Free The Secret of the Old Clock by Carolyn Keene Page B

with delight.
    "We were just going to send out a search party for you!" Helen exclaimed. She stopped abruptly and stared at her friend. "You're sunburned and covered with grease! What happened?"
    Nancy laughed. "I had an extended sun bath." Then she gave a lighthearted account of her mishap as the campers trooped back to their cabins. When Helen learned that Nancy had had nothing to eat since breakfast, she went to the kitchen and brought back some food.
    The following morning the young sleuth decided on her next move. Directly after breakfast she began packing.
    When Helen entered the cabin she exclaimed in amazement, "Why, Nancy Drew! You're not leaving camp already!"
    "I'm afraid I'll have to, Helen. Right after lunch. I may be back but I'm not sure, so I'd better take my bag with me."
    "Don't you like it here?"
    "Of course!" Nancy assured her. "I've had a wonderful time. It's just that there's something very important I must attend to at once."
    Helen looked at her friend searchingly, then grinned. "Nancy Drew, you're working on some mystery with your father!"
    "Well, sort of," Nancy admitted. "But I'll try to get back. Okay?"
    "Oh, please do," Helen begged.
    Nancy went to the office to pay Aunt Martha and explain her hasty departure. After lunch she set off in her car to a chorus of farewells from the campers, who sadly watched her depart.
    She headed the car toward the end of the lake, then took the dirt road leading to the Topham cottage. Soon she came to a fork in the woods.
    "Now, which way shall I turn for the bungalow?" she wondered. After a moment's hesitation, Nancy calculated that she should turn left toward the water and did so.
    The going was rather rough due to ruts in the road. Two of them, deeper than the others, apparently had been made by a heavy truck.
    "The tracks appear fresh," Nancy mused.
    As she drove along, the young sleuth noticed a number of summer cottages. Most of them were still boarded up, since it was early in the season. As she gazed at one of them, the steering wheel was nearly wrenched from her hand by a crooked rut. As Nancy turned the steering wheel, to bring the car back to the center of the narrow road, one hand accidentally touched the horn. It blared loudly in the still woods.
    "That must have scared all the birds and animals." Nancy chuckled.
    Around a bend in the road, she caught sight of a white bungalow ahead on the right side of the road.
    There was no sign at the entrance to the driveway to indicate who the owner was, but a wooded path leading down to the lake looked like the one she had seen from the water.
    "I think I'll walk down to the shore and look at the cottage from there," Nancy determined. "Then I'll know for sure if this is the place Helen pointed out."
    Nancy parked at the edge of the road and got out. To her surprise, she observed that the truck's tire marks turned into the driveway. A second set of tracks indicated that the vehicle had backed out and gone on down the road.
    "Delivering supplies for the summer, no doubt," Nancy told herself.
    She went down the path to the water, then turned around to look at the cottage.
    "It's the Tophams' all right," Nancy decided.
    Instead of coming back by way of the path, she decided to take a short cut through the woods. "With mounting anticipation of solving the Crowley mystery, she reached the road and hurried up the driveway.
    "I hope the caretaker is here," she thought
    Nancy suddenly stopped short with a gasp of astonishment. "Why, the Tophams must be moving out!"
    The front and side doors of the cottage stood wide open. Some of the furniture on the porch was overturned and various small household items were strewn along the driveway.
    Nancy bent to examine some marks in the soft earth. She noted that several were boot prints, while others were long lines probably caused by dragging cartons and furniture across the lawn.
    "That must have been a moving van's tracks I saw," Nancy told herself. "But the Tophams didn't say