Free The Mysterious Mannequin by Carolyn G. Keene

pencils.”
    “Very funny,” said Nancy. “Ned, will you be serious!” But she couldn’t keep a straight face.
    “Well, where else?” he asked.
    “I can think of only one other kind of place,” Nancy answered. “A sweetshop.”
    “I saw one down on the next corner,” Ned told her.
    The couple walked to it and went in. Ned bought a box of chocolates and handed it to Nancy.
    “Oh, thank you,” she said, then asked the clerk, “Do you have any customers named Arik and Hatun?”
    As the clerk said no, Nancy and Ned became aware of giggling at the side of the shop. They turned to see two little girls sucking lollipops. On a hunch Nancy asked if they knew either of the people.
    “Sue, you tell her,” said the other girl shyly.
    “Okay, Kathy,” her playmate said. She told Nancy that a family who lived next door to her had a boarder named Arik. “He has a funny first name. We call him Tunafish.”
    The two little girls burst into giggles again.
    Nancy smiled and said, “Sue and Kathy, is it Tunay?”
    “Guess so,” Kathy answered. “We like Tunafish.”
    Nancy asked, “Will you take us there?”
    “Why not?” said Sue.
    The two little girls ran from the shop with Nancy and Ned at their heels. They went around a corner and up to a row of houses.
    Presently they stopped and Kathy pointed. “He lives in there.”
    Nancy and Ned climbed the steps and rang the bell. A woman answered and this time Ned made the inquiry. “Does Tunay Arik live here?”
    “Yes, he does,” the woman replied. “But he’s at work now. Won’t be home till five o’clock. Why did you want him?”
    “We have a message for a man we think is named Tunay Arik,” Nancy spoke up. “What does your boarder look like?”
    When the woman gave a description, Nancy merely said, “He sounds like the right man. We’ll be back to see him later.”
    As she and Ned turned to go down the steps, Nancy whispered to him, “He fits the description of the burglar all right!”
    When they reached the foot of the steps, Sue and Kathy were waiting for them. Giggling again, they began to sing in a kind of nursery rhythm.
    “Tunafish is in lu-uv,
Tunafish is in lu-uv.
But Aisha won’t date him.
No, she’ll never date him.”
    Nancy was intrigued. She clapped and asked the little girls to sing the song again. They obliged and ended up laughing so hard tears came to their eyes.
    Nancy asked, “Do you mean Aisha Hatun?” The girls said they did not know her last name, but a couple of times they had heard Tunafish singing softly in some foreign language. The song always began, “Ah-ee-sha, Ah-ee-sha.”
    “What else did he do?” Nancy inquired.
    Sue and Kathy, who said they were sisters, admitted sneaking into the house next door now and then to listen to the boarders.
    “Sometimes,” said Kathy, “Tunafish would go to the telephone and dial a number. He would say ‘Aisha, I must meet you.’ Then he’d talk in another language. We’d get tired of listening and go home.”
    Ned grinned. “So you never found out where the girl lives?”
    “No,” Kathy said. “And he was so sad. I guess she wouldn’t date him.”
    The girls said they must be going now and ran up the steps into the next house.
    “We picked up a clue,” Nancy remarked, “but we still have to locate Aisha Hatun. I have a hunch. Let’s try the library. I noticed one not far from here.”
    They walked to it and Nancy found that the woman at the desk was a music teacher whom she knew.
    “Hello, Nancy,” she said. “I guess you’re surprised to see me here. Most of my pupils go away in the summer and I take this part-time job. How come you’re in this neighborhood? Sleuthing?”
    Nancy admitted that she was and introduced Ned to Mrs. Armstrong. She told of her search for Aisha Hatun.
    Mrs. Armstrong pulled out her card file and thumbed through to the H’s.
    “Here it is,” she said. “Miss Aisha Hatun takes out books quite regularly. She must be a great reader. Oh,