The Secret of the Wooden Lady by Carolyn Keene Page A

to me old Mrs. Mathilda Smythe has a story about a Captain Rogers—or was it Roberts? Beats me. Why don’t you go talk to Mrs. Smythe, anyway?”
    “I will,” Nancy said earnestly, and asked where she could find her.
    The artist gave the address of the elderly widow and told Nancy to mention his name. Nancy found the gray-shingled cottage and knocked on the door. In a moment a fragile old lady of eighty opened it. Nancy introduced herself, and explained why she had come.
    “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Smythe said cordially. “Please come in.”
    Nancy followed her into the spotless parlor, and told her briefly about the Dream of Melissa and Captain Rogers.
    “Captain Perry Rogers!” Mrs. Smythe exclaimed. “My mother nearly married him.”
    “Really?” Nancy was excited. “Please tell me the story, Mrs. Smythe.”
    The old woman sat forward in her rocking chair and cradled her hands in her lap.
    “Captain Rogers fell in love with my mother, Mathilda Witherspoon,” Mrs. Smythe said slowly. “She was only sixteen. Captain Rogers was a good bit older, and her family opposed the marriage. But Mother and the captain were very much in love. They planned to marry secretly as soon as he returned from the voyage to India.”
    “But he never came back?” Nancy asked. Mrs. Smythe shook her head sadly. “My mother never heard from him again. She waited and waited, hoping some news would come. At last she married Father. And a fine man he was too, mind you.”
    “Did anyone ever learn anything about the ship?” Nancy asked. “Was the Melissa wrecked?”
    “No one knows, Miss Drew. from that day to this, nobody has ever found a trace of the ship or her cargo.”
    The old lady rocked gently, looking into space. She pursed her lips and gave a little smile. Nancy felt she was about to be let in on a secret.
    “Captain Rogers made Mother a promise.”
    “What sort of promise?” Nancy prompted.
    “He said he would bring her back a priceless gift. She didn’t know what it was. But Captain Rogers was a rich man. He made many profitable voyages to the Orient.”
    Nancy asked eagerly, “Didn’t your mother ever guess what the gift might have been?”
    “No, I’m afraid not. At any rate, in the stories I heard, the treasure was always something mysterious.” She smiled wistfully. “Perhaps if the Melissa had returned, and Captain Rogers had married Mother, there would be money today to pay the taxes on this house. It’s the old Witherspoon homestead, and I’m afraid I’m going to lose it.”
    Nancy longed to tell Mrs. Smythe of the Bonny Scot —that it was almost certainly the long-lost Dream of Melissa. But she did not want to raise the woman’s hopes of finding Captain Rogers’ fabulous gift.
    She did tell her, however, about the snuffbox with the initials P. R., and how it had led her to the story of Captain Rogers and his ship.
    “If I ever find that snuffbox again,” Nancy promised Mrs. Smythe, “I’ll bring it here to show you.”
    She said good-by and hurried to catch a bus back to meet George. She could scarcely wait to tell her and the others aboard the clipper that there really had been a treasure on the Dream of Melissa.
    “And no doubt it’s still there!” Nancy finished telling George as the two girls rowed back to the ship.
    “And if we don’t look out, the thieves will find it before we do,” George said seriously. “Listen to this.”
    She said that through the owner of the grocery-hardware store, she had located the boy who had delivered the lizard. At first he had not been willing to answer George’s questions. But after being told that Captain Easterly thought there was a poisonous lizard in the box, the boy had talked freely, assuring George he had not known what was in the box.
    “Big, tall guy I’d seen in the drugstore when I was gettin’ a soda, come up to me on the beach,” the boy said. “Told me he wanted to play a joke on a girl on the Bonny Scot. Paid me well for taking the