History Lesson

Nancy caught her breath in dismay, but tried not to let her fear show in her eyes. " Don't be ridiculous, " she retorted. " You can't possibly get away with such a crazy scheme!

" But why not, Miss Drew? " Varney's lips curved in a mocking smile. " A wind is blowing, the night is getting colder. And there is certainly no heat in this old mill. So naturally, if the two of you should decide to sit and talk in your car, you would let the engine run and turn on the heater in order to keep warm. Unfortunately, it will appear that you sat there chatting too long, with the windows closed, unaware of the dangerous exhaust leak. En fin, the unhappy result can only be called an accident, n'est-ce pas? " The financier broke off with a harsh laugh.

Pierre Michaud stared at him in angry bewilderment. " What is all this you are saying, Varney? Before tonight, you have helped me and supported my work! But now you come here acting like an enemy! Like a criminal who wishes to get rid of me and my friend, Nancy Drew! Have you lost your mind, monsieur? And why, " Pierre added, frowning intently, " are you now speaking like a Frenchman, instead of an American? "

" Because he is a Frenchman, " said Nancy. " Don't ask me why he's able to speak English so well, or how he managed to pass himself off as an American so successfully. But I'll bet he followed you over to this country from France, Pierre—and for a very good reason! "

" For what reason? " Pierre shot a puzzled glance at the girl. " I do not understand, Nancy…"

" To stop you from becoming the Count d'Auvergne. Am I right— Monsieur Vernet? "

The financier eyed her coldly. " Perhaps you would care to explain why you call me by that name, Miss Drew? "

" Certainly! Why not? When I glanced through the opening pages of Professor Crawford's report just now, I noticed that Yvette Duval's first married name was Yvette Vernet. And I strongly suspect that you belong to the same family as her first husband, which means your real name is also probably Vernet. N'est-ce pas, monsieur? "

This time it was Nancy who spoke in a mocking tone. She was trying to keep the conversation going, in the desperate hope that she or Pierre could find some way to overtake their captors.

The man who called himself Varney chuckled again. " You are even smarter than I thought, my dear Miss Drew. Which makes it clearer than ever that I must get rid of you both! "

No doubt Pierre would have been more confused than ever by this latest exchange of remarks, had he been listening. But his attention had just wandered. While Nancy and Varney were speaking, he noticed that both crooks had their eyes focused on the girl detective. Cautiously, he reached out and took a firm grip on the desk chair... and suddenly hurled it at the burly financier!

The chair sent Varney toppling sideways against his apelike henchman! Louie Bousha too went down!

Before the crooks could recover, Pierre pounced on them, lashing out furiously with his fists as they struggled to their feet!

Bousha was still clutching the deadly canister. Nancy sent it flying from his hand with a swift kick in the wrist.

Just then, footsteps came pounding up the stairs and another man rushed into the room. He was dark-haired and tough-looking. Nancy's heart sank as she recognized him as her swarthy shadow. But a moment later, her dismay changed to excited relief. He was helping Pierre fight Varney and Louie Bousha!

There were tense moments as the struggle surged back and forth across the room. Then Nancy suddenly saw her chance. Grasping the overturned chair which Pierre had thrown, she gave it a hard shove. It slid across the floor, banging into Vamey's left ankle. Startled, he lost his balance, and a second later a hard punch by Pierre knocked him sprawling!

The fight was soon over. Battered and subdued, with their hands tied behind them, the two crooks glared at the victors. Pierre, who was still panting from his exertions but also grinning in triumph, gave Nancy a quick hug and kiss.

" Forgive the liberty, ma cherie, but without your help, we might never have won!

Nancy smiled and squeezed his hand, then turned to their swarthy ally. " I think we both owe this gentleman a vote of thanks, Pierre. His name is Andre Freneau. If you'll remember, we saw him outside the restaurant on that day you and I met in my father's office. Perhaps now he'll tell us how he came into this case."

Freneau was startled to learn that Nancy already knew his name. He took out his passport and official identification to show the two Americans. " As you see, Mademoiselle Drew, I am a French private detective, " he said, then smiled and bowed and held out his hand. " But may I offer my congratulations to one who is obviously a much better detective than I am ever likely to be! "

Both Nancy and Pierre shook his hand warmly.

" May I also apologize for any trouble I may have caused, " Freneau went on, " especially on that night in front of your house, Mademoiselle Drew. You see, I trailed your friend here, Pierre Michaud, and also that fellow Vernet, over to this country from France. I knew Vernet was a scoundrel, so when it appeared that he and Pierre Michaud were working together, I wrongly concluded that all three of you were engaged in some criminal scheme."

Pierre's dark eyes kindled with interest on hearing Freneau mention Vernet-alias-Varney. " What can you tell us about him, monsieur? " he asked.

The French detective smiled grimly. " I feel quite sure this shrewd young lady already knows the most important fact about his identity. Am I correct, Mademoiselle Drew? "

Nancy smiled back, then glanced at the scowling face of Vernet. " Since he's tried so hard to keep Pierre from discovering his true birthright, I'm almost certain he himself must be the former claimant to the title."

Freneau smiled approvingly. " Correct, mademoiselle. He is fitienne Vernet, and up until tonight, he has been able to call himself the Comte d'Auvergne! "

Later, after the two crooks had been turned over to the state police, Nancy and Pierre returned to the Thorpes' house, with Andre Freneau as an additional guest. Bess and George were also on hand to witness the outcome of the case.

By this time, Nancy had been able to read through Professor Crawford's report. So when the group clamored to hear her solution to the mystery, she was able to fill in the previously missing details.

" Your ancestress, Yvette Duval, " Nancy told Lisa, " was originally married to a French nobleman—Philippe Vernet, who held the title of Comte d'Auvergne. Their son was that little boy shown on the miniature. Unfortunately, France was plunged into revolution just about that time, and the royal government was so hated that almost every member of the nobility that the mob could lay hands on was put to death. So Yvette and her husband made plans to flee across the Channel to England to save their lives.

Yvette's sister Charlotte, the teenage sleuth explained, had previously married an Englishman and was already living in that country.

" I knew from Charlotte's letter, " Nancy went on, " that Yvette had had to leave some 'precious treasure' behind in France. Then when we found the miniature, I began to wonder if that little boy on it might have been her lost treasure. After all, what could be more precious to any mother than her child? And when we noticed the family resemblance between that little boy and Pierre, the whole jigsaw puzzle began to fit together."

" But wait! " Bess Marvin spoke up in a puzzled voice. " Why on earth did she hide that beautiful miniature away in a shabby old gown? "

Nancy smiled. " Because that shabby old gown was the disguise she wore during her escape from France. The Vernets didn't dare risk their son's life—there was too much risk of being caught. So they left him behind in the care of a kind-hearted village notary and his wife, named Michaud. Even the possession of such a valuable object as that miniature might have given the couple away as aristocrats. That's why Yvette sewed it in the hem of her gown—to keep it from being discovered, and also, of course, so she could have that cherished picture of her little boy to remember him by until she could see him again."

Nancy's face saddened as she described the tragic events that followed.

" Before they could escape from France, Philippe was recognized as a nobleman and carted off to the guillotine in Paris. Yvette, however, managed to avoid capture, thanks to her disguise as a peasant girl, and boarded a ship at Calais that took her across the Channel. But as a result of her terrifying ordeal, she suffered a loss of memory and landed in England in a state of total amnesia."

Luckily, Nancy added, her sister Charlotte identified and took care of the unhappy young woman. Eventually Yvette regained most of her memory and married Paul Duval, a banker of mixed Anglo-French parentage. But ever afterward, she preferred never to think or talk about the terrible circumstances that had cost her first husband his life.

Lisa exclaimed softly, " So that's why her story was never passed down in the family, from generation to generation! "

Nancy nodded thoughtfully. " You'll be interested to know, too, that according to Professor Crawford's papers, Paul Duval was a widower with one son when he married Yvette.

It was that son who carried on the Duval name. Only daughters were born to Yvette and Paul after their marriage, and I suspect they may have learned about her escape from France during the Reign of Terror. But the details probably soon got blurred and were forgotten. I guess most of us never bother to ask our parents and grandparents much about the past until it's too late.

" Because of the disturbed conditions in France due to the Revolution and the Napoleonic wars that followed, Yvette never recovered her lost child. The Michauds, who had long since moved from their native village, brought up the little boy as their own son.

" The only other relic of the past was the portrait of Yvette's first husband. Apparently her sister Charlotte was somehow able to retrieve this from the Comte's chateau and have it smuggled to England, soon after Yvette's flight to freedom. Perhaps seeing it helped Yvette recover her memory, " Nancy mused.

" Since nothing was known about their little son's fate, a cousin of the count claimed his chateau and estate and became accepted as the new Comte d'Auvergne. Like other nobles who swore allegiance to the Revolutionary government, he was allowed to keep his title.

" By the time the River Heights art museum opened a century later, the Duval family did not even know whom the oil portrait of Philippe Vernet represented. So they donated it to the museum.

" I suppose the whole story might never have come to light, " Nancy told her audience, " if one day the curator hadn't had the picture taken down and placed in storage. Miss Louise Duval was so annoyed that she called in an art expert to prove the picture was valuable. It was through him that she learned the painting was a portrait of the Comte d'Auvergne... which in turn made her realize her family might be descended from French nobility.

" Miss Duval, " Nancy went on, " then hired Professor Crawford to trace her family's history and try to prove her exciting secret hunch. His summer's research in England and France uncovered the fact that Pierre's Grandfather Michaud was a direct descendent of the count and countess's lost little son. This made him— and later Pierre—the true present-day Count d'Auvergne and therefore the rightful inheritor of the Chateau d'Auvergne and all its surrounding vast estate.

" Unfortunately, Etienne Vernet, like his forefathers, had grown used to being the count and enjoying the wealth that went with the count's estate. He had no intention of giving up the title.

" From what Monsieur Freneau told us, " said Nancy, " we know now that Vernet did away with a French private detective whom the professor had hired to gather evidence in the case.

" Under grilling by the state police/' Nancy added, " Vernet also admitted that he had flown to this country and tried to run down Miss Duval with a car in order to stop her from pursuing her investigation.

" His effort, in fact, succeeded. Louise Duval succumbed to a heart attack, and as a result, Professor Crawford simply left his unfinished report lying in his desk drawer.

" At the time of the professor's research, Etienne Vernet was twenty-six years old. From that point on, he kept careful tab on the Michauds in order to thwart any future attempt they might make to claim the title.

" After reading a French newspaper interview with Pierre Michaud, the false count went into action. The interview told how Pierre was coming to America to develop and market his computer device, and also to find out why Louise Duval had written the mysterious letter to his grandfather thirty years ago.

" Vernet—who had been educated in the

United States and spoke English fluently— posed as 'Mr. Varney' in order to keep in touch with Pierre's activities, and also to obstruct and discredit him in any way possible. This included starting the fire in his workshop, planting the booby trap, and spreading malicious lies about him while posing as a French lawyer.

" With the help of his stooge, Louie Bousha, Vernet also tried to steal the original count's portrait from the museum and scare me off the case by chasing me in a red car and tampering with my power steering."

" You told us that red car didn't seem to have any driver, Nancy, " George Fayne spoke up. " How did the big crook manage that trick? "

" Actually it was his hired hand, Louie Bousha, who was at the wheel, " the young detective replied, " and he wore a black hood which made him almost impossible to see in the darkness."

" Yikes! " George exclaimed. " Pretty neat! "

" It was also Bousha who broke into your attic, " Nancy told Lisa. " That was because Var-ney had heard from Pierre that you'd invited me to come over the next day and search your great-aunt's effects. But we spoiled their plan when you phoned and asked me to come over that same night."

" What a lucky break! " exclaimed Lisa. " Otherwise they might have found the ring and the miniature before we did! "

Nancy then invited the French detective, Andre Freneau, to tell his story. He revealed that it was his father who had been hired by Professor Crawford to help investigate the background of the Michaud family and the rightful ownership of the d'Auvergne estate, and who had later been done away with by fitienne Vernet.

" I always suspected my father's death was due to foul play, " Freneau told his circle of listeners. " When I learned that Pierre Michaud and Vernet were both coming to this country, I at first suspected they were engaged in some new criminal plot. Thanks to Mademoiselle Drew, however, I eventually learned which one was the real criminal."

Nancy added that following Vernet's arrest, she had also found out that during his trip to America thirty years ago, he had paid the then law clerk Maxwell Fleen for information about his firm's client, Miss Louise Duval.

Chubby Bess Marvin looked shocked on hearing this. " If Fleen's a lawyer now, " she said indignantly, " shouldn't he be disbarred from practice for doing such a thing? "

" That's a matter I intend to take up with my father, " Nancy replied discreetly.

The evening ended on an especially happy note when Pierre Michaud proudly announced that Lisa Thorpe had accepted his proposal of marriage.

When the applause and excitement had subsided enough for him to be heard, he turned with a somewhat uncertain smile to Mr. Thorpe and added, " I trust her father will not object to our engagement? "

" He'd better not! " Lisa said, only half-jokingly and with a new firmness in her voice.

Norton Thorpe clapped the young Frenchman on the shoulder and, with a hearty smile, shook his hand. " My dear chap! How could I possibly object to my daughter becoming not only the new Countess d'Auvergne but also the wife of an up-and-coming electronics genius! " Lisa, her eyes moist with tears of joy, not only because of her future marriage but also because of her restored relationship with her father, threw her arms around Nancy in a warm embrace exclaiming: " Oh, Nancy, none of this could ever have happened if you hadn't worked so hard to solve the mystery."

For a moment, the girl detective wondered how difficult her next case would be. She did not expect an answer so soon when she found The Broken Anchor.

" How can we ever thank you? " Lisa asked.

" You already have, " Nancy said, blinking her eyes. " That look of happiness on your face is my greatest reward."

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