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The Elusive Island






 

As THE speedboat passed, Juarez Tino turned to look back. Had he recognized Nancy?

“Follow that boat! ” Dr. Anderson ordered.

Jack opened the throttle and his boat leaped ahead, its prow out of the water.

“Glad to speed. But why? ” he asked. “Is that man ahead someone you know? ”

“We think so, ” Nancy answered. “Keep him in sight if you can.”

An idea suddenly came to her. The note in the incinerator had said “Will meet you at B—” Was Juarez heading for Black Key?

They raced after his speedboat, following its zigzag course. Then Juarez disappeared behind a palm-fringed islet. When the others rounded it, he was not in sight. They cruised in the vicinity for a while, searching for him, but he had vanished.

“We’d better not waste any more time, ” Nancy said. “I think Juarez went straight on to the Black Key. Let’s look on the map for Storm Island.”

After studying it, Jack headed the motorboat west, but could not find the Key which Two Line had vaguely pointed out on the chart. After an hour he changed his course. “You’d have to be a wizard to know this place thoroughly. Shorelines keep changing. New Keys building up.”

“How does that happen? ” Fran asked.

“Tides, storms, shifting sands. And the busy mangrove tree. That’s the great land builder in these parts.”

He pointed to the junglelike growth edging the Key they were passing. “Mangrove roots grow fast and spread faster. They catch drifting plant life and debris. And so the shoreline keeps building up.”

About twenty minutes later, Nancy asked, “Are we nearing the place where the Black Falcon sank? ”

Jack shrugged. “That Key we just passed is Storm Island. And out there near one of those Keys, according to Two Line Parker, lies the Black Falcon.” He pointed toward a vista of islets.

“But don’t ask me which one, ” Jack added with a grin. “You’ll have to figure that out yourself.”

He wound in and out among the islands. But since Two Line had told them nothing specific about the surrounding Keys, it seemed hopeless to identify Black Key.

They watched for Juarez, and listened for the drone of his speedboat. But all they heard were the cries of cranes and the lonely wail of limpkins.

“It’s lonesome out here, ” Fran said. “We must be miles from civilization.”

Dr. Anderson looked at his watch. “I think we’d better start back.”

Nancy felt frustrated as Jack headed his boat toward Miami. The hunt had certainly been disappointing.

“But, ” she told herself, “I’ll come back. The fifteenth isn’t until Wednesday.”

Nancy told Dr. Anderson about the charred letter she had found in Florida City that morning.

“According to that, Porterly and his friends are meeting on the fifteenth at some place beginning with a B. It may be Black Key, ” she declared.

“Sounds reasonable, ” the professor agreed. “Perhaps we should come back tomorrow and continue our search. We may be able to pick up Juarez’s trail.”

Nancy was delighted that he had expressed her own desires. “But let’s get an early start, ” she said. “In the morning.”

Dr. Anderson frowned. “You forget I have other students. I’m taking my class to a museum in the morning. We’ll have to wait until afternoon.”

“How about Fran and me going out in the morning with Jack? ” Nancy proposed.

The professor shook his head. “Now that I know Juarez is around, the answer is No. Two men in your party is the absolute minimum.”

When they reached the dock of the Southern Skies Guest House, a familiar figure came to meet her.

“Terry Scott! ” Nancy was dumfounded.

The young man grinned. “Like a dutiful daughter, you wired your dad. So when I talked to him on the phone, he told me where I might find you.”

Nancy introduced him to Fran and Jack. “And of course you and Dr. Anderson—” she added.

The older man gave Terry a long, cautious stare. Then, smiling, he held out his hand.

“I guess we may as well be partners, ” he said. “I’ve been using the services of your young detective on my own.”

Terry laughed boyishly. “With the three of us working together, we can’t lose.”

“What have you been doing, Terry? ” Nancy asked as they walked to the house. “We haven’t heard a word from you.”

“I’ll tell you at dinner, ” he promised. “How about you and Fran and Dr. Anderson eating at my hotel? ”

Half an hour later they gathered in the big dining room. Terry picked up the menu card and smiled.

“Ummm. Pompano steak, corn bread, and papaya! ” He sighed appreciatively.

After a waiter had taken their orders, Nancy said, “Now tell your news.”

“First of all, ” Terry began, “a good lead came from the Mexican police. They told me about an old woman—an aunt of Juarez—who lives a few miles from the site of our excavations. They have a signed statement from her.”

She admitted that Juarez had stolen the cipher tablet and Dr. Pitt had trailed him. She knew this, because Juarez had stopped at her place for food to take on a journey and had told her the story.

“Did she know where Juarez was going? ” Nancy asked eagerly.

“No. She had no idea where either Pitt or Juarez might be found.”

Nancy smiled impishly. “Dr. Anderson and I can do better than that. We know where Juarez is.”

Terry looked at her in amazement. “In Florida? ”

Nancy told about the pursuit of Juarez and their fruitless search for him in Jack’s motorboat.

“I’d like to go out myself and hunt for him, ” Terry declared. “Do you suppose, Fran, that your cousin would take us all out tomorrow morning? ”

Nancy threw Dr. Anderson a demure look. “I’m sure Jack will go, but the professor is conducting class tomorrow in a museum.”

Early the next morning Jack Walker moored his boat at the guest-house dock. Terry and Nancy were waiting, and Fran hurried to join them at the last minute, pencil and notebook in hand.

“The prof is making me write a report, ” she said. “Otherwise, I can’t go with you.”

Jack started the motor and the boat sped off on its mission.

“What’s the subject? ” Terry asked. “Maybe we can help you.”

“The Florida Keys—Their Character and Their History.”

Terry smiled. “All right. Let’s start with their character. The Keys are small coral islands stretching some two hundred miles beyond the mainland. At one time they were probably part of the land link to Yucatan.”

Fran looked at Terry thankfully. “Gracious, I didn’t know that! ”

Nancy reminded the girl of Two Line’s stories about pirates and wreckers, and Fran wrote busily in her notebook.

At last the searchers reached the group of Keys they had visited the afternoon before and started cruising around. Finally Jack let the motor idle.

“Hopeless, ” he said.

“It’s a maze, all right, ” Terry agreed. “But let’s not give up.”

Nancy pointed toward a small craft near one of the islets. “Could that be Juarez? ”

Jack headed his boat in that direction, and they soon overtook the other boat. It proved to be a small fishing cruiser, and Juarez was not aboard. Its only occupant was a sun-tanned fisherman, obviously intent on the day’s catch.

Nancy addressed him with a smile. “Good morning. We’re doing a little exploring. Would you please tell us how to find the Black Key? ”

“Black Key? Never heard of it, miss.”

“Perhaps you know where the Black Falcon was sunk many years ago? ” Nancy asked hopefully.

The man in the cruiser grinned. “It’s fishing I like, not history, ” he said. “It’s enough if I know the Keys by their shape, so to speak, and how they’re arranged. It helps me remember where the catch is good.”

“Well, thank you, anyway.”

Jack Walker was about to pull away from the other boat, when Nancy remembered something—the slip of paper she had found in the shrubbery at home, with the notation “5 x 7 and one.”

“I have one more question, if you don’t mind, ” she called to the fisherman. “You spoke of knowing how the Keys are arranged. Is there any place where they’re in groups of five and seven—and then one Key lying alone? ”

The man frowned, and thought about this. “Five and seven. Well, I’ll be switched! That’s the way they are, though I never figured it out before.”

He pointed with his rod.

“There’s five of them over that way, spreading south and eastward. They’re in a kind of half-moon. And yonder there are seven more of those Keys, sort of chainlike. They run north.”

“And the single island? ” Nancy asked.

“I’m not sure about that one, ” the man answered. “There might be a single one in there somewhere. I don’t remember.”

Nancy told the fisherman he had been very helpful, and Jack turned his boat in the direction the man had pointed out. Soon they reached the five half-moon Keys and the chain of seven Keys.

“Now let’s look for that odd island, ” Terry said. He was becoming intrigued, too, by the possibility of solving the mystery of Black Key.

Jack cruised slowly around the inside of the half-moon. There, overshadowed by the larger Keys and at an equal distance between the two groups, was a tiny islet.

Nancy was so excited she could hardly speak. “This must be Black Key! ” she whispered.

Viewed from the boat, the spot looked like a small jungle of mangroves. But as they approached, its extent proved to be greater than they had supposed. Searching its shadowy rim, they at last found an opening in the dense growth.

Jack guided his motorboat into the narrow inlet. Sheltered by the trees, they were completely out of sight of passing boatmen.

“A wonderful hideaway for pirates like Juarez! ” Terry commented.

Nancy spotted a path that wound off among the trees and suggested that Jack stop. “Let’s get out here, ” she said in a low voice, “and do some exploring.”

The group disembarked and cautiously moved inland. For a short distance the path wound and twisted among the mangroves. Then it suddenly ended at an open, sandy knoll.

Nancy and her companions stood still and gazed around them. In a moment Nancy pointed through a tangle of bushes across the clearing.

“Look! ” she whispered.

Almost concealed by the surrounding trees was a low gray hut. As they dashed across the open space toward it, the searchers heard a plane overhead. It was flying low.

“Hide! ” Terry commanded. “We don’t want to be seen.”


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