"He absolutely must," she said to herself.
The FBI agents were very thorough. They searched every inch of the room. Finally one of the men began to open the desk drawers. He called the girls" attention to the fact that there was nothing in them.
"That"s unusual for a college student," he remarked.
George spoke up. "Maybe Ned removed the papers."
"But why?" Bess asked.
The agent looked up at Nancy. "Perhaps Miss Drew has an answer."
"I can make a guess," Nancy replied. "Did you know that there had been a burglary in one of the labs? A great deal of equipment was taken. Isn"t it possible the same burglar came here to steal some science papers that belonged to Ned?"
"Very good reasoning," the agent said. Then he picked up a small paper which had lain upside down in the drawer. "This is the only thing in here, but it looks interesting," he added, turning it right side up. He handled it carefully so as not to smudge any fingerprints that might be on it.
The others peered over his shoulder. Someone had drawn a sketch of an oversized eve. Under it were the letters
Everyone stared at the paper and Bess murmured, "That awful eye again!"
The agent turned to his companion. "Do you know what this says?"
"Yes," the other man replied. "It"s Greek. I studied Greek at school. These letters spell the word Cyclops."
Hearing this, Bess gave another little cry. "That"s the second time today we"ve come across Cyclops," she told the agents.
Nancy informed the men that Ned Nickerson had not studied Greek so she was inclined to think that someone else had made the drawing.
Everyone started conjecturing about who had left it. The burglar?Another student?A professor? Nancy, however, was convinced that Crosson had given it to Ned or placed it in his room as a warning.
No one had any answers to the questions and the FBI agents admitted there was nothing else in the room to supply a clue. "We"ll take this paper along," one of them said, "and have the fingerprints on it a.n.a.lyzed."
The group went downstairs and in a few minutes the agents said good-by. They promised to communicate with Nancy if anything of importance came of their tests.
The three girls returned to the guest room and sat down to talk. "It seems to me," said Bess, "that things are getting to be more of a mess instead of being straightened out."
Nancy agreed but George came to her friend"s defense. "I think Nancy has accomplished a great deal. She has practically proved that Ned was kidnapped and probably by Crosson who was afraid of having an undergraduate receive more praise for some experiment than he would for one of his."
"You could be right," Bess remarked. "But where do we go from here?"
At that moment the extension phone in their room rang. Nancy answered. A student who had taken the call said that Ned Nickerson"s mother was on the wire.
"She has something very important to tell you, Nancy," he said.
"Thank you," she replied to the boy, and he transferred the call to her phone.
"Nancy dear, is this you?"
"Yes, Mrs. Nickerson. How are you?"
"Oh, I"m all right, but worried of course."
"I understand you have some important news for me."
Ned"s mother said she felt sure it was important and went on to say that a large package had arrived from Emerson. It was from Ned and had been mailed to her and Mr. Nickerson several days before.
"We can"t understand why Ned sent those things home during the term. Surely he would need them for his college work."
Nancy asked what was in the package.
"It was filled with papers and all kinds of technical drawings from science courses."
"Mrs. Nickerson," said Nancy, "was there a drawing of an eye?"
"No, dear. Why do you ask?"
Nancy said that she thought Ned might be interested in an experiment to do with a glowing eye, then asked, "Does the word Cyclops appear anywhere among the papers?"
"No. That"s derived from Greek, isn"t it?" Mrs. Nickerson inquired. "Nothing in the contents contains a Greek word."
She went on to say that no letter of explanation had come.
"What kind of drawings are they?" Nancy queried.
"Oh, various geometrical figures, but one thing we did notice. There were several sketches of helicopters. My husband and I don"t know anything about helicopters so I can"t tell you what type they are. Do you think Ned was taking flying lessons?"
"I never heard him mention it," Nancy replied, then inquired if there were any charts for computer programming.
"I have no idea," Ned"s mother replied. "I wouldn"t know one if I saw it!"
Nancy asked a few more questions about the papers, but Mrs. Nickerson could not answer them. Suddenly she suggested, "How about you and Bess and George coming here for a little visit and going through Ned"s papers? You might even find a message from him hidden among them!"
"Oh, thank you very much," Nancy replied. "When would you like us to come?"
Mrs. Nickerson said, "The sooner the better. Can you start right away?"
"I don"t see any reason why not," Nancy replied. "Would you hold the line a minute while I ask Bess and George?"
Nancy turned and quickly relayed the message. They agreed at once to go.
As the girls packed their bags and wrote a note to Burt and Dave, they discussed what Nancy had learned from Mrs. Nickerson.
"I can"t understand," said Bess, "why Ned bothered to send all those papers home."
George had an answer. "Perhaps he suspected he might be kidnapped and wanted to keep the papers safe. Or it"s just possible he decided to vanish so he couldn"t be kidnapped."
Nancy thought this over. Presently she said, "If Ned did go away for a personal reason, maybe he"s doing some detective work on his own."
George nodded. "True. And where does Crosson fit in? Is Ned trailing him because he suspects him of something dishonest?"