Carolyn Keene - Nancy Drew by The Twin Dilemma

a variety of materials and sewing goods.
    Through the window, the girl detective saw the men descend a flight of steps in the rear. She entered the store, taking quick note of the colorful polyester and cotton fabrics that were shelved in bolts.
    A sign in the back indicated that the sewing supplies and offices were downstairs. Nancy followed the arrow, glancing down at the customers as she went below. The men were not in sight. Apparently, they had stepped into the office.
    Nancy headed for a table with large pattern books on it. She leafed through one, glancing up periodically to look for the two impostors.

    “Excuse me, please,” a woman said suddenly. Nancy had not been aware of the customer standing next to her, eager to look at the pattern book she was holding. “Are you finished with that?”
    “Oh, yes,” the girl replied as men’s voices suddenly drifted over the sound of file drawers opening and closing.
    The office, Nancy soon discovered, was located around a bend in the wall. Next to it was a tall column of narrow metal cabinets that contained all kinds of buttons. Without seeming too obvious, the girl secreted herself behind them. Now she was within better hearing range of the conversation.
    “Mr. Belini,” Nancy overheard Jacqueline’s friend say, “I have only a few questions.”
    The young detective leaned forward eagerly, but someone approached the cabinets and opened a drawer, digging noisily through the buttons. Nancy quickly busied herself with swatches of material that hung behind her. Then, when the metal drawer slammed shut, she took her place again.
    This time the other man was talking, and it seemed to Nancy that she heard the name Rosalind. But his voice fell away in a drone of unintelligible words.
    It’s so frustrating, Nancy said to herself. She was tempted to leave her hiding place and move closer to the doorway, but what if she were caught? I can’t take the chance, she decided.
    She rested her hands on the stack of metal and dipped her head to one side. The pressure of her grip pitched the fragile cabinet forward and several drawers slid open, emitting hundreds of buttons!
    They poured out in a steady stream despite the girl’s attempt to right the cabinet quickly. Then her fingers slipped, and the whole structure crashed to the floor!

14
    A Developing Pattern
    As hundreds of buttons swirled out, Nancy hurried to the other side of the wall. She felt a lump harden in her throat as the three men ran out of the office.
    “Again someone knocked over this cabinet,” Belini complained. “Why don’t people watch where they’re walking?”
    Two assistants seemed to appear from nowhere. “That whole setup is just terrible,” one said. “We’ll have to get a different type of cabinet. This one is so wobbly it falls at least once a week!”
    While Belini mumbled something, they scooped up the buttons, separating them into their respective drawers. The three men, meanwhile, went back into Belini’s office. When the clerks finished with the cabinet, they hurried upstairs, allowing Nancy to position herself behind it once more. This time she carefully avoided touching it.
    “How well do you know Mrs. Jenner?” she heard the phony Chris Chavez ask.
    Belini said something in reply, which Nancy could not understand. Then his voice rose as he added, “Mrs. Jenner has a reputation for being abrasive. But she was a good worker, Mr. Henri, the best stylist around!”
    Henri! Nancy couldn’t believe her ears. Could it be that the phony Chris Chavez was really the reporter, Ted Henri?
    A jumble of thoughts raced through the girl’s mind. Why all the pretense? she wondered. And what was Ted Henri’s affiliation with the phony Russell Kaiser, alias Pete Grover?
    Was Henri investigating the same design thefts that Nancy was? Did they relate at all to the fake auction scheme he, as Chris Chavez, had revealed to Nancy?
    Or maybe he trumped up the auction story for my benefit, hoping to