The Secret of Red Gate Farm by Carolyn Keene

hearing of her encounter with the lookout.
    “Weren’t you frightened when he sprang up out of nowhere?” Bess asked, giving Nancy an admiring glance. “I’d have fainted on the spot!”
    “That’s an easy way out if I ever heard one!” Nancy commented with a laugh.
    “Girls don’t faint these days,” George scoffed. “Probably you’d have screamed and brought all the members down on you. They’d have dragged you off and put an end to you!”
    “Thanks, George,” Bess muttered. “You say the nicest things!”
    “Well, girls, talk all you like,” Nancy added, “but don’t lose your nerve altogether. I still want to get a closer look at that cave!”
    “Not tonight!” Bess said firmly.
    Nancy smiled. “I hope there won’t be a ritual on the hillside tonight. We’ve been too busy to get our costumes ready.”
    The girls watched but the distant landscape remained dark. Finally they went to bed. Not long afterward, Nancy was roused from a fitful slumber by the stopping of a car not far from her window. She hopped from bed and went to peer out. A tall, slender woman who wore her hair piled high was walking to the front door.
    Nancy leaned out the window and called, “What is it you wish?”
    “Nancy Drew. Is she here?”
    “Yes, I’m Nancy.”
    “I have a letter for you.” Nancy did not recognize the woman’s voice. But she might be disguising it.
    “From whom?”
    “Your father.”
    “Why are you bringing it now?”
    “It’s an urgent message,” the strange woman said. “I’ll leave it on the doorstep.”
    She dropped the letter, hurried into the car, and the man at the wheel drove off. Heart pounding, Nancy put on her robe and slippers and hurried down to the front door.

CHAPTER XII
    Secret Service Agents
    THE stopping of the car at the house had awakened Mrs. Byrd who slept on the first floor. She met Nancy in the hall and asked what was happening.
    Quickly Nancy told her, then opened the door. On the porch lay a plain envelope with Nancy’s name typed on it.
    “This seems like a peculiar way for your father to get in touch with you,” Mrs. Byrd remarked. “Why didn’t he phone if it’s urgent?”
    “I don’t understand it myself,” Nancy answered, as she tore open the letter.
    The message was typewritten and was succinct. Nancy was to return home at once. Her father needed her. She was not to try to communicate with him. He could not explain why. It was signed “Dad.”
    Nancy read the letter to Mrs. Byrd. “Oh, I couldn’t let you start out at this time of night alone,” the woman said at once. “You must wait until morning.”
    “This whole thing doesn’t seem like Dad,” Nancy reflected. “He wouldn’t send a terse note like this even if he were in some kind of trouble.”
    Mrs. Byrd was very much concerned. “It seems to me he would have called you on the phone in an emergency,” she offered thoughtfully.
    “Yes,” Nancy agreed, “that’s why this puzzles me so. But don’t you worry about it, Mrs. Byrd. This is something I’ll have to try to figure out myself.”
    “But, my dear,” Mrs. Byrd repeated, “it’s impossible for you to do anything about it at this hour.”
    Nancy carefully studied the note again. Suddenly she became aware of a familiar scent of perfume. The young detective held the envelope to her nostrils. It had been handled by someone who used the distinctive Blue Jade scent which Bess had purchased!
    Instantly Nancy was alerted. “It wouldn’t surprise me, Mrs. Byrd, if this letter is a phony! I’m going to call Dad, even though it’s an unearthly hour to waken him.”
    She picked up the receiver in the hall. No sound reached her ears. “I’m afraid the line is dead,” she told Mrs. Byrd. “Does this happen often?”
    “It has never happened before,” Mrs. Byrd said. “I made a call after supper and everything was all right then.”
    Nancy stood in perplexed silence. Had her father tried to get her, found the line out of