spaces to replace Morse Code's dots and dashes. She shares this with
her friends George and Bess and they all drive to the countryside to
practise. They almost hit a stray cat on the way and they take it
home. They later return it to its owner, Miss Annie Carter, who has
placed an ad in a newspaper over it.
Annie is a middle-aged spinster and formerly-famous actress who rears
25 cats in her home. She is unable to feed them all so they howl
around the neighbourhood,constituting a nuisance. The neighbours give
her an ultimatum and one of them,Fred Bunce,threatens to reopen the
Gus Woonton case. According to Miss Carter,Bunce iltreatment of his
ward Gus made him come to her for food and she sent him to Riverside
Home boarding school where (according to a just-arriving telegram) he
died. Bunce threatens to sue her but stops when Nancy offers her
famous father's legal assistance to Miss Carter. He even offers to
finance his funeral. [:D However, Ralph Woonton,Gus' supposed
biological father,died childless and Gus is really Bunce's son. Bunce
was Ralph secretary and manages to pass off his half-demented son as
Woonton's, partly to get Ralph's property and partly because he is
ashamed of Bunce. He has forged the telegram to blackmail Miss
Carter.]
Seeing that Annie is inefficient in both homekeeping and spending,
Nancy employs Mrs Bealing (a relative of Hannah Gruen,the Drews'
housekeeper) as her housekeeper. Miss Carter wants to recover the
money she has spent on Gus from Mr Bunce. Mr and Miss Drew visit the
Bunces and the wife reveals Gus has an inheritance but Bunce denies
this.
Meanwhile,Mrs Bealing reports to Nancy that she has been hearing
strange tapping noises at night and that Miss Carter's pets are being
poisoned. Miss Carter willingly hands over most of the other pets to
the vet. Then Horace St Will,Miss Carter's actor friend, visits her.
During their talk, Horace reveals he is related to Ralph Woonton. He
sends Ralph's letters which prove he dies childless to Mr Drew. A few
days later, Bunce breaks into Carson Drew's study and makes away with
the letters. He is almost caught by the just-returning Mr Drew so he
hides the letters in Drew's tool chest and hastily leaves the
compound. He later sends a coloured man with freckles to recover them.
Nancy and Ned (her boyfriend) find the Bunces' home deserted ; the
couple has fled. Mr Drew employs Detective Keely to trail Bunce. Nancy
and Keely search Bunce's house and find Annie's cats,which they
promptly return to her. Meanwhile,Mrs Bealing discovers that Annie
(with stage name Lady Violette) is supporting a young actress named
Beverly Barrette and is too proud to disclose her poor financial
status while she herself has the barest necessities of life.
Ned and Nancy go for a steamer ride with other youths. Nancy meets
Harlan Bailey, Ned's friend, who once lived near the Woontons in South
America. Then Captain Staff warns Penello,a deck hand, to keep off a
certain room in the steamer. But Penello has already tampered with the
steering wheel and the vessel strikes another boat and throws the
passengers into the water. Everyone on board is rescued but people
erroneously blame Captain Staff.
One day,Nancy and her chums run into Penello and watch him and the
freckle-faced coloured man walk into the "Egyptian Temple of the
Stars" together. Nancy and her pals too enter and pretend to have come
for fortune-telling. They eavesdrop on the conversation between
Penello and Omar (the fortune-teller) but they are soon drugged to
sleep by the incense in the waiting room where they are. Omar wakes
them up and discovers Nancy is Drew's daughter. He then locks them
up,drugs them with incense again and sends a ransom note to Mr Drew. A
policeman raids the temple and rescues the girls but Omar evades
arrest. Nancy reports the conversation between Captain Staff and
Penello to an insurance company and this leads to a verbal threat from
an anonymous caller.
Mr Drew then sends Nancy and her pals to Bess' aunt (Mrs Miller) in
New York for safety reasons. The girls tell Beverly about Annie's
true financial state. They later spot the Bunces in a restaurant and
Mrs Miller trails them to Windham Hotel and watches them buy steamship
tickets for their journey to South America the following Thursday.
Nancy phones Riverside Home and finds that the Home never sent a
telegram about Gus' death and that Fred has taken Gus away from the
Home. Keely too arrives on New York on a tip-off to catch the Bunces,
but they have left the hotel.
Nancy and Horace later see Fred talking with Omar and the freckled man
(Omar's brother Sam). They hide in a bush and eavesdrop. While Horace
is away to call the police, the men discover Nancy and kidnap her in a
stolen car. The Bunces smuggle Nancy into The Tasmania,the ship taking
them to South America, with the connivance of Chief Officer Murray.
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