(#39) The Clue of the Dancing Puppet by Carolyn Keene Read Free Book Online

with sighs loud enough to be heard on the first floor.
    Bess, meanwhile, was so convulsed with laughter that she had thrown herself on the bed and was rolling from side to side, tears streaming down her cheeks.
    “It’s perfect! Absolutely perfect!” she said, dabbing her eyes.
    George, too, was roaring with laughter. Finally she said, “Nancy, if you ever get a chance to play the part and do that to Bob Simpson, I’m telling you, Ned Nickerson will scalp you!”
    “He sure would,” Bess laughed. Nancy’s tall, good-looking friend, who attended Emerson College, was now a summer counselor at a camp.
    Nancy grinned. “Enough play acting! Let’s get on up to the attic!” she said.
    At this moment the girls heard a woman’s loud and terrified scream from the first floor!

CHAPTER VIII
    The Alarming Rehearsal
     
     
     
    “WHO WAS that?” Bess exclaimed fearfully.
    Nancy and George did not wait to answer. The sound seemed to have come from the kitchen, so they raced down the back stairs. The girls found Margo Spencer standing in the middle of the floor, her hands over her face.
    “What happened?” Nancy asked her quickly.
    The actress looked at her wildly. “I saw a witch!”
    “A witch! Where?” George questioned.
    “Out there.” Margo pointed toward the back stoop. “I heard a knock and opened the door. There stood the most horrible-looking witch!”
    “What did she say? What did she want?” George queried.
    Margo replied that she did not know. “I didn’t give the witch a chance to say anything. I slammed the door and locked it.”
    Nancy was across the floor in two seconds. She flung open the door. No one was on the stoop! She turned questioning eyes on Margo Spencer.
    “It was there! I saw it!” the actress declared. “I couldn’t make up such a thing!”
    By this time her husband had hurried into the kitchen. The drama coach, obviously startled, asked why Margo had screamed. When told, he began to chide her.
    “How perfectly ridiculous! You’re seeing things, my dear. Maybe you’ve been working too hard. Suppose you go up and take a nap. I’ll manage the rehearsal alone.”
    Margo Spencer turned a withering gaze on him. “I wasn’t seeing things,” she insisted. “Furthermore, you have no right to question my sanity!”
    “Now I know you’ve been overworking,” her husband said gently. “I’m not questioning your sanity. We actors and actresses have great imaginations. To us, trees or bushes can take on fantastic shapes.”
    Margo Spencer’s eyes were darting fire. Nancy felt very uncomfortable standing there. With a sudden inspiration, she said:
    “Mr. Spencer, please let me tell you about something I discovered this morning in the hayloft. It may clarify the situation.”
    The Spencers looked at her in astonishment. “How?” Margo asked.
    Nancy told how the hay had concealed the witch puppet. “It was well hidden and contained no strings or wires by which one might manipulate it. But it could lean against something. What you saw, Margo, might have been the witch puppet,” she said kindly. “Was it standing by itself, or supported by a post?”
    The actress thought a moment. “It was leaning against a post,” she replied. She turned to her husband. “Now do you believe me?”
    Mr. Spencer made sincere apologies and gave her a kiss and a hug.
    “I must go and look in the hayloft again,” said Nancy. “It’s just possible that the witch you saw, Margo, was not the one I found.”
    The whole group trooped to the hay barn. No one was around. Nancy went up the wooden ladder to the loft and rummaged in the hay.
    “Our friend the witch is still here,” she said. “Margo, will you come up and identify her?”
    Margo climbed the ladder, followed by her husband. By this time Nancy had uncovered the figure.
    “That’s it!” Margo cried out. “Oh, she’s so ugly! Hamilton, now do you blame me for screaming?”
    Mr. Spencer put an arm around his wife. “No, dear. I