The Bluebeard Room by Carolyn Keene Read Free Book Online Page A

Mr. Warrick! He’s hardly moved or said a word since he got in early yesterday, and when he does talk, it’s just gibberish. A gentleman who came to see him this morning couldn’t get any sense out of him, either.”
    “Sounds like he’s coming down from a bad drug trip,” Lance muttered to Jane as they followed the landlady up the stairs.
    “Oh no, he’s been staying off drugs, that I do believe!” put in Mrs. Roby. “If he hadn’t, you can be sure I’d have sent him packing.”
    She knocked on the door of her lodger’s room. When there was no response, Lance opened it, only to stop short with a stifled exclamation.
    Ian Purcell, Nancy now saw, occupied a dingy but spacious one-room apartment furnished in florid Victorian style. He was seated in front of the fireplace partially facing the door. The skinny, straw-haired bass player showed only the barest awareness of his visitors. His eyes seemed haunted and his mouth hung open with a trace of drool from one corner.
    “For God’s sake, Ian, snap out of it!” Lance blurted. But the rocker’s sole response when shaken was a babble of meaningless sounds.
    “How long has he been like this, Mrs. Roby?”
    “A good day and a half, it’s been. ’Twasn’t six A.M. when he got in yesterday. Cook was in the kitchen when she heard him at the door. He had a key, of course, but couldn’t fit it in the lock, so he rang the bell. When she let him in, he collapsed in her arms. She had to wake our handyman, and the two of them got him upstairs to his room. Since then, I’ve heard him stumbling about a bit now and then, but that’s all.”
    Lance Warrick heaved a heavy sigh. “All right, I suppose we’d better call an ambulance.”
    Nancy spoke diffidently to the landlady, “Did you say Mr. Purcell had a visitor this morning?”
    “That’s right, Miss. Quite a nice-dressed gentleman, he was.”
    “Did he give his name?”
    “Hmm, seems he did, but I don’t recall offhand. Some kind of art dealer, I believe. Wait now—he left a card, come to think of it.”
    While Lance went to phone for an ambulance, Mrs. Roby fetched the card to show Nancy. It named the caller as Eustace Thorne, a dealer in objets d’art with a shop on Pimlico Road.
    Lance soon returned from the telephone. He decided that he and Jane Royce would ride along with the ambulance to inspect the sanatorium where Ian would be taken and arrange for the best possible medical care. “In the meantime, Nancy, you can drive my car back to your hotel,” he said. “Jane can pick it up later. Better yet, I’ll pick it up myself when I come to take you out to dinner tonight!”
    “We’re dining, are we?” Nancy smiled quizzically.
    “Of course we are—to make up for the way our lunch was cut short!”
    “All right. But are you sure you want me operating that beautiful machine in London traffic? I’ve never driven on the left-hand side of the street before.”
    “Nothing to it, luv. I’ll show you the controls myself.”
    Before leaving, Nancy said she wanted to talk to the art dealer who had visited Ian Purcell. Lance told her how to get to Pimlico. “It’s right between Buckingham Palace and Chelsea. We passed it.”
    It was a thrill driving the lovely red sports car through London. Pimlico, Lance had informed her, was a newly fashionable shopping area.
    Eustace Thorne, a silk-suited man with a walrus mustache and a carnation in his lapel, was more than willing to answer Nancy’s questions. Lance Warrick, she learned, had phoned ahead to introduce her.
    “May I ask why you went to see Ian Purcell, Mr. Thorne?” she began.
    “About the Golden Mab, my dear. You see, he told me last week that he’d recently seen a duplicate of the statuette.”
    “The Golden Mab?” Nancy Drew frowned. “Should I know what that means?”
    The art dealer shrugged and fluttered his well-manicured hands. “Perhaps not, if you’ve just arrived in London. It’s been receiving a good deal of media coverage