(#60) The Greek Symbol Mystery (2 page)

“She’s not—” Nancy interrupted, but was cut off as the crowd pressed closer to the girls. She grabbed George by one arm while Bess hung onto the other.

“We’re cousins,” she murmured. “Her name is Fayne and mine is—”

Her words trailed off as the men barked back. “Go home, Miss Sully. We’re the new landlords here!”

The men laughed harshly, forcing the girls to step off the curb into the street.

“Those men aren’t going to let us within two feet of that agency,” George declared.

“I knew we should’ve stayed at the airport,” Bess put in as the cleaning man retreated into the store.

“Let’s go,” Nancy said in disappointment. She waved to an oncoming taxi. “I hope our batting average improves when we get to Athens.”

The girls were still discussing the side trip when they boarded their plane, an Olympic Airways jet. While Bess went ahead to find their seats, Nancy stopped to talk with the copilot. He was young and had dark hair that spun in waves across his forehead.

“I flew a small plane once,” Nancy told him. “I can’t imagine sitting behind controls like these.”

“Well, as long as we aren’t in motion yet, ” the copilot replied, ducking into the front compartment, “be my guest.”

“Oh, are you sure it’s all right?”

“Just don’t touch anything. Okay?”

She nodded and slipped into the comfortable bucket seat next to him. “This is fantastic!” Nancy exclaimed, leaning toward the bank of knobs and gauges.

Suddenly a man’s voice bellowed at the pair from behind them. “What is this? Some joke? You let a girl try to fly this plane? Are you crazy?”

The copilot tried to explain but could not get a word in as the angry passenger kept complaining. Finally, Nancy stood up and stared calmly at the burly man. His face was the shade of a pale tomato.

“If you’re going to fly this plane,” he yelled, “I’ll see to it we never leave the ground!”

“You have nothing to worry about,” Nancy replied. “I’m only a passenger like yourself.”

“Then what are you doing in the pilot’s seat?” the man demanded.

Nancy explained. She had just finished when one of the flight attendants approached the group. “Please be seated, Mr. Isakos,” she said to the man and handed him a Greek newspaper.

Instead of thanking her, he merely shrugged. “Girls should be kept in their place—certainly nowhere near the controls of an airplane!”

George, who had heard part of the conversation, was angry at the man’s presumptuous tone. “In case you didn’t know,” she said as he walked down the aisle, “Amelia Earhart was an ace pilot and so is Nancy Drew!”

Isakos did not answer her. He slid into a seat not far from the girls.

Nancy frowned. “We’ll probably have to listen to his complaints all the way to Athens!”

She purposely averted her eyes from his as she moved toward her seat. Halfway there she noticed a piece of paper on the floor. She glimpsed the name PHOTINI printed boldly in the upper lefthand corner, and picked it up.

“What’s that?” Bess asked as Nancy slid into her seat next to George and fastened her seat belt.

“I don’t know,” Nancy said.

The three young detectives stared curiously at her discovery. It was the torn letterhead of the Greek agency that was under suspicion! Beneath the printed address was a most mysterious-looking doodle:

2

Stolen Note

Instantly Nancy pulled a small magnifying glass from her handbag and trained it over the unusual doodle. “It looks like the Greek letter phi,” she said.

“But what are those curlicues at each end?” Bess whispered.

“Maybe that means the doodler is going in circles!” George replied, grinning.

“Or it could mean something important,” Nancy said. She strained her neck to look out the window as the plane taxied into the lineup ready for take-off. The runway shimmered in the heat.

“Do you think it’ll be this hot in Greece?” Bess asked.

“Hotter,” George teased. “I’ve heard it gets to at least 120 degrees in the shade—”

“Of an olive tree,” Nancy added absently.

Paying small attention to the light banter between her friends, she stared at the note again. Suddenly, she realized there was some faded, almost invisible handwriting on the Photini letterhead.

“Look at this!” she exclaimed, handing the piece of paper and her magnifying glass to George.

“Let me see it, too,” Bess said.

“In a minute,” her cousin replied. She held the glass over the words Nancy had indicated. “All I can make out is
Záppeion
and
Maïou.
”

“Záppeion,”
Nancy repeated. “Isn’t that the place in Athens that has a huge military exhibit?”

Her listeners shrugged. “I don’t know about that,” George said, “but I think
Maïou
means the month of May in Greek.”

Bess was able to detect one or two more words in the message, and together they reconstructed the sentence:
rendezvous stó Záppeion tís íkosi pénde Maïou.
Nancy filled in the letters with her pen as the plane’s engines began to roar and the flight attendants returned to their stations for take-off. Once the plane was in the air, Nancy summoned one of them.

“Will you please translate this for me?” she asked, indicating the message in Greek.

The young woman wrinkled her forehead for a second, then answered. “It says ‘meeting at Záppeion on the 25th of May.’ That was a month ago.”

“Where exactly is Záppeion?” Nancy inquired.

“It’s not far from my apartment—behind the King’s Garden in the heart of Athens. If you haven’t been there, you ought to go. ”

“I’m sure we will,” Bess said. “What other sightseeing do you recommend?”

“Oh, there is so much—the National Archeological Museum or the Benaki, for instance. And you must see Plaka, the old section of Athens. Also, monastiraki, the flea market.”

“Isn’t that the place Helen Nicholas told us about?” Bess whispered to Nancy.

“Yes, she said it’s within walking distance of our hotel. ”

When the flight attendant excused herself, Nancy pulled out the notepad with Dimitri Georgiou’s signature. She compared it with the message on the letterhead. The formation of the letters was the same!

“So I guess we can conclude Dimitri wrote this,” George said, “and met someone at Záppeion on May 25th. But who and why, and was the meeting relevant to our case?”

“The point is,” Nancy said, drawing two sets of crisscrossed lines on the back of the letterhead, “whoever he wrote this to is probably on this plane. ”

“But we don’t want him to know we’re looking for Mr. Georgiou, do we?” Bess declared. She formed an X in a corner box of the tic-tac-toe pattern she had just drawn.

“If you mean we shouldn’t ask someone to claim the letterhead,” Nancy went on, “I agree.”

She and Bess played a few games of tic-tac-toe. Then dinner was served. There was a generous portion of moussaka on each tray, along with fresh green salad garnished with feta cheese and small black olives.

“I love eggplant,” Bess said, savoring her last forkful.

After the meal, the girls slipped on headphones to listen to music and later to the sound track of the in-flight movie. To their delight, it had been filmed in Athens. Nancy paid less attention to the story than to the twisting alleyways the girls would investigate tomorrow!

When it was over, the lights in the plane remained dim. Restless passengers got up to stretch while others, including the young detectives, asked for pillows and blankets.

“Good night,” George yawned presently.

“ ’Night,” Bess said.

Nancy wedged her handbag next to her, then closed her eyes, sinking soon into a deep sleep. It was only an hour or so later that she awoke as she felt her handbag being shoved against her. Groggily she glanced into the aisle. She saw no one there.

It must’ve been my imagination, she concluded, and drifted off again.

Sunlight flooded the plane a few hours later as it droned across southern Europe. It was three A.M. in New York but nine o’clock there.

“We just lost six hours,” Bess yawned.

“Cheer up,” her cousin replied. “You’ll gain them all back when we go home. ”

“Promise?” the other girl said.

She closed her eyes again while Nancy opened her handbag.

“It’s gone!” she cried suddenly.

“What’s gone?” George asked.

“The paper—the letterhead!

“Are you sure?” Bess put in.

“Look for yourself,” Nancy said.

She pulled out her wallet, a checkbook, various cosmetics, an airplane ticket, and passport, leaving only a set of small luggage keys in the bottom of the bag. The Photini letterhead was, indeed, missing.

“Maybe you threw it away with your dinner napkin,” George suggested.

Nancy shook her head. “Don’t you remember we played tic-tac-toe on the back of it, then I put it into my purse before we ate?” She sank back into her seat. “Someone took it,” she added.

She told about being half-awakened the night before when she felt the bag being moved. “But I guess I was so tired I just dismissed it.”

“Don’t feel bad,” Bess consoled her. “At least we know that one out of all the passengers on board has contact with Dimitri.”

“So all we have to do is interrogate 300 people!” George quipped.

Nancy wrinkled her nose. “You and Bess take coach and I’ll go through first class,” she replied, chuckling.

The girls dismissed the incident temporarily from their minds as they debarked and collected their suitcases. Outside, the sun blanketed the area of Glyfada in thick layers of heat.

“It’s sweltering,” George declared, feeling the temperature seeping through her sandals.

“We’ll get used to it,” Nancy said and darted toward a taxi stand. Within moments, the girls were on their way to the Hotel Skyros, a charming place located near Omonia Square.

“Gor-geous!” Bess exclaimed as a porter led them to their room.

It was large, with sliding glass doors that opened onto a terrace view of the Acropolis. On the walls were embroidered tapestries and beside each bed was a small flokati rug.

“When we get up in the morning,” said Bess, “we’ll think we’re floating on an Athenian cloud!”

Nancy and George laughed as they opened their suitcases.

Nancy removed a folding umbrella and remarked, “This could have stayed home!”

Before she could unpack anything else, there was a knock on the door. The porter had returned with a basket of delicious-looking yellow apples.

“For you,” he said, setting it on the table in front of the glass doors.

“Thank you,” Nancy replied.

“Maybe Ned sent them,” Bess suggested after the porter left, referring to Nancy’s special date. “Is there a card?”

“I don’t see any,” Nancy said. “Perhaps it’s a welcome gift from the hotel.”

She was tempted to sample it but decided to hang up her clothes first. George, on the other hand, scooped an apple off the top. As she bit into it, she glimpsed something green and scaly inside the basket. It was slithering upward between the fruit! George dropped the apple on the floor and stepped back.

“There’s a snake in here! Nancy! Bess!” she cried.

Now the venomous head emerged. George held her breath and took another step away as Nancy reached for her umbrella.

“Don’t move!” she told George, then slid the tip of the umbrella under the reptile.

It swooped forward abruptly, then swung back again.

“Oh!” Bess shrieked. “Be careful!”

“Sh!” her cousin chided her.

Seconds ticked by slowly as Nancy edged closer, hoping to bait the snake onto the umbrella. This time, to her relief, it curled across the folds of the material.

“Get the wastebasket and one of the flokati rugs,” Nancy said to Bess. “We’ll use it as a cover.”

Trembling, Bess obeyed Nancy’s instructions. She placed the basket near the table, dropped the rug in a heap next to it, then darted out of range. Nancy turned slowly and steadily on her heels, never letting her eyes leave the poisonous creature, and lowered the umbrella into the basket.

“Whew!” she sighed in relief as the snake slid off.

Instantly George stuffed the rug over it while Nancy dialed the hotel desk.