Suddenly, the door behind her creaked. Nancy whirled and stifled a scream. A tall, threatening figure was silhouetted in the doorway!
Chapter Four
“What are you doing in here?” Ned demanded. He flicked the tight switch next to the door.
Nancy blinked. “Oh, it’s you! Thank goodness . . . you startled me.”
“Nancy? I said, what are you doing poking around in Mike’s room?”
There was a coolness in his tone that puzzled her. Why was he being so hostile? It wasn’t as if she’d been doing anything wrong!
“I came upstairs for the bathroom but walked in here by mistake,” she explained. “But I’m glad I did. Look what I found!”
She nudged the carton toward him with her toe. Ned glanced at its contents and shrugged.
“So?”
“Don’t you see? It’s the same stuff that was used to make the dummy in the gym!” Quickly she filled him in on her examination of the effigy. “It means that Mike is behind all the practical jokes!”
“Not necessarily.”
Nancy stared at him, unable to believe what she was hearing. “Come on, Ned, be serious . . . what else could it mean?”
“Well, maybe it’s just a coincidence. Or maybe somebody dropped that box in here in order to frame him.”
Nancy thought about that. At first she was embarrassed—she had jumped to a conclusion! But then she realized that she had been right after all.
“No, it couldn’t be a frame-up,” she reasoned. “A frame-up would be more obvious. Think about it . . . why dump the evidence in a place where only Mike is likely to find it?”
“Okay, I’ll admit it sounds farfetched,” Ned said. “But so what? It’s not as farfetched as your theory!”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I know Mike. He’d never do anything to hurt the team.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Of course I am! The Wildcats mean everything to him. He’d no more play practical jokes on us than . . . well, than he would shoot the ball into the other team’s basket!”
A short silence followed. Ned had a point, Nancy knew. There was no good reason for Emerson’s co-captain to undermine the team’s morale, none that she could think of, anyway. On the contrary, he had every reason to work for the team’s success! Was her theory a washout after all?
No, she decided, the evidence was right in front of them. Maybe she didn’t know the motive yet, but she couldn’t ignore the facts. Somehow she had to convince Ned that she might be right.
“Ned, maybe someone’s paying Mike to play the practical jokes,” she suggested.
Ned shook his head. “Give me a break. Even if Mike could be bribed, which I doubt, who would do something like that?”
“A rival team?”
“No way! Those pranks have been played before and during all our games.”
“Okay, then maybe Mike’s got his own reason . . . a secret one. Maybe it’s even a subconscious desire to lose, or something.”
“You’re way off base,” Ned declared. “Mike and I are friends. If he were loony-tunes, believe me, I’d know!”
Nancy was getting ticked off. “Ned, why are you being so stubborn? You’ve got solid evidence of Mike’s guilt right at your feet!”
Ned crossed his arms. “You know as well as I do that evidence can be misleading. To phi the blame on someone you need more than a box of packing chips—you need a motive, too!”
“Okay, okay!”
Nancy began to pace back and forth. Usually she was calm and collected when working on a case, but now she was beginning to feel frustration. She didn’t like it.
“All right, I guess we’ll have to investigate some more,” she said finally. “Here’s where we’ll start—”
“We?” Ned interrupted.
“Of course.” She stopped pacing and glanced at him. “Ned, you’re going to help me, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Help you what? Dig up dirt on my friend? No, I’m not.”
Nancy was stunned. “You’ve got to be kidding me! Come on, Ned, you’re in a perfect position to help. You’re inside the team! Anyway, you’ve never refused to help before.”
“You’ve never suspected one of my friends before, either.”