The Haunted Showboat by Carolyn Keene Page A

group, Alex adroitly tried to find out about her conversation with Uncle Rufus. But the young detedective side-stepped his questions.
    “What’s next on the program?” Alex inquired, as he and the girls walked toward the Haver mansion.
    “A bath and a shampoo!” George announced firmly.
    When the girls reached their adjoining bedrooms, Nancy whispered her plan about starting again for the showboat. Bess said that she would be glad to go but wondered how they could keep Alex from accompanying them or finding out where they were going.
    “This time we’re not going to tell anybody where we’re going,” Nancy said. “You remember Colonel Haver telling me I’d have free rein in solving this mystery and wouldn’t have to report to anybody. Let’s keep this trip a secret.”
    “Why the secrecy, Nancy?” Bess asked. “Surely you don’t suspect anyone in this house of being mixed up in the mystery, do you?”
    “I didn’t mean that,” Nancy answered. “If our plan becomes known, we may be interrupted again to go sight-seeing.”
    George chuckled. “Also, Bess, you don’t have to be suspicious of people like Alex just because you don’t like them. I suppose he means well, but I can’t stand that man and I know Nancy can’t.”
    “Well, I can’t either,” admitted Bess. “But, Nancy, surely you don’t think he put that barrier rope across the river to keep us from seeing the showboat, do you?”
    “No. But he’s not very consistent. First, he wanted to join forces with me and solve the mystery—undoubtedly to make a hit with his future father-in-law. Now he says he’s going to advise him to drop the whole proposition and even wants me to back him up!”
    George laughed. “Talk about women changing their minds!”
    The girls were ready in half an hour and went downstairs. Donna Mae and Alex were playing tennis on a court near the house. Colonel and Mrs. Haver, Nancy learned from Mammy Matilda, had gone to town.
    Nancy and her friends left the mansion by a side door and walked to their car. Taking the service road, Nancy avoided the tennis court and drove off. Following Uncle Rufus’s directions, she turned from the main road onto a bayou lane.
    In a little while she came to a modest brown wooden shack in a grove of cypress trees. The girls got out and walked toward the building.
    “Wait!” Bess cried out. “This can’t be the right house. Do you hear what I do?”
    From the cabin came the sounds of doleful chanting and the rise and fall of a wailing voice, evidently praying.
    “Sounds like a voodoo session,” George observed.
    The girls stood still and listened. Singsong mutterings followed the chanting.
    A moment later a small boy came from the cabin and ran toward the girls. “What you all want?” he asked.
    “Is this Uncle Rufus’s home?” Nancy inquired.
    “Yassum, it is,” the boy replied. “But you cain’t see him now.”
    “But we have an appointment with him,” said Nancy.
    “Uncle Rufus had a ’mergency case,” the boy said.
    “Emergency case?” George asked. “Is Uncle Rufus a doctor?”
    “Yassum,” said the little boy. As he ran off, he called back, “Uncle Rufus is a voodoo doctor!”
    The girls were amazed.
    “I don’t want Uncle Rufus casting any spells on me!” Bess said firmly.
    Nancy was thoughtful. Finally she asked, “Do you suppose Uncle Rufus could head a group of voodoo believers who hold secret meetings on the showboat?”
    George said it was very likely. “And perhaps they’re deliberately haunting it so the boat won’t be moved!” she suggested.
    “We’ll try to find out. But we mustn’t make Uncle Rufus suspicious,” she warned, and her friends nodded.
    At that moment Uncle Rufus’s “patient,” an elderly colored woman, came from the cabin. She was singing a hymn. As she passed the girls she smiled at them happily but did not speak.
    After the woman was out of hearing distance, Bess remarked, “She acts as if she were in a