Nancy Drew is the smartest person alive. I am convinced of that. But sometimes, things happen in Nancy Drew Mystery Stories that defy explanation. And when that happens, you just gotta go with them. Like this incident in The Phantom of Pine Hill.
The shadows were long as Nancy hurried through the woods. Suddenly she stopped short. Floating down toward her, seemingly out of nowhere, was a small white paper. As it fell almost at her feet, she looked up in the trees to see where it had come from. There was no person, bird, or animal in sight…
Her eyes grew wide in astonishment. On the paper were two large, very black, well-defined thumbprints!
For several seconds Nancy did not move. There had been a few times in her life when she had been utterly confounded by some event which seemed to hold no explanation except a supernatural one. This was one of those times.
At the end of the book, Fred Jenkins and his father confess to just about everything – including playing the part of the mysterious phantom. But sometimes, even when there’s a perfectly logical explanation for something, it’s not always … perfectly logical.
Fred’s father had thought of the prank of the thumbprints. He knew a very large man with huge thumbs and for a fee got him to make marks on several papers.
“I sure had you fooled that time I dropped one of the papers.” He smirked. “I was up in a tree all the time but you never spotted me.”
Alrighty then. What else is there to say?
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