“Oh, Moms, did he scram then?” Bobby asked, all ears and eyes.
“I forgot you were here,” his mother answered. “Of course he ‘scrammed,’ as you say. Wouldn’t you?” She ruffled the hair on Bobby’s head.
“It’s all because of our antique show, I know,” Trixie said worriedly. “She’s never been bothered before, and she’s had all those beautiful things in her house for years. Do you mind if I go over there for a while, Moms?”
“No, I don’t think you’d better go just now,” her mother said.
“Oh, Moms, we just have to have that silver ready for the show. Are you bothered about what happened there last night?”
“Of course I am,” her mother answered. “But then, Mrs. Vanderpoel said she had called Spider to tell him about it.”
“Then you don’t need to worry if Spider’s on the job. May I go, Moms?”
“I guess so—yes,” her mother said.
“I go, too,” Bobby said.
“I think not … not till you’re entirely well, Bobby. That’s what the doctor said, you know … stay inside till you are quite well.” Mrs. Belden brought the checkerboard out and put it on the table. “We’ll play a game, Bobby,” she said.
“I’m well now. I don’t want to play checkers. I want to go visiting. I want to go with Trixie. Nobody comes to play with me. I’m tired of staying home,” Bobby wailed.
“I don’t blame him,” Mrs. Belden said to Trixie. “Don’t stay too long. Maybe you can do something to amuse him when you come back.”
“Where are Brian and Mart?” Trixie asked. “Mart is able to amuse Bobby sometimes when no one else can.”
“They went to the clubhouse to work on the furniture Mrs. Vanderpoel gave the B.W.G.’s,” Mrs. Belden said.
“That’s where I should be,” Trixie said, “but I’ll be helping the show if I go and look at the silver.”
“Why don’t you polish it while you’re there?” Mrs. Belden asked.
“That’s an idea, Moms. I’ll call Honey and Diana and ask them to go with me.”
The girls were glad to be asked to do something aside from making dolls and aprons. They had a gay assortment of both now, on the shelf at the clubhouse, ready for the show. Most of them were made from remnants donated by the stores in Sleepyside.
It wasn’t long after the girls came down the hill that the three of them were walking along Glen Road to the byroad that led to Mrs. Vanderpoel’s home.
“It’s a mystery about that desk,” Diana said. “Who could possibly have left it outside the door at night in the middle of the blizzard?”
“Are you sure it wasn’t there when you went into the old schoolhouse?” Honey asked. “It was dark, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, but I’m positive it wasn’t there,” Trixie declared. “As positive as I am that I’m alive. Why, I stumbled over the desk, practically, when I went out the door in the morning. I couldn’t have missed it the night before.”
“I could believe you missed it easier than I can believe that somebody knew you were in that old schoolhouse and went through the blizzard to return the desk,” Honey said. “It just doesn’t make sense.”
“What happened last night doesn’t make sense either,” Trixie said and she told them about the attempted robbery at Mrs. Vanderpoel’s home.
“That proves one thing,” Honey said, “that thieves are on the trail of the antiques we are trying to get together for our show. They’re the same ones that were after the desk. But, jeepers, who brought it back?”
“You figure it out,” Diana said. “We haven’t said a word to anyone about the things in Mrs. Vanderpoel’s house. Jim said we shouldn’t talk about them, and I know that not one of the B.W.G.’s has said a word. How did the news get out?”
“Bobby had to sound off to a boy who was shoveling snow the day we tried to take the desk home,” Trixie said. Then she told them of her conversation with Bobby.
“Gleeps, then that’s why you were hijacked,” Diana said.
“Exactly,” Trixie agreed. “Thank heaven Mrs. Vanderpoel told Spider about last night.”
“Yes,” Honey said. “It isn’t safe for her to be there alone.”
“She surely knows how to handle a gun,” Trixie said, laughing. “Can’t you just see her telling that burglar she’d shoot?”
“I still don’t think a woman of her age should be in that house alone,” Honey said. “It’s all our fault, too, because she wants to help us with our show.”
At Mrs. Vanderpoel’s house the girls collected the beautiful silver coffee service, the George III tankards, old flat pieces of silver handmade by eighteenth century silversmiths. The girls spread newspapers on the kitchen table and carried the silver there to be polished.
Mrs. Vanderpoel did not seem greatly disturbed by the happening of the night before. She said that she and her ancestors had lived in that house for more than a hundred years and nothing had ever happened to any of them. “Nothing’s going to happen now,” she assured them vehemently. “The way that scalawag ran off last night showed he was mighty scared. I’d have shot him and he knew it.”
While the girls were busy around the kitchen table, Spider came to the door. Tad was with him. Timidly the boy acknowledged the girls’ warm greeting. They had promised Spider that they would be more cordial to Tad and had been trying to keep their word. Tad did not quite know what to make of it.
“I understand you had a visitor last night,” Spider said.
“Indeed I did,” Mrs. Vanderpoel said with spirit. “He didn’t stay long, though. I talked to him down the muzzle of my rifle. He understood what I was saying.”
“That’s all very well,” Spider said, “but some of his gang may try to come back here again. I don’t think you should stay out here on this byroad all by yourself.”
“How about letting me stay here with you?” Tad asked eagerly.
“There’s no need of that, Tad,” Mrs. Vanderpoel said. “I’d like right well to have your company, but I can take care of myself no matter who comes, and don’t you get it into your head, Spider Webster, that I can’t.”
Spider chuckled. “Good for you!” he said.
Tad looked longingly around the kitchen, the old wood cook stove, the bright sugar and cooky jars, and sighed. Then he pulled up a chair and helped the girls polish the silver. He carried the finished pieces to the sink, washed them in warm suds, and dried them.
In the meantime Spider scouted around outside the house for footprints, inspected the doorframe, and concluded that Mrs. Vanderpoel had not let the burglar get near enough to leave any evidence. “I’ll go along now,” he said, “but we’ll keep an eye on things. I’d feel a lot better if you’d let Tad stay here.”
“I like the boy,” Mrs. Vanderpoel said, “and he’s welcome any time he comes here, but I’m not going to be mollycoddled by anyone. Come again some other time, Tad, just any time you want, but go along now with Spider.”
“I think I’d better go, too,” Honey said. “I have a lot of studying to do, and we’re almost through polishing the silver.”
“I’ll go with you,” Diana said. “I promised my mother I’d look after my little sisters.”
Trixie stayed to finish the polishing. She was so interested in her work and the stories Mrs. Vanderpoel told her about the different pieces and how they came into her family that she did not notice the growing dusk outside.
“Jeepers,” she said when Mrs. Vanderpoel turned on the light, “I’d better go. I told Moms I’d help her with Bobby if Mart couldn’t, but here I am now and it’s almost dinnertime.”
“You’ll not go off in this dusk alone,” Mrs. Vanderpoel said. “Why don’t you stay the night with me? I have so many things I’d like to show you.”
“I don’t think Moms would want me to stay all night,” Trixie said. “She’s still sort of nervous about that blizzard and our escape. She’s pretty tired, too, from taking care of Bobby. I’ll call her and see if Mart and Brian can come
for me.”
“I’m sorry you stayed so long,” Mrs. Belden told Trixie over the telephone. “I’ve been expecting you any minute. Mart and Brian are at a Y meeting in Sleepyside. They won’t be home till late. Your father is at a meeting of the bank board. He’ll come home when the boys do. I don’t know when that will be.”
“Mrs. Vanderpoel said she’d like to have me stay here all night,” Trixie said.
“I don’t like that idea either,” Trixie’s mother said. However, when she talked to Mrs. Vanderpoel and discovered that Spider was keeping an eye on the farmhouse, she decided to let Trixie stay for the night.
After a delicious old-fashioned supper of homemade sausage and fried apples, Trixie had a wonderful time curled up in the corner of the living-room couch looking at an album of Vanderpoel ancestors. Mrs. Vanderpoel’s long-sleeved challis nightgown and quilted robe made Trixie look exactly like one of the pictures of the Dutch women. Later, after she had climbed up to the high four-poster bed in the guest room and rubbed her sleepy eyes, she imagined she could see an array of white-capped, pink-cheeked Dutch women around her bed.
Visions of them followed Trixie even into her dreams. When suddenly she was awakened by a strange, muffled noise, she was whisked from the seventeenth century into the present.
There the noise was again—something scraping!
Trixie propped her elbow on her pillow and listened. The noise came from the direction of the lean-to kitchen. Hastily, but quietly, Trixie slipped her feet into her saddle shoes, pulled the big robe around her, and, without turning on the light, slipped through the dining-room into the dark kitchen.
There was that noise again. A window lifted perhaps? Slowly, stealthily, Trixie opened the door to the lean-to kitchen just a crack.
The man inside saw her, ran across the room, knocking pans here and there, making a frightful noise in his eagerness to get back through the window.
“Get your gun!” Trixie called to Mrs. Vanderpoel. “A burglar! He’ll get away!”
Mrs. Vanderpoel came running, shouting at the top of her voice, “Hands up! I’ll shoot! Stand back, Trixie. Get behind me. Hands up, you thief!”
The man, confused, struck his head on the side of the window trying to get through and, dazed for a second, hesitated, then plunged … right into the arms of Tad!
“I’ve got him!” Tad called. “Get a rope, Trixie! Help me tie him up!”
Little Mrs. Vanderpoel hurried with a clothesline, and Trixie ran out the door with it to where the man, held fast in Tad’s arms, struggled to get away. She looped the rope around his arms while Tad held them pressed against the man’s back. Then they bound the burglar’s legs fast.
“There you are!” Tad said. “Now we’ll see who you are!” He pulled the mask from the man’s face.
It wasn’t a man at all, but a boy not much older than Tad.
“It’s the lad who shoveled my walks!” Mrs. Vanderpoel said. “Maybe he just came to collect for his work.”
“At this time of night?” Tad asked. “And masked? No ma’am. I know him. It’s Bull Thompson.”
The boy growled at Tad, “I’ll get you for this!”
“That voice,” Trixie said. “Why, he’s one of the gang who stole the desk. I’m sure I remember his voice. Where did you know him, Tad?”
“He was a member of the Hawks,” Tad said, “but not for long. He sure didn’t fit into our club. He only joined it to get hold of our funds. He ran off with eleven dollars, too. I haven’t seen him for months. I thought he’d moved out of Sleepyside. His uncle, Snipe Thompson, disappeared and I thought Bull went with him. Snipe had a bookie joint over on Hawthorne Street … did time for it. Say, Trixie, call the sergeant at the police station. Tell him to find Spider and send him out here in the patrol car. It’ll be reform school for you this time, Bull, or I’ll miss my guess.”
Bull only snarled his answer.
Spider came with Sergeant Molinson, the man who had helped to rescue Trixie and Mart from the trailer when they had been kidnaped. “It’s you, again, poison!” the sergeant said to Trixie. “Every time I see you it means trouble.”
“Don’t you say one word against that girl,” Mrs. Vanderpoel warned him, “or Tad, either. I suppose Spider told you to keep a watch, whether I wanted you to or not,” she said to Tad. “And you, Sergeant, those kids did a better job on that crook than you policemen could have done.”
“Yeah,” Sergeant Molinson agreed, “maybe we ought to put ’em on the squad. Come on now, Bull. Into the patrol car with you. We’ll have some questions to ask you—been rough-housing the school and stealing from desks and lockers, haven’t you?”
“Prove it!” Bull sneered.
“We will, don’t worry,” Spider said. “We’ll get the rest of your gang, too. Do you want to tell us who they are? Is your Uncle Snipe in on it? Spill it, Bull.”
“Naw,” Bull said, “no smart aleck cop is ever goin’ to get that out of me. I don’t snitch on pals.”
Chapter 12
“This Can’t Be I!”
“I can surely breathe easier,” Mrs. Belden told Trixie, “when I know that Mrs. Vanderpoel’s burglar has been caught. Do you see these gray hairs on my temples?” Mrs. Belden pushed back her hair. “You put them there, Trixie. I’ve worried more about you than all three of the boys, though I’ve had plenty of occasions to be concerned about them, too, with all the situations they get involved in with you.”
“It isn’t my fault if mysterious things happen when I’m around,” Trixie said. “How could I help it if that burglar came back to Mrs. Vanderpoel’s house when I was there?”
“It would have been just as easy for you to step out in the hall and call the police as it was to go out in that lean- to kitchen all by yourself. Is it any wonder my hair is turning gray when I think of what might happen to you?”
“I never even thought of calling the police,” Trixie said. “Anyway, how did I know it wasn’t a cat prowling around? You know I had to tell Mrs. Vanderpoel that the desk had been stolen. Do you know what she said?”
“I can’t imagine … and I never could see why you didn’t tell her before.”
“I didn’t want her to think I was so helpless as to let someone steal it right under my nose. Well, when I told her she said, ‘Land sakes, child, I’ve known about it for a long time. I still know more about it than you do.’ What do you suppose she meant by that?”
“Why didn’t you ask her?” Mrs. Belden wanted to know.
“I didn’t have a chance. Say, Moms, they sent Bull Thompson to reform school. You don’t have to worry about him any more.”
“They haven’t sent the rest of his gang anywhere. Until they do, I’ll not have an easy moment. Thank goodness it’s only a little over two weeks till your antique show. Then I’ll have a rest from worry until you get into some other project,” Trixie’s mother said.
“Don’t be so cross with me, Moms,” Trixie said.
“I don’t mean to be, but goodness, Trixie, you’ll be fourteen years old the first of May, and you’ve never been content to be a girl instead of a tomboy. You’ve never even dressed like the pretty girl you are since that cousin of Honey’s was here. Maybe after the antique show is over you can plan some real boy and girl parties, and no more detective work.”
“That’s just what I’m trying to tell you, Moms,” Trixie said. “You’ll be glad to know that Diana is having a dress-up party at her house Friday evening. It’s sort of a pre-Valentine party. Her mother and father are having people in for dinner February fourteenth so Diana is going to have her party early.”
“That will mean a new dress for you, Trixie,” her mother said, delighted.
“Not a long one, Moms, please. Diana said her party this time isn’t going to be the way it was Halloween, when her imitation uncle ruined the whole thing with all that crazy food and hired orchestras.”
“I hope it’s simpler,” her mother said, “because it didn’t sound to me like a young peo
ple’s party at all. Trixie, I’ll meet you this afternoon and we’ll find a dress for you—shoes, too.”
“Heels?” Trixie asked.
“Of course,” her mother said, obviously pleased, “as high as you want them.”
“I’ll have to get shoes, of course,” Trixie agreed, “but just forget about the dress. I can wear one of Honey’s or maybe one of Diana’s. They have closets full of them. Then you can give me the money the dress would cost and I’ll add it to the UNICEF fund.”
“There are several things wrong with that reasoning,” her mother told her. “In the first place I want you to have a pretty dress or two of your own. You hardly own a thing but sweaters and skirts. You’re forever wearing Honey’s clothes.”
“She doesn’t care,” Trixie insisted.
“This time I care,” Mrs. Belden said.
“All right, Moms, if you feel that way about it,” Trixie said. “Can you pick me up about two thirty? I’ll be out of English class then. Maybe Honey and Diana will go with me to get a dress.”
“This is to be our expedition,” Mrs. Belden said. “I want you to have the prettiest dress we can find. Sometimes I think you pay too much attention to what the girls say and haven’t an idea of your own about clothes.”
“Honey and Diana can put on anything and look beautiful,” Trixie said, not at all enviously. “Honey is just gorgeous and you know it. If anything, Diana is prettier. Everyone at Sleepyside High thinks Diana is the prettiest girl in the class.”
“I think Trixie Belden is going to give her some competition,” Mrs. Belden said.
“You wouldn’t be prejudiced would you, Moms?” Trixie teased. “Have you taken a good look at my freckles lately? And my waist? It’s miles around.”
“It’s nothing of the sort,” her mother said, provoked. “That’s another thing we’ll shop for—a girdle.”
“Gleeps, Moms, I’d never wear it, not in a thousand years.”
“Just wait and see. We’ll get it before you try on dresses. I wish you would take more pride in your appearance.”
The Mysterious Code Page 10
