The Marshland Mystery

by Campbell, Julie

  “That makes sense,” Trixie agreed with a grin. “Come on, Honey.” And she was mounted on her bike and on her way in a minute.

  As they cycled, side by side, along Glen Road toward the first turnoff that Brian had marked on the map, Trixie was more silent than usual. She was wrestling with her conscience. She had promised her mother she would be kind to little Gaye, and she had meant to be. But she had an uneasy feeling that running off the way they had would show the child that they hadn’t wanted her along, or they’d have waited for her and told her they were disappointed she couldn’t come.

  “There’s Old Telegraph Road just up ahead, I think,” Honey called, “where that car’s crossing. Does the map say we go east or west on it?”

  “I’ll check and see.” Trixie reached into her pocket and kept on pedaling. “I don’t remember.”

  “Neither do I,” Honey admitted with a giggle that broke off suddenly when she saw the look on Trixie’s face as Trixie braked her bike suddenly and felt frantically first in one pocket of her jacket and then the other. “What’s the matter?”

  “The map,” Trixie told her glumly, giving up the search. “Jim didn’t give it back to me. Now what are we going to do?”

  A Face at the Window ● 5

  GLEEPS! I HATE to turn back now, but I suppose we’ll have to.” Trixie leaned dejectedly against her bicycle. “Without that map, we’re sunk.”

  “Maybe there’s some kind of a sign up there where we’re supposed to turn. It just might say ‘Martin’s Marsh,’ in plain English,” Honey suggested. “Let’s get started again, before I notice how tired my legs are!”

  “Good idea!” Trixie agreed hastily. “Mine are getting a bit wobbly, too. They’re sending distress signals to my so-called brain.” Trixie groaned as she settled herself again on the bike. “Let’s go.”

  There were no signs pointing the way to Martin’s Marsh around the corner of Old Telegraph Road. As a matter of fact, there were no signs of any sort, and, except for two or three lines of tire tracks in the soft, sandy dirt, there was no indication that anyone used the old road. Old telegraph poles, some leaning well out °f line, seemed loosely held together by a few slack wires.

  There wasn’t a hint in the quiet solitude of the spot that this road, not so long ago, had been a highway from the river to the rich interior valley. Only a distant humming gave evidence that, not too far away, a great concrete ribbon of throughway stretched for a hundred miles, from city to city.

  “Well, here we are,” Trixie said dismally, “and I suppose that whichever way we decide to go, we’ll be going the wrong way.”

  But Honey, off her bike now, was standing in the middle of the road and sniffing the air with rapturous expression. “M-m-m! I smell violets! Let’s stop right here and pick some.”

  Trixie tilted her pert nose and sniffed. “Smells more like swamp to me,” she said flatly. Then, a moment later, her blue eyes sparkled. “Swamp! Wait a minute!” She ran to stand beside Honey. “Let’s see which way it’s coming from, and we’ll know which direction to go!”

  “Oh, Trixie, you’re a genius!” Honey exclaimed.

  They both stood still and sniffed inquiringly. It took Trixie only a moment to make up her mind. “Nothing from the east,” she announced, then sniffed inquiringly toward the west. “There! That’s it! West!”

  Honey wrinkled her pretty nose and pointed it west. “You’re right! Let’s go!” she laughed.

  A moment later, they were on their way.

  Honey called over to Trixie as they rode. “Can you remember any of the landmarks on the map?”

  “Golly, I don’t think so,” Trixie admitted mournfully. But a couple of minutes later, as they turned a corner, she gave a sudden exclamation and pointed ahead. “Look!

  A big oak split by lightning. Wasn’t there something about that on the map?”

  “Oak—lightning—why, of course! Now I remember!” Honey agreed excitedly. “Brian drew a tree with a big zigzag of lightning hitting it. There was a road beyond it just a little way, I think, where we turn off.”

  “Let’s take a look,” Trixie said eagerly and was on her way before she had finished speaking. Honey was not far behind her as they reached the big oak and went on to look for the turnoff road.

  The smell of the marsh was getting stronger every second, and the road was starting to get rougher and narrower.

  Suddenly Trixie let her bike veer across the dirt toward Honey, and they almost collided. Her eyes were fixed on something deep in among the trees at the side of the road. “Honey! Look! A huge old house!”

  They stopped and stared. At first sight, it had seemed like a whole house, one that a person could live in. But a closer look showed that it was only a shell. Three stories high, with part of its gambrel roof still covering the upper story, it stood in the midst of tall trees and a vast tangle of vegetation.

  “Reminds me of the Frayne house after Jim’s good-for-nothing stepfather accidentally set fire to it,” Trixie said. “Fire can really wreck a place, even when it’s brick and stone.”

  “It seems a shame, ” Honey sighed, “a waste of money. I suppose that’s the old Martin mansion where the partner of Captain Kidd lived.”

  “Dad said that people only suspected that he was Kidd’s partner.” Then Trixie added, “But I bet he was, all right. All sorts of things could have gone on in a spot that must have been at least a day’s journey from the city. And the Hudson is only a short distance away. There’s a swamp to hide in, besides.”

  Honey stole a quick look at Trixie as her friend was speaking. Trixie was getting the look that showed she was beginning to make plans. “Trixie Belden, you can just forget it,” she said, shaking a finger at her. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “Huh?” Trixie looked surprised, and then she laughed. “We could just take a little bit of a look around in there. You know, I’ve heard about old places like that having secret passages underneath, especially when something unlawful was going on, like pirating. Suppose we just happened to find a trapdoor or a secret panel, and there was a tunnel, and—” Trixie’s vivid imagination had gone to work.

  Honey interrupted hastily. “And cobwebs and spiders and rats and maybe—” she gulped—“maybe skeletons. Ugh! You’re not going to talk me into exploring that house!”

  Trixie sighed. “Okay, scaredy-cat. But it would be fun to look around outside. Maybe we could even find some antique doorknobs or stuff like that and sell it to make some money for the B.W.G. treasury!”

  Honey looked at her gravely. “You know you’re just making that up. If there had been anything like that left, after a big fire that did as much damage as this one did, it would have been taken years ago. But if you simply must go exploring, I’ll go with you.”

  “I knew you would! Come on; let’s wheel our bikes in as far as we can and walk the rest of the way.” She started off almost at once, and Honey followed her up a narrow driveway almost overgrown with weeds.

  The weeds in their path were not half as tall as they would be later in the season, and they could see well ahead, so there was little danger of suddenly encountering a snake. Overhead, brown squirrels chattered angrily at them from the branches, and birds swooped low over their heads, as if trying to scare them away from the newly filled nests. There was a chorus of twitters, chirps, and indignant songs going on all around them.

  “Any minute now, that blue jay is going to land right on my head!” Trixie called back to Honey. “She missed me by inches that time!”

  Now they were close to the big ruined house. It rose high above the tallest of the trees that had once marked the borders of the formal sunken garden. A tangle of vines, reaching almost three stories high, softened the blackened outlines of windows.

  The two girls stood together and looked upward at the fresh green that stretched across the empty windows.

  “Can’t you imagine old Ezarach Martin up there with his spyglass, looking out over the trees toward the Hudson, w
atching for Captain Kidd’s longboat to bring the loot from some hidden cove down the river?” Trixie spoke softly, as if someone might be up there listening.

  Honey stirred uneasily. “I don’t think he could see as far as the river,” she said. As Trixie suddenly looked thoughtful and started around toward the rear of the house, Honey called after her, “But you don’t have to climb up there and find out. Please, Trixie, let’s go back to the road now.”

  But Trixie had disappeared around the corner of the house, and a moment later Honey heard her calling excitedly, “Honey! Come look at what I’ve found!”

  With her heart in her mouth, Honey ran as quickly as she could.

  Trixie was peering over a broken wall into a small plot of ground at the rear of the big house.

  “What is it?” Honey called as she ran.

  “A rose garden!” Trixie said, turning wide blue eyes to her friend.

  Honey slowed down to a walk, disappointed. “Oh, is that all? Gosh, Trix, you’ve seen dozens of rose gardens. What’s so remarkable about this one?”

  “This one is being taken care of,” Trixie told her.

  “How can it be,” Honey asked, “when nobody lives here? And why should somebody who doesn’t live here come and take care of a rose garden?”

  “I dunno,” Trixie admitted, “but you just take a look yourself.”

  Honey came and peered over the wall. The rose garden was very old. The main branches of the rosebushes were thick and spiny, but every one of the bushes was neatly trimmed, and the ground around them had been carefully weeded and neatly raked. “That’s strange,” Honey murmured. Then she saw Trixie lean over suddenly and study something in the soil. “What have you found now?”

  “Footprints,” Trixie told her. “Small ones. Anyhow, smaller than my feet.” She set her foot down beside the print. “Probably a little boy’s.”

  “But they’re pointed. Boys don’t wear pointed-toed shoes. It’s a girl.”

  “And they’ve been made since last night’s rain,” Trixie decided. “Maybe we scared her away.” She straightened up and stared all around, hoping to catch a glimpse of the mysterious gardener.

  “Trixie, I think we’d better get out of here. We’re really trespassing, you know.” Honey clutched Trixie’s arm nervously and looked about. “Whoever has been taking care of this garden may come after us with a shotgun if she sees us snooping!”

  “Huh!” Trixie’s eye measured the small footprint again. “Nobody would be silly enough to let a little girl have a shotgun.” She frowned. “Wonder why she comes here?”

  “Maybe her people have a trailer back in the woods somewhere. Dad says he’s seen lots of campers around lately. It’s the spring weather that brings them.”

  “But why should she work around a garden that doesn’t belong to her?” Trixie persisted.

  “Maybe she happens to like roses,” Honey guessed. “But they won’t bloom for another month or so,” Trixie objected. “If her people are just camping, they’ll probably be gone by then. It’s certainly mysterious.”

  “Well, we aren’t getting any nearer to the swamp while we stand here guessing about her. Hadn’t we better go look for those flowers and plants we set out to get for Miss Bennett?” Honey asked matter-of-factly.

  “Right, as usual,” Trixie said cheerfully. “Let’s be on our merry way.”

  But they were due for another surprise. They had pedaled along the lonely road for only a few hundred feet, when they went around a bend and found themselves practically in front of another house.

  This house stood, small and neat, behind a whitewashed picket fence. And it quite obviously was occupied, for the brick walk to the front door was swept clean, and the plots of bright-colored spring flowers were carefully set out and well cared for. Tall maples stood stiffly like soldiers along either side of the walk.

  “How darling!” Honey said, slowing down to admire the cottage. “Look at the spring beauties. Don’t you love them, Trix? They’re such a heavenly shade of pink.” But Trixie, who had stopped also, was more interested in taking a close look at the mailbox that stood on its pedestal at one side of the gate. Much to her disappointment, there was no name on the metal box, only a number.

  “Isn’t it the cutest ever?” Honey asked with an admiring sigh. “I always wanted to live in a cottage just like this!”

  “Not me,” said her more practical-minded friend. “That well back there near the barn looks as if it were very much in use even today! The tin cup is shiny, and the bucket is still wet from being dipped. I’ll take my plumbing up-to-date!”

  “But it’s so—so charming and—away from things.”

  “You said it. Too far away,” Trixie retorted with a grimace. “But the well reminds me that I’m awfully thirsty. Why don’t we go in and knock and ask politely if we may have a drink of water?”

  “I’m sure it would be all right,” Honey agreed.

  They carefully propped their bikes against a roadside tree and opened the gate. It squeaked loudly, startling them both into giggles.

  “There’s nothing like announcing yourself with a squeaky gate.” Trixie grinned, but the grin disappeared a second later. She gripped Honey’s arm and held her back. “Look at the window!” she said in a strange voice.

  Honey looked and felt a little shiver go down her spine. A bony hand was gesturing from between the curtains of the window next to the door. And, quite unmistakably, the hand was warning them to go.

  Then, as they stood staring, wide-eyed, the hand disappeared, and for a flash they saw a small white face with wide-set dark eyes, framed by smooth white hair parted in the middle. Then the face disappeared into the shadows of the room, and the curtains fell.

  Without a word, both girls turned and fled through the gate. It took all of Trixie’s courage to stop long enough to latch the gate after them and leave it as they had found it.

  Then she hurried after Honey to their bikes. Mounting quickly, they pedaled off as fast as they could go, without so much as a backward glance.

  Martin’s Marsh ● 6

  IT WAS ANOTHER quarter of a mile to the edge of the swamp, but Trixie and Honey kept pedaling hard until they came to the broken fence that marked the edge of soft ground.

  Trixie glanced back before she braked her bike to a stop, but the cottage was no longer in view. “This looks like it!” she called to Honey, who was close behind her.

  Honey wobbled to a stop, dismounted, and sank down on the grass under a white-blossomed dogwood tree. “Thank goodness! I was about to collapse!”

  Trixie threw herself down beside Honey, groaning. “I couldn’t have gone much farther!” she admitted.

  Honey laughed suddenly. Trixie looked at her in surprise. “Now what’s so funny?” Trixie demanded.

  “Us!” Honey gave a giggle. “Getting panicky and running as if a pack of wolves were after us! Why did we do such a silly thing?”

  “I was scared,” Trixie admitted a bit sheepishly. She clasped her knees and rested her chin on them. “I suppose it was that spooky hand waving us away and then that white face staring at us—just staring!”

  Honey nodded. “It was weird. All I wanted to do was to get away as fast as I could. I was all shivery.”

  “Now I suppose she’ll think we had guilty consciences because we had come to steal her flowers! Maybe we should go back and explain that all we wanted was a drink of water.”

  “Not me!” Honey assured her promptly. “I got over being thirsty.”

  “I suppose the little girl who tends the rosebushes lives there with the old lady,” Trixie said suddenly. “It’s close enough. And maybe the old lady likes roses, and her dear little granddaughter brings them to her in June, and—” Trixie was off on a flight of fancy.

  “And we’ll still be here in June ourselves if we don’t get busy looking for wood sorrel and spearmint and the rest of those plants Brian wrote on the map.”

  “The only one I remember is tansy,” Trixie said wit
h a grin, “and that’s because I remember a very old herb book of my grandmother’s that had a recipe for tansy cakes that were eaten at Easter.”

  “Wonder what they tasted like.” Honey grimaced. “Bitter, sort of,” Trixie told her. “At least, I think that’s what it said. They were taken as a tonic. And the fresh tansy leaves were soaked in buttermilk for nine days, and then the buttermilk was used to bleach freckles.”

  “Ugh! I’d rather have the freckles.” Honey laughed. Trixie sighed. “That’s what you think, because you don’t happen to have any.” Trixie’s freckles, though not nearly so numerous as Mart’s, were an annoyance to her. Her mother always told her they would disappear when she was older, and her father said he thought they were cute, but Trixie had her doubts about both opinions.

  “Anyhow, we’ll gather some violets. I can see oodles of them from here. And look, over there in the distance; aren’t those blue flags?” Honey pointed eagerly.

  “And I see some yellow lady’s slippers over that way.” Trixie nodded in the other direction. She got to her feet and extended a hand to Honey. “Come on, and bring the trowel and the basket from your bike. We’ll get samples of all of them and then have lunch.”

  And a moment later, they were picking their way carefully along a faint path that seemed to lead along the very edge of the swamp.

  But the splashes of color were somewhat farther in than they had seemed from the edge of the swamp. And even when Trixie and Honey reached them and began to choose the strongest and most beautiful of the flowering plants, they saw still others, deeper in the swamp, that promised to be much more spectacular. So they continued to follow a winding path for quite a distance, always led on by the distant sight of more beautiful specimens.

  They both had muddy feet, and the wire basket they had brought was heaped high with many kinds of plants before they decided to stop and check over what they had found.