The Mystery off Old Telegraph Road

by Campbell, Julie

  Trixie winced as Nick slammed the receiver down. She hung up the phone and turned to find Mart and Brian staring at her.

  “That was Nick Roberts,” she explained lamely. “He doesn’t seem to think the bikeathon is a good idea.”

  Brian shook his head. “I don’t think I do, either, Trixie. I know you have your heart set on helping the art department, and it’s hard to abandon the project now, when all the pledge cards are in and we know how successful the bikeathon could be. But I think we have to decide—soon—if the dangers don’t outweigh the advantages.”

  Trixie looked at Mart. “What do you think?” she asked him. “Are you still willing to go ahead with it?”

  Mart shrugged. “I don’t know what to say. I was almost hoping that Ben Riker or Nick Roberts would turn out to be the culprit, since that would at least solve the mystery and take us off the hook.

  Now we know that Ben Riker is innocent, and I guess we can assume that Nick is, too, since Sergeant Molinson let him go after he was questioned.

  “That means that whoever made those threats is still at large. And that means that there is a certain amount of risk involved with going ahead and having the bikeathon on Saturday.

  “I just don’t know what to say, Trixie,” Mart concluded helplessly.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Trixie said. “Tomorrow morning before school, we’ll all get together and have a vote. The majority rules. If at least four of the Bob-Whites vote to cancel the bikeathon, we’ll go right to the principal’s office and ask him to announce it over the PA. Otherwise, we’ll go on as scheduled.”

  “That seems fair,” Brian said. “It also gives us a night to sleep on our decision, which I intend to begin doing immediately. Good night.”

  Before she fell asleep, Trixie once again turned over in her mind her growing suspicion that the counterfeit bank note she’d found was somehow tied in with the attempts to have the bikeathon canceled. Ben Riker already is a forger, in a way, because of the arrows. And Nick has enough artistic talent to make a bill like that.

  Suddenly Trixie sat bolt upright in bed. “Mr. Roberts,” she murmured into the dark room. “He’s an engraver! I’m sure I’ve read that people who draw the pictures on money are called engravers She thought the idea over, then shook her head. “If Mr. Roberts were a counterfeiter, he wouldn’t be working all day in that shabby trophy store. The family wouldn’t still have money troubles, either, as Mr. Crider said they did. Still...Trixie shook her head again to dismiss the thought, then lay back down and drifted off into a troubled sleep.

  The next morning, Trixie was both relieved and nervous when all the Bob-Whites boarded the school bus for the ride to town. We can have the vote right here on the bus, she thought. At least it will all be over soon—one way or the other.

  She signaled for the others to join her at the back of the bus, where they could have relative privacy.

  With their heads bent close to Trixie’s, Di, Dan, Honey, and Jim listened while Trixie told them briefly about the phone conversation she’d had with Nick Roberts the night before, and about the decision that she and her brothers had made to ask the Bob-Whites to vote on whether or not to cancel the bikeathon.

  When she had finished, she looked around at the solemn faces of her friends. Then she opened her notebook, took out a sheet of paper, and quickly tore it into seven pieces. Trixie handed the pieces of paper to her friends, saying, “We’ll have the voting by secret ballot. Just write yes’ if you think the bikeathon should go on tomorrow as scheduled, and no’ if you think it should be canceled.”

  Trixie quickly wrote “yes” on her own ballot, then folded it in half. Brian and Mart both wrote their votes quickly and handed their folded ballots back to her. She looked at her brothers intently, but she couldn’t tell from their expressions which way they had voted.

  Jim also made his decision quickly and handed the folded paper to Trixie. Dan, Di, and Honey each thought for several moments before they wrote their votes and, with solemn expressions, handed the last three ballots to Trixie.

  Trixie stared at the seven folded pieces of paper in her hand. This is it, she thought. In a minute we’ll know whether the bikeathon goes on or not.

  “Hurry up, Trixie,” Honey urged. “Count the votes. I can’t stand to wait another moment!” Trixie’s hands were shaking as she unfolded the first piece of paper. “ ’Yes,’ ” she read. She unfolded the next piece of paper. “ ’Yes.’ ” Her hopes soared: Maybe the vote would be unanimous for having the bikeathon. Her hopes plummeted when she unfolded the third ballot. “ ’No.’ ”

  The fourth ballot was also a “no,” and Trixie felt her stomach tighten. Three folded pieces of paper remained, and they would be the deciding ones.

  The three remaining votes were all “yes.”

  “Yippee!” Mart cheered, removing any doubt as to which way he had voted. The other Bob-Whites did their best to remain expressionless.

  Trixie sighed with relief. The bikeathon would go on as scheduled, she announced.

  Then her feeling of relief left her and tension took its place as she realized what the vote meant: The Bob-Whites were once again divided. Two of the club members were opposed to the bikeathon, and, although they would go along with the decision of the majority, the vote wouldn’t be enough to remove their fears.

  What if something does go wrong? Trixie thought. What if somebody wants to stop the bikeathon enough to do something desperate, and Sergeant Molinson s men can’t stop it from happening? How will the Bob-Whites feel about each other then?

  Trixie scanned her friends’ faces as if she hoped to find the answer written there. All she found was six pairs of troubled eyes looking into her own.

  At the Abandoned House • 16

  THE REST OF the school day passed without incident, although Trixie was nervous and inattentive. She jumped and looked at the door whenever she heard a noise in the hallway, half expecting to be summoned to the principal’s office and told of another incident that would mean that the bikeathon must be called off.

  As the day wore on, Trixie began to relax. If something else were going to happen, it would have happened by now, she thought. I don’t think we have anything to worry about dining the bikeathon. The threats were meant to make us cancel it. Whoever made them has probably given up hope of scaring us into calling it off.

  Still, she had to admit that that was only an optimistic guess. Not knowing who had made the threats—or why—she could only keep her fingers crossed until the bikeathon was actually over.

  By the time Trixie boarded the school bus that afternoon, she was almost cheerful again. “Just think, Honey,” she said, bouncing up and down on the seat in her excitement, “by this time tomorrow, it will all be over. We’ll have checked off all the riders who returned to the school parking lot, and we’ll know exactly how much money they earned.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s all over,” Honey reminded her. “We still have to make all those phone calls to the sponsors, letting them know how much money they should send in.”

  Trixie dismissed Honey’s reminder with a wave of her hand. “There’s nothing to that—just a few phone calls apiece if we divide up the cards. I mean the hard part will be over, and the—” Trixie stopped in midsentence, her nervousness returning again.

  “’And the danger,’ you were going to say, weren’t you?” Honey asked. “I’ve been thinking all day about that phone call I got, and the phone call Mrs. Vanderpoel got, and Di’s tires, and Mr. Maypenny’s game cart, and— Oh, Trixie, I hope we did the right thing, deciding to let the bikeathon go on tomorrow. I’m almost sure that Jim voted against it.”

  “I think Brian did, too. We made the right decision, though. They’ll see,” Trixie said, trying to keep a confident note in her voice that she didn’t really feel. “Here’s your stop, Honey. See you tomorrow morning!”

  Soon after, Trixie and her brothers got off the bus and began walking up the long driveway to their house. They were
several yards from the door when they heard the unmistakable sound of Bobby Belden’s most anguished wail. They exchanged worried glances, then ran up the driveway to the kitchen door, which was opened slightly.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Brian asked as he ran up to his mother, who was standing on the back step.

  “Bobby’s locked himself in the house,” Mrs. Belden said, looking harassed. “Apparently he put the chain lock on when I stepped out for a moment, then couldn’t remember how to unlock it when I wanted to get in. He didn’t realize the front door was already locked. Now he thinks he’s trapped, and he’s too frightened to listen to my instructions on how to work the lock.”

  Mart and Trixie walked up to the door. At close range, Bobby’s screams were deafening.

  “Don’t worry, Bobby,” Trixie shouted above the noise. “We’ll have you out in no time.” She looked up at Mart with an expression that said, “But how?”

  Mart thought a minute, then cleared his throat and put his head close to the door. “Slide the chain to the far end of the bracket, Bobby,” he said loudly through the narrow opening.

  Bobby wailed even more loudly. “I don’t know what’s a bracket, Mart. Get me out! Holp, please, holp!”

  Trixie suppressed a grin as she saw the look of exasperation on Mart’s face.

  “Clear the way,” Brian said behind them.

  Trixie turned and saw Brian bringing a hacksaw from the garage. “Bobby has already decided he can’t understand you,” he said. “There’s no sense wasting your breath. We’ll just have to saw the chain.”

  While Trixie, Mart, and Mrs. Belden watched anxiously, Brian pushed the hacksaw into the narrow opening between the door and the doorjamb and carefully sawed through the chain.

  Bobby ran into his mother’s waiting arms the minute the door opened and continued to sob while Brian took the hacksaw back and put it in the garage.

  By the time Brian returned to the house, Bobby had stopped crying and was sitting quietly, his breath still coming in hiccuping gasps. “Th-Thanks, Brian,” he said. “You saveded my life.”

  Brian chuckled. “It wasn’t quite that drastic,” he said. “But, Bobby, why on earth did you decide to lock the door?”

  “I don’t know,” Bobby said sheepishly. “Because I never lockeded it before, I guess.”

  Seeing Bobby’s lower lip begin to tremble again, Trixie fought to keep from laughing. Instead, she put her arms around her little brother and hugged him. “Well,” she said, “now you have locked it, and you don’t ever have to do it anymore, right?”

  “Right,” Bobby said, nodding emphatically.

  At dinner that night, the story of Bobby’s adventure was the sole topic of conversation. Now that he felt he was out of danger, Bobby relished telling his father about his own fright and his oldest brother’s heroism in rescuing him.

  Partly in order to give Bobby something else to think about, Peter Belden suggested that the whole family go to an early movie as soon as dinner was over.

  The rest of the family accepted the invitation eagerly, but Trixie asked to be excused. “It would be a waste of your hard-earned money, Daddy,” she said regretfully. “All I can think about tonight is the bikeathon tomorrow. You go ahead and bring back a full report. Maybe Honey will want to go with me later if it’s a good film.”

  As soon as her family left, however, Trixie began to regret her decision. At least the movie might have distracted me for a minute or two, she thought as she wandered aimlessly through the quiet house. As it was, she had nothing to think about but the bikeathon and whether or not those telephone threats would be carried out.

  Or I could think about the ring of counterfeiters, she thought, turning on the television and sprawling on the couch. Although I’m sure that the two are somehow related. Isn’t that silly? I have nothing to base that feeling on but a dumb, scary dream, but I can’t seem to shake it, any more than I can shake my suspicions of Ben and Nick.

  Trixie watched the local news, then stared unseeing at a situation comedy that followed. As the program ended, she stood up, stretched, and turned off the set. I hope the other viewers got more laughs out of that show than I did, she thought, with a sigh.

  Going out to the kitchen for a snack, Trixie’s eyes fell on the sawed-through chain. It reminded her of the time the lock on the bathroom door had jammed shut when Mr. Belden was fixing the plumbing, and he had had to pry the hinge pins loose in order to get out.

  Trixie opened the refrigerator, then froze, her hand reaching for a carton of milk. “Hinges!” she shouted into the empty house. “That’s it! The hinges were on the outside of that boarded-up house!”

  She turned and ran out the door, tugging on a jacket as she ran. She got her bike out of the garage and pedaled as fast as she could toward Old Telegraph Road.

  A few yards from the spot where the driveway of the abandoned house turned off the main road, Trixie got off her bike and walked beside it. She wheeled it quietly up the gravel drive and lowered the kickstand carefully with her foot.

  Her eyes straining in the darkness, Trixie made out a shadowy form next to the house. Walking toward the form, Trixie saw that it was a van—and she saw that there was a light coming from the back of the house.

  Trixie crouched down next to the van and looked toward the light. In the silence, she heard gruff-sounding men’s voices coming from the back of the house.

  “This was a sweet setup we had here,” one man said. “I still say we should just leave the stuff here.”

  “No way,” another voice replied. “It’s too risky now. With fifty kids milling around here tomorrow, somebody could discover that this cellar door has been opened recently. Then our goose would really be cooked.”

  “The door’s locked,” the first man said. “If those kids see that big padlock in place, they’re not going to notice that we’ve been taking out the hinge pins and walking right in. Even the guy who comes over to clean up the yard hasn’t noticed it. I think it’s a lot more dangerous to go driving around the country with a bunch of counterfeit money than it is to—”

  Just then, Trixie’s bike, which had been parked on the loose, unsteady gravel in the drive, tipped over with a crash.

  Trixie hesitated, unsure whether to stay hidden by the van or make a run for it. She hesitated too long. When she finally stood up to make a dash for the road, she succeeded only in stepping into the ray of a flashlight carried by one of the men coming around from the back of the house to investigate the noise.

  Trixie turned and started to run, but the darkhaired, burly man quickly overtook her. He seized her by the arm and held it in a viselike grip, dragging her around to the back of the house and shoving her roughly through the open cellar door.

  “Look what I found,” he called. “It’s the leader of those bikeathon kids.”

  Trixie stumbled down the steep stairs and found herself face-to-face with the other man. He, too, was dark-haired, but he was less husky than the man who had pushed her. He looked no less menacing for his smaller size.

  “You’re the one that people call the amateur detective, aren’t you?” the smaller man snarled. “We thought we’d have trouble with you before now. That’s why we kept away from you with our threats and tire-slashing. Well, you finally got too nosy. Now you’re going to have to be loaded into the van with all the other stuff we have to dispose of.” He moved menacingly toward her, and the big man grabbed her from behind, stuffed a rag into her mouth to keep her from screaming, and tied her hands together behind her back.

  He pushed her into a dark comer of the cellar, saying, “Stay here until we’re ready to leave.”

  Trixie felt the sticky, clinging fingers of a cobweb against her face. She shook her head to free it, and the tears that had been standing in her eyes rolled down her cheeks.

  They were going to dispose of her, the man had said. Trixie shuddered as she thought about what that might mean.

  Why did I have to come out here by myself? she t
hought desperately. Why didn’t I wait for Brian and Mart to come back from the movie, or call Jim and Honey?

  She realized that she’d left the house so hurriedly that she hadn’t even taken time to write a note. I thought I’d be back before my family was, she brooded. More tears rolled down her cheeks as she thought about her family returning from the movie and finding her gone.

  They’ll start to worry right away, she thought. They’ll call Honey to ask if I’m at the Manor House, and then Honey and Jim will start worrying, too. Someone will discover that my bike is missing, but that won’t tell them where I’ve gone. By the time they do find it, I’ll be— Where? In the Hudson River, probably. Trixie choked down a sob.

  The smaller man heard the noise and turned around, his face a cold mask. “Pipe down, kid,” he ordered.

  Trixie did her best to return his look with an angry one. When he turned his back, she looked away from him to the contents of the room, and what she saw was so surprising that, for a moment, she forgot her fear.

  It’s a regular printing shop! she thought. In one comer of the room stood an old-fashioned-looking printing press. There were pallets loaded with paper, drums of ink, and boxes filled with the finished product: fifty-deutsche-mark notes, just like the one she had found.

  Trixie also noticed a fireplace that was filled with charred pieces of paper. That’s where my note came from, she thought. They were burning rejects, and somehow one note blew up through the chimney before it burned completely.

  The smaller man saw Trixie staring and turned to look at the fireplace. “We have to put those ashes in a bag and take them with us,” he told the bigger man. “We don’t want to leave any clues behind. Otherwise we won’t be able to set up shop in this area again.” He smiled evilly at Trixie, his eyes glittering. “You tipped me off, kid. Thanks to you, we should be able to make a clean getaway,” Trixie flushed with anger—anger at the cruelty of the little man and anger at herself. Now you’ve done it, she thought. You’ve destroyed the one clue that might have made those men get caught. She tugged at the ropes that bound her wrists, frantically hoping that she might be able to free herself and make a run for the cellar door. The ropes held tight.