The Mystery at Saratoga

by Campbell, Julie

  “Don’t tell me Trixie Belden finally ran out of energy!” Mr. Wheeler teased. “I could have made a fortune taking bets that that would never happen!”

  “Now, Matthew,” Mrs. Wheeler said, “don’t try to change her mind. Let’s send the girls back to the hotel in a taxi. We can meet them there in a couple of hours and go out on the town for dinner. That’ll give them a chance to freshen up a little.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Wheeler,” Trixie said gratefully. “I’ll see you at the hotel. Thank you, too, for showing us around, Mr. Worthington.”

  Honey, looking vaguely worried at her best friend’s strangely quiet mood, thanked Mr. Worthington and followed Trixie out of the stands.

  The two girls walked slowly through the rapidly thinning crowd to the front gate of the racetrack, where a row of taxis was waiting to pick up passengers returning to their homes and hotels.

  Suddenly Trixie broke into a run, weaving through the crowd and shouting, “Excuse me, please!” as she pushed her way past startled adults. Honey followed, trying to keep Trixie in sight without knocking anyone out of the way.

  When they were almost at the front gate, Trixie stopped running as abruptly as she had begun. “Wh-What is going on, Trixie?” Honey asked breathlessly as she came up beside her friend.

  “Oh, Honey,” Trixie wailed, “I saw a redheaded man in the crowd. I tried to catch up to him, but he just disappeared!”

  Supersleuth Honey ● 11

  HONEY STARED at her friend open-mouthed for a moment, then closed her mouth and swallowed hard. “Oh, Trixie,” she said, her voice cracking, “do you think it was Regan?”

  Trixie’s mouth turned down at the corners and she shrugged. “I don’t know, Honey. I never got close enough to him to tell for sure. The man I saw was about the right size, and he had red hair. That’s all I know.”

  “Oh!” Honey exclaimed in disgust, stamping her foot. “This whole day has been one frustration after another. I’ve felt as though I were about to explode, having to keep all my feelings to myself because you and I were never alone to talk things over.”

  “That’s exactly how I’ve felt, Honey,” Trixie said. “That’s why I passed up the chance to go to the winners’ circle, much as I’d like to any other time. Now we have a couple of hours to talk things over before your parents get to the hotel, starting as soon as we can catch a cab.”

  Unfortunately, the girls’ chance to talk was postponed by their cabdriver, an outgoing, chatty man who began a one-sided conversation almost as soon as the girls got into the cab.

  “It sure is nice to have a couple of fresh-faced young ladies in the cab for a change,” he said. “The customers who usually climb into this hack at the track are a different-looking bunch. High rollers and down-and-outers, but all of ’em people who’ve been around the track too long. Yessir, you ladies are a nice change of pace. Boy, you should have seen the last guy I drove back to town. Now that was a tough customer if ever I saw one, and I’ve seen my share. This guy was big and mean-looking. Nasty scar running all down one side of his face, like he’d got on the wrong end of a knife fight sometime in his life.”

  “I saw that man, too, when we were at the concession stand at the track,” Trixie said.

  “Then you know what I’m talking about,” the driver said, barely stopping his flow of chatter long enough to absorb Trixie’s observation. “Yessir, I’ve seen ’em all. I’ve driven guys to the track who were laughin’ and jokin’ with me all the way out, and picked those same guys up a couple of hours later lookin’ like they were about to bust out cryin’. And I’ve seen guys lookin’ like the cat that ate the canary after a good day’s bettin’, and I’ve seen guys who looked like they’d never lose at the track ’cause they’d do whatever they had to to see that their horses won.

  “Some of the ladies are somethin’ else, too. I get little old ladies that look like they should be home sittin’ in a rockin’ chair on the front porch and tendin’ to their knittin’, unless you look close enough to see the gleam in their eye that means they’re all set to wager a bundle on the ponies. And I get ladies who are all dolled up like they’re goin’ to meet the queen of England, with so much perfume on it makes my eyes water. The saddest, though, are the gamblers’ wives. They come along with their husbands to the track because they think maybe they can stop them from losing their shirts, but they know in their hearts that they can’t. So they just sit in the backseat all quiet and tense, chewin’ their lips and lookin’ half scared to death.” The cabbie shook his head. “They’re the ones 1 feel sorry for. I try to laugh and joke with ’em to make ’em feel better, but it doesn’t work. I always want to say, ‘Hey, you can’t do any good cornin’ out here with your man and sufferin’ while you watch him lose the rent money. Why don’t you just wait at home, watch TV or read a book and try to take your mind off the inevitable?’ I always want to say that, but I never do. Probably wouldn’t do any good, anyway.” The cabbie shook his head again.

  “Excuse me,” Honey said quickly as the cabbie paused briefly in his nonstop chatter, “you see so many people here, I was wondering if you could answer a question for me. I’ve been wondering all day if there’s some kind of superstition about redheads causing bad luck at the racetrack, or something. It seems as though I didn’t see a single redhead all day. You see, my brother is a redhead, so I’m very conscious of them, and that’s what made me think of it.”

  The cabbie chuckled. “There’s no superstition about redheads at the track that I know of, and I know ’em all: rabbits’ feet and horseshoes over the barn doors and lucky shirts and lucky rings and lucky days of the week. Nope, I’d say there are probably just fewer redheads in the world than you think there are, since your brother’s a redhead.

  “Matter of fact,” the cabbie continued, “I had a guy with bright red hair in the cab just this morning. Nice-looking young fellow he was, and real polite, even though he did smell to high heaven of horses. He apologized for it, which is more than those ladies with their heavy perfume ever do, even though I’d rather have the smell of horses in my cab any day than all those exotic concoctions. At least he came by his horse perfume honestly, since he works at a boarding stable around here, I found out. Yessir, he was a real nice young guy, and a redhead to boot.”

  The cabbie continued his conversation with himself, but the girls were beyond listening to him. Trixie grabbed Honey’s hand and held it hard to keep from shrieking in her excitement. From the pressure Trixie felt from Honey’s hand, she knew that her usually quiet friend was having just as much trouble trying to keep her excitement in check.

  The minute the cabbie stopped in front of their hotel, the girls paid him, thanked him for the ride, and raced through the lobby and up to their room. Sitting cross-legged on one of the large double beds, they began to discuss the events of the day.

  “I just know it was Regan that the cabbie took to the track this morning,” Honey said.

  Trixie nodded. “And I’m sure, now, that it was Regan I chased through the crowd at the track. Drat! I wish I’d been able to catch up with him. Then our search would already be over, and we’d have the entire story by now. But we’re so close, Honey! There can’t be that many boarding stables around, even in a horse town like Saratoga, I’ll bet anything that by this time tomorrow, we’ll have found Regan. And it’s all thanks to you, Honey, for playing your hunch and asking the cabbie about redheads at the track. I’ll have to start calling you ‘Supersleuth Honey’!”

  To Trixie’s astonishment, Honey suddenly burst into tears. “What is it, Honey? What’s wrong? You should be thrilled! Our search for Regan is almost over!”

  Honey’s response was to cry even harder. She threw herself onto the bed, burying her face in one of the pillows, her shoulders heaving as she sobbed.

  Trixie was becoming really frightened. Her best friend was, she knew, a very sensitive and, sometimes, highly emotional person, quick to feel both joy and sadness. But never before had Honey reacted with s
uch intensity—and with so little warning. Trixie was at a loss to know what to do. Finally she went into the bathroom and pulled some tissues out of the dispenser on the wall and took them in to Honey, who took them wordlessly, still crying too hard even to say, “Thank you.”

  Then Trixie sat on the other bed and watched and waited until her friend’s sobbing diminished. When it had almost stopped, Trixie got up and went into the bathroom again, returning with a washcloth that she had wrung out of cold water. When she returned to the bedroom, Honey had rolled over to lie on her back. She was staring at the ceiling, her chin trembling from the effort she was making to hold back her tears.

  Trixie held the washcloth out to her. “Fold this up and put it over your eyes,” she instructed her friend. “That’ll keep your eyes from getting swollen.”

  Honey nodded, still unable to speak, then took the cloth and put it over her eyes. Trixie sat down again and waited quietly for a few more minutes. “Do you think you can talk about it now?” she asked finally.

  Honey nodded, pulled the cloth off her eyes, sat up on the bed, and blew her nose loudly. “I was so excited when the cabdriver told us about giving a ride to the redheaded man. But then, as you started talking about how close we are to finding Regan, I suddenly felt really terrified. A voice in the back of my mind screamed, ‘I don’t want to find him!’ And then I felt guilty and frightened and confused, all at the same time, and I—” Honey’s voice broke, and she swallowed hard and blew her nose again, then sat silent, staring down at her hands.

  “I think I understand,” Trixie said quietly. “I had some of the same feelings today, after we talked to Carl Stinson.”

  “Trixie, I wouldn’t say this to another soul in the whole world, but I—I really have a hard time keeping faith in Regan’s innocence. Carl Stinson must be an honest person—Mr. Worthington wouldn’t have kept him on as a trainer and given him so much responsibility if he weren’t. And Carl Stinson really believes that Regan is guilty. The Regan that we’ve always known is completely trustworthy. I’d trust him with my life. But the fact is that? somebody gave drugs to Gadfly seven years ago. And we don’t know what Regan was like seven years ago, as a poor, frightened, troubled, runaway teen-ager.”

  Trixie nodded sadly. “I thought that exact same thing this afternoon, Honey, when I almost forgot about your father’s generosity. It occurred to me then that loyalty must be a hard thing to ask of someone who’s desperate for money.”

  “I keep remembering, too,” Honey said, “that Regan ran away when Mr. Worthington appeared at the Manor House. That seems like the action of a guilty person.”

  “Not necessarily, Honey,” Trixie replied. “Don’t forget, Regan ran away to Saratoga. We know that much for sure. If he were running away for fear of being caught by Mr. Worthington, he could have gone to the Midwest or to California. There are racetracks and stables all over the country where he could find work. I still believe that his coming here shows that he’s trying to clear himself.”

  “That’s true,” Honey agreed. “I guess I’d lost sight of that fact. Does that mean you’re sure Regan is innocent?”

  Trixie didn’t answer for a long moment. “All I can say,” Trixie said finally, “is that I’m sure that the Regan we know couldn’t drug a horse. The Regan of seven years ago might have been forced, by things he couldn’t control, to do something that was against the law. But whatever the truth is, I want to know the whole story. And the only way to learn the whole story—”

  “Is to find Regan,” Honey concluded. “You’re right, I know. It’s—it’s just so frightening to think that when we find Regan, he might confess to drugging Gadfly.”

  “We’ll stand by Regan no matter what,” Trixie said firmly. “But if we do find out that he was responsible, we’ll have to convince him that he should turn himself in. I’m sure that your father will hire him the best lawyer in New York, and that a judge will take the circumstances—whatever they were—into account.”

  “But a judge will also take into account the fact that Regan ran away and stayed hidden for seven whole years. Besides, Trixie, I don’t know if anyone could persuade Regan to do something he didn’t want to do. What if he tells us that he is—or was— guilty of drugging Gadfly, and then refuses to turn himself in? What will we do then?”

  As Trixie looked into Honey’s searching eyes, her stomach tightened as she realized what their alternatives would be: either to turn Regan in against his will or have it on their consciences that they’d helped a guilty man escape.

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Trixie said finally. Then she added silently, And we may come to it tomorrow, if we find Regan.

  Complicated Theories ● 12

  THE NEXT MORNING at breakfast, following a plan they’d worked out the night before, Trixie and Honey told the Wheelers that they would prefer not to go to the track that day.

  “We spent all day yesterday looking at those beautiful, beautiful horses on the track, and it was wonderful, but it made us miss riding,” Honey explained in a wistful voice.

  “So we’d like to find some place nearby where we can rent horses for a few hours and go riding,” Trixie concluded, hoping that she had made her tone sound casual enough to keep the Wheelers from suspecting that she and Honey were keeping something secret from them.

  “I don’t understand,” Mr. Wheeler said, frowning. “In just a few days, you’ll be back at Sleepyside, with all the Manor House horses waiting for you, impatient to be exercised— especially now, with Regan gone. I don’t know why you’d want to rent second-rate riding-academy horses and miss an entire afternoon of seeing the unique things that Saratoga has to offer.”

  Trixie felt her heart skip a beat, but she forced herself to keep her feelings of dismay from registering on her face. Oh, please, Mr. Wheeler, she thought, don't tell us that we have to come to the track with you. Please, please!

  “Now, Matthew,” Mrs. Wheeler said, putting her hand on her husband’s arm, “this is the girls’ vacation, and they should spend it as they like. Besides, I think that going out and getting some fresh air and exercise—even on what you call ‘second-rate horses’—will be better for them than spending another day at a racetrack.”

  Mr. Wheeler looked from his wife’s face to those of Honey and Trixie, which clearly reflected, in spite of their efforts to control their feelings, their eagerness to be on their own for the day. “I suppose you’re right,” he said finally. “When we’ve finished eating, you can ask the desk clerk for the names of some local riding stables.”

  Trixie hadn’t realized that she’d been holding her breath while she waited for Mr. Wheeler’s decision. Now she let it out slowly while Honey said, “Thank you, Daddy! I can hardly wait! It’s just a perfectly perfect day for riding.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Wheeler,” Trixie echoed. “I hope you’ll help us see the rest of the sights of Saratoga before we leave. It isn’t that we aren’t interested—really. It’s just that all of yesterday’s excitement has made us need to work off some steam.”

  Mr. Wheeler’s face relaxed in a smile. “I guess I can understand, Trixie. It’s just hard, sometimes, for grown-ups to remember the boundless energies of our youth. Have a good time.”

  The desk clerk gave the girls the names of four riding stables near town, and they quickly changed into their riding clothes, hailed a taxi, and gave the driver the address of the first place on their list. As they pulled away from the hotel, Trixie said, “I hope we get lucky before the fourth stable, or I’ll wind up spending every cent I brought along for cab fare, instead of for souvenirs.”

  Honey nodded. “It could get expensive if we have to go to all four stables. But even if we do spend all our money, can you think of anything that the people in Sleepyside would rather have us bring back than Regan?”

  Trixie squeezed her friend’s hand. “That’s a wonderful thought, Honey. And it’s stupid of me to be worried about money at a time like this, when we’re right on the
verge of finding Regan.”

  Nevertheless, when Trixie checked the dwindling contents of her billfold an hour and a half later, she admitted to herself both that she was worried about running out of money and that they seemed no closer to finding Regan than ever.

  The girls had visited the first two stables on their list, once again relying on the plan they’d formulated the night before. They knew that they couldn’t just walk into the stables and ask for Regan by name, since he was almost sure to be working under an alias. So they had decided they would simply say that they wanted to rent horses and would ask to look over the stock to select the ones they wanted. That would give them time to look around and ask subtle questions about the employees. It was risky, they knew, because they could miss Regan if it was his day off or if he was running errands away from the stables, and because they risked arousing the curiosity of his employers with a badly worded question. But they had decided it was all they could do.

  Now, in the taxi on the way to the third place on their list, Trixie had to wonder if their plan had been as well thought-out as it had seemed. They had caught no glimpse of the redheaded groom, and their questions regarding the size of the staff at each of the two stables had brought no information that they could use.

  “The worst part, Honey,” Trixie complained after they had given the driver the third address, “is that we don’t even know for sure that we can eliminate these first two places. I mean, Regan could be working at either one of them. The fact that we didn’t find him doesn’t prove anything.”

  “I know, Trixie,” Honey said. “But we still have two chances out of four to find him. And if we don’t find him today—well, as you said to me last night, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” The cab pulled into the long driveway of the third riding stable and stopped in front of the office. The girls once again dug into their billfolds to pay the driver, both noting sadly the few bills remaining. They climbed out and looked around for someone to ask their by now well-rehearsed questions. Trixie heard a small squeal from Honey, and she followed her friend’s gaze to a large fenced exercise yard to their left. There, cantering around in a wide circle on an Appaloosa horse, was Regan!