The Black Jacket Mystery

by Campbell, Julie

  But Trixie wasn’t so sure. And now she had a new worry. Maybe Regan hadn’t told Miss Trask the truth when she sent him to Moms for advice. Maybe he wasn’t as honest as he had always seemed. She knew that he hadn’t told her the truth about having someone in the tack room with him last night.

  She decided not to say any more to Honey or anyone. She would just keep an eye on Regan when he came back, and if she got any evidence that he was up to something, she would tell Moms and Dad right away. “But I still hope I’m all wrong,” she told herself.

  Bobby’s See-crud • 5

  YOU DON’T WANNA find my skate.” Bobby sniffed indignantly. “You’re not lookin’!” He pulled at his sister’s sleeve.

  “Oh, Bobby, stop pestering! Were helping the boys so we can all go skating together. We’ll be finished in a few minutes, and then we’ll look for your skate!” Trixie was currycombing Strawberry while Honey attended to sleek Starlight in the next stall. Mart and Brian were measuring out the horses’ next meal and cleaning the leather.

  “We have several of the antique sale posters laid away in the clubhouse,” Brian called out to Trixie as he went past. “Why can’t we use the reverse side of them for our carnival announcements?”

  “Swell idea,” Trixie agreed at once.

  Mart glanced over the top of the next stall at Honey, working hard grooming Starlight. “When is Jim due home? Did he have any idea?”

  “Late tomorrow, he said,” Honey answered cheerfully. “Won’t he be thrilled when he hears all the plans we’ve made?”

  “Yeah, especially when he finds out he’s booked to draw posters, help build the booths, run off the programs on the school printing press—if he can get permission, of course—and—” Mart was ticking off the items on his fingers.

  “—and see that certain parties don’t hand him all the jobs and just go around talking big about how hard they are working!” Trixie finished the sentence saucily.

  “Where did Bobby go?” Brian asked suddenly as he was getting ready to take care of Thunderer’s cut leg. “Hey, Bobby! Where are you?” he called. Then he put aside the bandages to stride outside and look around.

  Trixie groaned. Instead of helping with the horses, a job she really liked, she should have been keeping an eye on Bobby. She hurried outside to Brian.

  He was looking up and down the driveway for Bobby. “Here.” She tossed Strawberry’s currycomb to him. “I’ll try the house. He may have decided to mooch some cookies at the kitchen.”

  Trixie hurried up toward the Manor House, calling impatiently first in one direction and then the other, “Bobby! Where are you?”

  She was about halfway to the Manor House when she saw the little boy come around the comer from the rear, with Miss Trask on one side and Celia on his other. He was carrying a skate in one hand while he munched on a fistful of cookies from his other hand.

  He waved gaily. “Hi, Trixie! We founded my skate!” he called and came running.

  The gray-haired housekeeper and Celia halted to watch him greet Trixie, and then they turned and went back to the house with a farewell wave.

  “Tom fixed it Celia says it was in the kitchen now can we go skating?” Bobby ran the words all together.

  “I guess so, if it doesn’t snow too hard,” Trixie told him, holding firmly to his wrist as they went back to the barn. “Let’s see what Brian says.”

  The work was finished, and they quickly decided that half an hour on the ice would do them all a lot of good. They set out, stopping only a few minutes at the clubhouse to get their skates.

  It was quite a distance into the woods before they would come to the lake. They went single file through the evergreen forest to the sloping hillside that sheltered one end of the lake from most of the wind. There was a good spot among the rocks where they always built a campfire, and the boys went to work at once to get one started.

  The ice was smooth and clean. Honey put her skates on at once and checked to see that there were no broken twigs embedded in the ice in the little cove where she planned to take Bobby for his skating lesson.

  Trixie and Mart paced off a length of shoreline along which Mart intended to work up his speed. They marked it with a strip of red cloth at each end, and Mart began practicing, while Brian timed him with the watch.

  Trixie was feeding the campfire with some wood she had gathered when Honey started to the cove, leading Bobby by the hand.

  “You can come n’ watch, Trixie,” Bobby called to his sister as he skated more or less steadily at Honey’s side.

  “All right. You practice awhile, and I’ll be with you soon,” she called, waving them on.

  She was still feeding the fire carefully a few minutes later when she heard the sound of a car’s motor. It was coming from the private road over on the other side of the hill.

  It was a steep, narrow road and very bumpy. It wasn’t meant for anything but a car with four-wheel drive, and from the sound of this car, the driver was having a time getting uphill with this one. The road led only to the game preserve and Mr. Maypenny’s cabin in the center of it.

  She knew that Mr. Maypenny didn’t have a car. In fact, he positively loathed the “critters.” When he didn’t walk on his rounds of the traps and snares for the pesty little cottontails, he rode Brownie, his old mare.

  Now the chugging and puffing sounded as if it were just on the other side of the hill. Trixie couldn’t resist climbing up to the top of the hill among the tall spruces and trying to see who was driving that car. If it turned out to be Mr. Maypenny himself, f she would have fun teasing him about driving, after f all the things he had said about cars.

  She started to climb, but she was in too much of a hurry. She carelessly stepped on a loose rock on the side of the hill and stumbled, landing on one knee. It was a hard fall and it hurt; by the time she had scrambled to her feet and limped the rest of the way up to the top of the hill, the car had passed. The only glimpse she had of it was of the rear end turning a comer in the road and going out of sight.

  She rubbed her painfully skinned knee and went down the hill again, very much annoyed with herself.

  The storm had really begun now, and the wind was sending heavy gusts of snow across the surface of the ice.

  Brian and Mart were waiting beside the fire, “Let’s call it a day,” Brian said, glancing at the leaden sky.

  Honey was coming across the ice with Bobby at her side, and the wind was blowing and pounding them unmercifully.

  “I only failed down once,” Bobby boasted as they came up to the fire.

  “Good for you, young feller!” Mart laughed. “Now how about heading for home?”

  “But I’m c-cold,” Bobby complained and huddled shivering at the fire.

  “Let him get warmed through first, and then we’ll come along after you,” Honey told the boys.

  “I’ll wait with you,” Trixie said hastily. She was glad to linger so the boys wouldn’t have a chance to notice that she was limping. She knew Mart would tease her about it.

  “Okay, but don’t wait too long.” Brian glanced skyward again. “This looks like a mean one.”

  “And stomp out the fire, squaws,” Mart added. “With this wind, one live spark could make a lot of animals homeless—and lifeless!”

  “To say nothing of Mr. Maypenny,” Brian said grimly. “So don’t forget.”

  Trixie’s knee was hurting and it made her cross. “Go on ahead. I guess we’re as good woodsmen as you two. We know what were doing.” She was trying to stand very straight, but if they didn’t hurry and start off, she just knew she was going to collapse.

  “Hey!” Mart pointed to her knee. “What’s with the tom dungarees? Did you ‘failed down‘ too?”

  “Go on, and stop asking silly questions!” Trixie gripped the slim trunk of a sapling beside her and held on. “You didn’t see the ice cracked anywhere, did you?”

  Brian laughed and drew Mart away with him. “See you later at the clubhouse, ladies.”

&nb
sp; As soon as they were out of sight, Trixie groaned and sat down on a flat rock, gingerly feeling the injured knee.

  “Why, you did fall, didn’t you?” Honey hurried to her. “Let me see.”

  Trixie had tucked her dungarees into the top of her boots, so they had to pull off the boot before they could roll up the pants leg and look at the scraped spot. Trixie fingered it gently, with a moan or two, and then decided that nothing was broken, after all. “Just a scrape,” she told Honey.

  “We’ll get the first-aid kit at the clubhouse and bandage you pretty,” Honey told her, “with some of that red, white, and blue adhesive tape.”

  “I want some heap-o’-tape, too. See?” Bobby held out a finger with a tiny scratch on it. “I hurt awful.”

  Trixie grinned at him as she rolled down her pants leg. “We’ll put some on the other hand, too, so you’ll balance!”

  Bobby’s eyes shone. “I love you, Trixie!” He flung his arms around Trixie’s neck, and they hugged each other.

  “But you must promise not to tell Mart or Brian that I skinned my knee,” Trixie warned him. “That’s our secret.”

  “I love see-cruds.” Bobby nodded happily. “I know a see-crud.”

  “What is it, doll?” Trixie kept her arm around him and winked at Honey, who was smiling at them both. “A big, big secret?”

  “Uh-huh.” Bobby nodded and looked serious. “It’s Miss Trask’s see-crud, an’ Celia’s, an’ it’s about Regan an Tom, an’—”

  Trixie put her free hand over his mouth to stop him. “Then you mustn’t tell it to me if it belongs to them.”

  Bobby pulled her hand away so he could speak, and backed off. “It’s somethin’ Regans bringing home from the city!” he shouted at Trixie. “It’s a big sperimen! What’s a sperimen, Honey?”

  “A sperimen?” Honey looked bewildered. “I never heard of a sperimen.”

  “Neither did I,” Trixie laughed. “There’s no such thing, Bobby.”

  Bobby’s face was red and his eyes blazed. “Is so!” he shouted at his sister. “Miss Trask says it’s a dan-gerish sperimen, so there! Maybe it’s a—a snake!” He was not happy with the idea and shivered as he stood staring at them.

  Honey laughed. “I never heard of a snake by that name. And, anyhow, both Tom and Regan hate snakes, so there’s no chance your sperimen is a snake. You don’t have to worry about that.”

  The two girls exchanged glances over Bobby’s head, and then Trixie touched her knee and said, “Ouch! That scrape hurts. I think we’d better be getting back to the clubhouse. How about putting out the fire, if everybody’s warm enough now?” She looked meaningly at Bobby.

  “Let me!” Bobby started kicking the damp snow onto the fire and tramping it into the earth to put out any last embers. It was one task he loved, and he did it very efficiently.

  The girls waited and watched to see that he didn’t overlook any half-burned sticks.

  “What do you suppose he meant by ‘sperimen,’ Trix?” Honey whispered.

  “Sperimen.Sperimen.” Trixie whispered the word to herself. “Hey, do you suppose the word she said was ‘experiment’?”

  Honey laughed. “That’s probably just what she did say. But goodness knows what she meant! And, anyhow, I guess it’s none of our business.”

  “I guess not.” Trixie sighed. “But this trip of Regan’s is getting ‘curiouser and curiouser as Alice in Wonderland said. What kind of an experiment would he bring home?”

  But it was foolish to stand there in the darkening woods while the wind whipped snow in their faces. So they hurried off after Bobby, and Trixie found her injured knee getting better as she thought less and less of how much it hurt.

  In fact, the three of them reached the clubhouse a lot sooner than they had expected to, and they were happy to find the cheerful little stove sending out warmth that felt good after the hike.

  Mart and Brian had found the old posters, discovered that they would do nicely for the new project, and had laid them out on the conference table, with pots of paint and clean brushes, so that nothing would delay Jim from going to work on them when he got back from his field trip.

  Brian looked up from the table. “Hey, I hear a car.

  “Maybe Dad and Mom changed their minds and came back,” Honey guessed happily and ran to open the door.

  The snow was falling rather heavily now, and the car that had turned into the sloping driveway was having trouble starting up the steep grade.

  Trixie looked over Honey’s shoulder, and Bobby peered past them. “It’s your mom’s old car,” Trixie said. “Isn’t that the one Regan and Tom took into town?”

  Honey nodded, disappointed, and started to close the door. “They’re back a lot sooner than they had expected.”

  “Where’s the sperimen?” Bobby shrilled at the car.

  The windows were rolled up and Tom, the driver, didn’t hear. He kept his attention on the now slippery road and went on up the driveway.

  But before the door closed out the sound of the car laboring up the hilly drive, Trixie recognized the choking and sputtering of the motor.

  There was no doubt about it. This car of Honey’s mother’s was the same car that she had heard an hour ago climbing the rough, narrow road beyond the lake hill.

  He New Pupil • 6

  Of COURSE, TRIXIE admitted to herself, it was possible that she was just imagining that the car she had heard out by the lake was the same one that just had coughed and sputtered its way past the clubhouse with Regan and Tom inside.

  She decided that she wouldn’t say anything about it to the boys. She would feel pretty silly if she did and then Regan denied that he had been out near the lake today. He had been annoyed enough last night when she had tried to find out who had been talking to him in the tack room. She still had to tell him about having spilled the contents of his letter file. If he suspected that she had read part of his letter—wow! He might get angry enough with her to go to the Wheelers and tell them that she had been prying into his private affairs.

  Brian had drawn a rough map of the lake, and he and Mart had their heads together over it, trying to decide just where the booths should be for the carnival and where to stage the ice show.

  “Keep everything in the lee of the hill where the wind won t hit,” Mart advised.

  “And be sure to have one booth for hot chocolate and coffee—” Honey reminded them.

  “An’ ice cream.” Bobby clapped his hands. “An’ tell Regan to bring the sperimen.”

  “The what?” Mart looked to the girls for their explanation.

  “He means experiment,” Honey laughed. “Bobby thinks Regan’s brought home some kind of an experiment, and he is hoping it isn’t a snake!”

  “Not this time of the year, Bobby,” Brian explained to his small brother gravely. “The snakes all go into their little nests under the big rocks, and they go to sleep till the ground warms up again. They don’t like ice and snow.”

  “Oh!” Bobby seemed relieved. He knew that anything Brian said was true. He couldn’t always depend on Mart or Trixie. They liked to tease him. “I’m glad,” he said.

  “You see? Honey told you!” Trixie laughed. “Nobody ever heard of a sperimen snake.”

  “Oh.” Bobby smiled at Honey. “I thought it was you said so, Trixie.”

  “Ha!” Mart chuckled. “Talk about casting aspersions on a certain persons veracity!”

  Trixie gave him a withering glance and hooked her arm in Honey’s. “I hope that dictionary you swallowed gives you indigestion, smarty-pants. Come on, Honey, lets leave the uncouth savages!” And she added, with a Western twang, “Come along, gal, and help Moms rustle up some grub for the hands!”

  “Ki-yi-yippy-ay-yay!” Mart gave a cowboy yodel as the girls snatched up their jackets and scarves and hurried toward the door. “Hey, where you going so fast? Are you leaving Little Tornado on our hands?”

  Trixie sighed. “I wouldn’t think of it. Come on, Bobby.” And in spite of his wr
iggles and protests, she and Honey had him zipped into his overcoat in a few seconds and were on their way home along Glen Road.

  After the first few unwilling yards, he began running ahead, cheerfully kicking up the fallen snow and trying to catch the new flakes in his mouth as he ran.

  Trixie and Honey followed at a more dignified pace, arm in arm, enjoying the gentle touch of the snowflakes on their pink cheeks and pinker noses.

  “I could hardly wait to tell you,” Trixie confided, “but I’m almost sure that Regan went up to see Mr. Maypenny today before he came home. Maybe Mr. Maypenny knows about the experiment, whatever it is.

  Honey was surprised. “What makes you think Regan went to see him?” she asked, and her hazel eyes got wider and wider as Trixie told about hearing the car.

  “What on earth could the experiment be about?” Honey frowned.

  Trixie shrugged. “Well, whatever it was, it didn’t take Regan and Tom very long to take care of it in town. I hope it’s all fixed up now.”

  And a few minutes later, as she and Honey and Bobby all tramped into the kitchen, it seemed that it had been “fixed up.” Mrs. Belden was talking to Miss Trask on the phone.

  “I’m so glad to hear it,” she was saying. “It appeared to me that that was the best thing for Regan to do, and I’m glad he decided to try. It’s too bad we can’t do more, but we have to think of how the others might—” She broke off abruptly as Trixie came in with Honey. Then she went on lightly, “But I must stop gabbing. My starving infants have just arrived, and I’m afraid they’ll have to be fed.” After a few more laughing remarks, she hung up the receiver.

  The others? Trixie thought. Wonder if that means us. But she knew better than to ask her mother.

  “Has Miss Trask heard from Dad and Mother?” Honey asked her hostess eagerly.

  “As a matter of fact, that’s why she called, dear. They won’t be home for ten days or so, and if you wish, you may stay right here with us till Jim gets back from his field trip”—Mrs. Belden smiled—“or longer.”