The Mystery of the Velvet Gown

by Campbell, Julie

  “Yes, dear, but Miss Trask just called. Her sister in New York City came down with a stomach virus yesterday, and Miss Trask is going to take the eight-thirty train in to do some errands and laundry for her. She asked if you would like to go along with them. Apparently,

  Honey has asked to go along.”

  Trixie was suddenly wide awake. “Boy, would I! But, Moms,” Trixie sighed, looking somewhat sheepish, “what about....”

  “The chores,” her mother finished for her. “Miss Trask said she plans to catch the two o’clock train back this afternoon, so you’ll have time to finish whatever I don’t get done today. I’ll help you out—just this once.” Mrs. Belden smiled.

  “Moms, you’re terrific!” Trixie cried, giving her mother a quick hug. “I must be the luckiest girl in the world.”

  Mrs. Belden laughed. “I don’t know about the luckiest, but you certainly are one of the most active. Now, hurry up and get dressed. They’re going to stop on their way to the train station to pick you up.”

  Trixie hurriedly pulled on a pair of blue wool pants and a sweater. I can't believe it, she thought. What luck!

  She and Honey had spent an hour on the phone the night before, which had brought a scolding from Peter Belden about tying up the phone lines. “But,” Trixie had wailed, “it was so important, I just had to talk to her!”

  “Of course you did,” Mart had teased. “Nobody could walk around with as many secrets and important things to discuss as you do. You had to tell someone before you burst. Fortunately, Honey will listen to you. It saves us, at least.”

  Trixie had almost taken the bait, but then she’d thought twice about it and had laughed it off. Mart is already watching me too closely, she’d warned herself. I'd better play it cool for a while, at least until I have some more evidence.

  She’d told Honey everything she’d learned from Bill Morgan about the pictures, and she’d admitted that while she suspected Peter Ashbury of stealing the film, she hadn’t yet figured out why or how. She had related the whole incident with Miss Darcy after school.

  “See, Honey?” she had said. “There is something strange about Peter Ashbury and those costumes and Miss Darcy, if only we could figure out what the link is.”

  Honey had been puzzled by everything, too, and had said, quite offhandedly, “If only we could tail Mr. Ashbury for a while....”

  Trixie had been secretly pleased that Honey would ever suggest anything so daring. “Now you’re talking,” Trixie had told her. “I was getting worried about your lack of enthusiasm for this mystery.”

  Quickly running a brush through her sandy curls, Trixie smiled at her reflection as she recalled Honey’s surprising suggestion. Now, as if by magic, they had the perfect chance. If only—she thought—if only we can find out exactly where Peter Ashbury works.

  Trixie was so excited at the prospect of a day’s sleuthing that she bounded down the stairs and burst into the kitchen, only to be reminded by her mother that other members of the family were still asleep.

  “Gleeps!” Trixie cried, putting her hand over her mouth. “Sorry, Moms. I got so carried away, I forgot,” she added in a whisper.

  “Well, you’d better have a quick, quiet bowl of cereal—nothing that snaps, gargles, or roars, please. They’ll be here any minute.”

  “I’m too excited to eat,” Trixie said.

  “My goodness,” Mrs. Belden laughed, “you’re acting as if you’d never been to the city before.“

  “It’s like a little surprise vacation, that’s all,” Trixie said, pulling on her coat. “I’ll walk to the end of the driveway to meet them.” She gave her mother a good-bye kiss. “Thanks for letting me off the hook with chores, Moms.”

  “Have a good time.” Helen Belden smiled and closed the door behind her daughter. She watched from the kitchen window as Trixie jogged to the end of the driveway.

  Miss Trask soon pulled up in the Wheelers’ sedan and stopped alongside the entrance to the Beldens’ drive. Trixie had been waiting eagerly, hopping on one foot and then the other, trying to keep warm in the frosty morning air. “Hi,” she said, climbing into the backseat. “Sorry we woke you and your mother up so early this morning, Trixie,” Honey said, giving her friend a knowing, sidelong glance, “but I thought it would be fun to keep Miss Trask company on the train ride.”

  “Oh,” Trixie said, remembering the real reason for the trip. She turned to Miss Trask. “I was sorry to hear that your sister is sick. How is she?”

  “It’s just a stomach flu, nothing serious,” Miss Trask replied. “But she needs to have a prescription filled and some laundry done. It’s a little harder for her to manage with the wheelchair when she’s ill, so I thought I would offer to come in for a few hours.” Miss Trask’s sister had been an invalid for some time, but she was now able to live independently.

  “Do you want us to help, too?” Honey asked. Trixie crossed her fingers and hoped that Miss Trask would say no, even though she knew that Honey had been right to offer to help.

  “Goodness, no,” Miss Trask answered. “I thought I’d drop you two off at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s only a few blocks from my sister’s apartment, and there are quite a few interesting exhibits there now.”

  “Okay,” Honey and Trixie agreed in unison.

  They arrived at the Sleepyside station just in time to catch the eight-thirty train.

  Miss Trask sighed with relief as they took their seats in the coach. “I’m glad we made this train. The next one doesn’t leave for another hour. Trains don’t run as frequently on the weekends as they do during the week, when all the commuters are going to work.” Di’s father was one of those commuters who made the hour-long train trip to and from New York City every day.

  Honey and Trixie settled into a double seat across the aisle from Miss Trask as the train moved slowly away from the station. Soon Miss Trask was absorbed in a magazine. The humming rhythm of the train masked the whispering excitement Honey and Trixie shared.

  “I can’t believe it!” Trixie giggled. “Perfect timing.”

  “I know,” Honey beamed. “When Miss Trask’s sister called this morning, I couldn’t help thinking, ‘How did Trixie arrange this?”

  Trixie laughed, too, and then they settled back to watch out the window as the countryside slipped away and the skyline became crowded with buildings.

  “The train seems to sound different when we get close to the city,” Honey said, “as if it’s getting more energy or something. In Sleepyside, it sounds like chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga, but now it sounds like hustle-bustle, hustle-bustle.”

  Trixie turned to Honey and laughed. “Have you ever thought about getting a job as a train engineer? I never knew you could do such a good train imitation, Honey. Do you do bird calls, too?”

  Honey giggled. “You know what I mean,” she said. “The train does sound different.”

  “I think so, too,” Trixie said. “I was just laughing about your ‘hustle-bustle, hustle-bustle.’ It sounds like a new dance step or something.”

  Just then the train dipped into the underground tunnel that led to the tracks of Grand Central Station. They were enveloped in darkness for several seconds until the train lights winked on.

  “I always like this part of the trip best,” Trixie said. “It’s like going into some secret cave.”

  “Some secret!” Honey exclaimed. “When you come out, you find yourself in one of the world’s busiest train stations.”

  Trixie laughed. “Now I guess it’s my turn to say ‘You know what I mean.

  The conductor’s voice came over the loudspeaker to inform everyone that this was the last stop on the line.

  Honey and Trixie gathered up their coats and followed Miss Trask off the train. They walked through the underground network of hallways and waiting rooms until they arrived at the center of the beautiful old terminal.

  “Look up,” Miss Trask said. She pointed, directing their attention to the huge barrel-vaulted ceiling of the
concourse. Ornate arches bordered the blue-tiled ceiling, which was studded with small, starlike lights. The lights twinkled along the gold outlines that depicted the mythical characters of the zodiac.

  “It’s lovely,” Honey whispered.

  “You know, I never looked up in this station before,” Trixie admitted. “I was always so busy trying not to bump into anyone or looking for the information booth or something that I never even thought of it.”

  “Neither did I,” Honey confessed. “Look! There’s Pegasus.” Her pointing finger followed the outline of the head and shoulders of the winged horse.

  “Fine detectives you’ll make,” Miss Trask sniffed teasingly. “You’ve got to look up, down, and all around.”

  Honey and Trixie giggled. “You’re absolutely right, though!” Trixie added emphatically.

  When they reached the street, Miss Trask hailed a cab and directed the driver to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  “I’ll drop you off there and go on to my sister’s,” Miss Trask explained. “It’s almost ten o’clock now. I’ll be back at noon, and we’ll all go somewhere for lunch before catching the two o’clock train back to Sleepyside. You kids should be able to keep yourselves busy for two hours. I’ll meet you at the front entrance.” Honey and Trixie nodded in agreement, and shortly, the cab stopped in front of the museum. The two girls got out of the cab and waved good-bye to Miss Trask.

  “We’ve got a lot of work to do in two hours,” Trixie said as she and Honey began the long climb up the steps to the museum entrance. “They should have a phone book somewhere here,” she added.

  “Uh-huh.” Honey giggled. “It might be an antique, but it will be a phone book.”

  “This building really is beautiful,” Trixie panted as they neared the huge glass-doored entrance, “but I don’t see why they couldn’t have made fewer steps.”

  With careful directions from a museum guard, the two girls went to find a telephone. “You really could get lost in this place, it’s so big,” Honey said.

  Trixie agreed. “In fact,” she added, pointing to the Egyptian exhibit as they passed, “those really aren’t mummies, you know. Those are people who never found their way out of this place, and the museum decided to keep them.“

  “Oooh, wouldn’t it be terrible if that were so?” Honey shuddered slightly and hurried past the rest of the mummy exhibit.

  They soon found the phone book, and Trixie quickly looked up Ashbury, Peter. “Here it is!” she cried excitedly. “I was afraid he might have an unlisted number, but he doesn’t. I only hope this is the Peter Ashbury we’re looking for,” she added, jotting down the address.

  “Now let’s hope our luck holds out and this address isn’t on the other side of town,” Trixie said, heading toward another museum guard to ask directions.

  “That’s only two blocks from here,” the guard assured them, and he went on to explain exactly how to get there.

  “We certainly are lucky today,” Honey said happily. “Maybe one of the ‘stars’ we stood under in the station was lucky.”

  “I sure hope so,” Trixie sighed, “but remember, we have to look up, down, and all around as Miss Trask said. We can’t always count on luck to find clues. And,” Trixie added, “we’d better make sure our watches are right. We can’t exactly be running up the stairs of the museum at noon, when Miss Trask will be expecting to see us come down them.”

  Honey’s face clouded slightly, and she frowned. “I do feel guilty about deceiving Miss Trask. She’s so terrific and she trusts us....”

  “I feel guilty, too,” Trixie admitted, “but you know if we asked permission to follow Peter Ashbury, the fiancé of a friend of hers, because we suspected he was a criminal, she wouldn’t exactly smile and say, ‘Go ahead.’ ”

  “I know,” Honey sighed, “but I just feel... well, you know. I’m already worried that we’ll have to tell her something about the exhibits we saw.”

  “Gleeps, you’re right!” Trixie exclaimed. “We’d better be back here at eleven-thirty so we have time to take a quick look at something.” Honey agreed as they reached the bottom of the long flight of steps and were on the street again.

  “Now, we just have to walk east two blocks,” Trixie said, recalling the guard’s directions.

  As the girls crossed Fifth Avenue, Honey pointed out the Empire State Building.

  “This really is an exciting city,” Trixie said, “but I don’t think I could take the hustle-bustle, hustle-bustle all the time.”

  “I know what you mean,” Honey said seriously. She and her parents had lived in an apartment in New York before moving to Sleepyside. Then she laughed. “And besides, where would the horses get their exercise? Can you imagine Jupe, with all his wild energy, pulling one of those hansom cabs?” she asked. Jupiter—or Jupe, for short—was a large black gelding, one of the five horses in the Wheelers’ stable.

  “I certainly can’t,” Trixie laughed. “The passengers would be in for a wild ride through Central Park with Jupe in the lead.”

  Trixie stopped and pointed to a blue canopy with the numbers 268 emblazoned on the side. ‘That’s the address,” she said. “Come on!” The two girls hurried into the beautiful old apartment building and were met at the entrance by a neatly uniformed doorman.

  “May I help you, young ladies?” he asked in a formal tone.

  “I hope so.” Trixie smiled. “Does a Mr. Peter Ashbury live here?”

  “Yes, he does, miss. Would you like me to ring him?” he asked, heading for the house phone.

  “No, thank you,” Trixie said hurriedly. “I—I wanted to send him something, and I just needed to make sure I had the correct address.” The doorman looked puzzled, but he just shrugged his shoulders.

  “One more thing,” Trixie said hastily. “Could you please tell me—is Mr. Ashbury a costume dealer?”

  “Oh, no,” the doorman answered. “He’s—” Just then, one of the elevator doors slid open, and Peter Ashbury stepped out. Trixie slipped her arm through Honey’s, spun her around, and walked briskly through the revolving door. The doorman looked on, dumbfounded.

  “Run!” Trixie hissed, and the two girls raced to the corner.

  “What’s going on?” Honey demanded, gasping for breath as they turned the corner and stopped.

  Trixie glanced around the corner anxiously. “That was Peter Ashbury getting out of the elevator. I hope he didn’t see us,” she said worriedly. “I wish we’d had time to hear what the doorman had to say about Mr. Ashbury, but we can’t exactly go back and ask him now. At least we know he’s not a costume dealer.”

  Honey sighed. “Sorry I was wrong about that, but I still think I’ve seen him before.” Trixie kept poking her head around the corner, checking to see if Peter Ashbury had left the apartment building. Finally he appeared, neatly dressed in a tweed overcoat. A woman and two small children were with him.

  “Good,” Trixie said. “They’re going the other way. Now we can follow them at a safe distance. Let’s walk on the other side of the street, though, to avoid seeing that doorman again. I hope he didn’t tell Mr. Ashbury that two girls were asking about him.”

  Honey shot Trixie a worried glance.

  “Stop looking as if I’m making you walk the plank,” Trixie said impatiently.

  “Oh, Trixie,” Honey said forlornly, “I’m not worried about following Peter Ashbury. But who are the woman and children with him?”

  “I don’t know,” Trixie said, “but—”

  “I think you’re thinking the same thing I’m thinking. Poor Miss Darcy.”

  “We’d better be quiet and concentrate on following him. I don’t want to lose him.”

  The two girls crossed the street, all the while keeping an eye on Peter Ashbury.

  “He’s turning down Madison Avenue,” Trixie said. “Let’s wait until he turns the corner.”

  Honey and Trixie continued to follow the group at a safe distance. Peter Ashbury and the woman strolled casually, occasionally gla
ncing into store windows or holding up one of the children to point out something interesting in a display. At one point, Trixie feared that Peter Ashbury had seen them, and she and Honey dropped farther back, slowing their pace and speaking only occasionally.

  Finally, at an intersection, Ashbury whirled around and looked straight at Trixie. He leaned over and said something to the woman, then turned and stalked angrily toward the two girls, a scowl disfiguring his handsome face.

  Honey’s first impulse was to run, but Trixie had gripped her arm and was holding it tightly. “Smile!” Trixie hissed under her breath as Peter Ashbury approached them.

  “Hello, Mr. Ashbury.” Trixie smiled with more confidence than she felt.

  “So it is you!” he snapped. “What do you think you’re doing, following me?”

  “W-We’re not following you!” Trixie stammered, her courage fading in the face of his anger. “We were—we were just window shopping....” Her voice trailed off uncertainly.

  Trixie’s response seemed to confuse Ashbury, and he hesitated. He's beginning to believe me, she thought with relief. He must not have seen us at his apartment building.

  Just then, Honey spoke up. “Yes, Mr. Ashbury,” she said, affecting a slightly puzzled tone. “We thought it seemed like too nice a day to spend in a museum, so here we are. We were just wondering if that was you.” Honey glanced at the woman and children, then quickly looked back at Ashbury, her hazel eyes innocently wide.

  Trixie silently applauded her friend’s performance. She could see that Honey’s words had convinced Peter Ashbury.

  “Yes, it’s turned into a nice sunny day,” he said, a little too heartily. “Very pleasant, for January. My... sister and I thought it would be a good day to take her children for an outing. Well, well. Nice seeing you girls.” Then he turned and hurried away.

  “Whew!” Honey sighed and seemed to melt under Trixie’s still-firm grip on her arm. “I knew he was going to see us.”

  “You were great!” Trixie exclaimed enthusiastically. Then she frowned. “But do you suppose that really was his sis—”