The Mysterious Code (13 page)

Trixie put an arm around Reddy’s neck and rubbed her face against his warm neck. “Moms must have been frantic,” she said.

“She was pretty worried,” Regan admitted. “She didn’t know which way to turn. She thought we should call the police and organize a searching party, but I persuaded her to let just Tom and me hunt for you. I was sure Reddy was trying to lead us to you.”

“How about
my
mother?” Jim asked anxiously.

“I didn’t tell her you had Jupiter,” Regan said, “until after Mrs. Belden called. Then she wanted to call your father in New York.”

“Gee, I hope she didn’t do that,” Jim said. “There wasn’t anything he could do about it.”

“I finally convinced her of that, and asked her to let Tom and me have a try first,” Regan said. “Tom took Celia down to Crabapple Farm to stay with your mother, Trixie, and we picked up Reddy. We had a hard time keeping Mart from coming, too. I guess we should have let him, but you realize we had to do some wandering around before we found you.”

“Poor Moms,” Trixie said. “She’s had a worse night than we’ve had, and Mrs. Wheeler and Honey, too. We’d better get started right back so she’ll know we’re safe.”

“Better than that,” Regan said. “I arranged a signal
to let them know at Crabapple Farm and at the Manor House just as soon as we found you and knew you were all right. Stand back, everyone!”

They all crowded back against the log schoolhouse and Regan took his shotgun from under his arm, aimed it high in the air, and fired three times. Then he repeated it.

“They’ll all be glad to hear that,” Regan said. “You kids had better eat something before we start back. Mrs. Belden sent some hot soup in this Thermos and some sandwiches.”

“We can’t be very far from the valley,” Jim said, “if they could hear that gun.”

“You’re not,” Regan said. “You must have wandered around in a circle. We did the same thing hunting for you. You’re just at the edge of the pie-shaped clearing Mr. Maypenny owns. Right across there, not more than three hundred yards away, is Maypenny’s house, waiting and ready to give you shelter, even if he is away.”

Jim pulled off his cap, threw it down in disgust. “A fine woodsman I am,” he said, “after all that time I lived in the forest, too, when I ran away from my stepfather. Good Reddy,” he said to the red setter who had been running around jumping up on all their knees, and
licking their hands. “Good Reddy! We started out to try to find you and you saved us instead.”

“Do they give Carnegie medals to dogs?” Brian asked, his voice husky. “Here’s one that rates one, if they do.”

A few days after the storm, Trixie was helping her mother clear away the breakfast dishes. Bobby, in his robe, still sat at the table.

The big kitchen was fragrant with the aroma of coffee, buttered toast, and steaming oatmeal.

The night of the blizzard, faced with but primitive necessities for comfort, Trixie had thought of the cozy Belden kitchen. Then her mind had turned to little children in far-off countries, little children who didn’t even have the grain and water she and Jim and Brian had had to eat.

“I hope with all my heart that our UNICEF benefit is a success, Moms,” she said. “We’ll have to work harder than ever. I wish everyone could have a breakfast like this.”

“Don’t everybody?” Bobby asked, his mouth full of buttered toast and jam.

“No, lamb,” Trixie said.

“Why?”

“It’s a little hard for you to understand, Bobby,” she
said. “Some day you will. When I think,” she said, “about all the people who don’t have enough to eat, and how hungry we were in just the short time we were without food …”

“I don’t even want to think about it,” her mother said.

“I do,” Bobby said. “I wish I’d been there. I’d have caught that burglar who bringed back the desk. I’ll bet it was the same one who stealed it from us, Trixie. I’ll bet it was that big boy.”

“What big boy?” Trixie asked.

“That big boy who shoveled snow—you know, Trixie, at Mrs. Vanderpoel’s house. Brom saw him. He runned away.”

“Brom ran away?” Trixie asked, puzzled. “Why did Brom run away?”

“Brom didn’t run away, stupid!” Bobby said.

“Bobby!” Mrs. Belden warned.

“It was that big boy who runned away, Trixie,” Bobby said. “The one who asked me how much the desk costed.”

“What?” Trixie asked. “What did you tell him, Bobby?”

“I told him a hunnerd dollars!”

“That isn’t true. It isn’t worth that much. That
doesn’t matter, though. What did the big boy look like?”

“He looked like a big boy,” Bobby said. “An’,” he boasted, “I told him Mrs. Vanderpoel had lots and lots of other things she was goin’ to give the Bob-Whites, trillions of dollars’ worth.”

Trixie left the dishes she had started to wash and went over to Bobby’s chair.

“What did the big boy say then?” she asked seriously.

“He didn’t say anything,” her little brother answered. “He just runned away, I told you.”

“What do you think of that, Moms?” Trixie asked.

“I don’t think a thing about it,” her mother answered. “And please don’t think about it yourself. I can see that detective gleam in your eye. After all the worry I’ve had about the blizzard, I’d appreciate a little calm and quiet. It was nothing but idle curiosity on the boy’s part. Forget it.”

That was an impossible prescription for Trixie. Try as hard as she could, she couldn’t even remember seeing a boy shoveling Mrs. Vanderpoel’s walks the day the desk was stolen. It was a good thing, she thought, that she had never told Mrs. Vanderpoel what happened to her and Bobby on the way home that day. Now the desk was back as good as ever and what difference did it
make where it had been in the meantime? Spider had thought it was a joke. Maybe he thought Tad had taken it. No, Tad didn’t know the woods as well as she and Brian and Jim did. He would never have been out in that blizzard. “It’s a mystery to me,” Trixie said to herself, “a
real
mystery.”

Just then the telephone rang. Mrs. Belden answered it.

Now and then she would say, “Goodness, is that so?” or “What did you do then?”

“It was Mrs. Vanderpoel,” Mrs. Belden said when she finally dropped the receiver into its cradle.

“Oh, I know,” Trixie said, “she told me to come over and look at the George the Third silver she had taken from her grandfather’s chest. She said if I wanted to polish it we could show it in our antique show. I guess I’d better go over there now.”

“That wasn’t what she wanted, Trixie,” her mother said seriously. “Last night someone tried to break into Mrs. Vanderpoel’s home.”

“Oh dear, I hope they didn’t scare her too much.”

“It didn’t frighten her a bit,” Mrs. Belden said. “I think it was the other way around. She has real Dutch courage. She said she just took down her father’s rifle and stood in the full light of that half-glass door and
shouted, ‘If you come one step nearer I’ll blow the top of your head off!’ ”

“Oh, Moms, did he scram then?” Bobby asked, all ears and eyes.

“I forgot you were here,” his mother answered. “Of course he ‘scrammed,’ as you say. Wouldn’t you?” She ruffled the hair on Bobby’s head.

“It’s all because of our antique show, I know,” Trixie said worriedly. “She’s never been bothered before, and she’s had all those beautiful things in her house for years. Do you mind if I go over there for a while, Moms?”

“No, I don’t think you’d better go just now,” her mother said.

“Oh, Moms, we just
have
to have that silver ready for the show. Are you bothered about what happened there last night?”

“Of course I am,” her mother answered. “But then, Mrs. Vanderpoel said she had called Spider to tell him about it.”

“Then you don’t need to worry if Spider’s on the job. May I go, Moms?”

“I guess so—yes,” her mother said.

“I go, too,” Bobby said.

“I think not … not till you’re entirely well, Bobby.
That’s what the doctor said, you know … stay inside till you are quite well.” Mrs. Belden brought the checkerboard out and put it on the table. “We’ll play a game, Bobby,” she said.

“I’m well now. I don’t want to play checkers. I want to go visiting. I want to go with Trixie. Nobody comes to play with me. I’m tired of staying home,” Bobby wailed.

“I don’t blame him,” Mrs. Belden said to Trixie. “Don’t stay too long. Maybe you can do something to amuse him when you come back.”

“Where are Brian and Mart?” Trixie asked. “Mart is able to amuse Bobby sometimes when no one else can.”

“They went to the clubhouse to work on the furniture Mrs. Vanderpoel gave the B.W.G.’s,” Mrs. Belden said.

“That’s where I should be,” Trixie said, “but I’ll be helping the show if I go and look at the silver.”

“Why don’t you polish it while you’re there?” Mrs. Belden asked.

“That’s an idea, Moms. I’ll call Honey and Diana and ask them to go with me.”

The girls were glad to be asked to do something aside from making dolls and aprons. They had a gay assortment of both now, on the shelf at the clubhouse, ready for the show. Most of them were made from
remnants donated by the stores in Sleepyside.

It wasn’t long after the girls came down the hill that the three of them were walking along Glen Road to the byroad that led to Mrs. Vanderpoel’s home.

“It’s a mystery about that desk,” Diana said. “Who could possibly have left it outside the door at night in the middle of the blizzard?”

“Are you sure it wasn’t there when you went into the old schoolhouse?” Honey asked. “It was dark, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but I’m positive it wasn’t there,” Trixie declared. “As positive as I am that I’m alive. Why, I stumbled over the desk, practically, when I went out the door in the morning. I couldn’t have missed it the night before.”

“I could believe you missed it easier than I can believe that somebody knew you were in that old schoolhouse and went through the blizzard to return the desk,” Honey said. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

“What happened last night doesn’t make sense either,” Trixie said and she told them about the attempted robbery at Mrs. Vanderpoel’s home.

“That proves one thing,” Honey said, “that thieves are on the trail of the antiques we are trying to get together for our show. They’re the same ones that were
after the desk. But, jeepers, who brought it back?”

“You figure it out,” Diana said. “We haven’t said a word to anyone about the things in Mrs. Vanderpoel’s house. Jim said we shouldn’t talk about them, and I know that not one of the B.W.G.’s has said a word. How did the news get out?”

“Bobby had to sound off to a boy who was shoveling snow the day we tried to take the desk home,” Trixie said. Then she told them of her conversation with Bobby.

“Gleeps, then that’s why you were hijacked,” Diana said.

“Exactly,” Trixie agreed. “Thank heaven Mrs. Vanderpoel told Spider about last night.”

“Yes,” Honey said. “It isn’t safe for her to be there alone.”

“She surely knows how to handle a gun,” Trixie said, laughing. “Can’t you just see her telling that burglar she’d shoot?”

“I still don’t think a woman of her age should be in that house alone,” Honey said. “It’s all our fault, too, because she wants to help us with our show.”

At Mrs. Vanderpoel’s house the girls collected the beautiful silver coffee service, the George III tankards, old flat pieces of silver handmade by eighteenth century silversmiths. The girls spread newspapers on the kitchen table and carried the silver there to be polished.

Mrs. Vanderpoel did not seem greatly disturbed by the happening of the night before. She said that she and her ancestors had lived in that house for more than a hundred years and nothing had ever happened to any of them. “Nothing’s going to happen now,” she assured them vehemently. “The way that scalawag ran off last night showed he was mighty scared. I’d have shot him and he knew it.”

While the girls were busy around the kitchen table, Spider came to the door. Tad was with him. Timidly the boy acknowledged the girls’ warm greeting. They had promised Spider that they would be more cordial to Tad and had been trying to keep their word. Tad did not quite know what to make of it.

“I understand you had a visitor last night,” Spider said.

“Indeed I did,” Mrs. Vanderpoel said with spirit. “He didn’t stay long, though. I talked to him down the muzzle of my rifle. He understood what I was saying.”

“That’s all very well,” Spider said, “but some of his gang may try to come back here again. I don’t think you
should stay out here on this byroad all by yourself.”

“How about letting me stay here with you?” Tad asked eagerly.

“There’s no need of that, Tad,” Mrs. Vanderpoel said. “I’d like right well to have your company, but I can take care of myself no matter who comes, and don’t you get it into your head, Spider Webster, that I can’t.”

Spider chuckled. “Good for you!” he said.

Tad looked longingly around the kitchen, the old wood cook stove, the bright sugar and cooky jars, and sighed. Then he pulled up a chair and helped the girls polish the silver. He carried the finished pieces to the sink, washed them in warm suds, and dried them.