The Mystery Off Glen Road (19 page)

“Hey, squaw. Bring me some hot buttered rolls.”

Trixie, hot, tired, and cross, clenched her fist and shook it under his nose. “Get ’em yourself, Sitting Bull.”

He grabbed her wrist with his free hand. “Why the naked little fingers?” he demanded. Trixie knew that he was just as hot and tired and cross as she was, but she jerked away from him, and the food on his plate slid off onto the floor. Reddy promptly appeared from nowhere, grabbed a turkey leg, nosed open the screen door to the terrace, and disappeared into the darkness.

“Gleeps,” Mart yelled. “Those bones will kill him.” He dashed off in pursuit of the red setter, and Brian glared angrily at Trixie.

“Can’t you ever do anything without causing trouble?” he demanded. “After all that fuss about your silly old diamond ring, why aren’t you wearing it?”

Out of the corner of one eye Trixie saw that Mr. Lytell had heard every word. He had been bending over Miss Trask’s chair at the other end of the table, but now he straightened. If he had been a dog, Trixie decided, his ears would have pricked up with interest.

“Answer me,” Brian was saying irritably. “Why aren’t you wearing your ring?”

“Because I lost it in the potato salad,” Trixie retorted. “Di’s father ate it and he seems to be still alive, so I’m not going to worry about Reddy and a few turkey bones. He’s been swiping them for years.”

Brian, his good nature immediately restored, burst into loud laughter. “Are you trying to tell me that Mr. Lynch, one of the richest men in North America, has been swiping diamond rings for years? Or were you referring to Reddy’s thieving habits?” He took his hand from Trixie’s wrist and gave her an affectionate hug. “Clean up the mess I spilled like a good girl, and I won’t ask you any more embarrassing questions.”

Trixie pushed him away from her. “Clean it up yourself. If you only knew it, Brian Belden, I’ve already done more than enough for you as it is.” She fled out to the terrace, straight into the arms of Ben Riker.

“Say,” he said when they had laughingly disentangled themselves, “that kid brother of yours is cute. The
trouble with me is that I’m an only child. I’ve learned a lot this week from hanging around you Beldens and Jim and Honey. And Di, too. You guys are always so busy you don’t have time for practical jokes. I realize now that they’re kid stuff. Why, even Bobby knows better. He’s more fun than a barrel of monkeys. I wish my mother would adopt him.”

“He
is
cute,” Trixie said, deciding that she did like Ben Riker after all. He had improved a lot during the last few days. Instead of being silly, he had actually been helpful in many ways. “Where is Bobby?” she asked suddenly. “I haven’t seen him for simply hours. It’s time he went up to bed.”

“I haven’t seen him since he ate a whole bowl of potato chips, singlehanded, around seven o’clock,” Ben said with a grin. “Weighted down as he was, he couldn’t have gone far. I’ll collect him and put him to bed for you. That would be fun.”

“Gee, thanks,” Trixie said, collapsing on the low stone wall of the terrace. “If I don’t get my own weight off my feet soon, my ankles will snap in two.”

“Consider your baby-sitting problems solved,” he said and went inside through the kitchen door.

Trixie lay flat on her back and stared up at the moon. The temperature had dropped only a few degrees
after sundown. Not a breeze was stirring and it was ominously warm. If that cold front that was moving eastward hit this area, anything could happen from thunder arid lightning to a blizzard. No wonder Brian was so irritable. He and Jim had been working like slaves on the clubhouse which they could have finished today if it hadn’t been for the party. Jim had kept on working until it was too dark to see, but Brian had had to quit early in order to help Mart direct traffic. It must have been frustrating to stand around all afternoon and evening telling people where to park their cars so they could get out whenever they wanted to leave and at the same time not ruin any of Moms’s flower beds.

“Oh, well,” Trixie reflected, “I didn’t have any fun today either. What with worrying about that darn old ring!” She closed her eyes wearily and fell asleep almost instantly. A second later, or so it seemed, Ben was shaking her.

“I tell you he’s gone,” he was whispering hoarsely. “I’ve searched the house and the grounds. There isn’t a sign of him.”

“Who—what?” Trixie sat up, rubbing her eyes.

“Bobby,” he hissed. “I don’t think we ought to frighten your mother, but we’ve got to do something. I remember now he said something to me about the brook.
But he couldn’t have gone down there in the pitch dark, could he, Trixie?”

“Oh, oh,” Trixie gasped. “He has a flashlight of his own. He could do
any
thing.” Just then Honey and Di came out on the terrace followed by Brian and Jim. “Bobby’s disappeared,” Trixie wailed. “Don’t let Moms know. Get all the flashlights you can find—and—” She burst into tears.

“Whoa,” Brian said steadily. “He’s probably sound asleep under his bed.” He raced indoors.

“That’s right,” Honey said soothingly. “You’ve forgotten, Trixie. On warm nights Bobby always sleeps under his bed.”

Trixie immediately stopped crying. “Did you look under his bed, Ben?”

He shook his head. “I never thought of that.”

Mart appeared then with Reddy at his heels. “I had to search the whole four acres,” he complained, frowning at Trixie, “and finally found him down at the brook, licking his chops.”

“Oh, never mind about Reddy,” Trixie cried. “Bobby’s disappeared. At least I think he has.”

At that moment Brian came back with several flashlights. “He’s nowhere indoors. We’ll have to search every inch of our property. I’ll start with the brook.”

“Wait a minute,” Mart said, and the freckles stood out in the whiteness of his face. “Are you sure Bobby isn’t in the house?”

“Positive,” Ben and Brian said in unison.

“Well, he isn’t anywhere on our property,” Mart said. “Including the brook. I just combed it all inch by inch trying to find Reddy.”

“The Wheelers’ lake,” Trixie gasped. “He couldn’t have gone up there. He
couldn’t
have!”

“Take it easy,” Jim said, taking a flashlight from Brian. “Come on with me, Trixie. It’s all very simple. Bobby has run away again for some reason. If he isn’t down here he’s up at our house or in Regan’s apartment over the garage.”

“But nobody’s home at your place,” Trixie objected. “He wouldn’t stay there alone.”

Jim grabbed her hand and started off toward the path. “Sure he would. Patch is there. They’re probably curled up together on a sofa, sound asleep.” He added over one shoulder to the others, “The rest of you may as well come along, too, just in case we have to search the whole house. But my guess is that we’ll find him in less than five minutes.”

But they didn’t. Even after they had all searched the big house, the stable, and the garage there was no sign of Bobby.

“I guess the boathouse is the next step,” Mart said reluctantly. “Let’s go, men. You girls check up on the clubhouse.”

The boys started off in one direction, Di and Honey in another, but Trixie stood rooted to the spot. Her legs were trembling so she couldn’t move.
It’s all my fault
, she thought miserably.
I was supposed to keep an eye on him, and he probably ran away to get back at me because I lost his compass
.

No, that wasn’t like Bobby. He only ran away when he himself had committed some crime. What crime had he committed? Trixie stood alone in the Wheelers’ kitchen and tried to think. Eating a whole bowl of potato chips wasn’t a crime in Bobby’s eyes. Bowl! That was the answer, of course. The brass bowl on the butterfly table. She herself, without thinking, had hurriedly dumped a big box of potato chips into it earlier that day.
Bobby must have found the ring at the bottom. This provided him with a golden opportunity for revenge. He had no way of knowing that it was only a cheap imitation, and so he had probably gone off somewhere in order to hide it in some safe place. Bobby was forever hiding things in a “safe place” and then forgetting where the place was. A good safe place in this case might be the bottom of the lake.

Trixie shuddered. She could almost see him poised on the edge of a slippery rock in the moonlight … and nobody near enough to hear the splash and his cries of “Holp! Holp!”

“No, no,” she told herself fiercely. “Bobby would take my ring and hide it, but he wouldn’t deliberately throw it away. He went off to hide it and then got so tired he fell asleep at the very spot. But where?”

All of a sudden Trixie thought she knew the answer. She grabbed a flashlight and raced off up the path to the red trailer. And there she found him, curled up on one of the bunks with Patch lying at his feet.

“Bobby, Bobby,” she cried, gathering him into her arms. “Don’t ever do this again. You’ve scared us almost to death.”

He opened his eyes and, hugging her tightly, immediately began to whimper, “Trixie, I tookted your ring
and losted it. I didn’t mean to, it just slipped out of my hands, sort of, down the drain pipe. Mummy’s going to be awful mad at me ’cause I can’t never, never sell my squirrel-bird for enough money to buy you another one. So I runned away.”

From sheer relief, Trixie was crying herself now. “It’s all right, Bobby darling,” she crooned. “The ring was only worth a dollar, and you don’t have to buy me another one. Stop crying and I’ll tell you a secret.”

“A see-crud?” He was all smiles now, twisting and wriggling delightedly. “An honest-to-goodness see-crud, Trix?”

“That’s right,” she told him. “But you must promise not to tell Brian. Or Jim. Or Daddy and Mummy. You can tell Mart and Honey, but nobody else. Promise?”

He shook his blond head up and down solemnly.

“Well,” she said, still holding him close, “I gave the real ring to Mr. Lytell so he wouldn’t sell that car Brian wants so much. You know the one. It was sort of a swap, like the Aladdin story in the
Arabian Nights
, remember? Old lamps for new. I don’t care anything about the real ring even, but Brian does care a lot about the car. It’s going to be a surprise, see? So you mustn’t tell him.”

And then Trixie felt rather than heard someone
coming up the trailer steps. She whirled around and there was Brian. The expression on his face was one of utter amazement and at first she thought it was because he had not really dared to hope that he might find Bobby in the
Robin
. But when he spoke she realized that while he had been walking silently along the pine-needle carpet of the path he must have heard her sharing the secret with Bobby. Wordlessly he took the little boy out of her arms and hugged him as tightly as she had hugged him. After what seemed like a long silence he said, “I don’t know whether to brain you or bless you, Trixie.” He left the trailer and hoisted Bobby to his broad shoulders.

Trixie followed them slowly down the path toward the stable. “Oh, don’t be mad, Brian,” she pleaded. “I don’t care anything about that silly old ring.”

“Mad?” he asked in a low voice. “Of course I’m mad, you lamebrained idiot. Mad with joy.”

Jim suddenly joined them then, appearing out of the woods. In the same low voice Brian had used he said, “Well, I see the lost is found.” He reached up and gently tugged one of Bobby’s silky curls.

“That’s right,” Brian said huskily. “And the mad squaw who found him has also fixed things so that Mr. Lytell didn’t sell that jalopy after all. You tell Jim about
it, Trix. I can’t. I seem to be all choked up as though I were coming down with a heavy cold.”

“I couldn’t seem to talk either,” Trixie told Honey the next morning as they cantered along the trail. “All of a sudden I felt as though I had some of Bobby’s pet frogs in my throat, so in the end, he was the one who told Jim about it. It was an awfully garbled version, of course, with a lot of talk about old lamps and new lamps, but Jim caught on right away. He bopped me over the head with his flashlight and stalked off into your house.”

Honey laughed. “You should have heard what he said to me about it, Trix. He thinks you’re just about the most wonderful girl in the whole wide world, and so do I.”

“Don’t be ridic,” Trixie said. “I’m a moron. But just to prove that I’m not really, I’m going to find our way back to that cabin-in-the-clearing. I’ve figured it all out. Instead of starting at the fork, we’ll start from the spot on the trail where the path merged into it. And this is it.”

“How smart you are,” Honey cried admiringly. “Instead of winding our way through the labyrinth, all we have to do is go back along this path in reverse. I mean, turn left at that little fork where Starlight turned
right. We can’t go wrong, and in a few minutes we’ll be in the big clearing.”

“No sooner said than done,” Trixie said, starting Strawberry off at a canter. And sure enough, five minutes later, she reined her horse to a stop a few yards from the cabin. Honey pulled Lady to a stop beside her. And then both girls almost fell off their horses.

The door to the cabin opened and out came Mr. Maypenny!

“Well, now, hello,” he said pleasantly. “Real sociable of you to call.” He pointed a gnarled finger at Trixie. “You’re the Belden girl, unless I miss my guess. I’ve seen you around, trespassing on my property, and asked Lytell who you were.” He chuckled. “Lytell ’lowed as how you were all right, but sort of harum-scarum. No harm in you though, he says.” He took a wrist compass from the pocket of his khaki knickers and held it up so Trixie could see what it was. “Did you happen to drop this compass the day before Thanksgiving when you were moseying around here?”