The Mystery Off Glen Road (3 page)

“That’s right,” Honey agreed. “Only you and I know how Regan hates cars. Besides, what with Fleagle causing him so much extra work, Regan couldn’t possibly do any driving. I’m really glad Mother and Daddy have gone off in the limousine. At least nobody has to drive Daddy to and from the station every day.” She pulled Trixie out into the hall. “The thing that scares me to death is, suppose Regan quits? He’s fed to the teeth with Fleagle. Miss Trask and I hoped to tell Daddy today that he’s got to fire that gamekeeper, but Daddy left before we had a chance.”

Trixie shuddered again. “If Regan quits, our lives are ruined. Your father would sell the horses in no time flat, because, of course, there just isn’t any groom in the whole wide world like Regan.”

“More than that,” Honey continued, “there are very few people who are as understanding as Regan is. I mean, we’re really awful nuisances in spite of the fact that we try not to be. Some weeks we exercise the horses every single day, rain or shine. Then all of a sudden not one of us goes near the stable. Like during exams, or when the boys spent every spare minute shingling the clubhouse roof. Or when they were painting the walls and building the shelves and making the furniture. You and I did ride then, after school and sometimes
before breakfast, but we didn’t exercise Jupe and Starlight. So Regan had to, and although he didn’t complain, I know he was furious. The thing is, he wouldn’t mind so much if we didn’t wait until the last minute to let him know whether we’re going to ride or not.”

Trixie sank down on the bottom step of the staircase. “I don’t know how Regan stands us,” she admitted. “We Bob-Whites have got to pull ourselves together and make more sense. We’d better have a conference right away.”

Honey giggled nervously. “You just said that, only you were talking about the hurricane. Here come the boys now. You bring them up to date on everything, Trixie. I’ve got to go back to the dining-room and make sure that the coffee is hot and the punch is cold.” With a gay wave, she edged past Jim and was lost in the crowded living-room.

Jim, flanked by Brian and Mart, marched down the hall and came to a stop beside Trixie. “You girls are up to something,” Jim said, pretending to be very stern. “I can tell. What
have
you done?”

Trixie scrambled to her feet, tripped on the hem of her skirt, and sprawled headlong. Nobody said anything for a long minute as she lay there, overwhelmed by rage and embarrassment. Then Mart said to Brian:

“Since we are unfortunately related to that object, is it not up to us to restore her to some semblance of equilibrium before the departing wedding guests trample her to a pulp?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Brian said soberly. “She might be more useful as a pulp. When cleaning storm windows, for instance, a spongelike substance comes in mighty handy.”

“True,” Mart agreed, and nudged Trixie’s ankle with his toe. “But until she is mashed into the proper shape, might she not prove to be a dangerous hazard to myopic guests who could mistake her for a one-dimensional article of furniture, perhaps part of the carpet?”

“I doubt that,” Brian replied. “In that strangely feminine garment she is wearing, she looks more like a giant but bruised California orange. In my opinion—”

“Oh, stop it, you two!” Jim exploded with laughter. He reached down two strong arms and helped Trixie to her feet. As he settled her back on the step he said, “Do you feel as though you broke any bones when you salaamed to us so gracefully?”

Trixie glared at him. “I didn’t salaam or break any bones, smarty. It’s this party dress Moms made me wear. I’m going to take it right off so Brian and Mart can use it for cleaning windows.”

“Oh,
no
,” Mart yelped. “Not here and now. In the words of the Ancient Mariner: Oh, wedding guest, oh, wedding guest, tarry a while said Slow.”

Trixie turned to glare at
him
. “You’ve got it all mixed up with an old nursery rhyme. I think it’s ‘Polly Put the Kettle on and We’ll All Have Tea.’ ”

“Let’s do have tea,” Jim said easily. “Punch, anyway. It’s got a tea base. Shall I bring you a glass, Trix?”

“No,” Trixie shouted impatiently. “I couldn’t eat or drink another thing.” She wound the organdy skirt around her legs and leaned forward slightly. “Listen, you dopes. There’s an awful storm raging outside in case you morons haven’t noticed. That blue spruce, which is almost a part of our clubhouse, must be even older than the Ancient Mariner. The wind is blowing from the east. Suppose it—”

“Gleeps,” Mart interrupted, suddenly very serious. “She’s right, men. Is there anything we can do?”

Brian sank down on the step beside Trixie. “We could wire it to another evergreen, but they’re all Ancient Mariners, aren’t they, Jim?”

Jim nodded. “If we wired the spruce to one of the pines, we’d simply have twin hazards.”

“Tweedledum and Tweedledee,” Mart said sadly. “As in
Alice in Wonderland.”

“I wish you’d learn to quote correctly,” Trixie snapped. “The proper quotation at the moment is what happened to Humpty Dumpty. If any one of those evergreens falls on our clubhouse, all of the king’s horses and all of the king’s men will never be able to put it together again.”

“Not without a king’s ransom,” Jim agreed. “And since none of us has a penny at the moment—”

Trixie couldn’t help laughing. Jim was just wonderful. There he was, rich enough in his own right to buy and sell dozens of clubhouses, but he always acted as though he were just as poor as the Beldens. It all came from the fact that until the Wheelers adopted him he had been a homeless, half-starved orphan. The money which he had inherited about the same time, he had put away into a trust fund so that when he was graduated from college he could launch his favorite project: an outdoor school for underprivileged orphan boys. Brian, whose ambition was to become a doctor, had already agreed to be the school physician. Mart, after he was graduated from an upstate agricultural college, was going to be in charge of the farming end of the project.

Thinking about Mart’s career made Trixie whirl on him. “You’re supposed to know something about trees,”
she cried. “Can’t you pull your addled brains together and think up some solution to our problem?”

He bowed stiffly. “Like George Washington, I cannot tell a lie. There is no—”

“Hatchets,” Trixie interrupted in a loud voice. “Let’s all dash down to the clubhouse and chop down all the trees.” She started to get up, but Jim gently pushed her back. She looked up puzzled.

“Pull
your
addled brains together, Trix,” he cautioned her. “The trees, as well as the clubhouse, belong to Dad, remember? Since he’s not here to give us permission, we can’t behave like vandals. It’s just possible that he more highly values those beautiful old evergreens than he does a ramshackle cottage which he never saw until you and Honey discovered it.”

It all seemed so hopeless that Trixie could hardly keep from crying. She could tell from the stubborn look on Jim’s face that there was no point in arguing. He was just one of those people who were so honorable that they leaned over backward to respect other people’s rights even when it made no sense.

The wind was truly roaring now, rattling the windows and howling down the chimneys of the old house. Trixie was positive that in the morning not one of Mr. Wheeler’s prized old evergreens would be left standing.
And beneath the debris would be the remnants of their clubhouse.

Carefully lifting her skirt so she wouldn’t trip again, Trixie stood up. “Toothpicks,” she said succinctly.

Mart closed his hand around her brown wrist. “One of the nicest
non sequiturs
I’ve every heard. Elucidate, my dear squaw. Pray do.”

Trixie jerked away from him. “Praying,” she said, “is just what you boys should do. Otherwise, when you go down to the clubhouse tomorrow morning before school, you’re going to find nothing to show for all our work except a ten-cent box of toothpicks!”

All afternoon the wind blew with wild fury. Because the Belden property was down in a hollow, only very old trees were uprooted. But in the woods on the high land behind the Manor House, many valuable trees were damaged and killed.

At five-thirty the sixty-five-mile-an-hour gale dropped to forty and finally slowed to ten miles an hour. Not until then were the Bob-Whites permitted to leave the house and survey the damage. The bridle path that led up from the stable to the red trailer was blocked by the trunks and branches of trees. Regan and the gamekeeper, Fleagle, were clearing away the debris, and they were arguing as usual.

When the boys offered to help, Fleagle glared at them. “Scram, you kids,” he growled. “You’ll just be in the way. This path must be cleared before tomorrow morning so I can ride into the game preserve and find out what damage has been done there.
That’s
the most important thing.”

Regan, his big freckled hands on his hips, lost his
redheaded temper. “Sez you! This is only a lull in the storm. Things are going to get a lot worse tonight. Chances are good that the electric and phone wires will be down. The important thing is to do whatever we can to keep
that
from happening.”

“Is there anything we
can
do?” Jim asked. “It seems pretty hopeless to me.”

“It is pretty hopeless,” Regan agreed. “When electric wires are torn down by falling trees there’s always the danger of fire, too. It makes me sick to think about the honeymooners’ trailer. Everything those kids own—their nice wedding presents and all—could be nothing but a heap of ashes if a crackling live wire gets to lashing around in the woods.”

Trixie shuddered at the mental picture. “We
can’t
let that happen to Celia and Tom,” she moaned.

“That we can’t,” Regan said emphatically. “So Fleagle, here, and I are going to clear a path to the trailer and tote back to the big house everything we can. Aren’t we, Fleagle?” he finished in a menacing tone of voice.

For answer, the surly gamekeeper shouldered his ax and stalked back toward the garage. Over one shoulder he said, “Play Santa Claus if you like. I’m quitting.”

“Oh, oh,” Honey moaned. “Do you think he means it, Regan?”

The groom shrugged his broad shoulders. “Whether he quits or not won’t make much difference for the next few days. Unless this lull lasts, which it won’t, nobody will be able to get into the game preserve on either side of the road to do any patrolling until the paths have been cleared.”

Jim nodded soberly. “The lighting and phone companies will send out crews to repair damage to the cables, and the State will send crews to clear the main roads. But private property owners will have to cope individually after that.”

“Right,” said Regan, “and to hire private crews is going to run into big money. But let’s not cross any bridges until we come to them. Since his Royal Highness Fleagle has quit, you boys help me clear the path to the red trailer.”

“We’d like to help, too,” Honey said. “Trixie and I—”

“No,” Regan interrupted firmly. “This weird light in the sky is going to fade any minute, and then it’ll be pitch dark. The velocity of the wind may suddenly increase to what it was before, with gusts of one hundred miles an hour. You girls had better go home.”

Reluctantly, Trixie and Honey left. “Let’s go down
and see if everything’s all right at the clubhouse,” Trixie said, as soon as they were out of earshot. At that very moment, a sudden gust of wind flattened a white birch ahead of them and seemed to blow the gray-green light out of the sky. It was, as Regan had predicted, pitch dark, and to make matters worse the lights inside the Manor House went out, indicating a power failure.

Honey moved closer to Trixie. “I can’t see a thing,” she whispered, “and it feels as though we’re going to have thunder and lightning. Let’s go inside.”

Trixie giggled. “Let’s. But which way is inside? I feel as though we were in a giant’s pocket.” And then she saw a light in the kitchen, and at the same time one in the apartment over the garage. Both Miss Trask and Fleagle, Trixie could see through the windows, had lighted kerosene lamps. Miss Trask joined them on the path in a few minutes.

She handed Trixie a flashlight and said, “You’d better run along home, dear. Your mother will be worried. The phones are out of order, too.”

“Thanks,” Trixie said, accepting the flashlight. She hurried down the stony path to the hollow. She entered the house through the door to the kitchen where a kerosene lamp had been lighted. Her mother was trimming the wick of another one, and her father was in the
cellar filling a kerosene heater. Logs were crackling merrily in the living-room fireplace, and Bobby was kneeling on the hearth.

“It’s so ’citing,” he greeted Trixie. “We’re right smack in the middle of a horrorcane.”

“
Horror
cane is right,” Trixie said, thinking about the clubhouse. But thank goodness it was down on the same ground level with her own home, so perhaps the trees around it would still be standing in the morning.

“Where are the boys?” Mr. Belden asked as he emerged from the cellar. Trixie explained that they were helping Regan, and he said, “Well, all right, but charity begins at home. The temperature is dropping rapidly, and with the electricity off, we are helpless so far as heat, water, cooking, refrigeration, and lights are concerned.”