The Mystery Off Glen Road (8 page)

It was Trixie’s turn to sigh. “I’ve got news for you, Honey,” she said as she climbed back into the saddle. “There
are
such things as poachers nowadays. That’s why the State of New York hires wardens which they call game protectors. That’s one reason why your father has to have a gamekeeper. A poacher is anybody who breaks the game laws, and he is also anybody who, although he may not be breaking a game law, kills or catches any living thing on somebody else’s property.”

“Oh,” Honey said in a subdued tone of voice. “Well, I guess that settles it. If there are poachers lurking around, you and I can’t be gamekeepers. What would we do if we did catch a poacher poaching?”

“Why, that’s simple,” Trixie replied. “We’d simply track him to his lair. And if he didn’t have a lair, he’d have a car or a truck or something so he could tote away the carcasses of everything he’d illegally killed. In that case, all we’d have to do is to get the registration number of his car and report him to the police.”

Honey shuddered.
“You
may think it’s simple, but the very word, carcass, makes me feel like fainting. You know perfectly well, Trixie Belden, that I always faint at the sight of blood.”

Trixie grinned impishly. “You know perfectly well, Honey Wheeler, that you got over that phobia a long time ago. You’re not any more afraid of poachers and carcasses than I am. Anyway, let’s continue along the trail. It’s always the widest one of the paths, so this must be it.”

“It’s not the one the toe of that print is pointing to,” Honey objected. “I’m sure it isn’t.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Trixie said, leading the way along the trail. “A poacher, unless he was traveling on horseback, wouldn’t stick to the trails. He’d sneak along the paths.”

Honey was silent for a few minutes while Strawberry trotted along behind Lady. Then she said, “I think that footprint was left by Mr. Lytell. He trespasses on Daddy’s game preserve all the time, but nobody minds. I mean, he has to when he goes out riding on that old gray mare of his. But I’m sure he doesn’t do any poaching.”

“I’m sure of that, too,” Trixie said. “I’m also sure he didn’t leave the footprint. Because he never wears hunting boots.”

“Oh, all right,” Honey said grimly. “There is a poacher. So we’d better tell the boys right away.”

“Heavens, no!” Trixie cried. “They’d only make fun of me. You know how they are, never suspicious of anything unless a crime is committed practically under their
noses.” She pulled Lady to a walk as they approached the macadam road. On the other side of it was Mr. Lytell’s little store.

“I’ll wait here for you,” Honey offered, “and hold Lady’s reins. But hurry, Trixie, please.”

“Okay,” Trixie said and swung out of the saddle. Just then a man she had never seen before came out of the store. He was tall and gaunt with broad, slightly stooping shoulders. The vizor of his red cap hid most of his weatherbeaten face, but Trixie could see enough of his features to be positive that he was a stranger. The very costume he was wearing was proof enough of that. Most of Mr. Lytell’s customers were neighbors whom she had known ever since she was a little girl, and even at masquerades they never wore such quaint garments.

“My grandfather,” she whispered to Honey, “wore a turtleneck sweater like that when he played football in high school. There’s a picture of him with his team in an old album at home. And he wore funny-looking knickers like those when he played golf. But they were white linen, not khaki wool.”

The man, who was carrying a large cardboard carton under one arm, paid no attention to them as he entered the woods and disappeared from view almost immediately.

“There must be a path there,” Honey said in a low voice. “But I never would have seen it, would you?”

Trixie investigated. “There is a path, but nobody except a mouse or a rabbit would call it one.” Consumed with curiosity, she raced across the road and into the overcrowded store. Mr. Lytell was adding coal to the fire in his pot-bellied stove, so Trixie had to shout:

“Who was that man who just left here?”

Mr. Lytell straightened and turned to face her with a petulant frown. “Trixie Belden,” he snapped. “What do you mean by rushing in here and yelling at me as though I were stone deaf? It’s high time you ceased being such a harum-scarum tomboy. I’ve a good mind to pick up the phone and call your mother. There
is
a real lady, and if you didn’t look so much like her, I’d never believe that you were her daughter.”

Trixie suppressed a sigh. Mr. Lytell had said this kind of thing about her so many times before that it was boring to listen. She knew perfectly well that he did not approve of her, so she began to worry for fear he would not accept the diamond ring. Too late she realized that if Honey had offered it to him as security for Brian’s jalopy there wouldn’t have been any trouble. Mr. Lytell
did
approve of Honey, and the fact that her parents were so rich would have kept him from becoming suspicious.
But now all she could do was plunge into the situation and hope for the best.

She took the tiny leather jewel case from the pocket of her jeans and put it on the counter. “I’m sorry I was so noisy, Mr. Lytell,” she said contritely. “But I was curious because I never saw that man before. Anyway, this is why I came to see you.” With a flick of her fingernail she snapped open the gold clasp of the case. Even in that musty, dusty store the facets of the diamond glittered.

The storekeeper uttered a sound that made Trixie think of a billy goat’s bleat. As a matter of fact, the storekeeper, with his wispy mustache, did look rather like a goat. She suddenly felt as though she were taking part in a scene from
Through the Looking Glass
. The storekeeper in that scene had been a sheep, but she
had
been wearing spectacles, and the sheep’s store was as cluttered as this one. For a moment, while she tried to keep from laughing, Trixie was sure that Mr. Lytell would grab a pair of needles and begin to knit.

Instead, he grabbed the ring from the jewel case and brought it over to the strong light above the desk in the back of the store. Trixie followed him, not daring to say a word. After what seemed like hours he turned to her and said in an awed tone of voice:

“This diamond is worth about two hundred dollars.
Where did you get it, Trixie Belden?”

“Jim Frayne gave it to me ages ago,” Trixie said. “It was his great aunt’s and because I found it before the old mansion burned to the ground, Jim felt that it belonged to me.” In a rush of words she went on: “You remember, Mr. Lytell, when old Mr. Frayne’s house burned. And how Jim ran away afterward and all. You’ve just got to believe me. The ring
is
mine. But I want you to have it.”

“Me?” He swiveled around his chair to glare at her. “You’ve never made much sense in your life, Trixie Belden, but now you’re making no sense at all. Why on earth should you give me this ring?”

Trixie took a deep breath and, because her knees felt so weak, hoisted herself onto the counter. “Because of Brian,” she finally got out. “I mean his jalopy. I mean
your
jalopy, but it’s really Brian’s except that he hasn’t got the fifty dollars any more. On account of the storm and what the blue spruce did to our clubhouse, you know. I—”

“No, I don’t know,” Mr. Lytell exploded, and he didn’t sound at all like a sheep or a goat now. He sounded more like an angry bull. Then he lowered his voice and said as though he were speaking to a backward kindergarten child, “Let’s start at the beginning.
Brian wanted to buy my old Ford. He didn’t have enough money, but because I like Brian, I cooperated so that he could get the registration plate and take out the insurance. In other words, I gave him the car with the understanding that he would give me fifty dollars today. He called me day before yesterday to say that he could not produce fifty dollars after all. So I am going to turn the car over to a secondhand dealer this afternoon.”

“Yes, yes,” Trixie cried nervously. “I mean, no, NO! That’s just the point. You’ve hit the nail on the thumb, Mr. Lytell. How smart you are. You understand now, about the diamond and all, don’t you?”

He pushed his eyeglasses farther up the bridge of his nose. “I don’t understand one word that you’re talking about, Trixie Belden.” Then just when Trixie thought it was all hopeless, a smile crinkled his face. He picked up the diamond again and said in a whisper, “Yes, I do understand now. You’re giving me this as security so that Brian can have my old Ford after all.”

Trixie nodded her head up and down vehemently. Because he was whispering she felt that she had to whisper, too. “But you mustn’t let Brian know. He gave us the fifty dollars he should have given to you this morning. So we could repair the clubhouse. But the money really belongs to him. I mean to you. I mean, the
jalopy should really be Brian’s.” Her voice dwindled away into a rasping cough. Mr. Lytell had that suspicious look on his face again.

“If you boys and girls needed money,” he said, “why didn’t you sell this ring, Trixie? I’m not a pawnbroker.” He closed the jewel case and snapped the clasp back in place. “There’s something fishy about all this. I don’t like it. I just don’t like it.”

“But I don’t want to sell it,” Trixie wailed in despair. “Oh, Mr. Lytell, I know you don’t like me, but you do like Brian. Please try to understand. We’re all going to work hard so we can earn the money and pay Brian back just as soon as we can. Maybe by this time next week we’ll have fifty dollars. Then you can give Brian his car and give me back my ring.”

For answer, he got up slowly, went over to his safe, twirled the dial, opened the door, and put the jewel case inside. “Miss Trask,” he mumbled to himself, “thinks the world of you, and I think the world of Miss Trask. So there must be some good in you.” He turned to face her, and he was almost, but not quite, smiling.

“Very well, Trixie Belden,” he said in a loud clear voice, “I’ll keep the car and the ring here until next Saturday. If you don’t produce fifty dollars by then I’ll—” He emphatically left the sentence unfinished but Trixie
knew what he meant. If she didn’t redeem the ring within a week, he would report the whole transaction to her father.

“Thanks,” she said weakly, and somehow made her trembling legs carry her out to where Honey was waiting with the horses.

“Well,” Honey promptly demanded, “how did you make out?”

Trixie gathered the reins and mounted Lady. “We’re safe for another week,” she said. “So now we’ve just got to get that gamekeeper job.”

Honey nodded. “Was Mr. Lytell very suspicious?”

“He couldn’t have been more suspicious,” Trixie replied, “if he’d caught me stealing the ring from Moms’s jewelry box. I’m sure that’s who—whom he thinks it belongs to.”

“Naturally,” Honey said. “Mr. Lytell wouldn’t give anybody anything, so he couldn’t possibly believe that Jim gave you that ring. I’m really surprised he kept it as security.”

“It’s all due to Miss Trask,” Trixie said weakly. “Mr. Lytell thinks she’s just wonderful, you know, and I gather she’s told him she likes me in spite of all my faults.”

Honey giggled. “Everybody likes you, Trixie, and you really haven’t got any bad faults. But isn’t it funny
how Miss Trask and Regan are forever getting us out of scrapes?”

“Let’s hope they don’t stop now,” Trixie said as they cantered along the trail. “They’ve just got to give us the gamekeeper job, starting tomorrow morning, so we can earn fifty dollars by this time next weekend.”

“We’ll talk to Regan about it first,” Honey agreed. “While we’re grooming the horses and cleaning the tack.”

When the trail narrowed they trotted single file and Trixie said, “I wonder who that strange man was.”

“Didn’t you ask Mr. Lytell?” Honey demanded. “As a matter of fact, you did ask him. I heard you yell at the top of your lungs, ‘Who was that man who just left here?’ ”

Trixie chuckled ruefully. “That was the trouble. I shouted and Mr. Lytell got mad. Said I was a harum-scarum tomboy and all that sort of thing. So I didn’t dare ask him again.”

“Well, it really doesn’t matter,” Honey said without interest. “We’ll probably never see that man again.”

“It does matter,” Trixie argued. “I think he’s a poacher.”

Honey laughed. “You’ve got poachers on the brain, Trixie. Mart would say that you had poached brains instead of scrambled brains.”

“Don’t mention Mart’s name to me,” Trixie begged. “What I’ve been through this week! He and Brian teased me so much I almost gave up. It was simply torture getting dressed for dinner every evening and having to sit there and listen to their wisecracks.”

“Never mind,” Honey said soothingly. “You succeeded, and it will all turn out to have been worth it in the end. This week has been awful for everybody. Miss Trask is worn out with trying to do both Celia’s and Tom’s work, and sometimes she’s almost cross, if you can believe it.”

“I can’t,” Trixie replied. “She’s always so nice and cheery. And that reminds me. Did you hear anything from the honeymooners? Moms was worried the night of the storm because trees were crashing down on the highways upstate. I didn’t worry because Tom is such a marvelous driver. I figured they had sense enough to stop off at an inn until the storm ended.”