The Gatehouse Mystery Read online

  Chapter 15

  Signatures

  Honey stared at Trixie. “What are you talking about? What makes you think Daddy was expecting a letter from Mr. Whitney?”

  “Well, was he, or wasn’t he?” Trixie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Honey said. “Daddy was on vacation, you know, until he was suddenly called to Chicago. His secretary forwarded any letters she couldn’t answer herself up here. He might have been expecting one from Mr. Whitney which didn’t arrive until after he left. But what difference does it make, Trixie? It couldn’t have been important. They don’t correspond about business. They just write to each other arranging to meet for luncheon or for fishing or hunting trips and things like that.”

  “I see,” Trixie said, turning back to Jim. “Since that letter of recommendation wasn’t personal, do you think I could see it? It was just written to ‘whom it may concern,’ wasn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” Jim said. “It was really just the simple kind of reference that most employers give their employees when they’re honorably discharged. You know. ‘This is to certify that Richard Blank worked for me as a chauffeur for the past three years. I found him honest, industrious, and satisfactory in every way.’ So what?”

  “So it’s all right for me to look at it, isn’t it?” Trixie asked.

  “Perfectly all right,” Jim said, “except that I haven’t got it. Dad was in such a hurry when he left Thursday morning, he glanced at it, showed it to me, and then tossed it into a pigeonhole of his desk.”

  “I dare you to look for it,” Trixie said.

  “Well, I won’t.” Jim picked up his reins. “You’re suffering from heat exhaustion, Trixie, but you don’t know it. Let’s go home and take a swim in the lake before lunch.”

  Trixie leaned from her saddle to grab his arm. “Please look for it, Jim. It may be important.”

  He glared at her. “It would have to be important. Anytime I go rummaging through the papers in Dad’s desk, you’ll know I’m crazy with the heat.”

  Trixie sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that. Just skip it.”

  No one said anything while they trotted their horses back to the stable. Regan took one look at the girls’ hot, perspiring faces and reached for their horses’ bridles.

  “Slide off and get into swimming clothes,” he told them. “I’ll groom Lady and Susie.”

  “Oh, thanks, Regan,” Honey said, quickly dismounting. “This must be the hottest day of the summer.”

  “It only seems that way,” he said, “because a thunderstorm is brewing.” He glanced up at the puffy white clouds in the blue sky. “The radio was right for once. We’ll get rain this evening.”

  “I hope it doesn’t rain this afternoon,” Jim said. “I’m looking forward to my steering lesson. Maybe when I do some real driving, all that gear-shifting business will make sense.”

  Brian laughed. “From the way Jim talks,” he said to Regan, “you’d think he wasn’t my prize pupil. He’ll be driving circles around us in no time.”

  “He can have my license any time he wants it,” Regan said, slipping a halter over Susie’s head. “Now that Dick knows a little something of what this job is like, he isn’t so crazy about it. But he’s bound and determined to give you a driving lesson this afternoon, Jim. While Miss Trask was buying all the food in the village, he came back and polished the sedan. I’ll say that for him.”

  Trixie and Honey hurried into the house to change into bathing suits. “I wonder why Dick is so anxious to give Jim a driving lesson,” Trixie said. “You’d think he’d try to get out of anything he could on a hot, muggy day like this.”

  “I think he really means well,” Honey said. “If only he were nicer to you, I’d like him.”

  “Nothing would make me like him,” Trixie said. “I wish I could see that letter from Mr. Whitney.”

  “But why?” Honey asked.

  “Because,” Trixie said, “I have a feeling the signature was forged. If you promise not to say anything to the boys, I’ll explain. They’ll just make fun of me.”

  “I won’t say a word,” Honey said, curling up on the window seat beside Trixie. “I’m dying of curiosity.”

  “It all depends,” Trixie began, “on whether or not you went down for the mail at the regular time on Wednesday afternoon.”

  Honey thought for a minute. “Wednesday. That was the day we found the diamond. Let me see—No, I forgot as usual, Trixie, and the mail stayed in the box all night. I remember now. Miss Trask brought it up the next morning just when we were sitting down to breakfast. That’s when Daddy found out he would have to leave for Chicago right away. If I’d remembered to bring up the mail Wednesday afternoon, he and Mother wouldn’t have had to rush so with their packing.”

  “I thought you probably forgot,” Trixie said. “Now, don’t you see, Honey? If someone was lurking around in the woods that day, he could have seen the mailman put the stuff in the box around five. Since it stayed there all night, he could have sneaked a letter out of the box that evening without anyone seeing him. A letter from Mr. Whitney.”

  “I still don’t understand,” Honey said. “Why would anyone steal some of our mail?”

  “Signatures,” Trixie said. “References have to have signatures. Anyone can rent a typewriter and type out the ‘to whom it may concern’ part, but to prove anything you have to have a signature.”

  “Oh, oh,” Honey gasped. “In the mailbox was a letter to Daddy from Mr. Whitney! Dick swiped it and copied the signature. Is that what you’ve been driving at?”

  “That’s right,” Trixie said.

  Honey frowned. “But Mr. Whitney doesn’t sign his full name when he writes to Dad. He just signs himself ‘Whit.’ I’ve seen it on Christmas cards. They’re old, old friends.”

  Trixie slid off the window seat to the floor, groaning. “I never thought of that. I just took it for granted that they did business together.” Suddenly she brightened. “Don’t they do any business together, Honey? I mean, mightn’t there have been a contract or something like that which would mean that Mr. Whitney would have to sign his full name?”

  Honey thought for a minute. “I don’t really know, Trixie. Anyway, do you think Dick would dare swipe a letter? Isn’t robbing the mails a federal offense? Would he dare risk getting G-men on his trail just to get a job with us?”

  “The job,” Trixie said, “isn’t the point. He’s after the diamond. I’m sure of it. If it’s as valuable as you say it is, wouldn’t he take a big risk to get it?”

  “I guess so,” Honey said.

  “Anyway,” Trixie went on, “Dick probably only borrowed the letter. Just long enough to steam open the envelope and copy the signature. He probably put the letter back in your box on Thursday while Bobby was showing him around the place. And in that case, there should have been a letter from Mr. Whitney in the Thursday mail.”

  Honey sighed. “I wouldn’t know. Jim collected the mail that day and gave Miss Trask all the letters that were for Mother and Daddy. Anyway, Trixie, just forging Mr. Whitney’s nickname, ‘Whit,’ to the reference wouldn’t have helped Dick any. Oh, now I remember,” she suddenly interrupted herself. “Mr. Whitney and Daddy belong to the same club. Dad’s the treasurer, and the dues are paid in August. There could have been a check from Mr. Whitney in Wednesday’s mail.”

  Trixie jumped to her feet. “Where does Miss Trask put your parents’ mail, Honey? If we saw the envelope we might be able to tell if the flap had been steamed open.”

  Honey shook her head. “Miss Trask forwards all their letters right on to their hotel in Chicago. Let’s go swimming, Trixie. It’s so hot, and I don’t see how you’re going to prove that Dick is both a forger and a diamond thief.”

  “If I had a piece of carbon paper and a piece of tracing paper,” Trixie said stubbornly, “I could show you how easy it is to become a forger without much practice.”

  “I have both,” Honey said. “In my desk. Come on.” She led the way acro
ss the hall and pulled down the front of her desk. “There you are. Now what?”

  Trixie pointed to a pad of note paper. “Sign your name on the first sheet.”

  “Madeleine G. Wheeler,” Honey wrote with a flourish.

  Trixie stared. “Is that your real name?”

  “Of course, it is,” Honey told her. “I was named for my mother. Honey is just a nickname, because of the color of my hair.”

  Trixie slipped a piece of carbon paper between the first and second sheets of the writing tablet, and laid a piece of tracing paper over Honey’s signature. Then she carefully traced the name. After that, she tore the second sheet of paper from the pad and showed Honey a faint, but perfect carbon copy of “Madeleine G. Wheeler.” Next, Trixie took Honey’s fountain pen and carefully inked over every letter of the carbon copy.

  Honey gasped. “My stars, you can’t tell the original from your copy! Where on earth did you learn that trick, Trixie?”

  “Mart taught it to me,” Trixie said with a giggle. “Although I don’t think his ambition is to become a forger. He read about it in some book. Anyway, according to Jim, your father only glanced at Mr. Whitney’s signature on Dick’s reference. If he had looked more closely, he might have seen traces of carbon on the signature. Look at my forgery of your name, and you’ll see what I mean.”

  Honey took the sheet of paper to the window. “I do see what you mean,” she said after a moment. “The M and the W are sort of blurred.”

  “Sh-h,” Trixie cautioned her as she heard voices out in the hall. “Here come the boys. Destroy the evidence, or they’ll tease me to death.”

  They carefully crumpled the three sheets of paper containing Honey’s signature and crammed them into Jim’s scrap basket. Then they hurried out into the hall.

  “What were you doing in my room?” Jim demanded suspiciously.

  “It was my room until yesterday,” Honey reminded him, smiling. “Hurry up and change, boys. We’ll only have time for a dip before lunch.”

  As Trixie tried to dart by him, Mart stopped her. “The cat that swallowed the canary,” he said, “couldn’t have looked more guilty. What have you two been up to?”

  “None of your business,” Trixie retorted. “Let me go. It’s too hot for you to display your brotherly love of me.”

  Mart snorted. “Remember the motto of our club—just one big, happy family. That means no secrets. The word is written plainly on both of your girlish faces. S-e-c-r-e-t-s!” He gave Trixie a little shake. “Give.”

  Trixie pulled away from him, but before she could say anything, Jim interrupted. “Something is rustling inside my scrap basket,” he said, striding across the room to the desk. “Aha,” he went on. “Crumpled paper. Shall we examine it, men?”

  “By all means,” Mart said. “By all means. They were trespassing, weren’t they?”

  “Jim Frayne,” Honey screamed. “If you look at those papers, I’ll—I’ll never forgive you.”

  He shook with laughter. “That does it. I was only teasing before, but now—”

  “Now,” Brian said, “we had better investigate further.” He strode over to the scrap basket and yanked out the ball of tracing paper. He tossed it to Mart who caught it expertly. Trixie made a dive for him, but he tossed it over her head to Jim who passed it along to Brian.

  “Stop it,” Honey begged. “It’s too hot for dodge ball.”

  “I think you’re all as mean as can be,” Trixie cried angrily. “Especially Jim, who pretends to be so honorable all over the place. If you were the least bit honorable, you’d let us take those papers and go away.”

  “What?” Mart demanded. “Are there more of them? The plot thickens. What were you doing?”

  “Writing poison letters, of course,” Trixie said.

  “Gleeps,” Mart yelled. “I wash my hands of the whole matter!”

  Trixie pushed by him. “I’m going downstairs and telephone Dad about Mom’s birthday present. If you delay me one more minute, he’ll be out to lunch, and he’ll probably buy her something in the village. Honey,” she added over her shoulder, “keep them from reading those poison letters if it’s the last thing you do. We don’t want to lose all of our dear, dear brothers.”

  Chapter 16

  The Missing Box

  Trixie’s father heartily approved of her plan. “I’d be very glad to pay Honey fifty cents an hour for helping your mother with the mending,” he said. “Especially now, when she’s so busy canning. And it’s just the kind of birthday present she likes, Trixie. Thanks for suggesting it.”

  Trixie hung up and went back to join the others. They greeted her with very dejected expressions.

  “Don’t tell her,” Mart said sadly. “Let her find it out for herself. The girl sleuth needs practice.”

  “What’s eating all of you?” Trixie demanded. “Let’s go swimming.”

  “Oh, Trixie,” Honey cried. “Just look around the room. Something’s missing.”

  Trixie’s round, blue eyes traveled at once to Honey’s dressing table. The jewelry box was gone! “This is too much,” she moaned, sinking down on the rug at Mart’s feet. “Bobby must have told Dick about the room-switching. He helped you move, remember?”

  Jim nodded. “And Bobby also knew that we didn’t move what he called the ‘boxlike thing.’ He tried to carry it into my old room several times, but we told him firmly that it must stay in here. That’s when he discovered the secret compartment, I guess, and put the diamond inside it.”

  “Well, anyway,” Trixie said, “at last you agree with me that Dick is Suspect Number One. And we still have the diamond. But what kind of a trap can we set now?”

  Jim shook his head. “We can’t be sure that Dick is Suspect Number One, Trixie. Not yet. When Bobby acquires a bit of information he generally spreads it around fast. He could have told any number of people by now that Honey and I switched rooms.”

  “I hope you didn’t tell him it was a ‘see-crud,’ ” Trixie said forlornly. “If you did, you might just as well have printed the news on the front page of the Sun.”

  “I did tell him it was a secret,” Honey admitted miserably. “It was awfully dumb of me.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference,” Trixie said, trying to cheer her up. “Bobby would have told the world about it, anyway. The point is that our prowler must have made up his mind that it would be too risky,” she went on, “to try and get the diamond while Jim was sleeping in this room. It would be less of a risk to try and steal the box during the day.”

  “That’s right,” Honey agreed. “And today is the day. Winnie, the laundress, always leaves before noon. Helen had the afternoon off, so she left right after that. Marjorie got off early because she worked late last night. Once Nailor leaves the house in the morning, he never comes back except for meals. Celia and the cook have been busy preparing lunch for the past hour. Miss Trask has been in the kitchen putting away the stuff she bought ever since she came back from the village.” Honey shrugged. “The whole upstairs has been empty ever since about eleven-thirty. Anyone could have sneaked in through one of the side doors, walked calmly up here, and walked out again with my jewelry box while we were out riding.”

  “Not anyone,” Trixie pointed out. “How about Patch?”

  “His barking in the daytime,” Jim said, “doesn’t mean a thing. I’ve got to start training him soon. He barks at the mailman, the bakery truck, the garbage collectors, anything that appears with four wheels.”

  “If you don’t train him soon,” Trixie said with a giggle, “he’ll be just another Reddy. He’s hopeless.” She scrambled to her feet. “If anyone has your box, Honey, it’s Dick. And it won’t take him long to find the secret compartment. What’ll he do when he realizes that he went to all that trouble for an antique jewelry box and some costume jewelry?”

  “I don’t know,” Honey said with a sigh. “I’ve just about decided to become a dress designer instead of a detective. What will he do, Jim?”

  “W
hat will who do?” Jim asked.

  “Who do, voodoo,” Mart said, waving his hands. “Mumbo-jumbo. Now you see it, and now you don’t. What he’ll do, of course, is sneak the box back into the house the first chance he gets. If it was Dick who swiped it,” he added. “He certainly can’t risk keeping a feminine object like that in his room over the garage for very long. If a tramp swiped it, he’ll hack it to pieces and leave the wreckage in the woods.”

  “I keep telling you,” Trixie said crossly, “that a tramp couldn’t have swiped it. He might have been hiding in the thicket and heard Honey tell me that she put the diamond in her jewelry box, but he still had no way of knowing which room was Honey’s. Even with a floor plan, it would have taken him too long to open all the doors on this floor and peek into every room. Someone downstairs would have heard him.”

  “That’s true,” Brian said thoughtfully. “The finger of suspicion does begin to point toward Dick.”

  “Begin to?” Trixie sniffed. “It has always pointed to him. If the jewelry box suddenly shows up again, will you believe me?”

  “I’ll have to,” Jim said reluctantly. “Nobody else except Nailor would dare risk being caught on this floor. And Nailor is above suspicion.”

  “Are you sure of that, Jim?” Brian asked. “What I mean is, maybe Nailor isn’t Nailor, but someone else masquerading as him.”

  Mart howled with laughter. “No matter how you tried you couldn’t turn yourself into a giant peanut. Only age and too much work in the hot sun can do that.”

  “Come on, let’s go swimming,” Trixie said. “We’ll be in late for lunch, anyway; but maybe we can jump in and out of the cold water and dress quickly enough so we won’t get a bawling out.”

  “You girls go ahead,” Jim said. “We haven’t time. We’ll just wash up a bit.”

  Honey and Trixie raced down to the boathouse, dove into the lake, and climbed right back up again. Then they hurried into the house to change.

  “I hope your mother doesn’t mind our dripping all over her carpets,” Trixie said.