The Mystery Off Glen Road Read online

  “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 anything.” 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.”

  Chapter 19

  Too Good to Be True

  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?”

  Trixie slid weakly out of the saddle. “I sure did,” she said. “But, Mr. Maypenny, this isn’t your property.” She nodded toward Honey. “This is Honey Wheeler. All of these woods belong to her father. It’s part of his huge game preserve.”

  To Trixie’s amazement, he moved closer and shook hands with Honey. “Well, now, I’ve seen you around, too, and I know your father. A real pleasant gentleman; a bit stubborn, like all redheads, but pleasant.”

  Honey couldn’t help smiling as she dismounted. “But I don’t understand,” she said. “Mr. Lytell told me that you owned land around here, but I didn’t think it was in the middle of Daddy’s preserve.”

  “Sure is,” he said with a broad grin. “Right smack in the middle of it. A pie-shaped section consisting of ten acres. It’s belonged to me and my family for nigh onto hundred years. Good land, too. I’ve lived off it man and boy since I was your age. Mr. Wheeler, he knows it’s good land, too. Offered me a fancy price for it, but of course I just laughed. What good would twenty thousand dollars do me if I didn’t have a house and garden and plenty of fish and game? Grow my own vegetables, I do. Store some in a root cellar and can others. Dry out some of the meat and can some. Just finished canning a dozen jars of venison stew. Real tasty. There’s still plenty in the pot. If you’ll come inside and set down I’ll dish you up some.”

  In a stunned silence the girls looped the reins of their horses around branches of a tree and followed him into the cabin. Trixie liked Mr. Maypenny but she felt that she had been cheated out of a mystery. Finally she said:

  “Well, you’re a trespasser. Every time you leave your property or go back to it you have to trespass on Mr. Wheeler’s property.”

  He shook his head. “There’s a law about that to protect property owners. Now Mr. Wheeler, he got real angry when I laughed at his offer of a thousand dollars an acre. Said he was going to block up the paths and trails so I’d be penned up like a bull in a fenced pasture. I kept on laughing and told him to talk to his lawyer. Next day he came back real meek-like, for a redhead, and offered me twenty thousand dollars for the land.” The old man, chuckling reminiscently, ladled the delicious-smelling stew into earthenware bowls.

  Honey giggled. “I wish I’d been there. Daddy—meek! It must have been a riot. He’s so used to buying anything he wants.” She tasted the stew. “Yummy-yum. It’s divine, Mr. Maypenny. I wish you were cook at our house. The one we’ve got now is just terrible. Nothing has any flavor.”

  “Well, now,” Mr. Maypenny said, sitting on the bunk, “a stew just isn’t worth putting into a pot unless you put everything in your garden in it. In that I got turnips and parsnips and carrots and potatoes and beans and corn. And I don’t use any water a-tall. Why should I? Onions and cabbage and tomatoes are full of water—the right kind of water. I must have used a peck of tomatoes in that goo-lash. Spices, too. I’m a bit heavy with garlic and basil and thyme. There may be some folks who don’t go for such, but it suits me to a T.”

  Trixie had been eating steadily and now felt less disgruntled. “It suits me, too,” she said, grinning. “But, Mr. Maypenny, you’ve been setting snares for rabbits. That’s illegal, even on your own property.”

  “No, ma’am,” he replied pleasantly but emphatically. “Rabbits is varmints. The little robbers would get everything in my garden before I did if I didn’t catch ’em first. I got a license to trap ’em. Coon and fox, too. There’s a bounty all year round on fox pelts. I trap otter and mink, too, because they go after the trout in my section of the stream. With the money I get for the skins, I buy what I can’t grow. Sugar, salt, canned milk, coffee, tea, and such. I don’t need a lot, so I don’t trap a lot. Personally I like the little critters, but they’d eat me out of house and home if I didn’t discourage ’em.”

  Honey scraped her bowl clean and said, “Mr. Maypenny, Daddy will be home tomorrow. He’s going to spend the whole weekend trying to get a deer. If he does, will you show our cook how to make this stew?”

  “Better than that,” he said. “I got plenty of venison left from the deer I shot with my longbow on Sunday. I aim to pot some of it in a day or so. I’ll just pot double the amount. Half for you folks and half for me. I’ll put some up in jars for you, too, if you’ll bring me the jars. I like to be friendly with my neighbors, though I don’t get time to see much of ’em.” He chuckled. “Your paw and I could be good friends if he weren’t so derned redheaded stubborn. Told him he could shoot over my property so long as he gave me notice. He seemed pleased because it’s sort of hard to tell exactly where the boundary lines are.”

  Trixie suddenly remembered something. “Mr. Maypenny,” she asked, “is there a crazy person loose in these woods?”

  Honey gasped and covered h
er mouth with both hands. “I forgot all about that. He is crazy, Mr. Maypenny, because he rides around on a unicycle. Trixie saw the tracks.”

  The old man shook with silent laughter. “I’m your lunatic, girls. Those tracks were left by my deer-carrier. It’s a one-wheeled contraption and mighty handy. I’m not as young as I used to be. Get sort of tuckered out if I tote a deer carcass more than a mile or so.” He led them outdoors and around to the back where the deer-carrier was parked. It looked like a huge super-market basket which had been attached to a bicycle wheel.

  “Daddy would adore to have one of those,” Honey cried admiringly. “It’s wonderful!”

  Mr. Maypenny sniffed. “Matt Wheeler is just a boy. If he can’t tote his own game, his bow and arrow should be taken away from him. A likeable lad, but what he doesn’t know about how to run a game preserve would fill a library.” He frowned, sucking in his lips. “That Fleagle! Do you mean to stand there, Honey Wheeler, and tell me your paw paid that man good money? Why, that redheaded adopted brother of yours, Jim Frayne, has more sense in his little finger!”

  Honey gasped again. “Do you know Jim, Mr. Maypenny? I mean, does Jim know about your property here in the woods?”

  “Imagine so,” the old man said easily. “Stopped in real sociable-like the other day when he and that Belden boy were out fixing up the bird-feeding stations that were knocked down by the storm. Gave ’em a few hints which they found helpful, or so they said.”

  Trixie and Honey stared at each other. Then they both hugged each other, almost hysterical with laughter. “It all comes from keeping see-cruds,” Trixie finally managed to murmur.

  Honey turned and slipped her arm through Mr. Maypenny’s. “You,” she told him pleadingly, “could be the answer to all of our problems. Please, please, say yes you will.”