The Secret of the Mansion Read online

"He's all right," Honey said quickly. "But, please, Regan, don't let anybody know what you know about him. That horrible, old, stoop-shouldered man is his stepfather."

  "Figured something like that," Regan said as he saw them safely into the house. "And don't you worry about me. I mind my own business, and I don't tell anybody anything that doesn't concern them." He strode away in the waning moonlight, humming softly to himself.

  The Missing Heir

  Sunlight was streaming into the room when Trixie awoke the next morning, and she realized that she and Honey must have slept very late. Rolling on her elbow, she reached across to the other twin bed and poked Honey. "Wake up, sleepy head!"

  "I am awake," Honey said, keeping her eyes tightly shut. "I've been trying to figure out for the past half hour whether it was all a nightmare or not."

  "It was not." Trixie swung out of bed. "Let's get dressed and hurry up the hill to see how Jim is." She sniffed. "Whew! My pajamas smell like smoke. Do yours?"

  "Yes." Honey wrinkled her nose. "That's why I was pretty sure it wasn't a nightmare. Gosh, Trixie," she said as they washed and dressed, "I was awfully worried about Jim hiding out in the summerhouse last night when it looked as though the fire was going to spread to the woods. Weren't you?"

  "I sure was," Trixie agreed. "And it's a good thing that place is practically all windows; otherwise the smoke might have made him pretty sick." She stopped in the kitchen long enough to scoop two oranges out of the refrigerator. "We can eat these on the way up," she said, handing one to Honey, "and have the rest of our breakfast later with Jim. Now that Jonesy thinks he died in the fire, maybe he'll stick around here a few days longer."

  "Oh, I hope so," Honey said. I wish Regan hadn't made us go home last night before we had a chance to see if Jim was okay."

  "Well," Trixie said, grinning, "we were lucky it wasn't Miss Trask. She would have given us heck for going up there in our pajamas."

  I was so excited I didn't know what I had on," Honey said. "And I don't believe anyone else noticed, either."

  I planned to dress and go back and see Jim," Trixie admitted, "as soon as I was sure Regan was asleep. But I was so tired, the last thing I remember was toppling into bed." She stopped suddenly and flicked a strip of orange peel into the bushes. "Say," she said, trying to sound casual, "did you have a nightmare last night? The one about being in the sealed room with the big balloon pressing down on you?"

  "Why, no." Honey stared at her in astonishment. I haven't had that nightmare for a long time. As a matter of fact, except for that one about the big black snake with the white streak down its back, I haven't even dreamed since we moved up here."

  Trixie chuckled. "Well, I bet you don't have that sealed-room dream any more. If ever you were going to have it, you would have last night. What with the fire and worrying about Jim, I'm surprised I didn't have a nightmare myself."

  The air was strong with the smell of smoke and scorched wood as they pushed through the thicket into the clearing.

  "I bet I don't have any nightmares any more," Honey said thoughtfully. "And it's a funny thing, but that creepy feeling I had that something awful was going to happen has gone away, too."

  "I should think it would." Trixie laughed. "The awful thing has happened. Nothing could have been much worse than the fire!"

  The girls whistled, "Bob white! Bob white!" over and over again, but there was no answering call from the hidden summerhouse. Reddy sniffed around the ruins with an air of disgust and ran off through the woods after a rabbit. It was terribly quiet in the clearing, for not even a chicken was in sight.

  "He must still be asleep," Trixie said as they stood there listening. "Jim," she yelled. "It's all right. Come on out."

  There was no sound except the wind rustling the leaves of the trees and the distant rumble of thunder in the overcast sky. "Maybe he got smothered," Honey breathed. "There was so much smoke around here last night, and the windows of the summerhouse are choked with vines."

  But Trixie was already on her hands and knees, crawling as fast as she could under the old arbor, calling, "Wake up, Jim! It's us, Trixie and Honey."

  Honey followed after her so closely that when Trixie swung open the door to the summerhouse, she almost knocked her down. A spider scuttled across the bare floor.

  "He's gone," Trixie wailed. "I was afraid he'd run away the first thing in the morning. Now we'll never see him again, Honey."

  Honey's hazel eyes clouded with tears. "Oh, gosh," she cried, "why didn't he wait to say good-by? I hoped that, now he doesn't have to worry about jonesy any more, he might come and live with us."

  "Me, too," Trixie moaned. As her eyes grew accustomed to the semi-darkness, she suddenly spied a piece of paper on the floor of the summerhouse. It was held in place by the little leather jewel case. "It's a letter from Jim," she cried excitedly. "Help me pull away some of these branches, Honey, so we can read it."

  A shaft of grayish light trickled through the gap in one of the windows, and Trixie and Honey read the letter.

  Dear Trixie:

  You and Honey are great sports, but this is good-by. I heard Jonesy yelling last night, and now that he thinks I'm dead my troubles are over. But what do you think? Early this morning I tripped over that old mattress you dragged out of the house, and I guess that it must have been so trampled by the firemen that the ticking tore into shreds when my knees hit it. And then I saw that old mattress Id been sleeping on every night was stuffed with money! Not half a million dollars but enough to keep me going for a long time. You were right. A treasure was hidden in the Mansion and in the very room where you said all along we'd find it.

  As soon as I get settled somewhere, I'll come back and repay you two for all you've done for me. But in the meantime, I want you to have my great-aunt's ring to remember me by. After all, you found it, and you saved the money from the fire. If you like, I think you can sell it for enough to buy that horse you want so much. Please, don't you and Honey forget me. I'll see you sometime.

  Yours, Jim.

  "Honey," Trixie said sadly, "he really has gone. We're going to miss him like anything, and I wouldn't think of selling this ring. I'll earn the money for a horse and keep this to remember Jim by. But we'll never forget him, will we, Honey?"

  Honey shook her head. "Never, never. He was almost the nicest person I ever knew. And," she added slowly, "he called me a good sport, Trixie. Can you believe it?"

  Trixie laughed. "What's so wonderful about that?" Honey flushed. "Oh, I know it sounds silly to you, Trixie, but nobody ever called me that before. I never had any real friends till I met you and Jim."

  Trixie put her arm around Honey's shoulder and hugged her impulsively. "Well, you've got me as your friend for as long as you want me, Honey. And I'll bet Jim does come back some day."

  Honey smiled. "You know, I've got one of my funny feelings about that. I've got a sort of premonition that we're going to see him again. Soon." She stopped as a man's voice on the other side of the hidden summerhouse broke in.

  Hello! I can hear you two, but I can't see you. Where are you?"

  For one frightening moment, the girls clung together, terrified that jonesy might have come back. Then, as the man called again, "Hello there," they knew it was not jonesy's voice.

  Hastily they scrambled out under the arbor and almost bumped into a tall, well-dressed man with thick gray hair and a gray mustache.

  "Hello," he said again. "I'm George Rainsford, the late Mr. Frayne's attorney." He smiled pleasantly. "Are you two real or are you wood sprites?"

  It was Honey who regained her poise first. "Why, I know you," she said. "I'm Honey Wheeler. Matthew Wheeler's daughter. Didn't you come to our apartment in New York for dinner one evening last winter?"

  Mr. Rainsford nodded and shook hands. "Yes, I did. But I certainly would never have recognized you. You must have gained about ten pounds since then, and you've acquired quite a tan."

  Honey introduced Trixie. "We're neighbors," she said. "The Belde
ns live down in the hollow, and Dad bought the place on the other hill."

  Mr. Rainsford sobered suddenly. "Then you two may be able to help me. I'm trying to track down young James Winthrop Frayne II stopped at a little store on the way up here, and the man there told me he'd seen a redheaded boy riding through the woods the other day." The girls gave each other quick, secret looks as Mr. Rainsford went on. "The morning papers in the city said that the Frayne heir was burned to death in the fire here last night." He smiled. "Somehow, I don't quite believe that. The Frayne's are too tough and too smart to be caught in a burning building."

  Trixie decided to take the bull by the horns, then. Even if Jim didn't want anyone to know he was still alive, she knew she could trust this man, and that he would be a real friend to Jim.

  "Jim wasn't caught in the fire," she blurted out. "He hid in the summerhouse, but then he ran away again." "And you girls know where he is?" Mr. Rainsford said, with an encouraging smile.

  Trixie shook her head regretfully. "No, we don't. He left a note, but he didn't say where he was going." "How did you happen to meet Jim in the first place?" Mr. Rainsford asked.

  "We came up here to explore the morning Dad took old Mr. Frayne to the hospital," Trixie told him. "And we found Jim asleep on the floor of the living-room."

  Mr. Rainsford stared at her in surprise. "Do you mean to tell me you girls broke into the house? Didn't you know you were breaking the law?"

  Trixie flushed. "We only went inside to lock up the place," she said quickly. "Honey saw a face at the window earlier, and I thought we ought to make sure it wasn't a tramp or someone from the village who knew Mr. Frayne was in the hospital. You see, there was supposed to be half a million dollars hidden in the house, and I-"

  "And what if it had been a tramp or a thief?" Mr. Rainsford interrupted sternly. "An ugly fellow who might have done something unpleasant to prevent you from reporting him to the police?" He frowned. "It was very wrong of you and an extremely dangerous thing for you to have done. Why, even I, Mr. Frayne's attorney, wouldn't have entered the house without first obtaining a search warrant."

  Trixie stared shamefacedly down at her shoes. "We didn't mean to do anything wrong," Honey broke in. "We just didn't think."

  Trixie grinned ruefully. "It's a bad habit I have acting before I think."

  Mr. Rainsford relented and smiled then. "I'm sure you meant well and that you'll never do anything like that again. Now, please, go on with your story. Your tramp turned out to be Jim?"

  Trixie nodded and quickly told him everything that had happened, beginning with why Jim had run away from his stepfather.

  When she had finished, Mr. Rainsford said slowly, "I suspected something like that. Actually, Jim has nothing to worry about from Jones. I've gathered enough evidence from neighbors on the farms outside Albany to prove to a judge that Jim's stepfather is not a competent guardian. As soon as we locate him, I'll take the matter to court and have another guardian appointed."

  Trixie let out a sigh of relief, and Honey looked as thought she were going to dance up and down with happiness. Mr. Rainsford smiled at them. "Jim sounds like a great lad. I'd like to adopt him myself. Will you two help me find him?"

  "Of course, we will," Trixie and Honey cried together, and Trixie added, "We've got some clues, Mr. Rainsford. He told us he was going to apply for a job at one of those three big boys' camps upstate."

  "Well, that makes it easy, then," the lawyer told them. "And when we do find him, there's half a million dollars in trust waiting for him."

  "Golly," Honey gasped. "Then Jim really is a missing heir after all, and old Mr. Frayne wasn't a crazy miser." "Not exactly," Mr. Rainsford explained. "Mr. Frayne got a bit queer after his wife's sudden death. He took all of his money out of banks and turned over the rest of his estate to me. He formed a trust for his great-nephew, but I was not to inform Jim of this trust until after his uncle's death." He frowned. "I wish that boy had got in touch with me before he ran off again. I'd better get right on the phone and start calling those boys' camps."

  "Oh, don't do that," Trixie begged. "You don't know Jim. He's as stubborn as a mule. If he got the least bit suspicious that somebody was looking for him, he'd think it was Jonesy; and then he'd disappear for good. If he got a job on a cattle boat that was sailing right away, it might be years before we could locate him."

  Mr. Rainsford looked at her sharply. "Well, what do you suggest then? He's not going to have an easy time getting a job at one of those camps without written permission from his parents or guardian. If we don't act quickly, he may ship aboard a cattle boat, anyway."

  "We'll go and look for him, ourselves," Trixie cried. "Honey and I. He wouldn't worry at all if he heard two girls were trying to trace him. He'd know it was us and he trusts us, you see."

  "But," Mr. Rainsford objected, "you two can't go wandering around the state all by yourselves."

  "It's a perfectly wonderful idea," Honey broke in, enthusiastically. "We'll go in our trailer. Daddy's got an enormous one which we almost never use, because Mother won't travel any way except by plane. It's really a darling little house on wheels. Oh, we'll have a wonderful time, won't we, Trixie?"

  Mr. Rainsford's heavy gray eyebrows shot up, questioningly. "All by yourselves?" he repeated, and shook his head at them.

  Honey's flushed face grew even redder. "Oh, no! Miss Trask, my governess, will go with us. She's a perfectly marvelous driver. Daddy is always saying that he feels safer with Miss Trask behind the wheel than he does when Regan's driving. Regan doesn't care about anything but horses," she explained with a laugh. She grabbed Trixie's arm. "Let's all go over to my place now," she cried. "If Mr. Rainsford helps us tell Miss Trask how important it is to find Jim right away, I'm sure she'll agree to the plan. Come on!"

  Trixie chuckled inwardly as Honey impatiently led the way through the thicket to the trail that ran between the two estates. Honey's worse than I am, now, she thought. Barging off in a great hurry, without even thinking about what might happen. I wonder what will happen on that trailer trip. Something exciting, I bet, if it has anything to do with Jim and Honey. Which it has!

  As though in answer to her thoughts, there was a sudden loud crash of thunder and a jagged fork of lightning streaked across the sky.

  The long-awaited rain was coming down '*'A torrents as the three of them hurried up the steps b0 the wide veranda of the Manor House where Miss Trask was anxiously watching for them.