The Mystery Off Glen Road Page 6

  “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.

  Chapter 8

  A Job for the Bob-Whites

  “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.”

  “They did,” Honey told her. “They’re in Canada now. We all got postcards from them yesterday. They’ll be back next weekend, thank goodness. When Mother called up from Florida on Wednesday she told Miss Trask to hire a temporary maid and a temporary chauffeur at any price, but Miss Trask said it wouldn’t be worth-while breaking them in for such a short time. She has enough trouble breaking in cooks who are forever leaving.”

  “I hope for Miss Trask’s sake,” Trixie said, “that Ben Riker doesn’t put any frogs in this cook’s bed.”

  “That would be the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Honey agreed. “If the cook left while Celia and Tom are away I think Miss Trask would quit, too.”

  “And that,” Trixie added, “would be the end. She’s just wonderful. Oh, Honey, let’s canter. I can’t wait to find out if Miss Trask and Regan will give us the gamekeeper’s job.”

  “I can’t either,” Honey admitted. “If we can win Regan over to our side, I’m sure Miss Trask will agree. But Regan can be stubborn at times. We’ll have to be careful, and also we had better be very sure that we do a perfect job when we groom the horses.”

  Half an hour later Honey began the conversation with: “Oh, Regan, about those ads you and Miss Trask put in the papers. Did anybody apply for the gamekeeper’s job?”

  Trixie couldn’t help grinning. Honey was trying so hard to make her voice sound casual as she worked on Strawberry with a currycomb.

  “No,” Regan replied from the doorway of the tack room. “And, in my opinion, nobody ever will. There aren’t many people left who can afford game preserves, and they’ve got all the gamekeepers there are left working for them.”

  “Oh,” Honey said as she led Strawberry back to his stall. “Do you have to be so very wonderful to be a gamekeeper? I didn’t think much of Fleagle. I mean, I thought he was sort of dumb, didn’t you?”

  Trixie’s secret grin widened. There just wasn’t anybody in the world as tactful as Honey Wheeler.

  “Fleagle,” Regan said in a wrathful tone of voice, “was as stupid as they come. Why, even you and Trixie know more about horses than he does.”

  “That’s just what I thought,” Honey said innocently. “Trixie and I, working early in the morning, and after school, could be just as good a gamekeeper as Fleagle was, couldn’t we? I mean, what is there to do except ride along the trails and sort of patrol? Trixie and I were riding along the trails on the other side of the road only this morning and we didn’t get lost once.”

  Regan placed his big freckled hands on his hips. “No kiddin’?” he demanded. “Now, that’s a record, isn’t it?” Grinning broadly, he added, “I suppose you two captured singlehanded a whole army of poachers, too.”

  “Oh, don’t tease us, please, Regan,” Honey begged. “We Bob-Whites have just got to get that job. On account of the clubhouse and Brian’s jalopy, you know. And you know perfectly well there aren’t any poachers, and if there were, the boys could capture them singlehanded and all.”

  Regan guffawed. “The boys can singlehandedly go out and repair the feeding stations that were knocked down by the wind. One thing is sure. I certainly haven’t got the time to do it.”

  “That’s just the point,” Trixie put in. “The boys are very good at repairs. They’ll do all that sort of thing. Honey and I, while we’re patrolling, can scatter grain around for the birds and whatever it is that deer like. After all, Regan, I’ve been feeding our chickens for years. There’s not much difference between a chicken and a pheasant when you get right down to it. Or a partridge either. They were all eggs once, you know.”

  Regan howled with laughter. Then he sobered. “You girls have got something there. All five of you kids working together could certainly do as good a job as that Fleagle did, and cause me a lot less trouble.” He started for the stable door. “I’m going right in and talk to Miss Trask about it.”

  When he had gone, Honey and Trixie collapsed on the floor of the tack room. “Keep your fingers crossed,” Honey said. “Miss Trask is very understanding and all, but she just might not go for the idea.”

  Trixie giggled. “I can’t keep my fingers crossed and clean my saddle and bridle.”

  “Well, cross your toes then,” Honey retorted, handing her a sponge and a can of saddle soap. “This tack has got to be super-perfect today of all days.”

  They worked in silence until they had cleaned and put away every bit of the leather, then they hurried outside and down to the clubhouse. The boys had finished rebuilding the wall and were now working on the roof.

  Mart, sitting astride the ridgepole, called down to the girls, “Hi, you lazy squaws.”

  “Lazy, indeed,” Trixie yelled back. “We just finished exercising all of the horses and cleaning about five million tons of leather.”

  “Oh, don’t you and Mart start arguing,” Honey begged. “When you two get going you go on forever.” She tilted back her pretty face and called up to Jim who was hammering shingles into place. “Jim! Can’t you boys quit for a while so we can hold an emergency meeting? Something important’s happened. I mean, about to happen. At least I hope it’ll happen.”

  Jim removed the nails from his mouth and stared down at her. “Gleeps, Honey! Can’t you ever make a simple sentence without tacking on a lot of ‘I thinks’ and ‘I means’?”

  “No, she can’t,” Brian answered the question as he started down the ladder. “She’s been exposed to Trixie too long. The habit is as catching as measles.”

  “I’ve got news for you, Jim,” Mart added, as he followed Brian down the ladder. “Neither one of them ever makes sense. Lovely girls, and all that, at least Honey is, but—”

  “Now who’s ‘at-leasting’?” Trixie demanded.

  Jim slid down the roof and, grasping the gutter for a second, swung himself to the ground. Trixie couldn’t help giving him an admiring glance. All of the boys were strong and supple, but Jim was the most athletic one of them all. There really wasn’t anything worth doing that Jim couldn’t do—and do awfully well. Without realizing that she was thinking out loud she said to him:

  “You’re just as good a gamekeeper as Fleagle was, if not better.”

  Jim reached out and gave one of her sandy curls a gentle tug. “I’m going to have a great big scarlet ribbon made for you and on it, printed in gold, will be: ‘Miss Nonsense of America.’ ”

  “Yes, yes,” Mart agreed. “I’ll be her press agent. We’ll tour the country together, I in my limousine and she in her cage. Remind me to make a sign for that cage, Jim. Something to the effect that customers should not poke their fingers through the bars unless they wish to lose said fingers.”

  Trixie bared her teeth at him. “I wish I were a lioness so I could bite your
head off.”

  “Oh, please,” Honey implored them. “Let’s go into what’s left of the clubhouse and hold a meeting.” She led the way and when they had gathered around the table, she said, “Trixie and I were just talking to Regan about maybe our getting the gamekeeper job, at least for a week, anyway. He’s talking to Miss Trask about it now.”

  There was silence for a minute, then Mart emitted a loud, “WOW! If Miss Trask agrees, that’s a sure fifty bucks.” He turned to Brian. “Maybe you can get your jalopy after all.”

  Brian shook his head. “That Ford’s at the secondhand car dealer’s place now. That is, if it hasn’t already been sold.”

  “Well, let’s not worry about that now,” Trixie said hastily. “The important thing is for somebody to talk Miss Trask into agreeing with Regan that we should have the job.” She pointed her finger at Jim. “You’re that somebody.”

  “That’s right,” Brian agreed. “And I now understand what Trixie was driving at when she said you’d make a good gamekeeper. If you didn’t have to go to school, Jim, you could hold down the job all by yourself.”

  “Singlehanded is the word,” Honey said with a giggle. “It’s one of Regan’s favorites. He keeps on using it the way Trixie and I keep saying—”

  “Never mind,” Jim interrupted. “If Regan’s on our side, we’ve practically won the battle. But I’ll go up to the house now and see what cooks.” He hurried off.

  They sat there tensely waiting until he came back in less than ten minutes. There was a broad grin on his freckled face and he greeted them with a loud whoop:

  “It’s all set. Except for a slight hitch.”

  “Oh, no,” Honey moaned. “Don’t tell us. We know. Miss Trask doesn’t think Trixie and I can cope with poachers.”

  He threw one arm around her slim shoulders and gave her a brotherly hug. “The chance of you and Trixie stumbling across a poacher is one in a million, little sister. So don’t you two let your vivid imaginations run away with you while you patrol.”