The Mysterious Code (2 page)

“He should know, too,” Diana said, “how the B.W.G.’s gave my parents a whole new set of values.
We’re lots more of a family since my mother and father discharged the butler, the nurses for my twin brothers and twin sisters, and half the maids. They thought when we first moved into this neighborhood that we’d have to live like millionaires. I guess we couldn’t do it because we’ve really been poor most of our lives.”

“We’re getting away from the subject again,” Brian warned. “What makes the situation so urgent now, Trixie?”

“The school board is having a meeting tonight—”

“And?”

“And they may very well tell us that we can’t ever be a club again!”

“Our beautiful clubhouse that we’ve worked so hard to rebuild!” Diana sighed. She was the newest club member. She had felt pretty lonely before the B.W.G.’s had asked her to join them. “I used to look at you, Trixie, and your two older brothers, Brian and Mart, and Honey and her adopted brother, Jim, and think that nothing would ever make me quite as happy as to be asked to be a B.W.G. and now—”

“And
now
,” said Trixie, once more the efficient co-president of the club, “now we aren’t going to go down without a fight.”

“Most of what you have been saying has been trying to read Mr. Stratton’s mind.” Jim was being practical. “Don’t you think it would be a good idea if we were to talk to Mr. Stratton before that meeting this evening?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you ever since I came in,” Trixie said. “Mr. Stratton said he wanted all of us to come to his office at three thirty this afternoon.”

“What do you think that means?” Diana asked. “A chance for us to save the club?”

“Trixie doesn’t know that, Diana,” Brian said. “
I
know this, however. If Jim and I don’t get back into the kitchen pretty soon we’ll be fired. That would make such a dent in the club’s funds it would die a natural death.”

“Let’s meet here, then, at three twenty-five. We’ll go to the principal’s office together,” Trixie said solemnly. “Jeepers, I forgot to eat my lunch. Not one of us ate anything. It’s real trouble, sure enough, when we’re too worried to eat.”

The six members of the B.W.G.’s were a sad-faced lot. The club had been organized, in the first place, because the members’ families lived out in the country near the little town of Sleepyside. All of them had to take the bus to school. The town boys and girls had many after-school activities which the bus travelers could not share.

Trixie, her brothers Brian, Mart, and little six-year-old
Bobby lived at Crabapple Farm on Glen Road, two miles from Sleepyside.

On the western boundary of the farm, and just up the hill, Honey Wheeler, thirteen, lived with her parents and her adopted brother Jim, fifteen. Their home, Manor House, was a huge estate with acres of beautiful rolling lawn, a bird sanctuary and game preserve, a private lake, riding horses, and many servants.

Diana Lynch, thirteen, too, whose father had recently become a millionaire, lived in another large country estate. Her twin brothers and twin sisters were much younger.

In spite of the vast wealth of the others, the Beldens loved their white frame farm home best. Though their parents worked hard—their father had a position in the Sleepyside bank—they never lacked time to make their children’s friends welcome.

The club members, whose secret whistle imitated a Bob-White’s call, all wore red jackets which Honey had made, with “B.W.G.” cross-stitched on the back.

They had remodeled the old gatehouse on the Wheeler estate, and now used it as a clubhouse. When they had first discovered it, it had been almost a ruin, set in a tangle of shrubs and vines. The B.W.G.’s had worked hard to rehabilitate it. The boys had done most
of the repair work on the roof and interior. The girls had painted, made curtains, and helped clear the vines and shrubs away.

It was a rule of the club that all funds used in the work of the club had to be earned by the individual members. Honey’s father and Diana’s father would have financed the club for any amount, but the members did not want this. Trixie contributed five dollars a week which she earned helping her mother. Honey, who had learned to mend and sew at summer camps and private schools, earned the same amount as Trixie by doing mending. Diana was paid to help look after her little brothers and sisters. Mart did all the odd jobs he could find around the neighborhood. Jim and Brian, of course, worked in the school cafeteria.

As a group they had patrolled the game preserve before Mr. Maypenny, the present gamekeeper, had been employed. For this Mr. Wheeler had paid them the regular gamekeeper’s wages.

Recently, too, when they had been at a dude ranch in Arizona for two weeks at Christmastime, they had substituted for the regular work crew who had left mysteriously. Diana’s uncle, who owned the ranch, had paid them the same wages that he paid the regular employees.

Working together, planning together, playing together, the six had grown into a close-knit clan. They believed sincerely in the worthwhile objectives of the Bob-Whites of the Glen.

Surely nothing could destroy the club now.

“Don’t you think I’d better leave my Bob-White jacket in my locker?” Trixie asked when they all met to go to Mr. Stratton’s office.

“Why do you want to do that?” Mart asked.

“Because it was our jackets that seemed to bother him so much,” Trixie said. “On second thought, I don’t think I
will
take mine off. We haven’t done anything wrong.”

“It would too closely approximate appeasement,” Mart said. “In the minds of the most erudite men in diplomatic circles, an attempt to placate is tacit acknowledgment of guilt.” Mart tried out all his big words on the club members. Diana’s puzzled violet-blue eyes widened. She even mixed up one-syllable words.

“Never mind, Diana,” Brian said. “He probably doesn’t know what the words mean himself. He reads the editorials in the
New York Times
and learns them by heart.” Secretly Brian was proud of his younger brother.

“I don’t see how any of you can laugh,” Trixie said. “Here we are now at the judgment seat.”

Six serious-faced young people went into the principal’s office. Six chairs were drawn up facing Mr. Stratton’s desk.

“Good afternoon,” he said and smiled. “Now let me see, you are Brian Belden … and you, Martin Belden.”

They nodded their heads.

“And Jim Frayne?”

“Yes, sir,” Jim said.

“And Madeleine Wheeler.” Honey winced at the unfamiliar name.

“Trixie Belden. Is Trixie a nickname?” he asked, his eyes twinkling.

“Not exactly,” Trixie answered. She had been christened Beatrix, but people didn’t have to know that. Her understanding mother had just called her Trixie when she enrolled for kindergarten.

“Last of all, Diana Lynch.” Mr. Stratton straightened. His smile faded. “Now who is to be spokesman?”

“I am,” said Trixie. Jim was co-president of the Bob-Whites, but Trixie usually did the talking because … well, because she was naturally chatty.

“Trixie, you have told me about the B.W.G. club and the reason for its being. I’m afraid it isn’t enough. The board feels it must scrutinize closely the reason for any organization not sponsored directly by the school. It
doesn’t want secret societies to exist in Sleepyside schools, when clubs—really gangs—can be the source of so much trouble. With vandalism occurring in Sleepyside, we feel we
must
clamp down. And whatever ruling we make about secret clubs will affect the good ones as well as the bad.”

“But the Bob-Whites of the Glen isn’t a secret club,” Jim said, “except when we try to do good, and we don’t shout that to the world.”

“That is to be commended,” Mr. Stratton agreed. “The real fault seems to be that the work is carried on in too restricted a field.”

“We can only do so much,” Brian said. “And we do help people outside our own members. I can’t talk about it, but we do.”

“I think the members of the school board might consider a state or a national project,” Mr. Stratton said.

“Creeps, we aren’t the American Red Cross,” Mart said in a low voice.

“I beg your pardon,” Mr. Stratton said, “I didn’t hear you.”

“I meant, do you think we should be like the American Red Cross?” Mart, ashamed now, repeated.

“Nonsense!” Mr. Stratton said. “Of course everyone
helps the Red Cross. I’m afraid you don’t grasp what I mean. I
can
say, though, and it is food for serious thought: The board feels very strongly that you must show a valid reason to continue to exist or, well, they didn’t actually say so, but they meant that you will have to disband.”

“We couldn’t!” Trixie almost shouted.

“No, we couldn’t,” Diana echoed. “Why, Mr. Stratton, we’d do anything else in the world except give up the Bob-Whites.”

Jim and Brian and Mart exchanged glances. Jim spoke for the trio. “I’m sorry, sir, but that is something we couldn’t do. We think our club has a good purpose and we can’t see why anyone should try to make us disband. We just couldn’t break up our club.”

“Even if refusal meant expulsion?” Mr. Stratton asked reluctantly.

“Not that!” Trixie gasped, her mind turning to what her mother and father would surely say. She squared her shoulders. “Is there
anything
we can do, Mr. Stratton?”

“I don’t know,” Mr. Stratton said sadly. “I’ll try to explain to the board that the Bob-Whites are not a secret society in the true sense of the word, at least not the kind they deplore. If only you could have some really worthwhile project under way.”

It was apparent that Mr. Stratton was not the nosy troublemaker Mart had labeled him; that he really was their friend.

“I
wish
we felt free to tell you some of the things the B.W.G.’s have done,” said Honey. “Why just this Christmas we earned four hundred dollars out at a dude ranch and—”

“Honey!” Jim warned.

Honey covered her mouth with her hand. She had been so carried away she had almost told that they had given the money to the little Navaho hotel maid at the ranch to help pay for her father’s operation.

While Honey had been talking, Trixie had wriggled around in her chair, impatiently waiting to have the floor. Now she jumped up. “I have a
wonderful
idea!” she said. “Mr. Stratton, could we please have just about fifteen minutes for a small conference?”

Mr. Stratton took out his watch. “Mercy, yes,” he said. “I had an appointment at four fifteen, and it’s nearly four thirty now. Just stay right here and talk things over. I’ll be back at five.”

Trixie, Honey, Diana, Brian, Jim, and Mart stood till he left the room. Then they pulled their chairs close around Trixie.

“Let’s have it, Master Brain,” said Mart. “I don’t see
much ahead for the Bob-Whites but sabotage by the school board.”

“Don’t say that, Mart!” Diana cried and stamped her foot. “I know Trixie will think of something to get us out of this trouble.”

“She can get us
into
more trouble than a bunch of Kilkenny cats,” said Mart.

“And
out
of trouble, too,” Jim said. “I’ll never forget who saved me from the fire when my great-uncle’s mansion burned.”

“You’d have been a gone goose if she hadn’t thought of a way out when Diana’s phony uncle tried to kidnap both of you,” Brian reminded Mart.

“That’s right,” Mart said shamefacedly. “She saved Bobby, too, when the copperhead snake bit him.”

“Please …” Trixie begged.

“We could go on and on telling of things Trixie has done for us,” Honey said, “even if she did get us into some bad situations, too. Right now, though, we have only a few minutes to think of something to keep the Bob-Whites from going out of existence. All right, Trixie, what’s your idea?”

“How about something to help UNICEF, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund?” Trixie asked. Then she added dramatically,
“That would cover the whole world!”

“Say, Trixie, that really sounds like something,” Mart said excitedly. “Just let the school board try to put the heat on us when we’re doing something for the United Nations!”

“It isn’t time for back-patting yet,” Jim said slowly. “What does the Children’s Fund do, Trixie?”

“I only know about a few things,” Trixie said, “but they are almost miraculous.”

“For instance?” Jim asked.

“Working with other organizations in the United Nations, UNICEF has trained nurses, doctors, teachers, technicians, in about eighty countries in the world, helping them to make use of their own resources. You see, it isn’t just for today they are helping, but for years to come.” Trixie’s eyes shone as her idea unfolded.

“Can you tell us of some specific instance where the Fund has operated?” Mart was insistent. “Mr. Stratton will have to have facts to present to the board.”

“Heavens, they already know about the Fund itself, because we’ve been donating to it for a long time,” Trixie said. “For your information, though, I can tell you that in Nicaragua, for instance, the Fund has helped build dry-milk factories, so that milk could be manufactured in the flat dairy land, and transported burro-back over the
mountains for children who have never even had a cup of milk in their lives.”