The Mystery of the Missing Heiress (6 page)

“It is true, tragically, that my friend and her husband were drowned when their automobile fell into the canal.

“It is not true, however, that their daughter, Juliana, was drowned. She was saved. Since there seemed to be no living relative, I took Juliana into my home, and we have loved her dearly. My own two children were grown, and it made me happy to have a young child in the family again. Ample funds were left in trust for Juliana by her father.

She was sent to a private school here.

“Eight years ago my daughter, Mrs. Walter De Jong, and her husband moved to the United States, where he Is in charge of his company’s American office. They now live in the Bronx. My daughter and I thought Juliana might have greater educational advantages in the States, so she went with them and is now in your country, where she attended college. She is engaged to be married to a young attorney in The Hague.

“Juliana will be so happy to have the news, which I shall write to her, that she has a young cousin, James Winthrop Frayne. You will be getting in touch with one another soon, I am sure, and both you and Juliana will write to me of this happy occasion.”

The letter was signed “Minna Schimmel.”

“Whoopee!” Trixie cried. “The Bronx isn’t far from here. Why didn’t she give the Dejong family’s address?”

“What difference does it make? We can look it up in a directory, I suppose,” Mart said. “Where are you going?”

“To tell Jim, of course. May we possibly be excused, Moms? Brian and Mart and me? This calls for a Bob-White emergency meeting. Please, Moms! I’ll work even harder than ever after the meeting.”

“I know better than to try and stop you, Trixie. Go ahead, all of you. I’ll call Honey and tell her to meet you at the clubhouse. She can call Diana and Dan.”

“Oh, Moms, you’re the greatest!”

“I’ll go, too,” Bobby said. “I want to know what you do.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Trixie said. “Meetings are for Bob-Whites only, Bobby. In a few years you can be a Bob-White yourself.”

Bobby’s lip trembled. “I’m the one who brought you the letter...

“Who’ll taste the catsup for me, so I’ll know when it’s just right?” his mother asked.

“Let Reddy taste it. Let me go, Trixie!”

Mrs. Belden steered Bobby to a low kitchen chair near the stove, where the catsup was cooking.

“You stay with me, Bobby, because I don’t want to stay alone. After they’re all gone, I’ll tell you where I’ve hidden a brand-new jigsaw puzzle.”

“All right... but I never get to go anywhere! I can'telephone Honey,” he told his mother. “I know her number.”

When all the members reached the clubhouse, Trixie opened the letter and read it dramatically. “Isn’t it exciting? A cousin you never knew you had, Jim.”

“Yeah,” he said slowly and reached for the letter. “I like to think I still have at least one living relative.”

Honey gasped. “Oh, Jim! You know that since Daddy and Mother adopted you, all of our relatives are your relatives, too.”

“I know,” Jim said quickly, “and you’ve all sure been wonderful to me. But it isn’t
quite
the same as blood relatives.”

“How about that stepfather of yours?” Mart asked, mostly to see what Trixie would say.

He found out.

“Mart Belden, don’t you ever mention that cruel, mean stepfather of Jim’s again. No wonder Jim doesn’t think of him as family. He wasn’t a
blood
relative, anyway.”

“I can’t bear to think of how terribly he treated you,” Honey said and put her hand on her brother’s arm. “He beat you and starved you and even tried to burn you in that old house! It’s terrible! Thank goodness he’s no longer your guardian. We’ve heard the last of him.”

“I
hope
we have,” Trixie said devoutly, a faraway look in her eyes.

“Let’s forget about that and think about Juliana!” Honey said firmly.

“She’s lots older than us,” Diana said, “if she’s old enough to have gone to college and to be engaged! Imagine that!”

“Maybe she won t even like to do the same things we do,” Dan said. “Do you think so, Mart?”

“She’ll like her handsome cousin,” Mart answered and grinned as he saw Jim’s freckled face color. “Furthermore,” Mart said and touched his waistline, “even someone with a beard down to here would like to ride a horse.”

“And ride in the Bob-White station wagon!” Diana said.

“And go swimming!” Brian added. “And go picnicking in the woods and everything!”

Jim took up the letter and read it again, folded it, and gave it back to Trixie. His face was serious. “Even if she
is
older, we’ll get along fine. I’m sure to like her, because she’s my mother’s niece. I
wish
my mother could have lived.” His eyes brightened as he looked at Trixie. “She was a lot like your mom.” Trixie’s face saddened. Everyone couldn’t have a mother like Moms. Of course, Jim’s adopted mother, Mrs. Wheeler, like her husband, gave Honey and Jim every material thing they wanted.

She watched Honey’s face. It reflected loyalty and love for her mother. Trixie knew, though, that Honey realized what Jim meant when he said his own mother had been like Moms. She was always right there when she was needed. Mrs. Wheeler was beautiful and kind— Oh, well, Moms was Moms, and Mrs. Wheeler was Mrs. Wheeler.

Mrs. Minna Schimmel had said in her letter that her family loved Juliana. The Bob-Whites would love her, too, if only because she was Jim’s cousin.

“Let’s go up to the house,” Honey said impulsively, “and call Juliana.”

“That’s an idea,” Jim agreed. “We can ask her to come right over here to our house.”

“Tell her we’ll meet her at the bus station,” Mart said.

At the Wheeler house they all gathered around Trixie as she began leafing through the telephone directory. “Here’s her number. Walter De Jong; it’s seven digits. Everyone quiet!”

Jim dialed and listened to the ring.

Nobody answered.

He waited a little, then dialed again—and again —and again.

A big sigh went up from the Bob-Whites sitting on the floor around the telephone. What a letdown, after the excitement of the letter!

“I was
sure
she’d answer,” Trixie said. “Wouldn’t you think she’d stay home or even telephone you, Jim, after she got Mrs. Schimmel’s letter?”

“Oh, Trixie, pipe down,” Mart said.

“She probably left home before the postman came,” Brian said. “Or maybe Mrs. Schimmel mailed a letter to her after she mailed the one to you.”

“Or probably she went to have her hair washed and ironed and her eyelashes replaced,” Mart added.

Trixie gave him a scornful look. “Now it’s your turn to pipe down, Mart.”

“I’ll try again later,” said Jim, “and keep on trying. In the meantime, why don’t we surprise Regan and take out the horses?”

“Not the Beldens,” Trixie said quickly, before Mart and Brian had a chance to say yes. “It’s back to the mines for us. Brians cutting the grass, and Mart and I have to help Moms. She’s making catsup. Whistle for us if you get in touch with Juliana. If you ride, Honey, do be careful when you go near that ledge above the marsh!”

“As if Jim would let me go within a mile of it!” Honey laughed. “Remember how he yanked Di hack when she wandered toward it?”

Trixie and her brothers worked hard all afternoon, and the big Belden kitchen was fragrant with the spicy smell of freshly bottled catsup.

At dinner Mr. Belden read the letter from Holland. “There’s a news story in the
Sleepyside Sun
tonight with much the same information,” he said. “It quotes a letter received at the courthouse from Mrs. Schimmel. This should put an end to all the phony claims for that strip of land. It will belong to Juliana. What did Jim have to say about a new cousin?”

“Gol, he went wild!” Mart said. “He tried to telephone her this morning. We found the De Jong number in the telephone book. Nobody answered.”

“I guess nobody has answered yet, or we’d have heard from Jim or Honey,” Trixie said. “I wonder what she’ll be like... Jim’s cousin!”

The next morning, while Trixie was bustling around helping her mother get breakfast, the call came from Jim.

When she had replaced the receiver, Trixie said to her mother, “Jim still hasn’t been able to get Juliana on the phone. He and Honey want to drive over there. They want Brian and Mart and me to go, too. He wants us all to wear our Bob-White jackets Honey made for us. May we go, Moms?”

“Of course. I’m going to take things easy, after all that work with the catsup yesterday. Bobby and I are going to pick up the Lynch twins and drive to White Plains to get a new tire for his bike. I think it’s a good idea for all of you to go over to the De Jong house.”

“Thanks, Moms. I know Jim just has to be doing something besides continually dialing that number.” Trixie gathered up the plates. “I’ll wash the dishes.”

“Don’t bother about that. I know Jim is in a hurry to get started.”

“It’s not far. We can make it in our Bob-White station wagon in no time at all,” Brian called. “It’s my turn to drive. Hurry, Trixl Have you got your Bob-White jacket?”

Honey met them in the driveway. “Jim was up with the sun. He’s out polishing the station wagon for the umpteenth time. Diana and Dan can’t go. Jim said Brian is to drive.”

“That’s right,” Trixie said. “Watch Mart crowding into the front seat! That’ll make three of them there. Mart, there’s all this room in the back. You can even have a seat to yourself.”

“And have to listen to you and Honey giggle all the way to the Bronx? No, thanks.” Mart edged in next to Jim and shut the car door.

“It’s all right with Honey and me,” Trixie assured him. “We have plenty to talk about.”

“An emergency meeting of the Belden-Wheeler Detective Agency,” Mart hooted. “I suppose there’s something very mysterious about the fact that Juliana hasn’t answered the telephone. We’ll probably see her gagged and blindfolded, being dragged into a gangster’s car—”

“Knock it off, Marti” Brian ordered. “You can go too far.”

Some time later Mart answered Brians rebuff.

“You can go too far, too,” he remarked, a little subdued, but still irrepressible. “You’ll go so far you’ll pass the De Jong house. I know it’s not far from Castle Hill Avenue, and we passed that.”

The De Jong home was a comfortable-looking brick house set close beside others much like it. Brian maneuvered the car into the narrow driveway.

“The house has a closed-up look,” Trixie said as they all piled out.

“It sure for certain does,” Honey agreed.

They crowded around Trixie as she worked the old-fashioned bell pull; they heard it jangle far inside the house, then waited.

Nothing stirred.

Trixie pulled again, hard.

No answer.

She turned to the waiting Bob-Whites and shrugged her shoulders. “Nobody’s home.”

“That’s a brilliant deduction, if I ever heard one,” Mart said. “Where do we go from here?”

A Surprise for the Bob-Whites • 6

IT WAS a pretty dejected group of Bob-Whites that went down the steps and toward the car.

“Maybe they’ve all gone somewhere for a vacation,” Honey said. “There isn’t any mail in the mailbox, though.”

“No, I’ve been taking the De Jongs’ mail in for them,” a friendly voice said. A pleasant-faced woman came across the yard from the house next door, followed by a little boy. “I’ll send it on to them as soon as I have an address. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“It’s about Juliana, the girl who lives with them,” Honey said. “Do you know anything about her?”

“Of course. Are you friends of hers?”

Tin her cousin,” Jim said. Then, as the woman seemed puzzled, he continued, “I didn’t even know she existed till yesterday. I don’t think she knew it, either.”

“How interesting,” the neighbor said. “I’m Mrs. Hendricks. The De Jong family left yesterday for a vacation in the Poconos.”

“Did Juliana go, too?” Honey asked quickly.

“No. She had intended to go with them. She changed her mind when she saw an article in a New York newspaper which mentioned her mother’s name. It seems there’s some land involved, in a little village north of here.”

“Sleepyside,” Trixie said. “That’s where we all live. Where is Juliana now? Nobody answers the doorbell over there.” She gestured toward the De Jong home.

“No. Juliana left this morning. She has her own car, a blue Volkswagen. She was going to take care of the business in Westchester County, then join the De Jong family in Pennsylvania. I’m awfully sorry you missed her. Won’t you come in for a cold drink before you go back home?”

Trixie shook her head, then looked around at the others.

“We aren’t tired, and we haven’t far to go,” she said. “It’s just over the Bronx River Parkway, then the Cross Country to Saw Mill River Road and the Glen Road exit. It won t take us more than an hour, at the most.”