The Mystery Off Glen Road (15 page)

“He does,” Trixie said, “but not for long. You know Bobby. He never stays in one place longer than a half-hour unless he’s asleep. But that’s going to be Di’s worry, not ours.”

By that time it was dusk and they had just barely covered all of the trails in the preserve. “I’m glad horses
can see in the semi-dark,” Honey said. “But we’d better keep them down to a walk from now on. They might stumble over a boulder, and anyway, we’ve got to let them cool off or Regan will have a fit.”

Trixie pulled Susie over to one side so Honey and Lady could lead the way. “I’m lost,” she admitted. “I never saw any of these landmarks before. If you can call them landmarks.”

“I can’t and I don’t,” Honey said with a giggle. “They’re all just black blobs to me. I suppose people like Jim would call them trees and shadows. I’ll give Lady her head. She’ll take us home.”

Lady did, and the girls were surprised to find that the boys were at the stable. Jim was putting a saddle on Jupiter; Brian was saddling Starlight and Mart was leading Strawberry out of his stall.

“Are you boys crazy?” Honey demanded, swinging out of her saddle. “You can’t go riding at this time of night. Anyway, all of the horses have been exercised. Regan himself gave Jupe a good workout this morning while Trixie and I were riding Starlight and Strawberry.”

Jim glared at her. “Where have you two goons been? We were about to form a small posse and go search for your bodies.”

“No, no,” Mart corrected him. “You have forgotten, Sheriff. We were perfectly willing to leave our sisters in the labyrinth forever. It was the horses we were about to seek. They are valuable, which is something I cannot say for the feminine members of our club.”

As Trixie dismounted, Brian grabbed her arm. “You’re up to something,” he said. “Staying out so late, and disappearing so mysteriously yesterday. What cooks?”

Trixie jerked away from him. “It can’t be very late. All we did was patrol the preserve on the other side of the road. If you think you can do it any faster than we did, smarty, try it—just for size. I can’t wait to hear what Regan’s going to say to you when you bring a sweaty horse back to the stable, especially on a cold night like this.”

“You can’t win,” Mart moaned. He put Strawberry back into the stall while the other boys followed suit and returned the saddles to the tack room. Then all three of them lounged against a wall of the stable while Trixie and Honey groomed Susie and Lady. “Not bad, but not good,” Mart kept saying. “Like cheese, they’ll improve with age, don’t you agree, Jim?”

Jim nodded. “But I’ve been figuring it out mathematically, men. They had to cover a lot of ground
between four and six-thirty, so I’ve come to the conclusion that after all they didn’t get lost, nor did they loiter.”

“Well, in that case,” Brian said, “let’s clean the tack for them.”

Honey tossed her head. “Don’t bother. Just, please, get out of our way.”

“I wish they’d get off the face of the earth,” Trixie said grimly. “Such morons should not be allowed in the same inter-planetary system with us.” She deliberately stepped on Mart’s toe as she strode past him.

He punched her lightly on the arm. “Pardon me for living, but the graveyard’s full.” He followed her into the tack room. “Come on, Sis, ’fess up. You’re in some sort of a scrape, and you know it.”

Honey came quickly to the rescue. “Oh, my goodness,” she cried exasperatedly. “Can’t you leave her alone? Don’t you know that her heart is broken and all because Ben is so crazy about Di?”

“So
that’s
it.” Jim abruptly left the stable. Brian, with a puzzled expression on his handsome face, followed him out into the darkness. But Mart simply perched himself on the edge of the work table and began to whistle. After a while he said:

“Don’t you girls try to give
me
any of that. You
almost had me fooled for a while, Trix. But when you disappeared so mysteriously yesterday afternoon, instead of lurking around and waving your diamond ring in Ben’s face, I knew that you had simply been using him for an excuse.” He lowered his voice to a whisper:
“Why did you ask Dad for the ring, and where is it now?”

“None of your business,” Trixie retorted.

“Did you pawn it?” Mart persisted. “Or lose it?”

It was Honey who replied. “Neither, Mart Belden, and it
is
none of your business. If you knew the real reason why Trixie asked her father for the ring, you’d die of shame.”

“So?” His sandy eyebrows shot up. “The plot thickens. Mr. Lytell, among others, is very, very suspicious. He saw Trixie emerge from the woods yesterday after dark. He asked me to give him some explanation of why she was there at that time of the evening.” Mart waved his hands. “I passed it off by explaining that you girls were gamekeepers and Trix must have been working overtime. He thought it odd, as I did, that she should patrol on foot at such a weird hour of the day.”

“Oh, all right, Mart,” Trixie suddenly exploded. “I’ll tell you the truth, but you’ve got to promise not to tell Jim and Brian.”

He raised his right hand. “Wild horses couldn’t drag it out of me.”

Trixie replaced the top on the saddle-soap can and squeezed the sponge dry. Then she went over to the window to make sure that Brian and Jim had gone into the big house. “It’s this way, Mart,” she confided. “I found a dead deer in the preserve yesterday, so I know there’s a poacher lurking around. I want to catch him, but Honey thinks that maybe he was just a hunter who trespassed by accident and probably won’t ever come back.”

Mart slid off the table and began to pace up and down in the tack room. “I’m inclined to agree with Honey,” he said at last. “But the adventurous part of my personality agrees with you, Trix. To capture a poacher would be a feather in our caps. So let’s not leave a stone or a leaf unturned.”

Honey sighed. “Don’t be silly, Mart. The important thing right now is to get the roof of the clubhouse fixed. That’ll never be done if you’re going to go galloping around looking for clues.”

“True,” he said, “but I have no intention of galloping or Sherlocking. I will simply provide Trixie with a few facts about snares and traps and such. Thus, if she doesn’t fall into them, she will be able to recognize same. The point is, a poacher worth catching is one who
makes a business of it. That kind of poacher rarely uses a gun. He shoots deer with a longbow, in or out of season. He sets snares for partridge and pheasant, in or out of season. Instead of using a rod and reel, he catches fish in a net. Those guys,” he finished, “are a menace, and they ought to be exterminated.”

“All right,” Trixie said. “Honey and I will track him down to his lair, then you can exterminate him.”

“Not so fast,” Mart cautioned her. “All you girls should do is search for signs. If you discover evidence that a professional poacher is systematically depleting the preserve of game, report to me. I will take over from then on.”

“Oh, great,” Trixie said sarcastically. “Just great. Then you can wear the feather
we
earned in
your
cap. That will be the day.”

School closed at noon on Wednesday and Di came home on the bus with the other Bob-Whites. Instead of going home the Beldens went straight up to the Manor House where a festive luncheon awaited them.

As they trudged up the driveway Ben passed them in his flashy lemon-colored convertible. Because it was such a bright, sunshiny day, the top was down and Trixie could see that the back seat was piled high with cartons of groceries.

“I guess he can be useful after all,” she said to Jim. “He’s obviously done the shopping for Miss Trask. I can’t believe she trusted him with a list. Just to be funny he probably bought ten pounds of salt instead of sugar.”

“I doubt that,” Jim said easily. “Ben likes to eat and he knows the stores will be closed until Friday morning. Anyway, I don’t think Miss Trask did trust him with a list. She probably phoned the order in, so all he had to do was pick up the cartons.”

Honey, Di, and the Belden boys were several yards
ahead of them. Jim, as host, was carrying Di’s suitcase, and Trixie had trailed behind the others with him.

Jim grinned at her. “I gather that you have recovered from your yen for Ben. I’m sure glad of it, Trix.”

Trixie sighed. It would have been so comforting if she could have told Jim about the ring and why she had had to pretend that she had a “yen for Ben” and, even more important, tell him about the dead deer.

Although she and Honey, while patrolling that morning and the day before, had searched for signs that there was a poacher in the preserve, they had seen nothing. But that, Trixie felt, was because they had kept to the trails. If there were any clues she was sure that they could only be found on the paths.

Aloud she asked Jim, “How’s the roof on the clubhouse coming along? The radio said this morning that we were going to have a ‘white’ Thanksgiving.”

Jim nodded. “A cold front is on the way from the Middle West. Unless it swerves farther north or farther south we’re sure to have precipitation—rain, sleet, or snow.”

“A blizzard, probably,” Trixie said dismally. “Is the roof anywhere near fixed?”

“No,” he told her in an equally dismal voice. “It’s been quite a job, what with having to repair the wall
first. If we get precipitation along with sub-freezing temperatures, we can’t do any more work until we get a thaw.”

“Everything will be ruined,” Trixie wailed. “What can we do, Jim?”

“Plenty,” he replied cheerfully. “We boys are going to eat and run at lunch today. We can get a lot done before dark. Even so, there’ll still be a rather large gaping hole in the roof, but we can cover it with tarpaulin.”

“If there’s a high wind,” Trixie pointed out, “that won’t do any good. The tarpaulin will end up at Mr. Lytell’s store.”

“Don’t be such a pessimist,” Jim said. “We may not get anything but a light rain. The only thing that really bothers me, Trix, is Brian’s car. Since it was such a super bargain, I imagine the secondhand dealer has already sold it. I feel badly about that. Brian may never get another chance to buy a jalopy like that for fifty bucks. I wish one of us could have done something.”

Trixie suddenly began to feel smug. Although she couldn’t tell Jim about it, she
had
done something. Maybe everything would work out all right in the end after all.

Although the luncheon was a gay affair, it was rather hurried because the Bob-Whites had so much to
do. Trixie gobbled her ice cream and raced home to change into riding clothes so she and Honey could do a thorough job of patrolling the preserve on the south side of the road. This time, because darkness was such a long way off, she was going to explore the bypaths for clues.

She had just donned her dungarees and old sweater when her mother came into the room. “I hope you remember, dear,” Mrs. Belden said, “that you promised to keep an eye on Bobby this afternoon while I do the shopping for our party tomorrow.”

“Oh, woe,” Trixie moaned. “I completely forgot. Honey and I planned to patrol earlier than we usually do.”

“Well, I won’t be gone long,” her mother said. “I just want to pick up a few last-minute things to make sure they’re fresh. As you know, I did the big shopping on Monday.” She frowned. “I hate to interfere with your job. I’d take Bobby with me but you know how restless he gets when I take the time to examine a head of cabbage or a bunch of carrots.”

“It’s all right, Moms,” Trixie said quickly. “Di and Ben have promised to take care of Bobby for me whenever I have to patrol. Is that all right with you?”

“Certainly,” Mrs. Belden said with a smile. “Di, with
two sets of twins for brothers and sisters, should be a perfect baby-sitter.”

“Good.” Trixie dashed downstairs and out to the terrace where Bobby was playing with a small red fire engine. She grabbed his hand. “Come on. You’re going to spend the afternoon up at the Manor House.”

He pulled his hand free. “Hey! Whatcha think ya doing? You hurted me,
badly.”

“I didn’t either,” Trixie retorted. “But I
am
in a hurry. Come on.” She scooped up his red fire engine. “You can play with this up there just as well as you can down here.”

“CAN’T!” he yelled. “All my firemen are down here.”

Trixie tried to control her impatience. “Well, bring the firemen along, too. Not that I see any.”

He gave her a withering look and began to gather up some clothespins which he had dipped into red ink. He put some of them into the fire engine and stuffed the others into the pockets of his jeans. “My men,” he announced in a tone of voice which indicated that Trixie was both blind and stupid. “I’m the chief, ’course.”

“Oh, I see,” Trixie said meekly. “You can put out a lot of fires on the Wheelers’ veranda. Ben and Di are going to play with you while Honey and I patrol the
preserve. You will be a good boy, won’t you, Bobby?”

He tossed his blond silky curls. “Not a boy. I’m a fire chief!” He led the way up the path and when they reached the stable he ran ahead to throw himself into Regan’s arms. “I’m a fire chief, Regan,” he yelled. “Hey! You got some fires for me to put out?”