The Mystery Off Glen Road (18 page)

“Oh, fine,” Trixie said sarcastically. “Somebody had better tell Brian the facts of life about what happens to
borrowers. He and Jim are getting to be so chummy that it’s boring. Brian never comes home to change any more. Why doesn’t he just move up there, bag and baggage? Then Moms can rent his room and hire somebody to do his chores.”

Mart gurgled. “Our elder sibling, commonly known as Brian Belden, has been doing his household chores at the crack of dawn every morning so that he can devote all of the daylight hours to work on the clubhouse. I have, too, as you would know if you did not stagger off to the stable every
A.M.
with both eyes tightly closed.”

He darted out of the kitchen and Trixie hastily began to collect china and silver so she could set the table for her parents and Bobby. Moms joined her in the dining-room.

“Trixie, honey,” she said, folding paper napkins, “you shouldn’t have borrowed Bobby’s compass. I know that you didn’t mean to lose it, but you realize, don’t you, that you’ll have to buy him another one as soon as you can?”

Wordlessly, and very shamefacedly, Trixie shook her head up and down. “I’m sorry,” she gulped.

“All right,” her mother said. “There’s no real rush about it because it’s far too expensive a thing for him to treat as a toy anyway. Now, run along and get ready for
dinner at the Wheelers’. None of you can stay late. Tomorrow is going to be a very busy day. Although the ham and the turkeys are already cooked, there are going to be a lot of last-minute things for you to do.” She frowned worriedly. “I don’t want to interfere with your job, but couldn’t Mart patrol the preserve tomorrow with Honey so you can help me?”

“I’m sure he will,” Trixie said meekly. “I’ll ask him right away.” She fled upstairs.

Mart agreed, and later as they climbed the path to the Manor House he said, “I fully planned to do some patrolling on my own tomorrow, anyway. If Honey goes with me, all the better, because she can show me how to get to that house-in-the-clearing.”

“Not a prayer,” Trixie said. “I keep trying to tell you we have no idea where we were. It was sheer luck that we’re still not in the labyrinth.” They had reached the wooded section that lay between the path and the stable. The overhanging branches of the trees cut off the light from the crescent moon and they turned on their flashlights. “But she can show you that rabbit snare. And we did hear two shots, Mart. We couldn’t both have imagined them. Besides, that’s what made the horses run away.”

“Horses do not have vivid imaginations,” Mart
agreed. “And they also probably blazed a trail to the big clearing. I’m not the woodsman Jim is, but I’ll bet I can follow the bruised and broken branches along that narrow path.”

“I doubt it,” Trixie said. “Don’t forget the storm broke and bruised a lot of branches, too.”

“Maybe we ought to tell Jim,” Mart said. “The roof has reached the stage where he and Brian don’t need me any more, but if Jim has to quit to track down a poacher, I don’t think the work will be finished before we get heavy snow.”

“That’s the point,” Trixie said. “So you’ve got to find that cabin. Then all you have to do is tell Jim so he can report it to the game protector. What happens to poachers? Do they go to jail?”

Mart shrugged. “I don’t know, but he’ll surely have to pay a fine. He sounds like an illegal squatter, too. How do you like that? A house and garden and every little thing on somebody else’s property! The nerve of the guy. In fact, I just don’t believe anybody has that much nerve. And why didn’t Fleagle discover him?”

“His horse didn’t run away with him,” Trixie said. “That’s the answer. Fleagle was lazy, you know. He didn’t cover every inch of the preserve when he patrolled. You can count on the fact that he stuck to the trails.”

They were on the moonlit driveway now and she handed her flashlight to Mart. “Keep this in your jacket pocket for me, please. I’ll be sure to forget it. Last time I—”

“Hey,” he suddenly interrupted. “You’re wearing the ring. How come?”

“It’s a phony,” Trixie replied, and explained. “I have to wear it tomorrow, you know, or Dad and Moms will be suspicious.”

Mart nodded. “I’m none too happy about the fact that you’re deceiving them, but I guess it’s a justifiable crime.”

“It’s no crime to wear an imitation diamond ring,” Trixie argued. “And if Moms and Dad should get suspicious and ask me questions, I wouldn’t tell any lies. I just hope they don’t, that’s all.”

“Well,” Mart said with a chuckle, “when you’re old and gray you must tell them the whole story. They’ll enjoy it. As a matter of fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that they’d enjoy it right now. They’re awfully good sports, you know.”

“That’s true,” Trixie agreed. “But I’ve never tested them with a diamond ring before. Moms, thank goodness, didn’t seem too mad at me for borrowing Bobby’s compass. It’s sort of the same thing. After all, I didn’t
deliberately lose it, and I haven’t lost the ring.”

“You’ll lose it if you don’t fork over fifty bucks to Mr. Lytell on Saturday,” Mart pointed out. “He has a perfect right to sell it and give you the difference.”

“Don’t rub it in,” Trixie moaned. “That’s why we’ve got to earn our salary as gamekeepers, and that means exterminating that poacher.”

“I’ll do my best tomorrow morning,” Mart promised.

They hurried inside the big house where the others were waiting for them. Because they were going to the Beldens’ party tomorrow, Miss Trask had decided to have a Thanksgiving feast that evening. Thus the cook could have the next day off, and, as Miss Trask said, “This is a very good thing because ever since Celia left, Cook has been getting crosser by the minute.”

“Have you heard from Celia recently?” Trixie asked Miss Trask. “Are she and Tom still in Canada?”

“I don’t know where they are,” Miss Trask replied worriedly. “I got one of those ‘wish you were here’ postcards yesterday from them both, and it was mailed from Montreal. But that doesn’t mean anything. Tom took his longbow with him so I know he plans to do some deer hunting upstate before they return. He took his thirty-thirty rifle, too, so he could hunt in counties where
shooting with a rifle is permissible. It all adds up to this,” she finished in a discouraged tone of voice: “Tom is going to keep on trying to get a deer until the very last minute. If we have a blizzard between now and the weekend, they may be delayed for several days.”

“We just can’t have a blizzard,” Honey wailed. “On account of the clubhouse, Miss Trask. But don’t you worry about a thing. Now that I don’t have to go to school I can help a lot around the house. I can do everything that Celia did, and don’t forget, I can cook, too.”

Her cousin Ben hooted with laughter. “You cook! I’d rather eat a raw frog.”

Trixie glared at him across the table. “I’ll have you know,” she informed him tartly, “that Honey is a very good cook. And so am I, in case you’re interested.”

He raised his eyebrows in pretended astonishment and asked Brian, “Can either of them—?”

To Trixie’s amazement Brian suddenly became protective. “Boil water without burning it?” he finished for Ben. “The answer is, yes, they can. Can you?”

Ben flushed. “Ah, I was only kidding,” he said sheepishly. “I didn’t mean anything.”

Mart said easily, “You’d be surprised to know how well our squaws can cook.” He kicked Trixie under the table. “Hunter’s stew made with venison is their specialty.”

Honey gulped and said, “Oh, Ben knows how to make a hunter’s stew. He learned how at camp. Didn’t you, Ben?”

“Not very,” he replied, laughing. “I know what to put into the pot, but after that my mind becomes a blank.”

Jim, who had been sullenly silent until then, suddenly growled, “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Trixie and Honey are better cooks than the one we have now,” he told Ben. “If you’d rather eat raw frogs, why don’t you scram?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sakes,” Di put in. “Must we all quarrel every time we get together? Ben didn’t mean to be critical, Jim. He was only joking.”

It was Jim’s turn to look sheepish. “I’m sorry,” he said to Miss Trask. “I’m not a very good host.”

Honey, in that very tactful way of hers, broke the icy silence. “Did you say ghost, Jim?” she inquired sweetly.

Everyone laughed and from then on things went smoothly.

After the feast, the boys and girls trailed across the hall to the library where Di and Ben immediately began to play hillbilly records. Honey slipped out, beckoning for Trixie to follow. She led the way into her father’s den and closed the door.

“Well,” she whispered loudly, “what happened about Bobby and the compass? I’ve been dying of suspense. When you and Mart were so late arriving I began to think that Bobby had drawn and quartered you.”

“Not quite,” Trixie said, grinning. She brought Honey up-to-date on events and finished with, “Bobby’s mad at me all right, but if Ben amuses him with that phony bird tomorrow, he’ll probably forget about me. The important thing is for you and Mart to try to find that cabin-in-the-clearing.”

Honey shook her head. “Things keep on getting more and more involved. Since Mart has given his compass to Bobby, he and I will surely get lost. But you’re the one I’m worried most about.”

“Why?” Trixie asked. “I’ll be safe at home making potato salad and cole slaw.”

“Because of Bobby,” Honey hissed. “Have you forgotten the motto Mart gave him months ago? ‘Revenge is sweet.
Saccharine
-sweet!’ ”

In spite of the storm warnings and Honey’s grim predictions, Thanksgiving was a wonderful day. The sun shone brightly in a cloudless powder-blue sky, and by noon the temperature had risen to a record-breaking seventy-two degrees.

Mart and Honey did not get lost but neither did they find the cabin-in-the-clearing. Bobby spent the whole morning with Ben and Di and returned at lunchtime triumphantly with his strange bird.

“I shot it my own self with my bow-an’-arrow,” he announced proudly, “and I ’trieved it my own self ’cause Patch wouldn’t.”

“I don’t blame Patch,” said Mr. Belden, examining the strange object which Ben had put together, using a moth-eaten stuffed squirrel and the head of an equally moth-eaten stuffed parrot which he had obviously bought from a taxidermist in town. “This object is neither fur nor feathers, and no self-respecting spaniel would be caught dead with it.”

“Nobody was caught dead with it,” Bobby yelled.
“I caught him dead all by my own self.”

“Very smart of you, too,” Mrs. Belden said soothingly. “Now you must eat your lunch, Bobby, and take a nice long nap. We’re having a party today, so you may stay up later this evening than usual. But you must have a nap.”

“Won’t,” he stormed. “I’m a hunter. Hunters don’t take naps.”

“Oh, yes they do, Little Hiawatha,” said Mart, lifting Bobby onto the kitchen stool. “Let’s ‘peetend’ this bowl of vegetable soup is hunter’s stew and you made it your own self. Out of that par-squirrel you shot, or should we call it a squirrel-par?”

Bobby, all dimples now, ate hungrily and went off to bed willingly.

Mart really is wonderful with kids
, Trixie thought.
I wish I had his patience
.

From then on she was so busy she forgot all of her worries, and the first guest arrived while she was still dressing. It was so warm that Trixie hated to wear a sweater and skirt but she knew it would grow much cooler after sundown and that she would be in and out of doors receiving guests until the last one left. Hastily she clasped Di’s necklace around her throat, slipped on Honey’s “diamond” ring, and raced down the stairs to help her mother.

The first arrival, she saw from the hall, was Mr. Lytell. It would never do for him to see her with another “diamond” ring. He would be sure to make comments in that nosy way of his! And the trouble with “party” skirts was that there were no pockets in them.

In a panic, Trixie yanked the ring off her finger and dropped it into a brass bowl on the nearby butterfly table. “As Bobby would say,” she told herself, “I’ll ’trieve it as soon as Mr. Lytell leaves.”

But just then Miss Trask arrived and promptly offered to help serve food and punch. Mrs. Belden gratefully accepted the offer, and so, of course, Mr. Lytell followed Miss Trask into the dining-room, hovering at her elbow.

Trixie had always suspected that Mr. Lytell was in love with Miss Trask, and now she knew it. “He’ll never leave until she leaves,” she moaned to Honey around five o’clock.

“And you know Miss Trask. She’ll stay on and help with the dishes if she thinks we need her. Can’t you get rid of her so I can wear my ring?” She giggled nervously. “I mean,
your
ring!”

Honey smiled. “Nobody’s going to notice that you’re not wearing it, Trixie. There must be five million people here. I’ll bet you could go around with a ring in your
nose like a Fiji Islander and your parents would never know the difference.”

It was eight o’clock before the crowd began to thin. Brian and Mart, who had been supervising the parking and departure of cars, came in then, ravenously hungry. Miss Trask, with Mr. Lytell still hovering at her elbow, served them huge platters of food. As the boys moved away from the table Brian said to Trixie: