The Secret of the Mansion (6 page)

“I wouldn’t go through that pile of filthy papers for

62 53 anything,” Honey said firmly. “It’s probably crawling with roaches. I agree with Jim. The desk is the place to look.”

But Trixie had already started riffling through the yellow sheets of faded newsprint. Jim and Honey watched her for a moment and then went into the study

to search the desk. After a while, they called out that the desk was locked and that the chest of drawers contained nothing but a few acorns apparently

left there by squirrels.

Jim refused to break the lock of the desk without his uncle’s permission. “I keep thinking those bottle tops may be worth something,” he said deridingly

as they joined Trixie in the living-room. Trixie worked on and on, and pretty soon they caught some of her enthusiasm and set to work on the other two

stacks which contained old magazines and pamphlets.

Trixie was nearing the bottom of her pile, and she was hot and dusty and discouraged. She was about to admit that she had been wrong when she came across

a thick Sunday edition which was more neatly folded than any of the others. The newspaper was so old that it tore apart at the creases when she tried to

unfold it, and a large, green-tinged brass key fell out at her feet.

“Oh, joy!” she cried triumphantly, “I’ll bet this fits a treasure chest. Now all we have to do is find the chest.”

63 54 Jim examined the key carefully. “It looks more like an old-fashioned door key to me,” he said. “But I can’t imagine why Uncle James hid it under that

pile of papers.”

They tried the front, back, and side doors unsuccessfully, and in the end Jim dropped the key into his silver mug. “It may fit a closet or something in

one of the upstairs rooms,” he said. “But we can’t go up there. The staircase is boarded up, you know.”

“We could climb in through one of the windows,” Trixie interrupted, but Jim shook his head.

“I don’t like to do that,” he said soberly. “This is my uncle’s home, not mine. He must have boarded up the top floors for some good reason of his own.”

They were all staring up at the ceiling wondering what could be up there and why Mr. Frayne wanted it kept a secret, when they heard the sound of something

moving rapidly across the floor over their heads.

Honey gave a little scream and clutched Jim’s arm. “I’ve thought all along this house was haunted,” she whispered nervously.

Even Trixie felt creepy for a moment and then she joined in Jim’s laughter. “Squirrels, of course,” Jim said. “Or field mice.”

“Oh, Jim,” Trixie said, “I’d like to explore up there.”

64 55 “Well, I wouldn’t,” Honey said emphatically. “At this point I’d rather see a ghost than a mad squirrel.”

“Silly!” Trixie hooted. “What’s the idea, Jim, of scaring Honey half to death with crazy stories of mad animals?”

“They’re not crazy,” Jim said seriously. “I saw a mad weasel once, and I’ll never forget it. I was fishing at a pond in the woods, and it came straight

at me, running like fury. Lucky for me, I had hip-length rubber boots on, or I probably wouldn’t be here to tell the tale. I killed it with a rock and

saved the body to show to Dad, who was a naturalist, you know. He said the weasel had hydrophobia. There was a mad dog scare around the countryside that

August and Dad said an infected dog had probably bitten the weasel.”

Trixie sniffed. “I never heard of such a thing,” she declared. “I’ll bet you made the whole thing up.”

Jim’s face flushed with anger, and he stared at her through narrowed green eyes. “There’s one thing you’d better find out right now, Trixie Belden,” he

said evenly. “I never make things up. That was one of the reasons why I left Jonesy. He didn’t believe me when I told him I’d won a scholarship to college.

I didn’t bother to show him the letter from the principal of my high school. I just left.” And without another word he stalked across

65 56 the room and vaulted out of the window.

Trixie felt hot and cold with shame. She knew she

had the habit of hurting people’s feelings sometimes, without meaning to. Her mother and father and even her older brothers had often told her she should

count to ten

before jumping to conclusions, but she never seemed to remember in time. Hot tears burned back of her eyes, and she had to swallow hard before she could

call out, “I’m sorry, Jim. I didn’t mean it.”

There was no answer, and Honey said quietly, “Don’t feel so badly, Trixie. Jim’s a very sensitive boy, but he thinks a lot of you. He told me so this morning

when he came back after making sure that Bobby was all right. He said it took an awful lot of courage for you to run through the woods right after a mad

dog had been there.” Shyly she tucked Trixie’s arm through hers. I wish I wasn’t such a fraidy cat. I sat there on the window sill so scared I couldn’t

move and watched you two tearing through the brambles and wondered what it would be like not to be afraid all the time.”

Trixie swallowed again and felt better. “Are you really afraid all the time, Honey? Honest?”

Honey nodded. “Yes, and especially at night. I have awful nightmares sometimes, and when I was sick, I had nightmares all the time. 1 keep dreaming over

and over

66 57 that I’m in a tiny little sealed room, and a great big heavy balloon is pressing down on me. It keeps pressing down until I can’t breathe, and then

I wake up screaming.”

Trixie squeezed her arm sympathetically. “Gosh, it must be awful. I haven’t had any nightmares since I was a kid.”

“It is awful,” Honey said. “Miss Trask says it’s just nerves, and when I start eating better I’ll get over it.” “Start eating better?” Trixie stared at

her in amazement. “Why you ate as much as Jim and I did at lunch today. We all ate like pigs!”

Honey flushed with embarrassment, and she bent down to hide her face as she folded the napkin back into the empty basket. “I know I did, Trixie,” she said,

“but I was hungry today for the first time in my life. I guess,” she added quietly, “that was because today was the first time, too, that I ever remember

having had any fun.” She straightened suddenly. “I’m glad now that my family moved up here. If they hadn’t, why, g-gosh, I might never have met you and

Jim!”

67 58 Copperhead!

When Trixie got home, she found her mother dressed for her Garden Club meeting in the village.

“I’m leaving Bobby in your care,” she said as she slid behind the wheel of the station wagon. “You might keep him with you while you do some weeding. Don’t

forget to gather the eggs and throw out a canful of scratch for the chickens around five o’clock. Your father

filled the mash hoppers this morning, but you had better check the water.” She turned on the ignition. “I did the luncheon dishes and the dusting and made

a big pitcher of lemonade. There are plenty of cookies in the crock. I thought you might like to have your new friend to tea.”

“Oh, Moms!” Trixie jumped on the running board and kissed her mother swiftly. “You’re just wonderful. You think of everything.” Thoughtfully, she watched

the station wagon roll down the driveway under the arch of crabapple trees. “I’m the lucky duck, not Honey,” she told herself. “I have what she calls fun

all the time. From now on, I’m going to work like a beaver to show Dad and

68 59 Moms how glad I am I belong to them and not to Honey’s father and mother.”

Bobby began to wail then, as he always did when he woke up from his nap. Trixie raced upstairs and found him sprawled across his bunk, sleepily rubbing

his eyes. “I’m too hot,” he howled. “And I won’t wear overalls. I wanna wear my bathing suit, and you squirt me with the hose.”

“I’ll squirt you, later,” Trixie said soothingly. “Come on, Bobby, I’ll help you with your overall straps and sandals.”

“Don’t wanna wear sandals,” he said crossly, squirming away from her. “Wanna go barefoot.”

‘All right,” Trixie agreed, “but you’ve got to stay right with me in the garden, then. You can help me weed, and then, afterward, we can have lemonade and

cookies out on the terrace.”

Bobby cheered up immediately. “I can weed, too,” he announced as they walked across the lawn to the garden path. “Mummy showed me this morning which little

plants were lamb’s quarters and which ones were carrots.” He grinned. “I picked an awful lot of carrots first before she ‘splained to me.”

“You can pull up the purslane,” Trixie told him. “They’re easy to pick and good to eat. Better than lettuce.”

69 60 “I won’t eat ‘em,” Bobby said firmly. “‘Member the time I ate poison ivy?”

Trixie shuddered. Bobby had heard his older brothers saying that the Indians obtained immunity from poison ivy and poison sumac by chewing the leaves. He

had been a very sick little boy for several days. “No, you’d better not eat anything,” Trixie cautioned.

” ‘Cept lemonade and cookies,” Bobby said as he raced ahead of her and tripped over the patch of exposed tree roots.

“Oh, Bobby,” Trixie cried impatiently. “Must you trip over roots every single time?”

He scrambled to his feet and picked up his trowel and pail. “Not every single time,” he said with injured pride. “Once I tripped over a big black snake,

right here. He was so long,” he said stretching out his arms full length. “And he didn’t bite me, or anything.”

“Of course, he didn’t bite you,” Trixie said. “Snakes don’t go around biting people.” She hustled the little boy into the fenced-in garden and closed the

gate just in time to keep out Reddy who liked nothing better than to run up and down the neat green rows in pursuit of an imaginary rabbit. Reddy sat outside

the gate for a while and looked sulkily after them. Then he grew tired of waiting and set off after a squirrel.

70 61 Bobby promptly sat down on a carefully tied-up head of lettuce and announced that he was going to dig for worms instead of weeding. “You’re worse

than Reddy,” Trixie scolded him as she moved him to the path. “Now, stay right there and don’t dig up anything except this purslane.”

Trixie noticed, then, that the tomato seedlings her mother had transplanted that morning were drooping sadly in the hot sun. These plants would bear a late

crop of green tomatoes which her mother would pick just before the first frost, and they would ripen slowly indoors so the family could have fresh tomatoes

up until Christmas. “I’d better water them after I feed the chickens,” Trixie said. “Otherwise, they’re sure to die.”

She worked along the row of broccoli plants, weeding and cultivating with her scratcher but thinking mostly about Jim and Honey. I hope Jim isn’t still

mad at me, she thought with a little pang of regret. I’ll apologize the first thing in the morning. She began to wonder, then, whether old Mr. Frayne would

ever get well and whether or not there really was hidden wealth up at the old Mansion. She was lost in thought when she was startled out of her preoccupation

by Bobby’s screams.

She scrambled stiffly up from her knees, momen-

71 62 tarily blinded by the bright sunlight shining in her eyes. Then she saw that the gate was open and there was no sign of Bobby.

“Trixie!” he screamed again, and she realized that he was somewhere in the woods just outside the garden. For a moment panic seized her; Bobby’s screams

usually meant that he was in trouble, for Bobby was almost always in some sort of trouble. But then she remembered how he had screamed earlier that day

just to attract her attention, and she called out sharply, “What is the matter, Bobby? Where are you?”

“I’m here,” he called, and she saw him, then, at the edge of the woods waving a forked stick. “I caught a snake,” he said, half-crying, half-laughing. “But

he didn’t like it, and you were wrong. He did bite me.” He stuck out his bare foot as she ran to him. “He bitted me on the toe. It burns.”

Panic swept back over Trixie as she saw the drops of blood on Bobby’s big toe. It could have been a copperhead, she thought wildly. Oh, no, no. It must

have been a black snake. They get very bold when they’re teased. Aloud she asked in as calm a voice as she could muster, “What did it look like, Bobby?

Was it a black snake? Tell me quickly, was it long and black?”

Without even waiting for his answer, she made a

72 63 hasty tourniquet with her handkerchief and a stick and twisted it tightly around the bleeding toe.

Bobby’s lower lip began to tremble as he sensed her panic. “It wasn’t black,” he sobbed. “It was sort of brown with spots and stripes. Ooh, that’s too tight.

It hurts.”

But Trixie had already scooped him up into her arms and was running back to the house as fast as she could. “It was probably nothing but a harmless little

garter snake,” she kept telling herself to keep her legs from buckling under her. “But it might have been a copperhead. Oh, why did I let him go barefoot?”

she reproached herself. “Why didn’t I keep him in the garden with me?”

She laid him gently on the living-room sofa and ran upstairs, calling, “Lie perfectly still, Bobby. Everything’s going to be all right. just lie still.”

In her father’s medicine cabinet, she found a new razor blade wrapped in sterile paper. just then, she heard someone calling her name, and, looking out