The Mystery on the Mississippi
Your TRIXIE BELDEN Library
1 The Secret of the Mansion
2 The Red Trailer Mystery
3 The Gatehouse Mystery
4 The Mysterious Visitor
5 The Mystery Off Glen Road
6 Mystery in Arizona
7 The Mysterious Code
8 The Back Jacket Mystery
9 The Happy Valley Mystery
10 The Marshland Mystery
11 The Mystery at Bob-White Cave
12 The Mystery of the Blinking Eye
13 The Mystery on Cobbett’s Island
14 The Mystery of the Emeralds
15 Mystery on the Mississippi
16 The Mystery of the Missing Heiress
17 The Mystery of the Uninvited Guest
18 The Mystery of the Phantom Grasshopper
19 The Secret of the Unseen Treasure
20 The Mystery Off Old Telegraph Road
21 The Mystery of the Castaway Children
22 Mystery at Mead’s Mountain
23 The Mystery of the Queen’s Necklace
24 Mystery at Saratoga
25 The Sasquatch Mystery
26 The Mystery of the Headless Horseman
27 The Mystery of the Ghostly Galleon
28 The Hudson River Mystery
29 The Mystery of the Velvet Gown
30 The Mystery of the Midnight Marauder
31 Mystery at Maypenny’s
32 The Mystery of the Whispering Witch
33 The Mystery of the Vanishing Victim
34 The Mystery of the Missing Millionaire
Copyright © 1977, 1965 by
Western Publishing Company, Inc.
All rights reserved. Produced in U.S.A.
GOLDEN®, GOLDEN PRESS®, and TRIXIE BELDEN® are registered trademarks of Western Publishing Company, Inc.
No part of this book may be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from the publisher.
ISBN 0-307-21523-7
All names, characters, and events in this story are entirely fictitious.
Promise of Adventure ● 1
THE DOOR of the Bob-White clubhouse burst open, and Trixie Belden, fourteen, rushed in. Her cheeks were flushed, her sandy curls in disarray, and her big blue eyes round with excitement. Honey Wheeler, her best friend, followed close behind her.
“Guess what!” Trixie called to the club members inside.
“A black bear is right on your heels!” her brother Mart said, and, in mock fear, he slammed the door through which the girls had just entered.
Trixie dropped into a chair, pulled Honey into the one next to her, and sat gasping and laughing. “Mart, it’s a thousand times more exciting than that. You couldn’t ever guess in a hundred years!”
“They’ve discovered a large quantity of oil in our flower garden.”
“Guess again. You’re not even warm.”
“There’s gold in them thar hills back of the Wheelers’ game preserve,” Mart suggested.
“No, but you’re getting nearer. It does have something to do with Honey’s father.”
“Something to do with Dad?” Honey’s older brother, Jim, called from a corner of the big clubhouse room. “How come? Dad was just leaving for the commuter train when I came over here. What is it, Trixie?”
“If you’ll give me one little minute, I’ll tell you... but then, maybe I’d better wait till the others get here...
Mart jumped to his feet in protest. “Trixie Belden, you know you’ll never be able to hold out till all the Bob-Whites are together. Dan won’t get away from his job till evening, and Diana won’t even be back home for a month. Five of the seven Bob-Whites are here. That’s a quorum or whatever you call it. Come on, Trixie, out with it before you pop!”
“Well, then, here it is,” Trixie said slowly and importantly. “How’d you like to fly to St. Louis, Missouri-right to the place where the spaceships are made—where the factories are right at the airport, practically?”
“Golly... neat! Is it on the level, Trix?”Mart asked excitedly.
Trixie, her eyes dancing, nodded emphatically. “Mr. Wheeler has some business in St. Louis with one of the biggest aircraft manufacturers in the world!”
“So what?” her oldest brother, Brian, asked. “He often does that. That’s not news.”
“Well, this is! One of the executives flew here yesterday to talk to Honey and Jim’s father. He came in a big private plane. He’s going to fly back tomorrow, take Mr. Wheeler with him, and—”
“Take some of us along? Who? Which ones? Me?” Mart shouted.
“Not some of us. All of us! Every one of the Bob-Whites,” Honey said, then added soberly, “except Diana, ’cause she’s away, and maybe Dan can’t leave his job to go—but isn’t it exciting?”
“I’ll say!” Mart grabbed his cap. “I’ve got to tell Dan. He’s coaching those Little Leaguers today. Maybe the Park Board will let him take time off to go with us. Jeepers! On-the-spot inspection of a capsule that just may go into space!” He disappeared through the door.
“If he’d waited just a minute, I could have told him one thing,” Jim said seriously. “He should know it himself. All that spacecraft business is classified. We
won’t get within a mile of one of the f actories.”
“Yes, we will, Jim,” Trixie insisted. “Won’t we, Honey?”
“Daddy did say, Jim, that there’s an exhibit there that’ll be open to the public. We can at least see a capsule that carried some of the astronauts.”
“Don’t you think we can see anything of the space program?” Jim insisted. “I wish I’d had a chance to talk to Dad.”
“You can ask him this evening when he gets home from the city. There’s room on the plane for ten people—ten passengers, I mean, in addition to the crew. There’ll be only six of us, and that’s counting Dan. We have to be ready to leave, though, sometime tomorrow.”
“I can leave right now!” Brian said, his usually quiet voice loud with excitement. “Say—there’s lots more to St. Louis than just spaceships. Have you stopped to think that it’s on the Mississippi River? We could maybe take a steamboat to Hannibal; you know, right in Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer country. Or even to New Orleans...
“Wait a minute, Brian. We aren’t going to be there the rest of the summer, you know. How long did Dad say we’d be gone, Honey?” Jim asked his sister quickly.
“Less than a week,” Honey murmured. “Good-bye, New Orleans!” Brian said sadly. “Oh, well, I’ll settle for Hannibal or any other place on the river, in a steamboat!”
“Me, too. I’m so excited I’m about to explode!” Trixie took hold of Brian’s arm. “We’d better go break the news to Moms.”
Trixie and Brian hurried down the hill to Crab-apple Farm, which sprawled in simple, cozy comfort in the valley of the Catskills. A white picket fence spread its arms to enclose Mrs. Belden’s rose beds, an apple orchard, and the kitchen garden. Mr. Belden worked at the bank in the village, Sleepyside-on-the-Hudson, and Mrs. Belden was... well, she was just “Moms” to Brian, Mart, Trixie, and little Bobby... oh, yes, and to Reddy, their Irish setter.
On a rising slope above Crabapple Farm, the Wheeler home stood, surrounded by riding stables, a lake for swimming and skating, and a huge game preserve.
Brian and Jim, seniors at Sleepyside Junior-Senior High, and Trixie, Honey, and Mart were the original members of the club, the Bob-Whites of the Glen. The old Wheeler gatehouse was their beloved clubhouse. The Bob-Whites had pitched in with muscle, paint, and plaster, and now the house was sturdy and weathertight and attractively decorated inside. When Diana Lynch, Trixie’s age, had moved into a big house near the Wheelers, seeming
lonesome and lost, the Bob-Whites had invited her to join their club. Later on, Dan Mangan, the orphaned nephew of Regan, the Wheelers’ stableman, became the seventh member.
The Bob-Whites were a close-knit, loyal group, who worked together on many worthwhile projects to gather funds for UNICEF, Red Cross, and local and national relief needs. All of these endeavors had a way of turning into fantastic, oftentimes downright dangerous, adventures.
Trixie seemed to have a sixth sense that had often helped confused law officers to solve puzzling cases. When the Bob-Whites had been on vacation together, she and Honey had investigated mysteries on an Arizona dude ranch, an Iowa sheep farm, at a cabin in the Missouri Ozarks, in New York City, and even in their own small village of Sleepyside. With Honey, her valuable aide, Trixie expected someday to operate the Belden-Wheeler Detective Agency.
Just as they worked faithfully together, the Bob-Whites enjoyed good times most when they were together, especially since wherever Trixie went, there was bound to be excitement. “Trixie draws crooks to her like a magnet,” Mart once said. “She can spot one quicker’n a bloodhound.” It was no wonder, then, that they were fascinated with the possibilities of the promised plane trip to St. Louis.
They didn’t dream, though, as they packed for their journey, of the many dangers they would face before returning to their clubhouse at home.
As it turned out, Dan was able to go along on the trip, for a substitute took over his work. Diana, vacationing with her family, was the only Bob-White missing as they checked in at the Vacation Inn near the Lambert-St. Louis airport.
“I guess all the Bob-Whites had better get rooms close together,” Jim told his father as the registration clerk offered him a pen.
“You’re right; you’d better stick together,” his father answered. He would take a room down the hall but would spend much of his time at the home of the airplane executive, Mr. Brandio. “No one can predict what Trixie will be up to. You and the other boys must keep an eye on her. Mr. Brandio is going to let you have a car, Jim. The city is about an hour’s drive from here. Trixie can’t get far away unless you drive her.”
“Trixie doesn’t need to be watched, Daddy,” Honey told him. “Neither do I.”
“Of course not. I was only fooling. No, I wasn’t fooling altogether. Trixie has been in some pretty dangerous situations. Let’s have this trip be only fun. Right, Trixie?” He smiled at her warmly.
“I never hunt for cases,” Trixie insisted. “Can I help it if there are times when Honey and I just have to step in and help solve a mystery?”
“I guess not,” Mr. Wheeler answered soberly. “I guess not. I can’t help it, either, Trixie, if I’m relieved to know that you will all be quartered near to one another. Have fun, now! The car is parked in the back parking lot, Jim. Here’s the key. I’ll be in touch with you.”
Mart caught up the key and passed it on to Jim. “How do we get from here to Mr. Brandio’s factory, sir?”
“What for?” Mr. Wheeler asked.
“To see some of the space stuff. You know, one of the capsules that went to the moon... maybe the one that’s going to another planet.”
“Are you serious, Mart?”
“I sure am. What’s wrong?”
“It’s classified, that’s what,” Brian broke in. “We’d have told you that back at the clubhouse if you hadn’t gone hunting Dan so suddenly. All that business at the factories is classified. Isn’t that so, Mr. Wheeler?”
“I’m afraid it is. There’s an exhibit to be opened to the public later on. Say, I hope you’re not terribly disappointed. There are lots of other things to see in St. Louis. With the car you can hunt them out—”
“Thanks, Mr. Wheeler,” Trixie interrupted, frowning at Mart. “We’ll find lots of good places to go. Don’t you bother about us for one minute.”
“That’s good,” Mr. Wheeler said, relieved, and hurried to where Mr. Brandio waited in his car.
The boys carried the luggage from the motel office down the wide walk that circled the pool. Children splashed there, calling delightedly to one another. Overhead, jet planes were taking off and landing. Taxicabs roared in to discharge passengers and to pick up others. Maids hurried about making rooms ready for new occupants.
“This is our room right here,” Trixie told Honey, seeing the number on the door. Jim and Brian carried the girls’ bags inside. “You two are just next to us, and Dan and Mart are on the other side of you. Isn’t that right?”
“Right,” Jim agreed. “Whistle when you’re ready. We’ll decide then what we’ll do today.”
Inside their room, Trixie put her bag on a luggage rack. “I’ll just hang up my dresses. I don’t think I’ll need more than these two.” She opened the closet door, then whistled. “Say, Honey, I don’t believe the maid had quite finished getting this room ready. Someone must still be living here. At least, there’s something on this shelf that looks like a briefcase. I guess we were too anxious to get into our room—or the maid thought we were.”
Honey stood on tiptoe and looked around the closet. “There aren’t any clothes here, nothing but that briefcase.”
“I guess not. Maybe I’d better take it to the motel office. Some businessman must have left it. Heavens, I hope he hasn’t needed it. Of all the things to forget!” Trixie reached up to the shelf, and the briefcase fell to the floor, spilling papers. “Jeepers! It wasn’t zipped. Help me pick ’em up, please, Honey.”
The girls squatted on the floor and hastily gathered the contents together. Trixie was aware only of some yellow sheets heavily scribbled with figures, and a medley of graph paper. She tried to stuff them into the bulging case. She was so absorbed in what she was doing that she didn’t hear the door open. A gruff voice brought her, startled, to her feet. “Hand that over! It’s mine, young ladies!”
An angry-faced, dark-haired stranger grabbed the case from her hands roughly. His piercing black eyes flashed fire. “What do you mean by opening my dispatch case?”
Trixie, alarmed by the man’s fury, couldn’t answer. She stood as though hypnotized. Honey, too, was surprised into speechlessness.
The man tried hastily to stuff the papers back into the case, glaring at the trembling girls. “Don’t you know you shouldn’t touch other people’s property? What were you doing with my papers? Meddlers!” He gave Trixie a vicious nudge with his elbow.
Honey recovered her voice. “We didn’t even touch your old papers!” she said coldly.
“And we’ll thank you to take your belongings and get out of our room,” Trixie added. “There!” She slammed the door so hard it shook.
Honey went to the window and watched the tall, foreign-looking man stride down the pool walk. “Of all the rude people! I hope he misses his taxi and misses his plane. I hope—”
“Oh, rats, who cares about him?” Trixie answered. Honey turned from the window and laughed. “You do.”
“I do not, Honey Wheeler. I just.... Well, what did make him act so mean? There must have been something odd in that briefcase.”
“Yes. All those graphs were certainly strange. They had queer designs on them.”
“Honey, this motel is right near all those airplane factories.”
“He looked like a foreign agent, too!” Honey exclaimed. “Did you notice his eyes?”
“They’d bore a hole right through the walls. Golly, he almost hypnotized me.”
“Me, too. Gosh, Trixie, do you suppose he could be a spy?”
“Who knows? He acted kind of strange, for sure. Say, do you suppose those papers over there in the wastebasket belonged to him? The maid evidently didn’t empty it.”
“Maybe they are his.” Honey grasped the wastebasket and brought out a handful of crumpled papers. “Look at this!”
Trixie straightened them out on top of the dressing table. “Hmmm... more of that graph paper. He could have been copying plans. These sheets have figures all over them. And writing, too. There’s a map of the Mississippi River—and lo
ok at these queer drawings along the river!”
“Let me see. They’re not well drawn. Maybe he just sketched them for his children.”
“I don’t think so. I think they’re much more important than that.” Trixie folded the papers together and put them in her purse. “We’d better meet the boys and show them what we’ve found. Jim will know whether there’s anything odd about them. Let’s go, Honey.”
“You’d better not tell Jim and Brian how that man shoved you with his elbow. They’d knock his block off.”
“I thought that was what you were going to do,” Trixie said. “You turned on him like a wildcat.”
“I was scared—awfully scared, Trixie. I hope we never run into him again.”
“I... just... think... we... may,” Trixie said slowly and mysteriously. “I have one of my strange premonitions.”
Catfish Princess • 2
JIM, BRIAN, DAN, AND MART sat on a bench at the pool’s edge, waiting for the girls.
“Golly, Trix,” Dan said, “why do girls take so long to fix their faces or whatever they do? We could have been halfway to the city by this time.”
“Wait just a second, Dan.” Trixie fumbled in her purse and brought out the papers. “What do you think of these?” She leaned over the bench back and dropped the sheets in Jim’s lap.
“What are they? Where did you get them?” he asked curiously.
Honey told him. “... and you should have seen the way he looked when he found us picking up the papers from the floor.”
“He looked as though he could kill us!” Trixie said dramatically. “Do those papers look odd to you, Dan? Brian? Mart? What’s the matter with you, Jim? What’s so funny?”
“Nothing, Trix.Nothing.” Jim smothered a grin. “I can’t help laughing when I think that if Dad had waited just fifteen minutes longer, he’d have seen you put on your gumshoes and start sleuthing.”
“I’m not sleuthing. I just wanted to show you this stuff and ask you what you think I should do with it.”