The Black Jacket Mystery

  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 Black 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 (new)

  21 The Mystery of the Castaway Children (new)

  22 Mystery at Mead’s Mountain (new)

  Copyright © MCMIXI, MCMLXXVII by

  Western Publishing Company, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Produced in U.S.A.

  GOLDEN, GOLDEN PRESS®, and TRIXIE BELDEN® 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.

  0-307-21541-5

  All names, characters, and events In this story are entirely fictitious.

  An Emergency ● 1

  BOBBY! IF YOU DON’T hold still, I’ll never have you ready in time to catch your bus!” Trixie was trying her best to get her six-year-old brother into his winter overcoat.

  But Bobby had broken away again and, with his coat dangling from one arm, had plunged under the dresser in search of his missing crayons. His voice came out muffled. “Gotta take my crayons this morning. Miss Elephant says so!”

  “Oh, dear!” Thirteen-year-old Trixie ran her hands despairingly through her unruly mop of sandy curls. “I keep trying to tell you her name’s Miss Elliman, and you better call her that. Elli-man. Not Ele-phant!” she scolded. “And hurry up!”

  “Got ’um!” Bobby wriggled out from under the dresser clutching a handful of crayons and a crumpled box. “Zip me!”

  Trixie hustled him into the overcoat and zipped it hastily. “Now sit down just half a minute, and I’ll be ready!”

  She knew it would be a long half minute, but there were certain rules in the Belden household about tidying up bedrooms before leaving for school, and she had no choice. She whipped the covers off her bed and started to remake it.

  “Make tracks, small squaw, or you’ll miss the bus!” It was Mart, poking his head in at the door. Mart was eleven months older than Trixie and was often mistaken for her twin. They had the same sturdy build and blond hair, but Mart kept his in a short crew cut to avoid the curls that made the “twin” appearance stronger. Lately he had grown a couple of inches taller than Trixie and was extremely proud of it, except that he was growing out of his clothing.

  “Oh, Mart, could you—just this once—take Bobby to the bus?” Trixie appealed.

  “Seems to me you get paid to do that,” Mart teased. “Not a chance, sister dear!”

  Trixie swallowed hard and tinned back to the bed-making, feeling very sorry for herself. She didn’t see Mart crook his finger mysteriously at Bobby, or Bobby get up hastily and tiptoe to the door to join his big brother and then disappear.

  Trixie smoothed the covers and folded her quilt. “There! I won t be another minute!” she flung over her shoulder toward the spot where Bobby had been sitting. Then she stopped short and whirled around. He was gone.

  Trixie ran to the window and looked out. Mart, with Bobby firmly by the hand, was going out the front gate into Glen Road. He had been teasing her, as usual.

  “You’re late, dear. What’s wrong with you this morning?” Her mother came into the room.

  Trixie sighed and started to brush her unruly curls into a semblance of neatness. “I overslept. I was awake most all night, thinking about Dolores and Lupe and the earthquake, wondering what the B.W.G.’s could do to help.”

  Dolores and Lupe Perez were pen pals of Trixie’s and of her best friend, Honey Wheeler. Their letters, received yesterday, had told of an earthquake that had partially destroyed their small village of San Isidro, located in a Mexican coast state.

  The biggest tragedy to the Mexican girls had been the destruction of their school library. The B.W.G.’s, a secret club that Trixie and Honey had organized with their brothers a few months before, had gathered a lot of old schoolbooks for the small library and had found the Mexican girls delighted with the gift. They had written many times since, enthusiastically, about how much the books had helped them understand their neighbors to the north.

  “Weve got to find more books for them,” Trixie told her mother.

  “You will, dear. I’m sure of it.” Mrs. Belden smiled. She knew that Trixie was always full of ideas. Some of the ideas might plunge Trixie and her brothers and friends into all sorts of complications, but somehow they always came out of them safely. Usually, it was due to Trixie’s “detectiving,” with Honey Wheeler’s assistance.

  A few minutes later, Trixie sped down the long path in front of the neat little farmhouse and through the front gate of the white picket fence. She was well bundled up against the late February chill of the small but lovely valley on the east shore of the great Hudson River. It had snowed a couple days before, but the road to Sleepyside Junior-Senior High School was always the first to be cleared. Which meant, alas, that the Beldens and their next-door neighbors, Honey and her adopted brother Jim, had few days off from school because of snow-blocked roads.

  Honey and Jim were waiting with Mart at the bus stop as Trixie staggered up, breathless.

  The high-school bus was just coming around the comer into Glen Road, and Bobby’s grade-school bus had already left with Bobby safely aboard.

  “Whew! I made it!” Trixie announced between gasps. She knew better than to thank Mart in front of their friends for taking Bobby to the bus for her. Mart would have been embarrassed. He always tried to “play it cool,” as he called it. She decided to save her thanks till they were alone.

  Honey was taller and slimmer than Trixie, although they were practically the same age. Her shoulder-length light brown hair and her soft hazel eyes had brought her the nickname of Honey. Everyone used it because it fitted her so well.

  Honey’s father was a millionaire. Their Manor House estate, that touched the borders of the Beldens’ small Crabapple Farm, was a huge one. It had stood empty for several years before the Wheelers had bought it and moved in the previous summer. Mr. Wheeler had had the underbrush cleared off, a private game preserve established for hunting, and the mansion itself redecorated. His stables, in the charge of Bill Regan as head groom, held the finest of saddle horses.

  Honey, an only child, had been lonely till they moved into Manor House. Her parents were often away from home, and she had been practically brought up by servants.

  But after she and Trixie had met and become friends at once, all had changed. They had had several exciting adventures together, during one of which they had helped Jim Frayne escape a cruel stepfather. Now adopted by the Wheelers, fifteen-year-old Jim was everything that Honey had dreamed a big brother could be.

  Trixie’s two older brothers and Jim Frayne were all members of the Bob-Whites of the Glen, the secret club that the girls had thought up last fall.

  “Did you manage to think of any way the B.W.G.’s can find more books for the San Isidro school?” Honey asked as the bus drew up and stopped for them.

 
“Sort of,” Trixie admitted. “But it’s still only a glimmer. It could be fabulous if we can work it out!”

  “Here she goes again, straight into orbit!” Mart sang out and groaned loudly.

  Jim chuckled. “It’s been much too quiet since the antique-sale excitement died down. I felt we were due for a launching soon!”

  “Let’s sit by ourselves,” Trixie whispered hastily and led the way to the empty rear of the bus. The B.W.G.’s always had their choice of seats because most of the other pupils of Sleepyside Junior-Senior High School lived closer to town than they did.

  Mart promptly followed his sister and Honey up the aisle and Jim went along with a mischievous smile. They plumped down in the seat ahead of the two girls, so they wouldn’t miss a word.

  Trixie shielded her mouth with her hand as she leaned close to Honey. “I thought maybe we could have an ice carnival on your lake the end of this month. You know, before the ice starts to melt,” she

  whispered. “A benefit show!”

  “Marvelousl” Honey whispered. “Go on!”

  Trixie was so excited as the thoughts started racing through her brain that she forgot to whisper, and her voice rose sharply, “We’ll have games and skating races and we’ll give away prizes—”

  Mart’s voice came from the seat ahead. “Our esteemed treasurer will love the part about prizes,” it said loudly, “considering the irrefutable fact that the club treasury is now practically empty. Madam President seems to have taken no cognizance of the fact.” Mart liked to try to puzzle Trixie by using big words he was certain she wouldn’t understand. Usually he succeeded, but this time Trixie only gave a disdainful but unladylike snort and resumed her whispered conversation with Honey.

  Brian, Trixie’s sixteen-year-old brother, was club treasurer. He was a senior at Sleepyside, having skipped a grade, and was getting ready to go to college next year to start studying to become a doctor. Brian was tall like his father and had the same dark good looks. Between his schoolwork and the chores he did, both at home and helping with the Wheeler horses, he was always busy. His day started early and ended late, but he always kept some time for the Bob-Whites along the way.

  “Have you tried out your latest brainstorm on our big brother?” Mart interrupted to ask.

  “I haven’t seen Brian today, but I’m sure he’ll think of something helpful,” Trixie told him coolly. “He always does.” She paused pointedly and then added sweetly, “Why, even you two might come up with an idea if you strained your tiny brains a little!”

  “Ouch! She hit me!” Mart pretended to hold his head. “Unfair blow!”

  “Silly character!” Trixie sniffed and went back to whispering to Honey.

  The bus stopped just then to take on a crowd of their friends. The laughter and chatter and greetings put an end to any hope Mart might have had of thinking up a sharp answer. And any further talk about Trixie’s brand-new carnival plans had to be postponed.

  But all the rest of the day, whenever Trixie and Honey had met briefly in the locker room or the corridors on their way to classes, they had exchanged quick, excited whispers. “Tickets, posters to be made, prizes—where are we going to get them?” Trixie would ask. “What else are we forgetting? What are we going to need first?”

  “Muscles for building the booths,” Honey would answer with a giggle. “That means Jim and Mart. And Brian to drive his jalopy around Sleepyside handing out our posters after Jim finishes lettering them—and, oh, jillions of things!”

  So it went till they were on the bus hurrying home to try out the idea on their parents. Both of them knew it would mean a lot of hard work to get the ice carnival put on, but they felt up to it. All the Bob-Whites had regular chores for which their parents paid them a few dollars a week, and if it wouldn’t mean neglecting those chores, or halfdoing them, they were sure their parents wouldn’t object. Besides, it was for a good cause.

  Trixie watched her friend hurry up the long, wide driveway to the Manor House. In the late, winter afternoon sunshine, her home, sitting among its snow-covered lawns, looked as cold as an ice palace. “I’m glad our house isn’t on a hill,” Trixie thought. “Ours is lots smaller but it’s lots homier.’ ” And she added with a contented smile, “We can always count on Moms being there to say hello.”

  That last was something Honey couldn’t always depend on, Trixie knew. Her father’s business connections made it necessary for her mother to be very social. And lots of times they had to rush off to Washington or some other place at a moment’s notice. When they did, there was only Miss Trask, the housekeeper, to be “family.” She was a very kindly person and fond of Honey, but she couldn’t take the place of Honey’s real folks.

  “Guess we Beldens are lucky not to be rich!” Trixie chuckled to herself as she started up the road toward her own small home.

  There would be warmth in the sunny Belden kitchen, and Moms would be bustling about, starting dinner. Dad would soon be home from his job at the bank in Sleepyside, and he liked to smell meat roasting and cake baking.

  Moms would be wearing one of Mr. Beldens mother’s big, old-fashioned, starched, white aprons. It wasn’t that she needed such a big one, but it was because Dad’s mother and grandmother had worn them in that very same kitchen. There had been Beldens at Crabapple Farm for six generations, and there was even a rumor that Washington Irving had boarded with them while he was writing “Rip Van Winkle.”

  “And they all wore aprons,” Trixie thought grimly. “Glad I don’t have to marry a Belden. My house is going to be run by push buttons. I may not even have a kitchen!”

  With that hopeful thought, she went around to the kitchen door to scrape the snow off her rubber boots. As she came in sight of the rear door, she was astonished to recognize Starlight, one of the Wheelers’ horses, tied close by.

  Somebody from the Wheelers’ must be visiting, but who?

  The window of the service porch was open a few inches, and a big, masculine voice that she knew at once boomed out. “I wouldn’t have bothered you with it, Mrs. Belden,” Regan, the Wheelers’ head groom, was saying, “but Miss Trask said you or Mr. Belden might have some idea what I can do. It’s got me beside myself, worrying.”

  Trixie had never heard big, red-haired Regan speak in just that tone before. He never seemed to worry about anything except when she or the boys or Honey had been running the horses too much or had forgotten to clean the tack after a ride. And in those cases, he got just plain mad and let them know it at once. Most of the time, though, he was good-natured and easygoing, and he and Tom, the chauffeur, had lots of jokes together.

  Trixie felt sure that the trouble, whatever it was, had nothing to do with the horses her brothers and Jim had exercised this morning, as usual. Regan would have had a ready answer for anything concerning them.

  He was speaking again. “Its something I’m hoping to keep from any of the youngsters. There’s no telling how they’d feel about it if they suspected the truth.”

  Trixie gasped out loud, and then clapped her hand over her mouth. This was getting worse every minute. She had no right to stand here and listen to anything that sounded as serious as this.

  It took a lot of willpower to stifle her curiosity and turn away, but she did it. She hurried around the house to the front door.

  She took pains to close the front door loudly as she went in, and she sang a little as she strode along the hallway toward the kitchen. She hoped they would hear her.

  Regan was still there, but there was a smile on his ruddy face as he stood at the door, cap in hand. Trixie was just in time to hear his parting words. “It sounds like the best idea, Mrs. Belden, and thanks a lot. If it doesn’t work out, I don’t know what more I can do. It could turn out good if I’m lucky, or just make things more mixed up.”

  Mrs. Belden nodded soberly. “It’s worth trying. Good luck on it, anyhow, Regan. I only wish we could do more to help.”

  Regan put on his cap, gave Trixie a nod and a brief smile, and wi
th a quick “Good-bye now,” left.

  “What’s bothering him?” Trixie tried to make her curiosity sound casual as she helped herself to a stalk of celery and munched on it.

  “Something that doesn’t concern you,” her mother told her lightly, but Trixie heard her add under her breath as she turned away, “thank goodness!” It was all very mysterious. And Trixie loved mysteries. Her mind kept flitting back to Regan and his “troubles” all the time that she was telling her mother the plans that were shaping up for the book benefit. It wasn’t just idle curiosity. All the Beldens and their friends liked the broad-shouldered groom a lot, and if Trixie could find out what was bothering him, it was possible that they could do something to help him.

  How could she learn what it was without asking questions? She couldn’t ask her mother again. There must be a way, and Trixie meant to find it!

  Mysterious Errand • 2

  I THINK I’LL PHONE Honey and just tell her that it’s okay with you if we start working on our carnival plans right away,” Trixie said suddenly, setting aside the bowl of potatoes she was about to peel.

  Mrs. Belden sighed. “You have all evening to do that. Right now I hear Bobby running around up in your room. He’s had a long nap since he came from school, and you know how fast he can turn your room into a wreck once he starts romping!”

  “Gleeps! I’d better get him dressed and out of there!”

  As Trixie hurried up the stairs, she could hear the kitchen extension ringing. She was tempted to come back to see if Honey was calling to report what her dad had said about the carnival plans, but a crash from her bedroom quickly changed her mind. She dashed there to see what mischief Bobby had gotten into this time.

  “Oh, Bobby!My china cat!” The antique figure of a spotted, green-eyed cat was smashed into a hundred small pieces that were scattered over the floor around an overturned chair. Small Bobby was still sprawled on his hands and knees in the wreckage, where the toppling chair had dumped him.