The Mystery of the Uninvited Ghost Page 10

  “Still?” Trixie repeated alertly.

  “Dad was going to use it Thursday morning, but it was gone, and he used Jim’s instead. I remember because Jim wondered how he had put the first scratch on the blue paint.”

  “Did you mention that similar bike at the inn?” Trixie asked.

  Honey said, “No. Should I have?”

  “Search me,” Trixie said, falling into step with Honey to follow Hallie and Di to the sewing room.

  There Miss Trask was in command. A blond girl sat at the sewing machine. Heavy braids were wrapped around her head, like a crown, above a thin, pretty face. Warm brown eyes sparkled behind thick glasses. She flashed a bright smile, pausing in her work only long enough to repeat names when Miss Trask made introductions.

  Her name was Ella Kline, and she did alterations for the Bride’s Shop, as well as mending for Glen Road Inn, where she had a room. “Ella will live in while our project is in progress,” Miss Trask said.

  Just then, Ella needed something from the cutting table. She swung up painfully from her chair on crutches. At once, Trixie’s mental computer did some calculating: Glen Road Inn plus Ella Kline—did that equal the elusive wheelchair?

  Usually Trixie paid little attention to clothes and fidgeted over dressmaking demands on her time. Today she stood quietly on a platform during the careful fitting of a tissue pattern. Miss Trask noticed and congratulated her. For an instant, Trixie stared blankly, then told Miss Trask, “I’m thinking.” After a few seconds, she looked down into Miss Trask’s eyes and saw the curiosity there. With Ella within earshot, Trixie couldn’t say, “Ella Kline needs a wheelchair, and I wonder if she ordered that one that was stolen.” Instead, Trixie gulped and asked, “Miss Trask, did you manage to get in touch with Miss Ryks?”

  “I still haven’t been able to find her in,” Miss Trask answered, then went back to her fitting.

  “If you think Juliana would approve, we—”

  “What am I to approve?” Juliana sang out, entering the room with a waltzing step. Her hands were full of envelopes, which she held up and let fall in a white flutter. “Everybody’s coming! Isn’t it wonderful?” Her golden tulip ring flashed its throatful of diamonds. Trixie knew that the day before she would have felt like dancing with Juliana. But now that ring reminded her of Dan. Where was he? Why had he run?

  Juliana spun around to face Trixie. “What am I to okay?”

  “Oh!” Trixie pushed the thought of Dan aside. She said hurriedly, “We wonder if you approve of our inviting Miss Ryks to your—”

  Hallie loudly cleared her throat. To cover the slip Trixie had almost made, Honey interrupted, “—to tea to get acquainted before the wedding.”

  “So she won’t feel strange and out of place,” Di finished.

  “That’s a very kind suggestion,” Juliana said. Every girl in the room heaved a sigh of relief. “Okay, then, how about Tuesday afternoon at our house?” Trixie said quickly.

  “At two o’clock,” Di put in. She added lamely, “I mean, that sounds like a very good time to meet a stranger. At two o’clock, I mean. On Tuesday.”

  “Yes,” Juliana said, looking slightly dazed. “A very good time. I’ll be there, Trixie.” As she left the room, she looked at Di and shook her head in bewilderment.

  Trixie giggled. “Di, if Juliana asks why you’re setting the time for my guests to call, just say that you’re my new social secretary.”

  “Now, Trixie, what did you really mean to ask?” inquired Miss Trask.

  “I only thought it might be a good idea to ask Miss Ryks to Juliana’s shower. I’d be happy to deliver the invitation personally.”

  Trixie saw the disappointment in Hallie’s black eyes before they were hidden by dark lashes. Quickly Trixie added, “Hallie and I could bike down to the inn after dinner. Okay, Hallie?”

  Hallie’s smile was the answer.

  “That’s an excellent idea,” Miss Trask said. “Now, stand still, Trixie. I’m almost finished fitting this pattern.”

  When Hallie and Trixie reached home, Mrs. Belden was frying chicken for an early dinner. Peering into the skillet, Trixie asked, “One chicken for our mob, Moms? I thought you were baking a ham today.”

  “One chicken will serve five of us. The boys called. They’re with Jim and are having supper with Mr. Maypenny,” Mrs. Belden answered somewhat abstractedly. “I do wish I knew what’s going on. I’ve lost a whole baked ham! I can’t keep track of my own kitchen.”

  “Is there something I can do?” Trixie asked worriedly. It wasn’t like her mother to get so upset.

  “Hallie and I are supposed to take a shower invitation to Miss Ryks at the inn after dinner. Okay?”

  “Fine!” Mrs. Belden exclaimed. “Just don’t touch my cupboards!”

  Bobby was sitting alone on the steps when the girls whizzed down the lane on bicycles. He waved. Trixie said, “Bobby’s in some new phase. He hasn’t been tagging after us lately.”

  “I kind of like it when he tags along,” Hallie retorted. When they reached the inn, she headed for the back door. “Have to see my friend, the cook.” Trixie went in the front door, and to her surprise, the desk clerk recognized her. “Are you here to see Miss Ryks?”

  “Yes, please, if she’s in.”

  “I’m sure of it. Her nephew, Dick Ryks, passed by here a few minutes ago. He visited somebody up on the third floor before calling on his aunt.”

  The moustached nephew answered Trixie’s tap on the door of room 214. Trixie introduced herself and explained about the shower. The man said he was Dick Ryks and took the invitation. “When is this shindig?” he asked.

  “Tuesday,” Trixie told him.

  He shrugged. “I’ll put Aunt Kate in a taxi. But you’ll have to bring her back. I’ve got plans for that day.”

  Trixie promised Brian’s jalopy for a taxi, then asked, “May I speak to her now?”

  Dick shrugged again and chewed his ragged moustache. “No can do. The old gal’s asleep.”

  Neither Trixie nor the nephew mentioned their encounter at the airport. Trixie left by way of the service entrance and walked around the building to the kitchen door. There she found Hallie with a tall glass of lemonade in her hand. The cook was preparing an order that had just come in from room 214, while a maid waited at the table with Hallie.

  As the cook handed the tray to the maid, Hallie bounced up. To Trixie’s amazement, Hallie seemed to deliberately dump her lemonade all over the maid.

  “I’m sorry,” Hallie said. “Here. Give me your cap. I’ll carry the tray while you change your uniform. Room two-fourteen, you said?” And she was on her way before the cook could voice any objection.

  Hallie returned almost at once. She took off the cap, thanked the cook for the lemonade, and pulled Trixie out of the kitchen.

  “Why’d you do such a rude thing?” Trixie demanded sternly.

  Hallie’s eyes widened enormously while she whispered, “Trixie, guess what! That tray was ordered for Miss Ryks, but she wasn’t in the room! The bathroom door was open. There was no place to hide!”

  “Gleeps!” Trixie gulped. “I just talked to that Dick Ryks and gave him the invitation. Wasn’t he there either?”

  “Oh, sure. He was sitting by the window in her wheelchair, with his feet on a table and a pile of magazines on the floor.”

  “I don’t get it,” Trixie admitted. “I want to stop at the desk for a minute. I have a question to ask that clerk.”

  The gossipy clerk looked surprised, and so did Hallie, when Trixie didn’t mention Miss Ryks. Instead, she asked about Ella Kline.

  “Yes,” the clerk answered. “She has a room up on the third floor, but she isn’t in right now. In fact, I believe she can t be reached for a week.”

  “I know,” Trixie told him. “She’s working for my friends the Wheelers. Sewing.”

  “That’s what she does here,” the clerk said.

  “She must find it hard,” Trixie said speculatively, “to manage her crutche
s on these slick stairs and halls. I would think she could get along better with a wheelchair like Miss Ryks has.”

  “Funny you should mention that,” said the desk clerk. “Miss Ryks’s chair is rented from Miss Kline. Since Miss Ryks will be with us such a short time, she didn’t find it convenient to bring her own chair.”

  “A short time?” Trixie repeated.

  The clerk laced his fingers and leaned over his high desk, all set to gossip. “I thought she might have told you that she’s only with us through the first week in August.”

  “She’ll be here for the wedding at the Wheelers?”

  “I’m sure of it. She made quite a point of letting all of us know that she’s well connected socially.”

  Trixie caught her breath. “Thank you,” she said. The clerk didn’t seem to know what he was being thanked for, but he said, Tm sure you’re welcome.” Trixie and Hallie left the desk hurriedly.

  On their way out, they passed a pigeon-shaped, overdressed short woman, who was busily stripping bracelets and rings from her arms and hands. As she advanced on the reception desk, she gave orders to the clerk in a foghorn voice. “Take these up to the manager s safe, and tell him I won t be needing them for a few days!”

  “Yes, Mrs. Boyer,” the clerk said, holding out a plump hand. While the girls watched, Mrs. Boyer added a necklace and earrings to the glittering pile. When she went to the elevator, she looked like any middle-class housewife who had played bridge all afternoon.

  Hallie gave a long whistle. “Do you suppose those diamonds are real?”

  “You’d better believe it,” Trixie said. “That’s Mrs. Boyer. I’ve never met her face-to-face. She’s got more money than the Wheelers and Lynches have put together!”

  “And she lives here?” Hallie asked in amazement. “She’s eccentric,” Trixie said.

  As they pedaled up Glen Road, Trixie said, Tm not sure exactly what information that clerk gave us.”

  “That Ella Kline was the one who ordered the chair in the first place,” Hallie said.

  “Yes. But how could Miss Ryks know that?”

  “Maybe she already knew Ella Kline.”

  “We can check that with Ella. We don’t know how long Miss Ryks has been at the inn, but we know she’ll be here for two more weeks—till the wedding.”

  “She’s been here at least three days,” Hallie mused. “She called Hans on Tuesday and gave her address as the inn.”

  “A fat lot of good that address does anyone. She’s never in—or she’s indisposed,” Trixie grumbled.

  “In the inn!” Hallie chanted. “I’d feel sick, too, if I had to look at that Dick Ryks all the time.”

  A Frog Hunter ● 11

  THE THREE BELDEN BOYS were sitting on the porch, saying nothing, doing nothing, when Trixie and Hallie arrived home. “Were waiting for Jim,” Brian explained.

  “But I thought you were with him,” said Trixie. “Didn’t you have supper with Mr. Maypenny?” She chose her words carefully because Mart was sending messages behind Bobby’s back. Evidently Bobby didn’t know that they’d been hunting for Dan.

  Brian nodded and said, “I called Honey. She says that her parents haven’t come home.”

  “And Sergeant Molinson didn’t show up?” Hallie asked casually.

  “She didn’t mention him.”

  “Mrs. Wheeler must not have called him.” Hallie turned to Trixie. “Is that good or bad?”

  “Who knows? Who knows anything till we talk to Dan?” Trixie asked, ignoring Mart’s signals.

  “I talked to a man in the woods,” Bobby said unexpectedly.

  “Today?” Trixie demanded.

  Bobby’s sense of timing was not good. For him days came and days passed. “He was riding Jim's bike in the woods, and he had to stop quick or he’d have hit me. He said he was sorry he scared me.”

  “That’s all he said?” Mart asked.

  “That’s talking,” Bobby said with great dignity.

  At that moment, Jim drove up the lane. Carrying a heavy flashlight, he walked to the porch. “You fellows feel like a hike?”

  Bobby looked at the boots on Jim’s feet and the jacket slung over a shoulder. “Are you going for a frog hunt?”

  “Not exactly,” Jim said cautiously. All eyes turned toward Bobby. One never knew what he had in mind.

  “Well, neither was the man I saw. He said he was, but he didn’t even know the way to the lake.” Lately Bobby had learned to weigh his words. He explained carefully, “He did have a bag. No net, just a bag.”

  “When?”

  “Where?”

  “Who?”

  Hallie’s drawl climaxed the chorus. “Reckon there’s no sense in asking why. I know the answer. He wasn’t hunting frogs.” Her words and tone were kept light, but there was an undercurrent of tension in her voice.

  Trixie and Hallie sat on the steps and watched the boys’ flashlights bob through the dark woods like giant fireflies. “I wish...” Trixie sighed.

  “You know we can’t go,” Hallie reminded her.

  “Well, I certainly can’t sleep till I know what’s happened,” Trixie retorted.

  After giving permission for Trixie and Hallie to wait up for the boys, Mr. and Mrs. Belden went upstairs with Bobby. After a while, they turned off the lights that had made a big checkerboard design on the grass, and the lawn was dark. Reddy left his favorite grass nest and stretched his silky chin across Trixie’s bare knees. She scratched his ears.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Trixie said soberly, “of all the things that Dan’s been saying, like warning Juliana to take care of her ring, and wishing he could have prevented the Lynch robbery, and saying the ring hadn’t been returned yet. It sounds like he did take that ring. If Mart, or Brian, or Jim took a valuable ring, they wouldn’t know what to do with it, but Dan would. He lived by his wits on the streets of New York City.”

  “He has a good job and friends,” Hallie pleaded. “What would cause him to slide backward?”

  “I hope he didn’t,” Trixie said. “Trouble is, I can’t tell my brain to shut up, and it keeps running facts through my computer. It says he could have taken the ring, but it doesn’t tell me why.”

  “The footprint we found says that somebody else could have,” Hallie reminded her cousin.

  Trixie twisted her fingers together in a nervous tangle. “About Dan—sometimes we think we have a good reason for doing a wrong thing. Dan’s as stubbornly loyal as Regan. It runs in their family.” Trixie threw up her hands in helpless confusion. “When I think I’m on the right track, Bobby’s frog hunter gets in the way. Dan may be out there in the woods with him.”

  “But he isn’t a frog hunter,” Hallie said soberly. Both girls stared at the night shadows.

  To pass time, Trixie and Hallie went to the kitchen and baked oatmeal cookies. The last pan was hot from the oven when the three boys returned—tired, sleepy, and hungry. They hadn’t found Dan, and Mr. Maypenny hadn’t heard from him.

  Trixie poured milk and passed around the cookies. Brian took one but hesitated before biting into it. “As far as Mr. Maypenny knows, Dan hasn’t eaten all day.”

  “Did you see Bobby’s frog hunter?” Trixie asked. “No, but we did find some other trespassers. Remember Dan’s old gang?” Brian asked. “Five of them were sacked out around the remains of a campfire where they’d cooked their supper.”

  Deeply troubled, Trixie said, “Did you wake them? You didn’t, did you? That would have been a dangerous thing to do I”

  “No,” Jim assured her. “Afterward, we thought maybe we should have, but there were five of them to our three. They could have come out of their sleeping bags with knives in their fists. They carry them.”

  “I know,” Trixie whispered. “Do you suppose—” She broke off to listen to a sound that seemed to come from the backyard. She decided it had to be Reddy.

  Jim finished Trixie’s question: “—that Dan’s gone back to the gang? We hope not, but it is possible.” Trixie
could tell from her brothers’ faces that the question had been discussed.

  “We’ve decided to call the police,” Brian said.

  “No, Brian!” Trixie begged. “You’ll just get Dan deeper in trouble if Mrs. Wheeler reported the recovery of the missing ring.”

  Gently Jim said, “Trix, how can he be in worse trouble? He’s missing. He doesn’t have his wallet, so he has no money. That means he’s without food and shelter. As for that gang out there—whether Dan’s with them or not, they spell danger. We have to call the police.”

  Tearfully, Trixie finally agreed. She listened while Brian talked to Sergeant Molinson. The last time Dan’s gang had been in the area, Mr. Maypenny had been injured. Those teen-agers from the city played rough. When Brian hung up the phone, she asked, “Well, what did he say?”

  “He says it’s too soon to act, but he’ll remain on the alert. No one’s filed charges against the gang for trespassing, and there’s no law against sleeping.”

  “Agreed!” Mart said wearily, and he stretched and yawned widely. “We all need a good night’s rest.”

  “Also, Dan hasn’t been gone long enough to be considered a missing person. The sergeant’s sorry that we’re worried, and were to keep him informed.” Brian tousled Trixie’s sandy curls. “He also asked about you, Trixie. He said, If Detective Beldens on the job, she’ll know when she needs help.’ ”

  Trixie was much too worried about Dan Mangan to take bows for either past or future performances. “What are we going to do about Dan?” she asked.

  “Keep on looking for him till we find him,” Brian answered. “What else?”

  “We’re getting up early,” Mart said. “I'll set my alarm.”

  “Can we join you?” asked Hallie.

  “No,” said Brian. “We think it’s far safer if you two keep a lookout for Dan around here till we see what that gang is up to.”

  After agreeing on a time to meet the Beldens the next day, Jim left for home.

  Mart and Brian were preparing to resume their search for Dan when the rest of the Beldens got up Saturday morning. The radio was on, and suddenly a news item set nerves to tingling: “Police report an attempted break-in at Glen Road Inn. It would seem that the intended robbery victim was an elderly invalid. Because she was in a wheelchair, the guest couldn’t reach her telephone before the burglar made his escape through a window. Authorities state that a local youth with a past record of juvenile offenses is reported missing and may possibly be involved. Now for the weather....”