The Black Jacket Mystery Page 10

  “He just happened to hear us talking, and he blew up!” Trixie explained. All three of the boys looked so grim and disapproving that she was worried. “He’s making Mr. Maypenny send Dan back to wherever he came from, next week.”

  Tough break for Dan if he isn’t the one who found Honey’s watch,” Jim said with a frown. “Personally, I don’t think we should accuse him of breaking in here without a lot more evidence than you two had about the watch. It’s a serious charge to base on one footprint and a suspicion of revenge.” Mart had been examining the footprint on the poster. He put the poster on the floor and measured the print against his own thick boot. “Especially when this footprint’s a good inch longer than mine in my heaviest boots, and I know Dan wears a smaller size than I do!”

  “Let me see!” Jim strode over and checked Mart’s discovery. “You’re right. Well, that changes things a bit, I’d say. Did Mr. Lytell mention anything about the guy with the watch having extra-big feet?”

  Both the girls shook their heads. “Of course not,”

  Trixie told him, “or we’d have known it wasn’t Dan.”

  “Also, these boots were brown, not black like Dan’s,” Honey said, pointing to some smudges on the edge of the table. “The character, whoever he was, put his feet up and rubbed shoe polish on our clean table!”

  All three of the boys checked hastily. It was shoe polish that was streaked on the table, and some of it was rubbed on the face of one of the posters that showed a dent where a heavy heel had rested. And the polish was brown, a very yellowish, ugly brown.

  “Anybody who’d wear this wild-looking color must be a mental case!” Mart said with a shudder. “Yikes!”

  “Funny thing, I can’t imagine a tramp wearing yellowish-brown cowboy boots. Can you?” Brian asked Jim.

  “He may not have been a tramp,” Jim said gravely. “Maybe he was just passing through, hiking, and needed money, so he broke in and got three dollars and forty cents luckier.”

  “He didn’t have to make a mess of our clubhouse, whatever his troubles were!” Trixie said, getting angry again. “Look at that heap of half-smoked cigarettes beside the stove! Ugh! The smelly things!”

  “Cigarettes? There’s another bit of evidence that Dan isn’t the guilty party!” Jim told them quickly. “He mentioned not smoking the other day when one of the kids offered him a cigarette.”

  There was a distant sound of an auto horn. The bus was coming, the last bus they could catch and still get to Sleepyside High on time.

  “Skedaddle, all of you! I’ll straighten up around here and catch the next bus. I don’t have a class till second period.” Jim shooed them all out, and they ran down to the bus stop just in time to board the bus and collapse, breathless, in their seats.

  Honey and Trixie made their way to the rear so they could talk undisturbed, while Mart and Brian glanced through their math books.

  “I’m glad it wasn’t Dan,” Honey said. “I suppose you’re sort of disappointed, because you don’t like him.”

  Trixie thought it over a moment. Then she said, “I’m not disappointed. I’m glad, same as you are. Only, not so much for Dan’s sake. It’s Mr. Maypenny I’m glad for.”

  “What has Mr. Maypenny got to do with this?” Honey was often perplexed by the way Trixie’s ideas jumped all over the place.

  “Don’t you see?” Trixie was very earnest. “If Dan isn’t the only person around with those pointed-toed boots, then it’s possible he didn’t find your watch. And as for the boy who found it being dark and skinny like Dan, I guess there are plenty who look like that. So he’s being sent away by Regan for something he didn’t do, and when we go tell Mr. Maypenny that we were mistaken about Dan, why, he won t have to send Dan away, after all. And if Dan’s his grandson, Mr. Maypenny will be glad. See?”

  Honey nodded, a little dizzily. “We’re going to see him? When?”

  “I thought after school, on our way to the lake for rehearsal,” Trixie informed her. “And by that time we’ll have told Regan, too.”

  But when they went to the Wheeler stables after school to get Strawberry and Lady, Regan was nowhere about. They saddled the young mares, who were champing at the bit to get started on their airing. The boys were already out building the booths along the lakeside.

  As the two girls rode out of the barn, Tom Delanoy, the chauffeur, came hurrying down from the Manor House with a message for Honey.

  “Miss Trask says your folks will be home any day now, Miss Honey,” Tom said respectfully. He was always a little formal with Honey, though he could unbend and laugh with the boys when they came to watch him work on the family cars. He was as friendly as Regan, but he was the big redhead’s exact opposite so far as coloring went. Tom had dark, curly hair and blue eyes. “She’s expecting a wire and will call you at Crabapple Farm when she hears which plane you’re to meet.”

  “Oh, thanks, Tom. I’m hoping they’ll get here next week for the ice carnival!”

  “Where is Regan?” Trixie asked. “We want to tell him something important.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a bit for that, Miss Trixie,” the young chauffeur told her, a frown suddenly appearing. “I put Regan on the train to town this morning. Something came up sudden that he has to tend to.”

  “Oh.” Trixie and Honey were disappointed. “Your brothers were looking for him, too,” Tom volunteered. “I don’t know what for, but they seemed just a mite upset when they found out that he was gone.”

  “Thanks, Tom. We’ll catch up with Regan when he gets back.” Trixie rode down the driveway, followed by Honey.

  “I wonder if Regan’s gone to see somebody about sending Dan back,” Trixie called to her friend. “That certainly would get things all mixed up if he makes arrangements and then we tell him we were mistaken. I mean, that I was mistaken. You’ve always stuck up for Dan.”

  Honey laughed. “I wasn’t half as sure as I pretended. But I’m glad it’s going to turn out all right for him.”

  “We’ll tell the boys to get hold of Regan and talk to him the minute he comes back,” Trixie planned. “I’m going to ask Jim if there’s something Dan can do to help us get ready for the carnival. Maybe he would feel more at home if he felt we were taking him into the plans with us.”

  But when they came onto Dan in the middle of the game preserve a little later, he wasn’t in the mood to be either friendly or helpful.

  He had been making a snare for one of the Wheeler pheasants that was to furnish a meal for a small party of Mr. Wheeler’s friends a few days later. He stood with the snare in his hands, feet planted apart, as he glared defiantly at the two girls. “What do you want to talk about? I told you I’ve got work to do!” he barked at Trixie, who had volunteered to approach him.

  “You don’t need to snap my head off!” Trixie retorted. “We just wanted to tell you that we’ve decided that it was somebody else who found Honey’s watch and sold it to Mr. Lytell. Not you.”

  “What am I supposed to say? ‘Thank you, ma'am'?”

  “Of course not!” Honey rode a few feet closer to the dark-faced boy and smiled down at him. “We just want you to know that we’re going to tell Mr. Maypenny right now that we’re sure we were mistaken.”

  “Don’t bother!” he snapped with a scowl. “I’m getting out of this backwoods joint in a coupla days, and what that old square thinks about me means exactly zero.” He turned his back on her and went to work on the snare.

  Honey hesitated a moment, and though Trixie couldn’t see her face, she felt sure Honey had tears in her eyes. She wasn’t used to being talked to like that.

  “Come on, Honey,” Trixie called to her friend. “Let’s leave before Mr. Hydrophobia gets sore enough to bite one of us!”

  Honey wheeled Lady and rode away without speaking, but Trixie saw her dash a tear from her eye with the back of her hand.

  “I have a good mind not to tell Mr. Maypenny we may have been wrong about that—that character!” Trixie sputtered as the
y rode side by side.

  “Oh, no! We must tell him. And Regan, too. It doesn’t matter if Dan wants to be disagreeable. I guess we can’t blame him, if he’s innocent.”

  “I suppose not,” Trixie admitted grudgingly. Then she started up the narrowing trail.

  But Honey pulled in and looked back at Dan Mangan. Sunlight was slanting down through the tall evergreens, and a shaft of it struck Dan as he stood looking after them with drooping shoulders. On an impulse, she waved.

  To her surprise, Dan snatched off his cap and waved in answer. “He’s up at Storm King hunting for that wildcat!” he called, cupping his hands around his mouth.

  “We’ll find him. Thanks!” Honey called back and waved again before she wheeled her horse and followed Trixie.

  Mr. Maypenny’s Accident • 14

  YOUSEE! Dan does want us to tell Mr. Maypenny what we found out. That means he wouldn’t have been so glad to be sent back to wherever-it-isl I’m glad I waved to him!” Honey’s eyes sparkled.

  Trixie only said “Hrmph!” and kept riding along. They were getting close to the clearing that surrounded the sturdy little log cabin that Mr. Maypenny’s grandfather had built almost a hundred years ago. There was no smoke coming out of the cobblestone chimney, so they knew that he hadn’t yet returned from the hunting expedition.

  Trixie glanced at her wristwatch. “I don’t think we’ll wait too long. We want to be at the lake well before sunset. I hope the boys have a nice big fire going for us.”

  They dismounted to give the horses a rest while they waited. In a few minutes, Mr. Maypenny, astride old Brownie, rode in from the north trail that led through the woods into the labyrinth and beyond that toward the high peaks.

  “Glad to see you youngsters,” he said. “Didn’t the boy ask you inside?”

  “He’s way back there, fixing a snare,” Trixie explained. “We don’t have much time, anyhow. We just wanted to talk to you for a few minutes.”

  “Good! If you’ll just wait till I put away my gear and settle this old nag of mine in the barn, I’ll be with you. Go on in and light the fire for some hot soup or a cup of chocolate.”

  “Never mind the food,” Trixie told him cheerfully. “We’ll come along with you and talk there.”

  “All right, if that’s how you want it,” he agreed, chuckling. “First time I’ve heard Miss Trix turn down hot chocolate! Must be something important on your mind.”

  “We think so.” Trixie grinned. “I guess you will, too.”

  They walked toward the barn with him, and they told him their reasons for thinking they had made a mistake by identifying Dan as the person who had sold Honey’s watch to Mr. Lytell.

  “It was on account of those weird cowboy boots he wears that we blamed Dan,” Trixie said honestly. “Now we’ve found out there’s somebody else who wears the same kind, but a much larger size. And whoever it was broke into our clubhouse last night and stole some money and just about wrecked the place.”

  When they had finished telling him about it, the old man was silent a moment. When he spoke again, there was a brighter gleam in his eyes. “Thanks, little ladies, for coming all this way to tell me. The boy will be glad to hear what you’ve found out. And so will Regan when the poor lad gets back from the city. It’s too bad he couldn’t have heard the news before he left!”

  Trixie was eager to ask him some questions, but they had reached the barn, and he turned briskly to them as he paused at the doorway. “Sure you won’t stay for a hot drink? It’s mighty chilly.”

  “No, thanks,” Trixie told him. “We’re on our way to the lake to have a bonfire party with the boys and practice some new figures for the carnival.”

  “Well, run right along. Me, I’m going to go bring that young Dan home, and we’ll have some good hunters’ stew while I tell him what you’ve told me.”

  “I hope he listens a little better to you than he did to us!” Trixie said, smarting from Dan’s treatment. “I’m sure he will,” Honey said with a smile.

  “He’s a strange one, all right.” Mr. Maypenny chuckled. “Kinda short-tempered, but not as bad as he thinks!”

  He held their horses as they mounted, and then nodded at the half-moon in the darkening sky. “Looks like a bright, clear evening. Have yourselves some fun!”

  Trixie glanced toward the woods in the direction of the high mountains. “Did you see anything of our catamount?”

  “Almost caught up with him,” he said. “Tracked him five miles beyond Storm King and saw him only once. Took a shot, but he was moving too fast for me, covering twenty feet at a jump. I didn’t have the heart to chase him any farther, seeing that the big feller was headed away from here up toward the high peaks. Guess that’s where he’s got his family.”

  The girls looked toward the distant mountains, hardly visible in the late shadows. “I hope he stays home with them now!” Trixie said with a shiver.

  They rode off a moment later, and, though they kept looking for another sight of Dan Mangan, they didn’t get a glimpse of him.

  “I still wonder what he meant by feeling sorry for Regan. Do you suppose that means Mr. Maypenny isn’t Dan’s grandfather, after all, in spite of having the same kind of chin?” Trixie asked as they turned into the cross path that led to the lake.

  “I’m sure I don’t know. It is sort of odd that Regan had to go to the city about Dan,” Honey said with a frown. “At least, Mr. Maypenny practically said he did.”

  They found a brisk bonfire on the lakeshore, and the booths all standing, finished except for the bunting and the games and souvenirs they expected to have.

  “You are simply wonderful!” Honey told the boys.

  Trixie was walking around the largest booth, inspecting it. “I see you signed your work, too.” Her voice came from behind the big wooden structure. “Which one of you calls himself Ymca?” Her grin appeared over the top of the booth.

  “She’s got us!” Jim laughed. “You win, Trix. We did get a little lift here and there. We borrowed that one, I admit. It was left over from a party at the Y.M.C.A.! Di’s father hauled it over, as is, a while ago.”

  “Well, now I feel much better,” Trixie said. “We were just going to offer to do some extra work so you could rest after your labors. Now we’ll merely inquire where all the hot dogs and hamburgers are stacked, and how soon you’ll be serving your hungry guests.”

  “Unfair!” Mart bellowed. “You’ll cook your own, princess! All you’ve done is ride around visiting. I bet you stopped at old Maypenny’s for some of that hot chocolate that’s going to make you both look like bags of potatoes if you keep it up!”

  “At least, we’re not growing out of our B.W.G. jackets as fast as some persons!” Trixie retorted. “And that gives me a precious idea for the carnival! Why don’t you wear last year’s Sunday suit and be a clown? Those bony wrists and the jacket that doesn’t come near touching the top of your trousers should be a scream!”

  “Since Brian and I are running this carnival—” Jim began sternly.

  “Who said so?” Trixie asked pertly. “It was our idea.”

  “I repeat”—Jim scowled playfully at her—“since we strong masculine types have to do all the work, and be insulted in the bargain, the least you squaws could do would be to rustle up the eats.”

  “Come on, Trix, I think my big brother has a point there.” Honey laughed.

  “All right, but we won’t tell them what Mr. Maypenny said, just for that,” Trixie said with a sniff.

  “Okay, get the frying pan to work, and we’ll try to keep from dying of curiosity,” Brian said dryly. “As a matter of fact, I don’t believe you even saw Mr. Maypenny. You’d still be there gobbling his stew.”

  “But we did see him, really. And we told him we had decided it was somebody besides Dan who sold my watch,” Honey told him earnestly.

  “Did Dan forgive you?” Mart grinned. “Bet he just hissed at you and coiled up.”

  “That’s a mean remark,” Honey said, with
as much anger as any of them had ever seen her show. “It’s not fair.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mart said humbly. “I was just being a clown. I guess it comes natural to me. I don’t really feel that way about Dan Mangan.”

  “I hope not,” Jim said seriously. “I think we ought to show we’re sorry we misjudged him.”

  “We could ask him to come and have some of our supper here tonight,” Trixie suggested. “Though I know he’d say no.”

  “He might not,” Honey argued. “He waved to me and told us where to find Mr. Maypenny.”

  The boys exchanged looks. “All right. Tell us the story of your gay afternoon in the woods. Let the hamburgers and hot dogs wait.” Mart pulled at a stray blond curl that had escaped from Trixie’s head scarf.

  But when the girls had told about the talk with Mr. Maypenny, including his strange sympathy for “poor lad” Regan, the boys had no more idea than they what he had meant.

  “Anyhow,” Brian told them when they had given up guessing, “one of us should go over to Mr. Maypenny’s and talk to Dan. And it wouldn't do any harm, if he’s at all friendly, to invite him to bring his skates and take a few turns around the lake. It might break the ice.”

  “That’s what we need, broken ice to skate on,” Mart said, grinning at his big brother.

  “Smarty! We know what Brian meant, if you don’t.” Trixie sniffed at him. “And just for that, you ought to be the one who goes to Maypenny’s and talks to Dan. Does everybody agree? All in favor, say aye!”

  And before lie could beg off, a chorus of ayes from the other four members of the Bob-Whites elected him their messenger, although he sputtered protests.

  Still grumbling, he left the warm circle of the fire and mounted Jupiter. “If I come back fast, he took a pitchfork to me!” he called to them as he rode into the darkness of the trail.

  It was less than fifteen minutes later that they heard him come riding down the trail a lot faster than he had gone up it. When he was still a score of yards away, he called out, “Jim! Brian! Come here!”