The Mystery of the Millionaire Page 11

  That afternoon, Trixie told Honey about Mart’s experience. Her best friend’s hazel eyes were on the verge of tears as she listened to the story.

  “That’s awful!” Honey exclaimed. “How could anyone be that mean? Those people are just taking someone’s willingness to work and turning it against them!”

  “It makes me angry, too,” Trixie said. “The worst part of it is that I’ve suddenly realized the same thing has just happened to us!”

  “To us?” Honey repeated, puzzled. “We haven’t answered any ads.”

  “We answered a phony request for help,” Trixie countered. “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “Oh, Trixie—” Honey began.

  “Don’t ‘Oh, Trixie’ me, Honey Wheeler. It’s the exact same thing, and I’m willing to admit it, even if you aren’t. Mark McGraw used our willingness to work with a real detective against us. He wasn’t honest enough to tell us we’d just be in his way... that he was too important to waste time with a couple of kids. Instead, he made up a bunch of phony assignments, which we spent hours working on, when he never intended to do anything with them.”

  “You don’t know that for a fact,” Honey argued. “You’re jumping to a conclusion, just as you accused him of doing. What I said before still stands: We did discuss strangers in town, and we don't need our depositions until the case goes to court. As for the map, maybe Mr. McGraw had already found out, through one of his contacts, that Mr. Ramsey had been taken out of the area, to Buffalo. I admit that Mr. McGraw wouldn’t have the good manners to apologize for having us draw the map for nothing, but that doesn’t make him dishonest.” Honey paused for breath. Then she added, “You had a chance to prove that Mr. McGraw wasn’t interested in the assignments; you only had to remind him about them. But you didn’t do it. You just jumped to your own conclusions and refused to have anything more to do with the case.”

  “I still say that reminding him of the assignments wouldn’t prove a thing. If you think it’ll prove something, I’m willing to try it.” Trixie stood up and walked to the door of Honey’s room. “Come on,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Where are we going?” Honey asked.

  “We’re going to use the telephone to call Mark McGraw in New York City. I want you to be listening in. He’ll probably say he wants the assignments, after he finally remembers giving them to us. But you’ll hear the dishonesty in his voice first.”

  “He could be in Buffalo by now,” Honey said. “Laura sent him the money yesterday.”

  “Then I can at least leave a message with his secretary. Oh, Honey, I felt so helpless when Dad told Mart there was nothing he could do about losing his money to those crooks. Well, this is something I can do something about—and I’m going to do it!”

  Honey knew her best friend too well to think that there was a chance of getting her to change her mind once she was as set on a course of action as she was at the moment. Reluctantly, she followed her sandy-haired friend to the telephone table in the upstairs hallway.

  Trixie lifted the receiver, then held the button down for a moment as she remembered something she wanted to say to Honey. “I’ll pay for the call out of my next allowance. Just let me know how much it is.”

  In spite of herself, Honey giggled. “There may be some dishonest people in the world, Trixie Belden, but you certainly aren’t one of them. I’m your partner, so I’ll pay for half of the call. Now, dial!”

  Trixie dialed the number for directory assistance in New York City. When the operator answered, she said, “I’d like a listing for a Mark McGraw. He’s a private detective.”

  “One moment, please,” the operator said. Computer sounds came through the wire as Trixie waited impatiently. “Still checking,” the operator said.

  Trixie shifted from one foot to the other. She straightened as the operator came back on the line. “Checking in the white pages and in the business directory under ‘Investigators-Private,’ I find no listing for a Mark McGraw. I’m sorry.” Trixie barely remembered to thank the operator before she slammed down the receiver and turned to Honey, who was watching her expectantly. “That detective is a fake!” Trixie snapped.

  The Getaway ● 12

  HONEY LOOKED STUNNED. “There must be some mistake,” she said breathlessly.

  “The operator couldn’t find a listing for Mark McGraw in New York City. That doesn’t leave much room for mistakes,” Trixie said solemnly.

  Honey shook her head in reluctant agreement, then brightened. “Maybe his name isn’t spelled the way it sounds,” she said.

  “How many ways can there be to spell ‘McGraw’?” Trixie asked scornfully.

  Honey snapped her fingers. “M-c-G-r-a-t-h, for one,” she said. “Daddy has a friend who spells his name that way and pronounces it ‘McGraw.’ I remember one time Daddy had a meeting with him, and he told Miss Trask to call and say he’d be late. Miss Trask got absolutely frantic, because she couldn’t find the name in Daddy’s address book. She finally called Mr. McGraw—spelled t-h—and it turned out to be the right person.”

  Trixie reached for the phone. “I’ll call the operator back—”

  “No,” Honey interrupted. “I have a better idea. Daddy has the New York City telephone directories in his office. We’ll look there. Then we’re bound to find Mark McGraw, no matter how he spells his name.”

  The girls spent the next twenty minutes huddled together over the directories, their shoulders touching as one read a left-hand page and the other read a right.

  When Trixie finally straightened up, clutching her aching back, her face was pale under its covering of freckles. “There’s not a single name listed under ‘Investigators-Private’ that could possibly be Mark McGraw’s, no matter how he spells it.”

  Honey, too, straightened up, reluctantly admitting, “I’m afraid you’re right, Trixie. I—I guess I knew you were right all along, but I just didn’t want to believe it. Do you realize what this means for Laura? She’s put all her faith in Mark McGraw’s ability to find her father.”

  Trixie shook her head, her jaws clenched. “Laura Ramsey has put in all Mr. Lytell’s money, you mean,” she said through gritted teeth. “I bet they’re in this together.”

  “Trixie!” Honey’s exclamation was filled with shock and horror. “You can’t mean that!”

  “What else can it mean?” Trixie asked desperately. “How do you explain Laura’s hiring a phony detective? It can’t be an accident.”

  Honey chewed on her lower lip, her hazel eyes sweeping the room as if hoping to find a better explanation written on one of the walls.

  “Where is she?” Trixie asked softly.

  Honey looked at her best friend nervously. “She’s down at the lake, taking a swim.”

  “Let’s go,” Trixie said abruptly, heading for the door.

  “We can’t— I mean, maybe we should talk this over with Jim or somebody, before we go making wild accusations.”

  “Wild!” Trixie, herself, sounded a bit wild by this time! “Laura Ramsey brought in someone she said was a detective, whose name, she said, was Mark McGraw, and who supposedly came from New York City. Now we find out that no such person exists. That’s a wild accusation?”

  Honey held up both hands in a gesture of despair. “All right,” she said. “Let’s go ask Laura about Mark McGraw. But please, Trixie, try to be tactful. If there is some logical explanation, I don’t want Laura to feel as though she’s under suspicion.”

  “I don’t know, sometimes, how you can be so trusting, Honey,” Trixie said. She continued quickly, before Honey could interrupt. “But I’ll be tactful, I promise.”

  The girls found Laura stretched out on a towel on the beach near the boathouse. Her body glistened with suntan oil, and cotton pads covered her eyes. The girls hovered for a moment, not sure how to make their presence known. Then Honey cleared her throat softly.

  Laura sat up with a start, the cotton pads dropping unnoticed into her lap. She shaded her eyes with one
hand and squinted up at the girls, smiling when she recognized them. “Going swimming?” she asked. “It’s too nice a day to do anything else, I think.”

  “N-No,” Honey said, “we didn’t come here to go swimming. Actually, there’s something we wanted to ask you.”

  Trixie thought she saw Laura’s body stiffen. Could she have some inkling that she’d been found out? Trixie wondered. She decided to let Honey do the talking. Tact was her friend’s talent, not her own.

  Honey cleared her throat again and sat down on the sand next to Laura. “Do you remember the first time Mark McGraw was here, how he gave Trixie and me some assignments to work on?” She waited for Laura’s nod, then went on. “Well, we suddenly realized that we’d never given them to him. We—we thought he might need them, so we decided to call him and offer to mail them to his office. We... well, we couldn’t get his number. I mean, the directory assistance operator told us there was no listing for such a person.”

  Trixie had stopped breathing as she watched Laura Ramsey’s face, wondering if the woman would burst into tears and confess or bolt and run, trying to get away. Nothing in Trixie’s imaginings had prepared her for Laura’s actual reaction: The frightened look on her face vanished, and she began to laugh!

  “Of course you didn’t find a listing,” Laura said. “Mr. McGraw doesn’t have one. You see, he works for a large firm of detectives; it’s one of the oldest in the state. They don’t list each of their investigators individually, of course. And for reasons you can probably understand, his home number is unlisted.”

  Trixie stared at the ground and let out her pent-up breath slowly. She felt, rather than saw, Honey glance at her briefly before turning her attention back to Laura. “I was sure there was some explanation,” she said.

  “Actually,” Laura Ramsey said, “I thought I had explained, back when I first came here. A friend of mine who had a necklace stolen recommended Mr. McGraw to me. She had simply called the detective firm, and she was lucky enough to have Mr. McGraw assigned to her case. She was so impressed with him that she asked him for several of his business cards, which she handed out to her friends. She wanted to make sure that they’d be able to get him, personally, if they ever needed a detective.” Laura Ramsey had picked up her bottle of suntan oil and began applying another coat to her arms as she spoke. “The card is in my suitcase, back at the house. When I come up, I’ll find it and give it to you. I do think that Mr. McGraw should have those assignments of yours.”

  “Thank you,” Honey said politely. She stood up and brushed the sand off her jeans. “Shall we go back to the house?” she asked Trixie sweetly.

  Trixie nodded, still unwilling to speak or to look her friend in the eye. She knew that a stern lecture on her suspiciousness awaited her, but she knew, too, that she deserved it.

  Honey said nothing on the way back to the house, however. It was as if she knew that Trixie’s conscience would be much harsher than she could be.

  Trixie, too, avoided discussing what had happened, although she could not dismiss it from her mind. Back in Honey’s room, her eyes scanned the pages of a borrowed book, but her mind absorbed little of what she read. For some reason, she thought about Bobby. There was something he’d said that she wanted to remember, but it eluded her.

  At dinner, too, Trixie was distracted and unusually quiet. When Jim commented on it, she could only say lamely, “It’s just the heat, I guess.” She did manage a small smile, but Jim’s piercing gaze told her that her reply had not satisfied him.

  Trixie had a feeling of floating in space. Although her suspicions had been disproved, they had not been dismissed. The distrust of Laura Ramsey that she had so carefully kept to herself had been given free rein for a while that afternoon. Now, again, she was finding it hard to control it.

  When dinner was over, she stood next to her chair for a moment, watching almost jealously as Celia cleared the table. The best cure for her free-floating feeling, she knew, would be to anchor herself with useful work. But her usual chores simply didn’t exist at Manor House.

  “What do you want to do until bedtime?” Honey asked, as if reading her friend’s thoughts.

  “I don’t know,” Trixie told her. “We don’t usually have much trouble filling time, since we can talk for hours and hours. But tonight I feel I ought to keep my mouth shut as much as I possibly can.”

  Honey smiled sympathetically. “I know why you feel that way, but I miss your chatter. Jim did, too, tonight at dinner. We can find something to talk about that won’t remind us of... well, of things we don’t want to talk about.”

  Trixie shook her head. “No matter what we start out talking about, we always come back to mysteries. I think I’d be better off just trying to read a book. Do you mind if I get something else out of the library?”

  “Help yourself,” Honey told her. “I’ll be up in my room.”

  Trixie nodded and went to the library. Lost in her own thoughts, she was unaware of Laura Ramsey’s voice until she’d already opened the door and stepped into the room.

  “All right, darling,” Laura was saying into the telephone. “I’ll see you soon.” Laura hung up the receiver and started to leave the room. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Trixie. Her face seemed flushed, but whether it was from embarrassment or sunbathing, Trixie couldn’t be sure. “That was my father’s secretary,” Laura said. “I’ve been calling her every day or two to let her know I’m all right. I don’t want her to get suspicious, you know.”

  Trixie nodded, her eyes still on Laura’s face. She tried to imagine herself calling Peter Belden’s secretary “darling,” but it was impossible!

  Laura hurried past Trixie and left the library. Trixie forced herself to concentrate on the rows of books. Then, finding something that looked as though it might hold her attention, she went upstairs to Honey’s room.

  A half hour later, she slammed the book shut. “It’s no use,” she told Honey. “I can’t keep my mind on what I’m reading. I keep going over the same sentence two or three times and still don’t know what it’s about.”

  Honey carefully marked her place in her own book before she closed it. “What would you like to do?” she asked.

  “I’ve been feeling up in the air all evening,” Trixie said. “One thing that might help is to take care of some unfinished business.” She stood up resolutely. “You get out our assignments. I’m going to ask Laura Ramsey for Mark McGraw’s business card.” Before Honey could protest, Trixie left the room.

  She walked down the long upstairs hallway to the room where Laura Ramsey had been staying. She knocked softly and waited for an answer, but there was none. She knocked again more loudly. Still there was no response.

  Glancing down, Trixie saw that light was shining through the bottom of the door. “If she isn’t there, I really ought to turn off the light. It’s wrong to waste electricity.” Trixie ignored the small squirm in her stomach that accompanied the lie she’d just told herself. She opened the door.

  The room was empty. Trixie’s gaze swept the room and stopped at the closet. The door was open, revealing empty hangers dangling from the rod.

  Trixie entered the room boldly and searched it hurriedly. The drawers of the dresser, too, were empty. There were no cosmetics, no toothpaste, no toothbrush in the adjoining bathroom.

  Trixie ran back down the hallway and burst into Honey’s room. “Laura’s gone!” she announced breathlessly.

  “Gone where?” Honey asked in confusion.

  Trixie’s hands made excited circles in the air. “Away!” she exclaimed vaguely. “I don’t know where, exactly, but I have a hunch. Tell Jim to get the station wagon right away!”

  Honey opened her mouth to protest, then closed it and hurried out of the room.

  Trixie stood frozen for a moment, her stomach churning. She had a momentary twinge of fear that this time, too, she might be mistaken. Suddenly, comfortingly, she remembered Bobby’s words: “Then how do you know he disappeared?” They didn�
��t know, she realized, if Anthony Ramsey had ever existed! If there was the slightest chance that her hunch was right, there wasn’t a moment to lose.

  She started to run downstairs, then paused and looked back over her shoulder at the telephone standing in the upstairs hall. She debated for a moment. The phone call she knew she ought to make would only add to her embarrassment if she were wrong. She clenched and unclenched her fists nervously, then ran back up the stairs. She dialed the number that her parents had forced her to memorize so long ago, grateful now—as she had been many times before—that they had done so. When a gruff voice answered, she said, “Send a squad car to Mr. Lytell’s store on Glen Road right away.” She hung up before the policeman could ask her to explain.

  She ran back downstairs and out the front door. The station wagon was waiting, motor running, with Jim and Honey already inside.

  Trixie jumped into the backseat. “Drive to Mr. Lytell’s store right away,” she demanded.

  Without pausing to ask questions, Jim put the car in gear and started down the driveway.

  Trixie looked past Honey at him gratefully. Then, realizing that an explanation was in order, although he hadn’t demanded one, she spoke as rapidly as she could. “I went into Laura’s room to get Mr. McGraw’s card. The room was empty! The clothes you’d lent her and everything else were gone. Then it all fell into place. I’d surprised her on the phone in the library right after dinner. She called somebody ‘darling’ and said she’d see him soon. She told me it was her father’s secretary, but I didn’t believe it. When I saw she was gone, I knew right away it was Mark McGraw she was talking to. She was afraid we were onto them, and she’d decided she’d better get away from Manor House. She’d called him to let him know—maybe even to pick her up. I called the police while Honey got you, Jim.”

  Trixie stopped abruptly and looked at Jim. “Gleeps, Jim,” she wailed, “how could you like a crook like Laura?”

  Jim looked surprised. “Like her? Who said I like her?”