The Mystery off Old Telegraph Road Read online

  “That was my idea,” Nick said. “You see, I want to go on to art school after I graduate, but no good school will take me on the basis of these drawings. I need samples of work in other media, too. I’ll be a senior next year, so that’s my last chance to get together the samples I need. And after the turnout for the art fair, I’d say my chances are as slim as ever,” he added bitterly.

  “I wish we could help,” Trixie said in a sympathetic tone.

  “Well, thanks,” Nick said. “But I don’t see how you can. Not unless you know somebody on the school board that you can persuade to give the art department more money. It’s a vicious circle. Other departments, like theater and athletics, can raise money by selling tickets to their plays or games. The school board gives them money, knowing they’ll earn part of it back. But art just isn’t like that. If we’d been able to raise a lot of money here today, there might have been a chance, but—” Nick shrugged.

  “If anyone can think of a way to help, it’s Trixie,” Honey assured Nick. “But in the meantime, I can do something, and that’s buy the picture of the Manor House. Its perfectly perfect, and it will make the best Mother’s Day present I could ever find.”

  “Oh, woe,” Trixie moaned. “Here we go again. I’d already decided that I have to have the picture of Crabapple Farm, but giving it away was the furthest thing from my mind. Now that you’ve said that, I’ll feel selfish if I don’t give Moms the drawing, but I’ll be heartbroken if I have to give it up.”

  Honey laughed. “Knowing you, Trixie, that drawing will be hanging in the living room of Crabapple Farm before the sun sets on Mother’s Day. Anyway, it’s not as though you’re really giving it up. You’ll be able to see it every single day until you move away from home—which won’t be for a long time.”

  “You’re right, as usual, Honey,” Trixie said, handing Nick her money and taking the drawing. ’And besides, if I save all my spare nickels and dimes between now and then, maybe I can offer Nick a commission and ask him to draw another—” Trixie broke off in midsentence as she saw Nick staring over her head toward the entrance to the gym.

  Turning around, she saw Ben Riker and three of his friends. They were swaggering into the gym, and Ben’s friends were talking loudly enough for everyone at the art fair to hear.

  “Sure would be nice to stop over at Wimpy’s for a cola,” Mike Larson said.

  “Yeah, but our buddy Ben is the only one with a car,” Jerry Vanderhoef answered. “And he can’t come along because he has to play chauffeur to his cute little cousin and her freckle-faced chum.” Ben looked embarrassed, but he managed to reply in the same sneering tone. “It’s just my good deed for the day, pals. I’m much too wonderful a guy to pass up two maidens in distress.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Mike jeered. He turned to the third boy and pretended to be speaking confidentially as he said loudly, “You know what I think? I think Ben’s got a crush on tomboy Trixie.”

  “Nah,” Bill Wright said disdainfully. “I think Ben just likes being a chauffeur. I heard he’s going to get himself a little uniform and a cap, just like Tom Delanoy, his uncle’s chauffeur, wears.”

  “Hey, knock it off,” Ben said, giving Bill a shove that was meant to look playful but actually had a great deal of force behind it.

  “What’s the matter, Ben? Does the truth hurt your feelings?” Bill shoved Ben back, knocking him into the table that held the display of pottery that Trixie and Honey had looked at earlier.

  The girls heard the crash as one of the pieces of pottery shattered on the floor, and they rushed to the table with Nick Roberts right behind them.

  At the table, they found Amy staring at her shattered blue vase and trying to hold back her tears.

  Honey put her arms around Amy. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said. “Why, oh, why, did it have to be that vase that broke?”

  Amy attempted a wry grin that didn’t quite work. “I guess that was a third possibility I hadn’t considered,” she said. “It looks as though I lost, after all.”

  After a momentary silence, Ben’s friends recovered their mocking attitude.

  “Oh, Ben,” said Jerry sarcastically, “look what you’ve done. You’re so destructive!”

  “Clumsy, too,” added Bill. “Well, now you can get a broom and a dustpan and do your second good deed for the day—cleaning up this terrible mess! See you around, Ben!” Laughing loudly, the boys left the gym.

  Ben, his face flushed, reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. “I guess I broke the stupid thing, so I might as well pay for it. What do I owe you?” he asked Amy.

  Nick Roberts stepped between the girl and Ben Riker. “That ’stupid thing,’ as you call it, took more time and effort than you’ve probably ever put into anything. It was a work of art, meant to be looked at and enjoyed, not swept up and thrown into a garbage can in a million pieces. I know your type. You’ve had everything handed to you on a silver platter, and you think you can bail your way out of anything with money. But this is a loss you can’t pay for, any more than you can pay for Amy’s hurt feelings.”

  Amy put her hand on Nick’s arm. “He didn’t break the vase on purpose, Nick. He was pushed. If he wants to try to make up for it by paying for it, let him. After all, we’re here to raise money for the art department. I’d hate to think the vase was a total loss.”

  Ben Riker took a ten-dollar bill out of his billfold and tossed it onto the table. “You heard her, buddy. Here, you can use this to buy a brand-new lump of clay. Come on, girls. I want to get you two home before you get me into any more trouble.” Ben turned on his heel and strode out of the gym. Honey and Trixie, too embarrassed even to look at Nick and Amy, followed him.

  The three rode home in strained silence. Ben, still angry at Nick Roberts’s tongue-lashing, drove Mr. Wheeler’s car fast and recklessly. Trixie, knowing that if she opened her mouth she would say something she’d regret later, gritted her teeth and said nothing. Honey, always trying to soothe hurt feelings, made a few random comments on the weather and schoolwork, but she, too, lapsed into silence when she got no reply.

  As they neared the Belden driveway, Honey said, “Ben, why don’t you take us both to the Manor House? With Jim, Brian, and Mart all busy, Regan will be happier if Trixie and I exercise at least two of the horses.”

  Regan was the Wheelers’ groom. He was a great friend to the Bob-Whites, but he also had a temper suited to his red hair. The Bob-Whites all tried to do their share of exercising and grooming the horses, to avoid upsetting him. Still, Trixie thought about begging off the ride, afraid that she’d be unable to keep herself from saying something to Honey about Ben’s behavior, but she was also afraid of asking Ben to make the extra stop at Crabapple Farm.

  The silence between the two girls continued as they went up to Honey’s bedroom to change, Trixie into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt borrowed from her friend. They didn’t speak during the walk to the stable or while they were saddling Susie and Lady. But the warm spring weather and the first signs of green on the trees of the Wheeler game preserve soon soothed Trixie’s temper, and she began to talk about the lack of funds for the art department and what they could do to help.

  “I could ask Daddy to make a big donation,” Honey suggested. “You know he’s always willing to help out in the community. He thinks Sleepy-side Junior-Senior High School is a wonderful school because my grades are better here than they ever were before. Although,” she said with a sigh, “they still aren’t very good.”

  “I suppose if it comes down to that, you could ask him,” Trixie said. “But I’d much rather have the Bob-Whites do something to raise the money. After all, your father isn’t a student at Sleepyside, and we are.”

  Honey giggled at the mental picture of her husky, businesslike father sitting at a school desk, raising his hand to volunteer an answer. “That’s true. But what can we Bob-Whites do that we haven’t already done? We’ve had an ice-skating show and an antique show, and we had an auction that wasn’t ver
y successful, and—”

  “That’s it!” Trixie shouted so loudly that Susie, startled, shied, and Trixie had to pause for a moment to calm the horse before she could continue. “That’s exactly what well do to raise money for the art department: We’ll do what we didn’t do before!”

  Big Plans ● 3

  HONEY PULLED LADY to a halt and stared at her friend as though she’d just taken leave of her senses. Why, Trixie Belden,” she said, “that’s what I just said. Of course we have to do something to raise money for the art department that we haven’t done before. That doesn’t solve the problem if we don’t know what that something is.”

  “We do know what that something is, Honey,” Trixie replied. “What I meant was, we’ll do what we were going to do before but didn’t!”

  “The walkathon!” Honey exclaimed, finally understanding what Trixie meant. “Oh, what a perfectly perfect ideal We were going to have a walkathon to raise the money to replate Hoppy, but we never did because we donated the reward money we got for finding him—what I mean is, the reward that Sammy almost got, except that he stole Hoppy in the first place and only pretended to find him, so they gave it to us. The money, I mean, and— Why, Trixie Belden, why are you laughing?”

  “I’m laughing because your way of explaining things is just as jumbled as mine is,” Trixie said between giggles. “It’s a good tiling we know each other so well, because we’d never be able to understand each other otherwise.”

  Honey started to giggle, too. “Jim sometimes says, when I’ve got something hopelessly confused, 1 don’t know whether you’ve been listening to Trixie too long or the other way around, but pretty soon I’m not going to be able to understand either one of you.’ Anyway, the important thing is that we’re going to raise money for the art department by having a walkathon, right?”

  “Wrong,” Trixie said. “Not a walkathon. A bikeathon. Right through the game preserve. It’s so beautiful right now, with the first leaves on the trees and everything turning bright and green. A lot of the kids at school have asked me what the preserve is like, and I’m sure even more of them have asked you about it, Honey. I’m positive that they’d sign up for the bikeathon just to see it. It has to be a bikeathon because walking on the highway and through the woods is much too dangerous.”

  “Oh, Trixie, you’re wonderful!” Honey exclaimed. “I told Nick Roberts that if anyone could come up with the answer to his problems, it would be you. And I was right! Oh, when do we have it? What do we have to do? What will the route be?”

  “Wait a minute!” Trixie said. “I just got the idea. You can’t expect me to have all the answers yet. Besides, there’s a lot of work involved. We’ll need all the Bob-Whites to help. I’ll tell Mart and Brian and call Di. You get Jim and Dan.” Di and Dan took part in most of the club’s activities. Di had grown up in Sleepyside, but she and Trixie hadn’t become friends until after Di’s father had made a fortune practically overnight and moved his family to a mansion near the Wheelers’. Dan Mangan was Regan’s nephew. He’d come to live with Mr. Maypenny, the Wheelers’ gamekeeper, after he’d fallen in with a bad crowd in New York City.

  “I know Dan and Di will want to help,” Honey said, “although they’re both busy a lot, with Dan working for Mr. Maypenny and Di baby-sitting for her two sets of twin brothers and sisters. But let’s try to meet at the clubhouse after dinner.”

  “Yipes!” Trixie exclaimed. “Speaking of dinner, I was supposed to help Moms get it ready! Let’s get back to the stable and curry the horses and clean the tack so that I can get home before Moms disowns me!”

  During dinner, Trixie excitedly explained her plan to her family. They all agreed that it was a good idea to help a very worthy cause.

  “I just wish you’d come up with your idea before now, when I’m a senior,” Brian said. “Drawing is an excellent way to learn anatomy, which I’ll need when I’m studying to become a doctor. But from what I’ve heard about the art classes at Sleepyside, they just aren’t good enough to sacrifice something else I need, like chemistry or math.” Mart Belden helped himself to another portion of mashed potatoes and gravy as he said, “My sagacious elder sibling is never profligate in his predilection for beneficial electives.”

  Trixie made a face at Mart. “If you mean that Brian doesn’t waste his time taking useless classes, you’re right. If you followed his example, you’d take three hours a day of spelling so that you could write those big words you love to say.”

  “You know, Trixie,” Mr. Belden said, interrupting his two middle children’s verbal spat, “your mother was an art major, and I think she could tell you about the high cost of art supplies.”

  “Oh, my, yes,” Mrs. Belden said. “Even back then, paints and brushes were very expensive. In fact, I practically gave up my artwork when your father and I were first married because we didn’t have very much money. And then when you children came along, I got involved with other things, like trying to cook enough food to satisfy five enormous appetites, and I just never got back to painting. I can’t begin to imagine how young people afford supplies now, the way prices on everything have increased.”

  “At least you’re not bitter about it, Moms, the way Nick Roberts is.” Trixie told her family about the art fair, including both Ben Riker’s rude behavior and Nick Roberts’s flash of temper.

  “I don’t know Nick Roberts well enough to tell you why he behaved the way he did,” Brian said, “although I have seen him around school. But it sounds to me as though Ben was on the defensive because of the way his so-called friends acted. I don’t think Ben is a bad guy. He just needs to do some growing up. Be patient with him, Trix.”

  “Yeah, Trixie,” Bobby, her six-year-old brother, said. “Be nice to Ben. I like Ben. He plays with me an’ tells me funny stories, an’ one time he even taked me hunting with him and we caught a squirrel that looked like a parrot.”

  Trixie sighed. “I know, Bobby. Ben has been nice to you. So I’ll try to be nice to Ben. It certainly is hard, though, the way he’s been acting lately.”

  “I heartily concur, my dear Beatrix,” Mart said, easing the shock of his agreeing with Trixie by calling her by her hated full name. “Ben Riker’s once merely annoying behavior has become downright pernicious. In short, he’s really hard to take.”

  “Well,” Trixie said, “I guess we’d better try to take him for a while longer, if only for Honey and Jim’s sake. After all, he’s Honey’s cousin and the Wheelers’ guest.”

  After dinner, the Bob-Whites met at the clubhouse to plan the bikeathon. Trixie and Honey had already Med the others in on the art department’s need for money and the general plan, so the seven members began immediately to plan the details.

  They quickly decided that the bikeathon should be held as soon as possible, before school let out for the summer and the students were all scattered. The date decided on was two weeks from the following day, a Saturday.

  The Bob-Whites also decided that a route covering twenty-five miles would be the right length to ensure that everyone could ride the distance without getting too tired and also be home before dark.

  “I know just the route we should take,” Dan Mangan said. “Starting at the school, we can go along Old Telegraph Road to the Albany Post Road, then along Glen Road to Lytell’s store. Then we can go along the path through the game preserve to Mr. Maypenny’s and have a rest stop there. Finally, we’ll ride along the other path that goes from Mr. Maypenny’s through more of the preserve, between Di’s and the Manor House, and back out to Glen Road and into Sleepyside.”

  “Gleeps, Dan, that’s perfect!” Trixie told him. “Maybe we could even have a picnic at Mr. Maypenny’s. That would get lots of kids to sign up. We’ll need other rest stops, too. I hadn’t even thought about those. We could stop at Mrs. Vanderpoel’s, I bet. You know how she loves young people. But shouldn’t we have another rest stop somewhere along Old Telegraph Road? Does anybody know of a good place?”

  The other Bob-Whites shook
their heads.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Jim said. “Let’s wrap up the other details, then pile into the station wagon and drive along Old Telegraph Road and see if we can find a likely spot.”

  When the others agreed, Jim took charge to finish the meeting quickly. “Dan, why don’t you ask Mr. Maypenny if we can use his clearing for our picnic lunch?” Dan had come to know the Wheelers’ game warden quite well, what with living and working with the old man, and he told the other Bob-Whites that he was sure Mr. Maypenny would agree.

  “Great,” Jim said. “Honey, you call Mrs. Vanderpoel and ask her if we can have a rest stop there. Brian, you ask the principal if we can have a sign-up booth after school to get riders. I’ll ask Sergeant Molinson for a police escort so that nobody will get hurt by cars on the highways. What’s left?”

  “Posters!” Trixie exclaimed. “And pledge cards for the riders to give to the people who sponsor them. There should be no problem getting those done. This is for the art department, after all. I’ll call Nick Roberts and ask him to help. For once we won’t have our usual messy, hard-to-read Bob-White artwork.”

  “Okay,” Jim said. “That’s it. All aboard the Bob-White express. Next stop, Old Telegraph Road.”

  The Bob-Whites climbed into the station wagon that Mr. Wheeler had donated to the club. They drove down Old Telegraph Road, looking for a place that would make a good rest stop. About halfway between Glen Road and Albany Post Road, Di Lynch said, “Look! What’s that?”

  A gravel drive branched off the road to the north. Tall hedges hid what was along the drive. “We’ll pull in and see,” Jim said. “If were lucky, maybe it’s the home of one of our classmates whose folks will put up with a whole flock of bike riders for half an hour or so.”

  Pulling into the driveway, the Bob-Whites saw a large clearing on which stood a deserted-looking frame house and a shed. The windows were covered with sheets of plywood crisscrossed with two-by-fours that were obviously meant to discourage vandals.