The Mystery of the Missing Heiress Page 2

  Beneath them the mighty Hudson flowed. Flat ferries, heavy with beetle-sized cars, churned trails that rocked tiny, white-sailed pleasure craft in their wake. Gulls wheeled, dipping and soaring to the tempo of tugboat whistles.

  Immediately below the Bob-Whites lay their objective: a strip of marshy land to be reached by a worn and precipitous footpath. Swampy, of little use to industry, it fascinated the young people. In late fall it was a resting place for fowl on their north-south flight. Even when the Beldens’ grandfather had been a boy, botany classes from Sleepy-side schools had hunted there to fill herbariums with specimens.

  Diana, shading her eyes to look far up the river, walked, unthinking, into the forbidden area, only to be jerked back by Jim with such force that she sprawled on the ground.

  “Can’t you read?” he asked, fright hoarsening his voice. “That shelf of earth is so thin that a rabbit’s whisper might break it off. Don’t do that again,

  Diana!” He helped her to her feet.

  “That was a close call,” Mart said seriously. “Girls! They have to be watched just like babies! Let’s go back.”

  “We will not, Mart.” Trixie’s voice was impatient. “You’re a fine one to talk! You’d have drowned half a dozen times in the Wheeler lake if a girl—Honey— hadn’t pulled you out when you were learning to dive off the high board. And we’re not going back till we see what those men down there are doing to the marsh.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mart said, shamefaced. “When I get scared, I.... Let’s go find out what’s up.” Carefully they inched their way down, chain-fashion, hand in hand, loosening outcropping pebbles, and rejoicing in the thrill of this lesser danger.

  Near the water’s edge, men busy with sump pumps seemed to be drawing up samples of sand and vegetation for testing.

  “What goes on?” Jim asked.

  “Some outfit from Canada is going to build a factory here,” one of the men said. “They’re going to drain the swamp.”

  “That’s been tried many times before,” Jim said. The listening Bob-Whites nodded.

  “It wouldn’t work,” Brian asserted. “There’s no bottom to the marsh.”

  “They’ve found one now, kid,” the man answered. “Some engineers came up with a new way of doing it. There’s been enough publicity about the project. If you’d read the papers, you wouldn’t have to ask so many questions and interrupt our work—you and a dozen others.”

  “Gosh! What’ll we do for stuff for botany?” Mart wondered. “Where will the migrating birds light?”

  “Questions! Questions! Questions!” the man snorted. “You’d better get out of our way... go back up to where you came from. Read the answers to your questions in the newspapers. Say,” he added as they quickly crossed the road to the path, “aren’t you going to take the old guy with you?” Mart turned. “What old guy?”

  “That old guy there. He asked more questions than you kids. Isn’t he with you?”

  Mart shook his head. “There’s no old guy with us.

  Trixie, though, had trained her keen eyes to hunt out details other people missed. She had to, to be a good detective.

  Far up the road she saw a man fade into the shrubbery and out of sight.

  A sense of something evil, something frightening, set her to shivering, though the day was warm and sunny.

  A Mysterious Phone Call • 2

  TRIXIE AND HONEY lingered, whispering, as the boys began the climb back up the path.

  “You looked scared to death,” Honey said under her breath. “What happened?”

  “It was that man - the old man - didn't you see him?”

  “No. I thought that workman was seeing things. Did you see someone?”

  Trixie gave Honey a little shove to start her up the path. “Gleeps, if you’d only keep your eyes open! I was sure you saw him, too, and maybe could tell me who he was.”

  She had raised her voice, and Jim, trudging ahead, overheard. “I saw him just as he disappeared, but, gosh, Trixie, he gave me a funny feeling—as if there were something I should know about him.”

  “Forget the spooky guy,” Brian said. “The only thing that gives me the heebies is that I’m just in the middle of a study of herbs. I’ve never found any of them outside that marsh—tansy, boneset, bergamot, pennyroyal.”

  “I never even heard of them,” Jim said.

  “Not many people have today,” Brian explained, puffing as they neared the top. “They were used by our great-grandmothers for medicine. I think they’re pretty neat today. I want to do some research with them. I’ll bet it’s the only place in the United States where you can find them still growing wild.”

  Jim laughed. “I’ll take that bet. There’s plenty of marshland left, even here around Sleepyside. If you keep on this way, Brian, you’ll get your M.D. before you even start pre-med.”

  “Then I can be the doctor in residence in your home for orphan boys.”

  I wish I had some sort of career to work toward all the time,” Diana sighed, her lovely face worried and a little red from climbing. “Honey and Trixie are so sure they want to be detectives. Mart’s so sure he wants to be a farmer, Brian a doctor, and Dan a New York policeman. Jim has had his mind set on that home for orphan boys ever since his great-uncle left him that money. I used to think I wanted to be a stewardess, but now I’m not sure I want to be anything—except a mother, maybe.”

  “We all want to be that,” Honey was quick to say. “That’s a career. Look at Trixie’s mother. She mothers all of us. She’s super!”

  Trixie saw Honey’s face sadden. Her own mother was away so much of the time on business trips with her father. There was Miss Trask, of course. She had been Honey’s teacher at Briar Hall, before Honey came to Sleepyside and enrolled in public school. Now Miss Trask did a wonderful job as housekeeper at Manor House and of pinch-hitting as mother for Honey and Jim. All the Bob-Whites were devoted to her. She disciplined, but she didn’t snoop. She listened but found little fault. Why, she made almost as good a mother as Trixie’s own.

  At the top of the cliff, Trixie and Honey stood looking back down below. The men were still busy dredging and sampling. Trixie’s face clouded as the Bob-Whites started back to the horses and Manor House. That man—what was it about him that....

  “Stay with me tonight,” Honey begged. “My mom is away, as usual, and we have so much to talk over.”

  “I shouldn’t,” Trixie said, hesitating. “I’m always getting out of chores at home. Mom never says a thing, but she does depend on me to watch Bobby. He can get into more mischief.”

  “It won t be quite so much work for her if you and Brian and Mart stay for dinner at our house. Stay, please. Miss Trask will call your mother.”

  “And Moms will say yes. She never thinks about herself. No, Honey, I have a better idea. Moms has to get dinner for Bobby and Daddy, anyway. She doesn’t mind more people. You and Jim come to dinner at our house. Before we left tins morning, Brian and Mart and I gathered the eggs and brought in vegetables from the garden—tomatoes, green beans, green cabbage, and some late lettuce. If I run on home now and help, we’ll have a sort of picnic supper.”

  “I’ll love it. So will Jim. But you’ll have to promise to stay with me tonight, anyway. Let me go home with you now and help. I can at least read to Bobby.”

  “And who, pray, will groom the horses?” Mart asked.

  “And clean the tack?” Jim added.

  “I told the girls I’d help groom the horses if you kids would exercise them,” Regan said and took Susie’s and Lady’s reins.

  “That simplifies matters,” Jim said. “Mart and Brian and I will help Regan make short work of things here at the stable. You girls help Mrs. Belden. We’ll drive our car after dinner. It’s too bad Di and Dan went home, but we can call them.”

  “Perfect!” Trixie said. “We’ll pick them up in the new Bob-White bus after dinner. Maybe we can all go to the movie in Sleepyside after we wash the dishes. Moms won’t mind if we have dinne
r early, just as soon as Daddy gets home from the bank. We did agree to use Bob-White funds for a once-a-month movie, didn’t we?”

  “Right,” Mart said. “And what better way to christen the new car? There’s a western at the Cameo— Every once in a while my poor little sister comes up with an idea that’s a bell ringer.”

  “Once in a while is better than never,” Trixie retorted archly. Then they both laughed. They were so near the same age that they constantly baited one another. But let an outsider say anything critical about either one, and watch the fur fly!

  The next morning Jim, Brian, and Mart had parked the station wagon in front of the Bob-White clubhouse. Jim was on his knees, painstakingly sketching the words BOB-WHITES OF THE GLEN, to be filled in later with bright red enamel, when Trixie came flying down the driveway from Manor House, followed by Honey.

  “Jim,” she shouted, “who is Betje Maasden?”

  “Who’s who? What?” Jim asked, startled, as Mart accidentally touched the horn.

  “If Mart will keep still a minute, I’ll explain. Someone called at your house just now. I answered the telephone, because nobody else seemed to be doing it. A gruff, mysterious voice asked for you.”

  “Everything is mysterious to Trixie,” Mart said. “Well, I keep thinking about that man I saw yesterday,” Trixie answered, keeping her eyes on Jim.

  “Of all the unmysterious things that could happen!” Mart gibed. “The poor guy was probably just curious. All you saw of him was his back, anyway.”

  “It was a mysterious back.” Trixie shivered.

  “I give up,” Mart hooted. “Do I have a mysterious back, Mrs. Sherlock Holmes?” He struck a pose.

  “You couldn’t be mysterious if you tried,” Trixie retorted. “You just talk too much. That man was sort of strange. Jim said he shivered, too, when he saw him.”

  “Jim would agree with you if you said you saw a dinosaur disappearing into the shrubbery. That doesn’t prove anything.”

  “Let’s get this show back on the road, Mart,” Jim broke in. “What did you tell the man on the phone, Trix?”

  “I said you weren’t there—and could I take a message? He said yes, if I thought I had sense enough to remember it.”

  Jim bristled. “That was a great line to take. Just great. Then what?”

  “Then he asked me if you ever had an aunt by the name of Betje Maasden. Did you?”

  “Not that I ever heard of. The only relative I ever knew was my great-uncle, James Winthrop Frayne.”

  Mart whistled. “He was worth half a dozen other relatives, too. He left you Ten Acres.”

  “Which promptly burned to the ground,” Trixie said.

  “And,” Mart went on pompously, “he left you half a million dollars. Nobody would sneeze at that kind of money.”

  “No,” Brian said, “and Jim promptly salted it all away to build a school for runaway boys as soon as he’s through college. I’m going to be his doctor.”

  “We all know that,” Trixie said, somewhat impatiently. “Let’s get back to Betje Maasden. The name somehow rings a bell. Didn’t you ever have an Aunt Betje, Jim?”

  “Nope,” Jim answered. Then he sat up straight. “Say, wait a minute. My mother had an older sister —lots older. But she was Aunt Betty. I never saw her. Her maiden name was Vanderheiden, the same as my mother’s.”

  “ ‘Betty’ could be ‘Betje,’ ” Honey said thoughtfully. “Lots of old Dutch names have turned into more modem ones.”

  “That’s right,” Jim said positively. “My own mother was Katje, but my father always called her

  Katie. I never did hear the name Maasden, though, as far as I can remember. Did you tell that guy off who got so smart on the phone, Trixie?”

  “No, I didn’t. He slammed down the receiver after he said he’d find out some other way—that he had to know right away.”

  “You said the name Betje Maasden rang a bell with you, Trixie. It does with me, too, sort of. Betje Maasden, Betje Maasden.” Jim’s forehead wrinkled.

  “I have it!” Trixie shouted triumphantly. “It’s the name that was in that story in the newspaper.”

  “What story? What newspaper?” Jim asked, amused at Trixie’s excitement.

  “You know—the story Daddy read to us at dinner last night when we told him about those men we saw at the marsh. I guess nobody paid much attention. Our heads were so full of our new car. I’m sure I remember the name Betje Maasden, though. Where is the Sleepyside Sun? Is it up at your house, Honey?”

  “Now, it just happens—” Mart said, rolling up his shirt sleeves and extending his hands as a magician does. “See? Nothing up my sleeves!” He reached in his hip pocket. “It just happens,” he repeated, “that I have a copy of the little newspaper with me. There’s an advertisement in it that I intend to bring up at our meeting, as soon as Trixie forgets about Betje Maasden and gets down to business.”

  “Read it first!” Trixie begged. “First read the story about the marsh, Mart. Please!”

  “Okay. It has a local dateline.

  “The International Pine Company, of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, plans to build a million-dollar furniture factory in Sleepyside. It will offer employment to several hundred men and women.

  “The factory is to be built on the strip known as Blue Heron Marsh, lying west of our city, along the Hudson River. Representatives of the Canadian company have been at work surveying the strip for reclamation.

  “The land is appraised at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Work will begin as soon as title to the land is established. The last name to appear on the abstract as owner of the land is Betje Maasden. No address is given. Research is under way now to locate Betje Maasden.

  “Well, that’s that!” Mart said and folded the newspaper. “Now let’s get down to business.

  “Oh, Mart,” Trixie said, “can’t you see this is business—that we have to find out who Betje Maasden is?”

  “No, I don’t see it, Trixie. I think it’s none of your business or ours. However—” Mart gave a great sigh—“I might just as well resign myself to watching you and Honey go into action. The Belden-Wheeler Detective Agency is about to take over the Bob-Whites of the Glen again. I can see that.”

  “Have a heart, Mart,” Brian said. “After all that excitement on the Mississippi River towboat, how do you think we can settle down to any routine? I’m for Trixie and Honey—and Betje, too. What’s the next move, Trix?”

  Trixie smiled gratefully. “Well, if anybody in this whole countryside knows anything about anyone called Maasden, it’s sure to be Mrs. Vanderpoel. I suggest we pay her a visit.”

  Mrs. Vanderpoel had been a true friend to the Bob-Whites when they were planning their antique show for UNICEF. She had not only lent them many of her priceless antiques for use in the show, but she had also persuaded many of her friends among the old Dutch families to do so.

  Since Crabapple Farm was only a short distance from the quaint yellow brick home where Mrs. Vanderpoel’s family had lived for generations, Brian, Mart, Trixie, and Bobby visited her often. She liked them and they liked her. Fat, jolly, grayhaired, and hospitable, she had a bottomless jar filled with spicy Dutch windmill cookies, kept just for the Beldens and their friends in the Bob-White club.

  “Before I can go anyplace or do anything, I have to go home and help Moms,” Trixie said. “I was gone yesterday and last night, and—jeepers, I just remembered! Moms has to go to the dentist this morning, and I promised to take care of Bobby. If he’s turned loose alone in the house, he’ll tear everything apart to see what makes it work.”

  “Psychiatrists say that children must be encouraged to find out things for themselves,” Mart said. “They don t know Bobby.”

  “I'll say they don t,” Brian agreed. “Last week he opened my butterfly collection and put all the specimens out on the porch ‘to see if they’d fly.’ They were broken to pieces, of course, and no good after that. You’d better get home right away, Trix, before Moms gets away
and the little fixer is turned loose.”

  “How about you and Mart coming home with me? It seems to me Dad had his ‘now or else’ voice last night when he talked about cutting the lawn.”

  “I’ll help,” Jim said quickly, “as soon as I finish this lettering on the station wagon. If we’re going to get our weekly allowances and chip in on the Bob-White club fund, we’ll all have to get to work, I guess. The fund sure looked sick after we shelled out for the movie last night.”

  Honey put her hand over her mouth. “I just remembered. Last night I brought all that mending home to do for your mother and then forgot all about it. I can’t expect her to pay me if I don’t keep it up. Buttons, buttons, buttons! Sometimes I think Bobby pulls them off just to keep me busy. Well, if he didn’t, I wouldn’t get a chance to do mending, and it’s the first money I ever earned in my life.”

  “It’s not a bad rule we made about club funds— that we have to earn the money we put up,” Mart said. “Lets get going and get the lawn mowed. Then we can go sleuthing with Trixie. I want to hear, myself, what Mrs. Vanderpoel has to say about this Betje what’s-her-name.”

  “How about taking the horses?” Jim suggested. “Mrs. Vanderpoel’s house is back in the woods, you know, and Regan will be wanting us to exercise the horses if he knows we’re going.”

  “I’ll call Di,” Honey said. “Then I’ll see you later. She can ride Sunny down to your house, and we’ll put her to work, too.”

  The Faded Snapshot • 3

  ATCRABAPPLE FARM, Mrs. Belden was just leaving when Trixie and the boys arrived.

  “Heavens, I’m glad to see you,” she said. I didn't know where you were, and I was going to have to take Bobby with me to the dentist. I know how Dr. Morrison would like that!”

  Trixie laughed. “The last time he was there, he tried to make a deal with Dr. Morrison, didn't he? Bobby wanted him to save all the teeth he pulled, so he could put them under his own pillow and collect for them from the Tooth Fairy.”