The Mystery at Saratoga Read online

  Sounds more like a book about railroad accidents, she thought, until she saw the subtitle: Behind the Scenes in the World of Professional Horse Racing.

  Turning to the index, Trixie ran her finger down the page. She felt her stomach tighten as the name “Worthington” jumped off the page at her.

  “This is it,” she told the others in an excited whisper. “There are two pages in this book about Mr. Worthington!”

  She led the way to a table, sat down, and opened the book to the page listed in the index.

  Trixie felt goose bumps rise on her arms when she saw the chapter heading at the top of the page. “Sport of Kings—and Rogues,” it said. Afraid to read what was said about Mr. Worthington, she turned to the first page of the chapter and read through it rapidly.

  “What’s it about, Trix?” Dan asked impatiently.

  “It—it’s about racetrack scandals,” Trixie said. “This author says that racing has always been the most affected by scandals of any major sport, mainly because betting is the backbone of racing. From what this writer says, there must be almost as many ways to cheat at horse racing as there are horses.”

  “What does the writer have to say about Mr. Worthington?” Honey asked. “I hope he’s not a criminal or something.”

  To Dan and Honey’s surprise, the usually daring Trixie slammed the book shut. Her freckles stood out on her face, which was drained of color. “I can’t look,” she said. “I—I don’t know why. It’s just a feeling. But I’m afraid to read the part about Mr. Worthington.”

  Dan snatched the book away from Trixie and turned again to the pages on Mr. Worthington. “You’re being silly, Trixie,” he said. “We’ve spent all this time at the library trying to find just this information. This is no time to chicken out.”

  Dan began to read the passage aloud. Trixie kept her eyes lowered, staring at the maze of initials carved in the library table by generations of Sleepyside youngsters.

  “ ‘One scandal of recent years stands out in the mind of this writer as a perfect example of the kind of thing that gives professional horse racing a bad name,’ ” Dan read.

  “ ‘The incident involved Gadfly, an exceptionally talented two-year-old owned by J. T. Worthington of Saratoga, New York.

  ‘The colt was undefeated in his first seven races, and many experts picked him to win racing’s Triple Crown as a three-year-old.’ ”

  “The Triple Crown,” Trixie breathed. “That’s the Kentucky Derby, the Belmont Stakes, and the Preakness. Only a few horses have ever won the Triple Crown!”

  “What happened, Dan?” Honey asked.

  “ ‘Gadfly won his eighth race by more than five lengths—a decisive margin,’ ” Dan read. “ ‘Then, after the race, when the tests that are now required by law at most major racetracks were taken, traces of a drug known to deaden pain in injured horses were found in Gadfly’s blood and urine.’ ”

  “Oh, no!” Honey gasped.

  “That would force the track officials to disqualify Gadfly, wouldn’t it?” Trixie asked.

  Dan nodded. “The book also says the horse’s owner and the trainer, and Gadfly himself, were barred from all the major tracks in the country for six months for violating the racing code. But that’s not all. Listen. ‘As so often happens with high-strung, sensitive horses that are bred to race, the banishment seemed to break Gadfly’s spirit. Although he was entered in four other races in the following season, Gadfly never again won a race.

  “Can that really happen?” Trixie asked.

  “Yes, it can,” Honey said. “Thoroughbreds really are as sensitive as this writer says they are. They’ll often race when they’re hurt, even when their legs are broken, to keep from losing.”

  “Is that all the book says about Gadfly, Dan?” Trixie asked.

  Dan, who had been reading rapidly down the page, shook his head. “I wish it were. But the worst is yet to come. ‘Although Gadfly was retired to Worthington Farms and may yet sire future generations of winning horses, what makes this particular scandal so awful in this writer’s memory is that no one was ever brought to justice for his part in what took place.

  “ ‘Perhaps because the incident did not result in any loss of life—human or animal—neither the horse’s owner nor the Thoroughbred Racing Protective Association took the necessary measures to insure that the case would be thoroughly investigated.’ ”

  Dan took a deep breath before he continued. This despite the fact that the chief suspect, a young groom, should have been easy to spot in any crowd because of his bright red hair!’ ”

  Trixie’s Plan ● 4

  FOR THE SECOND TIME in a few minutes, the book was slammed shut—this time by Dan Mangan. As the sound echoed in the quiet of the library, Dan sat rigidly still, holding the book so tightly that his knuckles turned white. His head lowered, he stared at the front cover as though something fascinating were written on it. Only the tensed muscles of his jaw and the movement of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed showed that he was not reading but trying to bring his emotions under control.

  When the slamming sound died away, a breathless silence descended over the part of the library where the Bob-Whites sat. The girls, too, sat with their heads lowered, lost in their own thoughts, not wanting to catch each others’ eyes and see the fear that would be visible in them.

  Unconsciously, Trixie traced with her thumbnail an initial that had been carved in the library table by some restless student. Her thoughts were occupied by a confused jumble of images: a beautiful three-year-old colt galloping across a finish line, the pack of horses far behind him; the same colt, his spirit broken, struggling in the pack in later races while another horse surged ahead.

  Mixed with those images were memories of Regan: Regan with Bobby on his shoulders, playing horse; Regan lost in concentration while he curried Lady until her coat was sleek and shining or while he dug a stone out of the tender pad of Starlight’s foot; Regan looking stern as he warned the girls about cooling down their horses after a ride.

  Suddenly a nightmare image leaped into Trixie’s-mind: Regan, his face contorted into a villain’s mask, a hypodermic syringe in his hand, walking in slow motion toward the stall where Gadfly waited before his race.

  The vision was so awful that Trixie gasped. She looked up quickly from the table and glanced around the library, wanting to reassure herself that she was safe in Sleepyside, not living in some nightmare world.

  Honey and Dan both looked up when Trixie gasped, and they both saw the look of stark terror on her face. Dan reached across the table and put his hand on her arm, giving it a gentle, reassuring squeeze.

  Trixie looked at Dan and said, in a high, choked voice that belied the hopefulness of her words, “He doesn’t give the groom’s name, after all. Maybe—” She broke off as Dan shook his head and looked back down at the table. Blushing as she realized how foolish she sounded, she turned to look at Honey.

  Honey, too, shook her head. “There can’t be much doubt about who the redheaded groom was, Trixie,” she admitted. Then, turning to Dan, she added, “But the fact that the writer doesn’t mention him by name probably means something else: That the writer wasn’t sure enough of the facts to name Regan, that it was just his opinion that Regan doped the horse. But that opinion is wrong— absolutely wrong!” Honey’s usually gentle hazel eyes snapped with anger, and her usually quiet voice rose as she spoke.

  “That’s a good point, Honey,” Trixie said eagerly. “There are all kinds of laws about libel and slander. A writer can be sued if he says something that he can’t prove to be true about someone. The man who wrote this book is obviously upset about what happened to Gadfly. You can tell that from the way he wrote the chapter. So maybe he just put

  in the part about knowing who was the chief suspect to make it seem even worse that Mr. Worthington and the racing association didn’t try hard enough to solve the crime.”

  Trixie and Honey both looked relieved as they thought about this new theory, but Dan contin
ued staring glumly at the table. Trixie leaned forward to speak to him, then saw the stern face of the librarian at the desk behind him.

  Lowering her voice to a whisper, she said, “Let’s go outside where we can talk about this.” In her haste to leave the library without a confrontation with the librarian, Trixie rose too quickly and hit the back of the chair seat with her leg, sending the chair tumbling backward to the floor with a resounding crash.

  Flustered, Trixie whirled around to set it upright, got tangled in the chair legs, and tumbled to the floor.

  The nervousness that Honey had been feeling since Dan had finished reading suddenly erupted in a fit of nervous giggling, and she could only stand helplessly, clutching her stomach, as she watched Trixie struggling to untangle herself.

  It was Dan who finally grabbed one of Trixie’s flailing arms, pulled her to her feet, and righted the chair. He, too, was struggling to suppress his laughter as he said, “I’ll put these books back on the shelves. You two go wait outside for me, before one of you pulls this ancient building down on top of us.”

  Trixie, too, had begun to giggle, and she could only nod agreement as she and Honey turned and walked as quickly as possible to the door of the library, carefully avoiding meeting the librarian’s astonished and reproachful look.

  Once outside, Trixie and Honey sank down on the steps of the library and continued to laugh until the tears rolled down their cheeks.

  Finally Trixie’s laughter subsided, and a woeful look replaced the mirthful one. “Why am I such a clumsy oaf, Honey? And how can T laugh when everything is so—so absolutely awful?”

  Honey hugged her friend sympathetically. “Don’t feel bad, Trixie. You aren’t clumsy at all, except when you get impatient and try to move too fast, the way you did just now. It doesn’t happen very often—at least, not anymore. But we’ve all teased you a lot for being clumsy when it does happen, so we’ve made you self-conscious about it. That’s our fault, and I’m going to talk to the boys about it.

  “And as for laughing at a time like this, that’s normal, too. People can’t keep emotions bottled up inside for very long. They have to come out some way, in laughing or crying or something. It can be embarrassing, but it’s normal, and usually people "understand.”

  Trixie shook her head. “Maybe you understand, Honey, because you’re so understanding. But I don’t understand myself when I act the way I did in there just now. And Dan must think I’m awful, making a fool of myself and then giggling as though everything were wonderful, when his only relative in the whole world might possibly be in serious trouble.”

  “I don’t think you’re awful at all, Trixie,” Dan said, sitting down on the step beside her. “I know that you’re worried about Regan. We all are.”

  “I'm not as worried now as I was before we went to the library,” Honey said. “In fact, I think our mystery is pretty much solved.”

  Trixie and Dan both gave Honey bewildered looks.

  “Don’t you see?” she asked them. “When Daddy told Regan that Mr. Worthington was coming to visit the Manor House, Regan realized that he might be accused of giving the drugs to Gadfly, which of course he didn’t do. So he just went away until Mr. Worthington left.”

  Trixie shook her head. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple, Honey. Remember, Regan’s note said he had ‘things to take, care of.’ Leaving the Manor House just to avoid running into Mr. Worthington wouldn’t take care of anything. I think he’s gone off to try to solve the mystery once and for all, to clear himself.”

  “Or to turn himself in,” Dan muttered.

  Trixie turned on Dan angrily. “That’s a terrible thing to say, Dan Mangan! I don’t even know how you can say it, knowing Regan as well as you do. Even if you didn’t know him so well, you might try remembering that he showed a lot more faith in you when he first brought you to Sleepyside, and he hardly knew you at all!”

  “I’m sorry,” Dan said immediately. “You’re right, of course, Trixie. I don’t know why I said that. I guess it’s just that so many of the people I knew before I came here turned out to be bad characters. I know, now, that people can be good, but sometimes it’s hard for me to keep that kind of faith.”

  “We understand, Dan,” Honey said quickly. “People’s past experiences always affect the way they see things. Trixie and I, because of our past, tend to be too trusting, and that’s got us into some dangerous situations sometimes. But the main thing right now is to keep believing that Regan is innocent.”

  Once again, Trixie shook her head. “That isn’t the main thing, Honey. Just believing in Regan’s innocence won’t bring him back to Sleepyside, and that’s what we have to do.”

  “But how?” Honey asked.

  “Well,” Trixie said slowly, “we can either find Regan and convince him that he has to come back, or we can solve the mystery for him so that he’ll come back on his own. Or, better still, we can do both!”

  “How can we, Trixie?” Honey asked hopelessly. “The mystery that you’re talking about is almost seven years old. What we just read didn’t give us any clues on how to solve it, and anything that Regan knew, he kept to himself. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  Trixie shrugged. “Then we begin by finding Regan,” she said.

  “Don’t be silly, Trixie,” Dan said, sounding half-angry at Trixie’s confident tone. “You have no idea where he went or where to begin looking.”

  “We found Jim when he disappeared,” Trixie said stubbornly.

  “That was different, Trixie,” Honey pointed out. “We had a hard enough time finding Jim, and we almost got killed in the process, but at least we’d some idea where to start looking, because Jim had mentioned going to look for work at a boys’ camp in upstate New York.”

  “Exactly,” Trixie agreed. “And Regan said in his note that he had 'things to take care of,’ and we now know—or at least we’re fairly sure—that those things have to do with Mr. Worthington and Gadfly and a race that took place seven years ago at Saratoga. So—”

  “That’s it!” Honey interrupted, snapping her fingers as she finally understood the point that Trixie had been leading up to. “Regan went to Saratoga!”

  “Well, that makes everything easy as pie,” Dan said sarcastically. “You can just take the contents of the Bob-Whites’ treasury, which amount to about three dollars, as I recall, and use it to go to Saratoga to look for Regan.”

  “We don’t have to!” Honey said joyfully, ignoring Dan’s sarcasm. “Remember, Dan? My parents are in Saratoga right now. When they call tomorrow, I’ll ask if we can come up and join them there!”

  “Oh, Honey, that’s wonderful!” Trixie exclaimed, throwing her arms around her friend. Then she added, seriously, “But you’d better not tell them our reasons for wanting to come to Saratoga. You know how our parents feel about our trying to solve mysteries on our own. Just tell them we’re getting bored silly in Sleepyside, and we’d like to have a vacation to talk about when the boys get home ready to lord it over us with stories about their adventures at camp.”

  Honey giggled. “That certainly is the truth, Trixie—even if it’s not the whole truth. Oh, I can hardly wait to find Regan!”

  “Then let’s get home before dark, or our parents will ground us and we won’t even be able to go to the mailbox, let alone to Saratoga!” Trixie said. She jumped up from the step and ran toward the bike rack. Honey followed eagerly, but Dan, still unconvinced that Trixie’s plan was a workable one, walked slowly and thoughtfully behind.

  “The Trip Is On!” ● 5

  ALTHOUGH TRIXIE went to bed almost as soon as she got home, the day’s excitement had left her wideawake. She tossed and turned for hours, wishing she’d checked a book out of the library to read until she felt sleepy. That thought reminded her again of the chair-tipping incident, and she felt her cheeks grow hot as she pictured herself sprawled across the floor. “I’m glad Mart wasn’t there to see me make a fool of myself,” she murmured into the darkness. “He’d never l
et me forget it.”

  Then, not wanting to speak the words out loud, even in the privacy of her room, she thought, Fm glad Jim wasn't there, either. All of the Bob-Whites knew about the special friendship that existed between Jim and Trixie, and it, too, was a cause for teasing from Mart Belden. Trixie firmly denied to the other Bob-Whites, and usually to herself, as well, that Jim was a “boyfriend.” Still, she had to admit that, at times, his opinion of her was more important than that of anyone outside her family.

  “Except Honey’s,” she murmured. “But that’s different. Honey and I are so close, and she’s such a loyal person, anyway, that I don’t worry about losing her friendship—even when I ought to worry,” she added wryly, remembering the time when she and Honey had stopped speaking because of Trixie’s suspicions of Honey’s cousin Ben Ryker.

  Groaning, Trixie rolled over on her side and pulled the pillow over her head, as if to silence her own thoughts. I’ll never get to sleep if I just let myself keep jumping from one memory to another, she thought.

  She rolled onto her back and, putting the pillow under her head, began a relaxing exercise she’d read about. Starting with her toes and working upward, she tensed and then relaxed her muscles, concentrating on the muscles and keeping her mind a blank. Finally, she drifted off to sleep.

  Trixie woke with a start, sat bolt upright in her bed, and gasped for breath. She looked around the room, only gradually coming out of the nightmare she’d just been dreaming and returning to the real world, where everything was familiar, even the bright patch of morning sunlight on the foot of her bed.

  She closed her eyes and sank back on her pillow, remembering the dream. She’d been walking through a crowd of people when she’d spotted Regan’s red head in the distance. She’d called his name, but he hadn’t seemed to hear her. Struggling through the crowd, she’d come to a road and spotted Regan walking away from her. She’d begun to run, harder and faster than she ever had in her life, but she couldn’t seem to catch up to him.