The Mystery of the Missing Heiress Read online

  Trixie climbed over the pasture fence and snapped her fingers to call Susie. The little black mare cantered over to take the carrot Trixie held out to her. When she had crunched it juicily, she sniffed at the pocket where it had been hidden and bumped Trixie lovingly with her nose, wanting more.

  Something deep within Trixie stirred as she ran her hand lovingly down Susie’s neck and put her face close to the little mare’s cheek.

  She had always longed for a horse of her very own, and Susie was the nearest thing to it. She told Susie secrets she didn’t even tell Honey.

  As she led the mare into the stable to saddle her, Trixie talked to Susie about Spartan’s dancing and the upcoming show and the need for practice.

  The little mare nodded her head up and down, as though she understood every word. Trixie was sure she did, and would have gone on to tell her about the marsh and Betje Maasden, except that suddenly they were inside the stable. Here the other Bob-Whites were laughing, talking, and saddling their horses.

  Trixie took the tack from the peg in the room where it hung just so. Regan was strict about this— stirrups on the leathers, girth thrown over the saddle, bridle on the hook right under the saddle peg. No Bob-White would have thought of putting gear back any other way.

  Absentmindedly Trixie saddled Susie, walked her a little, tightened the girth, mounted, then, along with Honey, trotted through the pasture gate.

  “You’re having one of your faraway days,” Honey said. “Im just as interested in that strip of land and its owner as you are—more so, maybe, because it’s my brother Jim’s aunt. Right now, though, we’d better concentrate on our jumping. We owe something to Regan for the way he looks after us and our horses, you know—to say nothing of his babysitting Bobby when we need some privacy.” Trixie grasped Susie’s reins more tightly and smiled at Honey. “You’re right. You always are. I wish I didn’t have such a one-track mind. But this will take so much time. Maybe I should ask Regan to let me help with some of the paper work for the show instead of jumping.”

  Honey sat up straight on Lady, and Trixie; slowed, startled by the look on Honey’s face.

  “Trixie Belden, just try putting your one-track mind on practicing. Sometimes you make me furious. Sometimes I think I don’t even want to be a detective!”

  “Don’t say that!” Trixie said, stunned. “It’s our life work. Jumping isn’t.”

  “Try to act as though it is, at least today,” Honey begged. “The show means so much to Regan.”

  “I know that, and I do want to do my best. But if we ride in the Turf Show, it’ll mean daily practice for the next six weeks. I won’t have a chance to do anything else. I have to do my work at the hospital. I have to help Moms. What I want to do more than anything in the world is to try to solve mysteries. We’re just at the beginning of a good one now—Betje Maasden and that man at the marsh.”

  “Oh, Trixie, they haven’t anything to do with one another,” Honey said, laughing. “Anyway, the Turf Show won’t require daily practice. Regan said once a week, if we practice hard. And I’ll help you with the housework and Bobby too.”

  All morning, out in the pasture, Trixie watched Jupiter sail proudly over the bars and watched Brian on Starlight and Mart on Strawberry take their turns.

  It looked so easy, even for Honey on Lady. But, somehow, even though Trixie brought Susie right up to the bar at a romping gallop, the little horse turned her head and just walked around it.

  “I’ll never be able to jump,” Trixie told Regan, almost in tears.

  “That’s right,” he agreed. “You never will and Susie never will, unless you keep your mind on what you are doing. Susie can take those jumps without half trying. The trouble is with you. Try it again. This time put your heart into it. If you throw your heart and your mind into the effort, you and the horse will jump together.”

  “We’ll try it, Regan,” Trixie said, ashamed. “This time I think we’re going to make it.”

  When her turn came, Trixie circled the jumps several times, talking to Susie, petting her, and encouraging her. Then, confidently, she headed for the first hurdle, rose lightly over Susie’s withers, and gave the takeoff signal.

  Up they soared—and over!

  A cry went up from the other Bob-Whites, who had watched, without comment, Trixie’s many attempts and failures.

  “Susie never touched the bar with her hooves!” Trixie called triumphantly. “May I try it again, Regan, even if it’s out of turn?”

  “Go ahead,” Regan said. “Good girl! Keep at it while the going’s good!”

  When she slowed at the end of four jumps, Trixie turned Susie and cantered up to where Regan was standing.

  “That was real show riding,” he told her. “Nothing to it, is there, Trixie?”

  Trixie slid out of her saddle and put her head close to Susie’s. “When I’m riding Susie, there isn’t!” Back in the stable, Trixie rubbed, currycombed, and brushed Susie till the small mare nickered her gratitude for being made so comfortable.

  Trixie gave her a final pat. “As soon as you cool off a little, I’ll feed you and give you fresh water.” Jupiter, still restive, even after the strenuous morning, had to be crosstied before Jim could approach him with the currycomb. He had been superb. There wasn’t a horse to match him in all of Westchester County. Nevertheless, Trixie gave him a wide berth as she walked around the stable to join Honey.

  The two girls sat side by side, soaping and rubbing leather and shining chrome till it sparkled. Then all the Bob-Whites hung up their tack exactly right, for Regan was watching out of the corner of his eye.

  “It seems to me,” Dan said as he measured out the horses’ feed for his uncle, “that you don’t need to talk about jumping quite so loud around Spartan. Horses have feelings. Suppose you’d been a prize pitcher for the Mets, and then you got to be as old as thirty, maybe, and had to listen to a lot of guff about a new record for strikeouts. How would you feel?”

  “Do you mean Spartan used to be a jumper?” Mart asked.

  “I’ll say he was. Ask my uncle.”

  “Was he, Regan?”

  “The best. Look at those legs. Look at that chest and shoulders! He jumped in the circus. He was one of the Cossack horses, too. He grew old in the business. Mr. Wheeler bought him for Dan to use for light work in helping Mr. Maypenny.”

  “He has a good life now,” Dan said as he untied Spartan and backed him out of the stall. “But he’s like an elephant. He remembers way back when. Look at that gleam in his eye!”

  Spartan seemed to know he was being discussed. He perked up his head, wriggled his big body, and pawed the ground.

  Dan laughed and led him out to where Diana was waiting with Sunny. “See you later!” he called as they rode off.

  “What a day!’’ Regan went about straightening this, hanging up that, running his hand down each horse s withers to see if they were cool enough to be watered. “Great jumping you did today!”

  The Bob-Whites glowed.

  “Even me?” Trixie asked.

  “Yep, Miss Fidget, even you,” Regan said, “at last.”

  Juliana Is Alive! • 5

  EVERY MORNING Trixie was the first person to reach the postbox on Glen Road after the postman had passed. Every morning she came back looking woebegone.

  “You seem to think Holland isn’t any farther away than White Plains,” Mart told her. “Give the transcontinental mail a chance. Maybe there isn’t any such address now as Sixteen Seestrasse in The Hague. Time marches on, you know.”

  “I thought about that, smarty, and addressed the letter to occupant or neighbor. Oh, Mart, why do you always have to keep finding fault with me?”

  “Me? Finding fault with you? That’s a laugh. Did you hear that, Moms? Who’s always telling me, ‘Mart, feed the chickens; Mart, bring in the ripe tomatoes; Mart, do this; Mart, do that,’ hmmm? I ask you, who?”

  “Maybe I ask you to do all those things, but you never do them, does he, Moms?”

>   “Is that so? Where did those eggs over there in that basket come from? Where did those tomatoes come from?”

  “I brought them in, not you. Moms is going to make catsup. I have the water boiling to loosen the skins so I can peel them for her. What are you going to do?”

  Mrs. Belden reached for a box of spice high on a kitchen shelf and measured some into the kettle on the stove. “Mart is going to pick some green peppers and onions and bring them to me,” she said. “But first, both of you are going to stop complaining about one another. I have more work to do today than seven women. Why does all the garden stuff ripen at once? Trixie, where is Bobby? He was bouncing a ball in here not more than three minutes ago.”

  “Here I am, Moms!” Bobby called as he burst through the door. “And I’ve got Trixie’s letter with a funny stamp on it. Here, Trixie.” He thrust it into her hand. “What does it say?”

  “Give me time to open it,” Trixie said, slitting the envelope. “Down, Reddy! It isn’t for you.”

  Bobby put his arm around the dog’s neck to quiet him. “He wants to know what it says, the same as us. What does it say, Trixie?”

  “Jeepers! It’s a long one. Here, Moms, you take it and read it out loud. I’m too excited. Brian!” she called through the door to her elder brother who was clipping the grass. “Come and hear the letter from Holland! There, now, Moms. Begin.”

  “You’d think it was a letter from the President of the United States,” Mrs. Belden said, laughing. She turned the flame low under the boiling kettle. “Here goes. It’s headed ‘The Hague, eighteen Seestrasse.’ ”

  “A neighbor did get it; see, Mart?” Trixie gloated.

  “All right.All right. Just let Moms read it,” Mart countered.

  Brian waited, clippers in hand. “I sure second the motion, Trixie.”

  Trixie just glared at both boys and settled herself to listen.

  “ ‘Dear Miss Belden:’ ”

  She only got that far when Bobby collapsed, giggling.

  “What is the matter with you?” Trixie asked impatiently.

  “Miss Belden. Miss Belden. Only teachers are Miss.’ Trixie s not a ‘Miss.’ ” A giggle caught in his throat, and he spluttered, choking.

  “I'll try again,” Mrs. Belden said. This time she skipped the “Miss Belden.” She knew Bobby.

  “Your letter came as a surprise to me but a welcome one. After all these years, there is now word from the family of my friend Betje Maasden.

  I had not known there was any relative of Betje’s still living. We had heard that her sister married again and died in some eastern city in your country.

  “It is true, tragically, that my friend and her husband were drowned when their automobile fell into the canal.

  “It is not true, however, that their daughter, Juliana, was drowned. She was saved. Since there seemed to be no living relative, I took Juliana into my home, and we have loved her dearly. My own two children were grown, and it made me happy to have a young child in the family again. Ample funds were left in trust for Juliana by her father.

  She was sent to a private school here.

  “Eight years ago my daughter, Mrs. Walter De Jong, and her husband moved to the United States, where he Is in charge of his company’s American office. They now live in the Bronx. My daughter and I thought Juliana might have greater educational advantages in the States, so she went with them and is now in your country, where she attended college. She is engaged to be married to a young attorney in The Hague.

  “Juliana will be so happy to have the news, which I shall write to her, that she has a young cousin, James Winthrop Frayne. You will be getting in touch with one another soon, I am sure, and both you and Juliana will write to me of this happy occasion.”

  The letter was signed “Minna Schimmel.”

  “Whoopee!” Trixie cried. “The Bronx isn’t far from here. Why didn’t she give the Dejong family’s address?”

  “What difference does it make? We can look it up in a directory, I suppose,” Mart said. “Where are you going?”

  “To tell Jim, of course. May we possibly be excused, Moms? Brian and Mart and me? This calls for a Bob-White emergency meeting. Please, Moms! I’ll work even harder than ever after the meeting.”

  “I know better than to try and stop you, Trixie. Go ahead, all of you. I’ll call Honey and tell her to meet you at the clubhouse. She can call Diana and Dan.”

  “Oh, Moms, you’re the greatest!”

  “I’ll go, too,” Bobby said. “I want to know what you do.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Trixie said. “Meetings are for Bob-Whites only, Bobby. In a few years you can be a Bob-White yourself.”

  Bobby’s lip trembled. “I’m the one who brought you the letter...

  “Who’ll taste the catsup for me, so I’ll know when it’s just right?” his mother asked.

  “Let Reddy taste it. Let me go, Trixie!”

  Mrs. Belden steered Bobby to a low kitchen chair near the stove, where the catsup was cooking.

  “You stay with me, Bobby, because I don’t want to stay alone. After they’re all gone, I’ll tell you where I’ve hidden a brand-new jigsaw puzzle.”

  “All right... but I never get to go anywhere! I can'telephone Honey,” he told his mother. “I know her number.”

  When all the members reached the clubhouse, Trixie opened the letter and read it dramatically. “Isn’t it exciting? A cousin you never knew you had, Jim.”

  “Yeah,” he said slowly and reached for the letter. “I like to think I still have at least one living relative.”

  Honey gasped. “Oh, Jim! You know that since Daddy and Mother adopted you, all of our relatives are your relatives, too.”

  “I know,” Jim said quickly, “and you’ve all sure been wonderful to me. But it isn’t quite the same as blood relatives.”

  “How about that stepfather of yours?” Mart asked, mostly to see what Trixie would say.

  He found out.

  “Mart Belden, don’t you ever mention that cruel, mean stepfather of Jim’s again. No wonder Jim doesn’t think of him as family. He wasn’t a blood relative, anyway.”

  “I can’t bear to think of how terribly he treated you,” Honey said and put her hand on her brother’s arm. “He beat you and starved you and even tried to burn you in that old house! It’s terrible! Thank goodness he’s no longer your guardian. We’ve heard the last of him.”

  “I hope we have,” Trixie said devoutly, a faraway look in her eyes.

  “Let’s forget about that and think about Juliana!” Honey said firmly.

  “She’s lots older than us,” Diana said, “if she’s old enough to have gone to college and to be engaged! Imagine that!”

  “Maybe she won t even like to do the same things we do,” Dan said. “Do you think so, Mart?”

  “She’ll like her handsome cousin,” Mart answered and grinned as he saw Jim’s freckled face color. “Furthermore,” Mart said and touched his waistline, “even someone with a beard down to here would like to ride a horse.”

  “And ride in the Bob-White station wagon!” Diana said.

  “And go swimming!” Brian added. “And go picnicking in the woods and everything!”

  Jim took up the letter and read it again, folded it, and gave it back to Trixie. His face was serious. “Even if she is older, we’ll get along fine. I’m sure to like her, because she’s my mother’s niece. I wish my mother could have lived.” His eyes brightened as he looked at Trixie. “She was a lot like your mom.” Trixie’s face saddened. Everyone couldn’t have a mother like Moms. Of course, Jim’s adopted mother, Mrs. Wheeler, like her husband, gave Honey and Jim every material thing they wanted.

  She watched Honey’s face. It reflected loyalty and love for her mother. Trixie knew, though, that Honey realized what Jim meant when he said his own mother had been like Moms. She was always right there when she was needed. Mrs. Wheeler was beautiful and kind— Oh, well, Moms was Moms, and Mrs. Wheeler was Mrs. Wheeler.
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br />   Mrs. Minna Schimmel had said in her letter that her family loved Juliana. The Bob-Whites would love her, too, if only because she was Jim’s cousin.

  “Let’s go up to the house,” Honey said impulsively, “and call Juliana.”

  “That’s an idea,” Jim agreed. “We can ask her to come right over here to our house.”

  “Tell her we’ll meet her at the bus station,” Mart said.

  At the Wheeler house they all gathered around Trixie as she began leafing through the telephone directory. “Here’s her number. Walter De Jong; it’s seven digits. Everyone quiet!”

  Jim dialed and listened to the ring.

  Nobody answered.

  He waited a little, then dialed again—and again —and again.

  A big sigh went up from the Bob-Whites sitting on the floor around the telephone. What a letdown, after the excitement of the letter!

  “I was sure she’d answer,” Trixie said. “Wouldn’t you think she’d stay home or even telephone you, Jim, after she got Mrs. Schimmel’s letter?”

  “Oh, Trixie, pipe down,” Mart said.

  “She probably left home before the postman came,” Brian said. “Or maybe Mrs. Schimmel mailed a letter to her after she mailed the one to you.”

  “Or probably she went to have her hair washed and ironed and her eyelashes replaced,” Mart added.

  Trixie gave him a scornful look. “Now it’s your turn to pipe down, Mart.”

  “I’ll try again later,” said Jim, “and keep on trying. In the meantime, why don’t we surprise Regan and take out the horses?”

  “Not the Beldens,” Trixie said quickly, before Mart and Brian had a chance to say yes. “It’s back to the mines for us. Brians cutting the grass, and Mart and I have to help Moms. She’s making catsup. Whistle for us if you get in touch with Juliana. If you ride, Honey, do be careful when you go near that ledge above the marsh!”

  “As if Jim would let me go within a mile of it!” Honey laughed. “Remember how he yanked Di hack when she wandered toward it?”