The Mystery off Old Telegraph Road Page 6

  “Oh, Trixie,” Honey wailed, “I’m sorry, too! I said perfectly horrid things to you. And I was just as upset yesterday as you were. I should have realized that that’s why you left the supplies sitting out. Why, do you know what I did yesterday?”

  “What?” Trixie asked, still feeling tearful.

  “I was trying to pretend to watch the baseball game so that my family wouldn’t know about our fight. But really I wasn’t paying any attention at all. I was just staring at the baseball field, not really seeing it, when suddenly everyone started to cheer. I saw a runner crossing home plate, and I jumped up and yelled, ’Touchdown!’”

  Trixie’s tears turned to giggles. “Oh, Honey,” she gasped, “you didn’t!”

  Honey nodded solemnly, then she began to giggle, too. “And that’s not all, Trixie. When I jumped up, I forgot that I had a glass of pop in my hand, and I emptied the whole glassful of cold, sticky pop on Ben’s head! You should have seen the look on his face.”

  In her mind’s eye, Trixie could see the look on Ben’s face: full of anger he couldn’t vent because Honey s parents were there, and also full of confusion and bewilderment at seeing his normally poised and tactful cousin acting so foolish.

  “Oh, Honey,” Trixie said between her giggles, “we don’t dare fight anymore. It’s too dangerous!”

  “I agree with you, Trixie,” Honey said more seriously. “Fighting with you makes me feel too horrible. Let’s never fight again.”

  “I was all set to apologize this morning,” Trixie told Honey. “Then, when you weren’t on the bus—”

  “Oh, Trixie, I know,” Honey said. “Jim has decided we should start riding with Ben. He thinks it might keep him out of trouble. I had to go along with it this morning because I didn’t want Jim to know we’d had a fight. Jim’s riding home with Ben, too, but I just refused. I had to talk to you and try to straighten things out.”

  “Well, everything’s straightened out now,” Trixie said emphatically. “Let’s not do anything to un-straighten it, ever again.”

  “It’s a deal,” Honey said. “I’ll finish doing the direction arrows, since you started them. Then both of us can work at the sign-up booth Wednesday while the boys take the posters out and put them up. Ill call Di—she wasn’t in school today—to find out if she can help.

  “Then we can—oops! Here’s my stop, Trixie. I’ll call you after supper!” Honey gathered up her books and dashed for the door of the bus.

  As the bus pulled away, Honey stood in her driveway and waved good-bye to Trixie.

  I feel as wonderful this afternoon as I felt awful this morning, Trixie thought as she got off the bus at Crabapple Farm. Honey and I are friends again.

  “Yippee!” she shouted, running up the driveway to the house.

  The Sign-Up ● 8

  ON WEDNESDAY, during her study hall, Trixie went back to the art department to pick up the posters and pledge cards from Mr. Crider.

  Trixie was delighted with the work. “How did you do them?” she asked. “They’re all so uniform. They look more like something that came off a printing press.”

  “They were done with a printing technique, Trixie,” Mr. Crider told her, “although they weren’t put on a press. The technique is called serigraphy, or silk screening. Would you like to see how it’s done?”

  When Trixie nodded eagerly, Mr. Crider led her to a small room in the back of the art department. “Here’s where we work,” Mr. Crider said. “The process is called silk screening because, as you can see, we use a piece of silk cloth that’s been stretched tight on a wooden frame.

  “We make a stencil of the artwork, cutting out any places where we want ink to show through on the finished piece. Laying the stencil down on the piece of silk, we paint over the openings with a black, waxy substance.” Mr. Crider showed Trixie the stencil that had been used for her posters, putting it down on the silk screen to demonstrate.

  “After it dries for half an hour or so, we prepare a mixture of glue and cold water—about a fifty-fifty ratio. We spread the glue mixture over the screen with a squeegee, which is a flat rubber blade like the ones a gas station attendant uses to wash car windows.

  “We let the first coat of glue dry, then we apply a second coat and let that dry.

  “Finally, we use kerosene and a stiff scrub brush to wash the waxy substance off the areas of the screen where we want the ink to go through, and the screen is ready to use,” Mr. Crider concluded.

  “Whew!” Trixie exclaimed. “That really sounds complicated!”

  “The preparation of the screen is fairly demanding,” Mr. Crider admitted, “but once it’s ready, the silk-screening process itself is quite simple. All we have to do is pour a generous quantity of paint on one end of the stencil and work it across to the other with the squeegee. As long as the screen and the surface we re printing on are held steady, there’s not too much that can go wrong.”

  “That’s a lot better than our system of doing each poster by hand,” Trixie admitted. “Sometimes if two or three of us each do a poster, it’s hard to tell that they’re all supposed to be the same poster.”

  Mr. Crider chuckled. “Next time you have a project like that to do, I’d suggest that you go to the library and take out a book on silk screening. There are several books that show beginners how to get started. You don’t really need all of this complicated equipment, either. Some of the easier methods use plain brown wrapping paper instead of wax and glue. If your design is simple enough, you can just put the wrapping paper over your screen. The first coat of paint acts as a kind of glue to keep the paper on the screen where you want it.”

  “I think we could manage that,” Trixie said. “I can think of a lot of ways we could use silk screening. We could even make our own Christmas cards.”

  “You could indeed,” Mr. Crider said. “Silk screening is a very adaptable technique. It came from China, as you might expect, because it uses silk. The Chinese and Japanese used it for making pieces of fine art. Since it came to this country, though, it’s found a lot of uses in industry.

  “One of its big advantages is that the surface that’s being printed on doesn’t have to bear much weight—unlike surfaces that have to be put through a printing press. That means that breakable items, like glassware, can be silk screened.

  “Well, this is my free period, and I really shouldn’t be using it to give a lecture on art,” Mr. Crider concluded. “Here are your posters, and I hope you find ways of using silk screening for future projects. Don’t hesitate to call me if you need help.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Crider,” Trixie said. “I’ll remember your offer!”

  After school, the seven Bob-Whites met in front of the principal’s office, where the school custodian had already set up a table and chairs for the sign-up.

  Jim, Brian, Dan, and Mart divided up the posters and quickly decided which territory each should cover. Brian had driven his jalopy to school that morning, and Jim had the Bob-White station wagon, so they were to cover the shops and businesses farthest from the school. Dan Mangan would take places closest to the school, while Mart put posters up in the hallways of the school itself.

  By the time the boys left on their rounds, a number of students had already begun to gather around the sign-up table, thanks to an announcement that had been made over the PA system that afternoon.

  Time and again for the next hour, Honey, Trixie, and Di explained to eager students how the bikeathon would work:

  “Just take one of these cards and fill in your own name and address. Then take the card to all your neighbors, friends, and relatives, and ask them if they’d be willing to pledge a certain amount of money for each mile you ride—say, five or ten cents. Have them fill in their name and address where it says ’sponsor,’ along with the amount they want to pledge per mile.

  “We’ll have a table set up right here again next Wednesday so that we can collect your cards and hand out more. After the bikeathon, we’ll call all the people who signed your
cards, telling them how many miles you rode and how much they owe. Then they’ll send the money to the school, in care of the art department. That’s all there is to it!” Trixie was in the middle of explaining the bikeathon for the umpteenth time when she spotted Ben Riker and his friends walking up to the table.

  Oh, woe, Trixie thought. I hope they don’t make any trouble.

  The boys paused a short distance from the table and watched silently for a moment. Although they said nothing, the smirks on their faces made it clear that they were not about to sign up for the ride or pledge any money for any of the riders.

  “You know, guys,” Jerry Vanderhoef said finally, “that isn’t such a bad idea.” His friends looked surprised, but he continued. “I could use some extra spending money, couldn’t you? Maybe we should have a bikeathon, too. We could ask for contributions to our favorite charity.”

  “Yeah—us!” Mike Larson agreed.

  “That’s right,” Bill Wright added. “We could call ourselves ’The Society for the Preservation of Wimpy’s Hamburgers.’ How’s that?”

  “There’s just one problem with that idea, chums,” Ben Riker said. “This bikeathon is being run by one of Sleepyside’s most illustrious detectives, Supersleuth Trixie Belden. If she got word that you guys were planning to raise money for a cause that wasn’t worthwhile, she’d track you down and have you thrown in the slammer. And I don’t think that dear Miss Trixie would consider raising money for your after-school hamburgers very worthwhile.”

  Trixie felt her face burning with embarrassment as the boys kept up their banter. She wanted desperately to say something to the boys, to make them go away, but she remembered how much more miserable she’d been during her brief fight with Honey and resolved to hold her tongue.

  Trixie sneaked a look at her friend to see how Honey was reacting to the taunts of Ben and his friends. Honey was explaining the sign-up process to a couple of students. She was trying to look as though she didn’t hear what Ben was saying, but she wasn’t succeeding. She, too, was flushed with embarrassment, and her usually tranquil-looking face was drawn and pinched.

  She’s really suffering, Trixie thought. For the first time, Trixie fully realized how hard the situation was for Honey to cope with. Honey felt sympathy for Ben because she knew all too well how lonely his life was. At the same time, she knew that he was choosing the most destructive way possible of dealing with his loneliness.

  She doesn’t know how she should feel about Ben, Trixie thought. She just knows that she can’t ignore him, because he is her cousin. She’s probably waiting, just as Mart is, for Ben to do something so awful that the Wheelers will have to admit defeat and send Ben away for good. If that happens, Honey will always feel guilty because she wasn’t able to give him the help he needed.

  With the full realization of Honey’s discomfort came full understanding of how much worse Trixie’s own behavior had made Honey feel. Trixie had been forcing Honey to choose between her best friend and her conscience. If she cut Ben off now in order to please me, and then Ben went off the deep end, she’d hate herself, and, what’s more, she’d hate me, too.

  Trixie knew that it would be easier for her to tolerate Ben Riker from now on.

  Ben and his friends finally tired of their taunts and moved on, and shortly afterward the last of the students interested in the bikeathon left the table, pledge cards in hand.

  Fortunately, Ben’s rude behavior hadn’t dampened the enthusiasm of the students at the booth, nor had it given them cause to doubt the good intentions behind the bikeathon. Mart had taped one of the posters on the wall next to the table, and the map of the bikeathon route had been a strong selling point, as Trixie had known it would be. She’d heard many of the students talking among themselves about how interesting it would be to see the Wheeler game preserve firsthand. Trixie smiled to herself as she remembered the second most common remark she’d overheard: “Look! There are going to be free refreshments, too!” She knew that most of them would be expecting the usual unimaginative hot dogs and hamburgers.

  “Won’t they be surprised,” she said aloud to Honey and Di, “when they show up at Mr. Maypenny’s and discover that huge kettle of hunter’s stew?”

  “We really should tell them about it in advance,” Di said. “Otherwise, they’ll eat so many of Mrs. Vanderpoel’s delicious cookies that they’ll have to go around the bike route all over again to work up an appetite!”

  “How many people signed up?” Trixie asked. Honey finished counting the lists of names and looked up with a wide smile. “There are already fifty riders, Trixie, with more to come!”

  Trixie did some fast calculating. “Let’s see. If we have fifty riders, and they each get a dollar a mile in pledges.... Gleeps! That will be over a thousand dollars for the art department!”

  “Oh, Trixie, that’s wonderful!” Honey exclaimed. “Are you sure?”

  Di Lynch had been figuring with paper and pencil. “That’s right, Honey. See?” She showed the figures to Honey and Trixie. “Trixie only has trouble with math problems in class. When it comes to one of her pet projects, she has no trouble at all.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell everybody, especially when I bring home my report card.

  There’s nothing wrong with my answers in math class. It’s the problems that are wrong!”

  Still laughing at Trixie’s ’logic,” the girls cleaned off their table, gathered their books, and started to walk to the parking lot, where they were to meet the boys.

  Suddenly Trixie stopped and snapped her fingers. “Math problems!” she exclaimed.

  “I thought we just decided you don’t have any,” Honey said teasingly.

  “Oh, yes, I do,” Trixie said. “I have ten algebra problems that I’m supposed to do for homework tonight, and I left the book in my locker. You two go ahead and wait for the boys. I’ll run back and get my book and meet you in the parking lot in a minute.” Trixie turned and hurried back down the corridor.

  Rounding a comer, Trixie saw Nick Roberts. She started to speak, but something in his attitude stopped her. He stood motionless, his face fixed in a frown, staring at the wall.

  Following his gaze, Trixie saw that he was looking at one of the bikeathon posters that Mart had put up earlier.

  Mysteries • 9

  AS TRIXIE WATCHED in frozen silence, Nick continued to stare at the poster. Then, in one swift, sudden movement, he reached out and tore the poster off the wall, ripped it in half, and hurled it to the floor. Next he turned and ran off down the hall.

  Trixie remained motionless until he was out of sight. It was only then that she realized she’d been holding her breath. She exhaled in a slow whistle of surprise. What was that all about? she wondered. Can Nick really be that opposed to the bikeathon?

  Trixie realized that, short of finding Nick and asking him point-blank why he ripped down the poster, there was no way for her to know why he had acted as he had. And 1 certainly have no desire to corner him on it if he’s that angry, she thought as she hurried to her locker. He looked as though he might tear me in half as he did the poster.

  Trixie got her math book from her locker and hurried back outside to the parking lot. When she got there, Jim and Honey were waiting in the station wagon.

  “Brian and Mart have already left in Brian’s jalopy, Trixie,” Jim told her.

  “Somehow Mart seemed to think it made much more sense for them to go ahead and give Di a ride home,” Honey added, her eyes twinkling. The other Bob-Whites all knew that Mart Belden had a special feeling for Di Lynch, a feeling that Di returned.

  “That means you’re stuck with us, Trixie. Hop in,” Jim said.

  As Trixie walked around to the passenger side of the car, Honey got out and held the door so that Trixie could slide across the front seat next to Jim. Honey then took her place next to the door. Trixie’s feeling for Jim was well known, too, and Honey liked to do as much as she could to encourage it.

  “Why so quiet, Trix?�
�� Jim asked after they’d driven a few blocks.

  Trixie started guiltily, realizing that she’d been lost in thoughts about Nick Roberts. She debated briefly about telling Jim and Honey what she’d just seen in the deserted corridor, then decided she wouldn’t. I don’t want to risk turning everyone against Nick, and possibly the whole bikeathon idea. Aloud she said, “I guess I’m tired. You would be, too, Jim, if you’d just finished explaining the bikeathon over and over and over and over again.”

  “It really was exhausting,” Honey agreed. “Sometimes I’d have barely finished telling someone in great detail how the pledge cards work, when someone else would walk up to the table, pick up a pledge card, and say, ’What’s this?’ It made me want to scream.”

  “I had a couple of similar experiences with the posters,” Jim said. “I’d walk into a store, and someone behind a counter would say, ’Can I help you?’ I’d explain all about the posters and the bikeathon, and, when I’d finished, that person would say, ’You’ll have to talk to the boss about putting up a poster in the store.’ I’d have to find the boss and start all over again. It’s tiring, all right.”

  Trixie nodded absently, her thoughts returning to Nick.

  When Jim pulled into the Belden driveway, Trixie turned to Honey and said, “Honey, why don’t you stay for dinner and spend the night? You haven’t stayed over for ages!”

  Honey hesitated, knowing that slumber parties on school nights were usually frowned upon by both sets of parents.