The Mysterious Code (14 page)

In the meantime Spider scouted around outside the house for footprints, inspected the doorframe, and concluded that Mrs. Vanderpoel had not let the burglar get near enough to leave any evidence. “I’ll go along now,” he said, “but we’ll keep an eye on things. I’d feel a lot better if you’d let Tad stay here.”

“I like the boy,” Mrs. Vanderpoel said, “and he’s welcome any time he comes here, but I’m not going to be mollycoddled by anyone. Come again some other time, Tad, just any time you want, but go along now with Spider.”

“I think I’d better go, too,” Honey said. “I have a lot
of studying to do, and we’re almost through polishing the silver.”

“I’ll go with you,” Diana said. “I promised my mother I’d look after my little sisters.”

Trixie stayed to finish the polishing. She was so interested in her work and the stories Mrs. Vanderpoel told her about the different pieces and how they came into her family that she did not notice the growing dusk outside.

“Jeepers,” she said when Mrs. Vanderpoel turned on the light, “I’d better go. I told Moms I’d help her with Bobby if Mart couldn’t, but here I am now and it’s almost dinnertime.”

“You’ll not go off in this dusk alone,” Mrs. Vanderpoel said. “Why don’t you stay the night with me? I have so many things I’d like to show you.”

“I don’t think Moms would want me to stay all night,” Trixie said. “She’s still sort of nervous about that blizzard and our escape. She’s pretty tired, too, from taking care of Bobby. I’ll call her and see if Mart and Brian can come for me.”

“I’m sorry you stayed so long,” Mrs. Belden told Trixie over the telephone. “I’ve been expecting you any minute. Mart and Brian are at a Y meeting in Sleepyside. They won’t be home till late. Your father is
at a meeting of the bank board. He’ll come home when the boys do. I don’t know when that will be.”

“Mrs. Vanderpoel said she’d like to have me stay here all night,” Trixie said.

“I don’t like that idea either,” Trixie’s mother said. However, when she talked to Mrs. Vanderpoel and discovered that Spider was keeping an eye on the farmhouse, she decided to let Trixie stay for the night.

After a delicious old-fashioned supper of homemade sausage and fried apples, Trixie had a wonderful time curled up in the corner of the living-room couch looking at an album of Vanderpoel ancestors. Mrs. Vanderpoel’s long-sleeved challis nightgown and quilted robe made Trixie look exactly like one of the pictures of the Dutch women. Later, after she had climbed up to the high four-poster bed in the guest room and rubbed her sleepy eyes, she imagined she could see an array of white-capped, pink-cheeked Dutch women around her bed.

Visions of them followed Trixie even into her dreams. When suddenly she was awakened by a strange, muffled noise, she was whisked from the seventeenth century into the present.

There the noise was again—something scraping!

Trixie propped her elbow on her pillow and listened.
The noise came from the direction of the lean-to kitchen. Hastily, but quietly, Trixie slipped her feet into her saddle shoes, pulled the big robe around her, and, without turning on the light, slipped through the dining-room into the dark kitchen.

There was that noise again. A window lifted perhaps? Slowly, stealthily, Trixie opened the door to the lean-to kitchen just a crack.

The man inside saw her, ran across the room, knocking pans here and there, making a frightful noise in his eagerness to get back through the window.

“Get your gun!” Trixie called to Mrs. Vanderpoel. “A burglar! He’ll get away!”

Mrs. Vanderpoel came running, shouting at the top of her voice, “Hands up! I’ll shoot! Stand back, Trixie. Get behind me. Hands up, you thief!”

The man, confused, struck his head on the side of the window trying to get through and, dazed for a second, hesitated, then plunged … right into the arms of Tad!

“I’ve got him!” Tad called. “Get a rope, Trixie! Help me tie him up!”

Little Mrs. Vanderpoel hurried with a clothesline, and Trixie ran out the door with it to where the man, held fast in Tad’s arms, struggled to get away. She looped the rope around his arms while Tad held them pressed against the man’s back. Then they bound the burglar’s legs fast.

“
There
you are!” Tad said. “Now we’ll see
who
you are!” He pulled the mask from the man’s face.

It wasn’t a man at all, but a boy not much older than Tad.

“It’s the lad who shoveled my walks!” Mrs. Vanderpoel said. “Maybe he just came to collect for his work.”

“At this time of night?” Tad asked. “And masked? No ma’am. I know him. It’s Bull Thompson.”

The boy growled at Tad, “I’ll get you for this!”

“That voice,” Trixie said. “Why, he’s one of the gang who stole the desk. I’m sure I remember his voice. Where did you know him, Tad?”

“He was a member of the Hawks,” Tad said, “but not for long. He sure didn’t fit into our club. He only joined it to get hold of our funds. He ran off with eleven dollars, too. I haven’t seen him for months. I thought he’d moved out of Sleepyside. His uncle, Snipe Thompson, disappeared and I thought Bull went with him. Snipe had a bookie joint over on Hawthorne Street … did time for it. Say, Trixie, call the sergeant at the police station. Tell him to find Spider and send him out here in the
patrol car. It’ll be reform school for you this time, Bull, or I’ll miss my guess.”

Bull only snarled his answer.

Spider came with Sergeant Molinson, the man who had helped to rescue Trixie and Mart from the trailer when they had been kidnaped. “It’s you, again, poison!” the sergeant said to Trixie. “Every time I see you it means trouble.”

“Don’t you say one word against that girl,” Mrs. Vanderpoel warned him, “or Tad, either. I suppose Spider told you to keep a watch, whether I wanted you to or not,” she said to Tad. “And you, Sergeant, those kids did a better job on that crook than you policemen could have done.”

“Yeah,” Sergeant Molinson agreed, “maybe we ought to put ’em on the squad. Come on now, Bull. Into the patrol car with you. We’ll have some questions to ask you—been rough-housing the school and stealing from desks and lockers, haven’t you?”

“Prove it!” Bull sneered.

“We will, don’t worry,” Spider said. “We’ll get the rest of your gang, too. Do you want to tell us who they are? Is your Uncle Snipe in on it? Spill it, Bull.”

“Naw,” Bull said, “no smart aleck cop is ever goin’ to get that out of me. I don’t snitch on pals.”

“I can surely breathe easier,” Mrs. Belden told Trixie, “when I know that Mrs. Vanderpoel’s burglar has been caught. Do you see these gray hairs on my temples?” Mrs. Belden pushed back her hair. “You put them there, Trixie. I’ve worried more about you than all three of the boys, though I’ve had plenty of occasions to be concerned about them, too, with all the situations they get involved in with you.”

“It isn’t my fault if mysterious things happen when I’m around,” Trixie said. “How could I help it if that burglar came back to Mrs. Vanderpoel’s house when I was there?”

“It would have been just as easy for you to step out in the hall and call the police as it was to go out in that lean- to kitchen all by yourself. Is it any wonder my hair is turning gray when I think of what might happen to you?”

“I never even thought of calling the police,” Trixie said. “Anyway, how did I know it wasn’t a cat prowling around? You know I had to tell Mrs. Vanderpoel
that the desk had been stolen. Do you know what she said?”

“I can’t imagine … and I never could see why you didn’t tell her before.”

“I didn’t want her to think I was so helpless as to let someone steal it right under my nose. Well, when I told her she said, ‘Land sakes, child, I’ve known about it for a long time. I still know more about it than you do.’ What do you suppose she meant by that?”

“Why didn’t you ask her?” Mrs. Belden wanted to know.

“I didn’t have a chance. Say, Moms, they sent Bull Thompson to reform school. You don’t have to worry about him any more.”

“They haven’t sent the rest of his gang anywhere. Until they do, I’ll not have an easy moment. Thank goodness it’s only a little over two weeks till your antique show. Then I’ll have a rest from worry until you get into some other project,” Trixie’s mother said.

“Don’t be so cross with me, Moms,” Trixie said.

“I don’t mean to be, but goodness, Trixie, you’ll be fourteen years old the first of May, and you’ve never been content to be a girl instead of a tomboy. You’ve never even dressed like the pretty girl you are since that cousin of Honey’s was here. Maybe after the antique
show is over you can plan some real boy and girl parties, and no more detective work.”

“That’s just what I’m trying to tell you, Moms,” Trixie said. “You’ll be glad to know that Diana is having a dress-up party at her house Friday evening. It’s sort of a pre-Valentine party. Her mother and father are having people in for dinner February fourteenth so Diana is going to have her party early.”

“That will mean a new dress for you, Trixie,” her mother said, delighted.

“Not a long one, Moms, please. Diana said her party this time isn’t going to be the way it was Halloween, when her imitation uncle ruined the whole thing with all that crazy food and hired orchestras.”

“I hope it’s simpler,” her mother said, “because it didn’t sound to me like a young people’s party at all. Trixie, I’ll meet you this afternoon and we’ll find a dress for you—shoes, too.”

“Heels?” Trixie asked.

“Of course,” her mother said, obviously pleased, “as high as you want them.”

“I’ll have to get shoes, of course,” Trixie agreed, “but just forget about the dress. I can wear one of Honey’s or maybe one of Diana’s. They have closets full of them. Then you can give me the money the dress
would cost and I’ll add it to the UNICEF fund.”

“There are several things wrong with that reasoning,” her mother told her. “In the first place I want you to have a pretty dress or two of your own. You hardly own a thing but sweaters and skirts. You’re forever wearing Honey’s clothes.”

“She doesn’t care,” Trixie insisted.

“This time
I
care,” Mrs. Belden said.

“All right, Moms, if you feel that way about it,” Trixie said. “Can you pick me up about two thirty? I’ll be out of English class then. Maybe Honey and Diana will go with me to get a dress.”

“This is to be
our
expedition,” Mrs. Belden said. “I want you to have the prettiest dress we can find. Sometimes I think you pay too much attention to what the girls say and haven’t an idea of your own about clothes.”

“Honey and Diana can put on anything and look beautiful,” Trixie said, not at all enviously. “Honey is just gorgeous and you know it. If anything, Diana is prettier. Everyone at Sleepyside High thinks Diana is the prettiest girl in the class.”

“I think Trixie Belden is going to give her some competition,” Mrs. Belden said.

“You wouldn’t be prejudiced would you, Moms?”
Trixie teased. “Have you taken a good look at my freckles lately? And my waist? It’s miles around.”

“It’s nothing of the sort,” her mother said, provoked. “That’s another thing we’ll shop for—a girdle.”

“Gleeps, Moms, I’d never wear it, not in a thousand years.”

“Just wait and see. We’ll get it before you try on dresses. I wish you would take more pride in your appearance.”

“Wait just a minute, Moms. You’ve always told me not to grow up too soon,” Trixie said.

“That was two years ago at least,” her mother said, exasperated. “I
don’t
want you to grow up, but I’d like to be able to tell the difference between you and your brothers without straining my sight.”

That afternoon in Sleepyside Mrs. Belden made a few purchases before she picked up Trixie. A girdle was one of them. Before Mrs. Belden and Trixie went into the Teen Town dress department, she first went to the restroom and succeeded, with many a protest from Trixie, in getting her into the girdle. It slimmed her waist amazingly.

“Now we’ll look for the dress,” Mrs. Belden said.

“Don’t even pause at the rack that has pink dresses,” Trixie said.

“Why not?” her mother asked. “I’ve always liked pink. Pink is pretty on blondes.”

“Not on this strawberry blonde,” Trixie said.

The saleswoman slipped a pink dress over Trixie’s head, fastened it, and Trixie turned to her mother. “See what I mean?” she asked.

“Don’t slump so. Stand up straight,” her mother answered. “You’re just trying to make it look as bad as you can. It’s a pretty dress.”

“The dress is all right,” Trixie said. “But look at it with
my
hair, and
my
freckles.”

“Pink
isn’t
exactly right,” her mother agreed reluctantly. “We’ll try the blue one, please,” she said to the saleswoman.

There was something the matter with the blue one. There was something the matter with the yellow one, with the striped one, with the green one.

“You can’t make a swan out of me,” Trixie said, laughing. “You should have Honey for a daughter. Sit down here, Moms. I’ll look around by myself. You’re tired. If I
have
to get a dress I
have
to get one, I guess.”