The Mysterious Code (20 page)

Quietly Trixie put on her clothes, opened her door, listened, heard nothing, then tiptoed down the stairs. She reached for her coat in the hall closet, and a scarf, then went outside and down the walk to the road that led to Sleepyside.

She hadn’t gone far when, back of her, she heard the unmistakable chug of Brian’s car. He pulled up opposite her and stopped. “Have you lost your mind?” he asked. “It’s after eleven.”

“I know it. You can go right back home,” Trixie said. “You aren’t going to stop me.”

“Who said I was? I’m wide-awake now and might as well go in and give the place the once-over. Say, Trixie, isn’t that Jim up ahead?”

It was. Laughing, he climbed into Brian’s jalopy. “We all had the same idea, didn’t we?”

“Yes,” Trixie said, “and I thought I was the only one who worried. Gleeps, I’m glad you’re both going. Moms and Dad won’t be quite so mad at
me
. How did you happen to get your jalopy out without anyone hearing it, Brian?”

“I left it down the road, opposite the driveway. Didn’t you notice it?”

“I did not. And that means you intended to go into town all the time. Did you, too, Jim?” Trixie asked.

Jim didn’t answer.

“I like that!” Trixie said. “You weren’t going to say a thing to me about it, and you pretended I woke you, Brian.”

“We thought you’d been in enough danger,” Jim tried to explain.

“Thank you very much for your concern, Jim Frayne,” Trixie said. “Oh, all right. I’m here. We don’t have time to argue. I just hope Moms and Daddy don’t wake up and find we’re gone.”

“That’s a chance I had to take with my family,” Jim said. “Brian, turn down the street next to Main Street, then come back and park east of the showroom. Maybe we’ll run into Spider.”

A lone light shone faintly in the showroom, back in the corner opposite the Japanese exhibit.

Spider came to meet them from the drugstore nearby. “I
thought
some of the Bob-Whites would be showing up,” he said. “I have the key to the building right next to the showroom. A man I know who has an office upstairs said I could use his office. We can go up there and keep watch through the window.”

“Did you see the regular patrolman anyplace around?” Trixie asked.

“He only passes here about every hour,” Spider answered. “He spends most of his time patrolling the alleys that lead off of Main Street to Hawthorne Street. That’s one reason I wanted to come down and keep an eye on things myself tonight. I don’t think anything will happen, but I know you kids are worried about those borrowed antiques.”

Trixie, Brian, and Jim followed Spider to the window in the second-story office. The street down below was almost deserted. Now and then a car went by, but the pedestrians were few.

There was an excellent view of the front of the showroom building. No one could possibly enter without being seen by the four watchers stationed opposite.

Trixie never left the window. Brian and Jim and Spider were not quite so vigilant. Now that they were within sight of the showroom they seemed to feel more secure. They sat around a desk in the office talking.

The minute hand on the clock began its slow journey around the dial. It was eleven fifteen. Then eleven thirty.

Brian and Jim, restless, walked around the room, unable to keep still. Trixie shuffled her feet in the chair where she sat watching.

“Why don’t you kids go on home?” Spider asked. “You need sleep if you’re going to be on the job all day tomorrow. Don’t you see how quiet everything is? I’ll stay around here till it starts to get daylight.”

“We’ll stay a while longer,” Jim insisted. “We haven’t been here an hour.”

“Yes,” Brian said, “we’ll get plenty of sleep, because the show doesn’t open till nine o’clock in the morning.”

“We’ll get the heebie-jeebies just standing around,” Spider said. “Anyone want to play cards?” He drew a pack of cards from his pocket. “How about it, Trixie?”

“I was thinking that if you’ll give me the key,” Trixie said, “I’ll go down to the showroom and finish putting the price tags on the dolls and aprons. It’s the only thing we didn’t finish.”

“Better not,” Spider said. “If you turn up the lights, someone passing is sure to think something’s wrong.”

“I don’t need to turn the light up. I can work under that bulb in the corner,” Trixie insisted. “It won’t take me long. Then I guess we’d better go on home, maybe, if Spider is going to stay here anyway.”

“Want me to go along, Trixie?” Jim asked.

“I’ll be okay, Jim,” Trixie answered. “You stay and play cards with Spider and Brian. This job will only take a few minutes.”

Trixie let herself into the showroom.
Everything’s so beautiful
, she thought.
And it’s
so
quiet
.

She found the square paper slips where Honey had left them on the shelf beside the lines of aprons. Carefully she spread the slips under the light and went to work.

A car went noisily by outside. It disappeared in the distance, but another sound took its place—a faint
shuffle, a shuffle that came from—the back room!

Startled, Trixie put down the paper tag she was working on, and listened.

“Keep right on at what you were doing, sister!” a hoarse voice whispered.

Trixie jumped to her feet.

“An’ sit down!” the voice ordered. “Don’t make a move! Think you’re pretty smart, don’t you, sendin’ my nephew to reform school? Now it’s your turn for trouble! Sit down!”

Snipe Thompson! Trixie, shaking from head to toe, obeyed, sat back in the chair.

“Now you bend over that desk like you was workin’,” Snipe ordered. “I know your brother and that Wheeler kid and that fly cop Webster are upstairs next door. I want ’em to stay there just a little bit longer. You bein’ here makes it easier for us. We’ll promise you a little ride when we get through, sister, to pay you for your kindness. Get busy at what you were doin’!”

Trixie, frantic, not knowing which way to turn, did as Snipe ordered and tried to write the tags.

Automatically the Bob-White distress call formed on her lips.
They’ll kill me for sure if I make any kind of a noise
, she thought.
What can I do?

Her fingers clenched the pencil. Almost without
thinking about it, she began to draw three little stick figures on the tags:

Mechanically she continued drawing the same figures, her heart pounding so she could scarcely breathe.

“Bring that gold box back here!” Snipe commanded hoarsely. “Just pick it up and walk right back here. Get some of that silver on your way.”

At Snipe’s command Trixie went back and forth, back and forth, till all the silver had been carried out and seized by two masked figures.

As Trixie turned to go back into the showroom after every last bit of silver had been carried out, she saw Jim leave the entrance to the building next door. “Thank goodness,” she breathed and stood still in the partition doorway to try to obscure Snipe’s view.

It was too late!

“Get back in there and keep workin’ on those tags!” Snipe commanded. “Don’t say a word about us! I’ll have a gun trained on you every second. If that guy mentions the silver, tell him you took it out back for safekeeping. If you spill one word I’ll drill both of you!”

Jim turned the knob and came into the showroom.

“It seemed to be taking you a long time so I thought I’d see what had happened, Trixie,” he said. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes, Jim,” Trixie answered slowly. “Everything’s all right. I’m just tagging the aprons, see?”

Then an idea flashed through her mind. “Take a look at the tags,” she said. “See if you think the prices are right.” Trixie gathered up a few of the paper squares topped with her SOS call.

“I’ll put them here on the desk and go on pinning others on the aprons,” she said, mindful of Snipe’s warning not to approach Jim. “Maybe you’ll think the prices are too high. Go over to the desk and look at them, Jim.”

“How do I know anything about the price of aprons?” Jim asked. “Whatever you and Honey have decided is all right. Will it take you much longer to finish your work?”

“I don’t think so, Jim.” Trixie’s voice was tense. “I’d feel better if you’d
please
check on the prices we’re asking,” Trixie begged, near despair.

Jim only waved his hand to show he wasn’t interested. “Whatever you and the other girls have decided,” he said, “goes for me.”

“We got some of the prices out of that page in the
St. Nicholas
,” Trixie said desperately. “That page of figures in that old magazine we found in the attic.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Trixie. Get the job finished as soon as you can. We’ll wait about another fifteen or twenty minutes and then I think we’d better be moving on home. Nothing around here to worry about. Say, Trixie, wasn’t there a lot of silver out here on display? That was what worried you, wasn’t it? You thought it showed too much from the street. Did you put it under cover?”

The chest where the silver had stood was next to the desk where Trixie had been filling out the tags. Jim walked over to it as he finished his question. “Hid it someplace, did you?” he asked.

Trixie, conscious of Snipe’s gun, forced herself to answer casually, “Yes, Jim. I put it out of sight.”

“Good girl!” Jim applauded. “Soon as you’re through we’ll go home. I’ll go get Brian. We’ll be back in a jiff.”

When Jim stood at the chest inquiring about the silver, Trixie made a last frightened effort to communicate with him. If
only
he had looked at her she could have formed words with her lips. He didn’t. In a flash, though, frantically, she dropped into Jim’s coat pocket a handful
of the paper squares she had been marking. At the top of each one was the Bob-White coded call for help:

It was almost a hopeless gesture. Jim would never find the SOS call in time. How
could
he?

Utterly helpless, Trixie watched Jim walk across the room, open the door, and leave.

“Good thing for you you didn’t squeal!” the coarse voice from the back room whispered. “You’re a smart cooky. Now bring back that carved desk the whiskered old gent stole from us an’ … what’d you say?” he asked the man with him. “Oh, yeah, the swords, too. My frien’ here says it’s a matter of honor to get ’em both back, desk an’ swords.”

Painfully and slowly, for she was almost fainting with fear, Trixie picked up the carved lap desk and carried it to the back room. It was her first glimpse of Snipe. One look at his vicious unshaven face filled her with new terror. He grabbed the desk from her roughly, then commanded, “Go back and get the swords we had—an’ a couple more for good measure!”

Two lumpy dirty bags filled with silver and the
jewel box were piled at the back door. The door was at the far end of the back room.
We couldn’t see
that
door from upstairs
, Trixie thought sadly.
Jim and Brian and Spider can’t see it now. Everything we have is going to be stolen and I’ll—

“Get goin’, sister!” Snipe ordered. “The swords!”

Jim will never find those paper squares
, never
in all the world … they’ll just find my body somewhere … oh, Moms! Daddy!