The Mysterious Code (6 page)

“Do you see what I mean?” Mart asked impudently. “Do you want to buy it back now?”

When Trixie and her brothers went home for dinner, they were dusty and tired. They were so excited, however, that words piled on top of one another when they tried to tell their mother and father what had happened at the Manor House, of the wonderful things they had found there.

“That’s enough about your afternoon, now,” Mrs. Belden interrupted. “Take showers, all of you. Trixie, please help Bobby. Change to robes and slippers. You may eat your dinner in robes and get to bed early. Run along, now,” she insisted as they kept on talking. “When we are at dinner we can hear all about it.”

Later, when they were at the table, and grace had been said, Bobby shouted, “I’m first! Regan told me a good riddle.”

“Let’s hear it, son,” Mr. Belden said.

“He told me two riddles,” Bobby said. “This is the funniest one. What has ten letters and starts with—what is it, Trixie?” Bobby asked.

“It starts with G-A-S, remember?”

“Oh, yes, what is it, Moms? Daddy? You give up?”

Mr. Belden scratched his head and thought.

Mrs. Belden put her head in her hands and thought.

“We give up, Bobby,” they said.

“Brian’s jalopy!” Bobby said triumphantly and laughed till he almost choked.

“Bobby’s a clown,” Brian said. “The real answer is ‘automobile.’ Look here, Dad, at what I found in the attic.”

Brian and Mart stood over their father’s chair while he examined the swords. “This one looks just like the one we saw in New York,” he said. “Yes, I think you made quite a find, Brian. Are you sure, you and Mart, that Mrs. Wheeler wanted to give them to you!”

“Sure thing,” Mart answered. “She gave us some other keen things we found, too.” He told his parents about the beautiful cherry-wood tables.

“I found a crazy-looking thing,” Trixie said and produced the key and the tag with its acrobatic figures.

“It’s a code of some kind, I’m sure,” Mr. Belden said. “I think I saw something like it a long time ago.”

“Can’t you possibly remember, Daddy?” Trixie asked. “Maybe it would tell us something important.”

“It looks more to me like some child’s idea of a joke,” Mrs. Belden said. “It probably doesn’t mean a thing. All
Trixie needs,” she said to her husband, “is something like this to start her off with a bloodhound. Forget it, Trixie. You’ll have all you can possibly do, all of you, to get that furniture fixed up for your show. I don’t see how you can possibly find time to repair any more than just the things you found in the Manor House attic.”

“We have lots more promised to us,” Mart said. “We’ll have the best antique show Sleepyside ever saw.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Mr. Belden said. “Right now I think you’d all better go to bed. You’ve been yawning, and look at Bobby. He’s asleep with his head on the table.”

“I’ll help Moms with the dishes first,” Trixie said.

“We’ll put Bobby to bed,” Brian said. “Come on, fella!” He lifted the little boy in his arms and went up the stairs, followed by Mart.

The next morning the boys were off for the clubhouse early. Jim had agreed that they could accept the oil heater and he and Brian were helping to install it. At the same time Regan, with an electrician who had been engaged to put in some new light switches in the Manor House, was going to run a feed wire to the clubhouse.

After Trixie hurried through the dusting she tossed the dustcloth in the broom closet in the kitchen. “I’m
going over to Honey’s house,” she told her mother. “I want to look for something in the attic.”

“
After
you pick up that dustcloth from where you threw it,” her mother said. “And
after
you give the furniture in the living-room, the dining-room, and the study a good dusting, not just show the furniture to the dustcloth.”

“Oh, Moms, I never have a chance to do anything I want to do. What’s the matter with the way the furniture looks?” Trixie picked up the dustcloth and stamped into the living-room. Then, before she had dusted a thing she ran back penitently to her mother and gave her a quick hug.

“I’m so selfish,” she said. “How do you ever put up with me, Moms?”

“Oh, maybe because I happen to love you,” her mother said. “Never mind, Trixie, I remember when I was thirteen years old. Finish the dusting, then run along to Honey’s.”

Diana, summoned from her big home high on a hill, was at the Manor House when Trixie arrived. They rushed up the stairs to the attic, climbed through the trap door to the cubbyhole, put the key and the mysterious tag on top of an old trunk, and started to explore.

They looked under and around everything in the room: broken old ladders, discarded light fixtures, a three-legged hobby horse, storm windows, screens that needed repairing, discarded clothing packed in boxes. Trixie even rummaged through the boxes of clothing. They found an old chest filled with checkers and chess men, but the key with the strange figures didn’t fit the keyhole.

They did find some very old toys that had been put up high in the rafters. There was an old Punch and Judy theater with Punch, quite tattered and worn, leaning over the door holding his big stick. There was a Sleeping Beauty doll minus her long golden hair. There were three plaster figures of the seven dwarfs.

“We can paint these and dress them in some new clothes,” Honey said. “They’ll be as good as new.”

“Let’s stop hunting for anything that key fits,” Diana said. “We could hunt from now until the Fourth of July and never find it. It’s probably been thrown out long ago. Let’s take some of these old
St. Nicholas
magazines over under the light and look at them!”

Diana picked up two bound volumes of the magazine and carried them to the middle of the room. “My grandmother had some of them in
her
attic,” Diana said. “Did you ever try to work any of the puzzles? Here, let’s turn to the puzzle pages.”

The girls sat on the floor inside the cubbyhole, the bound magazines in their laps.

“This one is way back in 1884,” Diana said, opening the red cloth-bound book.

“Heavens, that was before the United States was born,” Trixie said.

“Not quite,” Honey laughed. “I thought you were better in history than math.”

“See if you can answer this one, if you’re so smart,” Trixie said, her face red. “It’s an easy charade, or so it says.”

“Not any of the puzzles in
St. Nicholas
were easy,” Diana said. “I guess people were smarter then.”

“Try this anyway,” Trixie said.

“Men hunt my
first
, then
second
my
first
in order to obtain my
whole
.”

“It must be something people hunt,” Honey said. “Ducks … no; geese … no; rabbits … no; wolves … no. What is it, Trixie?”

“I don’t know myself. I’ll have to look it up in the answers. They’re given the month following. Let me see … it’s
sealskin!
You hunt
seal
, don’t you see, then
skin
the
seal
, and you have
sealskin
. Say, look at this other page, would you? Jumpin’ Jupiter! It’s the acrobats, the whole alphabet! Where’s that tag?”

Spread over a page in the old
St. Nicholas
magazine there was a group of dancing, tumbling little stick men, each posture representing a letter of the alphabet.

“Let me see now,” Trixie said. “Let’s compare the tag. This is
K;
here is an
E
, and then
Y
. That first word is
Key
.”

Quickly Trixie spelled out the rest of the message on the tag. Transcribed, it read:
Key to Riches
.

Trixie was so excited her hands were shaking. “It’s a fortune!” she shouted. “I know it is. Come on!”

She jumped up and let the book tumble to the floor. “Let’s start hunting!”

“We’ve covered every inch of this place,” Diana said. “There isn’t anything here that the key will fit. How do you know what we are hunting for is in the attic?”

“It
has
to be,” Trixie said.

“Stand up here on this ladder,” Honey said. “Reach up into the rafters, back of the Punch and Judy show. Isn’t there something there?”

Trixie reached, almost fell off the ladder, brought out an old broken pull toy. Her face fell. “There’s not another thing here,” she said and climbed down.

Together the girls moved out all the old screens and storm windows, hunted over every inch of floor they had covered before, looked through the boxes of old clothes again till there was only one thing left, a chest that stood under the window in the closet next to the chimney.

“We hunted through that before, Trixie,” Diana said.

“Let’s hunt again,” Honey cried and she and Trixie drew out armload after armload of clothes long packed in moth balls.

When she reached the bottom of the chest Trixie was so exasperated and disappointed she felt like crying. She slammed down the lid of the old chest and kicked it so hard it banged against the chimney, loosening several bricks that fell to the floor.

“Jeepers, I’m sorry, Honey,” Trixie said. “Your mother will think this is terrible.” She picked up a brick, started to replace it in the chimney, then stopped. Her eyes grew as round as robins’ eggs. “Will you look at this?” she asked Honey and Diana. They put their heads close to hers.

Back of where the bricks had been there was an open space, and tucked cozily inside it was an old doll’s trunk.

Dazed, Trixie pulled it out, put it on the floor, inserted the key in the lock, turned it, and all three girls fell to their knees to look.

“It’s fantastic!” Trixie said.

“Yes,” Diana echoed. “But what is it?”

“Since this is your house,” Trixie said to Honey, “you lift it out and we’ll see what it is.”

Gently Honey lifted the treasure out and set it on the floor. It settled with a delicate tinkle.

“A music box!” they cried in unison.

The intricately carved and fashioned gold box showed no trace of tarnish. The gold was as bright as new. On the lid, under a garland of vines and arched trees, a little man and woman stood, dressed in court clothes of the time of Louis XVI.

“See if you can wind it,” Honey said.

When Trixie turned the key on the bottom of the box the little figures danced daintily round and round to the tune of a Viennese waltz.

Completely charmed, the three girls sat and watched and listened, until the flute-like tune fluttered to a close.

“It’s the most beautiful music box!” Honey said.

“And a jewel box, too,” Trixie cried. “It opens!” She
lifted the lid and little drawers popped out all around the inside edges.

“There’s something in one of the drawers!” Diana cried. “It’s a ring!”

“
Two
rings!” Trixie announced. “Two exquisite rings,” she added, awed.

“This one is an emerald,” Honey said and slipped it on her finger.

“This one is a ruby,” Diana said. “But it’s a man’s ring!”

“I think we had better take the jewel box downstairs and show it to your mother,” Trixie declared solemnly.

Mrs. Wheeler was sitting at the piano in the music room, lightly strumming the keys. She looked up as the three excited girls burst into the room. Honey held the box in her hands and extended it to her mother.

“Don’t tell me you’ve found a treasure in the attic,” Mrs. Wheeler said, smiling. “In all mystery stories they always find treasures in the attic … why you
did!
” she exclaimed. “What is that lovely thing?”

Honey wound the box, set it tinkling, and put it on the piano. The dancing figures circled, their tiny feet moving in exact time to the music.

“It’s beautiful,” Mrs. Wheeler said. “It is lovely enough to have been made by Cellini! You
never
found that in the attic!”

“We
did
!” Honey said. “Yesterday we found the key. It fits an old doll trunk. See the key and the tag? The little figures were so mysterious Trixie couldn’t be satisfied until she investigated it. Then we found that page in
St. Nicholas
with the alphabet.”

“I don’t believe Scotland Yard could have done a better piece of detective work,” Honey’s mother said.

“Then the bricks fell down and we found the doll trunk,” Honey went on.

“I’m sorry about the bricks,” Trixie said. “Not only the doll trunk, but … Honey, open the music box and show her what we found on the inside.”

“This is serious,” Mrs. Wheeler said when she saw the rings. “The box itself is priceless—and now the rings! I don’t know what to think. Who
could
have put them in that doll trunk?”

“Could it have been the people who lived here before we came?” Honey asked.

“That’s possible,” her mother said. “That’s it, of course. I have the family’s number someplace. Their name was Spencer. When their two daughters grew up and married, they went to live in New York and we
bought Manor House. I’ll go and look for the phone number in my desk.”