The Mysterious Code (9 page)

“Never mind, honey,” Trixie said. She was trembling so she could hardly speak, but her first thought was of her young brother. “Let Trixie brush you off, lamb,” she said. “Don’t cry. Spider will catch those bad men. There now, I’ll just put you down on the path. You’ll have to walk now, Bobby, and we’ve still a long way to go.”

Trixie was angry, bitterly angry at the three thieves who had robbed them. “Spider will get them,” she promised Bobby.

“I’m cold, Trixie,” the little boy said. “An’ it’s dark a’most. Are we losted?”

“No, honey. Here, take my hand. Left foot! Right foot! Left foot! Right foot! Marching! Marching!”

Bobby kept up sturdily for a while, then his steps slowed. “I—just—can’t—walk—any more,” he said and he sat down in the snow.

“Try just a little harder, Bobby,” Trixie urged. “See, through the trees, that’s Glen Road ahead.”

“I can’t see anything, Trixie. I’ll just sit here and rest,” Bobby said and settled down into the deep snow.

“No, Bobby, we have to hurry home. Those men may still be around the woods. I’ll carry you.” Trixie was so worried she hardly noticed his weight. She was afraid he would be sick, he was so tired and chilled.

Trixie was tired, too; very, very tired when she finally set Bobby down on the path that led to Glen Road.

There, to her great relief, she saw Brian and Mart coming down the road. Mrs. Belden, concerned with the lateness and approaching dark, had sent the boys to meet them.

At home Bobby was given a warm, comforting bath and put to bed. Trixie had a hard time calming down enough to tell her story.

With great difficulty she, Mart, and Brian kept their father from going off to the police in Sleepyside.

“Don’t you see,” Trixie said, “if we make a big fuss about the oak desk, a lot of other people may find out
about the things in Mrs. Vanderpoel’s house and break in … and they may break in the clubhouse.”

“She’s right, Dad,” Brian insisted. “Spider will help us find out who stole the desk. He probably knows about the gang already.…”

“See that you get in touch with Spider tomorrow, then,” Mr. Belden said. “I’ll check with him when I see him.”

“Oh, Daddy, please don’t do that,” Trixie begged. “Let us Bob-Whites handle it with him, won’t you? After all, it’s
our
show.”

“And you want to be self-sufficient,” Mr. Belden said. “I’m always telling your mother to let you manage your own affairs. I guess I’d better take some of my own advice.”

It was left that way.

The next morning Bobby had a bad cold. For days his temperature ran high and the doctor said Bobby had pneumonia. He was a very sick boy, so sick that it drove every thought of anything else out of the minds of the Belden family.

With good medicine and his mother’s careful nursing, Bobby grew better. While he had been critically ill it had been hard for the Bob-Whites to turn their attention to their work.

Trixie had, however, gone with the Wheelers’ chauffeur, Tom, back to Mrs. Vanderpoel’s to bring out the other furniture she said they could have—the furniture that needed to be repaired.

Trixie did not tell Mrs. Vanderpoel what had happened to the desk. She was ashamed to tell and, too, she hoped they would recover it soon. She would wait a little longer before saying anything about it.

“Did you see anything of that boy who was shoveling my walks when you were here last time?” Mrs. Vanderpoel asked.

“No,” Trixie answered. “Why do you ask, Mrs. Vanderpoel?”

“It’s the first time anyone ever worked for me and ran off without waiting to be paid,” Mrs. Vanderpoel said. “I never saw him before he stopped and asked for
work. Oh well, he’ll stop and ask for his pay, too, I guess.”

“I wonder,” Trixie said to herself on the way home, “I wonder if that boy had anything to do with the desk. I just wonder.”

In the clubhouse after school, they all worked hard getting ready for the show. The oil heater kept them cozy and warm, and the new electric lights made it possible to work after dark. Also, Regan had installed an alarm system attached to a wire leading to his apartment over the stable at Manor House. It hadn’t buzzed once, and there had been no disturbance since the night the two men were trying to look into the clubhouse.

“It must have been the same ones who stole the lap desk,” Honey said. “Do you think we’ll ever be able to find out any more about that or get the desk back?”

“Not unless we try harder than we’ve been trying,” Trixie said and told them what Mrs. Vanderpoel had told her about the boy who ran off without being paid.

“He might have been one of them,” Jim said thoughtfully. “He was, of course. Brian and I have tried to locate Spider half a dozen times to ask him about it. We haven’t been able to find him.”

“That seems strange,” Trixie said, worried. “It’s almost as though he’s trying to keep out of our way.”

“Why would he want to do that?” Diana asked.

“He’s been acting so queer lately,” Trixie said.

The next day, instead of meeting the others in the school cafeteria for lunch, Trixie started out to try to find Spider. Until they could discover who the thieves were, everything they had in the clubhouse was in danger.

Trixie’s intuition led her directly to where Spider was having a break for lunch, to Wimpy’s Diner where they had seen him the night of the school board meeting. Trixie climbed up on a stool next to Spider and nudged his arm.

“Hello, there,” Spider said. “How’s the head of the Intelligence Department today?”

“Spider,” Trixie said seriously, ignoring his sarcasm, “we’re having trouble, the Bob-Whites are. Someone was looking into the clubhouse one night. We had been having a meeting. They must have waited till they saw us leave, then tried to get in one of the windows.”

“How did you know?” Spider asked.

“I went back suddenly and saw them leaving,” Trixie told him.

“Did you recognize any of them?” Spider asked anxiously.

“No, but that isn’t all.” She told him about the masked men who dumped Bobby into the snow and stole the desk.

“What do you want me to do about it?” Spider asked. “I think you might as well forget it.”

Trixie, amazed at his attitude, insisted, “We
can’t
forget it, Spider. They’ll keep on doing things like that.”

“It was probably some kids playing a trick on you and now they’re afraid to return it. We find that all the time,” Spider said. “The desk will turn up one of these days in some out-of-the-way corner where they’ve hidden it.”

“Spider Webster!” Trixie said. “Those men who took the desk had masks on. They were real crooks.”

Spider waved his hand nervously. “Forget it, Trixie. There are half a hundred things more important that are bothering the police.”

“Well, they’re going to get a chance to bother once more,” Trixie said vehemently. “I don’t understand you, Spider. I’m going to march myself right down to the police station and report it now.”

“Don’t do it!” Spider warned.

Trixie hesitated, her hand on the doorknob. “What do you mean?”

“I mean just this,” Spider said, his face reddening, “that you’ll get your club into more trouble than Mr. Stratton caused. Who do you suppose complained to him and to the board about secret societies in the first place?”

“The police?” asked Trixie.

“Figure it out yourself,” said Spider. “Since that business came up with the school board there hasn’t been any more vandalism at the school, has there?”

“No,” Trixie admitted. “I’d give a good deal to know who did that damage at the school. What do you mean when you say the vandalism stopped after the talks we had with Mr. Stratton?”

“I mean just this: Maybe it
was
an inside job at the school. Maybe some kid did it for spite because he’d been shut out of the clubs.”

“He wouldn’t
steal
for that reason,” Trixie said.

“How do you know what a kid would do if he didn’t have the right guidance at home?” Spider asked. “You and the Wheeler and Lynch kids don’t know what it is to be up against trouble. You’ve always had it easy.”

“Why, Spider Webster, we work hard, every one of us.”

“Yeah, but your folks make it easy for you. It wouldn’t hurt any of you to be a little bit nicer to some of the other kids in school who don’t have it so good.” Spider’s face was serious.

Trixie didn’t answer for a little while. Then she said thoughtfully, “Maybe we do stick together too much. I guess it’s just because we’ve been working so hard. I never thought about it before, Spider. Maybe you’re right.”

“You just bet I’m right,” Spider said. “You kids always high-hat Tad, for instance. I know he’s not perfect, but he’s not bad either. All that business about helping kids on the other side of the world—try to do something for some kids nearer home.”

“Why, Spider,” Trixie said sadly, “we
have
been pretty selfish, haven’t we? Not a single one of the Bob-Whites ever wanted to be. I know that. I’m going to talk to them about what you’ve said. Thanks, Spider.”

After school Trixie told the rest of the B.W.G.’s that Spider didn’t think the mysterious visit to the clubhouse was very important.

“Don’t worry too much about it,” Mart said. “He’ll come around to helping us. Remember when we were shut up in that red trailer, and had such a time convincing Spider we were really kidnaped?”

“I remember,” Honey said. “You told us you had to bring out a tape recording of that man’s voice to prove it to Spider. He’s queer.”

“I think he’s worried about Tad,” Diana said.

“You don’t mean that he thinks Tad stole the desk?” Honey asked.

“No, he doesn’t think that,” Trixie said. “It’s something a lot different, and I’m ashamed. I think you will all be, too, after I tell you!” So she told them of her conversation with Spider.

“He makes us sound like a bunch of snobs,” Mart said. “And we’re not. I’m downright jealous of Tad because he’s in the Pony League and I’m not.”

“Tell Tad so some time,” Trixie said. “I think Spider is right, in a way. Maybe we
have
been thoughtless and didn’t mean anything, but if you think about it as I have since I talked to Spider, you’ll realize how much we keep to ourselves. It isn’t only after school hours, but at school, too.”

“Tad
is
a kind of goon,” Diana insisted.

“Maybe he wouldn’t be if we’d be a little more decent to him,” Trixie said. “I, for one, am going to try.”

“It won’t hurt the rest of us to try, too,” Jim said. “Right, gang?”

“Right!” they answered.

“I just hope Spider will help us find out a few things,” Trixie continued, her point made. “There’s some kind of a hook-up among those people who were looking into the clubhouse that night, the masked robbers who stole the desk, that boy who was shoveling snow, and even the schoolhouse vandals.”

It was only a few days later when part of that theory was disproved.

The Bob-Whites were all at the clubhouse working: Honey and Diana were stuffing the cloth dolls, Mart was working on a chair, and Brian and Jim were looking over a group of framed pictures that had been given them. Trixie was sitting at a table surrounded by papers, arranging the route for Tom and Regan to follow to pick up the antiques to be exhibited.

“Someone’s coming round the corner of the clubhouse,” Honey announced.

A knock sounded at the door.

Brian answered it. A small Japanese man stood there, hat in hand, bowing. “Please, I like to talk to the boss girl,” he said.

“We don’t have any boss,” Mart said, standing back of Brian. Then he added politely, “Won’t you come in?”

“He probably means Trixie,” Jim said, smiling. “If we have a boss, she’s it.”

“Miss Trixie, yes,” said the Japanese man. “Cook at Wheeler house tell me Miss Trixie have sword, I think maybe old samurai sword.”

Trixie looked a little shamefaced. She didn’t realize she had such a reputation for being bossy. “Jim and Brian and Mart know about the swords,” she said. “They polished them and oiled them. Would you like to see them?”

“Yes, please,” the Japanese man said.

So Brian and Jim took the swords down from the closet wall where they had hung them. The Japanese man picked up the longer sword and held it lovingly, running his right thumb up and down the single cutting edge.

He took it over under the strongest light to examine the marking on the hilt. Then he picked up the dagger and examined it just as carefully.

“Very old samurai swords,” he said. “Very old. Maybe belong to Satsuma clan. You sell them?”

“We hope to sell them when we have our antique show next month,” Trixie said. “We couldn’t sell them before that, could we, Jim?”

“Not without breaking our club agreement,” Jim told her.

“You see, Mr.—”

“Oto Hakaito,” he said and bowed.
He seems to be always bowing
, Trixie thought.

“You see, Mr. Hakaito,” she explained, “we agreed among ourselves that we wouldn’t sell anything from our collection
before
the show. Several people have wanted to buy certain articles, and we thought it would only be fair if everyone had the same chance the day of the show. Someone else asked about the swords.”

“Yes, I know,” the Japanese man said, bowing again. “My brother Kasyo and I would very much like to buy samurai swords.”

Then Oto turned around to the B.W.G.’s, circled around them, and bowed again. “I have confession to make,” he said. “Samurai swords very much loved by Japanese people. In Tokyo is big museum where are many swords. My brother and I like to buy these swords. Send them to museum in Tokyo. Make our father who live in that city very proud.”

“What did you mean by ‘confession’?” Mart asked. “There isn’t anything wrong about wanting to buy the old swords.”

“Confession is this,” Oto Hakaito said sadly. “One night, the night Miss Honey’s cook told us about the swords, we come here, my brother and I, to ask to see them. When we arrive there is no one here. So,” he continued, “we cannot wait. We flash light through windows to try to see swords. We very much disappointed no one home. You angry?”