The Black Jacket Mystery

An Emergency ● 1
     
    BOBBY! IF YOU DON’T hold still, I’ll never have you ready in time to catch your bus!” Trixie was trying her best to get her six-year-old brother into his winter overcoat.
    But Bobby had broken away again and, with his coat dangling from one arm, had plunged under the dresser in search of his missing crayons. His voice came out muffled. “Gotta take my crayons this morning. Miss Elephant says so!”
    “Oh, dear!” Thirteen-year-old Trixie ran her hands despairingly through her unruly mop of sandy curls. “I keep trying to tell you her name’s Miss Elliman, and you better call her that. Elli-man. Not Ele- phant!” she scolded. “And hurry up!”
    “Got ’um!” Bobby wriggled out from under the dresser clutching a handful of crayons and a crumpled box. “Zip me!”
    Trixie hustled him into the overcoat and zipped it hastily. “Now sit down just half a minute, and I’ll be ready!”
    She knew it would be a long half minute, but there were certain rules in the Belden household about tidying up bedrooms before leaving for school, and she had no choice. She whipped the covers off her bed and started to remake it.
    “Make tracks, small squaw, or you’ll miss the bus!” It was Mart, poking his head in at the door. Mart was eleven months older than Trixie and was often mistaken for her twin. They had the same sturdy build and blond hair, but Mart kept his in a short crew cut to avoid the curls that made the “twin” appearance stronger. Lately he had grown a couple of inches taller than Trixie and was extremely proud of it, except that he was growing out of his clothing.
    “Oh, Mart, could you—just this once—take Bobby to the bus?” Trixie appealed.
    “Seems to me you get paid to do that,” Mart teased. “Not a chance, sister dear!”
    Trixie swallowed hard and tinned back to the bed-making, feeling very sorry for herself. She didn’t see Mart crook his finger mysteriously at Bobby, or Bobby get up hastily and tiptoe to the door to join his big brother and then disappear.
    Trixie smoothed the covers and folded her quilt. “There! I won t be another minute!” she flung over her shoulder toward the spot where Bobby had been sitting. Then she stopped short and whirled around. He was gone.
    Trixie ran to the window and looked out. Mart, with Bobby firmly by the hand, was going out the front gate into Glen Road. He had been teasing her, as usual.
    “You’re late, dear. What’s wrong with you this morning?” Her mother came into the room.
    Trixie sighed and started to brush her unruly curls into a semblance of neatness. “I overslept. I was awake most all night, thinking about Dolores and Lupe and the earthquake, wondering what the B.W.G.’s could do to help.”
    Dolores and Lupe Perez were pen pals of Trixie’s and of her best friend, Honey Wheeler. Their letters, received yesterday, had told of an earthquake that had partially destroyed their small village of San Isidro, located in a Mexican coast state.
    The biggest tragedy to the Mexican girls had been the destruction of their school library. The B.W.G.’s, a secret club that Trixie and Honey had organized with their brothers a few months before, had gathered a lot of old schoolbooks for the small library and had found the Mexican girls delighted with the gift. They had written many times since, enthusiastically, about how much the books had helped them understand their neighbors to the north.
    “Weve got to find more books for them,” Trixie told her mother.
    “You will, dear. I’m sure of it.” Mrs. Belden smiled. She knew that Trixie was always full of ideas. Some of the ideas might plunge Trixie and her brothers and friends into all sorts of complications, but somehow they always came out of them safely. Usually, it was due to Trixie’s “detectiving,” with Honey Wheeler’s assistance.
    A few minutes later, Trixie sped down the long path in front of the neat little farmhouse and through the front gate of the white picket fence. She was well bundled up against the late February chill of the small but lovely valley on the east shore of the great Hudson River. It had snowed a couple days before, but the road to Sleepyside Junior-Senior High School was always the first to be cleared. Which meant, alas, that the Beldens and their next-door neighbors, Honey and her adopted brother Jim, had few days off from school because of snow-blocked roads.
    Honey and Jim were waiting with Mart at the bus stop as