The Mysterious Code

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 diem 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. “Please try. 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 t hink 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 die clubhouse.
    After Trixie hurried
through the dusting, she tossed the dustcloth into the broom closet in the
kitchen. Tm going over to Honeys house,” she told her mother quickly. “She and
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, die 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 peni-tendy 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 trapdoor 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 hobbyhorse, 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 chessmen,
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. “Then they’ll be as good as
new.”
    “Let’s stop hunting
for something 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 take a look at
them!”
    Diana picked up two
bound volumes of the magazine and carried them to the middle of the room.