The Mysterious Code

“You don’t do all your sleuthing singlehanded, either.”
    “Sometimes I wish
she did,” Honey said. “I’m a sleuth only against my will.”
    “The Reluctant
Flatfoot,” Mart called her. “Maybe Spider is right, and the desk will turn up
in some odd place.”

Lost
in a Blizzard • 9
     
    I’m afraid we can’t work on the
furniture at the club tonight,” Honey told Trixie when they met in the corridor
on their way to class. “Or try to solve any mysteries, either.”
    “Why not?” Trixie
asked. “We have to use every minute we can. Why can’t we work?”
    “Because Regan is
pretty mad at us. He says we never exercise the horses anymore,” Honey said.
    Trixie’s face fell.
“We can’t afford to have Began mad at us,” she said. “He’s one of the best
friends anyone ever had.”
    “Miss Trask, too.
She said she never sees us anymore. She misses Bobby particularly.” Honey was
exasperated with Trixie at times. She wished her friend wouldn’t try to solve
every mystery all by herself. Honey wanted to be the kind of detective who sat
in an office and directed other people. She had no liking for danger.
    Trixie was just the
opposite. The more involved a situation seemed to be, the better she liked it.
Adventure—even danger—beckoned to her and found her willing. The mysterious
happenings that annoyed Honey and, in fact, the other members of the Bob-Whites
of the Glen only excited Trixie. She would have liked to have spent every
moment with the club and its problems.
    Trixie was
scrupulous, though, about doing work that was expected of her. If Began wanted
the horses exercised, she would do it, no matter what she would rather do.
Until Honey Wheeler’s family had bought Manor House, Trixie had never had a
chance to ride a horse, and she had longed for one. Now the Wheelers’ five
riding horses were at the disposal of Honey’s and Jim’s friends. Red-haired
Regan lost his red-haired temper when the horses weren’t exercised and
everything wasn’t shipshape around the stables.
    “We’ll tell the boys
when we meet them at noon that we have to ride,” Honey said. “Regan surely can
use some help. He’s had Tom, our chauffeur, riding. If there’s anything Tom
hates more than a horse, I don’t know what it is.”
    “That’s true,”
Trixie agreed. “And if there’s anything Regan hates more than an automobile,
it’s another automobile. They’re both super at the jobs they have.”
    “That’s why my daddy
doesn’t want anything to happen that might make either of them want to leave,”
Honey said. “Why can’t Bobby come over to our house and visit Miss Trask and
Regan tonight after school? He used to be with them often before he was sick.
Di’s little twin brothers, Larry and Terry, have been at our house several
times. Regan is crazy about children. He was raised in an orphanage, and I
guess that’s the reason. Can’t Bobby come over?”
    “I’m afraid not. I
thought you knew that Bobby isn’t allowed to go out of the house as yet. He
hasn’t completely recovered from his sickness. He would be thrilled if Miss
Trask and Began would come to see him. You remember old Brom, the man with the
whiskers who was at Mrs. Vanderpoel’s house? I told you about him. He comes to
see Bobby often. Bobby loves him. He doesn’t have money to buy presents for
Bobby, but the things he brings are wonderful. He made a willow whistle for
Bobby that plays several notes.”
    “I’d love to see
it,” Honey said.
    “He carved queer
little witches and goblins for Bobby, too,” Trixie said. “I think Brom really
thinks the elves live in the mountains near here. I know Bobby believes
it. You should hear some of the legends old Brom tells Bobby. If someone would
put them in a book, I know the book would sell.”
    “Maybe someday we
could collect them,” Honey suggested, “if Brom would tell them to us so we
could write them down. That would be a good project for the B.W.G.’s, wouldn’t
it?”
    “Not for me,” Trixie
said. “You know the kind of marks I get in English.”
    “The poems you wrote
for your term paper were beautiful—the ones about the Navaho Indians. You wrote
them after we came back from the ranch,” Honey said. “You got an ‘A’ on them.”
    “All I did was to
repeat some of the ceremonial songs,” Trixie said, “and maybe twist them around
a bit. I can’t write prose. Poems sing inside my head at times. It’s when I try
to put them down on paper