The Mysterious Code

me. How did you happen to get your
jalopy out without anyone hearing it Brian?”
    “I left it down the
road, opposite the driveway. Didn’t you notice it?”
    “I did not. And that
means you intended to go into Sleepyside all the time. And you planned to go,
too, didn’t you, Jim?” Trixie asked.
    Jim didn’t answer.
    “I like that!”
Trixie said. “You weren’t going to say a thing to me about it, and you
pretended I woke you, Brian.”
    “We thought you’d
been in enough danger.” Jim tried to explain.
    “Thank you very much
for your concern, Jim Frayne,” Trixie said. “Oh, all right. I’m here. We don’t
have enough time to argue. I just hope Moms and Daddy don’t wake up and find
we’re gone.”
    “That’s a chance I
had to take with my family,” Jim said. “Brian, turn down the street next to Main Street, then come back and park east of the showroom. Maybe we’ll run into Spider.”
    A lone light shone
faintly in the showroom, back in the comer opposite the Japanese exhibit Spider
came to meet them from the drugstore nearby. “I thought some of the
Bob-Whites would be showing up,” he said. “I have the key to the building
across from the showroom. A man I know who has an office upstairs said I could
use his office. We can go up there and keep watch through the window.”
    “Did you see the
regular patrolman anyplace around?” Trixie asked.
    “He only passes here
about every hour,” Spider answered. “He spends most of his time patrolling the
alleys that lead off of Main Street down to Hawthorne. That’s one reason I
wanted to come down and keep an eye on things myself tonight. I don’t think
anything will happen, but I know you kids are worried about all those borrowed
antiques.”
    Trixie, Brian, and
Jim followed Spider to the window in the second-story office. The street down
below was almost deserted. Now and then a car went by, but the pedestrians were
few.
    There was an
excellent view of the front of the showroom building. No one could possibly
enter without being seen by the four watchers who were stationed opposite.
    Trixie never left
the window. Brian and Jim and Spider were not quite so vigilant. Now that they
were within sight of the showroom, they seemed to feel more secure. They sat
around a desk in the office talking.
    The minute hand on
the clock began its slow journey around the dial. It was eleven forty-five.
Then midnight.
    Brian and Jim,
restless, walked around the room, unable to keep still. Trixie shuffled her feet
in the chair where she sat watching.
    “Why don’t you kids
go on home?” Spider asked. “You need sleep if you’re going to be on the job all
day tomorrow. Don’t you see how quiet everything is? I’ll stay around here till
it starts to get daylight.”
    “We’ll stay a while
longer,” Jim insisted. “We haven’t been here an hour.”
    “Yes,” Brian said,
“we’ll get plenty of sleep, because the show doesn’t open till nine o’clock in
the morning.”
    “We’ll get the
heebie-jeebies just standing around,” Spider said. “Anyone want to play cards?”
He drew a pack of cards from his pocket. “How about it, Trixie?”
    “I was thinking that
if you’ll give me the key,” Trixie said, “I’ll go down to the showroom and
finish putting the price tags on the dolls and aprons. It’s the only thing we didn’t
finish.”
    “Better not,” Spider
said. “If you turn up the lights, someone passing is sure to think something’s
wrong.”
    “I don’t need to
turn the light up. I can work under that bulb in the comer,” Trixie insisted.
“It won’t take me long. Then I guess we’d better go on home, maybe, if Spider
is going to stay here, anyway.”
    “Want me to go
along, Trixie?” Jim asked.
    “I’ll be okay, Jim,”
Trixie answered. “You stay and play cards with Spider and Brian. This job will
only take a few minutes.”
    Trixie let herself
into the showroom. “Everything’s so beautiful,” she thought. “And it’s so quiet.”
    She found the square
paper slips where Honey had left them on the shelf beside the lines of aprons.
Carefully she spread the slips under the light and went to work.
    A car went noisily
by outside. It disappeared in the distance, but another sound took its place— a
faint shuffle, a shuffle that came from—the back room.
    Startled, Trixie put
down the paper tag she was working on and listened.
    “Keep right on at
what you were doin’, sister!” a hoarse voice