The Mysterious Code

whispered.
    Trixie jumped to her
feet “An’ sit down!” the voice ordered. “Don’t make a move! Think you’re pretty
smart, don’t you, sendin' my nephew to reform school? Now it’s your turn for
trouble! Sit down!”
    Snipe Thompson!
Trixie, shaking from head to toe, obeyed.
    “Now you bend over
that desk like you was workin’,” Snipe ordered. “I know your brother and that
Frayne kid and that fly cop Webster are upstairs over there. I want ’em to stay
just a little longer. You bein’ here makes it easier for us. We’ll promise you
a little ride when we get through, sister, to pay you for your kindness. Get
busy at what you were doin’!”
    Trixie, frantic, not
knowing which way to turn, did as Snipe ordered and tried to write the tags.
Automatically the Bob-Whites distress call formed on her lips. “They’ll kill me
for sure if I make any kind of a noise,” she thought. “What can I do?”
    Her fingers clenched
the pencil. Almost without thinking about it, she began to draw three little
stick figures on the tags:
     

     
    Mechanically she
continued drawing the same figures, her heart pounding so hard she could
scarcely breathe.
    “Bring that gold box
back here!” Snipe commanded hoarsely. “Just pick it up and walk right back
here. Get some of that silver on your way.”
    At Snipe’s command
Trixie went back and forth, back and forth, till all the silver had been
carried out and seized by two masked figures.
    As Trixie turned to
go back into the showroom after every last bit of silver had been carried out,
she saw Jim leave the entrance to the building across the street. “Thank
goodness,” she breathed, and she stood still in the partition doorway to try to
obscure Snipe’s view.
    It was too late!
    “Get back in there
and keep workin on those tags!” Snipe commanded. “Don’t say a word about us!
I’ll have a gun trained on you every second. If that guy mentions the silver,
tell him you took it out back for safekeeping. Don’t you go near him. If you
spill one word, I’ll drill both of you!”
    Jim turned the knob
and came into the showroom.
    “It seemed to be
taking you a long time, so I thought I’d see what had happened, Trixie,” he
said. “Is everything all right?”
    “Yes, Jim,” Trixie
answered slowly. “Everything’s all right. I’m just tagging the aprons, see?”
Then an idea flashed through her mind. “Take a look at the tags,” she said.
“See if you think the prices are right.” Trixie gathered up a few of the paper
squares topped with her SOS call.
    “I’ll put them here
on the desk and go on pinning others on the aprons,” she said, mindful of
Snipe’s warning not to approach Jim. “Maybe you will think the prices are too
high. Go over to the desk and look at them, Jim.”
    “How do I know
anything about the price of aprons?” Jim asked. “Whatever you and Honey have
decided is all right. Will it take you much longer to finish your work?”
    “I don’t think so,
Jim.” Trixie’s voice was tense. “I’d feel better if you’d please check
on the prices we’re asking,” Trixie begged, near despair.
    Jim only waved his
hand to show he wasn’t interested. “Whatever you and the other girls have
decided,” he said, “goes for me.”
    “We got some of the
prices out of that page in St. Nicholas, ”Trixie said
desperately. “That page of figures in that old magazine that we found in the
attic.”
    “I don’t know what
you’re talking about, Trixie. Get the job finished as soon as you can. We’ll
wait about another fifteen or twenty minutes, and then I think we’d better be
moving on home. Nothing around here to worry about. Say, Trixie, wasn’t there a
lot of silver out here on display? That was what worried you, wasn’t it? You
thought it showed too much from the street Did you put it under cover?” V
    The chest where the
silver had stood was next to the desk where Trixie had been filling out the
tags. Jim walked over to it as he finished his question. “Hid it someplace, did
you?” he asked.
    Trixie, conscious of
Snipe’s gun, forced herself to answer casually, “Yes, Jim. I put it out of
sight.”
    “Good girl!” Jim
applauded. “Soon as you’re through we’ll go home. I’ll go get Brian. We’ll be
back in a jiff.”
    When Jim stood at
the chest inquiring about the silver, Trixie made a last frightened effort to
communicate with him. If only he had looked at her, she could have
formed words with her lips. He