The Mysterious Visitor

with Mr. Belden. So it was nearly dawn by the time the Beldens finished talking and dawn before Trixie fell asleep.
    When she and Brian and Mart arrived at the clubhouse, they found that Honey and Jim had not heard anything about the exciting events of the night before. "I thought Di was coming out early to bring you two up to date," Trixie said, propping her eyes open with her fingers. "I myself am too tired and sleepy to talk about it. Di will tell you all about it when she arrives."
    "Trixie, please," Honey begged. "How can you expect Jim and me to sit here calmly until Di arrives, when all you’ve told us is that Monty was arrested early this morning? Tell us everything." Trixie sighed and began at the beginning, for what seemed to her about the one hundredth time. "The best part of it all," she finished, "is that Moms and Dad aren’t too mad at me."
    "They’re not mad at all," Brian put in. "They’re proud of you, Sis. After all, you didn’t plan to get yourself kidnapped by Monty."
    "I still don’t understand about the tape-recording machine," Honey complained. "How did it get into the trailer?"
    "That’s Mart’s story," Trixie said wearily. "You have the floor now, Mart."
    Mart grinned. "Well, you all know Ty Scott— the guy I was supposed to spend last night with. The tape recorder belongs to him. It’s his hobby. He belongs to a club, and the members send each other tapes and all that sort of thing. Like pen pals, you know. Anyway, he let me borrow it last night without asking a lot of questions. I put it in my bike basket and carried it out to the Lynches’, arriving around nine fifteen. I knew Monty would be listening to TV in the Robin then, so he didn’t hear me when I sneaked into the garage and hid on the other side of the limousine. When the program was over, he went into the house, and I went into the trailer. I hid the machine under a bunk, plugged it into an outlet, and, just as I got everything all set, I happened to glance out of the window and saw Trixie limping barefoot along the driveway. I was so stunned to see her that I just stood there with my mouth open until she turned the handle on the door. It was too late then to shut the machine off. I barely had time to get into the shower compartment and close the door before Trixie walked into the trailer."
    Trixie nodded. "That was the click I heard, and it scared me to death."
    "I don’t understand, Mart. Why did you hide from Trixie?" Jim demanded.
    "Because," Mart said, "she would have ruined my plan."
    "Just what was your plan?" Honey asked. "Whatever could you possibly hope to prove by installing a recorder in the Robin ?"
    "Exactly what I told you at the meeting yesterday afternoon," Mart said. "I planned to get a confession out of Monty and have it recorded without his knowing anything at all about it."
    "I still don’t get it," Jim said. "Why should he confess to you in the Robin or anyplace else?" "Let me tell my story in my own way," Mart pleaded. "I planned to greet him when he came back out to the Robin for the eleven o’clock TV show. I was going to confront him with the fact that I had seen him enter Olyfant’s hotel both before and after he went to stay with the Lynches. It wasn’t true, but it would certainly have shocked him into saying something. I then planned to say that I would not tell on him if he gave me a share of the loot. Ten percent, to be exact."
    Honey gasped. "Five thousand dollars? Why, Mart, he wouldn’t have given you that much money. You didn’t have any real proof."
    "I didn’t expect him to give me any money at all," Mart said patiently. "I simply wanted him to talk, and I think he would have talked plenty under my skillful questioning and cleverly put accusations."
    Jim groaned. "And, I suppose, while he was watching you, you would have unplugged the machine, taken it from its hiding place, and walked off with it under your arm! A fat chance you would have had of getting far! You’d have been stopped before you got to the door!"
    Mart snapped his fingers. "You forget, my dear James, that I had no idea then that the crook was going to depart that night. I planned to return, after he’d gone to bed in the house, and remove my equipment then."
    "Well, it might have worked, at that," Jim admitted. "But you took an awful chance, Mart. He would probably have done the same thing to you that he did to Trixie when he caught her there."
    "True," Mart said, "but I didn’t know he had a gun. None