The Mystery at Saratoga

Regan: Regan with Bobby on his shoulders, playing horse; Regan lost in concentration while he curried Lady until her coat was sleek and shining or while he dug a stone out of the tender pad of Starlight’s foot; Regan looking stern as he warned the girls about cooling down their horses after a ride.
    Suddenly a nightmare image leaped into Trixie’s-mind: Regan, his face contorted into a villain’s mask, a hypodermic syringe in his hand, walking in slow motion toward the stall where Gadfly waited before his race.
    The vision was so awful that Trixie gasped. She looked up quickly from the table and glanced around the library, wanting to reassure herself that she was safe in Sleepyside, not living in some nightmare world.
    Honey and Dan both looked up when Trixie gasped, and they both saw the look of stark terror on her face. Dan reached across the table and put his hand on her arm, giving it a gentle, reassuring squeeze.
    Trixie looked at Dan and said, in a high, choked voice that belied the hopefulness of her words, “He doesn’t give the groom’s name, after all. Maybe—” She broke off as Dan shook his head and looked back down at the table. Blushing as she realized how foolish she sounded, she turned to look at Honey.
    Honey, too, shook her head. “There can’t be much doubt about who the redheaded groom was, Trixie,” she admitted. Then, turning to Dan, she added, “But the fact that the writer doesn’t mention him by name probably means something else: That the writer wasn’t sure enough of the facts to name Regan, that it was just his opinion that Regan doped the horse. But that opinion is wrong— absolutely wrong!” Honey’s usually gentle hazel eyes snapped with anger, and her usually quiet voice rose as she spoke.
    “That’s a good point, Honey,” Trixie said eagerly. “There are all kinds of laws about libel and slander. A writer can be sued if he says something that he can’t prove to be true about someone. The man who wrote this book is obviously upset about what happened to Gadfly. You can tell that from the way he wrote the chapter. So maybe he just put
    in the part about knowing who was the chief suspect to make it seem even worse that Mr. Worthington and the racing association didn’t try hard enough to solve the crime.”
    Trixie and Honey both looked relieved as they thought about this new theory, but Dan continued staring glumly at the table. Trixie leaned forward to speak to him, then saw the stern face of the librarian at the desk behind him.
    Lowering her voice to a whisper, she said, “Let’s go outside where we can talk about this.” In her haste to leave the library without a confrontation with the librarian, Trixie rose too quickly and hit the back of the chair seat with her leg, sending the chair tumbling backward to the floor with a resounding crash.
    Flustered, Trixie whirled around to set it upright, got tangled in the chair legs, and tumbled to the floor.
    The nervousness that Honey had been feeling since Dan had finished reading suddenly erupted in a fit of nervous giggling, and she could only stand helplessly, clutching her stomach, as she watched Trixie struggling to untangle herself.
    It was Dan who finally grabbed one of Trixie’s flailing arms, pulled her to her feet, and righted the chair. He, too, was struggling to suppress his laughter as he said, “I’ll put these books back on the shelves. You two go wait outside for me, before one of you pulls this ancient building down on top of us.”
    Trixie, too, had begun to giggle, and she could only nod agreement as she and Honey turned and walked as quickly as possible to the door of the library, carefully avoiding meeting the librarian’s astonished and reproachful look.
    Once outside, Trixie and Honey sank down on the steps of the library and continued to laugh until the tears rolled down their cheeks.
    Finally Trixie’s laughter subsided, and a woeful look replaced the mirthful one. “Why am I such a clumsy oaf, Honey? And how can T laugh when everything is so—so absolutely awful?”
    Honey hugged her friend sympathetically. “Don’t feel bad, Trixie. You aren’t clumsy at all, except when you get impatient and try to move too fast, the way you did just now. It doesn’t happen very often—at least, not anymore. But we’ve all teased you a lot for being clumsy when it does happen, so we’ve made you self-conscious about it. That’s our fault, and I’m going to talk to the boys about