The Mystery at Saratoga

it.
    “And as for laughing at a time like this, that’s normal, too. People can’t keep emotions bottled up inside for very long. They have to come out some way, in laughing or crying or something. It can be embarrassing, but it’s normal, and usually people "understand.”
    Trixie shook her head. “Maybe you understand, Honey, because you’re so understanding. But I don’t understand myself when I act the way I did in there just now. And Dan must think I’m awful, making a fool of myself and then giggling as though everything were wonderful, when his only relative in the whole world might possibly be in serious trouble.”
    “I don’t think you’re awful at all, Trixie,” Dan said, sitting down on the step beside her. “I know that you’re worried about Regan. We all are.”
    “I'm not as worried now as I was before we went to the library,” Honey said. “In fact, I think our mystery is pretty much solved.”
    Trixie and Dan both gave Honey bewildered looks.
    “Don’t you see?” she asked them. “When Daddy told Regan that Mr. Worthington was coming to visit the Manor House, Regan realized that he might be accused of giving the drugs to Gadfly, which of course he didn’t do. So he just went away until Mr. Worthington left.”
    Trixie shook her head. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple, Honey. Remember, Regan’s note said he had ‘things to take, care of.’ Leaving the Manor House just to avoid running into Mr. Worthington wouldn’t take care of anything. I think he’s gone off to try to solve the mystery once and for all, to clear himself.”
    “Or to turn himself in,” Dan muttered.
    Trixie turned on Dan angrily. “That’s a terrible thing to say, Dan Mangan! I don’t even know how you can say it, knowing Regan as well as you do. Even if you didn’t know him so well, you might try remembering that he showed a lot more faith in you when he first brought you to Sleepyside, and he hardly knew you at all!”
    “I’m sorry,” Dan said immediately. “You’re right, of course, Trixie. I don’t know why I said that. I guess it’s just that so many of the people I knew before I came here turned out to be bad characters. I know, now, that people can be good, but sometimes it’s hard for me to keep that kind of faith.”
    “We understand, Dan,” Honey said quickly. “People’s past experiences always affect the way they see things. Trixie and I, because of our past, tend to be too trusting, and that’s got us into some dangerous situations sometimes. But the main thing right now is to keep believing that Regan is innocent.”
    Once again, Trixie shook her head. “That isn’t the main thing, Honey. Just believing in Regan’s innocence won’t bring him back to Sleepyside, and that’s what we have to do.”
    “But how?” Honey asked.
    “Well,” Trixie said slowly, “we can either find Regan and convince him that he has to come back, or we can solve the mystery for him so that he’ll come back on his own. Or, better still, we can do both!”
    “How can we, Trixie?” Honey asked hopelessly. “The mystery that you’re talking about is almost seven years old. What we just read didn’t give us any clues on how to solve it, and anything that Regan knew, he kept to himself. I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
    Trixie shrugged. “Then we begin by finding Regan,” she said.
    “Don’t be silly, Trixie,” Dan said, sounding half-angry at Trixie’s confident tone. “You have no idea where he went or where to begin looking.”
    “We found Jim when he disappeared,” Trixie said stubbornly.
    “That was different, Trixie,” Honey pointed out. “We had a hard enough time finding Jim, and we almost got killed in the process, but at least we’d some idea where to start looking, because Jim had mentioned going to look for work at a boys’ camp in upstate New York.”
    “Exactly,” Trixie agreed. “And Regan said in his note that he had 'things to take care of,’ and we now know—or at least we’re fairly sure—that those things have to do with Mr. Worthington and Gadfly and a race that took place seven years ago at Saratoga. So—”
    “That’s it!” Honey interrupted, snapping her fingers as she finally understood the point that Trixie had been leading up to. “Regan went to Saratoga!”
    “Well, that makes everything easy as pie,” Dan said sarcastically. “You can just take the contents of the Bob-Whites’ treasury, which amount to about three dollars,