The Mystery at Saratoga

part, Honey,” Trixie complained after they had given the driver the third address, “is that we don’t even know for sure that we can eliminate these first two places. I mean, Regan could be working at either one of them. The fact that we didn’t find him doesn’t prove anything.”
    “I know, Trixie,” Honey said. “But we still have two chances out of four to find him. And if we don’t find him today—well, as you said to me last night, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” The cab pulled into the long driveway of the third riding stable and stopped in front of the office. The girls once again dug into their billfolds to pay the driver, both noting sadly the few bills remaining. They climbed out and looked around for someone to ask their by now well-rehearsed questions. Trixie heard a small squeal from Honey, and she followed her friend’s gaze to a large fenced exercise yard to their left. There, cantering around in a wide circle on an Appaloosa horse, was Regan!
    Honey lunged forward to run to the fence, but Trixie grabbed her arm and stopped her. She whispered into Honey’s ear, and Honey’s face dissolved into a wide grin, her hazel eyes twinkling.
    The two girls walked quietly, almost on tiptoe, to the fence and arranged themselves in casual watching postures, their feet on the bottom rail of the fence and their elbows resting on the top.
    So intent was Regan on his riding that he made two more broad passes around the yard before he noticed the girls. On the third pass, he glanced over at them. Then the girls saw Regan do something they had never seen him do before and wouldn’t have believed he possibly could do: Looking back over his shoulder to confirm what his first glance had told him, Regan lost his balance and fell off the horse!
    He scrambled quickly to his feet and caught the horse’s reins. The expression on his face changed from astonishment to embarrassment to anger. Then he threw back his head and laughed, and the girls scrambled over the fence and ran to embrace him.
    “You girls are a sight for sore eyes!” he exclaimed. “Although my eyes won’t be the only part of me that’s sore tomorrow, after that spill I just took. How in the world did you happen to come to this place?”
    “By taxi,” Trixie said teasingly.
    “After we went to two other riding stables looking for you,” Honey added.
    “After a certain chatty cabdriver at the track told us about a nice young redheaded man who perfumed his cab with horse scent he brought with him from the boarding stable where he worked,” Trixie concluded.
    Regan looked from one girl to the other as their jumbled explanation flew back and forth. Then he shook his head. “You’d better come back to the stable with me and explain the whole thing— slowly—while I curry this horse.”
    While Regan worked, the girls told him how they’d traced him to this spot, starting with their walk through Saratoga and their finding his boots in the pawnshop.
    “We were afraid something might have happened to you, Regan, because the pawnbroker’s description of the man who brought the boots in didn’t fit you at all,” Trixie said.
    “It wasn’t me,” Regan said. “It was Johnny, who’s an exercise boy here at the stable. He and I have gotten to be pretty good friends since I started working here. Johnny’s not much of a talker, and I don’t think he managed to get much schoolroom education, so most people treat him as though he’s plain stupid. But I spotted him as a good man with horses. I respect him for that, and I let him know it. He was grateful for the encouragement, and he’s done everything he could to help me out. I was a little short of cash when I first got here. Johnny offered to loan me some money, but he doesn’t have much himself. So I asked him if he’d take the boots in for me and bring me back the money, which he did, no questions asked. My old boots are plenty good enough for the work I do around here. But I plan to get my good boots back as soon as I get my first paycheck.
    “But wait a minute,” Regan said suddenly. “You girls have done a first-rate detective job in tracing me here, with nothing to go on but a pair of monogrammed boots in a pawnshop window. But that doesn’t explain how you came to be in Saratoga in the first place.”
    In their joy at finally finding Regan, and their pride in relating the detecting process that had led them to him, the girls had forgotten the shadow of