The Mystery of the Blinking Eye

Right here. I want to explore all four floors.”
    “While you’re doing that, Barbara and I will go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” Diana told him. “Right now, though, we’d better take a quick look at that ghostfish, then go back to the apartment.”
    “It’s right here.” Brian stopped in front of a series of shelves. There were dozens of jars containing rare fish suspended in alcohol. “There’s one that looks just like our little contribution to science—the one we found in the Ozark cave.”
    A jar stood on a small square pedestal. Inside, in alcohol, there was a fish so white it seemed transparent. The legend under it read:

BLIND CAVE FISH. In the process of evolution, because its life-span is spent in complete darkness underground, the cave fish loses its sight. Then, through generations of lack of use, its eyes disappear.

    A printed card stood against the jar. It related the recent discovery of a similar fish in “Bob-White Cave” in the Ozarks and listed the names of the club members underneath.
    “How come my name is there?” Dan asked.
    “You’re a Bob-White, aren’t you, Dan?” Trixie reminded him.
    “One for all,” Mart chanted. “All for one.”
    “Well, that’s just too wonderfully wonderful!” Barbara exclaimed. “To think you knew how important that little fish was!”
    “We didn’t know exactly,” Jim said. “Trixie read about it in a magazine when we were at her Uncle Andrew’s lodge in the Ozark Mountains, and she led us on the hunt for it.”
    “We all worked together on that project,” Trixie said modestly. “I never do anything by myself. Honey and I both know that our detective agency just could not exist without help from all the Bob-Whites. It’s a long story about the fish. We’ll tell you all about it later.”
    “Seems to me it’d be a lot easier to discover something the size of that Gorgosaurus Bob remarked.
    “Except that he was found all in pieces,” Mart told Bob, “some of them not even as big as our little fish.”
    “I’d like to take another look at those ‘sauruses.’ Does anyone mind?” Bob asked.
    “Me, too,” Barbara echoed. “Remember that movie, Bob, where all those big prehistoric animals were moving around on earth? Do we have time, Jim, to take another look at the skeletons?”
    “You’ll have to make it snappy. Come on, gang, let’s start toward the exit. Bob and Barbara can look at the prehistoric exhibit again on our way out.”
    Trixie and Honey were on the other side of the big room, completely absorbed in a great glass case filled with skeletons of deep-sea fish. They didn’t hear what Jim said or see the rest of the crowd leaving.
    “How would you like to encounter something like that in the dead of night?” Honey asked, pointing through the glass to a skeleton fish, almost all mouth.
    Its great jaws were open to display two long rows of sharp, ugly teeth.
    “Right next to the skeleton, too, see, Trixie—a picture of the way that fish looks in real life. Heavens! It has luminous eyes and a real cavern for a mouth!” Trixie crouched down to peer through the glass. She shuddered as she saw the pictured monster’s eyes gleaming. Then she realized she was gazing right into the eyes of a man looking into the case from the other side.
    The face was that of the sleek-haired man they had seen at the United Nations!
    Honey saw him at the same moment. She seized Trixie’s hand tightly, and they both looked around for the rest of their crowd.
    “They’re gone!” Trixie gasped. “Honey, some of the lights have been turned off! It must be closing time! Where did Jim go?” Her voice fell to a whisper. “Did you see that awful man?”
    Honey squeezed Trixie’s hand tightly in answer. “Let’s get out of here fast!”
    They looked around frantically. Far down the corridors more lights went off. The girls, desperate, plunged madly around the great glass case, practically into the arms of the stranger!
    “It’s my little friends from the Peruvian exhibit, isn’t it? How lucky for you, you found me here!” He chuckled softly.
    Trixie, almost taken off her feet with the impact, recovered herself, her eyes seeking escape.
    “It’s lucky, young ladies, because if you will only follow me, you will discover you are not to be locked in. I know a quick way out of the building. Just follow me!” He grasped Trixie’s arm with one hand and Honey’s arm with the other and tried to pull them along with