The Mystery of the Castaway Children

his brow. “Don’t tell me they’re letting rooms to horses!”
    Ella twinkled at Mart. “Only on the first floor. Horses aren’t allowed on the stairs.”
    “Flies are allowed anywhere?” Jim teased. Trixie leaned toward Ella. “What about the fly sheet?”
    Ella pointed. “See a kind of hidden place in those shrubs by the gate? Pete told me he found the fly sheet there, folded up neatly.”
    Trixie ambled over to the gate and noticed that the lawn hadn’t been mowed right up to the shrubs and trees. An object could remain hidden there for quite a while. Even though the inn was a former manor house, it had seen better days and had known better care. Trixie dropped to her knees to paw through the branches and tall grass.
    Jim hurried to join her. “Here, let me do that. You’ll get bitten by spiders.”
    “Since when are you immune to spiders?” Trixie retorted.
    “I’m not, but the stick I poke with is,” Jim said.
    While the others chatted with Ella, Jim and Trixie went over the ground near the gate thoroughly. At last Trixie sat back on her heels, ready to admit defeat. That was when she saw something dangling in a forsythia bush a few yards away. It turned out to be a scrap of blue yarn.
    “I’ll be darned,” Jim said. “It’s a... what-you-call-it...”
    “A bootee!” Trixie said with a quiver of excitement. As if she’d needed it, this was more solid proof that Dodgy and the horse were connected. But where was the third member of this triangle? She and Jim searched further, but there were no more clues to be found.
    When they returned to the group on the lawn, they learned that Brian had talked to the cook. No one had asked to have a bottle filled, but several days ago, a boy had paid for one glass of milk and carried it to the courtyard to drink.
    “Davy,” Trixie breathed.
    “He must have poured the milk into Dodgy’s bottle,” Honey agreed.
    Trixie and Honey took one last look around the forsythia bush before the Bob-Whites said good night to Ella.
    “Where to now?” Jim asked when they were back in the station wagon.
    Trixie was too deep in frustrated thought to reply, so Jim swung the car onto Old Telegraph Road. “We could try some of the houses this way,” he decided.
    With the lowering of the sun, a glow had spread over the land. Trixie tilted her face to the breeze coming in through the window. Suddenly she pointed and exclaimed, “There!”
    “Huh?” Jim asked.
    “Tar!” Trixie shrieked.
    “An odorous, bituminous, viscous liquid, according to Webster,” Mart began calmly. Then he, too, waved his arms and yelled, “Turn around!”
    “Brian, does being nuts run in your family?” Jim demanded.
    “We found some tar on Dodgy’s foot,” Brian reminded him.
    “Well, give me some warning this time,” Jim said as he pulled to the side of the road.
    “You’ll be able to smell it,” Trixie said.
    Jim had to retrace only a few hundred yards before Trixie shouted, “Stop!”
    Facing the protected forest of the Wheeler game preserve stood an old Dutch barn, which was apparently being remodeled. Jim peered through the dusk to see that the contractor’s sign included the name of a well-known Hudson River artist. “Wow, what a studio!” he exclaimed.
    Trixie wasn’t looking at the carefully placed windows. She was looking at a tethered goat. “Milk!” she squealed.
    “Shall we explore?” prompted Brian.
    They found the usual construction clutter: stacks of lumber, a temporary tool shed that was locked, empty nail kegs, sawhorses, and several empty tar buckets. Jim whistled while they completed a quick tour of the ancient farm lot. “Wow,” he said again. “When I have my school, I hope I can find a solid old barn like this to fix up for a craft building.” Jim was planning to use his inheritance to build a camplike school for underprivileged children.
    Mart, like Trixie, was more interested in the goat than in the barn. “They’re using the goat to get rid of the brush that’s grown up around the lot,” he commented.
    The group heard a noise behind them and turned to find a tall boy, wearing shorts and sneakers, biking onto the lot. He dropped one foot to the ground and looked them over, obviously curious. Because he wore no shirt, Trixie guessed he lived nearby. She introduced herself and added anxiously, “We re on the trail of a Shetland that might have been here several days ago.”
    “Black? Very small?” the boy asked.
    Trixie gulped.