The Mystery of the Castaway Children

as the sergeant was explaining, Jim walked in through the screen door. He glistened with perspiration and was so tired that Trixie could count each freckle on his face. When Jim saw the handcuffed men, his green eyes blazed with fierce pride. “We did it again, gang!” he panted.
    “Thank you, Jim,” Trixie said. “Thank you, James Winthrop Frayne.”
    “You are welcome, Beatrix Belden,” Jim said quietly.
    “Only my dad says Beatrix,” Bobby put in.
    “And f-friends who risk their necks for you,” Trixie corrected Bobby shakily.
    Right behind Jim came Mr. and Mrs. Belden and Eileen and David Dodge.
    “Are you kids all right?” Peter shouted.
    “Our boys, David! Both our boys!” Eileen choked. Her shaking arms enveloped Davy, while David’s hands reached instantly for Dodgy.
    “I promised myself I wouldn’t cry,” Eileen sobbed, “and here I am.”
    “You’re entitled to tears, Eileen,” the sergeant said gently.
    Trixie looked around. The only dry eyes in the room belonged to Roger and Sax, and they were staring straight ahead. Trixie couldn’t help scowling at the prisoners. Sax returned the stare coldly, but Roger looked embarrassed. Trixie decided that Roger was really more of a weakling than a criminal.
    “It’s time to clear up some things,” the sergeant decided.
    “Don’t look at me,” Sax said. “I didn’t take those kids.”
    “Me neither,” Roger said. His hands were locked together, but he didn’t seem to know what to do with his feet. He shuffled them awkwardly.
    “We re not talking about taking kids,” said the sergeant. “We’re talking about making threats!”
    “Oh, that.” Sax’s eyes were bold. “Is there a law against typewriting?”
    “There is when it’s a ransom note,” the sergeant snapped back. “Just what was it that inspired you?”
    Sax jerked his head at Roger. “Talk to him.” Roger Higgins had decided that his feet fitted together best when they were ankle to ankle. He hunched his shoulders up around his ears, his great brush of brown hair sticking out like a clown’s wig.
    “Well?” the sergeant barked, cupping one ear. “Okay, okay,” Roger said. “We was taking inventory out at the Dodge farm. That is, my pop was, and I was just hanging around. I’m supposed to be learning the business.”
    “You were learning the business,” the sergeant corrected him.
    Roger nodded at Davy, who was leaning against his father’s shoulder. “There was this kid following us around, listening to everything we said. I could see he wasn’t liking it one bit. He just about had a fit when Pop wrote down the description of his pony. But his daddy tried to tell him how it had to go ’cause they couldn’t keep no livestock in the apartment they were moving to.
    “And I winked at his daddy, and I asked, ‘How much are you askin’ for your kids?’ And he winked back and said, ‘How much do you think they’ll bring?’ ”
    “David!” Eileen gasped in horror. “You said that?”
    David bit his lips and nodded. “So that’s what you meant in your note about selling you and the baby,” he said, handing Dodgy to Eileen and giving Davy an enormous hug.
    Roger went on. “Then the kid sort of tugged his daddy’s sleeve and said, ‘You can sell me if you have to, but not the new Dodge.’ That didn’t make much sense, but I could see the kid was hurtin’ bad, and he wasn’t in any mood for teasing.
    “Then pretty soon we got to the implement shed, and there was this new car standing there.”
    “A Dodge compact,” Trixie recalled.
    Roger traded scowls with Trixie. “When we got there, my pop asked, ‘You’re sure about the new Dodge?’ The kid’s daddy said, ‘I’ve got my back to the wall. I can’t afford to feed an extra cat, so everything goes.’ Well, that kid took off like a shot. Later, I saw him ride off on the pony with the baby. He wasn’t seen hide nor hair of till this—” At a loss for words, Roger glared at Trixie.
    “The word is girl,” Mart informed him.
    “—girl stuck her nose into my business!”
    “Just what made it your business?” the sergeant asked.
    “Why not?” Roger Higgins flared. “Sax was crowding me for the five thousand dollars I owed him. I told him about the kids disappearing, and he came up with the idea of collecting ransom from the kids’ daddy. That way, we’d both make a profit. We had no idea where the silly kids were, but Sax said we should write the first note anyway. Then