The Mystery of the Galloping Ghost

I’d brought and clear out fast,” he
said.
    “But
the cobwebs, the dust on the floor, the grime on the table—” Trixie began.
    “They
were probably all there the first time,” Honey said. “Only we didn’t notice
them.”
    “That’s
not all we missed,” Trixie said gloomily. “If we’d noticed Gus’s footprints in
the dust, we wouldn’t have fallen for the trick at all. I could have saved you
a lot of worry if I’d been more observant.”
    Honey
smiled appreciatively at her friend. “I could have saved some myself, too.”
    Trixie
felt an odd combination of anger at Gus’s tricks and relief that they’d been
figured out. “Now, Gus,” she demanded, “tell us where you hid Al- Adeen .”



10 * Confession—and Denial
     
    Gus’s jaw dropped open, then it set in a look
of stubborn anger. “I didn’t take the horse,” he said.
    “You
just admitted you were the ghost,” Trixie said.
    “Sure.
I did those things to drive Burke away. And I almost singed my whiskers, too,
because my pranks made Burke want the place even more. But then young Billy
decided not to sell. That’s what I wanted. Why would I steal the horse after
all that?” Gus made a hissing sound. “You girls are tough, but maybe you ain’t
all that smart.”
    “He’s
right,” Honey said, seeing Gus’s point about the horse.
    “Then
who took Al- Adeen ?” Trixie demanded.
    “What
do you mean?” Gus exclaimed. “Al- Adeen is a
hot-blooded young stallion. He decided to go see the world. That happens
sometimes.”
    “I
suppose so,” Trixie said reluctantly.
    “Besides,”
Gus added, still angry enough to want to press his point, “would a human thief
have kicked in that stall door? It was torn clean off the hinges. Look at it.”
He gestured toward the empty stall.
    Curious,
Trixie went over to Al- Adeen’s stall. The door was
leaning uselessly against the wall, testimony that it no longer had anything to
guard. The hinges dangled from the door, screws still in place, splinters of
wood still surrounding the screws.
    Trixie
gave a long, low whistle, impressed by the power that could cause such damage.
She inspected the doorjamb, fingering the deep holes where the hinges had torn
free. She crossed to the other side of the stall door to inspect the damage
there. “Hey, wait a minute!” she shouted. “Look at this!”
    Honey
came over and bent down to look. “Seems fine to me,” she said, then
straightened up and looked eagerly at Trixie. “Just fine.”
    “Exactly.” Trixie turned to Gus. “Explain how a horse could kick
a door off the hinges and not do any damage to the bolt.” She took another look
at the door. “No, wait,” she said sarcastically, “there’s no need to explain.
He shot the bolt back before he kicked the door in, that’s how.”
    Gus
silently inspected the doorjamb and the door. Then he said to Trixie, “It looks
like you’re pretty smart, after all. I’m the dumb one. I should have noticed
that the first thing.” Honey immediately softened. “You were upset. We all
were,” she told him. She turned to Trixie. “The one who wasn’t very smart was
the thief. Didn’t he know how suspicious this would look?”
    “Maybe
not,” Trixie replied. “Or maybe he knew, and this was the best he could do.
Remember, Pat and Regan were right upstairs. The thief could risk a couple of
blows from a sledge, but not much more.”
    “Okay,”
Honey said, “now we know it was a
thief. But who?”
    “Not
me,” Gus said.
    “No,”
Trixie said promptly. “Not you. I was off by a mile on that one. Your interest
is in having the Murrows stick around, and this theft
is likely to make them sell. Then who—” Trixie broke off as the answer became
obvious. She looked at Honey and saw that her friend had figured it out, too.
    It
was Gus who said the name aloud: “Burke.”
    “Of course!” Trixie said. “He takes the horse and hides him until
Bill gives up and agrees to sell. Then he either arranges for the horse to
wander home, or he sells him in some other part of the country where he can’t
be traced.”
    “There’s
no such place,” Gus said. “Al- Adeen has his
identification tattooed on his lip. Anyone who bought him could trace him.”
    Trixie
waved the objection away. “Well, then, he wouldn’t have to sell him. He could
just—” Her eyes grew wide as the sentence completed itself in her mind.
    “He
could put a bullet between the horse’s eyes,” Gus said.
    “We
can’t