The Mystery of the Ghostly Galeon

The Vanishing Pirate • 1

    TRIXIE BELDEN GASPED as she collapsed into a chair. “Jeepers, Honey!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “Your news had better be important. You sounded so mysterious on the phone that I dropped everything and ran all the way. I didn’t even stop to dry the dinner dishes.” She ran an impatient hand through her unruly blond curls.
    Her best friend, Honey Wheeler, couldn’t help smiling. “I meant for you to hurry over,” she said, “but I didn’t mean for you to break the Olympic track record, Trix.”
    Trixie’s merry blue eyes twinkled. “I did get here in double-quick time at that, didn’t I? You should have seen me, Honey. My feet were flying so fast that dust now covers the entire town of Sleepyside-on-the-Hudson.”
    In spite of her secret worry, Honey laughed as she sat on the edge of her neat bed.
    She was taller and slimmer than Trixie, though both girls were fourteen years old. Honey had long golden hair and wide hazel eyes.
    She once had been very lonely, but then one day, her wealthy father had bought the luxurious Manor House in the Hudson Valley, with its stables and lake and acres of rolling green lawns. Almost at once, Honey had met Trixie, who lived with her parents and her three brothers at Crab-apple Farm, an attractive white frame house nestled in the hollow below.
    Today, thanks to Trixie, Honey had many friends. Besides Trixie’s two older brothers, seventeen-year-old Brian and fifteen-year-old Mart, there were wealthy Di Lynch, who was in the same grade as Trixie and Honey, and Dan Mangan. Dan was the nephew of Bill Regan, who looked after the stables and helped run the Wheeler’s huge estate.
    Honey’s parents had also adopted seventeen-year-old Jim Frayne, whom Trixie and Honey had befriended when he ran away from his cruel stepfather.
    The seven friends had formed a club known as the Bob-Whites of the Glen, or B.W.G.’s, for short. They tried always to help each other, as well as other people.
    Trixie and Honey had solved many exciting mysteries and hoped someday to go into business together as detectives. They were planning to form the Belden-Wheeler Detective Agency.
    Now Trixie announced, “If you don’t tell me why you asked me to get here in such a hurry, Honey, I’ll simply die of curiosity!”
    “The thing is,” Honey began, “I’ve got some bad news. Our trip to the Finger Lakes this weekend is off.”
    Trixie stared. “Off? You mean—we’re not going there with your parents after all?”
    Miserably, Honey nodded. “I’m afraid that’s exactly what I do mean,” she said. “My dad’s been called out of town on business, and Mom’s gone with him. Besides me and Jim, you’re the first to know. Oh, Trixie, I’m so sorry! I know you’re disappointed. The others will be, too. The Bob-Whites have talked of nothing else all week at school.”
    Trixie swallowed hard as she gazed around her friend’s dainty bedroom with its white ruffled organdy curtains.
    “Don’t worry about it, Honey,” Trixie said at last. “The Bob-Whites will understand. Anyway, there’ll be other weekends....” Her voice trailed off into silence as she thought of the plans they’d made.
    Every afternoon after school that week, Trixie and the other club members had met in their neat little clubhouse, with its wisteria winding around the door. There they had pored over maps and had looked forward to a weekend of long walks, lazy talks, and tall stories told around a crackling fire.
    It was October, a perfect time for flying to the Finger Lakes in northern New York State. The Wheelers owned a cottage on beautiful Owasco Lake, not far from the city of Auburn—but now the Bob-Whites wouldn’t get to see it.
    Honey rose to her feet and walked to the window. She stared out through the dusk at the tall trees, and at the leaves that were turning bright red and gold.
    “There is something else we could do this weekend,” she said slowly over her shoulder. “Daddy suggested that we could go to the Catskills instead. We’d have to go tomorrow instead of Saturday, though, and leave right after school.”
    “Why, Honey Wheeler!” Trixie exclaimed, bounding out of her chair. “But that’s perfect! Tomorrow’s Friday, and that would work out just fine.”
    “I know,” Honey said. “That’s what I thought at first. But now I’m not sure we should go.” Trixie looked perplexed. “Not go? Oh, Honey, why not?”
    “Because the person who’s going