The Mystery of the Headless Horseman

“Oh, Rose! You’ve found it! I’m so glad.”
    Then someone else added smoothly, “I had better take charge of that. How clever of Miss Trixie to have discovered it.”
    “Harrison!” Di exclaimed, swinging around to face him. “I should have known you’d be here!” Then she gasped.
    Harrison was in his shirt sleeves. The pink scar on his forehead gave his face a slightly sinister look. In his hand, he carried a knife!
    “Oh, no, you don’t!” Mart was ready to spring.
    “Mart!Stop!” Trixie cried. “Harrison isn’t the
    villain! And the knife he’s holding is for peeling potatoes, I think.”
    Harrison looked shocked. “I? A villain?”
    “But if it isn’t Harrison,” Di cried, “then who?”
    There was a soft click at the front door as someone opened it. A tall figure stood in the doorway. He wore a dark suit and a derby hat and carried a small gun in one hand. He looked surprised to find the room full of people.
    “I knew it had to be you!” Trixie cried. “You came here now to search one last time. You were going to leave Harrison’s hat behind to throw suspicion on him. You stole it, and the door key, too, for just such an occasion as this one. You’ve even kept watch on this house from the deserted barn.”
    The man didn’t answer.
    “You must have been scared today when Di found out that the statue at the museum was a fake,” Trixie continued. “Now you have to get out of town at once. What else have you stolen?”
    “Is this the practical joker?” Mrs. Ward said. “It’s no joke,” Trixie answered. “Last week he got Mrs. Crandall out of town, and he came here to search for the vase. But then Harrison arrived on the scene.”
    “So he got Harrison into that cellar by a trick?” Honey asked. “But why didn’t he search the place when he had the chance?”
    “He started to,” Trixie said. “I should have remembered sooner. We were waiting for the ambulance, Honey, and you began to wander around this room. You closed drawers. You straightened books. All those things out of order were the signs of a search, you see.”
    Henry the Eighth wandered into the room. Trixie glanced down at the cat. “It was Henry who spoiled your plans the other night,” she told the tall man. “You had searched in here and were about to begin upstairs. Suddenly, you heard a noise up there. You thought Harrison had brought his friends with him from the museum, and you panicked and ran.”
    “But what was the noise?” Mart asked.
    “Henry knocked over a bottle of cologne,” Trixie said.
    The man came close and sneered at her. “How clever of you to have figured out where Crandall hid the vase. I had just realized, myself, that it was in the apple tree.” He aimed the gun at Trixie and stretched out his other hand. “Don’t move! The vase is mine now! Hand it over!”
    Trixie looked beyond him to the open front door. Reddy sat there, waiting patiently.
    Trixie had a sudden idea. “Oh, Henry, forgive me!” she whispered. Then in a loud voice she called, “Reddy! Don't chase the cat!”
    In one second, Reddy was in the room. In another second, he had dashed between a pair of legs clothed in dark trousers.
    Their wearer didn’t have a chance. His legs shot out from under him just as his fingers were closing around the precious box.
    “Get him, boys!” Brian yelled, diving for the gun.
    Jim, Mart, and Dan joyfully obeyed. There were sounds of a loud scuffle on the floor. Then there was silence.
    From the top of a bookcase, Henry yawned and began to wash himself. Reddy, who had not come anywhere close to catching him, looked bitterly disappointed.
    Mart helped drag the tall man to his feet. “So this was the villain all along,” he said.
    The man in the derby hat was the curator of the art museum, Alfred Dunham.

    The next day, with Dunham safely behind bars, the Bob-Whites and Harrison gathered once more at Rose Crandall’s cottage.
    “But how did you figure it all out?” Di asked Trixie.
    “I almost didn’t,” Trixie confessed. “I, too, thought that Harrison was guilty. His actions, you see, were so suspicious.”
    “Great heavens!” Mrs. Crandall said. “If only I had known what you were all thinking, I could have told you that wasn’t so.”
    She smiled at Harrison. He had insisted on serving them all ice-cold lemonade and sugar cookies hot from the oven.
    “Why did you lie to us?” Di asked him.
    “I’ll tell you why,” Trixie said. “He’s been trying all