The Mystery of the Midnight Marauder

his brother. “Which was?”
    “The only way to find out if a girl wants to go out with you,” Mart answered promptly, “is to ask her.”
    Brian nodded approvingly. “That sounds fine to me.”
    Mart sighed. “It sounded fine to Mr. Zimmerman, too. He approved the copy—even the dumb name I thought up, which, as you now know, was ‘Miss Lonelyheart.’ And that was my big mistake.”
    “Why didn’t you sign your own name, Mart?” Trixie asked.
    “I didn’t think anyone would want to read the stuff if they knew who was writing it,” Mart said, leaning his elbows on the table. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. But then, you see, the stupid column really caught on as soon as it appeared in the paper.”
    Dan grunted. “So then what happened?”
    “What happened was,” Mart answered slowly, “the school’s newspaper office was shortly flooded with heartrending missives. And it soon became clear that lots of kids wanted advice about their love life.” He looked down at his hands. “At first, I could handle it. I printed their questions as well as my answers.”
    “I remember,” Honey said, “and a lot of your answers were funny.”
    Mart nodded. “I know. I thought the whole thing was funny. That was then. But soon I began getting other kinds of letters. Some of the kids had real problems;”
    “What kind of problems, Mart?” Brian said. Mart sighed again. “Some kids felt that no one liked them. They were unpopular at school—and often at home, too.”
    Trixie thought of her own happy home life. Instantly, she felt sympathetic toward those schoolmates who didn’t know the warm feeling of being loved and wanted. “Oh, Mart, how awful!” she exclaimed, her voice trembling.
    “But that wasn’t all,” Mart said, looking at her. “Some of these kids, Trix, have got a real raw deal out of life. One girl wrote about her father. She said he drank—a lot. I guess he was an alcoholic. She wanted to know what she should do. Another said her mother had left home a couple of months ago. She just picked up and walked out on the whole family. The father didn’t know where she’d gone or why she’d left or anything. So now he’s trying to raise six kids all by himself. The girl who wrote the letter wanted to know what ‘Miss Lonelyheart’ would advise her to do about it. How could she get her mother back?”
    Di gasped. “But that’s terrible, Mart! What did you tell her—and that one with the alcoholic father, too?”
    “I couldn’t handle it.” Mart’s voice was low. “How could I tell people what to do with problems like those? I told them to see their counselors. That’s what I told most of them—when they’d signed their letters, that is. But a lot of them wrote in anonymously—and those letters I answered as best I could when I printed them.” He raised his head and looked at his friends. “It’s been just awful these last few weeks. I haven’t had any idea what to do.”
    Brian shifted sharply in his chair. “And so we come to the Midnight Marauder business,” he said. “What do you know about that?”
    “It all began,” Mart said miserably, “when I started to get a series of letters. Every time, they were shoved under the door of Mr. Zimmerman’s office and addressed to ‘Miss Lonelyheart.’ Some of ’em were so bad, I never showed them to old Zimmerman at all. Whoever had written the letters hated school, hated the teachers, and ranted on about how one day he was going to do something desperate.”
    “How did you handle it, Mart?” Brian asked, staring at his brother.
    Mart shrugged his shoulders. “I handled it as best I could. The letters weren’t signed, so I didn’t know who it was. At first, I kidded the writer along and made out that things weren’t as bad as he—or she—thought they were. I used to leave the answers taped to the outside of old Zimmerman’s office door. I had to ask his permission to do that, of course.”
    “But what happened then?” Trixie persisted. “You must have some reason for thinking this same person is the Midnight Marauder. Did you keep all his letters?”
    “I didn’t dare,” Mart confessed. “Some of ’em were really bad, so I threw them away. I only kept the last one.” He reached slowly into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a much-crumpled and obviously well-thumbed letter. “I got this last Thursday,” he said. “Here”—he pushed it across the table to Trixie—“you read it