The Mystery of the Missing Heiress

a letter received at the courthouse from Mrs. Schimmel. This should put an end to all the phony claims for that strip of land. It will belong to Juliana. What did Jim have to say about a new cousin?”
    “Gol, he went wild!” Mart said. “He tried to telephone her this morning. We found the De Jong number in the telephone book. Nobody answered.”
    “I guess nobody has answered yet, or we’d have heard from Jim or Honey,” Trixie said. “I wonder what she’ll be like... Jim’s cousin!”

    The next morning, while Trixie was bustling around helping her mother get breakfast, the call came from Jim.
    When she had replaced the receiver, Trixie said to her mother, “Jim still hasn’t been able to get Juliana on the phone. He and Honey want to drive over there. They want Brian and Mart and me to go, too. He wants us all to wear our Bob-White jackets Honey made for us. May we go, Moms?”
    “Of course. I’m going to take things easy, after all that work with the catsup yesterday. Bobby and I are going to pick up the Lynch twins and drive to White Plains to get a new tire for his bike. I think it’s a good idea for all of you to go over to the De Jong house.”
    “Thanks, Moms. I know Jim just has to be doing something besides continually dialing that number.” Trixie gathered up the plates. “I’ll wash the dishes.”
    “Don’t bother about that. I know Jim is in a hurry to get started.”
    “It’s not far. We can make it in our Bob-White station wagon in no time at all,” Brian called. “It’s my turn to drive. Hurry, Trixl Have you got your Bob-White jacket?”
    Honey met them in the driveway. “Jim was up with the sun. He’s out polishing the station wagon for the umpteenth time. Diana and Dan can’t go. Jim said Brian is to drive.”
    “That’s right,” Trixie said. “Watch Mart crowding into the front seat! That’ll make three of them there. Mart, there’s all this room in the back. You can even have a seat to yourself.”
    “And have to listen to you and Honey giggle all the way to the Bronx? No, thanks.” Mart edged in next to Jim and shut the car door.
    “It’s all right with Honey and me,” Trixie assured him. “We have plenty to talk about.”
    “An emergency meeting of the Belden-Wheeler Detective Agency,” Mart hooted. “I suppose there’s something very mysterious about the fact that Juliana hasn’t answered the telephone. We’ll probably see her gagged and blindfolded, being dragged into a gangster’s car—”
    “Knock it off, Marti” Brian ordered. “You can go too far.”

    Some time later Mart answered Brians rebuff.
    “You can go too far, too,” he remarked, a little subdued, but still irrepressible. “You’ll go so far you’ll pass the De Jong house. I know it’s not far from Castle Hill Avenue, and we passed that.”
    The De Jong home was a comfortable-looking brick house set close beside others much like it. Brian maneuvered the car into the narrow driveway.
    “The house has a closed-up look,” Trixie said as they all piled out.
    “It sure for certain does,” Honey agreed.
    They crowded around Trixie as she worked the old-fashioned bell pull; they heard it jangle far inside the house, then waited.
    Nothing stirred.
    Trixie pulled again, hard.
    No answer.
    She turned to the waiting Bob-Whites and shrugged her shoulders. “Nobody’s home.”
    “That’s a brilliant deduction, if I ever heard one,” Mart said. “Where do we go from here?”

A Surprise for the Bob-Whites • 6

    IT WAS a pretty dejected group of Bob-Whites that went down the steps and toward the car.
    “Maybe they’ve all gone somewhere for a vacation,” Honey said. “There isn’t any mail in the mailbox, though.”
    “No, I’ve been taking the De Jongs’ mail in for them,” a friendly voice said. A pleasant-faced woman came across the yard from the house next door, followed by a little boy. “I’ll send it on to them as soon as I have an address. Is there anything I can do for you?”
    “It’s about Juliana, the girl who lives with them,” Honey said. “Do you know anything about her?”
    “Of course. Are you friends of hers?”
    Tin her cousin,” Jim said. Then, as the woman seemed puzzled, he continued, “I didn’t even know she existed till yesterday. I don’t think she knew it, either.”
    “How interesting,” the neighbor said. “I’m Mrs. Hendricks. The De Jong family left yesterday for a vacation in the Poconos.”
    “Did Juliana go, too?”