The Mystery of the Missing Heiress

treat!” Jim said. Then he called out, “Mike, hamburgers, french fries, and malts for all of us. Say, Spider, how have you been? Where’s Tad?”
    “My brother is working at a summer camp upstate in the woods. Say, I never have stopped being grateful to you Bob-Whites for the way you helped me straighten Tad out.”
    “Don’t say a word about it,” Brian said. “Mrs. Vanderpoel misses both of you a lot.”
    “And do we ever miss her cooking! Boy! I hear she has some dame staying with her now—the one who inherited that strip of marsh where they’re going to build the factory.” He whistled. “Nice little sum of money she’ll get for that... one hundred and fifty thousand dollars!”
    “How come you know all about that, when you re never in Sleepyside anymore?” Jim asked. She's my cousin, you know.”
    “I know that, too. I was in Molinson’s office on business this morning, and she had just been in the recorder’s office inquiring about something. You know Molinson; he doesn’t like dames too well, huh, Trixie?”
    “Now he does. Now he doesn’t,” Mart said. “This morning he almost pinned a medal on Trix.”
    “I heard about that rescue, too. Say, Trixie, that was some stunt you pulled up there on the bluff. That girl who lost her memory is staying at your house, isn’t she? Makes a guy believe in miracles to look up at that bluff and think she wasn’t—”
    “Murdered!” Trixie said grimly. “That’s what it was, Spider—an attempt at murder. The second one, too. How did you know about Janie—we call her Janie—”
    “I saw the poster in the Missing Persons Bureau in White Plains. I didn’t connect it with you Bob-Whites till I stopped at the station today. When I talked to the sergeant, I found out this Janie is staying at Crabapple Farm. There’s no news of who she really is, is there? Has the sergeant any clue to how she came to be on Glen Road? Hit-and-run, was it? What a shame!”
    “It’s tragic, Spider,” Honey said. “She’s the loveliest girl.”
    “It's awfully sad.” Trixie’s face grew solemn as she thought about Janie’s predicament. “I wish we could help find out who she is.”
    “Sometimes they just disappear, girls and boys, grown men and women, too,” Spider said, “and no one ever hears a word about them.”
    “Does it happen the other way, too?” Trixie asked. “When nobody ever makes an inquiry about a missing person?”
    “Often,” Spider said, “but it’s mostly some no-good bum nobody wants to find, someone like that stepfather of yours, Jim. Nobody cried up a storm when he disappeared, did they? I guess he knows better than to show his face around these parts again.”
    “No fear,” Mart said. “When he realized he wasn’t going to get anything out of Mr. Frayne’s estate, that it all went to Jim, he beat it.”
    Spider laughed. “It’s a good thing he did, or he’d have landed in the clink, with a good push from me. What are you kids up to? I’ll give one guess. Trixie and Honey are on the trail of that hit-and-run criminal and are now trying to figure out what happened yesterday. Right, Trixie?”
    “We are concentrating on trying to find Janie’s identity,” Trixie said. “We didn’t think we could do much about what caused her accident on Glen Road. Then a lot of other things began to happen, Spider. Yesterday was the worst. We’re certain that someone is trying to harm Janie.”
    “Do you have any idea why?”
    “No, we don’t. We’re completely baffled. Someone is definitely out to get Janie. I don’t think Sergeant Molinson agrees with us yet about this. He’s trying to discover who moved those warning signs yesterday. He thinks the workmen who have been busy there may have done it, that maybe it has nothing to do with Janie. I don’t. I have a hunch.”
    “I’d bank on your hunches, Trixie. I’ve had experience with them before.”
    “Tell it to the sergeant,” Mart suggested.
    “He’s had experience with them, too. You say he’s trying to find out if someone moved the warning signs, and if they did, why. Do you mean the signs along that trail in the woods?”
    “Yes. They were in place a little over a week ago when we were riding through the woods, exercising the horses. That’s when we found out about the factory that’s to be built. We climbed down that path to the marsh.... Oh, Spider, I do wish you were on the police force in Sleepyside now. You wouldn’t keep saying, ‘It all takes