The Mystery of the Missing Heiress

gave you to help you sleep. Here, sip this water.”
    Trixie waited while she swallowed the sedative. In the faint moonlight that came from the window, her poor scratched face looked so forlorn. A shadow moved across it. A shadow from where? Outside? Perhaps from the curtain stirring in the breeze? Suddenly uneasy, Trixie went to the window and looked out. Seeing nothing but the garden, peaceful under the moon, she returned to Janie.
    “There, now, go to sleep.” Trixie tucked the sheet around Janie’s shoulders. “Who knows? Tomorrow may bring an answer to all our questions.”
    Softly she tiptoed to the door. There was no sound, no sound anywhere now, except Janie’s even breathing as the pill took over.

Something Curious About the Dog • 17

    POOR JANIE,” Trixie thought as she crept back into bed. “Nobody seems to be doing one thing to help her, and she is in dreadful danger! Spider seemed to be sure of this. He couldn’t do anything to help, either. It’s the most mixed-up puzzle. I wish Janie’s problems could be solved the way Juliana’s seem to have been.”
    From the next bed Honey’s breathing rose and fell in quiet sleep.
    Outside, the moon had disappeared. Intermittent yellow heat lightning flickered. There was silence... silence everywhere.
    Finally Trixie, too, slept.
    Bong!
    Trixie, startled, sat bolt upright in her bed.
    Bong! Bong! Bong! Three times more. Somberly the grandfather’s dock in the downstairs hall had announced the horn: of four.
    Somewhere outside, a branch broke. Lightning sent its pale, trembling light across the room. Thunder followed, distant, low, long, rumbling.
    Silence.
    Across the yard, out of the silence, something stirred and crackled in the shrubbery.
    Trixie listened.
    There it was again... that noise. A strange dog? No. Reddy would have routed another dog with his barking.
    Almost as eerie as the rustling sound itself was the light that came and went through the open window. That shadow she saw in Janie’s room— the shadow that crossed in the moonlight—was it really a shadow?
    Dread quickened Trixie’s heartbeat. Janie!
    Pushing her toes into her slippers, she tiptoed down the hall. “Shall I waken the boys?” she wondered. Noiselessly she opened their door a crack. They were so sound asleep. “If I call them,” she thought, “Bobby will wake up, then Moms and Dad. There’ll be bedlam, because Bobby will howl. He always does when he’s awakened suddenly from a sound sleep.
    “I’ll get my robe and slip downstairs by myself. No, I’ll wake Honey. If I don’t let her go with me, she’ll never forgive me. She won t make a sound if I shake her just a little.”
    “What is it?” Honey whispered through Trixie’s hand held over her mouth. “What time is it? What do you want, Trixie? What’s wrong?”
    “That’s what I want you to help me find out. Get your slippers and robe. I think something queer is going on outside. Shhh! We mustn’t wake everyone!”
    “What did you see? What did you hear?” Honey asked sleepily.
    Trixie told her. “It’s not much, I know. I don’t think that I imagined that shadow when I was with Janie.”
    “And you think we should go... outside... alone? It’s dark. There isn’t even any moonlight now. Ohhhhh... listen to the thunder! Trixie, I’m not going out there, and neither are you. There s no reason to be scared of anything. Reddy would have been barking like fury if anyone were prowling around. I guess you didn’t think of that, huh?”
    “I did,” Trixie whispered. “I thought the same as you, that Reddy would be watching. Then I remembered some lines I read in a mystery book. One of the detectives said, speaking of a scary time like this, 'There was a curious thing about the dog that night.’
    “The other detective said, ‘The dog did nothing that night.'
    “Then the first detective said, ‘That was the curious thing.'
    “Honey, I’ve always remembered those words. Tonight it's curious about Reddy. Where is he? We have to find out what is going on.”
    “Why can’t we call the boys and your father?”
    “And wake everyone? Give the prowlers a chance to get away? Honey, it’s our one chance... maybe... to help Janie, to find out—”
    “But I’m scared to death!”
    “Honey Wheeler, what possible danger could we be in? We’re right in my very own house in my very own yard with my very own dad and brothers right near. Jeepers, are you going with me or not?” You know I am. I