The Mystery of the Uninvited Ghost

the alleyway. He knew where he was going. Behind the stable, the only possible route was the path to the woods, and Trixie took it. Once on that, the ride was all downhill. The path was well cleared, but it took all of Trixie’s skill to negotiate the curves at the speed she was traveling. Several times, she almost fell. Once she was stabbed by conscience, remembering the promise she had made to her brothers not to go off alone. There was no time to worry about that now.
    The path led across Crabapple Farm. Reddy barked when she passed behind the shed. Bobby’s voice came out of a tree: “Everybody’s in a hurry!” Well, that meant that he’d seen the scrawny kid. Trixie didn’t slow down. She pedaled even more furiously.
    The path paralleled Glen Road and led in a roundabout curve to the inn. She knew she’d gain time by taking to the road, but the scrawny teen-ager might swerve onto a bypath at any point. As fast as she’d ridden, Trixie knew that he hadn’t had time to stop and hide the bike. Still, she couldn’t see him anywhere.
    Feeling let down, Trixie circled the parking lot at the inn, then rode down the sidewalk near the kitchen. There! In the same lilac hedge where it had been hidden before was Jim’s ten-speed. That meant the thief was around someplace.
    Trixie had a sudden idea—Bobby’s frog hunter had sounded like that messy-looking Dick Ryksl He, too, had been seen in the woods. Maybe, just maybe, that teen-ager was making contact with Dick. That meant Miss Ryks’s room. And if not there, perhaps a room up on the third floor where Dick was said to visit.
    Trixie left Honey’s bicycle in the inn’s rack. When she walked toward the building entrance, she saw Mr. Lytell’s car pull into the parking lot, with Mrs. Vanderpoel waving from the front seat. Trixie grinned, remembering Miss Ryks’s lack of enthusiasm about company calling. Well, that lady was about to have more company than she bargained for.
    As usual, it was the nephew who answered Trixie’s tap at room 214. Before she could say a word, he slammed the door in her face. Angrily Trixie raised her hand to pound on the door, then stopped. Miss Ryks’s room was on the ground floor. It might be possible to look into that room from outside and see if the bicycle thief was in there.
    Trixie hurried out the service entrance and passed the garbage cans. Two more of the Wheeler bicycles leaned against the brick wall. Honey and Hallie could be here! Now, where were they hiding?
    Trixie found her cousin and her best friend behind the lilac hedge near Miss Ryks’s windows. “Why did you come here?” she demanded.
    “Haven’t I always spied on you?” Hallie teased. Honey said, “We knew that path led to the inn, so we came down the road. We could make better time.” Hallie crouched and spread the lilac branches apart for a peephole. “What’s going on in there? First the room was empty. After a while, a man came in and flopped in a chair and put his feet up. Then he opened the door.”
    “Isn’t Miss Ryks in there?”
    “Not unless that Dick locked her in the bathroom. The wheelchair’s empty, and so’s the bed.”
    Through sheer curtains at the closed windows, Trixie could see the dim outlines of a chair and a bed. She could also make out Dick Ryks, but not the scrawny teen-ager.
    “Look,” Hallie said. “He’s getting a phone call.”
    “Mrs. Vanderpoel must be calling from the desk!” Trixie said. “I saw her in the parking lot.”
    After a long silence, Hallie gasped, “Trixie! Dick went into the bathroom, but Miss Ryks came out!”
    “She couldn’t have. You must have seen her come from the hall.”
    “No! The hall door didn’t open. Look, there she is, and she’s walking!”
    Miss Ryks strode about the room with great vigor, followed by clouds of smoke. “She’s smoking a cigar!” Honey said with distaste.
    At that moment, Miss Ryks stooped slightly to look into a mirror, patted her blue white hair, and put a choker around her throat. “No wonder she can’t talk,” Hallie said. “She chokes herself.”
    Next, Miss Ryks put on her dark glasses, threw a big scarf over her shoulders, strode briskly to her wheelchair, and hunched herself into place. “That old fraud!” Trixie stormed. “She’s no cripple, and Ella Kline needs that chair.”
    When the door opened, the visitor was indeed Mrs. Vanderpoel. After a little head-nodding conversation, Miss Ryks reached for the telephone. “She must be