The Mystery of the Uninvited Ghost

ordering tea,” Trixie said. “Excuse me. I’ll be right back.”
    Within minutes, Trixie was back to ask, “What now?”
    Honey told her, “Miss Ryks pretended to be too weak to answer the door without help, so Mrs. Vanderpoel pushed her chair. The maid was at the door with a note. Miss Ryks reached for it, but she gave it to Mrs. Vanderpoel. Now Mrs. Vanderpoel keeps looking this way. What did you do, anyway?”
    “I sent Mrs. Vanderpoel a message that we’re out here,” Trixie replied. “I asked her to feel faint so that Miss Ryks would have to call for Dick’s help.”
    Miss Ryks’s back was to the windows. Mrs. Vanderpoel fanned her face and changed chairs. “She must be telling Miss Ryks that she needs air,” Hallie said.
    Trixie agreed, then muttered, “I hope Miss Ryks can’t see us in that mirror.”
    Mrs. Vanderpoel stared straight out the windows and swooned out of her chair. For a while, the figure in the wheelchair didn’t move. Then, she stood up, strode to the bathroom, and came back with a glass of water. She didn’t offer it to Mrs. Vanderpoel but instead sloshed the water in her face! Next, she slumped into the wheelchair as if she herself needed help.
    Mrs. Vanderpoel slowly staggered to her feet. In a few minutes, the maid brought a tray and set it on the chest of drawers. However, Mrs. Vanderpoel didn’t stay to tea.
    The girls raced to the front door, where they found their plump friend sopping the front of her dress with a handkerchief. “My land, what was that all about?” she asked them.
    “We’ll tell you later,” Trixie answered. “Quick, did she leave the bathroom door open?”
    “Well, yes, she did.”
    “Was her nephew hiding in the bathroom?”
    “No. There was only Miss Ryks, and, my dears, do you know that surprising woman can walk when she cares to make the attempt?” Tut-tutting, she headed for the parking lot and Mr. Lytell’s car.
    The girls returned to the rear of the building for the bicycles Hallie and Honey had left there. Suddenly Trixie warned, “Ssh! Get down! Look who’s here now!”
    It was the scrawny teen-ager! He was being pulled through the window of room 214 by Miss Ryks.
    “I’ll bet that’s who came in on the stretcher,” Trixie said shrewdly. “Ella said little and scrawny, and he sure is. Agreed?”
    Two heads nodded. Hallie added, “And now we know who was seen sneaking out of Miss Ryks’s window. I knew it wasn’t Dan.”
    Trixie picked up on Hallie’s thought and said, “Maybe Dan found out what they were up to, and they blamed it on him to get him in trouble with the police and keep him out of their hair.”
    “J-Just blamed him, that’s all?” Honey quavered. “What do you suppose they’re up to, anyway? I’m sure it has to be connected with the robberies, now that I see that gang member here.”
    “Will you look at that!” Hallie burst out. “Now Miss Ryks is walking around with her nephew’s head on!”
    “It’s—it’s a wig!” Trixie gasped. “That person in room two-fourteen is a man! He does it with wigs— a white one when he’s Miss Ryks, and that moth-eaten thing when he’s Dick.”
    As the girls watched through the window, the person in room 214 dropped Miss Ryks’s dress to the floor and strode about in hiphugger jeans. “I’ll bet he’s barefoot, too,” Trixie said, shuddering. “Let’s get out of here. I’m scared.”
    “Me, too,” whispered both Honey and Hallie.
    On their bikes again, they rode beyond the parking lot, then rested in the shade. For a long moment, not a word was said. Wide-eyed with excitement, Trixie said, “Dick is Bobby’s frog hunter, I’m pretty sure. Nobody else we know goes around barefoot and gearing dark glasses. But Dick is also his own aunt and has contact with Dan’s old gang. I saw that scrawny kid give the okay sign to the gang at Wimpy’s, and we just saw him yanked through that window. You’re right, Honey. They are a gang of thieves.”
    “All the robberies have to be tied together because the Lynch furniture was at the yard sale with the bikes,” Hallie chimed in. “The ‘Early Kids ’ note involved the country club where that comic was working the night the Lynch mansion was robbed.”
    “That clinches it!” Trixie exclaimed. “Oliver Tolliver, the comic, quit right after that news story. That same day, he showed up at the inn as Miss Ryks. When he, or she, moved in, the skinny kid was on the stretcher playing Miss Ryks, and