The Mystery of the Uninvited Ghost

wheelchair. She can’t do anything to Dan tonight.”
    “What are you talking about?” Brian demanded, hollow-eyed from lack of sleep, tonight’s alarm, and the long strain of the search for Dan Mangan.
    “Yesterday, Hallie, Honey, and I found the missing comic that the sergeant suspects of directing a gang of thieves,” Trixie announced, and she turned to Sergeant Molinson. “You’re right. He does—plus he’s Miss Ryks.”
    The sergeant looked skeptical.
    “Listen to me, please!” Trixie begged.
    When the story had been told, from the wheelchair on Glen Road to the gang in the shed, Molinson rubbed his forehead. “All I can say is that I’ll keep a man on duty outside the door of room two-fourteen—”
    “—outside the windows, too!” Trixie interrupted. “That’s how she kept in touch with the gang, when she wasn’t playing the role of Dick Ryks and scaring little boys out of their wits out here in our woods!”
    “The windows, too,” the sergeant conceded. “Since I’ll be a guest at the wedding tomorrow, I’ll be on hand in case something goes wrong. Mr. Wheeler’s asked for a guard for the gift display. I suppose I can spare two men. They won’t be needed at room two-fourteen anyway, if Miss Ryks is at the wedding. Well, I have a long night ahead of me. I’ll see you all at the wedding tomorrow.”
    When the kitchen door closed, Trixie said resentfully, “He doesn’t believe me.”
    Mr. Belden tried to reason with her. “You have to admit that the idea of an invalid in a wheelchair tramping through the woods organizing robberies is pretty farfetched.”
    “Dad!” Trixie wailed. “We saw her with our own eyes! She changed from a woman to a man just by changing wigs and taking off that long dress!”
    “And now you’ve been threatened,” Mrs. Belden said slowly. “Oh, Peter! Maybe we shouldn’t go to the wedding tomorrow.”
    “Were all in the ceremony,” Brian quietly said to his mother. “We have to go.”
    “Do be careful, all of you,” Mrs. Belden begged.
    A night of restless sleep stretched ahead of Trixie. She asked Hallie to sleep in the extra bed in her room.
    Hallie’s berry-black eyes glistened. “Trixie, you’ve never asked me that before.”
    “So now I’m asking,” Trixie said.
    Several times during the night, Trixie awoke from a nightmare about a room filled with watching eyes. Once she called out, “Bobby!”
    She was comforted by Hallie’s answer: “Bobby’s safe. Go back to sleep.” When morning came, Hallie was still there.
    Trixie apologized. “Did I keep you awake?”
    “I love Bobby, too,” Hallie reminded her. “He’s my cousin. That matters.”
    “Yes.” Trixie thought of all the quarrels she d had with Hallie. They weren’t important any longer. Both of them were growing up. Each was becoming her own person—one blond and pert, the other darkly beautiful; one with a firecracker temper, the other matter-of-fact. But both loved people, and both were loyal to family and friends. Trixie couldn’t find the words to tell Hallie what she was thinking. She could only smile at her cousin and watch those incredibly dark eyes begin to glow.
    Almost shyly, Hallie asked, “Do you ever wonder who you axe?”
    “Yes. You, too?” Trixie asked softly.
    “Do you sometimes feel like you’re standing all alone on a mountaintop with a cold wind blowing? You shout into the wind, but your words get pushed back down your throat. You know you’ll keep swallowing your own words till you can answer the question, ‘Who am I?’ But there’s no one to tell you the answer.”
    Hallie sounded so lost and lonely that Trixie’s eyes misted. I don’t know much about mountaintops,” she said. “I have the feeling that Í m in a glass box. All of the people in the world march past me, but I can’t join them because of the glass. I know that when I can tell just one person who I am, the glass will melt and I can join the parade. It’s hard being a teen-ager, isn’t it?”
    Ill bet you want to be a detective because you want to keep the parade marching safely,” Hallie guessed.
    “Do you think so? Brian and Mart say it’s because I’m so nosy.”
    “My mom would call you a truth seeker,” Hallie said. “My mom has the smarts, so I go along with her most of the time. At home, Cap and Knut treat me like one of the fellows. I was getting so mixed-up, Mom said I needed some close contact with another girl. I thought of you, Trixie, so that’s