The Mystery of the Uninvited Ghost

his healthy young weight. Already half standing, Miss Ryks was thrown off-balance. Out went her hands, the one for balance, the other to rescue her dark glasses. Trixie snatched the big purse, moneybag and all, and handed it to Mart. “Run!” she ordered, and Mart ran.
    Cornered, Miss Ryks discarded her role as cripple and jumped up to plunge after Mart. Trixie and Jim acted as with one mind. Just as Miss Ryks leaped forward, both planted their feet on the long gray skirt.
    Rrrrr-rip!
    A man s rolled-up trousers were suddenly exposed above large white oxfords. Miss Ryks threw a punch at Jim, but he ducked. Brian closed in from the rear, and together the two boys struggled with the angry guest.
    Miss Ryks broke free and tried to run. Using the wheelchair as a surprise weapon, Trixie pushed it as fast as she could into the path of the escaping gang leader. Hampered by the trailing skirt and tripped up by the wheelchair, the former invalid was overcome when Sergeant Molinson helped the struggling boys.
    Trixie did the one thing that she had wanted to do from the minute she saw Miss Ryks’s two-headed act in room 214—she snatched the blue white wig from Miss Ryks’s head. As Trixie had suspected, that action revealed not the brassy hair of the nephew, Dick Ryks. It revealed the bald head of the man who had pushed the wheelchair down Glen Road and bought the rope at the sporting goods store!
    Finding himself totally unmasked, the comic from the country club took off the tight high collar, and Miss Ryks, room 214, Glen Road Inn, disappeared forever.
    The sergeant rubbed his forehead. “I don’t believe it, Detective Belden! This character had me fooled.”
    “I'll take that as a compliment to my acting ability,” the actor snarled.
    “You are good, you know,” Trixie said. “It’s just too bad you didn’t stay on the stage where you belong.” Bobby had seen the quick exit of the wheelchair parade and now appeared at the porte cochère. Soberly he stared at the captured man. “I knew he wasn’t a frog hunter,” Bobby said. “Frogs can't breathe in a moneybag.”
    “But guns can,” Trixie told Sergeant Molinson. “Mart doesn’t know it, but he’s also carrying around Mrs. Boyer’s diamonds.”
    “Which I am more than glad to relinquish,” Mart declared, handing the large purse to the sergeant.
    When Jim explained about the stolen wedding gifts, Sergeant Molinson called Regan.
    “Pretty smart,” the policeman told the actor, “keeping me busy while your gang worked.”
    “Miss Ryks” smirked.
    When Regan arrived, he said, “There’s a truck parked down by the clubhouse. Obviously the gang’s waiting for the boss. I’ll call Tom and have him head them off by turning a car across the road. Up here, we’ll use this taxi. Simple.”
    Taken by surprise, Dan’s old street gang was captured with little difficulty. The truck was driven back to the French doors of the alcove, and willing hands replaced the wedding gifts on the display tables. The missing guard was found bound and gagged in a closet.
    Few wedding guests knew of the action in the porte cochère, and by the time family groups began drifting back to their cars, Tom was on hand to help with smiling courtesy. A short while later, he drove Mr. and Mrs. Hans Vorwald, on their way to a new life in Amsterdam, away from Manor House and onto Glen Road.
    Good-bye! Good luck!” The Bob-Whites shouted and waved, unabashed by the tears dampening their cheeks.
    “Thank you! Bless you!” Hans and Juliana called back to them.
    Trixie turned at once to clutch Honey’s arm. “We have to find Hallie and Dan! The gang members aren’t going to tell where they hid them. They’ll want to bargain with that information for their own advantage! We can be sure of that!”
    “Are we sure Miss Ryks hid them?” Di asked.
    Trixie nodded. “Miss Ryks, the wheelchair, the robberies—there’s no way to talk about one without the others, so I’m sure! Oliver Tolliver needed a quick way to disappear from the country club after Dan found that note in the fireplace. When he caught a ride with the Teed driver, he must have meant only to hide the wheelchair and collect a reward, but then he saw the chance to rent the chair from Ella Kline and turn himself into a sick old woman—a clever disguise. To keep in touch with the gang, though, he had to be two people. He couldn’t move around freely in a wheelchair.”
    “And he pulled the scrawny kid through the