The Mystery of the Vanishing Victim

wasn’t trying to sneak up on you, you understand,” the hitchhiker began.
    “Oh, no, I’m sure you weren’t,” Trixie said quickly, happy to be able to agree with this man who, she was sure, was totally disagreeable.
    “It’s just that all of our attention was on the front of the car,” Honey added tactfully. “You could have galloped up behind us on horseback and we probably wouldn’t have noticed you.”
    The man nodded and turned his own attention to the front of the car. “Are you having troubles with this old machine?” he asked.
    The screams had drawn the boys from under the hood of the Model A. Brian answered the stranger’s question with a nod. “We just picked up this car from a friend. It’s sort of on loan for a few days. He mentioned that it was a bit temperamental sometimes, and we’ve found out he was telling us the truth. We hadn’t gone more than a couple of miles when it conked out.”
    “It seemed as though the car was just about to start when... when you....” Trixie didn’t know how to complete the sentence without sounding as if she was accusing the stranger.
    “I’m not sure about that,” Brian said. “I mean, I got the engine to sputter a little bit, but I’m not sure it was really about to catch. We’ve worn down the battery so much that I’m afraid to just keep fiddling with the carburetor until something works.”
    The hitchhiker’s bushy eyebrows shot up. “The carburetor, you say?” he asked excitedly. “Let’s take a look.” He walked around to the front of the car and stuck his head under the hood. “Do you have a flashlight?” he asked.
    “Right here,” Mart said, turning on the beam and focusing it on the carburetor.
    “Mm-hmm,” said the stranger. “Just as I thought. Do you have a screwdriver?”
    “Well.... There might be a toolbox in the car somewhere—” Brian began.
    “Never mind,” the man snapped. “Do you have a dime?”
    The four Bob-Whites all dug into their pockets at once. “Here,” Trixie said, coming up with a thin, silver-colored disk and handing it to Brian, who passed it to the hitchhiker.
    There was a moment of silence. Then the stranger said, “Uh-huh. Try it now.”
    Brian looked expectantly at Trixie, but she slid over into the passenger’s seat. “This is no time for amateurs,” she told her brother.
    Brian grinned at Trixie’s unexpected caution and climbed in behind the wheel. He turned the key and stepped on the starter. The engine turned and caught immediately, settling into a smooth, purring idle. “It’s a miracle!” he exclaimed.
    The hitchhiker straightened, rubbing his greasy hands absentmindedly on his pants legs. “It’s hardly that,” he said. “In fact, it’s the simplest thing in the world to someone who’s seen a Model A carburetor before. Come here. I’ll show you how it works.”
    Brian got back out of the car and watched and listened as the stranger explained what he had just done.
    Trixie scrambled into the backseat again. “Are you as relieved as I am, Honey?” she asked.
    The other girl nodded. “In fact, I bet I’m more relieved than you are, because I bet I was more scared than you were when the car wouldn’t start.”
    “Well, you made up for that by scaring me with your scream when you saw the hitchhiker standing next to the car,” Trixie told her.
    “I’m sorry I scared you, but you must admit that he does look sort of... well, disreputable,” Honey said, lowering her voice to a whisper to avoid being overheard.
    Trixie shook her head. “No. I mean, yes, he does look a little raggedy, but I don’t think that’s why you were afraid of him. I think we scared ourselves with all those horror stories we were telling right after we first saw him.” She held up her hand to stop the protest that she knew Honey was about to make. “I haven’t forgotten what was said. I agree with you that both hitchhiking and picking up hitchhikers are dangerous. But, Honey, the point of remembering those stories is to make us cautious, not scared of our own shadows.”
    Honey wrinkled her nose. “That’s true, too. I’ve heard equally terrible stories of people who have attacked—even killed—harmless strangers because they’d talked themselves into being afraid of them.“
    “What if we’d hit this guy over the head because we were so sure he was going to hurt us? We’d still be sitting here in a conked-out car, that’s what!” Trixie bobbed her head for emphasis as she