The Mystery of the Vanishing Victim

feeling as though we’d endangered your life,” Trixie confessed. “I mean, if you hadn’t stopped to help us....”
    “That was my decision, not yours,” the man said coldly. “It was a Model A, you said?”
    Trixie nodded. “There was something wrong with the carburetor. You fixed it right away.”
    The man leaned back against his pillows and stared at the ceiling. “I had a Model A once,” he said. “I bought it for fifty dollars back when they were used cars, not antiques. I held it together with chewing gum and baling wire for a year. I got to know that car inside and out. It’s what got me started with—” The man broke off abruptly and darted a nervous look at Trixie. “Anyway, it’s not surprising that I still remembered how to get one started.”
    “It’s a good thing you did,” Trixie told him. “We all feel as though we might still be sitting there in a stalled car if it hadn’t been for you.”
    “How did you kids get your hands on a Model A, anyway?” the man asked. “They’re pretty rare these days.”
    “It really isn’t our Model A,” Trixie explained. “It’s a donation for the rummage sale we’re sponsoring to benefit the hospital. Mr. Burnside, who owns the lumberyard here in Sleepyside, donated it. He thought we could attract more attention to the sale if we drove the car around town for a few days ahead of time.”
    “It ought to do that, all right,” the stranger agreed. “It ought to fetch a lot of money for the hospital, too.”
    “Isn’t it wonderful? We couldn’t believe our luck when Mr. Burnside decided to donate the Model A,” Trixie exulted. “I still don’t understand how he can part with it, but he bought an old Stanley Steamer, and he likes that even better, I guess.”
    “A Stanley!” the stranger exclaimed. The harsh look on his face was replaced by a thoughtful smile. “No transmission, infinite throttle. What a machine! Nobody ever did find out how fast one could go. The Stanley was designed by a couple of twin brothers, F.E. and F.O. Stanley. Before they got interested in cars, they were already successful inventors. They were the first to mass-produce violins, for one thing.
    They also developed the first packaged photographic negatives.
    “Then, back in eighteen ninety-seven, they went to a county fair and watched a demonstration of a new ‘horseless carriage.’ The thing broke down before it made a single lap around the racetrack at the fairgrounds. The Stanleys decided they could do better—and they did!
    “They had a great time doing it, too. One of their favorite tricks was to take off down the road a few minutes apart in matching cars. A policeman would flag down the first brother to give him a lecture about not going too fast in that newfangled contraption, then stop in midsentence when he saw what looked like the exact same man going by in the exact same car!”
    Trixie laughed as she imagined the startled look on the policeman’s face. “They sound as if they would have been interesting men to know,” she said. “I always thought of inventors as boring, humorless men.”
    The injured man shot Trixie a strange look. “Oh, you did, did you? Well, the Stanley brothers, at least, were anything but that.”
    “What finally happened to them?” Trixie asked.
    The stranger’s face darkened again. “They got themselves tangled up with the money men,” he said. “If I were to generalize about inventors, I wouldn’t say they were humorless, but I would say they’re too doggoned trusting.
    “In the Stanleys’ case, a couple of hotshots started pestering them to sell the rights to the Steamer. F.E. and F.O. didn’t want to do it, so they set what they thought was an astronomical price—two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The hotshots wrote out a check, and the Stanleys were out of business. They got back together later on, but by that time their best inventing days were over.”
    “That’s terrible!” Trixie said indignantly. “Why, just think what two brilliant men like that could have done. They might have come up with a car that would go hundreds of miles on a gallon of gas and not pollute the air at all and—and all kinds of things!”
    “They might have, at that,” the man told her. “In some ways, the Stanley was the best car ever designed. But it did have problems. The water tanks used to freeze up in the winter, and after people got used to the idea of a horseless carriage, they wanted one that