The Mystery off Glen Road

when old Mr. Frayne’s house burned. And how Jim ran away afterward and all. You’ve just got to believe me. The ring is mine. But I want you to have it.”
    “Me?” He swiveled his chair around to glare at her. “You’ve never made much sense in your life, Trixie Belden, but now you’re making no sense at all. Why on earth should you give me this ring?” Trixie took a deep breath and, because her knees felt so weak, hoisted herself onto the counter. “Because of Brian,” she finally got out. “I mean his jalopy. I mean your jalopy, but it’s really Brian’s, except that he hasn’t got the fifty dollars anymore. On account of the storm and what the blue spruce did to our clubhouse, you know. I—”
    “No, I don’t know,” Mr. Lytell exploded, and he didn’t sound at all like a sheep or a goat now. He sounded more like an angry bull. Then he lowered his voice and said, as though he were speaking to a backward kindergarten child, “Let’s start at the beginning. Brian wanted to buy my old Ford. He didn’t have enough money, but because I like Brian, I cooperated so that he could get the license plates and take out the insurance. In other words, I gave him the car with the understanding that he would give me the fifty dollars today. He called me day before yesterday to say that he could not produce fifty dollars, after all. So I am going to turn the car over to a second-hand dealer this afternoon.”
    “Yes, yes,” Trixie cried nervously. “I mean, no, NO! That’s just the point. You’ve hit the nail on the thumb, Mr. Lytell. How smart you are. You understand now, about the diamond and all, don’t you?” He pushed his eyeglasses farther up the bridge of his nose. “I don’t understand one word that you’re talking about, Trixie Belden.” Then just when Trixie thought it was all hopeless, a smile crinkled his face. He picked up the diamond again and said in a whisper, “Yes, I do understand now. You’re giving me this as security so that Brian will be able to have my old Ford, after all.”
    Trixie nodded her head up and down vehemently. Because he was whispering, she felt that she had to whisper, too. “But you mustn’t let Brian know. He gave us the fifty dollars he should have given to you this morning. So we could repair the clubhouse. But the money really belongs to him. I mean to you. I mean, the jalopy should really be Brian’s.” Her voice dwindled away into a rasping cough. Mr. Lytell had that suspicious look on his face again.
    “If you boys and girls needed money,” he said, “why didn’t you sell this ring, Trixie? I’m not a pawnbroker.” He closed the jewel case and snapped the clasp back in place. “There’s something fishy about all this. I don’t like it. I just don’t like it.”
    “But I don’t want to sell it,” Trixie wailed in despair. “Oh, Mr. Lytell, I know you don’t like me, but you do like Brian. Please try to understand. We’re all going to work hard so we can earn the money and pay Brian back just as soon as we can. Maybe by this time next week we’ll have fifty dollars. Then you can give Brian his car and give me back my ring.”
    For answer, he got up slowly, went over to his safe, twirled the dial, opened the door, and put the jewel case inside. “Miss Trask,” he mumbled to himself, “thinks the world of you, and I think the world of Miss Trask. So there must be some good in you.” He was almost, but not quite, smiling.
    “Very well, Trixie Belden,” he said in a loud clear voice, “I’ll keep the car and the ring here until next Saturday. If you don’t produce fifty dollars by then, I’ll—” He emphatically left the sentence unfinished, but Trixie knew what he meant. If she didn’t redeem the ring within a week, he would have to report the whole transaction to her father.
    “Thanks,” she said weakly and somehow made her trembling legs carry her out to where Honey was waiting with the horses.

A Job for the Bob-Whites ● 8

    WELL,” HONEY promptly demanded, “how did you make out?”
    Trixie gathered the reins and mounted Lady. “We’re safe for another week,” she said. “So now we’ve just got to get that gamekeeper’s job.”
    Honey nodded. “Was Mr. Lytell very suspicious?”
    “He couldn’t have been more suspicious,” Trixie replied, “if he’d caught me stealing the ring from Moms’s jewelry box. I’m sure that’s who—whom— he thinks it belongs to.”
    “Naturally,” Honey said. “Mr.