The Mystery off Glen Road

home after she and Honey had finished grooming the horses, he burst into the house yelling, “Hey, Mummy. I have to have my compass. Ben’s going to take me ’sploring tomorrow. Him and Di and me saw a funny-looking bird this afternoon, and we’re going to ’splore after it and maybe catch it alive and sell it to a zoo for a billion dollars. It looks sort of like a parrot but mostly like a squirrel, but, on account of Ben isn’t as smart as Jim, we might get losted, so I have to have my compass.”
    Trixie grabbed his plump arm. “You won’t have time to go exploring tomorrow, Bobby,” she said in a whisper. “You know perfectly well that it’s Thanksgiving, and also you know there’s no such thing as a bird that looks like a squirrel. Come on. I’ll tell you a story while you take a bath.”
    He yanked away from her. “Is so a bird that looks like a squirrel. I saw it my own self. It was sitting on a small, little, teeny-weeny bush, and Ben gave me some salt to put on its tail, but when I got so close, it flewed away into the woods.” He demonstrated with his fat hands how close he had gotten.
    Mrs. Belden, who had been grating raw carrots into a big wooden salad bowl, joined in the conversation then. “If you got that close, Bobby,” she said with a laugh, “why did you bother with salt? You could have grabbed it by the tail. That is, if it had the long bushy tail of a squirrel.”
    “Didn’t,” he informed her gravely. “Had a little, teeny-weeny, feathery tail like a chicken.”
    “Oh, my goodness!” Trixie exploded impatiently. “It’s just one of Ben’s silly jokes, Bobby. He’s always rigging up things like that with strings and a pulley. Remember that ‘ghost’ he tried to scare Honey with last time he visited her? Even you weren’t fooled by it.”
    “Not a ghost,” he stormed. “It’s a bird, and we’re gonna catch it early tomorrow morning. So I have to have my compass. I promised Ben.”
    “Very well,” Mrs. Belden said. “If you promised Ben that he could wear your compass, you shall -have it.”
    Trixie collapsed on the kitchen stool. “He can’t, Moms. I borrowed it this afternoon and—and lost it!”
    Mrs. Belden stared at her in amazement while Bobby burst into screams of rage. Trixie alternated between covering her face and her ears with her! hands. Finally Mrs. Belden led Bobby away, and in a few minutes his howls finally subsided into low sobs.
    Mart came into the kitchen then, and while Trixie finished making the salad, she blurted out the whole story. At first he seemed more interested in i Bobby’s lost compass than he was in the mysterious cabin in the clearing.
    “Gleeps, Trix,” he said, “you should know better than to touch anything that belongs to Bobby. You won’t hear the end of this until you’re old and gray.”
    “It’s all Ben’s fault,” Trixie stormed. “Why did he have to go and rig up that crazy thing?”
    Mart wiggled his eyebrows at her. “When you’re Bobby-sitting, I have discovered, your imagination is apt to run wild. If you don’t keep him amused when he thinks he’s a fire chief, you may find your-' self in the midst of a holocaust. But fear not, sis. I may be able to pour oil on the troubled waters by lending the lad my own wrist compass. That is, if you’ll do me a favor.”
    “I’ll do anything,” Trixie said hastily, “if you can keep Moms from looking at me as though she thought I were a thief.”
    “Pooh,” said Mart airily. “So far as our maternal parent is concerned, you are already forgiven, since you immediately confessed your crime. She may have a few well-chosen words to say to you on the subject later, but that will be that. Once Bobby is all sunny smiles again, the thing will soon be forgotten. Since I am the one who can produce those smiles, I will now dictate the terms. I will lend him my wrist compass on this condition: You tell me here and now why you asked Dad to get that diamond ring out of the bank. I am not a member of the feline family, but curiosity is slowly but surely killing me.”
    “Oh, all right,” Trixie said crossly. “But you’ve got to promise to keep it a secret.”
    Mart made an elaborate gesture of crossing his heart. Then Trixie began at the very beginning. Before she was halfway through, Mart threw his arms around her and hugged her so tightly that she couldn’t breathe.
    “You super-stupendous lame-brain,” he cried happily. “How do you do it? You always