The Mystery on the Mississippi

gas, Jim!”
    “I’m hurrying. This is as fast as I can go,” Jim shouted.
    “Then it isn’t fast enough. Listen to that baby roar! They’ll be on us in a minute. Turn off the road, Jim!”
    “What do you think he’s doing?” Dan cried.
    Jim slid the car down a small incline and took cover under the trees.
    The big car, its lights glaring, tore past the hidden car and out onto the county road, went around the corner on two wheels, and roared off down the highway.
    The Bob-Whites sighed with relief—all but Trixie. Her puzzled gaze followed the dark bulk of the big car till it disappeared. Then she shook her head as though to clear her thoughts and said determinedly, “Now’s our chance to see what’s going on back in that big house.”
    “Are you crazy?” Mart answered. “If you think Lontard bas anything to do with that old house back there, tell it to the federal agents. It’s their job. I don’t have to remind you that we promised not to take any chances. And, obviously, the people who live there don’t like company. I say leave it to the authorities. How about it, gang?”
    Even Honey agreed with Mart. “I doubt if that house has anything to do with our case. We just happened to get into somebody’s private estate, and they wanted to find out who we were, that’s all.”
    “Maybe so,” Trixie said reluctantly. “That car that passed us... I wonder! Do you have any idea where we are, Jim?”
    “Not the vaguest.”
    “There was a sign where we turned off the road. That is, I think I saw something that looked like a sign. Where’s the flashlight?” Trixie asked.
    Jim passed it over his shoulder to her, and as the car rounded a curve to the county highway, Trixie flashed the light around. Sure enough, there was a sign. Trixie read it silently. When its significance struck her, she read it again, aloud and triumphantly: “ ‘St. Peter’! Now, what do you think of that?”
    “Not a thing,” Mart said, disgusted. “How about letting us in on what you’re gloating about?”
    “St. Peter!” Trixie repeated excitedly. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face. It’s another one of those stopping places on Lontard’s map. Remember the old man with the beard? St. Peter, of course!”
    Mart laughed derisively. “Of all the far-fetched ideas I’ve heard, Trixie Belden, this one takes the cake. St. Peter! I seem to remember that there was a picture of a steamboat with the picture of the old man. Probably an old steamboat captain, instead of St. Peter. St. Peter is a town.”
    “Well, all I can say is this: You wait and see, Mart, and all the rest of you, too. If you’d only gone back to that house, maybe we could have found out what the picture of the steamboat meant. Maybe there’s an old steamboat on the river back of the house. You wait and see!”
    “Maybe there isn’t, too,” Mart laughed. “I’d like to see your face when you tell all this junk to the federal investigators.”
    “You won’t have a long wait,” Trixie said, settling back in the seat. “We’re going to talk to them in the morning, before Mr. Brandio’s plane takes us back to New York. I think you’ll be laughing on the other side of your face.”
    Suddenly a thought struck her. She remembered the shape of the big car that had passed them. “Yes, sirree, Mart Belden, you’ll be laughing on the other side of your face. Did you happen, by any chance, to notice what kind of a car that was as it passed us? Did you?” Trixie’s voice rose confidently. “Did you? It was a Mercedes. I’m practically positive.”
    “Golly!” Mart said, awed. “You could be right, Trix. Golly!”

The Aguileras Again ● 13

    IT WAS LONG after seven o’clock when the Bob-Whites returned to their St. Louis motel. The rain had stopped, and the air was cooling.
    “Nobody’d ever think we almost drowned in a rainstorm not fifty miles north,” Mart said. “It didn’t any more than sprinkle here. Am I glad of that! It means the exhibit at the airplane factories wasn’t rained out. Get a place to park fast, Jim, and let’s get going. Can’t we drop the girls and go right on from here?”
    “What do you mean ‘drop the girls’?” Trixie asked indignantly. “We want to see the exhibit, too. If you’d only think, you’d realize that there’ll be lots of girls among the future astronauts. How do you know Honey and I may not want to try it someday?”
    “I can imagine you orbiting the moon, all right. It’s a