The Red Trailer Mystery

door. Trixie stared at it, wondering why the shades on its windows were pulled down as though its occupants had already gone to sleep.
    Then she yawned. "I’m starving."
    "So am I," Miss Trask admitted. "Let’s have supper and go right to bed like the people next door so we can get an early start tomorrow. We’re way off schedule. I hoped we might spend this evening at Autoville, but not with the delay this morning and my overcautious driving!" She chuckled. Tm glad you girls are the chefs. I’m too tired to boil an egg."
    They hurried inside the Swan, and Honey consulted the little cookbook "We can frizzle a jar of chipped beef in a tablespoon of vegetable oil," she said, leading the way to the galley, "and add a can of mushroom soup to it and serve it with canned peas."
    "Yummy-yum," Trixie shouted. "That sounds—" She stopped by the living-room window and gazed out, with her mouth open. A man with shaggy black hair had just emerged from the trailer next door. He was wearing a threadbare suit and scuffed shoes, and the tight collar on his white shirt was frayed and worn.
    "That’s funny," Trixie wondered out loud. "What’s a man who looks so poverty-stricken doing in such a lavish trailer?"
    Honey came out of the galley to peer over her shoulder. "Probably the chauffeur," she whispered. "But then why isn’t he wearing a uniform like other chauffeurs?"
    Bud and Reddy were scratching at the door, hinting that they had been cooped up inside the Swan too long. Trixie let them out, and they bounded in circles, barking joyfully around the shaggy-haired man, who, paying no attention to them, strode rapidly toward a nearby hot-dog stand. While the girls watched curiously from the entrance to the Swan, Bud and Reddy came back and began sniffing curiously around the entrance to the red trailer.
    At that moment the Robins door opened a crack, and a little girl appeared. She was barefoot, and her patched, yellow sunsuit was faded and worn. Carefully she slipped her thin body through the crack in the doorway and tiptoed down the steps. Bud growled at her playfully and jumped up to lick her face.
    "Nice puppy," she murmured, sitting down on the ground and gathering the little black cocker spaniel into her arms. "My nice puppy."
    Honey laughed. "He’s mine, but he likes you a lot."
    " Mine," the little girl insisted, frowning. "All black puppies belong to me!"
    Trixie giggled and whispered, "She sounds just like my brother Bobby, and I guess she is just about his age. Don’t you think so?"
    Honey nodded. "She’s cute," and added under her breath, "but she looks half-starved. If her parents are rich enough to own a big trailer like that, you’d think they’d feed her decently and dress her in something better than rags!"
    "It’s not polite to whisker," the little girl said, staring at them disapprovingly. "Only naughty people whisker. My name’s Sally. What’s yours?"
    Before Trixie or Honey could reply, the door to the red trailer was suddenly thrown open, and a tiredfaced woman came out on the top step. Her cheap cotton housedress was neat and clean, but it showed signs of too frequent washing and mending. She was holding a tiny, sick-looking baby in her thin arms, and another child, in threadbare overalls, crawled behind her to peer out with big, expressionless eyes.
    "Sally," the woman called shrilly. "Come back inside at once!"
    Sally promptly burst into tears, rubbing her blue eyes with grimy fists. "I won’t! I won’t! I’m sick ’n’ tired of staying indoors all the time."
    Her mother, completely ignoring Trixie and Honey, came quickly down the steps. She seized the little girl’s shoulder and shook her gently. "You’re naughty, very naughty. You know you’re not supposed to speak to strangers."
    Sally squirmed away from her and picked up Bud in her thin little arms. "I’ll come back if you let me take my puppy with me."
    The woman gasped and turned a shade paler, her lips almost white. As Honey said afterward, she looked as shocked as though the child had said something really dreadful.
    Impulsively kindhearted Honey called, "It’s all right. He’s my dog, but she can play with him inside the trailer for as long as she likes."
    Sally’s mother caught her lower lip between her teeth, and there were tears in her eyes, but she replied coldly, "I’ll not allow any such a thing! The idea of her saying it is her dog." She raised her voice. "Joeanne, Joeanne!"
    A slim eleven-year-old girl with black