The secret of the Mansion

mother hurrying up the stairs to see why Bobby was crying, and she whispered desperately, "Please be quiet, Bobby. If you’re quiet, I’ll read the funnies to you all afternoon. Promise." Immediately, the little boy’s plump face was wreathed in smiles. "It’s a see-crud, isn’t it, Trixie? Your see-crud and my see-crud. But you gotta read Peter Rabbit to me three times or I’ll tell."
    "All right," Trixie promised as she hurried out of the room.
    "Lunch at one thirty," Mrs. Belden called after her. "And don’t be late. I’m roasting a turkey."
    "Gosh," Trixie groaned as she joined Honey in the garage. "Bobby was on the verge of telling Moms we re exploring the Miser's Mansion. I had to promise to read to him all afternoon to keep him quiet."
    "What a shame," Honey said sympathetically. "That means you can’t go riding with Jim and me." Trixie tried to shrug away her disappointment. "It doesn’t matter. You two will have more fun without me until I learn to ride better."
    "That’s not true," Honey broke in generously. "You’re doing very well, Trixie. Regan told me this morning that you’d be ready for jumping in another week or two."
    "Golly." Trixie stopped in the middle of the path, so thrilled she could hardly speak. "Do you really think he meant it, Honey?" she asked humbly.
    "Of course. Regan’s like your mother," she said, laughing. "He never says anything he doesn’t mean." Jim answered their whistle from the barn and came out dragging the ladder. "I got the window open the first thing this morning," he told them. "But I put the ladder away in case somebody came snooping around."
    Trixie told him then that Mr. Lytell had seen the smoke from his fire. "That’s one more reason why we should find that will right away," she finished. "He may come up here, after all, to investigate."
    "That’s true," Jim said thoughtfully. "And I suppose there must be a will somewhere. Or at least a deed to the property. Of course, it may be mortgaged to the hilt."
    "Have you looked around up there already?" Trixie asked.
    Jim grinned. "No, I knew you’d have a fit if I didn’t wait for you. Anyway, it’s so dark I couldn’t have seen anything."
    Trixie handed him a second flashlight that she had picked up in the garage.
    "I don’t see why this house hasn’t got electric lights," Honey remarked. "If Mr. Frayne was as rich as he was supposed to be, you’d think he would have had the place wired."
    "It’s wired, all right," Jim said as he started up the ladder, "but he probably had the current shut off at the time that he went into retirement. That’s why there’s no running water, either. The pump in the basement runs by electricity." At the top of the ladder, Jim played the flashlight around inside the house. "This was somebody’s bedroom," he called down to the girls. "My aunt’s, I guess, and it doesn’t look as though it’s been touched since the day she died." He disappeared through the window.
    "I’ll hold the ladder for you, Trixie," Honey offered. "After what happened to Jim yesterday, I wouldn’t climb up this rickety old thing for all the treasure in the world."
    When Trixie hoisted herself over the windowsill, she turned on her own torch. She found herself in what had once been a luxurious bedroom, but the dusty silk drapes were hanging in shreds from the rusty rods, and the bedspread had almost completely rotted away. Squirrels and field mice had played havoc with the rich upholstery of the furniture, and strips of faded wallpaper were crumbling to a yellow powder on the floor. In the long, glass-doored closet were the discolored remnants of a woman’s wardrobe, fashionable years earlier.
    "It’s really a crime," Trixie said to Jim, "that your uncle let this place go to rack and ruin. Why, if that Oriental rug hadn’t been eaten to pieces by moths, it would be absolutely priceless."
    She followed him through a connecting bath into the master bedroom. The beautiful mahogany of the huge four-poster bed was white with mold, and spider webs almost completely covered the Chippendale desk in one comer of the room. They peered into the closets and drawers and shook their heads over the moth-eaten suits and shirts and underclothing which nesting rodents had gnawed to rags.
    "I don’t get it," Trixie said in an awed voice. "The few times I ever saw your uncle he was wearing such a funny-looking patched outfit he looked like a scarecrow."
    Jim played his light along the rows of empty