The Mysterious Code Read online

  “Some of the things in the other attic room are almost as pretty,” Honey said. “They’re older, and our show is an antique show. Of course they have to be glued here and there, and stained. Maybe some of the chairs have to be recovered. Why don’t we go and look at them? I’ve only looked through the cubbyhole door, myself.”

  “I have to dust the house first,” Trixie said. Her mother looked at her in amazement to think she had remembered.

  “We’ll help you, won’t we, Diana? Jim’s waiting for us at the house,” Honey said. “Where are Brian and Mart?”

  “In town with Brian’s jalopy getting it fixed,” Trixie said. “Maybe they will be here by the time we finish dusting.”

  “They are here now,” Bobby announced. He had just opened the back door to ask his mother for a cooky. “Brian’s car sounds so smooth now—just listen!”

  They listened as Brian whirled the car around and backed it into the garage. It did not sound much louder than a cement mixer. The girls, hurrying around the house to finish the dusting, thought it sounded wonderful. They loved Brian’s old car almost as much as he did.

  “Is there anything the boys have to do for Daddy?” Trixie asked, gathering the dustcloths and putting them in the broom closet.

  “No,” her mother answered. “This is one Saturday they haven’t a thing to do. I mean outside of regular chores. They were going to wash the station wagon but it’s too cold a day for that.”

  “Then may we go over to the Manor House and explore the attic? Did you hear that, Brian?” she asked her brother. “And Mart? There are some pieces of old furniture and other things in the Wheeler attic that Mrs. Wheeler said we could have for our show. Shall we go over and explore the attic now?”

  “What’s keeping us?” Mart asked and picked his little brother up and put him on his shoulder.

  “Me, too?” Bobby asked.

  “I’m afraid not today, lamb,” Trixie said. “We’re going to be pretty busy.”

  “Let him come, too,” Honey said. “Miss Trask will read to him, or Regan will take him out to his apartment over the stable.”

  “Gee whiz, thanks, Honey,” Bobby said and struggled down from Mart’s shoulder.

  “Mrs. Belden, if you don’t mind, Miss Trask said to ask you if they could all stay for lunch. She said it would just be hot dogs. May they?”

  “I think so. Trixie, take Bobby up to his room and change his shirt, please. It seems as though the Belden children are always eating at your house, Honey.”

  “We come here more often, Mrs. Belden. Mother has all your recipes in a box at home, but she says Cook never makes them taste as good as you do.”

  “If I looked as pretty as your mother does,” Mrs. Belden answered, “I’d never put a foot inside the kitchen.”

  “There isn’t a movie actress who can hold a candle to you, Moms,” Mart said and kissed her.

  “Flattery will get you nowhere,” his mother said, blushing. “Try to be home by four o’clock, all of you. Your father will be here then. He’s going to bring that film we took at home on Christmas when you were at the dude ranch.”

  “We’ll try to be on time, Moms. Do you know,” Trixie put her arm around her mother, “that was one thing we could hardly stand—being away from Crabapple Farm at Christmas.”

  At the Manor House Regan met Bobby and took him by the hand to go to his apartment.

  “Tell me my riddle,” Bobby begged. “You always tell me good riddles.”

  “What has three keys but can’t open locks?” Regan asked, his freckled face amused.

  “That’s a hard one,” Bobby said. “It’s not my skate key … it’s not our door key … what’s the answer, Regan?”

  “A zoo. It has a monkey, a donkey, and a turkey,” Regan said. “Tell the other kids good-by, Bobby.”

  Honey led the Bob-Whites up the two flights of stairs to the attic. They had to go through a trap door to get into the room over the library. Cobwebbed boxes and furniture were stacked around the room. One light hung from the ceiling, sending weird shadows into all corners.

  Trixie tingled with excitement. It’s the same setting, almost exactly, she thought, as the one in Kidnaped for Ransom.

  “I’ve never been inside this room before,” Honey said. “I think most of the things must have been here when Daddy bought the house.”

  “Just look at this table!” Mart exclaimed. “It’s cherry or I’ll miss my guess. This is valuable, Honey, and here’s its twin! Do you think your mother meant that we could have anything in this room?”

  “That’s what she told me,” Honey answered.

  Mart, excited, carried the two tables through the trap door to the hall. “This is the first installment,” he said.

  Trixie’s head was deep in a big trunk she pulled open. “It’s full of old costumes,” she said. “The little theater in Sleepyside will pay a lot of money for these or … say, I think we’d better keep them and rent them to all the drama groups. We’d make more money that way. Look at this, what do you suppose it opens?”

  Trixie held up a small key. There was a tag attached to it. “This is queer,” she said and turned the tag face up so they could see it. On it were these little acrobatic figures in different postures:

  “Do you suppose it says something?” Honey picked up the key and its tag and took it over under the light. “Did you ever see anything like this before?” she asked.

  “It’s probably some kind of a code,” Mart said. “It’s neat. I’ll bet some kid did that a long time ago.”

  “Right,” Jim said. “More than likely, though, it doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “Maybe not,” Trixie agreed, then slipped it in the pocket of her sweater. “What are you making such a fuss about, Brian?”

  Brian had found an old sword, and rubbed it against his blue jeans to brush off the dust.

  “Say, Jim, take a look at this,” he said. “Could these be gold ornaments on the hilt?”

  “Why don’t you ask me?” Mart asked. “I’m an authority on swords. It’s a samurai. There should be a dagger to match. They come in pairs.”

  The boys hunted around on the floor. “Here it is! It’s a beauty!”

  “The samurai were military guards at the mikado’s palace way back in feudal days in Japan,” Mart recited, sure of his subject. “They were the only ones allowed to wear the two swords.”

  “They had a pleasant way of using them,” Jim said.

  “They did,” Mart agreed. “When the honor of a samurai was questioned, even ever so faintly, he had the great privilege of plunging this short dagger into his abdomen to end his life.”

  “Then his best friend, who bent over watching to see that he did the job neatly,” said Brian, “would slice off his head with this long sword to be sure the dagger did its work.”

  “Don’t talk about things like that,” Honey said, her face white. “It makes me sick. Let’s leave these old swords here. Nobody will want them.”

  “You’re wrong, Honey,” Brian said. “When I went to New York with Dad before Christmas I saw a Japanese sword in the gift department of a store. It wasn’t as old as this one … at least I don’t think it was … but the price on it was over a hundred dollars.”

  “I still don’t like them,” Honey said.

  “It’s history, though, Honey,” Trixie said. “Whoopee, look at these old masks! This one—why, I believe it’s a Garuda bird. Do you remember that Balinese dance we saw on TV out at the ranch?”

  Mart picked up the mask, ran his hand down the long beak of the Garuda bird, with its serrated teeth. “I remember,” he said. “A man wore one in the Balinese shadow play. Someone who lived here before must have traveled in the Far East and picked up these masks and swords.”

  Just then Celia, the Wheelers’ pretty maid who had married Tom, the chauffeur, pushed a tray ahead of herself through the trap door. “Mrs. Wheeler said to bring these sandwiches up to you,” she said and put a tray of hot dogs on an old trunk. />
  “Tom is bringing the milk,” she added. “Bobby is having his lunch with Regan. If you need anything more,” she said to Jim, “just come down to the kitchen.”

  After they had finished their sandwiches they selected the articles they wanted to use.

  “Let’s carry this loot over to the clubhouse and get busy right away,” Mart said enthusiastically. “Diana, you and Trixie can start to sand one of the gate-leg tables when we get there. If they’re really cherry, we’ll get a neat price for them. Come on, girls. Each one take a cooky jar. Jim, a table for you, and you, Brian, the mirror. Wait till you see the mirror with a new coat of gilt on the frame. I’ll take the Indian.”

  Aside from the two gate-leg tables they took a tobacco shop Indian figure with some of its original paint, a Windsor armchair, a table that might turn out to be a Pembroke, a framed mirror, a brass coal hod, two brown crackled cooky jars, and a model of an old whaling ship, the Oswego of Hudson.

  They stopped in the Manor House living-room to thank Mrs. Wheeler.

  “Oh, that old stuff,” she said. “You’ll never find anyone who will want to buy it.”

  “You’d be surprised, Mrs. Wheeler,” Mart said. “I’d like to place a bet that you buy one of your own things back when you see our show.”

  “That would surprise me very much,” she said, laughing. “Is that an old Bennington jar you are carrying, Diana? I wonder where it came from.”

  “Do you see what I mean?” Mart asked impudently. “Do you want to buy it back now?”

  Chapter 5

  The Acrobatic Alphabet

  When Trixie and her brothers went home for dinner, they were dusty and tired. They were so excited, however, that words piled on top of one another when they tried to tell their mother and father what had happened at the Manor House, of the wonderful things they had found there.

  “That’s enough about your afternoon, now,” Mrs. Belden interrupted. “Take showers, all of you. Trixie, please help Bobby. Change to robes and slippers. You may eat your dinner in robes and get to bed early. Run along, now,” she insisted as they kept on talking. “When we are at dinner we can hear all about it.”

  Later, when they were at the table, and grace had been said, Bobby shouted, “I’m first! Regan told me a good riddle.”

  “Let’s hear it, son,” Mr. Belden said.

  “He told me two riddles,” Bobby said. “This is the funniest one. What has ten letters and starts with—what is it, Trixie?” Bobby asked.

  “It starts with G-A-S, remember?”

  “Oh, yes, what is it, Moms? Daddy? You give up?”

  Mr. Belden scratched his head and thought.

  Mrs. Belden put her head in her hands and thought.

  “We give up, Bobby,” they said.

  “Brian’s jalopy!” Bobby said triumphantly and laughed till he almost choked.

  “Bobby’s a clown,” Brian said. “The real answer is ‘automobile.’ Look here, Dad, at what I found in the attic.”

  Brian and Mart stood over their father’s chair while he examined the swords. “This one looks just like the one we saw in New York,” he said. “Yes, I think you made quite a find, Brian. Are you sure, you and Mart, that Mrs. Wheeler wanted to give them to you!”

  “Sure thing,” Mart answered. “She gave us some other keen things we found, too.” He told his parents about the beautiful cherry-wood tables.

  “I found a crazy-looking thing,” Trixie said and produced the key and the tag with its acrobatic figures.

  “It’s a code of some kind, I’m sure,” Mr. Belden said. “I think I saw something like it a long time ago.”

  “Can’t you possibly remember, Daddy?” Trixie asked. “Maybe it would tell us something important.”

  “It looks more to me like some child’s idea of a joke,” Mrs. Belden said. “It probably doesn’t mean a thing. All Trixie needs,” she said to her husband, “is something like this to start her off with a bloodhound. Forget it, Trixie. You’ll have all you can possibly do, all of you, to get that furniture fixed up for your show. I don’t see how you can possibly find time to repair any more than just the things you found in the Manor House attic.”

  “We have lots more promised to us,” Mart said. “We’ll have the best antique show Sleepyside ever saw.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” Mr. Belden said. “Right now I think you’d all better go to bed. You’ve been yawning, and look at Bobby. He’s asleep with his head on the table.”

  “I’ll help Moms with the dishes first,” Trixie said.

  “We’ll put Bobby to bed,” Brian said. “Come on, fella!” He lifted the little boy in his arms and went up the stairs, followed by Mart.

  The next morning the boys were off for the clubhouse early. Jim had agreed that they could accept the oil heater and he and Brian were helping to install it. At the same time Regan, with an electrician who had been engaged to put in some new light switches in the Manor House, was going to run a feed wire to the clubhouse.

  After Trixie hurried through the dusting she tossed the dustcloth in the broom closet in the kitchen. “I’m going over to Honey’s house,” she told her mother. “I want to look for something in the attic.”

  “After you pick up that dustcloth from where you threw it,” her mother said. “And after you give the furniture in the living-room, the dining-room, and the study a good dusting, not just show the furniture to the dustcloth.”

  “Oh, Moms, I never have a chance to do anything I want to do. What’s the matter with the way the furniture looks?” Trixie picked up the dustcloth and stamped into the living-room. Then, before she had dusted a thing she ran back penitently to her mother and gave her a quick hug.

  “I’m so selfish,” she said. “How do you ever put up with me, Moms?”

  “Oh, maybe because I happen to love you,” her mother said. “Never mind, Trixie, I remember when I was thirteen years old. Finish the dusting, then run along to Honey’s.”

  Diana, summoned from her big home high on a hill, was at the Manor House when Trixie arrived. They rushed up the stairs to the attic, climbed through the trap door to the cubbyhole, put the key and the mysterious tag on top of an old trunk, and started to explore.

  They looked under and around everything in the room: broken old ladders, discarded light fixtures, a three-legged hobby horse, storm windows, screens that needed repairing, discarded clothing packed in boxes. Trixie even rummaged through the boxes of clothing. They found an old chest filled with checkers and chess men, but the key with the strange figures didn’t fit the keyhole.

  They did find some very old toys that had been put up high in the rafters. There was an old Punch and Judy theater with Punch, quite tattered and worn, leaning over the door holding his big stick. There was a Sleeping Beauty doll minus her long golden hair. There were three plaster figures of the seven dwarfs.

  “We can paint these and dress them in some new clothes,” Honey said. “They’ll be as good as new.”

  “Let’s stop hunting for anything that key fits,” Diana said. “We could hunt from now until the Fourth of July and never find it. It’s probably been thrown out long ago. Let’s take some of these old St. Nicholas magazines over under the light and look at them!”

  Diana picked up two bound volumes of the magazine and carried them to the middle of the room. “My grandmother had some of them in her attic,” Diana said. “Did you ever try to work any of the puzzles? Here, let’s turn to the puzzle pages.”

  The girls sat on the floor inside the cubbyhole, the bound magazines in their laps.

  “This one is way back in 1884,” Diana said, opening the red cloth-bound book.

  “Heavens, that was before the United States was born,” Trixie said.

  “Not quite,” Honey laughed. “I thought you were better in history than math.”

  “See if you can answer this one, if you’re so smart,” Trixie said, her face red. “It’s an easy charade, or so it says.”

  “Not any of
the puzzles in St. Nicholas were easy,” Diana said. “I guess people were smarter then.”

  “Try this anyway,” Trixie said.

  “Men hunt my first, then second my first in order to obtain my whole.”

  “It must be something people hunt,” Honey said. “Ducks … no; geese … no; rabbits … no; wolves … no. What is it, Trixie?”

  “I don’t know myself. I’ll have to look it up in the answers. They’re given the month following. Let me see … it’s sealskin! You hunt seal, don’t you see, then skin the seal, and you have sealskin. Say, look at this other page, would you? Jumpin’ Jupiter! It’s the acrobats, the whole alphabet! Where’s that tag?”

  Spread over a page in the old St. Nicholas magazine there was a group of dancing, tumbling little stick men, each posture representing a letter of the alphabet.

  “Let me see now,” Trixie said. “Let’s compare the tag. This is K; here is an E, and then Y. That first word is Key.”

  Quickly Trixie spelled out the rest of the message on the tag. Transcribed, it read: Key to Riches.

  Trixie was so excited her hands were shaking. “It’s a fortune!” she shouted. “I know it is. Come on!”

  She jumped up and let the book tumble to the floor. “Let’s start hunting!”

  “We’ve covered every inch of this place,” Diana said. “There isn’t anything here that the key will fit. How do you know what we are hunting for is in the attic?”

  “It has to be,” Trixie said.

  “Stand up here on this ladder,” Honey said. “Reach up into the rafters, back of the Punch and Judy show. Isn’t there something there?”

  Trixie reached, almost fell off the ladder, brought out an old broken pull toy. Her face fell. “There’s not another thing here,” she said and climbed down.

  Together the girls moved out all the old screens and storm windows, hunted over every inch of floor they had covered before, looked through the boxes of old clothes again till there was only one thing left, a chest that stood under the window in the closet next to the chimney.