The Mystery on Cobbett's Island (7 page)

“This is the best coffee cake I've ever eaten in my whole life,” said Trixie. “Even Moms's isn't this good. May I have your recipe to take home, Mrs. Kimball?”

“Of course you may, my dear. It is one I found in an
old cookbook in the kitchen cupboard, and what makes it so special, I think, are the black walnuts. We get them from a big old tree near the woodshed. That is, when we beat the squirrels to them.”

“It's a good thing Dad isn't here,” commented Peter, “or there wouldn't be a crumb left for us. This is his favorite breakfast, but he's gone up to Vermont this week to look over some properties for a ski lodge.”

“Gosh, wouldn't that be neat,” said Trixie, “to have your very own lodge to go to whenever you wanted!”

“Well, I could go whenever the Board of Education saw fit to give me a holiday.” Peter grinned. “I still have to go to school, you know.”

“I know,” Jim said. “We never seem to have enough time to ski or skate at home either. We don't have too many really good days for skiing in Westchester anyway, and they never seem to fall on weekends.”

“We aren't too far from Fahnestock, though,” Mart said, “so we drive up there when we can steal time from our homework. They have a good ski lift and a snow machine.”

After Mrs. Kimball had returned to the house, Trixie took the envelope with the mysterious letter out of the pocket of her shorts, and looking at Peter, she said, “We have another problem, Peter. You were so good at
helping us with the tree, maybe you can help us solve a mystery.” She handed him the letter and Jim told him how they had happened to find it.

“You see, we really don't know whether we have any business reading the letter or trying to do anything about it,” said Diana seriously, “and since we're all so new here on the island, we'd like your advice.”

Peter whistled softly as he read the letter. “Well, what do you know, a mystery on this quiet little island!”

“Trixie would turn up a mystery even if she were marooned at the North Pole.” Mart chuckled.

“Do you think the letter is real—that is, do you think Mr. C and Ed are real?” asked Trixie, ignoring her brother's sally.

“Well, I don't know for sure, of course,” Peter replied, “but why would anyone put a letter in a grownup's book if it were written as some kind of joke?”

“Have you any idea who Mr. C might be?” asked Brian.

Peter thought for a while; then snapping his fingers, he said, “Of course, how dumb can I be? The Moorings is sometimes called the old Condon place, because Mr. Condon lived there for many years before his death. He
could
be the Mr. C of the letter.”

“Golly, I remember now,” said Mart, “the man on
the ferry said something about the Condon place when we were asking directions. I'll bet you're right, Peter.”

“Could be, but that doesn't help much with ‘Ed,' does it?” Peter said. “You know, I think it might help if we had a talk with Abe White. He's Cobbett's Island's one and only cop. Maybe he can shed some light on who Ed is. He's a good friend of mine, and we can trust him to keep this under his hat.”

Mart turned to his sister and asked, “Did it ever occur to you, Moll Dick, that maybe there
isn't
any mystery, and that the thousand dollars has long since been found and given to Ed's boy?”

“Oh, I can't believe that,” wailed Trixie, upset at the very idea of not being able to unravel another case. “I'll the if there isn't anything to it!”

“There she goes again,” Jim said banteringly. “My co-president is frequently at the point of death, and it's only through the combined efforts of her loyal members that she is persuaded to face life again.”

“Bear up, Trixie; we can't lose you now!” cried Honey, with mock emotion in her voice, and everyone laughed, including Trixie.

“We'll go down at lunchtime and talk with Abe. We can catch him at Bascom's store where he usually eats lunch,” said Peter. “I've just got my junior license, so we
can drive down in the Ice-Box. That's what Dad calls my jalopy.”

As they were stacking the dishes on the tray to take back to the kitchen, they heard a noise of breaking branches in the nearby bushes.

“What was that?” asked Trixie apprehensively.

“Oh, probably a deer,” answered Peter. “They get so tame around here that in the winter, when food is scarce, they come right up to the house. Or it may have been a tree that was half blown down in the storm.”

When Trixie got to the kitchen she asked Mrs. Kimball if she had ever heard of a Golden Chain tree. “You have so many different kinds of trees here, I thought you might know about that one. I read about it recently and the name fascinated me.”

“As a matter of fact, we do have a Golden Chain tree, and a very beautiful one. It stands just behind the pool. It isn't in bloom yet, so you wouldn't notice it particularly, but in a few weeks it will be filled with yellow blossoms which hang in panicles or chains. It's a very old tree and I think it's the loveliest one on Cobbett's Island. I wish we had more of them, but that's the only one.”

The Bob-Whites listened to Mrs. Kimball with suppressed excitement. Here was another clue to the information
in the letter. As she thought about the letter, Trixie instinctively put her hand in her pocket and realized she had left it on the terrace. She dashed back to get it and was surprised to find the envelope on the table where she had left it, but the letter lying in the grass some distance away.

“Probably the wind blew it over here,” Trixie said to herself as she retrieved it, “but there doesn't seem to be any wind. That's queer.”

The incident slipped her mind, however, as she and the others went to work. Yesterday, their work had been mainly picking up fallen branches and blown leaves, but today it was quite a different story. They found that the honeysuckle vines clung to the trees like demons, and the roots seemed to extend for miles under the soft earth. Together with the wild grapes, they formed a veritable jungle. But the Bob-Whites soon evolved a system for coping with the stubborn vines. Peter and Jim cut the main stems at ground level. Then Mart and Brian pulled them away from the trees, and the girls dragged them off to be burned later after they had dried out.

By noon they had made good progress, but were still not up to the gazebo itself. They decided to have a hamburger at Bascom's so as not to waste any more time than was necessary. After cleaning up, they piled into the Ice-Box and headed for the center of the island.

As they drove through the village, Peter pointed out the school, firehouse, and municipal hall, all of colonial architecture. “What's that ramshackle building over there near the school?” asked Diana, pointing to a dilapidated structure that looked completely out of place in the otherwise attractive center.

“That, my friends, is our library,” replied Peter. “Do you see why we're so anxious for a new building? That one is over ninety years old, and while it was probably the pride and joy of the island in its day, it sure is an eyesore now. There are a lot of good books in there, even some rare ones, I guess, but who wants to go into a gloomy place like that?”

Bascom's was across from the school, and during the winter was a favorite gathering place for Peter and
his schoolmates. Today, it was deserted, but Mrs. Bascom came bustling out of the back room and said she would be glad to make hamburgers for all of them. “I miss Peter and all the young folks after school closes,” she said as she put buns on to toast.

As the meat was sizzling on the grill, Abe came in and, seeing Peter, called out, “Hi, Pete. What's new?”

“Draw up a stool and I'll tell you,” answered Peter. He introduced the Bob-Whites to Abe, and after Mrs. Bascom had served them and was busy in another part of the store, he told him about the letter.

Abe listened patiently and then, shaking his head, he smiled and said, “Personally, I think you kids are wasting your time. I'm fairly new on the so-called force around here, but I'd be bound to hear something about this if there was anything to it. Chances are it's just some directions for a treasure hunt game. The summer folks used to have an annual hunt and went all over the island. My advice to you is to forget it. Don't waste your time.”

“But, don't you think—” began Trixie seriously, but a nudge from Jim, who was sitting next to her, made her stop.

Abe finished his sandwich and coffee, and swinging off the stool, he adjusted the heavy leather belt that
held his revolver, said good-by to them, and left.

“I thought you'd better not say anything more to him,” Jim explained, “because he obviously doesn't take any stock in the letter at all. If we talked about it too much, he might get the idea that we're prying into something that isn't any of our business and upset our apple cart. As it is, he'll probably forget all about it.”

“You're right, as usual, Jim,” said Trixie. “We'll just keep quiet from now on. If there's anything to all this, we'll find out sooner or later.”

“I'm glad we told him about it, anyway,” said Diana. “Now we won't feel we're doing anything illegal.”

“Well, let's get back to the jungle,” said Brian. “We've got to finish clearing up before we can do anything more about the letter.”

As they passed The Moorings on the way back to Peter's, Trixie said, “Let's take just a few minutes off and see if we can figure out which building it is that lies between us and the Chain tree.”

“Okay,” said Peter as he headed into the driveway, “but I'm afraid it isn't going to be as easy as it looks. Don't forget, the trees have grown a lot higher and denser since that letter was written.”

“What was it the letter said about the tree?” Mart asked.

“I think it said halfway from the place where they used to sit to the Golden Chain tree,” Trixie replied.

“How in the world can you tell where they'd sit, with porches on practically every side of the house?” asked Honey.

“Well, my powers of deduction lead me to conclude that it couldn't have been on the west side of the house, because you can't even see Peter's property from there,” said Trixie, leading them around the house. “Let's see what we can see from the other side.”

When they reached the porch on the east wing, Jim climbed up the railing to get a better view. “If you stand here in the middle you can just make out the chimney of the tool shed through the trees, but I can't see the Chain tree.”

“It must be in that general direction, but we can't tell for sure until we do a lot more clearing,” said Trixie.

“We'd better get on with it, then,” said Diana, and they went back to Peter's and to work.

By dinnertime they had cleared as far as the gazebo and reluctantly called it a day. “We can easily finish up in another half day,” said Peter as they walked back toward his house. “So what say we take tomorrow morning off and look through the tool shed? I'll bet anything it's the place where the chart is hidden.”

“I'm all for that plan. It will give my aching muscles a chance to get back to normal,” Brian said, rubbing his back dramatically. “Football was never like this!”

“I don't hear the girls complaining. What's the matter with you? Getting old?” asked Jim.

“Well, Mart and I were doing all the heavy work, pulling those tough old vines down. All you and Peter had to do was cut them,” Brian answered grumpily.

“Oh, come on, everybody,” said Honey. “We're all tired and we're getting cross as bears. A good dinner and hot baths will revive us all, even you, Brian.”

“Honey, you're wonderful,” said Trixie, putting an arm around her friend. “You can always see what's making us out of sorts and come up with a solution. You're right, there's nothing like food to restore our spirits. So long, Peter, see you in the morning.”

“And speaking of food, tomorrow we'll bring a picnic lunch from our house to eat in the garden,” added Honey.

As they started home, the sun was beginning to set, and as it sank below the horizon, the sky was aflame with constantly shifting rose and purple colors.

“ ‘Red sun at night, sailor's delight,' ” said Trixie as they turned into their driveway. “Tomorrow should be another perfect day!”

The tool shed had originally been a summer kitchen, where, in the old days, all the cooking and preserving for the family had been done to keep the main house as cool as possible. Since the Kimballs had been living in the Oldest House, they had used the building for storing tools, screens, and storm windows. There was even enough space in the upper room for a kind of sail loft where Peter could hang his sails to dry, or store them during the winter months.

The next morning, when the Bob-Whites arrived, Peter showed them through the little brick building. When they reached the upstairs room, he noticed that some of the sail bags, instead of hanging from the wooden pegs along the wall, had been taken down and were lying in a disorderly heap in one corner.

“I'm sure I hung all those bags up last fall,” said Peter, scratching his head. “I remember distinctly when we took the boat out of the water after the last race, Dad helped me fold the sails, stow them in the bags, and hang them up. Now, who in the dickens could have taken them down, and why?”

“Are any missing?” asked Trixie as she lifted one of the bags and read the words, “Heavy Weather Mainsail,” stenciled on the side of the bag. “And this one next to it says ‘Heavy Weather Jib.' ”

“You mean ‘mains'l,' ” chuckled Peter. “That's the way the old salts pronounce it.”

“Aye, aye, Captain, ‘mains'l' it shall be, and what do you call this one, a jib or a jab?” Trixie countered with a twinkle in her eyes.