The Red Trailer Mystery (15 page)

“What jack?” Jeff demanded sourly. “If you see one lying around you’ve got better eyes than I have. I tell you, that redheaded punk—”

Al lost control of himself then. “Stop yapping about that kid! It’s getting on my nerves. He runs away from state reform school and stumbles on this old wreck. Sees a lot of trailer equipment lying around, but does that mean anything to him? How could it, blockhead? Unless he ran away with a walkie-talkie he doesn’t know about our racket or that a red trailer is missing. Sure he sees the van, but what of it? This old barn isn’t pretty but it’s got a stone foundation and a good roof. Why doesn’t the kid figure this is a legitimate moving and storage business we’re in? That’s what it says on the van. We charge cheap rates because we wait till we get a van full, then deliver the items all at once instead of making a lot of expensive trips up and down the river.” He threw away his cigarette and ground it savagely under his heel. “I don’t know why I tell you the spiel all over again. Thought you memorized it once so you’d know what to say if anyone stopped you on the road.”

“You’re the one who’s wasting time now,” Jeff said sarcastically. “You’re the brains of the outfit and yet you let that kid get away after he hid up there last night listening
to every word we said before we discovered him.”

Al’s narrow, too-close-together eyes glanced up at the loft, and Trixie’s heart missed a beat. “He was sound asleep,” he said, but he didn’t sound sure of himself any more. “I can tell whether a kid’s playing possum or not. And even if he did hear what we said, he’s not going to run to the troopers. They’d clap him back in reform school before he began to sing.”

“Reform school!” Jeff laughed hollowly. “If you’d ever spent any time in one of them places, you’d know better. Asleep or awake, whatever he was when we saw him stretched out up there, he ain’t got the look. And punks who run away from the law don’t carry silver cups and big heavy Bibles with them.”

Trixie and Honey stared at each other. Honey formed the word, “Jim,” with her lips and Trixie nodded. And then she saw not three feet from her face two impressions in the dust. One was oblong as though a heavy book had been placed there recently, and the christening mug would have fit exactly into the circular one beside it.

She pointed excitedly to the impressions, but Honey, grabbing her arm, was pointing in another direction. And Trixie saw with a thrill of pride that someone had tossed the missing jack into one of the empty stalls
before which Al was standing. That someone had to be Jim!

Trixie felt like laughing and crying at once. Only the night before Jim had hidden in this very loft listening to the plans of two trailer thieves! He had not only managed to fool them by pretending to be sound asleep when they finally discovered him, but early that morning he must have taken the jack from the van and not long ago come back to loosen one of the tire valves so that the men’s scheme would be ruined by a flat tire!

He really is the most wonderful boy in the world
, she decided silently.
And the best part of it is that he can’t be too far away now!

The men were arguing in loud voices, and Trixie peered through the crack again.

“I can give you the story of that redheaded kid,” Jeff was shouting. “He lives up there in that big white farmhouse. His old man gave him a licking on account of he played hooky from Sunday school. So he runs away and hides in this barn. A couple of nights away from home and he’s had enough. So he goes back, but first he starts a nice slow leak on us and swipes our jack just for the heck of it. I can tell a farm boy when I see one.”

Al’s face turned pale. “He did look husky,” he admitted slowly. “And unless he lives around here, how would he have known about this barn? It was only sheer luck that I saw it myself when I was covering the top of the van with branches so it wouldn’t be noticed from the road.”

“That’s what I keep trying to tell you,” Jeff bellowed triumphantly.

“You fool!” Al hissed. “If you were smart enough to figure all that out why didn’t you tell me before we got stuck in the woods right off the main highway two miles from a trailer we’d just dismantled?”

“You didn’t give me a chance,” Jeff snarled. “I wanted to tie him and gag him last night, remember? But I didn’t think he’d pull no trick on us right away. I figure like you, maybe he doesn’t guess we’re not in a legit racket. I don’t remember just what he heard us say last night.”

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I ain’t too worried about the kid myself until we get that flat, and I open the van door and find the jack missing.”

Suddenly Al, losing control of himself completely, hit him. Jeff staggered backward from the blow on his chin, and Al slapped him hard across one cheek. “You numbskull,” he screamed. “I can tell you what he heard us say last night. He heard us say the hullabaloo over
that missing red trailer was ruining our racket. People aren’t careless any more. They don’t park on side roads with their keys in the tow car and go off for a nice long swim. So we have to think of something else or quit. We decide to try the old hitchhiker gag. You heard the manager back at the cafeteria talking about a reservation for a salesman who’s due to deliver a big luxury trailer to Autoville around noon. So I wait farther up the highway and thumb a ride from the driver. I show him a short cut and when we turn into the side road I tap him lightly on the head. Then you drive up alongside and we hitch the trailer to the van. We leave the man in the tow car on the side road and we take the trailer into the woods.”

Al’s voice had risen to an outraged bellow. “That’s what the redheaded kid heard us say! Why didn’t you tell me he looked like a farm kid? Don’t you see, blockhead, he stole the jack this morning, then he came back a little while ago and fixed that tire so we’d frame ourselves nicely. The air leaked out just enough so we could hitch ourselves to the trailer and get into the woods a way, but there we are, just as the kid planned it, stuck to the evidence that will land us both in jail.”

Jeff’s face turned white between the red welts on one cheek. “Th-then you m-mean the tr-troopers are on their way here n-now?” he stuttered.

“Of course not,” Al roared. “They would have been waiting for us when we came back for the jack if the kid had notified them. Like you say, the boy did it just for the heck of it, and now he’s having a good laugh. Here we are with all this loot and no means of getting away with it. But the troopers have probably found the van by now, and sooner or later the redhead will lead them to this barn.”

Jeff rubbed his reddened cheek dazedly. “I’m getting away now,” he said slowly. “Loot or no loot.”

“How far do you think you’ll get?” Al sneered. “You with your prison record! If you don’t show up when it’s time for you to go on duty at the cafeteria, the troopers will put two and two together and get right on your trail. And that’s just what I want them to do, except that I don’t want them to find you until I’ve had a chance to board a plane and fly to the coast. If you take it on the lam now, they’ll pick you up before dark, and then you’d squeal, you rat, and I wouldn’t have a chance.” He laughed and took a menacing step toward Jeff.

Jeff cowered against a stall door. “Wh-what are you going to do?”

“Tie you up and gag you, of course,” Al said quietly. “And then I’ll put you in the big oat bin. Nobody will think of looking in there when the kid gets around to
showing the troopers our hide-out. And when they do find you, you won’t have enough breath left to sing.”

Jeff covered his face with his hands and burst into a loud wail that went on and on.

“Honey,” Trixie gasped above the scream. “He’ll smother! That Al is a terrible person. We’ve got to do something to stop him.”

“Sh, sh,” Honey cautioned. “As soon as Al leaves, we’ll open the bin and then go for the troopers. I can’t imagine why Jim didn’t tell them to be here waiting for those thieves when they came back for the jack.”

“I can,” Trixie whispered back. “Jim couldn’t go to the police station without being asked a lot of embarrassing questions about who he was and where he lived. The only thing he could do to stop those men was to fix that tire so the van would get stuck while it was hitched to the stolen trailer.”

“I know,” Honey argued. “But he could have telephoned.”

“How could he?” Trixie demanded. “There aren’t any phones in the woods. You know as well as I do now, Honey, Jim’s hiding somewhere close by. He knew they planned to steal a trailer which was due to arrive at Autoville around noon. He had to time everything perfectly so he stole the jack and then waited until he
saw Jeff coming across the fields from Autoville—the same way we came down here. Then he slipped into the barn and loosened the tire valve.”

Honey frowned. “He took an awful chance. If those men hadn’t got to accusing each other, they might have jacked up the van, changed the tire and got back here safely. As a matter of fact, in all this rain, I’ll bet the troopers haven’t discovered that stolen trailer yet. It’s not like Jim to risk letting those men—” She stopped as Jeff, right in the middle of a shriek, suddenly lurched forward and catching Al off guard, tripped him.

In a minute both men were sprawling on the barn floor and clouds of dust floated up to the loft as they struggled and fought. They made so much noise thrashing about and cursing hoarsely that Trixie and Honey felt perfectly safe in creeping to the edge of the loft to get a better view of the battle. At last there could be no doubt that Al, the stronger of the two, was going to win. While the girls watched, fascinated, almost sorry for Jeff, he suddenly went limp with exhaustion.

In another moment Al was securely trussing him up with rope, muttering all the while, “This will hold you, my fine jailbird! I never had any intention of giving you a share of the loot. But now it’s yours, all yours.” He ripped a strip from a burlap bag and
crammed it into the unconscious Jeff’s open mouth.

The clouds of dust created by the struggle made the air in the loft almost unbearable.
If I can’t cough or clear my throat soon
, Trixie thought in an agony of suspense,
I’ll choke to death
.

And then Honey sneezed. Frozen with fright to the edge of the loft, the girls stared downward as Al’s bushy-haired head fell back and his fox-like face turned up to meet their terrified gaze.

If it hadn’t been such a tense moment, Trixie knew she would have burst into hysterical laughter for the expression on Al’s face proved that he was as startled as though Honey’s suppressed sneeze had been an atom bomb explosion. For one long minute he stared up at them, mouth gaping, and then a crafty look crept into his narrow eyes.

“So it’s the rich little girls in the silver trailer,” he said, quietly moving toward the rickety ladder. “Snooping again, eh? Well, well, well, we’ll have to correct that bad habit. Nice young ladies don’t snoop. I could use some ransom money to pay for my expensive trip.” He placed one heavy foot on the first rung. “That governess of yours won’t argue when I tell her to leave a fat roll of unmarked bills under a stone at the Autoville entrance tonight. She won’t notify the police either.” He reached up a grimy hand and touched one of Honey’s shoulder-length curls. “Not when I send her a lock of your pretty hair with the note, eh?”

Honey shrank back as though she had been
slapped and Trixie thought wildly,
This is all my fault! I should never have exposed Honey to the danger of kidnaping. I should have come here alone. He wouldn’t bother with me, I’m too poor
.

Out of the corner of one eye she saw that Honey was sick with terror, on the verge of fainting. All her life she had grown up with the fear of being kidnaped, and now it was happening. The sight of Honey’s white, stricken face did something to Trixie. She sat up abruptly and, dangling her legs over the edge of the loft as though she were not the least bit frightened, said coolly, “If I were you, Mister Al, I’d get on that plane you were telling Jeff about just as soon as you can. I happen to know the state troopers are on their way over here right now.”

Al chuckled and took another step up the ladder. “I always said you were smart,” he told her. “Jeff kept saying you were nothing but a dumb little girl, but I knew better. You found our first hideaway, didn’t you? But you’re not smart enough to trick me into passing up a nice chunk of ransom money. If the state troopers knew about this hideaway, they would have been here long ago.”

Trixie swung her legs nonchalantly. “Don’t be too sure of that. That redheaded boy who let the air out of
your tire is one of our best friends, and he’s not dumb either. State troopers are like you and Jeff in one respect. They think kids are always playing cops and robbers.” She leaned forward slightly. “
Unless
they have absolute proof that it’s not a game. I should think,” she finished airily, “that Jim has had just about enough time to lead them to your van and the stolen trailer. They must be on their way here now.”

Fear flickered in Al’s close-set eyes, but he moved up another rung. “Jim,” he muttered sarcastically. “You made up that name. You never heard of that redheaded boy until an hour ago.”