The Mystery of the Millionaire

by Campbell, Julie

  Your TRIXIE BELDEN Library

  1 The Secret of the Mansion

  2 The Red Tra iler Mystery

  3 The Gatehouse Mystery

  4 The Mysterious Visitor

  5 The Mystery Off Glen Road

  6 Mystery in Arizona

  7 The Mysterious Code

  8 The Rlack Jacket Mystery

  9 The Happy Valley Mystery

  10 The Marshland Mystery

  11 The Mystery at Bob-White Cave

  12 The Mystery of the Blinking Eye

  13 The Mystery on Cobbett’s Island

  14 The Mystery of the Emeralds

  15 Mystery on the Mississippi

  16 The Mystery of the Missing Heiress

  17 The Mystery of the Uninvited Guest

  18 The Mystery of the Phantom Grasshopper

  19 The Secret of the Unseen Treasure

  20 The Mystery Off Old Telegraph Road

  21 The Mystery of the Castaway Children

  22 Mystery at Mead’s Mountain

  23 The Mystery of the Queen’s Necklace

  24 Mystery at Saratoga

  25 The Sasquatch Mystery

  26 The Mystery of the Headless Horseman

  27 The Mystery of the Ghostly Galleon

  28 The Hudson River Mystery

  29 The Mystery of the Velvet Gown

  30 The Mystery of the Midnight Marauder

  31 Mystery at Maypenny’s

  32 The Mystery of the Whispering Witch

  33 The Mystery of the Vanishing Victim

  34 The Mystery of the Missing Millionaire

  © 1980 by Western Publishing Company, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Produced in U.S.A.

  GOLDEN® , GOLDEN PRESS® , and TRIXIE BELDEN® are

  trademarks of Western Publishing Company, Inc.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  ISBN 0-307-21555-5

  All names, characters, and events in this story are entirely fictitious.

  CONTENTS

  A Find! ● 1

  Mr. Lytell Calls ● 2

  Laura’s Story ● 3

  Mysterious Mart ● 4

  A Real Detective ● 5

  A Spy! ● 6

  Trixie Trespasses ● 7

  The Green Car Returns ● 8

  Trixie Answers Questions ● 9

  McGraw Asks for Help ● 10

  Jumping to Conclusions ● 11

  The Getaway ● 12

  Trixie’s Reward ● 13

  A Find! ● 1

  WHOA, LADY!” Trixie Belden called, pulling back on the reins of the small black mare she was riding.

  Behind Trixie, Honey Wheeler reined in her strawberry roan and guided the horse up alongside Trixie’s on the narrow wooded path. “Is anything wrong, Trix?” Honey asked her best friend.

  In answer, Trixie turned her beet-red face toward Honey and blew a long breath upward, lifting the row of sandy curls that fringed her forehead. “If these horses are anywhere near as hot as I am, we’d better walk them for a while, or they’ll collapse,” she said.

  “You’re right,” Honey agreed, leaning forward in the saddle to pat Strawberry’s glistening shoulder. “It feels as though it’s going to be another scorcher.”

  Trixie wiped her brow with the back of her hand and looked at her friend enviously. Even in the middle of the worst heat wave in the history of Sleepyside-on-the-Hudson, Honey managed to look cool and neat. Her shoulder-length blond . hair was held back with a barrette at the nape of her neck, and even after an hour’s hard riding, not a single hair was out of place. Her skin had a rosy glow, and her hazel eyes sparkled—and, wonder of wonders, her cotton blouse still had neat creases running down the sleeves.

  Even in the middle of the woods, miles from the nearest mirror, Trixie knew that her own disheveled appearance was a startling contrast to Honey’s neatness. Trixie’s curly hair had a mind of its own, and by now it would be a mass of tangled, sandy-colored ringlets, with dripping darker strands on her forehead and in front of her ears. Her healthy complexion, she knew, now would be almost scarlet—but that wouldn’t hide the freckles that were scattered generously across her nose. Trixie looked down at her T-shirt, which had been clean and fresh that morning when she’d put it on. Only four hours later, it looked slept-in and had a big smudge of dirt across the front.

  “Oh, Honey, I don’t know how you do it,” Trixie wailed.

  Honey looked startled. “What do I do?” she asked, sounding a bit defensive.

  “You manage to stay clean and fresh and neat, no matter what. But I—” Trixie waved one hand at her T-shirt, offering her appearance as a conclusion to her sentence.

  In spite of herself, Honey giggled at Trixie’s woebegone expression. “You forget that I had years and years of doing nothing but looking neat,” she reminded her friend. “I learned that lesson well, but I’d trade it in a minute for all the things you got to learn and do during those same years.”

  Trixie leaned forward and stroked Lady’s neck, a guilty feeling welling up inside her. Even though Honey had spoken without a trace of self-pity, Trixie knew she hated to be reminded of the time before she moved to Sleepyside.

  Back then, Honey had been a “poor little rich girl.” Her father’s job took him and her mother away so frequently that they had decided it would be best for Honey to go to a boarding school. It was there that Honey had learned her poise and good manners, but she had suffered from the lack of a real home.

  Trixie, on the other hand, had lived her whole life at Crabapple Farm. Her family was far from rich, but it was a comfortable and happy existence. Trixie had grown up tagging along after her two older brothers, Brian and Mart, and looking after her youngest brother, Bobby. She hadn’t learned as much as she should have about etiquette, but she knew about softball and gardening and teasing and being teased.

  These two girls, from such different backgrounds, had become best friends the day Honey and her parents moved into Manor House, just down the road from Crabapple Farm.

  The huge, luxurious Manor House was the home Honey had always wanted. Although her parents were still away much of the time, Miss Trask, who had been hired originally as Honey’s governess, now kept the whole estate running smoothly.

  Honey had been a frail and frightened girl when she’d first moved to Manor House, but even then she’d had an inner courage that let her follow Trixie into any adventure.

  Their first adventure had involved befriending Jim Frayne, a young runaway. Then they found themselves tracking him down in upstate New York. Later, Honey’s parents had adopted Jim, giving Honey the older brother that made her home complete.

  There had been many adventures since then, and Honey’s courage had gradually overtaken her fear. Looking at her now, Trixie realized how much her friend had changed. Even the neat blouse and clean but faded blue jeans Honey wore were far more casual than the jodhpurs she’d worn for riding when she first moved to Sleepyside.

  Leaning over in the saddle, Trixie gave Honey an awkward hug. “I’m sorry I’m such a grouch. Hot weather always does that to me. I feel even grouchier when I see that the heat doesn’t bother you at all, but that isn’t fair.”

  “It isn’t fair, but I know exactly how you feel. In the winter, when the wind is howling and the snow is blowing, you put on a light jacket and walk clear over to my house and then want to go skating. All I want to do is bundle up and sit in front of the fireplace. I’m afraid I feel pretty grouchy then.”

  “I never knew it,” Trixie said in surprise. “You hide your grouchiness so much better than I do. You mean you hate the cold as much as I ha
te the heat?”

  “Probably,” Honey said. “Although I don’t know how we’d measure it.” She grinned teasingly. “Maybe we could have Brian invent a ‘hate-meter.’ ”

  Trixie picked up the thought immediately and began to expand on it. “What a great idea! Only it would be called a ‘hate detector.’ You know, like a lie detector. We’d put people in a chair and strap all those wires to their hands and then ask them questions: ‘Do you hate hot weather? Do you hate cold weather?’ And a needle would move up or down to show how much they hated it.

  “Then there would be some—oh, what do you call them?” Trixie closed her eyes and wrinkled her nose in an effort to remember. “Oh, yes— control questions. We’d ask about things that everybody loves or hates, so we’d have something to measure against. ‘Do you hate ice cream?’ Nobody could say yes to that. Or ‘Do you hate baby-sitting?’ Everybody would say yes to that one.”

  Honey was laughing so hard at Trixie’s wild imagination that she had to grasp the saddle horn to keep from sliding off Strawberry’s back. “Oh, Trixie,” she gasped, “that sounds like a wonderful invention. But you’d have to work harder on your control questions, I’m afraid. After all, I don’t hate baby-sitting a bit.”

  Trixie snapped her fingers in mock frustration. “Foiled again,” she said. “You do enjoy taking care of Bobby, because you don’t have to do it day in and day out for hours—and hours—and hours.” Trixie dragged the words out in a monotonous drone that made Honey start laughing again.

  “I don’t think baby-sitting would register as high on your hate-detector test as you’d like to pretend,” she observed. “Bobby’s a little cutie, and you know it.”

  Trixie shrugged. “I do know it. It really isn’t an awful job at all, especially since Moms lets me out of it about half the time. So I’ll have to think of another control question. How about ‘Do you hate a cold, wet can of soda pop on a scorching-hot day?’ ”

  “I think that’s a terrible control question,” Honey said, “but I think it’s a wonderful idea. Let’s ride over to Mr. Lytell’s store.”

  “Why, Honey, what a great suggestion! I never would have thought of it myself,” Trixie said, with exaggerated innocence.

  “I think you’ve been thinking of it since you reined Lady in, way back there. At least, I notice that’s the direction the horses have been taking. You must really want that cold drink, if you’re willing to go to Mr. Lytell’s for it. After all, I think he must register pretty high on your hate-detector test.”

  Trixie shook her head, making her sandy curls bounce. “It’s not my test that matters. It’s his. I think if Mr. Lytell took a hate-detector test, ‘Trixie Belden’ would register about the same as ‘mosquitoes,’ ‘quicksand,’ and ‘flat tires.’ ”

  “Poor Trixie,” Honey said sympathetically. “Mr. Lytell does seem awfully critical where you’re concerned, but you know he really likes you.”

  “He likes Miss Trask a lot better,” Trixie reminded her. “He never criticizes her.”

  “That’s true,” Honey agreed. “Miss Trask is exactly the sort of person Mr. Lytell likes best. She’s calm and sensible and quiet.”

  “And I’m excitable and scatterbrained and noisy,” Trixie admitted.

  “No, you aren’t,” said Honey, who was always quick to defend her best friend—even to herself. “That is, you are excitable, and sometimes your excitement makes you noisy, but I don’t think you’re the least bit scatterbrained. We couldn’t have solved as many cases as we have if that were true.”

  Trixie’s blue eyes sparkled as she thought about what Honey had just said. Beginning with the time when she and Honey had located Jim Frayne’s hidden inheritance and then tracked him down to tell him about it, the two girls had been involved in one fascinating mystery after another. Among other things, they had located emeralds and stolen diamonds, discovered a ring of counterfeiters, and returned a precious Ming vase to the Sleepyside art museum.

  Along the way, they’d made new friends while they were solving mysteries. Jim Frayne had been the first—and, in Trixie’s mind, the most important. Then they’d solved the mystery of Di Lynch’s Uncle Monty, and black-haired Di had become a member of their circle. After that, the girls had discovered the truth about Dan Mangan, and he, too, had been added to their group.

  Trixie and her two older brothers, along with Honey and Jim and Di and Dan, made up a club called the Bob-Whites of the Glen. The members were devoted to having fun and helping others with special projects. All of the members got involved, too, in solving the mysteries that Trixie and Honey uncovered.

  Remembering that fact, Trixie sighed. “You say I can’t really be scatterbrained because we’ve solved so many mysteries. But Mart would say that we only get into the mysteries because I am scatterbrained. Then the logical minds—

  Mart’s and Brian’s and Jim’s—take over to solve them.”

  “That isn’t what Mart would say at all,” Honey told her. “Mart would say, ‘Propensity for misadventure is characteristic of the distaff portion of the Bob-Whites, whereas the perspicuity necessary for the ultimate resolution is a commodity inherent in the male membership.’ ”

  Trixie’s jaw dropped as she listened to Honey’s perfect imitation of Mart’s long-winded way of saying things.

  Honey laughed at Trixie’s astonishment. “I’ve been practicing,” she admitted. “I get tired of having to have Brian or Jim interpret everything Mart says.

  “Anyway, even if Mart did say what I just said he’d say, you know he’d just be teasing. Mart’s sensitive about being only eleven months older than you are—and about looking enough like you to be your almost-twin. That’s why he puts on such superior airs. He really loves the mysteries as much as we do, but he’s not half as good at solving them.”

  The girls had arrived at Mr. Lytell’s store, but Trixie didn’t dismount immediately. Honey’s words had reminded her of something she’d been meaning to tell her friend. “Maybe Mart has got frustrated with trying to solve mysteries, so now he’s decided to be one. That would explain the strange way he’s been acting lately.”

  “What do you mean, Trixie?” Honey asked. Then she giggled. “Maybe I should ask, ‘How can you tell?’ Mart’s always a little hard to understand.”

  Trixie shook her head. “Not like this,” she said. “He walks around with a smug little smile on his face all the time. Well, not all the time. In fact, he spends most of his time locked up in his room. When someone knocks, there’s the sound of papers shuffling and then a long pause before he says, ‘Come in.’ He’s been watching the mail like a hawk, too.”

  “That is strange,” Honey said. “Could it be a girl, do you suppose?”

  “That’s what I thought at first. That would explain the funny smile. And he could be shut up in his room writing long, mushy letters and checking the mail for answers. But Di is his favorite girl. You know that. And he doesn’t act any differently around her these days.”

  “It must not be a girl, then,” Honey decided. “I mean, it must not be a girl who’s making him act funny. Because if Di were the girl, he’d act funny around her. And if Di weren't the girl, he’d still act funny around her. I mean, if Di weren’t the girl, he’d act differently from the way he did when she was the girl. What I mean is—”

  “I know what you mean,” Trixie said, laughing, “although I’m probably the only person in the whole wide world who would know what you mean. I think you’d better have a nice, cold can of pop to cool off your fevered brain. Come on!” She swung down from the saddle, tied Lady’s reins to a low-hanging tree branch, and walked toward the entrance of the store. Honey, laughing at her own garbled attempt at an explanation, followed.

  At the doorway, Trixie paused, straightened her back, and put on her most dignified expression. “This time,” she whispered, “I’m not going to do anything to make Mr. Lytell upset with me. I swear it!”

  The girls walked into the store and paused for a moment, their ey
es adjusting to the dim light. Trixie’s eyes swept around the small room, taking in its familiar contents. Mr. Lytell’s store was very different from the big supermarket in Sleepyside. There, the lights were bright. The shelves were jammed with cans and boxes. Here, on the other hand, the shelves were sparsely stocked. Mr. Lytell didn’t carry the wide range of items of a big store, because most of his business was in loaves of bread, cartons of milk, and cold pop—things that people in the surrounding neighborhood ran out of or decided they wanted on the spur of the moment.

  Mr. Lytell spent most of his time in the back room and only came out when he heard the door open and close.

  He came out now, and Trixie was struck again, as she was every time she saw him, by how unfriendly he looked. He peered at the girls through his wire-rimmed spectacles.

  “Good morning, Mr. Lytell,” Honey said politely. Trixie remained silent, wondering whether, despite her good intentions, she could really manage to buy a can of pop without doing something to make the storekeeper angry.

  Mr. Lytell only grunted a greeting, and Honey, turning quickly to the cold-drink cooler, rolled her eyes at Trixie. If Mr. Lytell was in too bad a mood even to be friendly to Honey, the girls’ best bet was to get their pop as quickly as possible and leave the store.

  Honey slid the door of the cooler open and took out a can of orange pop. Then she stepped out of the way, and Trixie stepped forward to look over the selection. She moved a few cans out of the way and peered at the ones behind them. She saw orange, grape, and cola, but those weren’t what she wanted.

  “Do you have any strawberry pop, Mr. Lytell?” she asked, turning to look at him over her shoulder.

  “What I have is what’s right there in that cooler, young lady, and if that doesn’t suit you, you’ll just have to go somewhere else,” Mr. Lytell snapped.

  Trixie turned back and quickly pulled out a can of orange pop. Mr. Lytell’s tirade, once started, was not to be ended that easily, however. “I suppose if you had your way, I’d stock every kind of pop under the sun, just so it would be there if you wanted it. Makes no difference to you how high my electric bill is, either. You’ll just keep that cooler door open all day, while you try to find what you’re looking for.”