The Mystery of the Missing Heiress

Jim, your own mother’s sister was Betje—Betje Vanderheiden! Seems to me I remember she went to Holland to live when she married. That was a long time ago, Jim. She married a big blond giant of a man... Wilhelm... Wilhelm.... I can't remember his last name.”
    “Was it Maasden?” Trixie asked anxiously.
    “I don’t think so. I don’t know. Let me see.... I should remember; I saw a picture of her not long ago.”
    “Can you remember where?” Trixie prodded. Mrs. Vanderpoel closed her eyes, thinking. “It wasn’t in an album. I remember holding it in my hand....”
    In that tin box, maybe?” Trixie asked, jumping to her feet in her excitement. “The one you have in your desk?”
    “Maybe if you’d give her a chance to think, Trixie, instead of dancing around her and making her nervous...” Mart suggested.
    “I’m sorry,” Trixie said, then added, “Is it in that box, maybe, Mrs. Vanderpoel?”
    She couldn’t understand why everyone, even Mrs. Vanderpoel, laughed.
    “Take it easy, Trix!” Mart chuckled. “You’re as nervous as a cat.”
    “Never mind, child,” Mrs. Vanderpoel said kindly, “I’m not at all sure it’s in the tin box in my desk, but bring it to me, and we’ll see.”
    Trixie brought the box. Then, with superhuman control, she sat quietly across the table from the kindly Dutch woman and watched as she took out the old Kodak pictures, looked at each one carefully, and set it aside.
    Some of them almost brought tears, and Mrs. Vanderpoel apologized. “I don’t know why I hold on to all these old pictures. They always make me sad. Oh, well, some of them make me glad, too, and that evens everything up. Here we are, Jim! Your Aunt Betje and her husband and their little girl.”
    She passed the faded picture across to Jim, and Trixie, looking over his shoulder, asked quickly, “Where are they now?”
    “Yes, Mrs. Vanderpoel,” Jim asked soberly, “and why didn’t you ever show me this picture before? I thought I hadn’t a relative in the world.”
    “You haven’t, Jim.” Mrs. Vanderpoel’s voice was sad. “That’s why I never showed you the picture before. A very tragic thing happened to all of them. The automobile in which they were riding went off the road and into a canal. They were drowned.
    No one said a word. Even Trixie was silenced. She just sat, holding the picture in her hand, turning it this way and that.
    “There’s something written on the back,” Honey said, breaking the silence.
    Trixie turned the little picture over, then handed it to Jim.
    “Betje and Wilhelm Maasden,” Jim read, “and Juliana. Sixteen Seestrasse, The Hague.”
    “There’s your Betje Maasden,” Jim said quietly to Trixie. “And I never saw her in all my life.”
    “It happened so many years ago,” Mrs. Vanderpoel reminded him. “All of fifteen years, I’d say. It’s too bad the date of the picture isn’t written on the back. People should always record the date. If I’m not being too curious, why all this interest in someone called Betje?”
    Then they told her of the marshland, of the story in the newspaper, of the title to the land, and of the search being made to find Betje Maasden.
    “It’s a wonder nobody thought of asking me before this,” Mrs. Vanderpoel said. “Someone from the library calls me about once a month to ask about old families in this part of Westchester County. There wasn’t any other kin to Betje Maasden but your mother, Jim. I guess, since she’s gone and your Aunt Betje is gone, that means the land properly belongs in your name.”
    “I guess so,” Jim answered, shaking his head sadly. “For a while I hoped maybe you’d turned up someone related to me.”
    Honey, sitting on the other side of Jim, put her hand on her adopted brother’s arm to comfort him. He smiled at her and said, “I guess that’s that.”
    “Except that you’ll have to have some more information for the office of deeds at the courthouse,” Brian said. “Don’t forget that strip of land is valued at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It seems as though it will be yours, Jim.”
    “If it is, it’ll go for a special dormitory for my orphan boys, and I’ll call it—”
    “The Betje Maasden Dormitory!” Trixie cried excitedly. “We’d better take this picture to the courthouse in Sleepyside.”
    “They’ll want to write a letter to The Hague and try to get some more information about the Maasden family,” Brian said.
    “I’ll write, too,”