The Mystery on the Mississippi

maybe the one that’s going to another planet.”
    “Are you serious, Mart?”
    “I sure am. What’s wrong?”
    “It’s classified, that’s what,” Brian broke in. “We’d have told you that back at the clubhouse if you hadn’t gone hunting Dan so suddenly. All that business at the factories is classified. Isn’t that so, Mr. Wheeler?”
    “I’m afraid it is. There’s an exhibit to be opened to the public later on. Say, I hope you’re not terribly disappointed. There are lots of other things to see in St. Louis. With the car you can hunt them out—”
    “Thanks, Mr. Wheeler,” Trixie interrupted, frowning at Mart. “We’ll find lots of good places to go. Don’t you bother about us for one minute.”
    “That’s good,” Mr. Wheeler said, relieved, and hurried to where Mr. Brandio waited in his car.
    The boys carried the luggage from the motel office down the wide walk that circled the pool. Children splashed there, calling delightedly to one another. Overhead, jet planes were taking off and landing. Taxicabs roared in to discharge passengers and to pick up others. Maids hurried about making rooms ready for new occupants.
    “This is our room right here,” Trixie told Honey, seeing the number on the door. Jim and Brian carried the girls’ bags inside. “You two are just next to us, and Dan and Mart are on the other side of you. Isn’t that right?”
    “Right,” Jim agreed. “Whistle when you’re ready. We’ll decide then what we’ll do today.”
    Inside their room, Trixie put her bag on a luggage rack. “I’ll just hang up my dresses. I don’t think I’ll need more than these two.” She opened the closet door, then whistled. “Say, Honey, I don’t believe the maid had quite finished getting this room ready. Someone must still be living here. At least, there’s something on this shelf that looks like a briefcase. I guess we were too anxious to get into our room—or the maid thought we were.”
    Honey stood on tiptoe and looked around the closet. “There aren’t any clothes here, nothing but that briefcase.”
    “I guess not. Maybe I’d better take it to the motel office. Some businessman must have left it. Heavens, I hope he hasn’t needed it. Of all the things to forget!” Trixie reached up to the shelf, and the briefcase fell to the floor, spilling papers. “Jeepers! It wasn’t zipped. Help me pick ’em up, please, Honey.”
    The girls squatted on the floor and hastily gathered the contents together. Trixie was aware only of some yellow sheets heavily scribbled with figures, and a medley of graph paper. She tried to stuff them into the bulging case. She was so absorbed in what she was doing that she didn’t hear the door open. A gruff voice brought her, startled, to her feet. “Hand that over! It’s mine, young ladies!”
    An angry-faced, dark-haired stranger grabbed the case from her hands roughly. His piercing black eyes flashed fire. “What do you mean by opening my dispatch case?”
    Trixie, alarmed by the man’s fury, couldn’t answer. She stood as though hypnotized. Honey, too, was surprised into speechlessness.
    The man tried hastily to stuff the papers back into the case, glaring at the trembling girls. “Don’t you know you shouldn’t touch other people’s property? What were you doing with my papers? Meddlers!” He gave Trixie a vicious nudge with his elbow.
    Honey recovered her voice. “We didn’t even touch your old papers!” she said coldly.
    “And we’ll thank you to take your belongings and get out of our room,” Trixie added. “There!” She slammed the door so hard it shook.
    Honey went to the window and watched the tall, foreign-looking man stride down the pool walk. “Of all the rude people! I hope he misses his taxi and misses his plane. I hope—”
    “Oh, rats, who cares about him?” Trixie answered. Honey turned from the window and laughed. “You do.”
    “I do not, Honey Wheeler. I just.... Well, what did make him act so mean? There must have been something odd in that briefcase.”
    “Yes. All those graphs were certainly strange. They had queer designs on them.”
    “Honey, this motel is right near all those airplane factories.”
    “He looked like a foreign agent, too!” Honey exclaimed. “Did you notice his eyes?”
    “They’d bore a hole right through the walls. Golly, he almost hypnotized me.”
    “Me, too. Gosh, Trixie, do you suppose he could be a spy?”
    “Who knows? He acted kind of strange, for sure.