The Aldens called a porter and got him to make up Annie’s room early so she could rest. “Stay here,” Violet said. “Your ankle hurts you and you’re very upset. Rest will do you good.”
“But what if the person who has my posters gets off the train while I’m sleeping?” Annie asked.
“You really can’t move fast enough to be much help,” Jessie pointed out. “We can, though. We’ll watch for you.”
“Leave it to us,” Benny said. “We’ll catch the thief very soon.”
Annie smiled at him and Violet realized her friend was feeling better.
“We’ll watch very carefully. If anyone gets off with a large package, we’ll call for help,” Henry said.
“What time does the train stop again?” Annie asked. Her voice already sounded sleepy.
“I have my timetable,” Henry said. “It stops in Salt Lake City at eleven-thirty-six p.m.”
“You won’t be able to stay awake that late,” Annie protested.
“We’ll wake up and then go back to sleep. Just like we did when you called us to help you last night,” Violet said.
Annie made a face. “I used an alarm clock. Anyway, that was very wrong of me.”
“We’d like to borrow your alarm clock,” Henry said. “You can sleep through till morning.”
Annie nodded and smiled. “You are very grown-up children. I feel like the youngest one here tonight.”
“We learned to take care of ourselves when we lived in our boxcar,” Violet explained. “Before our Grandfather found us and took us to live in Greenfield, we did everything for ourselves.”
The children went to bed early and Jessie set the alarm clock for eleven o’clock. “That will give us time to get up and dressed so we can watch the platform when we stop in Salt Lake City at eleven-thirty-six,” Jessie said.
The alarm went off at exactly eleven o’clock. Jessie and Violet woke up easily and knocked on the door of the boys’ room. They all pulled their clothes over their pajamas and got ready to station themselves by the doors of the train for the second night in a row.
“At least tonight we know a little bit more than we did,” Henry said. “I knew Annie wasn’t being quite truthful but I didn’t know she’d staged the whole thing.”
“You believe her now, don’t you?” Violet asked.
“Yes, I do,” Henry said. “Someone really stole the posters this time. I’m just not sure who that someone could be.”
“It could be Mr. Reeves,” Jessie said. “He is certainly interested in posters.”
“It could be Vincent,” Violet said. “He took money from Annie’s aunt and he . . . ”
“It could be that guy with the sunglasses and the beard,” Benny said. “He was talking to Vincent . . . ”
“It could be someone we don’t know at all,” Henry said. “But whoever it is would have a big package. Annie says folding the posters would lower their worth.”
“So we’ll keep a sharp eye out for large packages,” Jessie said.
The children nodded and stood waiting until the train pulled to a full halt.
They leaned out the door and looked up and down the platform. There were too many people moving around to be sure of seeing everything. “We’ll have to get out,” Henry said.
They jumped off the train and began moving up and down the platform, looking from one group of people to another. Suddenly, Jessie called, “I see the bearded man!”
“And he’s holding a big rolled package,” Violet said.
“Vincent is helping him,” Benny shouted. He began to run. At that moment, Vincent turned and went back into the train. The bearded man walked quickly away.
“Hurry, let’s catch him.” Jessie darted forward and caught hold of the man’s coat sleeve. She said, “Wait a minute, please. We want to talk to you.”
“Go away,” the man said.
Benny grabbed the back of his coat and Henry and Jessie tried to get hold of the rolled package.
The bearded man looked around at the crowd that was beginning to gather. He jerked the package away from the Alden children and threw it on the platform. Henry, Jessie, and Violet all ran for the package. Only Benny held onto the coattail and as the man pulled away from him, Benny was left holding a piece of the coat.
When the others came back with the package, Benny said, “He got away.”
“Never mind,” Jessie said. She bent down and untied the string around the rolled package. Unwrapping the paper carefully, she let the posters fall flat. “The important thing is we’ve got Annie’s posters back.”
“But the bearded man got away and we don’t know who he was or how he even knew the posters were on the train,” Benny said regretfully.
“Where is Vincent?” Jessie asked.
“He went back on the train,” Henry said. “I am not even sure he saw us.”
“We can talk about it in the morning,” Violet said. “Let’s get back to bed now before Aunt Jane misses us.”
But when they got back to their compartment, Aunt Jane was sitting up on the side of her bed waiting for them. She asked, “Where have you been? I was beginning to worry.”
“We caught the man who stole some posters,” Benny said. Then he corrected himself. “We caught the posters but the man got away.”
“What happened?” Aunt Jane asked.
“Annie has some valuable movie posters,” Violet answered. “She said they were stolen and they weren’t. Then later they were stolen and now we’ve recovered them.”
Aunt Jane smiled and said, “It sounds complicated. Maybe you can explain in the morning.”
“Tomorrow morning, we’ll tell you the whole story. It is complicated,” Henry said.
The next morning, the Alden children told Aunt Jane all about their adventures with Annie and the posters. When Henry got to the part about following Vincent, she nodded. “I knew something was going on but I thought it was some sort of a game you were playing.”
“No, it wasn’t a game,” Henry explained. Then he added, “But I still want to talk to Vincent. I think it is odd he talked so often to the bearded man. Maybe he knows more than he is telling.”
“I want to talk to Annie,” Aunt Jane said.
“Do you think we should wake her and tell her we’ve recovered the posters?” Violet asked.
“Let her sleep as long as she can,” Aunt Jane said. “Her ankle will heal faster if she is resting.”
They agreed that Annie would be very happy to have her posters back. Then Jessie said, “But there is still so much we don’t know.”
“Yes,” Violet said. “How could the bearded man know that she had the posters? Do you think Annie’s aunt could have anything to do with it?”
“It doesn’t seem like that could happen,” Jessie said. “On the other hand, how did Mr. Reeves know about the old posters coming into San Francisco?”
“We can probably find out more when Annie wakes up,” Benny said. |