Research Holp

Notes for #24 The Mystery at Saratoga © 1979
Page # Quote
13 Honey: "Regan's disappeared!"
14
  • Trixie dashed out the door into the hot August sunlight.
  • The Wheelers had adopted Jim Frayne, an orphan whom Honey and Trixie had befriended when he ran away from his cruel stepfather, a mean and greedy man named Jonesy.
16 Trixie's six-year-old brother, Bobby, was a favorite of the young groom.
18
  • Dear Dan, When you find this, I'll already be gone. I have some things to take care of that may keep me away from the Manor House for quite some time. I wish I could tell you more, but for the time being, I have to keep seecruds, as Bobby Belden would say. Please believe that I'll be back as soon as I can. Until then, work hard for Mr. Maypenny, and keep making me proud of you. Your uncle, Regan.
  • Honey: "I asked Miss Trask to let us into Regan's apartment. Only Regan's shaving things and some of his clothes were missing."
19 Honey: "There was a note addressed to Daddy." Trixie: "What did it say?" Honey: "Practically the same thing as Dan's He did ask Daddy to try to keep his job open for him until he got back, but he'd understand if Daddy hired someone else."
20 Honey: "Jim and Brian and Mart aren't here. They're all counselors at camp, and they won't be back for a whole week." Trixie: "Try to remember if anything unusual happened today before Regan disappeared." Honey: "I told Regan this morning that Mr. Worthington was coming out here and that he was a very important horse breeder who owned racing thoroughbreds."
21 Honey: "But when the time came to show Mr. Worthington through the stables this afternoon, Regan wasn't around."
22 Honey: "He (Mr. Worthington) has a lot of money, which he got through speculating on stocks and real estate. He owns Worthington Farms, near Saratoga. His horses race at Saratoga, Belmont, and Churchill Downs. He got in touch with Daddy because he'd heard that Daddy will sometimes buy an injured Thoroughbred."
26 Trixie had forgotten about the sixth sense that Bobby seemed to have for things he wasn't supposed to know about.
27 Trixie had to admit that as well as she knew Regan, she knew very little about him.
29 Regan: "It wasn't so very long ago that I was hiding out in barns myself, wondering where in the world the next meal was coming from."
30 With Dan working for Mr. Maypenny and Di visiting her uncle in Arizona, Honey and Trixie had been left on their own.
31 Trixie: "Miss Trask told Honey that Regan has loads of vacation and sick time coming."
32 Trixie: "Miss Trask says there'll be no question of trying to find a permanent replacement until that time is used up. Even then, she says she'll give him a leave of absence if he's contacted her to let her know why he's away."
35 Dan: "We've never talked much about the past — his or mine. Those are unpleasant memories for both of us. But Regan was an orphan, just as I was. If you knew much about the kinds of places they let orphans live in, you wouldn't have to ask why he ran away."
39 Honey: "I had no idea that there were so many books on horses at the library!" Dan: "There are a lot of people in the area who own and raise horses, Honey — as you should know, since your own father is one of them." Trixie: "And there are probably just as many people who would love to be able to own and raise horses but can't afford to."
40 Book title: Off the Track: Behind the Scenes in the World of Professional Horse Racing.
41 Chapter Heading: Sport of Kings — and Rogues.
42 Dan: (reading) "One scandal of recent years stands out. The incident involved Gadfly, an exceptionally talented horse owned by J.T. Worthington. After the race, traces of a drug known to deaden pain in injured horses were found in Gadfly's blood and urine."
43 Dan: (reading) "The horse's owner and the trainer, and Gadfly himself, were barred from all the major tracks in the country for six months. No one was ever brought to justice for his part in what took place."
44 Dan: (reading) "This despite the fact that the chief suspect, a young groom, should have been easy to spot in any crowd because of his red hair!"
48 In her haste to leave the library without a confrontation with the librarian, Trixie rose too quickly and hit the back of the chair seat with her leg, sending the chair tumbling backward to the floor. Flustered, Trixie whirled around to set it upright, got tangled in the chair legs, and tumbled to the floor.
49 Honey: "You aren't clumsy at all, except when you get impatient and try to move too fast. It doesn't happen very often — at least not anymore. But we've all teased you a lot for being clumsy when it does happen, so we've made you self-conscious about it."
56 Trixie firmly denied to the other Bob-Whites, and usually to herself as well, that Jim was a "boyfriend."
60 Mrs. Belden: "That talent for hearing only what they want to hear is one that all my children seem to have."
66 Honey: "Dan doesn't feel that he should go. He said he feels that he can help his uncle more by staying here and trying to fill in for him, so that Regan's job will be waiting for him."
68 Honey bounded in through the back door, remember her manners just in time to catch the screen door before it slammed. Mrs. Belden: "If you didn't have the same blond hair and hazel eyes, I'd say you couldn't possibly be the same frail, timid little girl who moved in next door."
71 Tom: "It can't be easy for Bobby, being the youngest. He gets a lot of love and attention when everyone's around, but he also gets left alone a lot." Celia: "I have to go into Sleepyside to do the marketing tomorrow. I'll call your mother and ask if Bobby can ride along. That way he'll feel as though he'd had a small adventure of his own."
73
  • Tom: "You're a very nice-looking young lady, Miss Trixie Belden. And I'm an expert on pretty ladies. After all, I married one."
  • Trixie: "Do you know, even though I've loved horses for as long as I can remember, I've never seen an honest-to-goodness horse race?"
74 Honey: "Daddy says a race track has more genuine characters per square foot than anyplace else in the world."
84 Honey: "August is the big month at Saratoga because of the races."
87 They had entered a district that had a much different feeling about it — a feeling of sadness and poverty.
91
  • Honey: "I just can't believe that Regan would fix a horse race, and I can't believe that he was ever a compulsive gambler."
  • Trixie: "Those riding boots in the window of that pawnshop — they're Regan's!"
93 The boots had been Regan's pride and joy. They had been handmade, especially for him, out of a soft red brown leather. A fancy, scrollwork R was embossed on the top of each boot.
94 Regan: "You'd better believe a good pair of boots is important." Trixie had volunteered for extra chores at home and worked hard to raise the money for riding boots of her own.
96 Pawnshop owner: "Giving somebody good money for those boots was a dumb mistake on my part. I should know better. But the guy who brought these boots in didn't tell me a sob story. he just put them down on the counter and looked me in the eye and said, 'How much?'"
97 Pawnshop owner: "That was all he said, but he seemed so determined, somehow."
98 Pawnshop owner: "I don't think those boots were made for him in the first place. He was a real big guy. Unless he had very small feet for his size, he wouldn't have been able to cram his feet into those boots."
105 Honey: "You're not funny-looking, Trixie. If you don't believe me, you should hear what Jim said about you right before he left for camp."
106 Honey: "What he said was, 'As pretty as Trixie has been getting lately, I'm almost afraid to leave for camp for three weeks. When I come back, she'll probably be the belle of Sleepyside, with so many boyfriends lined up that she won't have time for old friends.'"
108 Mr. Wheeler: "I've arranged for the three of us to attend the workouts at the track tomorrow morning. It's something that most visitors don't get to see, because the security restrictions at the track are pretty tight."
109 Mr. Wheeler: "But Mr. Worthington was able to get clearance for us."
115 Honey: "And here I thought you and I were the only two people in the world who could talk gibberish and still understand each other perfectly!" (She's referring to racing talk.)
116 In one stall, a small, weathered man was working over a sleek, glistening horse. Mr. Worthington: "Meet my trainer, Carl Stinson. Carl has been with Worthington Farms for over twenty years."
118 Carl: "Name's Gadbox, son of Gadfly. I'm not going to make the same mistake twice. I'm not going to trust anyone else with this horse."
119 Carl: No thieving little groom like that Regan kid is going to dope him before a big race. He was a groom who worked for me seven years ago. He wasn't more than sixteen when he came to me looking for a job. A runaway. From what, I don't know. Didn't ask. Treated him like a son. Thought he'd be able to take over from me someday. He ruined Gadfly and almost ruined me."
123 Mr. Worthington: "I trust Carl so completely that I can leave all the details of running the stables to him."
124 Mr. Worthington: "All I do is give him a budget. He decides how to use it. All of these responsibilities fell to him gradually. I'd say that he's been fully in charge for the past fifteen years or so."
125 Mr. Worthington: "He'd like to be an owner himself. But although he's paid a fair salary, he needs the bonus to raise the capital to buy stock and set himself up in business. So you see, if my luck improves, I'll probably lose my trainer."
126 Trixie: "I guess my favorite for the first race is Freckles."
136 Cabbie: "I had a guy with bright red hair just this morning."
137 Cabbie: "He works at a boarding stable around here."
141 Trixie: "I'm sure the Regan we know couldn't drug a horse. The Regan of seven years ago might have been forced to do something that was against the law."
148 The girls saw Regan do something they had never seen him do before. Regan lost his balance and fell off the horse!
149 Trixie: "We were afraid something might have happened to you, Regan, because the pawnbroker's description didn't fit you at all." Regan: "It was Johnny, an exercise boy here at the stable. Johnny's not much of a talker, and I don't think he managed much schoolroom education, so most people treat him as though he's plain stupid. I was a little short of cash when I first got here. He offered to loan me some money, but he doesn't have much himself. So I asked him if he'd take the boots in for me and bring back the money."
150 Regan: "I plan to get my good boots back as soon as I get my first paycheck. You girls have done a first-rate detective job in tracing me here. Is this a pleasure jaunt or did you manage to trail me from Sleepyside to Saratoga too?" Trixie blurted out the rest of the story. Regan's face turned almost the same fiery red as his hair. The only sound for a few minutes was that of the currycomb, as Regan waited for his rage to subside enough so that he could speak.
151 Regan: "There are a few things you don't know. The race that Gadfly ran was a claiming race. Owners weed out their stables constantly to keep from falling into debt. Any owner who enters the race knows that if his horse wins, someone might claim him."
153 Regan: "The rumors going around before the race put a few other people besides me in a suspicious light. For one thing, there was a rumor that Mr. Worthington was having some financial problems. Also, Gadfly had been having a knee problem. The facts against Stinson are that he'd never really had a great horse to work with before. So he could have drugged the horse, knowing the finding of the drugs would disqualify any claim."
154 Regan: "Mr. Worthington could have drugged the horse to break the trainer's spirit. he would get revenge on Stinson for arguing with him and make it financially impossible for Carl to leave."
156 Regan: "I knew I couldn't live with the suspicions anymore. So I came back to clear my name." Trixie: "Have you found any evidence yet to help you do that?" Regan: "About the only thing I've turned up might be a coincidence. There was a tough-looking fellow hanging around. He has a long, ugly scar running down the side of his face."
157 Regan: "I want both of you to promise you won't tell anyone where I am. The only way I can hope to clear myself is to stay undercover a while longer."
161
  • Honey: "Trixie Belden, if the criminals we chase were half as sneaky as you are, they'd all commit perfect crimes and never get caught. Every time someone makes you promise to stay out of trouble, it turns out you've found a loophole."
  • Trixie: "You and I tend to trust people, because our experience tells us that most people are good and kind and will believe us when we tell them the truth. Regan's only had that since he took the job with your parents. He still has a lot of mistrust to overcome. If your parents try to contact him, Regan will run again."
163 Honey: "We're to have dinner tonight with Mr. Worthington, Mr. Stinson, and Mr. Stinson's daughter, Joan."
166 Joan: "Mr. Worthington just told him (her dad) that he's entered Gadbox in a claiming race."
167 Joan: "He pulled the same trick seven years ago, right after my mother died. It cost my father his self-respect and a chance to become an owner, and I always believed it cost me the man I was in love with. I'm being overly dramatic. I was only sixteen, so what I think of as true love may have been just a childish infatuation. After the race suspicion turned to Regan, and he ran away, without even telling me good-bye."
168 Honey: "Don't you have any idea why Mr. Worthington made the decision to enter Gadbox in the claiming race?" Joan: "He's afraid that Daddy will use the winnings to get out. I think he'll wait just a few more years, until Daddy is too old. Then he'll start letting my father keep his winning horses."
175 Honey: "You win, Trixie, if only because it would be a shame to let all that careful planning go to waste."
177 Regan knelt in the straw in front of the girls, his face a stony mask. Trixie felt herself cringing away from him. Regan: "Hey Trix, don't be frightened. I'm sorry I grabbed you out there. I didn't recognize you in the dark."
179 Man: "All we have to do is find that feed pouch. It's too bad there isn't some dumb kid around to take the rap for us this time." Regan: (charging forward) "You'll take the rap for this one yourselves!"
182
  • Trixie: "The man with the scar hit you (Regan) over the head with his gun. He and his accomplice put us in a horse trailer, and as soon as they put the drugs in Gadbox's feed bag, they're going to take us somewhere."
  • Louie forced Regan to lie on his stomache. He tied Regan's hands behind him, then bent his legs up behind him and tied his feet to his hands.
183 Trixie: "What are you going to do to us?" Scarface: "There's a deserted barn out in the country. We'll dump you there."
188 A sign said, Saratoga, 10 miles. Regan: "We might just as well wait right here."
189 The car that skidded to a halt on the deserted road was the Bob-White station wagon. Out piled Brian, Jim, Mart, and a big burly young man. Regan: "That's Johnny!"
191 Jim: "They (Wheelers) called your room early this morning. When there was no answer they had the desk clerk let them in. They got frantic." Brian: "Honey's parents called our parents and our parents called us at camp."
192 Brian: "We decided to skip the two-day counselors' party that ends the season to drive down here and try to save you silly necks." That line always annoys me.
194 Jim: "Johnny suggested we check out that deserted farm." Trixie: "Why that farm?" Johnny: "That used to be my farm. It was my father's, really. He raised horses there. Then he got real sick, and when he died. I had to sell the farm to pay the doctor's bills. The bank bought it, but they don't use it. It just sits there, all empty. Someday I want to buy it back."
200 Scarface: "You again!" He raised the gun and leveled it at Trixie. Before he had time to pull the trigger, Regan, emerging from nowhere, forced him to the ground.
203 Mr. Worthington: "I had a call from Officer Ryan. He says that Scarface has confessed that he drugged Gadfly and attempted drug Gadbox."
204 Carl: "That man with the scar talked to me seven years ago. Offered me a lot of money. Explained the whole deal — how they'd wait for a race where there was one heavy favorite and another sure for second place. then they'd do something to make sure number one was disqualified, and bet heavily on number two at tremendous odds. I turned him down flat. I should have turned him in. He threatened Joan's life if I told the police."
205
  • Carl: "When I told Scarface I wasn't interested, he told me he'd go to you (Regan). When the drugs were discovered, I just assumed."
  • Mr. Worthington: "I was impressed at the loyalty he (Carl) showed to me. I realized that I haven't shown the same to him."
206
  • Mr. Worthington: "I found the new owner and bought Gadbox back." He handed two pieces of paper to Carl. Mr. Worthington: "Here are the papers for Gadbox and Gadfly. It's your chance for you to prove yourself as an owner."
  • Regan: "I'm happy for you Carl. But I can't come to work for you. I have a home now in Sleepyside, and I want to go back. You know, if you need a good hand with horses, I'd be happy to introduce you to one of the best." (Johnny)
207 Regan: "Johnny could recommend a good piece of property where you could set up Stinson Farms." Carl: "I wish you'd reconsider, Regan. I hate to lose you again." Regan: "You won't lose me entirely. I plan to be around a lot." There was no mistaking the look he directed at Joan Stinson, a look she returned with a smile.
209 Honey: "We couldn't leave while Regan and Bobby were still missing." Trixie: "Regan. You're missing these." She revealed Regan's treasured riding boots. Honey: "Since Bobby has been missing all of us, and we promised to bring him a souvenir." She opened the other box. Inside was a pair of child-sized riding boots.
210 Jim: "I don't know how you can look so pleased with yourself, Trixie, when you've been in and out of danger so many times in the past few days." Trixie: Right this minute …" Trixie and Honey: "Everything's perfectly perfect."