The Gatehouse Mystery

afternoon?"
    "If he doesn't come back tonight," Trixie said, "we won't catch anything in our trap. I've a good mind to take some pills, so I'll be sure to stay awake. Coffee wasn't much help."
    "Great," Mart said. "Sweets for the sweet and dope for the dopes. Give me that saddle, Honey. I'll get Starlight ready for Brian."
    Brian himself appeared then. "Nothing to it," he said happily. "Nothing to it. Moms and Dad were upstairs putting Bobby back on top of the bed from his nest under it." He gave Honey his mother's pincushion. "You'd better keep this. You're the only one of us who seems to have a rightful claim to such objects."
    "It is exactly like the other one," Honey said, cramming it into the pocket of her jeans. "Have you ever thought of what will happen, Brian, when your mother tries to stick a needle into the one that's half-filled with the diamond?"
    "That can't happen," Trixie said firmly. "It just can't. Besides, Moms has one of her knitting fevers on now; and most of the day she's canning tomatoes. I doubt if she'll even look in her sewing basket until she's finished Bobby's sweater."
    They mounted their horses and, with Jim and Honey leading the way, started along the trail that led through the woods. "I hope you're right," Mart said to Trixie. "Let's pray that Bobby doesn't yank all the straps off his sunsuits between now and Sunday."
    "Do you think the mystery will be solved by then?" Trixie asked.
    "I think our prowler will come back," he said, "if that's what you mean."
    "And," Brian added, "if we haven't solved the mystery by the time the house party ends, we'll have to give the diamond to the police and confess our sins."
    "I suppose so," Trixie said mournfully. "I'd like to know where Dick is now."
    The trail ended at a quiet country lane which paralleled Glen Road on the other side of the woods. The Beldens galloped up to join Jim and Honey, who had reined in their horses.
    "When you have your driving lesson," Honey was telling Jim, "this is where Dick will take you. There's almost no traffic on it, and there's just that one farmhouse over there at the dead end of the road."
    "That's right," Brian agreed. "At school the instructors took us out here for steering practice as soon as we knew how to shift gears." He turned to Jim. "Say, that's an idea. If Dick doesn't come back tonight, I can show you the gear-shifting part of the course. There's nothing to it, really."
    "Swell," Jim said. "I do want to get the hang of it all as soon as possible."
    "How did it happen you never were exposed to the art of driving before?" Mart asked. "When I was ten I started plaguing Dad with questions until I got the general idea, and so did Brian."
    "My dad," Jim said in a low voice, "my own dad, died when I was ten."
    Honey laid her hand lightly on his tanned arm. "Jim had a very mean stepfather, Mart," she said softly. "He wasn't the kind who answers boys' questions about gear-shifting."
    Mart's face reddened with embarrassment. "Golly, Jim, I'm sorry," he mumbled. "That was a dumb question I asked vou. But then, I'm dumb."
    Jim turned around in the saddle to grin at him. "You're anything but that, Mart, and there's no reason for you to apologize. I'm too sensitive. Plenty of boys have had much worse breaks than I had, and very few of them could hope for the good luck of being adopted by such swell people as the Wheelers."
    "Oh, Jim," Honey cried gently. "We were the lucky ones. I was the most miserable person in the world until I met you and Trixie."
    He tapped her lightly on the cheek. "Don't correct your elders, little sister."
    "Oh, woe," Trixie interrupted. "Here comes that nosy Mr. Lytell. Let's gallop off in all directions."
    "What's eating you, Trixie?" Brian demanded. "He's a perfectly harmless character, and I'd like to say hello.
    You know, of course," he said to Jim and Honey, "that yon man on the swaybacked gray mare owns the little Glen Road store?"
    "That we do," Jim said emphatically. "In the days when I was a fugitive from my stepfather, he gave us some bad moments."
    "Trixie's right," Honey added. "He's a nosy old gossip, but we've got to be polite. If it weren't for him, we wouldn't get the Sunday papers; and Regan would quit if he couldn't relax over the comics." She raised her voice and said pleasantly, "Good evening, Mr. Lytell. How is Belle bearing up during this hot, sultry weather?"
    Mr. Lytell poked at his glasses with one hand and patted the mare's gaunt shoulder with the other. "She can