The Mystery of the Emeralds

trying to find words to express herself. “I don’t like him, and yet—”
    “You’ve obviously got ambivalent feelings about him,” Mart interrupted, and he nodded his head very knowingly.
    “What kind of feelings?” Di asked. “Are you pulling another of your gags, Mart? Come on; be serious.”
    “I’m perfectly serious,” Mart answered with a straight face. “Ambivalent feelings are when you feel two ways about something or someone at the same time. Am I right, Trix?”
    “For once, dear brother, you’ve hit the nail on the head,” Trixie said. “Let’s start back to the house, and I’ll tell you what I mean.”
    As they started up the path toward the garden, Trixie continued, “I think Neil has a gentle side to his nature, and that’s why he took such good care of Miss Julie. On the other hand, he probably heard about the emeralds and figured he’d try to get to Rosewood Hall and take a chance on finding them.”
    “Miss Julie may have told him the same thing she told us,” Honey said. “Remember the day we were there, Trix? She said she never had liked jewelry, and she obviously wasn’t interested in having the emeralds, no matter how valuable they are.”
    “You’re right,” Trixie said, “and I’ll never forget how proud she looked when she told us she was ‘comfortably off.’ Neil probably felt that he had just as much right to hunt for the treasure as we did.”
    “Well, I follow you so far,” Jim said, “but what about his sneaking around Green Trees? How do you explain that?”
    “I was just coming to that,” Trixie answered. “Maybe when he found out about Mr. Carver being a cripple, he felt sympathetic toward him the way he did toward Miss Julie, and that day he saw the cars in the driveway, he may have just been checking up to see if Mr. Carver was all right.”
    “If that’s true, then what about today?” Mart asked impatiently. “What was he doing breaking in on you and Jim that way?”
    “He could really have thought we were stealing something from the mausoleum,” Trixie replied. “He called us ‘grave robbers,’ you know.”
    “Everything is ‘maybe,’” Brian cut in, “pure conjecture. I still don’t see why, if Neil is so interested in Mr. Carver, he didn’t go call on him and get to know him.”
    “You’ve got a point there, all right,” Trixie mused. “I don’t see why, either, unless he felt he would have to give up the emeralds if he found them. I’m confused! Don’t think I’m not! Let’s get on back to the house and talk to Mr. Carver about it.”
    As they approached Green Trees, they saw Edgar Carver slowly propelling his wheelchair down the garden path toward them, a worried look on his handsome face. Trixie called out to him that they were all right.
    “T began to be worried,” he said as the Bob-Whites came up. “I decided I’d better get down there and have a look, but it’s rather slow going in this thing.”
    “I’ll push you back to the house, and Trixie can tell you all about it,” Jim said, carefully turning the wheelchair around and heading back toward the house.
    “Well, I’ll admit we had kind of a close call,” Trixie said. “Just as we found the locket, Neil came in, and, before I could read the paper in it, we almost lost it— But there I go again,” she laughed, “getting the cart before the horse, as I always do!”
    “Neil? A locket? This all sounds very mysterious,’' Mr. Carver said. “Push me up that ramp at the end of the terrace, Jim.” He smiled. “Then we can all sit down and relax. In the meantime, Trixie can collect her thoughts so she can tell me what did happen.”
    As soon as they had gathered in the study, Trixie gave the locket to Mr. Carver, telling him how she had found it in the urn.
    “Have you ever seen it before?” she asked. “Do you think it was Ruth’s?” Her eyes were bright with excitement.
    Mr. Carver cradled the locket in his hand, looking first at the initials on the front and then opening it and gazing at the picture of the two young people.
    “I have no doubt it is Ruth and Lee. There is a striking resemblance between her and my mother— the same deep-set eyes and wide brow.”
    “Now look in the back,” Trixie urged him. “There’s the paper I started to tell you about. We never had a chance to read it, because Neil came in just at that moment and tried to get it away from us.”
    “Who is this Neil?” Mr. Carver asked. “I don’t think I’ve