The Mystery of the Queen's Necklace

“That safe wasn’t cracked.”
    “That’s what I’ve been worried about,” Trixie admitted. “You know that big fat roll of bills he asked Anne to put in the safe for him when we all checked our valuables?-Well—”
    “Somebody had to open the safe for him when he checked out!” Mart slapped his knee. “Trixie, you’re a whiz!”
    “But in order to steal the necklace and clean out the whole safe,” Trixie said soberly, “he must have had to pull a gun or something.”
    “Oh, Trixiè,” Honey protested.
    Miss Trask pressed her foot down harder on the accelerator. “You don’t think anything has happened to Andrew Hart?”
    “That’s the part I can’t figure out.” Trixie frowned. “The housekeeper couldn’t find him—that was after McDuff checked out—but then we figured he’d gone riding, since his horse was gone. But now Black Prince is back, and all three of them have disappeared—Jim, Gregory, and Mr. Hart.”
    “So McDuff has to stop by the castle to pick up the pickpocket, right, Trix?” Mart said. “And if we catch up with him, he’ll have to give us some answers.”
    “Right. He’s probably hired another car,” Trixie said. “Won’t he be surprised when we drive up in the Maroon Saloon—which he thought he had put out of commission!”
    “He was certainly lying about being an experienced mechanic,” Miss Trask sniffed. “Now, if he had removed the rotor from under the distributor cap, that might have stumped me.”
    “But—if he has a gun—” Honey shivered.
    “I do wish Jim and Gregory were here,” Trixie said. “But it’s still four against two. And we don’t really know that he has a gun. He could have found some other way to threaten Mr. Hart.”
    “We have five minutes before the gate opens,” Miss Trask said briskly, parking the Maroon Saloon in a lot around the corner from the castle. In thirty seconds, she and the Bob-Whites had joined the long queue of Sunday afternoon tourists.
    “I don’t see anything of Mr. McDuff,” Miss Trask said. “Trixie, perhaps there’s some other explanation for the disappearance of the necklace. Something quite innocent.”
    Honey brightened visibly. “Maybe Mr. Hart, Jim, and Gregory took it to show to that curator of the
    Royal Shakespeare Museum.”
    “I’m afraid not,” Mart muttered under his breath. “Shrink into the crowd, everybody, and look over there!”
    McDuff was getting out of a black car he had just parked across the street from the castle. Not seeming to notice the Bob-Whites or the Maroon Saloon, he strode toward the castle, whistling “And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye.”
    Trixie’s blue eyes shot sparks. “Oh, ye will, will ye?” she whispered.
    McDuff’s gaze was fastened on the heavy timber gate as the porter swung it wide. A crowd of tourists poured in, but Trixie put her finger on her lips and motioned the others to hold back. McDuff bought his ticket and walked through the arch.
    “We’ll stop them on the way out,” she said. “Both of them.”
    “Good thinking,” Mart agreed.
    Honey was hanging on to Miss Trask’s arm, and they both looked unhappy. Trixie was sorry that they were being disillusioned, and she was still worried about Anne’s father, but nothing could suppress the feeling of exhilaration that always came over her whenever the Bob-Whites were closing in on a criminal like Gordie McDuff. If only Jim were here , she thought. We really need him.
    It was Miss Trask who suggested a thorough search of McDuff’s new car for any evidence that he might have inadvertently left behind.
    “Not the jewels, of course,” she said. “He wouldn’t leave them in the car. But there might be something we could use to persuade the police he should be arrested. Otherwise he’s likely to talk them right out of it. You three keep your eye on the exit. I'll be right back.”
    “What a super idea!” Trixie exclaimed.
    “Sure is,” said Mart, turning back to the gate. “Are you sure you don’t want to call it the Trask-Belden-Wheeler Detective Agency?”
    It seemed like hours, but Trixie’s watch said one-thirty when McDuff and Gray Cap finally appeared around a bend in the winding, stone-walled drive. The gray, scar-faced man wasn’t wearing his cap, but Trixie would have known him anywhere, from that furtive, sidling walk with which he slipped through crowds. At the moment, however, the crowds were all inside the castle. Trixie, Honey, Mart, and Miss Trask were alone