The Mystery of the Queen's Necklace

I rode out to look for him.”
    “So that’s why nobody was in the stables when we came to look for Jim,” Trixie said.
    “Only there was someone there,” said Honey, shuddering.
    “Poor Mr. Hart!” Trixie exclaimed. “No wonder he doesn’t think much of tourists—look what happened to him when he took us in! I hope there’s some way we can make it up to him.”
    As the whole group headed back to the parking lot, Trixie filled in Jim, Anne, and Gregory on how' she had figured out that McDuff and Gray Cap had been working together all along. “It was Gray Cap who first spotted us in the Wax Museum,” she decided. “He overheard Honey talking about her necklace and tried to swipe it. Failing that, he started following us.”
    Like Gregory and Honey, Jim was full of admiration for Trixie’s detective skills. “So McDuff was Gray Cap’s smooth-talking partner,” he mused.
    “Right,” said Trixie. “You could tell that everything that man said, true or false, was designed to gain our confidence so he could be our guide and tell Gray Cap where we were going to be.” She was silent for a moment. “And Miss Trask, what you said before about a Scottish brogue reminded me of something else Gray Cap overheard us saying in the Wax Museum. We were talking about how bloody Scottish and English history was, and Jim said something about you liking the sound of the Scottish accent. So that’s why McDuff talked with one—only it was fake, like everything else about him!”
    “No wonder it got on my nerves,” Miss Trask said.
    Honey still looked troubled. “Trixie thinks that either McDuff or Gray Cap pushed me off that curb in Piccadilly Circus so that McDuff could pretend to save me,” she said unhappily. “But I just can’t believe that anyone would do such a horrible thing.”
    “Maybe he was just an opportunist,” Mart suggested seriously.
    “What do you mean?”
    “He could have been making the best of an opportunity that came his way,” said Jim. “With both guys keeping tabs on us, they probably figured that sooner or later something was going to happen that would give McDuff the chance to gain our confidence. So maybe McDuff really did save your life, Honey.”
    Honey rewarded the boys with a radiant smiler “I guess we’ll never know for sure,” said Trixie, leaning against the Maroon Saloon. “I just can’t get over how much trouble those two took to get at a necklace. They must have assumed it was horrendously valuable. That reminds me,” she said, turning to Gregory, “did you find out anything more from the curator at the theater museum?”
    “I’ve invited him to dinner tonight so he can examine the necklace after we get it back from the police and before you take it back to the States,” said Gregory. “That is, if you have no objection.”
    “I’m just thankful we have the necklace to show him,” Honey said. “And Mother will be here for dinner, too. She’ll be fascinated at what we’ve been able to find out—that the necklace was copied from Queen Elizabeth’s and used in Shakespeare’s plays.”
    “I’m afraid that’s only a hypothesis,” said Gregory. “But Mr. Cowles, the curator, told me he wished he had the funds to purchase a historical piece like that for the museum. Unfortunately, he’s barely able to keep the museum going. We all depend a great deal on the generosity of foreign visitors, though people like my father find that a hard pill to swallow.”
    “Well, I think it’s a perfectly marvelous hypotenuse,” Trixie said enthusiastically. “And I’ll bet Mrs. Wheeler will be so thrilled that she’ll let Honey give the necklace to the museum!”
    Everyone groaned at Trixie’s rendition of “hypothesis”—and even more at her impetuous offer of the Hart family heirloom. Everyone, that is, but Honey.
    “That’s a super idea,” she said, smiling at Gregory and Anne.
    “Father will be terribly impressed if you do something like that,” Anne told her. “That’s bound to convince him that tourists are absolutely smashing.”
    “ Some tourists, at any rate,” said Gregory warmly. “You and Anne will have to come to Sleepyside-on-the-Hudson sometime,” Honey said, “to visit your American cousins.”
    “That’s all of us Bob-Whites,” Trixie told them, “including some you haven’t even met yet.”
    “International relations seem to be looking up, old girl,” said Mart with an infuriating grin at Trixie.
    “About time, eh,