Trixie Belden and her best friend Honey are exploring an old gatehouse when they unearth a diamond hiding in the dirt. Has a jewel thief come to Sunnyside? Discover Trixie Belden, the teenage detective who has been charming readers for generations.

Trixie Belden loves to explore, and this time, she and Honey have their sights on a run-down old gatehouse. Far more than cobwebs and dust wait for them inside because buried in the dirt is...a diamond!

How could anyone have forgotten such a precious jewel? Trixie is <convinced< a thief walks among them. And this treasure hunt leads to two likely suspects: the manor houses'' new gardener or chauffer.

Detectives Trixie, Honey, and their best friend Jim reunite for a caper that sparkles with danger.

Peek into the adventurous world of Trixie Belden and unravel book three in the mystery series that has delighted decades of readers.

Autorentext
In the 1940s, Julie Campbell was running her own literary agency when Western Publishing put out a call for talented authors to write mystery series for kids. Julie proposed the Trixie Belden series and wrote the first six titles herself, but books seven through thirty-nine were written by a variety of writers all under the pseudonym Kathryn Kenny.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

A Discovery

“Oh, Moms,” Trixie wailed, twisting one of her short, blond curls around the pencil she had stuck behind her ear. “Do I have to write Brian and Mart? They’ll be home Saturday morning, and then I can tell them everything.”

Mrs. Belden looked up from the sweater she was knitting for Bobby, Trixie’s younger brother. “That’s the point,” she said with a smile. “Your older brothers have been at camp all summer, and you’ve never sent them anything but a few scribbled post cards.”

“There just wasn’t time,” Trixie said, staring down at the sheet of paper on which she had hastily scrawled:

Crabapple Farm

Sleepyside-on-Hudson, New York

Tuesday evening, August 22nd

“There just wasn’t time,” she repeated. “What with our going off in a trailer to find Jim; and, before that, the fire at the Frayne mansion, and before that, meeting Honey Wheeler, and--”

Mr. Belden, who worked in the Sleepyside First National Bank, had been trying to add a long column of figures. He interrupted Trixie, now, with a little frown. “Stop talking about it, Trixie. Write it. Your brothers will want to know all the news be-fore they get home. Why, they don’t even know that Honey’s parents bought the big estate up on the west hill last month.” He grinned. “You don’t have to go into details. Just prepare them for the pleasant surprise of Jim and Honey.”

With a stifled moan, Trixie licked the point of her pencil, and began to write.

Dear Junior Counselors:

I hope you saved every cent you earned at camp the way I did working at home this summer, because Dad says I can buy a colt from Mr. Tomlin next spring, and, if you help pay for his feed--the colt’s, I mean--I’ll let you ride him, sometimes.

I learned to ride this summer, because some rich people from New York bought the Manor House, and they have three horses and a simply darling daughter named Honey, who is my best friend. Dad talked to the principal and it’s all set--she’ll be in my class in junior high when school starts next month. Oh, woe! Only two more weeks before the grind begins!

Anyway, Honey and the Wheelers’ stable hand, Regan, who is super, taught me to ride. Honey was an only child, a poor little rich girl--I really mean it--until we found Jim. He’s old Mr. Frayne’s grandnephew and inherited half a million dollars from him. I know Moms and Dad wrote you that he died just before the old man-sion burned to the ground. Well, Jim ran away, then, because he has a mean old stepfather who wanted to get control of Jim’s inheritance. Honey and I went off searching for him last month in the Wheelers’ gorgeous trailer with Honey’s gov-erness, Miss Trask, who is a perfectly marvelous person, as nice as Regan, in spite of being a governess. And after we found Jim, Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler adopted him, so now Honey has a brother.

He’s just about the most wonderful boy in the world--almost a year younger than you, Brian--he had his fifteenth birthday in July--but he’ll be in your grade in high school, because he did two years in one and won a scholarship to college, too. But he isn’t a bookworm at all. He’s simply super at all sports and woodcraft. Even Re-gan says that he handles Jupiter, Mr. Wheeler’s enormous black gelding, better than anybody, and Mr. Wheeler is going to buy another horse for himself and give Jupe to Jim. He’s already bought him a gun and a springer spaniel puppy, Patch; so won’t you all have fun when you go hunting in the fall? Honey and I are going to make you teach us how to shoot.

Besides Jupe, the Wheelers have a strawberry roan who belongs to Honey, and a darling dapple-gray mare, named Lady, who belongs to Mrs. Wheeler, but she lets me ride Lady a lot. Mrs. Wheeler isn’t very strong. She’s slim like Honey, with the same huge hazel eyes and honey-colored hair. Mr. Wheeler looks enough like Jim to be his real father. They both have red hair and freckles and are tall and strong. Like Regan, they have quick tempers, but never stay mad long. Regan is only twen-ty-two and loves horses and hates cars, so Miss Trask does most of the chauffeur-ing. She is very brisk and sort of runs the whole estate, because, of course, Honey doesn’t really need a governess any more than I do. And Mrs. Wheeler can’t go out in the hot sun and see to it that the gardener keeps the grounds looking beautiful, or waste her energy planning menus with the cook, and things like that. The Man-or House is run like a small hotel, with more help than I think is really necessary, but they all love Miss Trask. She hires them and fires them!

Trixie stopped writing. She could think of a lot more to say, but her cramped fin-gers wouldn’t let her say it. She wanted to tell the boys about the exciting adven-tures she and Honey had when they solved the secret of the mansion and the mys-tery of the red trailer.

“I’ll give them the details over the weekend,” she decided sleepily as she handed the letter to her mother.

“That’s fine, Trixie,” Mrs. Belden said. “I’ll enclose your letter with mine. Now run along to bed, dear. And peek in on Bobby, will you? Make sure he’s on the bed, not under it.”

Trixie grinned. Her brother, on hot nights, preferred to sleep on the bare floor. And, ostrichlike, he kept thinking that since he couldn’t see anyone when he crawled under the bed, nobody could see him. “I’ll haul him out,” she told her mother and went upstairs.

The next morning, Trixie did her chores as fast as she could. Her father paid her five dollars a week for helping her mother with the housework and the garden; and, when Mrs. Belden was busy, Trixie had to keep an eye on mischievous Bobby. At this time of the year, Mrs. Belden was very busy canning the fast-ripening to-matoes. It was one of Trixie’s chores to gather the ripe ones each morning.

When Trixie brought in the last basketful her mother said, “Thanks, dear. Now run along and have fun with Honey. I’m sorry you’ll have to take Bobby with you, but I can’t keep an eye on him and the pressure cooker at the same time.”

“I don’t know which is more dangerous,” Trixie said, laughing.

“I’m not going,” Bobby announced when she joined him on the terrace. &ld…