Josie O’Gorman
and the
Meddlesome Major

The package tore and disclosed a mass of filmy lace.—Chapter VII

Josie O’Gorman
and the
Meddlesome Major

By
Edith Van Dyne
Author of
The Mary Louise Stories,
and Josie O’Gorman

Frontispiece by
Isabel Bush Mack

The Reilly & Lee Co.
Chicago

Printed in the United States of America
Copyright, 1924
by
The Reilly & Lee Co.
All Rights Reserved
Josie O’Gorman and the Meddlesome Major

CONTENTS

Josie and the Meddlesome
Major

CHAPTER I
JOSIE BECOMES A SALES GIRL

“Not much on looks!”

“Who?”

“That new girl the boss has just hired. Got no style to speak of. I reckon they’ll begin her at the notion counter. It don’t take much looks to hold down a job there.”

“Brains, perhaps!” suggested a trim looking girl with twinkling grey eyes and wavy brown hair, noticeable in that it was not so elaborately coiffured as her companions’. “My opinion is, Gertie Wheelan, that Mr. Burnett thinks more about brains than beauty where his business is concerned.”

“Don’t you fool yourself, Jane Morton. He may hire a plain one now and then because the good lookers give out, but take it from me, there ain’t a man livin’ that don’t fall for beauty.”

“Well, since you are already so pretty, Gertie, suppose you give us folks that run to brains a chance to doll up a bit. You’ve been standing in front of that looking glass for ten minutes and lunch hour’s most up,” said a stylish little black-eyed girl who might have laid claim to beauty as well as wit.

“Stop shoving me, Min,” begged Gertie. “Here, get in front of me. I can see over your head, you are such a little thing.”

“I’m young yet,” snapped back Min. “By the time I am as old as you are I may grow some.”

Age was Gertie’s tender point and Min’s sally drew a delighted laugh from the girls assembled in the employees’ room of the department store of Burnett & Burnett.

While they were talking and laughing and primping a young girl quietly entered the room, so quietly that she had removed her hat and wrap and put them away in the locker room before the group around the mirror was even aware of her presence. It was the new girl and Gertie Wheelen was right—she was not much on looks, even less than that according to the standards of the employees of Burnett & Burnett. She was small, sandy haired, and her features, while not displeasing, were without distinction; eyes pale blue and nose more or less shapeless. Her mouth showed character and her teeth were white and even. Her complexion was good, being clear and healthy with a sprinkling of freckles over the formless nose.

Gertie was wrong about the lack of style. Josie O’Gorman, while not modish, had style; a style that was all her own. She managed by arrangement of hair and cut of gown to look enough like other persons to pass unnoticed in a crowd, and yet Josie’s dress changed but little with the passing fashions and her intimate friends declared that the only alteration of hair dressing she ever indulged in was to show her ears or not show her ears according to the latest decree of fashion. Her dress was always immaculate and always the same—in the winter, blue serge with white collars and cuffs for the day, and white canton crepe trimmed with lace for evening; in the summer blue linen took the place of the blue serge and the canton crepe gave way to white linen or organdy. Her immaculate state was due to the fact that she had many gowns of the same model and innumerable collars and cuffs which she always laundered herself.

“That’s her now,” said Gertie as she caught a glimpse of the new girl in the mirror over Min’s head.

“She!” corrected Jane Morton. “The last lecture on salesmanship laid especial stress on the importance of good English.”

Josie bowed politely and smiled pleasantly but impersonally at the girls.

“How do you do?” said Jane. “I hope you will like Burnett & Burnett’s. It is really a great place to work. I want to introduce you to the girls.”

“Glad to meet all of you—my name’s Josie O’Gorman.”

“Where are you to begin?” asked Gertie.

“Tapes, darning cotton and the like.”

“What did I tell you?” Gertie whispered audibly to Min.

“It is a good counter,” said Min. “It’s in the middle of the store where you can see everything that goes on. I tell you a lot is going on here lately—more ‘kleps’ have been busy. I’ve been working for Burnett & Burnett ever since I was a kid and I know they have lost more in the last month than they have since I was a cash girl. Seems like things just vanish. It certainly made me hot when that box of point lace just disappeared off the face of the earth. I wish Mr. Burnett would take me away from the lace counter and put me over with the safety pins. Nobody ever bothers to steal safety pins from a shop but just borrows them from friends.”

Josie laughed and decided she was going to like little Min and Jane Morton.

“Do you think somebody stole the whole box of point lace?” Josie asked.

“No I don’t think it—I know it. One minute it was there and the next minute it wasn’t there. I reported it the second that I missed it and Major Simpson, the detective, got busy right off but it was remnant day and the store was packed and jammed with bargain hunters and that lace was gone and gone for good. I sure did feel bad about it. I had to go up to the office and answer a million questions and before they got through with me I felt like I had swallowed the stuff and it was choking me. There was about five hundred dollars worth of lace in that box.”

“Well how’d you like to be me and have some woman walk off with a whole bottle of perfume at ten dollars an ounce?” asked Gertie. “Old Burnett was sniffin’ around me so any body’d a thought I’d taken a bath in the stuff. I just howled and cried to beat the band. I made so much racket it took six floor walkers and the boss to pacify me and they finally sent me home in a taxi. I reckon the next time a thief gets busy at the toilet goods counter they won’t call on me to testify.”

“Your tears cost ten dollars an ounce, do they?” laughed Josie.

“Exactly!”

“I fawncy the thief is someone from the outside,” drawled a girl who had hitherto been silent and who had been introduced to Josie as Miss Fauntleroy either because Jane Morton did not know her first name or did not care to use it. Miss Fauntleroy was a very striking looking young woman, tall, slender, and broad shouldered; a decided brunette with wonderfully arched brows and lashes long enough to marcel, at least so her co-workers at Burnett & Burnett’s declared. Her blue-black hair was done after the latest mode, with waves and puffs and ringlets galore and never a lock out of place even after the strenuous ordeal of bargain day. Her voice was a deep contralto with a slightly foreign intonation, although she had divulged to Min that she was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, and intimated that she had cultivated the drawl and accent because she considered it elegant.

Of course Min had handed this information on to her best friends and it had become common property at the department store that Miss Fauntleroy was not near so mysterious as she would have one think. Her hands and feet were large but her shoes were stylishly cut and her nails showed much care and attention. She walked with a slow swinging gait and seemed never to be in a hurry, even when closing hour was approaching. She had proven herself an efficient saleswoman in the jewel and novelty department.

Josie O’Gorman’s ostensible business at Burnett & Burnett’s was the selling of tapes and darning cotton, and so ably did she play the part of shop girl that no one but her employers dreamed she was there for any other purpose. There was nothing in the girl’s appearance to indicate that she was the cleverest detective of her age and sex in the United States.

Shoplifting had developed into a serious matter in the department store of Burnett & Burnett, so serious that they had found it necessary to call in outside help on their detective force. Up to this time the detective force had been more or less of a farce since it was what the younger member of the firm, Mr. Theodore Burnett, designated as an inherited failing, one handed down from father to son to grandsons. The “force” consisted of one old gentleman known as Major Simpson.

“I’m not saying poor old Simpson is not a good man, as good as they make them,” Mr. Theodore Burnett said to Josie when she reported to the firm in regard to entering their employ.

“Good man but poor detective,” put in the elder brother, Mr. Charles Burnett. “See here, Miss O’Gorman, we’ve got you over here from Dorfield because Captain Lonsdale has recommended you so highly. I fancy there are detectives right here in our own city of Wakely that could do the business for us but you understand we don’t want poor old Simpson to know we are employing outside help. He is very touchy—”

“And very conceited!” interrupted Mr. Theodore.

“Be that as it may, we don’t want to hurt his feelings as he has been with the firm from the beginning. My grandfather stated in his will that Major Simpson should have a job with us as long as he wanted it and after that was to be pensioned.”

“But the old duck refuses to be pensioned although we offered to pay him more for not working than for working,” laughed Mr. Theodore.

“I rather like that in him,” said Josie. “But now to come down to what you want me to do. As I understand it I am to be employed by you secretly and you are to turn me loose, giving me carte blanche as to my methods.”

“Ahem!” hesitated Mr. Charles, who had his own idea about how everything connected with the department store should be run. “N-n-ot exactly.”

“Of course you are to work it your own way,” put in Theodore. “My brother just means he’d take it as a favor if you report to us now and then.”

“Naturally! Well then, in the first place perhaps I had better have another name to start with as somebody may know my true name. Not because of my own reputation as a detective—I have none to speak of—but because of my father’s. Perhaps you are aware of the fact that my father was one of the most able detectives in America, and that means the world, because we are up with the French and ahead of the Russians in the detective business.”

The Burnetts did not know it but they had the tact to pretend they did, so Josie’s one tender point was spared a jab. Mary Smith was agreed upon as a good working name and the notion counter as a fair vantage point from which to view the comings and goings of possible shoplifters.

“I should like a list of the names and addresses of all your employees,” suggested Josie.

“Certainly, Miss O’Gorman,” agreed the brothers.

“Smith! Just forget my name is O’Gorman, please.”

“Oh, sure! Miss Smith!”

At this juncture there came a light knock on the door and without waiting for permission a dapper little old gentleman entered the private office of the president. Josie decided that the new comer was as pompous in the back as he was in the front and when he seated himself stiffly in a high backed chair she came to the conclusion that he had achieved something which she had hitherto considered impossible—for a person to be as pompous sitting down as standing up. Evidently there was no doubt in the old gentleman’s mind that he was a more important personage than either the president or vice-president of Burnett & Burnett’s. As for the little sandy haired shop girl, who was no doubt being employed by the firm—she was of no importance whatsoever.

“I wish to speak with you alone, Mr. Charles. Of course Mr. Theodore may remain if he so desires, but—” he looked meaningly at Josie, “others may retire. New girl, I presume.”

“Yes—let me introduce you to Miss O’Gorman, Major Simpson,” said the senior member of the firm.

“Smith,” hastily corrected the junior member. Major Simpson did not hear the correction and Josie was registered on the tablets of the old gentleman’s memory as O’Gorman and O’Gorman she was forced to remain, since it was deemed wiser not to take the present incumbent of house detective into their confidence and being introduced by one name and employed by another would certainly have caused suspicion.

“I am sorry Brother Charles made the break,” Theodore said as he accompanied Josie to the elevator, leaving his brother alone with Major Simpson.

“Oh, that’s all right,” laughed Josie. “I’m not much on aliases anyhow and really prefer working in my own name. Please let me have the list of employees and their addresses as soon as possible.”

CHAPTER II
THE NEW HOME ON MEADOW STREET

Wakely classed itself as a city, while Dorfield was content to be listed as a mere town that might someday grow up. In spite of its size, Wakely seemed to our young detective to be a very lonesome place on that first Sunday she was compelled to spend away from all her dear friends in Dorfield, where she had lived since her father’s death. There were plenty of people in Wakely, too many people, in fact, making the housing problem a serious one. But nobody knew Josie and nobody cared to know her. Nobody paid the least attention to her at the beautiful old church where she had gone to worship in the morning; nobody spoke to her at the clean little restaurant where she had eaten her Sunday dinner; and now as she sat on a bench in the city park, nobody in all the surging throngs out for the usual Sunday stroll even so much as glanced her way.

Josie was not inclined to be lonesome. She was too interested in people and things to think very much of her own aloneness, but there were times when in spite of herself she felt a crying need for a real home of her own; something more than the partitioned off rear end of a shop, which was where she had been living for some time before coming to Wakely. The place was called The Higgledy Piggledy Shop, conducted by Josie and her friends Elizabeth Wright and Irene Mae Farlane, and they had managed it to their profit and to the delectation of the citizens of Dorfield, who found in it a long felt want.

If the Higgledy Piggledies did not have what you wanted they would get it for you, and if they could not do what you wished done they would see to it that someone else did do it. For Josie the shop was in reality a side line of the detective business, but it was of great interest to her and she missed the gay chatter of the partners, the daily visits of her dear Mary Louise—young Mrs. Danny Dexter—and she sorely missed the kindly interest and advice of Captain Charlie Lonsdale, the Chief of Police of Dorfield. He it was who had so highly recommended Josie to Burnett & Burnett.

“I almost wish he hadn’t,” sighed Josie as she sat on the park bench in the wintry sunshine and watched the people of Wakely swarm past. “I don’t care much who steals the stupid old dry-goods. It’s a dull job and I’d be glad to be out of it.”

“Hello! There’s somebody I know—but who on earth is it? Where have I seen that boy before? Certainly I don’t remember ever having laid eyes on his companions, rare birds that they are!”

Many persons pride themselves on never forgetting a face, but Josie might have patted herself on the back for never forgetting a pair of shoulders, a set of head, a contour of cheek or chin. However, she was completely baffled by the youth who had passed her as she sat on the hard, cold bench. Our little detective was irritated that she could not remember where she had seen that turn of cheek and line of shoulder, so irritated that she decided the seat in the park was very uncomfortable and she would trail along behind the trio and find out something about them. Her curiosity was idle but was it not Sunday afternoon? Why not let curiosity be idle as well as persons?

The man and woman walking with the youth appeared too young to be the father and mother of the boy and too old to be brother and sister, yet there was an intangible resemblance to both that led Josie to conclude they were his parents. The man was swarthy, black-eyed, and flashily dressed in a checked suit, gray spats and a brown derby. He walked with a slight swagger, twirling a slender cane in his lemon colored gloved hand.

The woman was small, inclined to be stout, and a great mop of henna colored hair elaborately dressed in waves and puffs defied oversight and invited scrutiny. She wore a handsome fur cloak and a purple velvet hat. Her cheeks and lips were tinted a bright coral and her nose was powdered like a marshmallow. In spite of the paint and powder there was something youthful and attractive about the woman. She walked with a light step and had a gay bird-like manner.

The younger man, or boy—he looked about eighteen, Josie decided—had an elegance that his companions lacked, although they would have been greatly astonished had they been told that the quiet unimportant little person, whom they had passed in the park and who later had passed them on the sidewalk, considered them anything but the last cry of elegance and fashion. Josie was able to get a good look at the trio at a crossing. Undoubtedly the boy was the son of the bizarre couple. He had his father’s bold black eyes and his mother’s delicate tilted nose and softly rounded cheek.

“Where—where have I seen him before?” Josie asked herself. “Never mind, I’ll remember someday. In the mean time I think I’ll find out where they live—not that it is any of my business—but one never can tell when information will come in handy in this business of detecting criminals. Anyhow I don’t trust those two, although I reckon the boy is all right. He looks too young to be anything else but all right and he looks honest, at least he looks honest in contrast to his father. My opinion is that the old one is in checks now but has been in stripes, or should have been. I wonder what they do. People, I’ll bet anything, and they do them brown while they are about it.”

Josie stopped to look in a window in order to let the trio get ahead of her and then nonchalantly followed them at a safe distance. They talked animatedly and their gestures were decidedly foreign-like in their swift and jerky repetition. It was impossible for Josie to catch what they were saying without seeming too interested in them, but it was easy to see that both man and woman were endeavoring to pacify the youth and persuade him to do something to which he was opposed. Once he stopped short on the sidewalk and Josie came within earshot as the boy said in a tone of suppressed violence:

“I tell you I’m sick of the whole game. I’m going to quit!”

“Oh, Roy, darling, not just now,” purred the woman, and Josie noted that the R in Roy and darling was softly rolled, giving a slightly foreign accent. “Not now when—” but the woman whispered the rest and the listener could not hear what was the big reason for not quitting just yet, nor could she gather what the game was that Roy wanted to quit.

The man said nothing, merely stood gnawing his moustache in a manner highly melodramatic and cut the air viciously with his slender cane. Josie loitered after them, wondering what part of the city they lived in, what they did for a living, and in the back of her brain was always the question: “Where have I seen the boy before?”

Josie was stopping for the time being at a hotel, though she realized it would never do for it to be known that a shop girl was living so extravagantly. Early in life Josie O’Gorman had learned from her illustrious father that in the detective business no detail was too small to be overlooked. If one was supposed to be a shop girl then one must live, eat, dress, act and talk like a shop girl. After three days at Burnett & Burnett’s Josie had come to the conclusion that shop girls were like any other wage earning girls, some silly, some clever; some educated, some ignorant; some inclined to put all their earnings on their backs, some saving up for a rainy day; but none of them were able to live in hotels. So, to play the part, she must bestir herself and find other quarters. The firm was paying her handsomely for her time and she could well afford to keep her comfortable room and bath. She was tempted to do it and give a false address if any of the girls should ask her where she lived but she remembered one of her father’s favorite sayings:

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave

When first we practice to deceive.”

This old saying had decided the matter for her and on that Sunday afternoon she had armed herself with clippings from the “Boarders Wanted” column in the morning paper and was determined to go the rounds and settle herself as soon as possible. The trio she was following turned the corner. Josie turned after them. Glancing at the street sign she read that she was on Meadow Street. Several of the ads were on Meadow Street. She ran quickly through them.

The man, woman and youth went in at No. 11. It was a shabby, drab looking apartment house. Yes, there was a room for rent in that very house—“Widow and daughter wish to rent room to young business woman. 11 East Meadow, apartment 4.”

Josie had liked the ad from the beginning. “They don’t flaunt their own refinement in their ad and they say business woman instead of business lady. They delicately inform the public that there is no brute of a husband around. On the whole I believe I’ll rent a room at 11 East Meadow. I can keep my eye on those flashy folk if I do. I suppose it’s none of my business—but one never can tell.”

Josie noticed that the interesting trio went in the house without ringing one of the bells displayed in the lobby. “That means they either live here or are intimate with someone who does,” was her conclusion.

Apartment 4 proved to be one of the back ones on the lower floor. The family who had so interested Josie had entered the one marked 3. After ringing the bell of No. 4, Josie had peered into the dark hall and had plainly seen the fur coat of the henna haired woman disappear through the door after the man in the checked suit had opened it with a latch key.

“That settles me,” thought Josie. “I’ll take this room if the widow and her daughter turn out to be most undesirable landladies in Wakely.”

Fortunately they turned out to be pleasant folk who had seen better days, to which the refinement and taste in the furnishings of their living room gave mute evidence. The tiny bedroom advertised for rent suited Josie perfectly; suited also the part she must play as a new shop girl at Burnett & Burnett’s with but little money to spend on sleeping quarters.

Mrs. Leslie did hemstitching and fine embroidery to eke out the salary her daughter made as a stenographer. The home was neat, and while Josie’s room had only one very small window, it did not open on a court but had a view of a small back yard which Mrs. Leslie informed her would later prove a great pleasure to them all.

“It is really quite sweet, and the janitor says that in the spring we may plant all the seeds there we want to. Mary and I will be much happier if we have a place where we can dig. We never quite get over longing for the country.”

Everything being satisfactory, Josie moved in that very evening, the question of references being waived because Mrs. Leslie had a feeling when she looked in Josie’s honest face that she was going to like her; and since one of the trusted employees of Burnett & Burnett’s came from her county that fact was enough to guarantee the goodness of any one of his fellow employees.

“We are sorry not to give you your meals,” said Mrs. Leslie, “but Mary and I live so simply.”

“You couldn’t live too simply for me,” declared Josie, “but I wouldn’t be any trouble to you for worlds. I can easily get my meals at one of the many restaurants near here.”

“Oh Mother, couldn’t we?” asked Mary. “Anyhow just breakfast—” and Mrs. Leslie decided they could manage breakfast and dinner too. So Josie was installed as a lodger and boarder and soon the lonesome feeling departed as she began to think that perhaps Wakely was not such a dismally lonely city after all.

The Leslies were a gentle, pleasant, kindly pair, and Josie was sorely tempted to tell them all about herself; how she happened to be in Wakely and what her real profession was. But she remembered in time what her father used to say, holding up a forefinger in impressive fashion:

“You know and I know and that makes eleven.”

So Josie held her tongue. She was such an “eloquent listener” that persons were inclined to tell her all about themselves and to forget to ask for the story of her life. The Leslies were like most others and found themselves chatting away to their new lodger with little or no restraint. She found out they were strangers in Wakely, having lived there only two months, knowing very few people in the town and none of the fellow tenants.

“We don’t even know the people who live right next to us,” said Mary. “Mother says she is glad we don’t but I must confess I’d rather like to know the boy. He is so handsome and kind of sad looking. I can’t say much for the sister, though. She is handsome enough but at times a little coarse and rough. The boy is at home only on Saturday afternoons and Sunday. I have an idea he and his sister are not on very good terms. I have never yet seen them go anywhere together. I can’t see why, because if I had a brother I’d be tagging on after him all the time.”

“Especially if he were such a good looking brother as you say this young man next door is,” laughed Josie.

CHAPTER III
THE NEIGHBORS IN APARTMENT 3

Josie reported for work bright and early Monday morning, so early that she was able to have a private interview with Mr. Theodore Burnett before the business of selling notions was booked to begin. He had the list of employees and their addresses all neatly typed, also in what department of the store each one worked.

“I may not be able to keep up the farce of selling notions for very long,” Josie explained to him. “You may have to pretend to suspend me or something so I can have time to be a detective but I’d like to hang on there for a few days so I can get the run of things.”

“Suit yourself, young lady! We are in your hands. By the way, old Major Simpson was rather curious about you. I do not understand why he wanted to know so much about you.”

“I don’t either. Perhaps he met my father in days gone by.”

Whatever the reason, Josie could but notice that the pompous old detective spent a great deal of time hanging around the notion counter. He seemed to be vastly interested in what she was doing and was constantly bumping into her whenever she left her department. She even fancied he dogged her footsteps when she went out to lunch, and was sure that he followed her all the way home.

“It can’t be my beauty that is attracting him, because there is no such thing; and it can’t be my wit, for he has not heard me say a word. It must be that I look like my father and somewhere in his profession as detective he met my father.”

It was a well known fact that Detective O’Gorman had been one of the homeliest men in the service, but such was his little daughter’s admiration for him that she never could get a compliment that pleased her so much as for someone to say she resembled him in the slightest degree.

“Old Major Simpson would have been a joke to him, but there may be some intelligence in the old fellow after all. There certainly is if he admired my father.” So thought Josie as she walked through the streets of Wakely, conscious that a bombastic old gentleman was dogging her footsteps. In her work of selling notions she was sure that never a paper of pins was sold by her without the house detective’s knowledge. At first it irritated her, but in the end she found it an amusing game to elude his watchful eye.

By carefully studying the list of employees she soon was able to fit name to face over the whole store and place each person in his or her proper department. Then came the job of finding the address of each employee.

“It seems to me important to know if any of them are living beyond their means,” she explained to Mr. Theodore when he asked her why she went to work in such a systematic manner. “When persons begin to do that, then it’s time to look out. They have a motive for getting-rich-quick, and sometimes when there is a motive the action follows fast.”

Poor old Major Simpson had a hard time keeping up with Josie. Every evening after the store was closed the girl made it her business to check off a certain number of fellow workers, quietly rounding up their homes, sometimes walking with them under a pretext of having business in their neighborhoods, sometimes merely following them. The panting and puffing detective lost the scent continually, and then Josie felt sorry for him and made it easier for him the next time. Gradually she made friends with the employees, careful always to be the listener and for that reason universally popular. So completely did she efface herself when she happened to make one of a crowd that the girls would actually forget her presence.

Miss Fauntleroy, the tall handsome girl at the jewel counter, was one person to whom Josie found it difficult to make up. She had a cold manner and attended strictly to business. The address given on the list was a suburban one, 10 Linden Row, Linden Heights, and Josie was forced to put off looking into her surroundings until the winter weather abated somewhat in its ferocity.

“Not that I mind the weather,” she said to herself, “but it would be too bad to take the old Major out where there are no paved streets while snow is up to one’s knees. He might catch his death.”

There was a let up in the shoplifting, no trouble having occurred since Josie entered the employ of Burnett & Burnett. She had been with them two weeks and except for the fact that she proved to be an able saleswoman of notions, she had accomplished nothing.

“You had better dismiss me and let me go back home,” she said to Mr. Theodore. “You certainly have no need of me here, and the Higgledy Piggledy Shop is missing me sorely.”

“Not at all!” declared the junior member of the firm. “We have plenty of need of you. It may be that there is no shoplifting because the thief is afraid of you.”

“But how could he know I was here?”

“Perhaps others know of the fame of your father as well as old Simpson.”

“Perhaps—but after all I am not supposed to be so much a watchdog as a blood hound. If detectives were simply preventives they would lose all their cunning and skill from disuse. I am sure you could find a cheaper watchdog than I am.”

“Well, we are not kicking about the price so why need you?”

Josie had had many interviews with the members of the firm and felt they were her friends and respected her. She especially liked Mr. Theodore, who seemed somewhat more progressive than his brother, but both of them were kindly and courteous. Mr. Theodore, who was an old bachelor, had invited Josie to dine with his family; insisting that his mother and sisters would come and call on her and that they would be delighted to make her acquaintance, but Josie had firmly refused.

“Not while I am selling notions,” she had laughed. “It would leak out in the store somehow and then someone would suspect immediately that I was not what I seem to be. Major Simpson is already worried about me and my job. I’ll wager he is standing outside of this door right now and his moustache and goatee are both bristling with curiosity concerning what the business is that brings me to your private office before opening hours. He would have his ear at the key hole if he dared and if his sense of dignity didn’t forbid. Why don’t you take him into your confidence? It doesn’t seem quite fair somehow.”

“Fair enough! If he wasn’t so conceited we might have you work with him but he is so cock sure of his own ability. I give you my word, Miss O’Gorman, he has never yet landed a shoplifter. Sometimes they have been caught by clerks or floor walkers, but old Simpson can’t see beyond his own embonpoint. Of course if you want his help—”

“Heavens, no!” laughed Josie, “but I should like to know what he knows about me and my being here, and why he doesn’t come out and say so if he does know who I am. Is he at all peeved with you and Mr. Burnett, your brother?”

“Not at all. In fact, he seems especially delighted with us as well as himself. I can always tell when he is pleased by the way he smiles on me and strokes his goatee.”

Three weeks had passed and Josie felt she was not earning her salt. Carefully she watched the lower floor of the store from the vantage ground of the notion counter. Two bargain Fridays had come and gone and as far as Burnett & Burnett could tell not one single person had left their emporium without either paying or promising to pay for the goods carried off.

The evenings with the Leslies were quiet and peaceful. The neighbors at No. 3 left early and returned late. Josie occasionally caught a glimpse of the man and his wife but she had not seen the girl. The youth, she had encountered twice in the street and still his appearance puzzled her. She was more certain than ever that she had seen him before, but where?

“I believe they are kind and charitable, anyhow,” said Mary. “I met a terrible looking old beggar in the hall coming from their apartment and I am sure they had given him something because the lady spoke to him in such a gentle tone and he answered her gently and—”

“What did they say?” asked Josie.

“I couldn’t make out, but it sounded kind of foreign. That made me think maybe the woman has found out there is someone of her nationality here in Wakely and she is kind to him because he is from her own country.” Mary was the type that always made the best of everything and everybody.

“Well, for my part, I think it is a great mistake to encourage tramps and beggars,” said Mrs. Leslie. “Now in the country we never could do it. If we even so much as fed one tramp we had a swarm of them coming to us for years. My husband once gave one an old suit of clothes and some shoes and after I had fed him Mr. Leslie told him he could spend the night in the barn because it was coming up to snow. After that a week never passed that some disreputable old bum didn’t come whining to my back door. It kept up until we had the road gate painted, posts and all, and then they let up on us and we began to think that the first one had put the tramp’s mark on our gate and all the others read it and knew we were kind hearted. Of course the paint destroyed the mark.”

“What a wonderful mark to have on your gate!” exclaimed Mary. “I wish I knew what it was and could put one on our door.”

“Perhaps one is there,” suggested Josie, “and I saw it and ventured in.”

“I don’t want any real tramps around here,” insisted Mrs. Leslie. “You, Josie, are less like a tramp than any one I ever saw. I felt safe with you from the moment you entered the door and I never have felt safe with any tramp. I don’t like to think that tramps might be coming in and out of this house and if I ever see or hear of another one being in the hall I am going to complain to the landlord.”

“Oh, Mother, please don’t! What would our neighbors think of us?”

“It makes mighty little difference what they think. People who don’t speak our language and have tramps calling on them have no business thinking.”

Josie laughed. Mrs. Leslie’s feeling in regard to tramps and foreigners was a common one with persons born and raised in the country. They encouraged neither tramping nor immigration.

“We have two beggars at Burnett & Burnett’s,” said Josie, “one at the front entrance and one at the back. It is against my principles to give to street beggars but I have a hard time getting by those two. The Associated Charities are constantly asking the public not to encourage beggars but send them to the A. C. so that they can look into their cases. I am sure they are right, and good citizens should uphold them; but beggars such as we have at our front and back entrances seem to be able to appeal against reason and I am sure they reap a substantial harvest. When charitable ladies get up tag days for their pet concerns they should man the stations with just such beggars instead of attractive young girls.”

“I thought begging on the street was against the city ordinances,” said Mrs. Leslie.

“Oh, they get around all laws by pretending to sell something. This beggar man at the front door sells lead pencils and the woman at the back goes through the motions of selling newspapers. She never has the last edition and always whines if anyone wants change. She is a husky looking person and I believe is well fed, in spite of the pretext she makes of dining off crusts.”

“Poor thing!” exclaimed Mary. “I’m sorry for her even though she may be a fraud.”

“Of course there is no easy way of making an honest living,” laughed Josie, “whether it be pounding a typewriter or—selling notions.” It was on the tip of Josie’s tongue to say lying in wait for shoplifters. “Begging is not such a bad way to spend your time if you are interested in human nature. Of course it must be rather hard on the man at the front entrance because he wears a patch over one eye and part of his game is to keep the other one half shut. That means he can’t see all that is going on, but who knows? He may be able to see more with half an eye than many persons can with two wide open ones.”

“The beggar I saw in the hall had a patch over his eye. I noticed it particularly, and felt sorrier than ever for him. I’d have given him something if he hadn’t hurried away so fast when I came in.”

“A great many beggars seem to be minus one eye,” said Josie. “I remember reading once of a great French detective who captured a notorious criminal, who was operating as a blind beggar with a patch over his eye, because the pseudo-beggar inadvertently changed blind eyes. The detective had passed him many times on the Pont Neuf in Paris, where the beggar had stood for weeks and weeks whining a pitiful tale. Now this detective, like all good ones, let nothing escape him, and he had noticed that the blind beggar wore a patch over his right eye. One morning the patch had moved to the left one. That set Mr. Detective to thinking and he watched the man. When darkness came the man stopped begging for the day, hobbled from the bridge into a nearby crooked street and there he straightened up, took off the telltale patch and walked briskly along the side walk. Then it was an easy matter to track him to his luxurious lair. Begging was merely a side line, as burglary on a large scale was his real profession. He was attempting to conceal his identity under the cloak of a mendicant.”

“I still say, poor fellow,” said Mary.

“And I say,” said Mrs. Leslie shrewdly, “that if I were a detective I’d wonder what on earth made you, Josie, go into being a shop girl. I begin to think it is nothing but a side line with you.”

Josie, being completely off her guard, hardly knew how to answer Mrs. Leslie. She did not deem it wise to take mother and daughter into her confidence concerning her true business in Wakely. She blushed and stammered like a veritable novice at the game of concealment and falteringly assured Mrs. Leslie that she had been forced into selling notions because of reverses in her family fortunes.

“To be sure the wages are not so very high,” she continued, “but Burnett & Burnett’s is a pleasant place in which to work. Then, too, it is so nice to be here with you and Mary that I don’t mind being in a store all day.”

Mrs. Leslie expressed herself as satisfied concerning her lodger’s profession but she afterwards said to her daughter: “She has a kind of high-brow way with her at times that makes me doubt her being just a poor girl; and her clothes, while they are simple, are made of such good material. You can’t fool me on dry-goods. I tell you, Mary, Josie’s dresses are made out of stuff that cost five dollars a yard.”

CHAPTER IV
JOSIE’S LITTLE BLACK BOOK

“Now I’ve talked too much!” Josie took herself to task after retiring to her room. “Mrs. Leslie has some kind of suspicion concerning me and it is all my own fault. I wonder what my father would have done under the circumstances.”

She took from her top drawer a little leather book; her most valued possession and without which she never traveled. It was a chunky little book, evidently home made. The pages were covered with neatly written lines which, to the uninitiated, looked like so much Greek script. It was in reality a cryptic shorthand invented by Detective O’Gorman and known only to him and his daughter and one other—a certain criminal, Felix Markham. How he came to know this family code is another story altogether. At any rate, in the United States Josie was the only person who could make heads or tails of this writing, as her dear father had gone to that far country where detectives find no work to do, and Markham had fled to China after having executed a daring escape from the penitentiary.

In this little book the detective had inscribed many homely sayings, some original but most of them borrowed from Poor Richard’s Almanac, the Proverbs of Solomon and other like sources. Josie often amused her friends by quoting these bits of wisdom as though her dear father had been responsible for all of them. Also in this book was written much that was interesting and valuable concerning criminals with whom O’Gorman had come in contact; descriptions of their appearance, habits and peculiarities, as well as the lists of their aliases and professions engaged in as blinds.

All of this was interesting reading and Josie never tired of conning over the difficult script. Reading between the lines she caught hints of successes which the noted criminologist was too modest even to put in his diary, although it was written in a shorthand known only to himself and his daughter and was meant for no other eyes.

On this night it was not her father’s successes that interested Josie, but his failures. The last twenty pages of the little book were filled with his failures and analyses of why he had failed, also admonitions to his daughter as to what she should avoid in the way of pitfalls for a detective.

“When you find you have aroused suspicion in the mind of someone as to your real business which it is perhaps expedient to conceal, do not be too quick to allay those suspicions as the person concerned will no doubt be on the lookout to trap you. If, in the course of time, you quietly do or say again the same thing that first aroused the suspicion in the mind of the person and then, being on your guard, make some casual explanation, it will be more convincing than changing too quickly and appearing for that reason rather unnatural. For instance, if, the better to catch a criminal, you have been taking the part of a lowly person, say a dishwasher in a restaurant, and inadvertently you show yourself to be educated—do not immediately revert to slang and double negatives to throw the person to whom you have revealed your culture off the scent, but rather show other bits of learning and then have a plausible story ready to account for a dishwasher knowing something beyond hot suds and drainers and tea towels.”

“There I am!” exclaimed Josie. “I am not sure just what it was that started Mrs. Leslie but I think it was the free and easy gabble about Paris bridges and luxurious lairs. Now I must bring up the subject again and talk some more about the same thing and then give her some kind of song and dance that will sound plausible enough to throw her off the scent. Then I’ll jump back to the subject of bone buttons and linen tape and maybe haul in something about a handsome floor walker at Burnett & Burnett’s.”

Satisfied with the plan, Josie devoutly closed her little book and went peacefully to sleep, wickedly hoping that somebody would do a little shoplifting the next day to keep her from dying of ennui.

Breakfast was hurried and she had little time to talk to Mrs. Leslie. One could not be very tactful nor use much finesse with a mouth full of hot oatmeal porridge. To talk about the crime wave in Paris so early in the morning would be ridiculous. It must keep until evening. Perhaps she was mistaken about Mrs. Leslie having any suspicion of her. Mary was as gentle and lovely as ever and her mother was certainly most considerate and cordial in her insistence that Josie should have another cup of coffee. After all, she had nothing to conceal—that is, nothing that would be to her discredit. It was only that she deemed it wiser to keep to herself her real business in Wakely. Of course if Mrs. Leslie became too suspicious it would be a simple matter to tell her the whole truth.

That morning the girls started to town a little earlier than was their custom. It was Saturday and a half holiday. Mary had some extra typing on hand she was anxious to finish and Josie wanted to interview Mr. Theodore Burnett before the store opened. As they stepped into the public hall of the apartment house they ran into the same beggar of whom Mary had spoken the evening before. The hall was unlighted except for a pale streak of sun that tried to find its way through the dingy glass of the street door but Josie did not need much light to recognize the man as the beggar who sat at the main door of Burnett & Burnett’s. The man began a pleading beggar’s whine and held out his hand to the girls. Unfortunately for him Mrs. Leslie opened her door at that moment to call a last good bye to her daughter and to remind her of some promised errand. The sight of the beggar angered her and she spoke sharply to him:

“Begone sir!” she cried. “It is against all rules of the house to have beggars in the hall.”

“Excuse! Excuse!” and the man bowed humbly, shuffling off with bent back and palsied head. As he passed the irate lady, Josie caught the flash of resentment that glowed in his one eye.

“Oh, Mother, the poor fellow!” said Mary. “I feel so sorry for him and you hurt his feelings terribly.”

“He’d no business in the hall. Perhaps I was a bit hasty. Here, run after him, Mary, and give him this penny. But tell him he mustn’t come back here.”

Mary added a small sum to her mother’s penny and hastening after the man pressed it in his hand. Josie, who was close behind, again caught an expression on the man’s face—a leer of admiration for the pretty young girl with her fresh rosy face and kind blue eyes.

A view of him in broad daylight convinced Josie that he really was the beggar who had the desirable stand at the front entrance to Burnett & Burnett’s and also the realization came to her that she had seen the man before and that it was not as a mendicant.

For the second time since Josie came to Wakely she puzzled her brains over where before she had seen or known a man, this time an old one. She was still in doubt as to the identity of the young man who evidently lived in the apartment next to the Leslies, and now a palsied old beggar was adding to her perplexity.

“I’ll keep an eye on him during the morning and perhaps I’ll remember,” she promised herself.

It was a busy morning but between sales Josie managed to get an occasional glimpse of the one-eyed beggar at the gate. He, too, was doing a thriving business. Josie wondered if the woman at the rear entrance was playing in such good luck as her rival in the front. Once during the morning she had occasion to pass by the back door and could look out at the female newsie. Straggling iron gray hair was blown by the wintry breezes across a round, plump face which Nature had doubtless intended to be wreathed in perpetual smiles and which seemed with difficulty to assume an expression of misery and woe. Her comfortable, well rounded body was arrayed in pitiful rags. Josie determined to study her more closely and accordingly when the store closed she made her exit by the rear door.

“Pa-a-perrr! Pa-a-perr!” quavered the woman in a tone that spoke of utter misery and dejection.

A genial gentleman stopped to buy one.

“Is it the last edition?” he asked.

“Ye-e-ss sirr!” she whined, “the very latest.”

He handed her a quarter of a dollar.

“I haven’t an-y ch-aa-nge, sirr.”

“No change? Well then keep it!” he exclaimed with a note of irritation in his voice.

Saturday was a short day for the employees of Burnett & Burnett’s and Josie determined to use the afternoon in looking up some more residences of her fellow workers. The day was pleasant, with a hint of premature spring in the air; an excellent day for checking up on some of the suburban addresses.

“I wonder if Major Simpson will follow me. Anyhow, I have chosen a balmy afternoon for his jaunt if he decides to take it,” she laughed. “I have a great mind to give him the slip.”

By the simple expedient of going up one elevator and down another Josie eluded the old detective, who was evidently on the lookout for her. She then quickly made her way to the rear exit and was out on the street before the old gentleman realized that the young person in whom he was taking such an unaccountable interest had flown the coop.

“Ding bust it!” he remarked eloquently, “I’ll come up with her yet.”

Miss Fauntleroy was immediately in front of Josie, moving with her accustomed slow grace. The girl was well proportioned and Josie had not realized before how very tall she was. Being of rather a diminutive statute herself, she seemed almost a dwarf by the side of the stately young woman.

“Pa-a-perr, pa-a-perr,” quavered the old woman in an irritating whine.

Miss Fauntleroy stopped and holding out a dime asked for a newspaper. Her voice was singularly hard and cold but the old beggar seemed rather amused as she answered:

“Yes, my prr-r-ty! Here’s your Jou-r-rnal.”

“Give me my change,” demanded the girl haughtily.

“Change? Sur-r-ely you know an old woman like me can’t make change.”

“Well you’ll make it for me or give me back my dime,” said the girl angrily, her voice breaking hoarsely. She snatched the money from the old woman’s hand and rudely twisting and rumpling the paper so that it would be difficult to sell to another customer, she threw it into the basket at the beggar’s feet and then walked proudly away.

While Josie held no brief for beggars of any sort, neither those who begged outright nor those who begged under the guise of selling back number papers or pencils made of scrap lead, still her heart was kind and it tried her sorely to witness the rudeness and direct unkindness of the inconsiderate Miss Fauntleroy.

“Here! I’ll take that rumpled paper,” she said gently, handing the correct change to the old woman. “I can smooth it out and read it on the trolley.” She stooped swiftly and picked up the twisted Wakely Journal.

“No, no, lady! I’ll give you a nice clean pa-perr,” insisted the newsie, reaching eagerly for the one that Miss Fauntleroy had thrown so disdainfully in her basket. But Josie clutched it tightly and was soon lost in the crowd, while the old woman sat dazed and disconsolate, forgetting to cry her wares as the employees trooped forth from Burnett & Burnett’s.

CHAPTER V
THE MAJOR TAKES UP A TRAIL

Josie jammed the rumpled paper in the big patch pocket of her sport coat and thought no more about it. She boarded the interurban trolley which passed through Linden Heights, wondering if Miss Fauntleroy could be on it and doubtful whether it were better for her to get off at Linden Row with that haughty and evidently bad tempered young woman or to ride on for several blocks. The crowded car thinned out as they approached the suburbs. Josie was soon able to make sure that the girl was not on board.

“Let me off at Linden Row, please,” she asked the conductor.

“Sure, miss, an’ the sign was put up only yesterday so I know where it is. The streets out here ain’t marked reg’lar.”

Linden Heights presented the appearance of much suburban property aspiring to become urban; streets and avenues named, sidewalks laid out, curbing placed, everything ready to make a thriving, prosperous, homelike neighborhood—everything but the homes and the neighbors. The houses were few and far between and Linden Row, though boasting a brand new name on a brand new corner and a brand new row of spindling linden trees, had not a house to its name. Josie walked north until the sad young street lost itself in a corn field; then she retraced her steps, crossed the car tracks and walked south until a swamp interrupted her progress, and still no habitation. Bullfrogs were singing their spring song in the swamp so Josie felt repaid for her long ride on the trolley.

“It means spring is almost here,” she said to herself, “is here, in fact. It’s a surer sign than thunder and lightning; surer than the robin’s whistle or trailing arbutus blossoms. How my dear father did love to hear the bullfrogs!”

So far as Josie could ascertain Linden Heights was nothing more than a real estate map. At any rate there was not a single house in the place with the exception of an old farm house, the mansion of the original owners of the tract, and when Josie knocked on the door with a trumped up plea that she was hunting a place to board, she was met without much encouragement by an old man with a tousled beard and mane who gave her to understand that he couldn’t abide women and wouldn’t let one of them stay on his place for five minutes. At least she had found out what she wanted to know: Miss Fauntleroy did not live there.

“Very puzzling!” she mused. “Why did she give a fictitious address to her employers? The first interesting thing that has happened since I came to this town. I hope it will lead to something. Anyhow I’ll watch this strange girl and find out something more about her. She certainly was very rude to the old beggar.”

On the way back to the city Josie decided to read the paper she had bought from the old woman, but at that moment she became engrossed in the conversation of some of her fellow passengers and the Wakely Journal remained in the patch pocket of her sport coat.

“The only thing I regret about my fruitless trip to Linden Heights is that I didn’t have the company of old Major Simpson,” Josie amused herself by thinking. “I shouldn’t call it fruitless, however, as it may lead to something. Anyhow, I’m wondering what the dear Major did in my absence.”

Had Josie realized what the dear Major was doing in her absence she would not have been quite so nonchalant in her idle surmises. No doubt his actions would have amused her but certainly they would have irritated her as well.

In the first place, Josie had hardly made her escape by the rear entrance of the department store when Min, whose surname was Tracy, gave a hurry call from the lace counter that in putting up her goods she had discovered the loss of many yards of the filmiest and finest lace in stock. The counter next to her reported missing a very expensive imported gold mesh bag. A hue and cry was raised by the excited Major Simpson and after much pompous blustering he had rushed to the office of the chief executives where he not only reported the theft but demanded Josie O’Gorman’s address.

“So you have a suspicion of who she is then, this Miss O’Gorman?” asked Mr. Theodore Burnett.

“Yes, I’ve had my eye on her for days. I have not been in the detective business for all of these years without being able to distinguish a girl of her type from a simple saleslady of buttons and what not.”

“Well, you are pretty clever, Major. I hope you two can get together. You say she has gone for the day? Do you think she can clear up this shoplifting mystery?”

“Of course she can if anyone can. Give me her address and maybe I can overtake her.”

“Eleven, East Meadow, Apartment 4, is her address. It is remarkable that a girl as young as she is can be so successful. She is very clever I think.”

“Yes—altogether too clever!” muttered Major Simpson. “But she will find there are others,” he intimated darkly.

“Yes, yes!” said Mr. Burnett uneasily, “but for goodness sake don’t be short with her. I am sure that through her we may be able to track down the whole gang of shoplifters.”

“Trust me, my dear Theodore, trust me!” said the Major, patting his white vest comfortably. “I will use all the finesse that my long service in this establishment has fostered. You need never fear that Silvester Simpson will be anything but a diplomat.”

“Oh sure! Sure!” added Mr. Burnett quickly. “I’ll leave it to you but I beg of you that you communicate with Miss O’Gorman at once.”

“Immediately!” and the Major strutted from the office.

“Eleven, East Meadow,” he mused. “That is the right address. I have followed her home often enough to know, but I asked Theodore just to see if the person had the temerity to give her real address.” And the old gentleman, not trusting his short legs to carry him to number eleven fast enough, hastily called a taxi.

When Major Simpson rang a bell he did not simply touch a button, he pressed it, and that with no light finger but with the end of his walking stick, leaning heavily against it until the bell was answered or broken.

Mrs. Leslie answered it quickly and somewhat indignantly. She had a sponge cake in the oven and the noise of the bell was enough to make it fall.

“What is it, sir?” but her tone of asperity quickly changed when she saw who was responsible for the clamor. “Well if it isn’t Major Sylvester Simpson. Sakes alive, Major Simpson, how did you find me out? I’ve been telling myself every day for two months that I ought to let you know I was in Wakely because of our families being kind of hereditary friends, but Mary and I are living in such a small way, and—”

Major Simpson—Major by courtesy only—made up in gallantry what he lacked in finesse. Not for worlds would he inform Mrs. Leslie that he was not looking her up at all and was quite as astonished to see her as she was to see him. He remembered her quite well as little Polly Bainbridge, whose grandfather’s farm was just across the creek from the Simpson’s farm. She had been a little girl when he was a grown man spending his yearly holidays in the country. He remembered faintly once having made her a present of a pink parasol on one of those visits. She was a very small girl and he was even then a floor walker at Burnett & Burnett’s. Perhaps that was how he happened to know the appeal a pink parasol has for a little girl.

Now that he had found her he must come in and see her. Of course it could not be that the person of whom he was really in search could possibly be living with Polly Bainbridge—now Mrs. Leslie—who came from his county and was of honest and respectable parentage as had also been her husband, people of good blood and reputation.

The Leslies’ living room was homelike, pleasant, and spotlessly clean, but with a certain feminine disorder in the way of a work basket open on the table, a scarf thrown over the back of a chair, a bit of embroidery on the sofa. This made an irresistible appeal to Major Simpson who, though a bachelor, was a great admirer of “the ladies” unless they happened to be “sales-ladies.” These he always regarded with suspicion as being either incipient shoplifters or, worse than that even, designing females who aspired to become Mrs. Simpson.

He settled himself in a comfortable overstuffed chair, conveniently low enough to allow him to cross his plump legs, and sniffed the pleasing odors emanating from the tiny kitchen.

“You must excuse me a minute,” blushed Mrs. Leslie, “but I have a cake in the oven.”

“Ah, that sounds like home!” declared the gallant Major. “And when I say home I mean the country. I fear me the city ladies trust to the bakers for such—” But Mrs. Leslie could not wait to find out what the city ladies trusted to the bakers as her cake had been in the prescribed number of minutes and the gas must be turned off and the cake turned out of the pan.

The major sniffed again. “Coffee!” was the verdict of his olefactory nerves. Like the Raggedy Man: “His old nose didn’t tell no lies,” for in a few minutes Mrs. Leslie returned with a tray of coffee and some hot doughnuts she had just finished frying when her bell pealed so loudly and persistently.

The guest ummed and ahhed with appreciation. He was self congratulatory that the little girl to whom he had once presented a pink parasol had grown into such a fine woman. He always had been a person of discernment and from the beginning he had known that little Polly Bainbridge was of the right sort. It was a pleasant thing to feel that a pink parasol cast on the waters might after some thirty odd years—or was it forty—be returned to one in the shape of fragrant coffee and hot doughnuts.

First, all the county news must be retailed and a bit of mild gossip concerning old neighbors be whispered. Major Simpson had long ago given up the habit of spending his holidays back home since the old folks had all died off and his ancestral halls passed into the hands of strangers. But his interest in all pertaining to his county was as strong as ever.

“I only go back for funerals, now,” said the old man sadly. Mrs. Leslie thought of the last funeral she had attended in that part of the world, that of Mr. Leslie, and her eyes filled with tears. The gay little coffee and doughnut party seemed in danger of becoming as sad as a wake but Mrs. Leslie brushed away her tears and smiled on her guest, filling his cup and pressing upon him another doughnut. So by simple grace happiness and good cheer were restored.

“Now tell me of your daughter. It seems strange for little Polly Bainbridge to have a grown daughter. Do you two ladies live here all alone?”

“Oh no! We have a lodger—Miss O’Gorman. By the way, Major Simpson, she says she is employed at Burnett & Burnett’s.”

Mrs. Leslie could not resist a slight emphasis on the “says” although she had promised Mary to try and forget the strange suspicions that had arisen in her mind concerning her gentle little lodger.

“She says right!” declared the Major shortly, suddenly remembering that he was a detective out on a scent. “What do you know of the young person?”

“Nothing—nothing at all! She came here in answer to an advertisement my daughter and I put in a Sunday paper. We took her in without references. Come to think of it, her saying she had a position with Burnett & Burnett seemed to me all the reference I needed since you were one of the firm.”

“No, no, dear lady—not yet—merely a trusted officer of the company. But tell me more of this Miss O’Gorman. How does she impress you? Do you feel that she is not—er—er exactly what she pretends to be?”

“Oh Major Simpson, it seems wrong to doubt the girl but—”

“But what?”

“She is a nice girl—a lady, in fact, but I can’t believe she is exactly what she says she is—I mean a girl with a job selling bone buttons and things. Not that there aren’t a great many ladies in shops—I don’t mean that there aren’t—and elegant gentlemen, too, but there is something about her and her clothes—”

“Ah! Her clothes! She seems to me to be simply dressed, more so than most of her fellow employees.”

“Exactly, but have you felt of them?”

“Not exactly!” answered the detective with dignity.

“I mean the material is so good, it would take almost a month’s salary to pay for one of her dresses, unless she makes a great deal more than girls just beginning usually make. And she has all of her dresses duplicated.”

“Was it only her clothes that made you think she was different?”

“Oh no, it was the way she talks. I hadn’t really had a positive suspicion of her being something she said she wasn’t, or rather not being what she said she was, until last night when we were sitting around the table reading and sewing. Josie got to talking about noted criminals and what they did and how detectives caught them—”

“Just stuff she had read in cheap magazines, I presume.”

“No, not fiction but facts.”

The Major became as eager as a hound on trail. Here were facts—excellent things for a detective to know—and in the possession of a woman. How easy it would be for him, with his years of experience, to wheedle this artless soul into telling all she knew.

“Ah, facts! Now, er-er-my dear neighbor, just what do you mean by facts?” asked the Major, making a great effort to appear unconcerned.

“Well, she spoke kind of familiarly of Paris and her accent sounded like our teacher’s used to—not at all like pupils. I always have my doubts about anybody who has too good an accent in French. I think she felt I was suspicious of her because she shut up all of a sudden. Please tell me, Major Simpson, have you also some suspicion concerning our lodger?”

CHAPTER VI
TOO MANY DETECTIVES

Major Simpson looked at his hostess with blinking eyes. Although he had spoken scornfully of cheap magazine fiction that had no doubt put melodramatic notions in Josie’s head, the truth of the matter was that the old gentleman devoured them himself in private, especially the ones dealing with crime and clever sleuths. How often in these stories unsuspecting women, landladies and lodging house keepers, were unconscious means of tracking desperate criminals. The detective came to a sudden conclusion. He determined to take into his confidence this gentle lady from his own county. Anyone who had such a light hand at doughnuts and could brew such clear rich coffee must have finesse. She was the one of all others to help him in his business of determining a difficult point in his profession. He leaned forward and grasping the widow’s plump hand, patted it tenderly.

“Mrs. Leslie—Miss Polly—er-er-Polly, little Polly Bainbridge, I wonder if you will help an old neighbor and friend in a most important matter.”

“Help you, Major Simpson! How can a woman like me serve such a gentleman as you?”

“Know then, my dear Mrs. Les—I mean Polly—I may call you Polly I hope—”

“Certainly, Major Simpson!”

“Well then, my dear Polly, you have under your roof a character that is under suspicion. I serve at Burnett & Burnett’s in a confidential capacity as their trusted private detective.”

“Land’s sakes!” cried Mrs. Leslie, who had an inborn respect for the law and all persons appointed to uphold it. But according to plays she had seen and the movies, a detective always wore a shabby brown derby and box-toed shoes. Here was her visitor, an acknowledged detective, in the smallest and neatest of polished oxfords, and from her chair she could plainly see a silk hat on the marble topped table in the reception hall, the kind of hat that might have been worn with impunity by presidents of republics or prime ministers of monarchies.

Having under her roof, or rather under her ceiling—because Mrs. Leslie had never felt that the roof of the apartment house belonged to her in the least—having under her ceiling a suspicious character was not nearly so exciting to that lady as harboring a live detective. She reasoned that Major Simpson must be an excellent detective since he had never divulged that it was in that capacity he served Burnett & Burnett, the opinion being in his county that he was a “kind of partner” in the firm.

Tales of mystery had always been Mrs. Leslie’s dissipation—it might be truthfully said her only dissipation—and now it was a delightful thing that what had hitherto been a dissipation should be put upon her as a duty. Surely everybody would consider it her duty to assist an old neighbor and family friend in any way possible.

“Help you! Indeed I will. Tell me what I must do first.”

“Tell me something of the life and habits of this young person, who has so imposed upon you.”

“Well, she is quiet, gentle, considerate and unassuming. I certainly have to give her that. She is never a mite of trouble but always helps Mary and me about any household tasks that come up, very much as though she were a daughter of the house.”

“Um-hum! Sly, very sly!” puffed the major.

“She is orderly and regular in her habits. Keeps her room as neat as a pin and never leaves anything lying around.”

“Afraid of giving a clue to her carryings-on. She is no doubt a hardened adventuress.”

Mrs. Leslie thrilled with excitement. She felt delightful cold chills running up and down her backbone and her eyes were snapping and her cheeks glowing as though under the spell of no less a person than Anna Katherine Green or Mary Roberts Reinhart. “The Bat” himself had not been able to make her shudder more happily. For the moment she lost all feeling for Josie, of whom she was really very fond, but thought of her only as a character in fiction and herself as the astute heroine who would track her to her lair.

“She is very much interested in Mary and me and encourages us to tell her all kinds of things about our home in the country. I am afraid we have told her many family secrets, nothing of grave importance because we have led quiet, sheltered lives up to the last few months, but just stories of the farm and Mary’s childhood and my girlhood. She is such a good listener and we have talked to her very freely.”

“Of course you have. That’s part of her game; to get information of all kinds about neighborhoods and then work some kind of fraud on them. She is more than likely to go down to our county and get in with folks there and steal the spoons and the registered letters or something. I tell you, Polly, I know their game—these slick ones. I’ll be bound she has talked mighty little about herself. Do you know any more about her home life, where she came from, what she did before she started to ‘do you’ than you did when she first came to you?”

“No, I’m afraid we don’t.”

“Exactly!”

“But tell me what you think the poor girl has done?” asked Mrs. Leslie, who could but feel sorry for criminals even though they spoke French with a French accent.

“Done! Why I have my suspicions that she had stolen from Burnett & Burnett many hundreds of dollars worth of real lace as well as a gold mesh bag that is easily worth a hundred. She is suspected by Mr. Burnett, too, but we are to go easy with her as we hope to track to their lair others who were able to get away with thousands of dollars worth of goods a few weeks ago.”

“What makes you think she has done it?” gasped Mrs. Leslie, her backbone continuing to tingle deliciously over such expressions as “Track to their lair.”

“Many things have led me to suspect her,” said the Major with impressive gravity. “She has studiously avoided my scrutiny and when I have attempted to follow her on the street she has with great ingenuity evaded my pursuit—given me the slip, as we say in the profession.”

“Then you have followed her?”

“Repeatedly! No doubt you have noticed that she seldom comes home immediately after closing hours, but walks around town, up one street and down another. Now is not that in itself a peculiar way for a nice young woman to behave?”

“Perhaps!”

“To my way of thinking it is very peculiar. Another thing is that she has ingratiated herself into the good will of many of the clerks at Burnett & Burnett’s. She has followed the same method with them that she has with you; always inviting confidence and never revealing anything concerning her own life and affairs. I have questioned some of them closely and all have nothing but good to say of Miss Josie O’Gorman. Now that in itself is unnatural and shows she has a sinister influence.”

“Ah, Major Simpson, I fear you are sarcastic.”

“Not at all, my dear Miss Polly! Young women in business are just like young women in society and are chary of expressions of admiration for members of their own sex.”

“But why do you think that my lodger has stolen these valuable articles? What proof have you?”

“None as yet—but that is where you are to help me. When the clerks reported the theft to me, immediately my instinct was to find this O’Gorman. It was within a minute of closing time and I would have gotten her but she seemed to divine that I was on her heels and jumped into an elevator. I followed in the next but she came up as I went down. You may imagine, my dear madam, how annoying it was to one of my years—and I may add, dignity—to be see-sawing up and down an elevator shaft in pursuit of a wretched little sandy haired girl. I give you my word I went up and down three times, always missing her like a foolish scene in a motion picture comedy. Then I took my stand at the front door, hoping to catch up with her in that way but she evidently slipped out the back door and once more gave me the slip. Now, however, I have tracked her to her lair—if such a charming parlor as yours could be called a lair—and with your able assistance I am sure I can catch up with her.”

“You have not told me yet how I am to assist you.”

“Simply by keeping your eyes open and reporting to me at every turn. I want to know every detail in regard to the movements of this O’Gorman person. I should like very much to see her room. I might gather some information that would escape the notice of a novice.”

“It seems kind of underhand—I mean on my part, but I’ll take you to her room and if I get out of this mess I never intend to advertise again for lodgers. Mary and I will have to manage somehow. I know Mary will be greatly put out when she hears of my helping you. She has taken a great fancy to Josie. You see, we both call her Josie by now.”

“It just shows your kind heart and your daughter’s loving disposition. If I were you, Mrs. Leslie—Polly—I would not mention the matter to Miss Mary. She might feel it her duty to warn the young woman that we are on to her tricks and she might escape. The fewer who are taken into a plot the better. But show me the young person’s room—I might say lair or den, because all criminals are more or less like animals and those terms are very appropriate. To call your sweet homelike parlor by such an epithet was criminal in itself.”

Josie’s room was as neat as a hospital, not a thing out of place. Mrs. Leslie opened the closet where hung the several dresses of the suspiciously good material.

“Just feel of them,” she demanded, and since they were merely hanging in a closet the Major did not deem it too familiar to comply with her request. It was not as though they were on the young woman’s person.

“Yes, very fine quality,” was his verdict, his memory harking back to early days at Burnett & Burnett’s When he stood behind the counter and measured cloths. “And look at the shoes!”

Josie’s one vanity being her feet, she was very particular about her shoes. Feet being one of the many vanities Major Simpson possessed he was a better judge of shoes than materials for dresses. On the floor of the closet was a neat row of shoes all on shoe trees and all highly polished.

“Don’t tell me! A girl standing behind a counter couldn’t afford to wear such shoes as these. Look at the cut! Look at the leather! Every heel as straight as a die and the ties of the finest grosgrain. Her shoes would give her away as masquerading if nothing else would.”

The inquisitive visitor must then have a peep in the bureau drawers. All was neat as a pin. The Major, being an old bachelor and extremely fussy about his personal belongings, could but be impressed by the exquisite order of the youthful criminal’s bureau.

“Such a pity! Such a pity!” he muttered. “But no doubt there is some good in the worst of them. And what is this little book?”

He took from the back of the top drawer Josie’s precious little homemade book filled with her father’s notes.

“Ah,” he said with an air of finality, “Greek! Now tell me, my dear lady, what a salesgirl wants with Greek. It is proof positive. I need look no farther. Of course I had no notion that I would find any of the purloined goods here in her room. Those, no doubt, she has taken to the home of confederates. Now my task will be to find where those persons live and recover the stolen articles and place the criminals behind bars.”

“How terrible! I can’t think of Josie in such surroundings.”