Mary Louise at Dorfield/Chapter 10

“Why don’t you like Mrs. Markle?” Josie asked Irene as they sat in Mary Louise’s car while she went in a shop on a housekeeping errand on their way home from the Higgledy-Piggledy after the strenuous day of unpacking and carpentering and plumbing.

“Why do you think I don’t like her?” and Irene tried not to give herself away to the astute Josie.

“Why, Irene dear, you couldn’t deceive a flea!”

“I hope I wasn’t rude to her. I try always to be extra polite to her.”

“Oh, you were polite enough, but your eyes are ‘wells of truth’ and one only has to look in them to know what your sentiments are.”

“I didn’t know that! Mercy, what am I to do? Put on smoked glasses?”

“Fortunately, you are inclined to like mankind, so won’t have to wear smoked glasses all the time,” laughed Josie. “But you haven’t told me why you don’t like her.”

“I have no reason for a strange feeling of distrust and abhorrence that comes over me when she approaches. I know she is beautiful and clever and charming and I fully realize that I am foolish to harbor such sentiments, but, try as I may, I cannot get rid of the feeling. It is one of nameless depression, a kind of smothered sensation.”

“Like some persons have when cats come in the room?”

“Exactly! Now do you think I am mean and silly?”

“No, not in the least! I think you perhaps have some kind of occult power that I wish I had myself. Now I don’t fancy the lady myself, but it is because her name is Hortense.”

“Why, what has that to do with her character?”

“Nothing on earth, but I have an antipathy to certain names and Hortense is one of them. Of course, I am well aware of the fact that there are many good Hortenses, as many as there are good Josies, but, somehow, it seems that I am not the one to meet the good ones. They are always a bit false, the Hortenses I have known. Now you are thinking I am silly. Confess!”

“No, not at all silly, but a bit unreasonable,” laughed Irene. “I fancy Mrs. Markle’s parents gave her that name and she had nothing to do with it.”

“I am not so sure of that. They may have named her plain Jane or even Maria or Hannah and she may have felt Hortense more in keeping. I’ll give it to her she has wonderful taste and Hannah would have been out of tone with her general make-up. Why do you think she wouldn’t let that young Mr. McGraw see her pin?”

“Why, wasn’t her reason given sufficient?” asked Irene.

“Not to me! Either there was something about the pin she did not want him to see or she wanted to get him to come to her apartment and call and thought that would be a good way to manage it.”

“Oh, Josie, you are hard on her!”

“Well, when you don’t like a person, you might as well find out why and that is what I am doing. I am just trying to analyze my emotions and find a cause for the effect. I must prove to myself for my own private satisfaction why the bristles stand up on my spine when the pretty lady comes around.”

“You did not show you felt that way in the least. I wish I could hide my feelings as well as you,” sighed Irene.

“Please don’t try to! You, with your instinct to detect evil, would prove too valuable to a would-be detective. Not that I am one,” quickly added Josie, who was determined not to let anyone know of her dual occupation.

After an early tea, Josie, in spite of objections raised by Mary Louise, insisted upon going back to her Higgledy-Piggledy apartment.

“I might just as well get used to it, honey. It is going to be in a mess for a while yet, but if I can be there early and late just so much the sooner will we begin operations. To-morrow is Sunday and I can have a nice long day to write letters that must be written and look over some papers. That won’t be too much like working on the Sabbath, and I can begin to work in dead earnest early Monday morning. I’ll see you at church to-morrow though, however.”

Josie refused the offer Mary Louise made of sending her home in her car but insisted her legs were made to use, and if she got too accustomed to riding around in cars, it would spoil her for more primitive forms of locomotion.

Josie did not go directly to her shop after leaving Colonel Hathaway’s, but slipping down a side street she walked quietly into the police station. Josie had a power inherited directly from her father of being almost invisible, that is she moved so quietly and was so unobtrusive in manner and dress that she could pass in a crowd absolutely unnoticed, and even where there was not a crowd, she had a way of effacing herself so that she might stand in one’s presence for minutes without being observed. And after she was observed, it would tax the powers of the most alert to describe the girl, so neutral could she appear. Her red hair even seemed to become dun and colorless when she, for some reason, was intent on being unnoticed.

The police station was quiet. It was too early for the usual Saturday night bustle of business. An officer was dozing at his exalted desk with a great book open in front of him, the book where the business of the day was recorded. At the door sat another policeman. He too was napping with his stiff belt unbuttoned and his helmet cocked over his closed eyes, his legs stretched out as though to trip up the unwary.

Josie was far from being in that class, however. She quietly and lightly jumped over the hurdle of legs and slipped under the nose of the man at the desk and made her way down a hall to the door of the Chief of Police, Captain Charley Lonsdale.

The chief was not asleep, far from it, but he was lost in the perusal of some closely written sheets over which he was knotting his beetling brows. His door was ajar and with a small tap to announce herself Josie entered and stood before him. He grunted in acknowledgment that he knew someone was in his presence to whom he would give his attention when he solved some troublesome problem.

“Well, what is it?” he finally jerked out, looking up from his papers. “Why, bless my soul! If it ain’t little O’Gorman. Child, I am glad to see you. I can’t tell you how I have felt about your father. Why, we’ll never get over his loss in the service. What he didn’t know about criminals was not worth knowing. A good man too! A good man, for sure! I wish I had him here right now to help me out with a case. I don’t see why those fellows in the East think their crooks are working around here. I don’t believe they are,” he declared, glancing again at the papers which had so absorbed his attention on Josie’s entrance.

“What is the case?” she asked, looking keenly at the chief.

“Oh, just the same old tale of crooks, but this time they seem to be stealing lots of things besides money. They have actually walked off with the entire furnishings of apartments, rugs, sideboards, pictures, even beds and wardrobes and whole sets of china. There must be an unbroken chain of them extending through the states. It is post-war conditions that we might have expected, but it seems to be even worse than we had anticipated and now they are worrying me about things that were lost in New York and Boston. I am sure nobody would come to Dorfield with stolen goods. Aren’t you?”

Josie said nothing and the chief looked at her keenly.

“Well?” he asked. “What do you say?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you still dabble in detective work?”

“No, I never did dabble.”

“So!” he laughed. “You were in it in dead earnest.”

“Exactly!”

“Well, you are your father’s own daughter and waste no words. I reckon you are here hunting a job.”

“I have a job, sir, I am keeping a shop.” Josie then told him of the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop and what her ideas were in regard to the running of it in connection with a secret detective service.

“Already I have a clue I want to follow up, sir,” she told him, “but, of course, if you could put me on the force it might be a help to me at some time. The shining star displayed on occasions sometimes has a good effect.”

“You are right. Sometimes it means more than a loaded pistol,” laughed the chief.

“Well, good-by, sir,” and Josie flitted from the chief’s office and by the drowsing attendants in the outer office without their being conscious of the fact that she had been in the building.

“What a fine little girl!” mused the chief. “She knows how to leave when her business is over with, too. That’s something precious few folks understand. I wish I had more like her on the force. I forgot to ask her if she had a telephone.” He rang his bell, which buzzed teasingly near the ear of the policeman sprawling at the door over whose legs Josie had lightly jumped.

“Casey,” he asked when the huge Irishman made his appearance trying to conceal the fact that he was not quite awake, “has the young lady got out of sight?”

“Yes, sorr, clane out of sight!” And Casey blinked rapidly.

“Well, that’s all!” said the chief shortly.

“Yes, sorr!” and Casey made a hasty retreat.

He remarked to the man at the desk, whose slumbers had also been broken by the buzzer:

“Sure an’ Chief Charley has been slapin’ an’ dramin’ uv the ladies. He was arfter wantin’ to know if the young lady was out uv sight. I could truthfully tell him she was that. There’s been no young lady here.”