Mary Louise at Dorfield/Chapter 15

Hortense Markle had besought the friends of Mary Louise to come and call on her, but when Elizabeth Wright was ushered into the charming little drawing room bent on the mission intrusted to her by her partner, she had a feeling that she was not quite so welcome as she had been led to expect. Could it be because she interrupted a tête-a-tête between her hostess and Billy McGraw? That young man seemed to be very much at home in the little apartment, as though he had paid many visits there in the short time he had been acquainted with the charming Mrs. Markle.

Elizabeth was a little embarrassed but determined to fulfill her mission before she left. She liked Billy and hated to see him making a fool of himself over the pretty adventuress. She wished she could save him from the bitter chagrin that would be sure to be his when the sorry business would finally come to light, but her loyalty to Josie forbade her doing or saying a thing to put him on his guard. Then he had paid her just enough attention to make it possible for him to think that jealousy prompted her in anything she might do or say.

“We have been very busy at the shop to-day,” Elizabeth began, in a rather loud tone as though determined that her voice would be heard by Hortense and her husband too, if he had concealed himself somewhere behind the curtains. “Irene finished mending the lace and then Josie laundered the whole lot and I have just delivered it to its owner.”

“Ah, indeed!” ejaculated Hortense.

Was there a note of disappointment in her voice?

“I rather wanted to see that lace again. It was a beautiful pattern. I have a passion for fine and rare lace.”

“Well, it’s safe with the rich old lady who brought it to us,” said Elizabeth, bluntly.

“You are quite wise to get it in safe keeping as soon as possible,” said Hortense, suavely.

“By the way, you never have let me see the orchid pin,” put in Billy. “You remember you promised.”

“Why, of course! I’ll get it immediately.”

She was gone from the room for a few moments. Elizabeth, who usually was very much at home with Billy McGraw, now sat in silence. For the moment she had nothing to say. He looked at her a little uneasily.

“Are you—are you—kind of angry with me?” he finally said.

“I? The idea! Why should I be angry with you?”

“I don’t know. You don’t seem so—so—chummy as you do sometimes.”

“Chummy? I did not know I had been quite that,” she said with a touch of coldness that she could not keep from her tones.

“Now I know you have got it in for me somehow.”

Elizabeth said nothing as Hortense came back in the room with the orchid pin which she handed to Billy.

“My, it’s a peach!” he declared. He examined it with great interest. “It is as near like Vi Thomas’ as can be. Hers, of course, had Tiffany’s mark on the back and a date, as I remember, some date that meant something to her and her husband.

“Mine just has the name Felix loves to call me, ‘Pet.’ It sounds awfully silly and sentimental, but he would have it on.”

“Can’t I see it?” asked Elizabeth, wishing in her heart she had a magnifying glass handy, feeling sure there would be marks of other things to be disclosed. She noticed that the gold mounting back of the pin was slightly concave. “No doubt Josie will attach much importance to that,” she said to herself.

“You promised some day to show me your original Rembrandt etching,” she said to Hortense. “I have never seen one.”

“Have you an original Rembrandt?” asked Billy. “You never told me. I’d certainly like to see it. The Thomases had a crackerjack of a Rembrandt. Of course that was lifted too when the orchid pin was.”

“Heavens! what luck. Those Thomases seem to be perfect Jonahs,” laughed Hortense. Elizabeth thought she detected a little sharp note in her laugh.

“I am terribly sorry not to show you my treasure of treasures, but the frame was pulling loose a bit and Felix has taken it to have it mended. Anything as precious as a Rembrandt must be framed in an airtight frame. Felix has been offered a huge sum for our Rembrandt and I am trembling for fear he might sell it. Of course, I know that persons of our means have no business owning such a rare etching but I would so hate to part with it. Felix is something of a speculator in such things, while I have more the soul of the born collector.”

“I should think you would live in continual fear of having your things snatched from you,” said Elizabeth, wondering at her own cruelty in making such a remark.

“I do,” said Hortense, sadly. “Why, Felix is so keen on a trade that I shouldn’t be astonished if he wanted sometime to sell my lovely orchid pin.”

“Ah, but the ‘Pet’ engraved on the back would keep him from doing that,” suggested Billy, thinking what a mercenary brute the husband must be.

“Oh, but that could be taken off,” said Elizabeth with an air of childlike innocence. “We had some marks taken off some silver one time. It was the initials of a person who had married into my father’s family and had her initials put on an old family tea service. She had no right to the service and the service was ruined in our eyes by the addition of her initials. Of course, it meant some of the thickness of the silver had to be sacrificed to get rid of the engraving and there is almost a concavity where there used to be a convexity, but we prefer that to the initials of the interloper.”

“Oh, please don’t tell my husband such a thing could be done,” was Hortense’s playful rejoinder. “He would surely get some of the eraser and take off the ‘Pet.’ Of course, this little pin is very valuable as a work of art and I shouldn’t object if we get really hard up. I have never been an unreasonable wife, and we have had our ups and downs.”

“You might write to your friend Mr. Thomas,” Elizabeth suggested to Billy, “and tell him there is a chance for him to buy the duplicate of the pin his wife lost.” Elizabeth well understood she was teasing Mrs. Markle, but could not resist doing it, feeling assured that she was supposed to be unconscious of so doing.

“Don’t do it! Please don’t do it!” begged Hortense, plainly alarmed. “If this Mr. Thomas hears of this pin he might make a bid for it and Felix is almost sure to take him up, although it does belong to me. I couldn’t bear to part with my beautiful pin. It has such wonderful associations. You see, Felix gave it to me in our early married life when everything was quite different.” This, of course, was for Billy’s benefit and he looked sad and promised he would not write to his friend.

Hortense looked daggers at Elizabeth, who began to feel that she was regarded as being a bit catty, the expression that she had so recently used to describe Hortense.

“No doubt I am,” Elizabeth said to herself, “but I couldn’t resist it.” Aloud, she remarked that she must be going. Mrs. Markle did not urge her to remain. She found this girl Elizabeth a little too inclined to suggest unpleasant things. She was on the whole rather relieved when Billy McGraw offered to take Elizabeth home in his car. She wanted to get rid of both callers and to see Felix alone and report to him that things were getting a trifle warm.

“I am afraid my clever puss has been talking too much,” suggested Mr. Markle, when his wife told him of her having been asked to exhibit the Rembrandt.

“Oh, I can’t think it. You see, one must be natural and what more natural than to say one has a Rembrandt if it is the case?”

“That’s so! We may be moving on soon, Pet. Simpkins & Markle had a fine offer to-day for a furnished apartment, and no questions asked. This would be the very one and we could take with us all the doubtful things and still leave a costly enough place.”

“Not before the wedding, surely!” she exclaimed.

“Well, hardly, when my wife is to be matron of honor! We will be here several months longer. What is the date fixed!”

“June the twelfth! Must I give out that there is a chance of our moving?”

“Not yet, but when you do, of course you must be the abused young wife with the peculiar and mercenary husband. That is a great stunt of yours. I heard what you were saying to that young ass of a McGraw.”

“Not jealous, are you?” she asked coyly.

“Not a bit! Just more in love with you than ever. I don’t know what I’d do without such a clever wife and such a stupid business partner. Simpkins is duller than ever. He accepts everything on its face value in the firm and assists me in operating the business with never an idea in his numskull that he is not conducting a perfectly legitimate thing. Of course, we have a lot of simple deals on that any real estate firm might have and then we have this out of town rental list that I attend to as much as possible. Sometimes, though, it is up to him and he accepts it with perfectly good grace. Specializing as we do in elegantly furnished apartments brings in a class of clients with whom he is unfamiliar and they seem in a measure to overawe him into extra stupidity.”

Dorfield and the neighboring towns were suffering from the after war congested conditions quite as much as were the large cities. New industries had sprung into existence, bringing many strangers to settle in the towns. Building was high and the cost of materials was increasing every day. That was forcing up the price of real estate and quite ordinary little apartments were renting for fabulous sums. When those apartments were furnished the supposed value was doubled. And when they were furnished elegantly the agents could go as far as they liked in their demands upon the tenants.

Simpkins & Markle were doing a flourishing business, specializing in small, elegantly furnished apartments. They had branch offices in all the neighboring towns, Mr. Markle being the traveling member who kept in touch with the branch offices.

These apartments were always let with the greatest care as to the form of lease. The empty apartment would be rented to a young couple who would sign the lease and pay a month’s rent in advance. Then their household goods would arrive from some distant state and be installed. Rugs, pictures, beautiful furniture of all kinds, silver, china, table linen, etc. The couple would live in the apartment for about a month and then the young husband would report at the real estate office that he had a raise, a new job, a sick mother, or something and wanted to sub-let his apartment, furnished. Of course, the beautiful furnishings would double and sometimes triple the value of the rooms and Simpkins & Markle would reap a reward. Simpkins would never be called upon to interview this couple and would therefore never be struck with its likeness to the couple before. He seemed merely to see that the firm was doing well and their kind of business was a lucrative one. He stayed in Dorfield and kept the books and attended to the old Dorfield business, which was slow but steady, while his more active partner attended to the furnished apartment rentals. His was the duty to pass on to the distant young couple the profits reaped by their contract in sub-renting.

The unerring taste of Hortense was often called in play to arrange the furniture in these apartments. She could put a touch to them that would add greatly to their value. Strangers, warned beforehand of the difficulty of finding any place to live and almost hopeless of obtaining even a roof over their heads, would be carried off their feet when shown these beautiful rooms where Hortense had had her artistic will. No price seemed too high for such a haven of rest and beauty.

There can be little doubt in the minds of my readers where this furniture came from. A chain of burglars reaching from New York to San Francisco were ever busy robbing any and every house where they could make an entrance. Then the spoils were carefully sorted and shifted to far away points where detection was not likely. Felix and Hortense Markle were head and brains for this bold undertaking. They worked under many aliases and sometimes appeared as father and daughter, sometimes brother and sister, sometimes they worked singly, but usually they were husband and wife. They were clever beyond the belief of ordinary mortals, so clever that their existence was doubted by some of the most astute and highly esteemed detectives. O’Gorman had been on their track and was in a fair way to come up with them when the war broke out and he was compelled to serve his country in other ways besides bringing to justice a pair of the cleverest thieves he confessed himself ever to have seen. He had talked to Josie of his ambition and had given her what information he possessed. This form of real estate hoax was a new one with the Markles, but their method was the one they had always used, that of living in a respectable and decent way and making friends with the best people in the town where they hoped to get the most loot.

Sleepy Dorfield was a good place for their machinations. There was a good deal of wealth in town and the friendship of Mary Louise and her grandfather was “open sesame” to the society of Dorfield.