Mary Louise at Dorfield/Chapter 4

Detective O’Gorman’s death while he was abroad on United States Secret Service brought sadness to the hearts of many, even to some of the criminals whom his almost uncanny powers had been instrumental in bringing to justice.

“A good thief has some respect for a good detective,” one noted cracksman, who was serving his term in the penitentiary, was heard to say when the news came that his one-time enemy was no more. “There is pleasure in trying to circumvent a man like O’Gorman, but most of these so-called detectives have gone into the business because they have failed as life insurance agents. It is no fun trying to get ahead of them. They are too easy.”

Little Josie O’Gorman mourned keenly the loss of her father. He had been everything to her and it was hard to feel that he was gone and she was never to see his dear, homely face again. Not that Josie thought his face was homely. She considered his funny fat nose more classic than the one worn by the sculptured Adonis and much more fitting to follow a scent; and his round eyes that could narrow down to slits when he got on the right track in a big case were to the daughter more expressive than Wallace Reid’s or any other movie hero’s.

Crushed at first by the blow of his sudden death, Josie had felt that never again could she go about the business of living; but the girl came of sturdy stock and she knew too well that her father would have been disappointed in her if she had given up to the grief that was well nigh overwhelming her.

“I must do as he would wish me to do. He would never sit and mope,” she declared to herself and immediately wrote to Mary Louise that she was thinking of coming to settle in Dorfield, as Washington was too sad for her right then.

“I am not going to stay with you, though, honey,” she wrote. “But must have a place of my own. I’ll engage in some business because I don’t know how to be idle. I must hunt a partner and perhaps I might get a flat and go to housekeeping.”

When Elizabeth Wright told Mary Louise of her unrest and determination to leave the ranks of unproductive consumers, Mary Louise immediately thought of Josie and how well the two girls might hit it off together.

Josie came, a sad little figure.

“Sadder than she would be if she had on mourning,” Mary Louise said to herself as she embraced her friend at the station.

“I guess you expected to see me in mourning,” Josie said as they took their seats in Mary Louise’s car. “Somehow I’d like to have it on, but Father hated it so that I decided not to wear it. He used to say that people in dripping black simply exuded gloom and had no right to impose their sorrows an all around them. I must do what he wanted.”

“That’s a brave girl!” cried Mary Louise, holding her close for a moment before she started the car. “I think the war has changed people’s ideas concerning mourning. But you should have a gold star. Your father certainly was serving Uncle Sam just as much as a soldier.”

“That is what I think and so I have a gold star, but I wear it where it can’t be seen. It is just as much satisfaction to me and I can feel it shining on my heart. But tell me about yourself! When are you and Danny going to begin to trot in double harness?”

“In six weeks! This is the fifteenth of April and we have set the first of June. I am so sorry you won’t be a bridesmaid.”

“Well, I will be one in spirit, but just now I can’t quite make up my mind to go through with it in the flesh. When you wrote asking me, I was just as happy as could be that you wanted me, but I felt that I must not try. The fact that you did ask me though is shining on my heart just like the gold star.”

“And now I believe I have a partner for you. I don’t know just what you mean to do and neither does your partner, but she means to do something.”

“Well so do I, and that makes a good beginning towards congeniality,” laughed Josie.

“Have you any ideas?”

“A few!”

“So has Elizabeth Wright.”

“Is that my partner’s name? I know I shall like her. I always do like Elizabeths. I’m awfully funny about names. Some names I simply can’t stand. Persons who have those names have to prove themselves to be worthy before I accept them, while the ones who have the names I like have a hard time proving themselves unworthy. I try to have an open mind where names are concerned, realizing that it is no fault of the namee but of the parents.”

“Did I have to prove myself worthy before you accepted me?” asked Mary Louise, amused as usual by her friend’s whimsical way of looking at things.

“Not at all! Your name was one of my strongest reasons for coming to your rescue, hiring myself to Mrs. Conant as a servant so that I might guard your interests and prove your grandfather’s innocence. I felt in my heart that the grandfather of a Mary Louise must be good.”

“Well, your instincts were right that time. I believe really and truly that Grandpa Jim is the best man in the world.”

“Now that my father is gone, I think maybe he is,” said Josie earnestly.

The girls were silent for a while as they sped through the streets of Dorfield. Finally, Mary Louise spoke:

“What are your ideas for an occupation?”

“Of course, my work in life is unraveling mysteries and I mean to be as clever a detective as my father’s daughter should be, but I have an idea that the best way to succeed is to keep it dark. Now this is my plan: I want to have a shop of some sort where all kinds of persons will come, where I can get in touch with all conditions of folk and they will think I am just the shopkeeper and have no idea of my real calling.”

“Oh, Josie, you are so clever!”

“Not a bit of it! Don’t begin flattering me or I’ll approach my work in the wrong spirit. Father always said one must have a humble and contrite heart or the fine points would slip by.”

“What kind of shop were you contemplating?”

“Something quite different from any shop Dorfield now boasts. But you tell me what this Elizabeth was thinking of so she can get the credit if she deserves it. We may have had the same plans in mind. Ideas seem to be in the air like flocks of birds and the same ones or ones of the same family light on several persons at the same time.”

“Elizabeth wants a literary work-shop, where one could get manuscript typed and corrected. She thought she might combine a clipping bureau with it and even write articles for persons who had not the brains to do their own work. She says she could do obituaries and valedictories and club papers for aspiring females, also speeches for politicians. Elizabeth is very clever but comes of the stuffiest, most conservative family. The mother is one of those women who are work crazy but never want their daughters to raise their hands and the father is living about fifty years too late. Mrs. Wright would have been a wonder if she had had the outlook to go into business instead of wasting all her energies on cleaning and cooking and getting husbands for her daughters. Elizabeth is dead tired of being what she calls ‘an unproductive consumer.’ The taste she had of being at work and drawing a salary during the war has ruined her as far as taking her place in the family of daughters, all of them striving towards the matrimonial goal. Elizabeth is determined to break the bonds.”

“Bully for Elizabeth! She sounds fine to me. I like the idea of the literary work-shop and clipping bureau. Does she know short-hand as well as typewriting?”

“I believe she knows it but has no speed, having just picked it up by herself.”

“Better and better! She is the kind that picks things up by herself. When can I see my partner?”

“She will come to see you this morning. Elizabeth always wants to get what she is interested in going immediately. She is like her mother in some ways but a much more comfortable person to be with.”

They found Elizabeth Wright awaiting them when they arrived at Colonel Hathaway’s residence.

“Please excuse me if I have come too soon, but I couldn’t wait,” she cried as she came forward to embrace Mary Louise and shake hands with her future partner.

“You couldn’t come too soon for me, but Josie may be tired after her long trip,” suggested Mary Louise.

“Not at all! I never let a trip tire me. My father used to say that it was nonsense for persons to get tired on a trip. ‘Just let the engine do the work and sit back and read and think and mix with your fellow passengers and you won’t get tired. The persons who let a journey make them tired are usually the ones who feel somehow that they must help pull the cars.’”

Elizabeth laughed. Already she was liking this funny little friend of Mary Louise. What an amusing looking person she was! Her features were not plain, although certainly not beautiful. Her hair was decidedly red, her face freckled but with a healthy color which kept the freckles from being too apparent. Her eyes were her best points, although at times she could make those eyes as stolid and dim as a half-wit’s. Her teeth were excellent, but as she usually laughed with her eyes one seldom saw her teeth. Elizabeth thought her face was interesting.

Josie O’Gorman was older than Mary Louise and her other friends, but there was something very youthful about her little figure and as she always dressed in misses’ sizes and cuts she could easily have passed for seventeen, although she was at least twenty-two. She said she bought juvenile clothes because they fitted her small figure and because they were especially designed for boarding school girls who were late for breakfast and had no time to fool with hooks and eyes. Her favorite style of dress was a one-piece affair that slipped over her head like a middy blouse. It hung in straight pleats from yoke to hem, confined loosely at the waist by a low hanging leather belt. Her headgear was always a straight brimmed sailor and her shoes of a broad-toed, low-heeled, sensible style. In the winter she wore blue serge in the morning, white serge in the evening and heavy white rajah silk for dress-up. In the summer, it was blue linen in the morning, white linen in the evening and linen lawn or crepe de chine for dress-up. Josie always looked fresh and well dressed, if not in the latest fashion, and she had to take no thought whatsoever concerning her apparel, not even as much as a man, since she had no collar button with which to contend and no stiff collars to be frayed out by heartless laundries. She could carry everything she possessed in a small wardrobe trunk with its convenient compartments for different garments. She always kept her clothes in her trunk whether she was at home or on a visit and a neat handbag ready packed with a change of linen and toilet articles in case of a sudden journey being sprung upon her. That was the result of her father’s training.

Detective O’Gorman used to say: “If we are to track criminals we must be as ready as criminals and I am sure no thief or murderer worthy of the name would have to stop and pack a grip to go on an enforced trip whether he knew he was hounded or not.”

Josie desired above all things to be as much like her father as a young girl could be like a middle-aged man and she was bidding fair to succeed.

She constantly quoted her father, who had been full of wise saws. Sometimes Josie gave him credit for sayings that were well known to have belonged either to Solomon or Good Richard, but the devoted daughter was sure they had originated with Detective O’Gorman and those other two less brilliant gentlemen had plagiarized his wisdom.

“Now tell us, Josie, what are your plans for a shop?” suggested Mary Louise after Elizabeth and Josie had finished sizing each other up. “I have told Josie what you are contemplating, Elizabeth.”

“My idea is a kind of higgledy-piggledy place, a place where one can get anything under heaven that is needed, because, if we happen not to be carrying it in stock, we will take orders for it if there is time to wait for an order or we will go out and shop for it if the thing can be bought in Dorfield. We will bargain to furnish anything from strawberries in January to information concerning the identity of the doorkeeper in Congress who dropped dead when news came of Cornwallis’ surrender. I know of a shop called ‘The Serendipity Shop.’ That, I believe, is the name Leigh Hunt gave to a place where one could go in and find out anything. But that has too erudite and obscure a meaning for us, who mean to be quite plain and simple. I think Higgledy-Piggledy Shop would be a grand name for us. Don’t you?”

“Splendid!” was the verdict of both her listeners.

“I have perhaps the most complete collection of encyclopedias and dictionaries outside of the Congressional Library. Father was daffy about exact information and had systematically collected all books that professed to contain such information from ‘Inquire Within, 3,700 Facts for the People,’ to the latest and most down-to-date dictionary of war slang. These books will be invaluable.”

“Will you let our customers—clients—patients—whatever we will call them, have access to these books?” asked Elizabeth.

“Not on your life! No more than doctors let us read their books for fear we might cure ourselves and they would be minus fees.”