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.”