CHAPTER IX

WHO IS MISS FAUNTLEROY

Josie’s taxi carried her quickly to the home of Mr. Theodore Burnett. Fortunately she found him in. The old colored butler who answered the bell seemed greatly astonished that a young lady should be calling on the master of the house and not on his mother and sisters.

“You mean Ol’ Miss, don’t you lady, I mean Mrs. Burnett and Miss Lily an’ Miss May? They’s all to home an’ I wouldn’t be ’stonished if they ain’t ’spectin’ of you ’case they done tol’ me tea in the settin’ room at five sharp.”

“No, Uncle,” laughed Josie, “this is a business call and I must see Mr. Burnett immediately. Please give him my card.”

“All right, lady, but--well all right! I reckon I mought jes’ as well take you right off in ter the liberry if you air so ’termined lak ter see the boss. He ain’t so partial ter doin’ business of a Sat’day. Don’t you reckon you mought prospone it ’til Monday?”

“No, I must see him now. If you take him my card I am sure he will see me.”

“Yassum, but I hate ter pester him so. He’s worrited enough what with sneak thieves a liftin’ goods off’n the sto’ right under the nose of these here detecertives he done pay out so much money to. I hearn him a tellin’ Ol’ Miss sumpen ’bout it at lunch time.”

“Where is the library?” asked Josie, determination in her voice.

“Well, lady, it air right back yonder--”

“What is the matter, Uncle Abe?” The question was asked by a pleasant looking young woman whose likeness to Mr. Theodore Burnett gave Josie the assurance that she was his sister. She had overheard sounds of an altercation from the upper hall and leaning over the bannisters spied Josie.

“I must see Mr. Burnett immediately,” said the girl. “It is important and I beg of you to inform him that I am here. I am Miss O’Gorman from the store.”

“O-O-h! Are you really?” and Miss Lily Burnett sailed down the stairs rapidly. “My brother has told us a lot about you and we have been anxious to meet you. Uncle Abe, you must tell Mr. Teddy immediately that Miss O’Gorman is here. Please come in, and when you and Brother Teddy get through your business talk we will be so glad if you will have tea with us. Now don’t say ‘no.’”

There was a sweet frankness about Miss Lily Burnett’s voice and manner that appealed to Josie but she felt that for the time being she must forego the pleasure of tea with the family of her employer.

“I am very sorry, but I am too busy to stop with you to-day,” she said.

“Well then, promise another day!” and Josie promised and was at last shown into the library where the master of the house and the junior partner of the firm sat in some dejection, attempting to read but evidently restless and preoccupied.

“Miss O’Gorman!” Mr. Theodore exclaimed, jumping up. “I have been wondering how I could get hold of you. Of course I had your address but no telephone number. I have wanted very much to have a talk with you ever since Major Simpson told me he was going to hunt you up. He found you, did he not? I don’t know how the old fellow happened to catch on to your being what you are. He is more astute than we thought. Perhaps calling himself a detective for so many years has finally made him one.”

Josie began to laugh.

“He has found out where I live and as far as I can make out he has sworn my landlady to secrecy in regard to his having tracked me. He has a mystery up his sleeve and for the life of me I cannot make it out. But I am not here to discuss Major Simpson and you have not told me why you wanted to talk to me. First let me ask you if a shoplifter has been at work again and carried off several yards of exquisite lace and a gold mesh bag?”

“How did you find that out? Major Simpson must have had a leakage somewhere. Ah, perhaps you have seen one of the sales-ladies?”

“Worse and more of it! I have found the goods in my own pocket.” Josie produced the stolen articles and laid them on the library table. “It seems almost too good to be true that my pocket was the one chosen, and it also convinces me that my father was right when he declared truth to be stranger than fiction. A real detective tale would never sell with such a thing as this happening in it.”

She then recounted in detail the story of how Miss Fauntleroy bought the paper and then twisting it up angrily returned it to the old newsie, and how the woman seemed genuinely distressed that she, Josie, should take the rumpled paper.

“Of course these two are the ones to watch now--Miss Fauntleroy and the old beggar woman at your back entrance. Miss Fauntleroy does not live at the address she gave Burnett & Burnett.”

“Are you sure? How do you know?”

“Yes, I am sure, and I know because this afternoon I went out to the address she gave and there is nothing but a frog pond at that number on Linden Row, Linden Heights. In fact, there are no houses at all on Linden Row. It has but recently been put on the market--a half-hearted attempt at a real estate boom, I fancy, and the houses are all ‘castles in Spain.’ The question now is: Where does Miss Fauntleroy live and what connection has she with the beggar at the gate? We must go very quietly so as not to scare her off. I am a little uneasy now that you tell me Major Simpson is to cooperate with me.”

“Ah, but I did not say that! Merely that he seems to be aware of the fact that you are not just a shop girl. He came to the office in great excitement a little while after the theft was reported and wanted your address. He seemed to think that through you he might track the whole gang, if gang there is, of shoplifters.”

“That being the case, why should he be so secret about it when once he found my address? Why should he not wait until I got home and talk the thing over with me? Why should he persuade Mrs. Leslie, the dear lady with whom I am boarding, to keep so dark about his having been there? Why, Mr. Burnett, he has even snooped around my bedroom and peeped in my bureau drawers.”

“Surely not, Miss O’Gorman! How do you know?”

“I know because a little book, of which I am very fond, had been moved.”

“Taken away?”

“Oh no, just turned around with the edges out instead of in. I always put it in the corner of my drawer, turning the back out.”

Mr. Burnett laughed. “Heaven’s above! What an inventory taker you would make--or housekeeper for Sherlock Holmes. But, my dear young lady, why should you think that poor old Sylvester Simpson was guilty of such--such sacrilege? Could not your nice landlady have done that? Did he leave finger prints on the book and have you examined it with a magnifying glass?”

“No doubt he did and I would have examined it and perhaps photographed the finger prints had it been necessary, but the deft detective did worse things than leave finger prints,” answered Josie, good naturedly accepting her employer’s banter.

“What could be worse?”

“His cuff link broke in my drawer,” she said, producing the telltale bit of gold. “Would you like to see Major Simpson when I supply the missing link?”

“I should, above all things. But seriously, what do you make of his behavior?”

“What do you?”

“Answered like an Irishman! You know an Irishman always answers an unanswerable question by asking another,” laughed Mr. Burnett. “Frankly, I don’t know; but then, I am a plain merchant and not a young lady detective. If I had to answer your question off hand I think I should say that the old man has gone a little crazy and thinks you are the shoplifter--”

“Exactly!” cried Josie. “You have hit the nail on the head, Mr. Burnett, and I give you all credit for solving the mystery of ‘The Major and the Maiden.’ I find very often in my work that the sane opinion of a sensible business man who makes no pretense of being able to unscrew the inscrutable is worth more than all the sleuthing in the world. I don’t know why I did not think of that myself. Of course he thinks I am responsible for all thefts past, present and future. That is the reason he has been following me around so much. And just think, I thought it was because he knew about my father.”

Then Josie laughed heartily at her own stupidity, and Mr. Burnett joined in. At that moment his sister Lily put her head in the library door and the other sister, May, looked in over Lily’s shoulder and they laughed, too. Although they hadn’t the slightest idea what it was all about, they were sure it was a good joke that was bringing forth such spontaneous merriment from their much admired brother.

“Now, Brother Teddy, you need not pretend you and Miss O’Gorman are discussing private business matters if you are laughing like that. There could not possibly be anything about business that would be so funny,” declared Lily. “I met Miss O’Gorman in the hall. Now I want May to meet her and I want both of you to come on in the living room and have some tea.”

“Indeed we will,” declared Mr. Burnett. “I have been wanting Miss O’Gorman to let you call on her ever since she has been here, but she is such a stickler in a way for business etiquette that she has refused. Now, Sister Lily, we have her in spite of herself.”

Josie did not mind at all being had in spite of herself. The day had been a trying one and it was pleasant to sit by the cheerful grate fire in the comfortable, homelike living room and have Lily and May serve the tea while she talked to Mr. Burnett and his charming old mother, who was a delightfully witty old lady in voluminous skirts and a dainty lace cap--a veritable “Ol’ Miss.”

“Now, Miss O’Gorman, I want you to tell the ladies of my family all about it. They are very remarkable women and know when to keep secrets. I am sure what you tell them will go no farther. My mother is a great reader of mystery tales and she will be vastly interested in what you have to say.”

So Josie told all the happenings since she had come to Wakely--not that much had happened except Major Simpson’s dogging of her every move--until that very day when things had moved fast and furiously.

“And you actually have the stolen things right here in this house?” asked the mother.

“Right here,” said the son, and he went to the library and brought back the purloined articles. “Of course the ridiculous part of it all is that Major Simpson thinks Miss O’Gorman is a clever shoplifter instead of being about the most successful female detective we have anywhere.”

“Oh please--” blushed Josie.

“Well, you know you are, at least that is what your Captain Lonsdale says. I am wondering what old Simp will say when he finds out the goods have been returned.”

“Of course he will say that he knew all the time I had the things and I brought them back because I was afraid of your sending me to jail. By the way, if I had been a thief it would certainly have been a dramatic move to bring the things to you. It would have disarmed you completely, would it not?”

“I guess it would.”

“And now I must go,” said Josie. “I am wondering all the time what my dear friends the Leslies are thinking about me. Mrs. Leslie saw the lace and gold bag as soon as I did and she expressed her astonishment. Heavens! Do you think Major Simpson could have informed her of the theft this afternoon? Of _course_ he did and now Mary and her mother think I am the guilty party.”