CHAPTER XII

A BOARDING HOUSE HERO

When Major Simpson received the frantic message from Mrs. Leslie informing him the watermelons had come, for a moment he stood aghast, not knowing at all what she meant. Slowly a wary smile overspread his rotund countenance and he exclaimed:

“By golly! There’s a woman for you! I’ll bet my gold-headed cane that somebody had caught on to the lemons and she realized I would have intelligence enough to grasp her meaning if she substituted watermelons. Of course--of course--picnics back in the grove behind the church--ice cold watermelons--ice cold lemonade. Even had she said fried chicken I should have been wise. Well, well! I must not neglect my digestion for this little shoplifter. Since she is safe in the hands of my good friend Polly Bainbridge I can eat my dinner in peace. I wonder whether or not the stolen goods are still on the wretch. I fancy not, but once we get our clutches on her she will divulge where she has hidden the loot.”

Major Simpson was star boarder in the very select house run by Mrs. Celeste White. The place was called “Maison Blanche”. Mrs. White seemed to think that her name Celeste gave her sufficient reason for assuming a French air. For that reason at Maison Blanche the bill of fare was always the menu. The baking dishes were casseroles, the napkins, serviettes. She made desperate efforts to have old Aunt Maria called the chef but that worthy person objected.

“No’m! I ain’t no shelf an’ I ain’t gonter be laid on none fer many a day yit. I’m a plain cook as fer as what you call me is consarned but I’m plain an’ fancy as fer as cookin’ is consarned. An’ what I cook air a gonter be called by the right name s’long as it air in my kitchen. When it gits as fer as the precinct of the butler’s pantry it kin begin ter change its name an’ not befo’. I cooks maccaroni an’ cheese in a bakin’ dish but Miss White she make a pass over it an’ by the time the boa’ders gits settled in they seats my maccaroni an’ cheese air fergetti O’ Gratty Ann. I don’t know who this here Gratty Ann is but she sho mus’ a been a great one fer the eatin’s since she got so many things named after her. They even got pertatters named her name only Miss White, she calls ’em pums. This Gratty Ann an’ that there Cassy Roll got they patent hitched on ter mos’ eve’y thing these days. In ol’ times Sally Lum an’ Brown Betty wa’ the onlies oomans what got they names in the cook book an’ now them two has ter take a back seat. The times air sho quare. Miss White she don’t even let cawfy be plain cawfy, that is when they dishes it up in them little doll baby cups, but she got ter name it after some low flung pusson called Demmy Task. I don’t know who Demmy Task is but she mus’ be a stingy one.”

In the kitchen Aunt Maria ruled supreme, while in the parlor Major Simpson was monarch of all he surveyed--from the great Mrs. Celeste White herself down to the humble little Miss Willie Watts who rented Mrs. White’s attic room which she pleased to call a studio. Here Miss Willie made crayon portraits of the living and the dead for a living, and for pleasure she painted fancy pictures illustrating striking bits in mythology as well as her favorite songs. These pictures painted merely for the love of what the poor little woman called “her art” she never sold, because nobody ever bought them. But she was very generous with them at Christmas and on birthdays and weddings. According to Miss Willie Watts everything must be decorated--no space go to waste. Art abhorred a bare space as much as Nature did a vacuum.

Major Simpson was the recipient of several of Miss Willie’s efforts. “The Lovers’ Tryst,” painted in a wooden mixing bowl, was touching indeed. Of course the poor man never did know what he was expected to do with a wooden bowl so he did nothing with it--just had it around. The small rolling pin tastefully decorated in new born cupids and suspended by silken cords and tassels attached to the handles, he guessed was meant for a cravat holder and so the vivid pink cupids peeped out from behind the old gentleman’s sober ties, constantly reminding him that the fool that the cynics tell us is born every minute may also be a lover.

On this evening Major Simpson was in his glory. The paying lady guests at Maison Blanche were gathered together in the parlor, listening in wrapt admiration while the star boarder recounted with becoming modesty the almost superhuman intelligence he had exercised in tracking down the desperate criminal, little Josie O’Gorman. Of course he named no names for fear that by some means the terrible truth might be conveyed to his victim and she might escape.

“How thrilling!” trilled a sweet young thing of some forty summers. “Oh, Major, you are wonderfully clever! I wish I might see you work. How will you proceed now? Will you swear out a warrant and go and arrest the wicked creature?”

“No, no, not yet! It is most important to round up all of the girl’s confederates. In the mean time she is safe in the apartment of my friend, the widow from my county--”

“A widow!” exclaimed Miss Willie Watts. “So she is a widow?”

Miss Willie was a contented little woman and envied no woman anything except a dead husband. In her heart she had always longed to be a widow. Her imagination could not picture for her a live husband but she could easily see herself in a widow’s ruche with a long crepe veil. Her imagination even carved a name on the tombstone marking the grave over which she mourned so piteously. It was not always the same name, for Miss Willie allowed herself to be fickle in regard to her imaginary dead husbands; but for many months now she had thought how blissful it would be to be called the Widow Simpson and how handsome the name Major Sylvester Simpson would look on an imposing marble shaft--“beloved husband of Willie Watts”--or should it be Wilhelmina? Willie would look so boyish on a tombstone.

Had Major Simpson realized the little artist was regarding him in “that bony light” no doubt he would have refused to let his cravats hang over the cupid covered rolling pin, but he merely counted her as one of the many lovely ladies who did him homage at the Maison Blanche, listening to his stories and applauding his cleverness.

“Burnett & Burnett could hardly get along without you,” murmured Miss Willie, thinking of herself as cruel even to imagine the efficient righthand man of the department store as carved on a tombstone.

“Well, they won’t have to. I could retire to-morrow if I chose, but the work of a detective is so engrossing that once one has engaged in it, it is impossible to relinquish it.”

“Have you always been one?” asked the sweet young thing.

“Not officially--but at heart, always.”

“I wonder you did not get in Government Secret Service. You would have been invaluable,” cooed one of the ladies.

“Ahem! Yes, but Burnett & Burnett needed me.”

“Of course--but how noble of you to stay in Wakely when the logical place for you to be was Washington,” declared Miss Willie. Then she asked vaguely: “Do they bury Secret Service agents in Arlington?” Nobody knew, so nobody answered, and Miss Willie blushed furiously, fearing that Major Simpson might guess the foolish thing that was in her mind when she asked the seemingly inconsequent question. Miss Willie had a way of breaking into a conversation following her own train of thought rather than the subject under discussion, and the guests at Maison Blanche were accustomed to her peculiarity and paid little attention to it. One solemn looking old lady, who said little but missed nothing, gave a deep gurgling chuckle. This old lady’s name was Mrs. Trescott. She had occupied a small back bedroom at Mrs. Celeste Waite’s for as many years as Major Simpson had occupied the large front one.

Mrs. Trescott’s chuckle was fortunately drowned by the dinner gong. The boarders trooped in and fell on the _purree de pois_ with the same gusto they would have employed had it been called plain pea soup. As soon as the first pangs of hunger were satisfied the conversation of the parlor was resumed.

“But, Major Simpson, you haven’t told us what this naughty girl looks like,” said one of the ladies. “Of course she is beautiful and charming and very chic.”

“No, I don’t think she is any of these things,” said the Major. “She is quite insignificant looking and her clothes are not of the latest style, though they are of very rich material. Her shoes are quite good and she is intellectual and well educated; speaks French with a good accent and reads Greek. Those high-brow crooks are the worst of all and the hardest to catch.”

“_Boeuf a la mode_ to-day,” said Mrs. White by way of informing the assembled company that French with an accent was eaten at her table if not spoken. And one of the young men at the far end of the room said in a hoarse whisper:

“That means biled beef.” But Mrs. Celeste White never heard anything she did not want to hear.

There were three persons at Maison Blanche that might have been called thorns in the flesh or flies in the amber. They were two frivolous young men and one young woman who utterly refused to play the game of its being a French _pension_ and who openly made game of Major Simpson, calling him Sherlocko and asking him where Dr. Watsonia was. They had all their fun to themselves, however, as the other inmates loved to look upon their dinner as table d’hote and were sure that Major Simpson in flesh and blood was much cleverer than Conan Doyle’s fictitious detective. Mrs. Trescott was the only person who derived any amusement from the bad manners of the three young persons and she could not help giving her famous gurgling chuckle when any of their witty remarks touched her risibles.

“Did you say pois meant cat?” one of the men asked.

“No, peas! Why?” from the girl.

“Oh, I thought it must mean cat or maybe kitten because it’s called purry and it sure does purr as it is taken in out of the cold. Listen!”

Everybody involuntarily stopped eating and listened except one deaf old lady who was drinking her pea soup with such gusto that the noise she made did sound ridiculously like the purring of a cat.

Mrs. Trescott chuckled and the three naughty ones giggled.

“Oh, Mrs. White, you should hear the thrilling things Major Simpson has been telling us about a wicked shoplifter at Burnett & Burnett’s,” said one of the ladies as the soup dishes were removed and there was a lull in the business of eating.

“Shoplifter?” asked one of the young men known as Jimmy Blaine. Jimmy was a cub reporter on a morning paper and his life was lived with his ear cocked for news. “Do tell us about it Sher--Major Simpson.”

The Major, forgetting all about Jimmy’s profession and glad of the chance to entertain a new audience, one that had heretofore been a scoffing one, plunged again into the tale of how he had run down Josie O’Gorman to her lair. He waxed eloquent over the account of Mrs. Leslie and her doughnuts and coffee, even mentioning the pink parasol he had given that lady in her childhood.

“And now all we have to do is round up the whole gang through this slip of a girl. She thinks she is clever but she is no match for Sylvester Simpson.” The Major sat back and beamed on his listeners, visibly swelling with pride.

“Hope he don’t bust on me,” Jimmy’s side partner, Kit Williams, whispered to the naughty young woman who was always ready to giggle.

“Tell us the name of this awful young person,” begged Jimmy.

“Oh no, young man! When you get to be as old as I am and as experienced you will realize that one mustn’t tell names and tales too.”

At this juncture Aunt Maria poked her head in the dining room door and announced:

“Miss Celeste, Major Simpson’s phone air a ringin’ lak sompen wa’ on fiah. I’d go up an’ answer it myse’f if it would do any good--but when folks wants Major Simpson they wants him an’ I reckon they couldn’t use no substerchute.”

“Ah, no doubt a development!” said the Major as he hurried to his room to quiet the persistent ringing of the telephone bell.

He returned before the next course of the table d’hote was served. His genial pink face was beaming and like Kilmansegg, father of the immortal one of the golden leg:

“Seem’d washing his hands with invisible soap In imperceptible water.”

“Just as I said--a development,” he declared. “It was Mr. Theodore Burnett on the telephone. He informs me that the articles, purloined from his establishment this forenoon, have been returned.”

“Oh, how thrilling! Did he say by whom?” asked the coy one.

“That was not necessary. I did not even ask him who returned them. I knew.”