CHAPTER XV

JOSIE SETS A TRAP

Jimmy Blaine did not now just what he was expecting but he knew it was not a quiet, business-like young person like Josie who showed no shyness and at the same time no brazenness, but with the utmost composure stated the case and put it up to the management whether or not it was worth while to pursue the scoop unearthed by the cub reporter. As soon as Jimmy breezed in, all on fire for more sensational news, Mr. Cox introduced him to the visitor. Josie gave him a boyish handshake and then plunged into the matter in hand.

“In the first place I am a detective, Josie O’Gorman from Washington and late of Dorfield. My father--”

“Not the O’Gorman!” from Mr. Cox.

“Yes,” beamed Josie. “I am here with Burnett & Burnett to catch the shoplifters that have been busy lately.”

Jimmy surreptitiously produced a pencil and endeavored to get hold of a linen cuff, but Josie stopped him:

“Please, Mr. Blaine, none of this is for publication as yet. You can get the whole story in good time and it will be a good one I am sure. I have come to the newspaper for help because in my experience the live wires are on newspapers and not on the police force. I cannot say for sure that the police of Wakely would bungle, but I can say that the police of Dorfield would and have. My father believed in the press as a great detective power and I have had more help from a young newspaper man in Dorfield than all the police; in spite of the fact that Chief Lonsdale of Dorfield is my very dear friend. But this young Dulaney--”

“Not Bob Dulaney of the --th Regiment?” cried Jimmy.

“Yes--Bob Dulaney!”

“Gee! This is great! Shake again!” cried Jimmy. “I’ve spent many a night lying in the mud near Bob, over there.”

“Then you know Danny Dexter, too?”

“Know him? Know him like a book! Why Danny was my Father Confessor. Many a time he’s told me what’s what. You see, I was the kid of the regiment and some of the fellows seemed to think it was up to them to make me walk chalk. I walked it all right.”

“We’ve no doubt you did,” twinkled Mr. Cox.

“Well, Danny Dexter married my best friend; but that’s another story and we’d better get back to business. Please let me say that I’m glad I came to the newspaper for cooperation as I’m pretty sure a friend of Bob Dulaney and Danny Dexter is going to be on the job and deliver the goods,” said Josie.

Jimmy Blaine grinned happily, proud that his boss should hear him praised through his friends.

Josie plunged into a recital of the Kambourians and how she had been mystified by them from the moment she saw them on the street that first Sunday in Wakely. She told of the baffling likeness the youth had to someone she had seen before; of her finding board in the same apartment house with them, by chance as it were; of Miss Mary Leslie’s encounter with a beggar in the hallway and of her identification of this beggar as the man whose habit it was to sit all day at the front entrance of Burnett & Burnett’s. She then touched on Major Simpson’s laughable mistake concerning her own character.

“He thinks I am the shoplifter and has had me under surveillance ever since I have been employed by his firm. I only grasped this fact yesterday. I knew he was following me around but I was conceited enough to fancy it was my methods that interested him. I thought maybe he knew I was my father’s daughter and was trying to learn something.”

Jimmy gasped:

“Then you are the one he thinks he has trapped.”

“The same! Thank you for making me such an irresistible vamp.”

“What! What! Is your story not true?” Mr. Cox looked both alarmed and irritated.

“It’s practically what old Simpson told right out at the boarding house table. Of course I kind of--er--er--embellished it a little, but the story is almost as he gave it--doughnuts and coffee and all.”

“It is what Major Simpson thinks is true, but suppose I go on with my tale. I am sure Mr. Blaine wrote the matter up quite correctly according to newspaper etiquette--certainly there is no handle for legal trouble,” soothed Josie. “If I don’t mind being called a beautiful criminal I am sure Mrs. Leslie should not mind being published as a fascinating widow. Anyhow, no names were used, so what’s the difference?”

“Perhaps you are right,” said Mr. Cox, smoothing out his troubled brow. “Pray proceed. Your story is most interesting.”

“Please tell us--did you return the goods to Mr. Burnett?” asked Jimmy.

Then Josie told of the twisted newspaper and her discovery of the lace and gold mesh bag and her taking the articles to Mr. Burnett. She also told of having tried to locate the haughty Miss Fauntleroy.

“And now--to sum up: Miss Fauntleroy is a fake and wishes to conceal her address. The newspaper I bought from the old woman who sits at the rear entrance of Burnett & Burnett’s had passed through the hands of Miss Fauntleroy and she put the stolen goods in the paper and twisted it up and returned it to the old woman.”

“Golly!” was all Jimmy could say. “And this Miss Fauntleroy?”

“It came to me all of a heap this very day that it was she to whom the young Kambourian had the haunting likeness. I had seen her in the store and been rather interested in her because she seemed different from the other employees. She is evidently the daughter of the house and the old beggar is none other than the mother, Madame Kambourian. The father begs at the front door, the mother at the back, and the daughter takes what suits her fancy and deposits it now with Mamma and now with Papa.”

“But you said this Madame Kambourian was handsome,” objected Mr. Cox. “Handsome and not at all old--hardly old enough to be the mother of the youth.”

“Yes, but age is easier to assume than youth. She had on a clever make-up. I wonder how much she takes in each day, selling papers and never having the change.” Then Josie proceeded to tell all that she had overheard through the open window, and how this was made possible because of the janitor’s having been too lavish with the owner’s coal.

“Now we must round up the whole bunch. The boy is mixed up in it somehow, though he is still a mystery to me. I could not gather just exactly what he does to increase the family income but I am sure it is something of which he is not proud. I feel rather sorry for the boy because I am sure he’d like to cut the whole bunch and be honest. The entire family is interesting to me. The man and woman seem so fond of each other and so considerate. I’ll give you my word they are much more loving than many married couples one sees.”

“You have not seen this Miss Fauntleroy there, have you?” asked Mr. Cox. “You are not really sure that she belongs there.”

“Not so sure that I could swear to it in a court of justice, but so sure that I could safely say I’d eat my hat if she is not,” laughed Josie. “I think she must be twin sister to this boy. I don’t want to brag, but when I get a hunch like this it is apt to be right.”

“Well then, let’s proceed on the assumption that Miss Fauntleroy is in reality Miss Kambourian. What next?”

“Next we must plan a campaign of watchful waiting. I will take charge of the interior of Burnett & Burnett’s, keeping a never closing eye on Miss Fauntleroy. I must have help to look after the beggar at the front and the one at the back as well as the Kambourian apartment, both front and back.”

After much thought and discussion Mr. Cox and Josie, with the alert intelligence of Jimmy Blaine to advise with them, decided the thing was too big not to call in the assistance of the police. The blue coats might bungle, but at least they could be set to watch the alley behind the apartment house and report anything out of the way.

“We’ve got a new chief here who is not so hide bound as the old one was; in fact, he is very down-to-date in his methods. I am sure he will cooperate with us. Call him up, Jimmy, and see if he is at his office. Sunday is no more of a holiday to the police than to newspaper men.”

The chief proved to be having a holiday in spite of its being Sunday, but an alert young sergeant answered the call and even expressed himself as willing to come to the newspaper office instead of having the newspaper office come to him. The tale was quickly told. Sergeant Tanner agreed with Josie on the plan of procedure.

“Who am I, anyhow, to take issue with the daughter of the great O’Gorman? I reckon you are a chip off the old block, Miss, because if you had not been you never would have caught that Markle bunch. We know all about that here in Wakely. We know how you tracked down that chap in Atlanta, too, the one who had put his step-sister-in-law in a bug house and was planning to marry her and cop the fortune. We know about the kidnapping case in Louisville, also. You see we aren’t named Wakely for nothing. Anyhow we are awake enough to keep up with the detective news.”

Josie could not help being flattered by Sergeant Tanner’s recognition of merit but she merely blushed a little and said:

“It was all luck, absolutely nothing but luck that made me successful in those cases.”

“I hope your luck will keep up,” said Mr. Cox.

“Of course plain clothes men are what we will need,” said the sergeant, “and I think I’ll be one of them. Shall I take over the apartment house and the entrances to Burnett & Burnett’s?”

“All right!” agreed Jimmy ruefully, “but what’ll I be doing? I want to get in on this somewhere.”

“You might be an inside man and help me in the shop,” said Josie. “Somebody must watch Major Simpson or he’ll bungle things.”

Sergeant Tanner was much amused over the poor Major and his bungling.

“He’s a terrible dub at detecting. If he had called us in on this shoplifting trouble we might have helped him but old Simp thinks he knows it all and he is as ignorant of the game as a new born babe. Now, Miss O’Gorman, I’ll detail some sharp men to keep an eye on the apartment house to-night and others to look after it every minute of the day to-morrow.”

“And I’ll come in the shop and buy things and even make up to Miss Fauntleroy,” suggested Jimmy.

“Don’t get too much in evidence,” cautioned Josie. “And Sergeant Tanner, be sure to keep a watch over the blind beggar man in front. As for the woman with papers, I have an idea she will not come to work for a day or so, not in the guise of an old woman, at least.”

Josie felt it wise to see Mr. Burnett for a moment before returning home to inform him how matters were progressing and to ask his approval of the move she had made in taking both newspaper men and police force into her confidence.

He approved highly. “Between the two you will be sure to get help. As for poor old Simpson, I wish he would have a slight indisposition that would keep him away from the store to-morrow. Hasn’t he messed things up, though?”

“Perhaps not! Anyhow I am hoping the Kambourians are so foreign they don’t read the American newspapers. The chances are they know nothing of the publicity given the matter.”