CHAPTER V

THE MAJOR TAKES UP A TRAIL

Josie jammed the rumpled paper in the big patch pocket of her sport coat and thought no more about it. She boarded the interurban trolley which passed through Linden Heights, wondering if Miss Fauntleroy could be on it and doubtful whether it were better for her to get off at Linden Row with that haughty and evidently bad tempered young woman or to ride on for several blocks. The crowded car thinned out as they approached the suburbs. Josie was soon able to make sure that the girl was not on board.

“Let me off at Linden Row, please,” she asked the conductor.

“Sure, miss, an’ the sign was put up only yesterday so I know where it is. The streets out here ain’t marked reg’lar.”

Linden Heights presented the appearance of much suburban property aspiring to become urban; streets and avenues named, sidewalks laid out, curbing placed, everything ready to make a thriving, prosperous, homelike neighborhood--everything but the homes and the neighbors. The houses were few and far between and Linden Row, though boasting a brand new name on a brand new corner and a brand new row of spindling linden trees, had not a house to its name. Josie walked north until the sad young street lost itself in a corn field; then she retraced her steps, crossed the car tracks and walked south until a swamp interrupted her progress, and still no habitation. Bullfrogs were singing their spring song in the swamp so Josie felt repaid for her long ride on the trolley.

“It means spring is almost here,” she said to herself, “is here, in fact. It’s a surer sign than thunder and lightning; surer than the robin’s whistle or trailing arbutus blossoms. How my dear father did love to hear the bullfrogs!”

So far as Josie could ascertain Linden Heights was nothing more than a real estate map. At any rate there was not a single house in the place with the exception of an old farm house, the mansion of the original owners of the tract, and when Josie knocked on the door with a trumped up plea that she was hunting a place to board, she was met without much encouragement by an old man with a tousled beard and mane who gave her to understand that he couldn’t abide women and wouldn’t let one of them stay on his place for five minutes. At least she had found out what she wanted to know: Miss Fauntleroy did not live there.

“Very puzzling!” she mused. “Why did she give a fictitious address to her employers? The first interesting thing that has happened since I came to this town. I hope it will lead to something. Anyhow I’ll watch this strange girl and find out something more about her. She certainly was very rude to the old beggar.”

On the way back to the city Josie decided to read the paper she had bought from the old woman, but at that moment she became engrossed in the conversation of some of her fellow passengers and the Wakely Journal remained in the patch pocket of her sport coat.

“The only thing I regret about my fruitless trip to Linden Heights is that I didn’t have the company of old Major Simpson,” Josie amused herself by thinking. “I shouldn’t call it fruitless, however, as it may lead to something. Anyhow, I’m wondering what the dear Major did in my absence.”

Had Josie realized what the dear Major was doing in her absence she would not have been quite so nonchalant in her idle surmises. No doubt his actions would have amused her but certainly they would have irritated her as well.

In the first place, Josie had hardly made her escape by the rear entrance of the department store when Min, whose surname was Tracy, gave a hurry call from the lace counter that in putting up her goods she had discovered the loss of many yards of the filmiest and finest lace in stock. The counter next to her reported missing a very expensive imported gold mesh bag. A hue and cry was raised by the excited Major Simpson and after much pompous blustering he had rushed to the office of the chief executives where he not only reported the theft but demanded Josie O’Gorman’s address.

“So you have a suspicion of who she is then, this Miss O’Gorman?” asked Mr. Theodore Burnett.

“Yes, I’ve had my eye on her for days. I have not been in the detective business for all of these years without being able to distinguish a girl of her type from a simple saleslady of buttons and what not.”

“Well, you are pretty clever, Major. I hope you two can get together. You say she has gone for the day? Do you think she can clear up this shoplifting mystery?”

“Of course she can if anyone can. Give me her address and maybe I can overtake her.”

“Eleven, East Meadow, Apartment 4, is her address. It is remarkable that a girl as young as she is can be so successful. She is very clever I think.”

“Yes--altogether too clever!” muttered Major Simpson. “But she will find there are others,” he intimated darkly.

“Yes, yes!” said Mr. Burnett uneasily, “but for goodness sake don’t be short with her. I am sure that through her we may be able to track down the whole gang of shoplifters.”

“Trust me, my dear Theodore, trust me!” said the Major, patting his white vest comfortably. “I will use all the finesse that my long service in this establishment has fostered. You need never fear that Silvester Simpson will be anything but a diplomat.”

“Oh sure! Sure!” added Mr. Burnett quickly. “I’ll leave it to you but I beg of you that you communicate with Miss O’Gorman at once.”

“Immediately!” and the Major strutted from the office.

“Eleven, East Meadow,” he mused. “That is the right address. I have followed her home often enough to know, but I asked Theodore just to see if the person had the temerity to give her real address.” And the old gentleman, not trusting his short legs to carry him to number eleven fast enough, hastily called a taxi.

When Major Simpson rang a bell he did not simply touch a button, he pressed it, and that with no light finger but with the end of his walking stick, leaning heavily against it until the bell was answered or broken.

Mrs. Leslie answered it quickly and somewhat indignantly. She had a sponge cake in the oven and the noise of the bell was enough to make it fall.

“What is it, sir?” but her tone of asperity quickly changed when she saw who was responsible for the clamor. “Well if it isn’t Major Sylvester Simpson. Sakes alive, Major Simpson, how did you find me out? I’ve been telling myself every day for two months that I ought to let you know I was in Wakely because of our families being kind of hereditary friends, but Mary and I are living in such a small way, and--”

Major Simpson--Major by courtesy only--made up in gallantry what he lacked in finesse. Not for worlds would he inform Mrs. Leslie that he was not looking her up at all and was quite as astonished to see her as she was to see him. He remembered her quite well as little Polly Bainbridge, whose grandfather’s farm was just across the creek from the Simpson’s farm. She had been a little girl when he was a grown man spending his yearly holidays in the country. He remembered faintly once having made her a present of a pink parasol on one of those visits. She was a very small girl and he was even then a floor walker at Burnett & Burnett’s. Perhaps that was how he happened to know the appeal a pink parasol has for a little girl.

Now that he had found her he must come in and see her. Of course it could not be that the person of whom he was really in search could possibly be living with Polly Bainbridge--now Mrs. Leslie--who came from his county and was of honest and respectable parentage as had also been her husband, people of good blood and reputation.

The Leslies’ living room was homelike, pleasant, and spotlessly clean, but with a certain feminine disorder in the way of a work basket open on the table, a scarf thrown over the back of a chair, a bit of embroidery on the sofa. This made an irresistible appeal to Major Simpson who, though a bachelor, was a great admirer of “the ladies” unless they happened to be “sales-ladies.” These he always regarded with suspicion as being either incipient shoplifters or, worse than that even, designing females who aspired to become Mrs. Simpson.

He settled himself in a comfortable overstuffed chair, conveniently low enough to allow him to cross his plump legs, and sniffed the pleasing odors emanating from the tiny kitchen.

“You must excuse me a minute,” blushed Mrs. Leslie, “but I have a cake in the oven.”

“Ah, that sounds like home!” declared the gallant Major. “And when I say home I mean the country. I fear me the city ladies trust to the bakers for such--” But Mrs. Leslie could not wait to find out what the city ladies trusted to the bakers as her cake had been in the prescribed number of minutes and the gas must be turned off and the cake turned out of the pan.

The major sniffed again. “Coffee!” was the verdict of his olefactory nerves. Like the Raggedy Man: “His old nose didn’t tell no lies,” for in a few minutes Mrs. Leslie returned with a tray of coffee and some hot doughnuts she had just finished frying when her bell pealed so loudly and persistently.

The guest _ummed_ and _ahhed_ with appreciation. He was self congratulatory that the little girl to whom he had once presented a pink parasol had grown into such a fine woman. He always had been a person of discernment and from the beginning he had known that little Polly Bainbridge was of the right sort. It was a pleasant thing to feel that a pink parasol cast on the waters might after some thirty odd years--or was it forty--be returned to one in the shape of fragrant coffee and hot doughnuts.

First, all the county news must be retailed and a bit of mild gossip concerning old neighbors be whispered. Major Simpson had long ago given up the habit of spending his holidays back home since the old folks had all died off and his ancestral halls passed into the hands of strangers. But his interest in all pertaining to his county was as strong as ever.

“I only go back for funerals, now,” said the old man sadly. Mrs. Leslie thought of the last funeral she had attended in that part of the world, that of Mr. Leslie, and her eyes filled with tears. The gay little coffee and doughnut party seemed in danger of becoming as sad as a wake but Mrs. Leslie brushed away her tears and smiled on her guest, filling his cup and pressing upon him another doughnut. So by simple grace happiness and good cheer were restored.

“Now tell me of your daughter. It seems strange for little Polly Bainbridge to have a grown daughter. Do you two ladies live here all alone?”

“Oh no! We have a lodger--Miss O’Gorman. By the way, Major Simpson, she _says_ she is employed at Burnett & Burnett’s.”

Mrs. Leslie could not resist a slight emphasis on the “says” although she had promised Mary to try and forget the strange suspicions that had arisen in her mind concerning her gentle little lodger.

“She says right!” declared the Major shortly, suddenly remembering that he was a detective out on a scent. “What do you know of the young person?”

“Nothing--nothing at all! She came here in answer to an advertisement my daughter and I put in a Sunday paper. We took her in without references. Come to think of it, her saying she had a position with Burnett & Burnett seemed to me all the reference I needed since you were one of the firm.”

“No, no, dear lady--not yet--merely a trusted officer of the company. But tell me more of this Miss O’Gorman. How does she impress you? Do you feel that she is not--er--er exactly what she pretends to be?”

“Oh Major Simpson, it seems wrong to doubt the girl but--”

“But what?”

“She is a nice girl--a lady, in fact, but I can’t believe she is exactly what she says she is--I mean a girl with a job selling bone buttons and things. Not that there aren’t a great many ladies in shops--I don’t mean that there aren’t--and elegant gentlemen, too, but there is something about her and her clothes--”

“Ah! Her clothes! She seems to me to be simply dressed, more so than most of her fellow employees.”

“Exactly, but have you felt of them?”

“Not exactly!” answered the detective with dignity.

“I mean the material is so good, it would take almost a month’s salary to pay for one of her dresses, unless she makes a great deal more than girls just beginning usually make. And she has all of her dresses duplicated.”

“Was it only her clothes that made you think she was different?”

“Oh no, it was the way she talks. I hadn’t really had a positive suspicion of her being something she said she wasn’t, or rather not being what she said she was, until last night when we were sitting around the table reading and sewing. Josie got to talking about noted criminals and what they did and how detectives caught them--”

“Just stuff she had read in cheap magazines, I presume.”

“No, not fiction but facts.”

The Major became as eager as a hound on trail. Here were facts--excellent things for a detective to know--and in the possession of a woman. How easy it would be for him, with his years of experience, to wheedle this artless soul into telling all she knew.

“Ah, facts! Now, er-er-my dear neighbor, just what do you mean by facts?” asked the Major, making a great effort to appear unconcerned.

“Well, she spoke kind of familiarly of Paris and her accent sounded like our teacher’s used to--not at all like pupils. I always have my doubts about anybody who has too good an accent in French. I think she felt I was suspicious of her because she shut up all of a sudden. Please tell me, Major Simpson, have you also some suspicion concerning our lodger?”