CHAPTER II.

A WOMAN REPORTER.

Five minutes later there was another tap on Marion’s door. She opened it at once without the slightest hesitation.

“Oh, it is you, Miss Allyn. Come in,” she said pleasantly. “We are just packing up, but, as you see, it will not take us long. Do sit down, and Dollie and I will be through in a minute.”

The young lady who had entered was a woman of striking appearance. She was about twenty-five, of medium height, but not at all handsome. The attractive feature about her was the shrewdness in her eyes, which were as keen as an eagle’s, and yet perfectly frank and fearless.

“I heard that old termagant talking to you just now,” she said, bluntly, “and I came to pat you on the shoulder, Miss Miller. Don’t you budge an inch until she gives you back your money.”

“I wouldn’t if it wasn’t for Dollie,” said Marion, sighing. “I can’t permit Dollie to be insulted, and if you overheard the conversation you know who we are, Miss Allyn.”

“I’ve known it ever since you came here,” said Miss Allyn, pleasantly, “and I’ve been hoping that she wouldn’t get on to it.”

“You knew and yet you did not tell?” cried both Dollie and Marion together.

“What do you take me for?” was the answer, with a shrug of the shoulders. “Don’t you think I know enough to mind my business, and, besides, is there anything about me that looks like a snake?”

“No, indeed, there is not,” said Marion, promptly, “but most women would have thought it fine to be able to tell such a secret.”

“Humph!” sneered Miss Allyn. “That’s why I despise women. They’d die if they couldn’t talk, and talk always makes trouble.”

“I guess you are right,” said Marion, as she snapped the catch of the little hair trunk which the police had rescued for her from the apartment in “The Norwood.” It was all the girls had in the way of baggage, but it held their scanty wardrobe nicely.

Another loud rap on the door clearly indicated that the landlady had returned.

Miss Allyn winked at Marion and then opened the door herself, confronting Mrs. Garvin in the most unconcerned manner.

“What, you in here, Miss Allyn!” said the landlady, sneeringly. “Well, if I was you I’d be a little more choice in my associates.”

“Would you now?” said Miss Allyn, who was chewing gum vigorously.

“Yes, I would,” snapped the woman, “but perhaps you don’t know who these two innocent-looking creatures are. They’re them Marlowe girls that’s been made notorious of late in the papers.”

“You don’t say!” said Miss Allyn, still chewing vigorously. Her extraordinary manner made her audience stare a little.

“I didn’t know it ’til to-day that I was harborin’ such critters, but out they go to-night. I won’t keep ’em a day longer. My house is respectable. I don’t want no——”

“Hold on Mrs. Garvin!” said Miss Allyn with a sudden ring in her voice, “you are ‘barking up the wrong tree’ this time, old lady! I’m better acquainted with your boarders than you think, perhaps. Do you want me to tell you the class of people you are harboring?”

Mrs. Garvin’s red face grew paler as she listened, but she was too thoroughly angry to think of being prudent.

“There’s no one in my house but honest people,” she began, but Miss Allyn stopped her with an imperious gesture.

“There’s one detective, one rogue and one sneak thief,” she said quietly, “besides an actor, two actresses and a red-headed grass widow. Not that I blame her hair, Mrs. Garvin. I’d turn pale, too, if I was in such close company to the widow.”

Mrs. Garvin’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. She had not dreamed of any one having such “dead wood” on her boarders, for if there was anything wrong about any of them she had been paid not to know it.

“Now if these poor girls could have given you an extra ten now and then you wouldn’t have taken such a dislike to them,” went on Miss Allyn, quietly, “but as they happen to be poor and you happen to know it you are going to kick them out of your house this evening.”

“And with a week’s board in advance in her pocket, too!” broke in Marion, “but is it really true, Miss Allyn, about the other boarders?”

“As true as gospel,” said Miss Allyn, calmly, “but don’t you wish to know who the sneak thief is, Mrs. Garvin?”

The landlady reddened to the roots of her hair.

“What’s your business, anyhow?” she snapped, turning upon Miss Allyn, furiously.

“My business is minding other people’s,” said Miss Allyn, smiling; “or, in other words I am a newspaper reporter.”

“Oh! oh!” gasped Mrs. Garvin, almost shaking in her shoes. “So you’ve been spying on my boarders while you lived in my house! Oh, it’s a nice business, that! A sneaking, prying occupation!”

“It pays,” said Miss Allyn, with a shrug of her shoulders, “but come on, old lady, pony up that eight dollars. You don’t want me filling up my paper with what I know about you, do you?”

“You don’t dare!”

Mrs. Garvin made her last effort to frighten her boarder, but a contemptuous glance was Miss Allyn’s only answer.

“We will not go one step until we get it,” said Marion, calmly. “So you can take your choice, Mrs. Garvin, it is a week’s board or our money back.”

“Well, take it and get out!” cried the woman furiously, as she drew some bills from her pocket and flung them at Marion.

Miss Allyn picked them up and counted them carefully.

“We will go together,” she said a minute later, when Mrs. Garvin had slammed the door and gone off fuming with anger.

“What, you will leave this house because of her ill treatment of us! Oh, Miss Allyn, don’t think of it! It will give you too much trouble!”

“Nonsense,” said Miss Allyn, “I intended to go to-morrow. It won’t take me an hour to pack my things.”

“But where will we go? It is nearly nine o’clock,” said Dollie, anxiously.

“The lame and the lazy are always provided for,” quoted Miss Allyn, merrily. “We’ll take furnished rooms, I guess, for the present. To Bedlam with boarding-houses! I always did hate them!”

The girls dragged their little hair trunk into Miss Allyn’s room to be sure of its safety, taking only what they would need for the night in a paper bundle.

“She can’t touch our trunks, that’s one good thing,” said Miss Allyn. “My board is paid for two days longer and I’ll send an expressman for the trunks in the morning.”

“You are a wonderful woman,” said Marion, as they started out.

“Well, I’m not a howling success in all lines of business,” said Miss Allyn, dryly, “but if I am given half a show I’m a dandy ‘bluffer.’ Now I wonder who the sneak thief was at Mrs. Garvin’s anyway!”

“What!” cried Marion, with a ludicrous expression of dismay, “Do you mean to say that you made that sneak thief up, that there was no such person in the house, Miss Allyn?”

“Sure,” was Miss Allyn’s brief but expressive answer! “But I guess I hit it pretty pat, all right. If I had described the fellow in detail. Mrs. Garvin would not have recognized him any quicker.”