JOSIE GETS A JOB
When Josie left the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop, after having hoodwinked
Mrs. Wright, she made her way to a small hotel much favored by
traveling men. It was the address given by a man who wished to employ a
number of young women to travel in the South to introduce a line of
household articles as well as some jewel novelties.
"What experience have you had?" the man asked her.
"Plenty of it," Josie answered with assurance. "I tell you, mister, I
can sell anything from a baby's rattle to a tombstone. You can ask the
girls who run the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop here in Dorfield. Ever hear of
them?"
"Sure!"
"Well, I have a letter here from Miss Josie O'Gorman, who is chief cook
and bottle washer 'round there and she will tell you that I am a
winner. I tell you Mrs. Danny Dexter and Miss O'Gorman think old Sally
Blossom is a peacherino."
The man took the letter, which was written on Higgledy-Piggledy paper
and in Josie's best handwriting. In it the cleverness of Miss Sally
Blossom was lauded to the skies. Josie blushed through her paint as he
read it aloud.
"To think of my having the nerve to say all that about myself!" flashed
through her mind. "But I bet it lands me my job."
It did. Since she was the first to apply she was given her choice of a
field of operations and she chose Atlanta. She gave her address as 126
East Centre and made an engagement with the man to see him the next day
to receive instructions and literature concerning her wares. Samples
were to be sent to her at Atlanta.
"Now, having given my address as 126 East Centre, I must hurry over
there and apply for board," said Josie to herself as she left the
hotel.
The group gathered on the porch at 126 East Centre was the same as it
had been on the day that Josie had tracked the elusive Dink to her
lair. The young men were tilted back in their chairs at the same angle,
and the young women were equally taken up with their ear puffs and
frizzes. The clientele of 126 was an ever-changing one, but the class
characteristics were stationary.
Josie tripped up the steps, assuming a kind of nonchalance as she
calmly viewed the loafing boarders. They in turn gazed at her, some
with interest and some with open disdain. With the boarders at 126 one
must prove herself down to their standards before being accepted into
their social order.
"Stuck up!" declared one young woman--the one with the most extreme ear
puffs of all, the shortest skirt and the highest heels.
"Oh, I don't know," objected a man, removing the toothpick from his
mouth and his gaudily socked feet from the railing. "I think she's some
cutey."
A snicker of derision answered this sally.
"With them unstylish low heels? I guess you ain't got below her henna
bob," snapped the girl, arching her instep and poking out her near-silk
clad foot with its high-heeled, dirty, white kid pump.
Josie pulled the bell. It was the old-fashioned kind that must be
pulled not pushed. When it was in working order a pull would set a wire
in motion through the length of the house to the back entry and there a
bell attached to the wire would start such a jangling that someone
would come to the front door. This happened when the bell was in order,
which was seldom the case at 126. When Josie gave a tug, which was
vigorous and somewhat vicious from the embarrassment she could but feel
at the overheard remarks, the bell handle with a coil of broken wire
spring came limply away, and it was nothing but Josie's training that
kept her ever on the alert that saved her from falling backwards.
"April fool!" called a grinning youth from the porch.
Josie laughed good-naturedly at her prospective fellow-boarder.
"Anyhow I know how not to get in," she said.
"'Tain't any trouble to get in this joint," ventured a woman. "There's
more goin' than comin'. I'll never send a dog here."
"Oh, 'tain't so bad considering the H. C. of L.," put in a middle-aged
man in a very tight Shepherd's plaid suit. "Mrs. Pete feeds us the best
she can for the mon."
"Oh, you're sweet on Mrs. Pete," laugheed the youth who had called
"April fool" to Josie.
"Is Mrs. Pete at home?" asked Josie, glad to know the name of her
future landlady.
"Sure she's home! Just open the door and walk in. Follow your nose--
there's cabbage to-day so it's easy--right down the hall until you come
to some steps. Then fall down the steps to the dining room. If Mrs.
Pete ain't there she's in the kitchen next to it."
Josie thanked the youth and followed his advice. She found everything
as he had told her she would, even to Mrs. Pete in the kitchen. She was
hardly prepared for the knock-down odors which greeted her nostrils as
she fell down the steps, nor was she prepared for the appearance of
Mrs. Pete.
Josie's first thought was: "How does the woman ever get down those
narrow stairs?" but she realized afterwards that she was of the soft
type of fat that could be squeezed into any space. She was bursting
from a tight kimono, a garment usually the loosest of all apparel, but
Mrs. Pete's arms quite filled the flowing sleeves and although it was
drawn tightly around her huge hips the fronts refused to meet but took
on the slant of a cutaway coat. There was no expression to her face. It
was simply fat. Her eyes looked like raisins in a bun and her mouth had
almost disappeared. One tooth projected as though nature had decided
that would be the only way to save the mouth from being entirely
submerged. Her nose would have been lost had it not been for a wart.
She moved lightly and easily, reminding Josie of a balloon with not
enough gas in it to soar aloft. She wore a black wig at a rakish angle
and a string of huge pink beads were lost and found in the folds of fat
of her neck.
"Well?" she questioned Josie in a voice that sounded as though she were
speaking down an empty hogshead.
"I want a room and board," said Josie.
"How many in a room?"
"I'd like one to myself."
"Humph! You'll have to pay for it then."
Josie expressed her willingness and they soon came to terms.
"It's a room a professional lady has just left, her and two children. I
don't usually take children but she engaged the room without letting on
there were any kids. She didn't take her meals here regular so I never
saw them much. Lord knows what the little things ate because she never
brought them down to what few dinners she got here. I'm so fleshy like
I never get up on the top floor. Here, Betty, you Betty! Come show this
lady the room on the top floor, the one Miss Dingus just left," she
called to a slouchy colored girl who was washing dishes at the sink.
"Dinner at half past one," boomed the landlady to Josie's back as she
followed Betty up the narrow stairs.
"I ain't ter say cleaned up that there top floor room yit," confessed
the maid, "but I'll try ter git it in fust rate fix befo' come night
time."
"Oh, that's all right," said Josie. "You just give me some clean sheets
and a clean pillow case and I won't mind the rest at all."
The room was large, the third floor back, with windows overlooking
dingy back yards. Its disorder was astonishing.
"I didn't know it wa' quite so stirred up as this," exclaimed the girl.
"These here, folks ain't many er 'em got no raisin'. They ought ter git
bo'd an' lodgin' in a pig pen. I's kinder fussed ter be a showin' you
sich a spot. Well," she added philosophically: "What kin you expect
from a hog but a grunt?"
Josie laughed.
"Never mind, Betty," she said, giving the girl a quarter. "I can manage
very well. You go on and finish your dishes and I will make up the bed
myself if you get the bed linen."
Betty looked at Josie curiously.
"Say, miss, you belies yo' looks. You got the 'pearance er these here
folks but you ain't got they ways. I been wuckin' in this here bo'din
house fer three years an' I ain't never had a one of them give me mo'n
a dime at a time unless'n it wa' ter git me not to tell Mrs. Pete 'bout
some devilment or other they done got in."
Josie had not thought it necessary to be other than herself before the
colored maid but she took herself severely to task for lowering her
guard, even with anyone seemingly so unimportant as Betty.
"Father used to say that small things were the stumbling blocks of some
of the biggest detectives," she said to herself. "I'll try to do
better."
The grateful Betty returned immediately with clean sheets and pillow
slips and one small towel. She then departed to finish her dishwashing.
As soon as she was alone Josie, first taking the precaution of locking
the door, began a search in the dirty grate for any papers that might
prove of importance to the matter in hand.
The grate was piled high with old torn letters and some had been dumped
in without even being mutilated. A match had evidently been applied to
the mass of papers but had only charred the corners of the envelopes.
"Oh what a careless Cousin Dink! Now we will see what we can find,"
whispered Josie.
The girl worked quickly and methodically, sorting out the letters and
putting them in neat packets and snapping rubber bands around them. She
examined the seemingly worthless accumulation of advertisements and
circulars, saving the envelopes wherever the date and postoffice stamp
were legible. Every scrap of paper in the heaped fireplace was
carefully scrutinized. What she deemed worthless was finally put back,
care being taken to pull the mass apart so that the grate seemed to be
as full as before.
"That Betty is too noticing to be careless," Josie reflected.
She then sat down by the window and began piecing together the letters
Cousin Dink had taken the trouble to tear up.
"She had a reason for tearing up some and not bothering about others."
The ones that were mutilated were all in the same handwriting.
Fortunately for Josie's patience they were not torn in very small
pieces. Fitting them together was not a difficult task for one so alert
and quick fingered as our little detective. In several instances the
letter had been torn and the pieces all put back in the envelope. That
made plain sailing indeed for the puzzle worker.
These letters that so especially interested our Josie were signed in
various ways but always with the same flourish of the pen: "Yours
always, C. H." "Lovingly, Ches." "Hastily, C." Several were signed:
"Chester Hunt." The letters were a strange mixture of love and
business. They commenced sometimes "Dear Coz:" sometimes "My own Dink:"
or "My own dear girl:" Always, while they were more or less
affectionate, Josie could read between the lines that this Chester Hunt
could command Cousin Dink to do as he chose. Whether he controlled her
by affection or whether by some other force it was hard to say.
Sometimes his tone was frankly impatient but he usually ended up such
epistles with repeated assurances of affection. Through the
correspondence Josie traced much in regard to Peter and Polly. There
was one telegram in which this Chester Hunt had summoned the woman to
Atlanta. That was dated about a year before.
"Come--I need you--C. H." That was all.
"That must have been when she went and got the poor kids," Josie
decided. "But there is one thing that is worrying me: why should this
Dink have saved all these letters up to this time, and after having
saved them so carefully, why now should she have torn them up and
evidently attempted to destroy them?"
The letters had followed the woman to many places, now a small town in
Louisiana, now Dallas, Texas, then St. Paul, Minnesota and so on.
Sometimes they were addressed to Miss E. Dingus, sometimes Margery
Dubois; sometimes Hester Broughton. Sometimes they were sent to a
street number, but often to General Delivery. Mention was often made of
the children and usually in rather impatient terms. The following are
extracts from the letters:
"Don't let the brats worry you but you had better not let anything
happen to them."
"Get a doctor if the pests are sick, because we don't want
investigations."
"If they keep on insisting on going back to their mother just tell them
she is dead."
"Caution them not to tell anything about themselves and if need be
intimidate them. Polly can remember too much."
"Keep up and don't get too tired of your job. There will be an end of
it sometime and you will receive your reward."
"Of course I mean to marry you as soon as I can arrange our affairs. It
is important to go carefully for a while. Don't let the kids know there
is any possibility of our marrying. Be sure and burn all of my
letters."
"M. W. is safe behind bars. S. W.'s will has been probated, it being
certain now that he is dead. I am sole executor and guardian of the
children in case his wife should pass away without a will. She will I
am sure."
"The infamous wretch!" exclaimed Josie,
In many of the letters there was a response to a plea for money and
more money. "I send you all I can spare. Don't let the brats spend so
much. They have been spoiled by too much indulgence already."
"Humph! Pickle and cream puffs for breakfast!" stormed Josie. "Mr.
Chester Hunt I certainly hope to make you squirm. But I wish I could
find out why Dink gave up the kiddies and why she destroyed her
more-or-less love letters."
Every torn letter was pieced together and the contents mastered before
Josie heard the dinner bell. The other communications appeared to be of
little value--letters from theatrical persons from different parts of
the country and a few from some man who signed himself "Mike." The
letters from Mike, Josie put in a packet to themselves. "She may have
another man on the string," she mused. "Mike may be our trump card, the
joker."
All of Mike's letters were addressed to Margery Dubois. They were badly
spelled and written in a labored handwriting but Josie felt that Mike
was a worthy fellow. Reading character by means of chirography had been
one of Detective O'Gorman's hobbies and Josie had taken up the science
to some extent. As Josie perused these epistles she gathered that Mike
had been Margery Dubois's dancing partner. Evidently they had been on
the vaudeville stage together.
"Not love letters at all," Josie decided. "When he says he misses her
so much, can't get along without her, he means he wants her to act with
him again."
The last one was from Chicago. In it he made an urgent appeal to his
former partner to join him there. "A big thing if you can come in a day
or so. Plenty of tin and three-night stands in big towns. No
barnstorming bizness in this job." This letter was signed Mike Brady
and the Chicago address was given.
"That's where she has gone," decided Josie.
By the time the great gong in the basement clanged forth its summons to
dinner Josie had grasped the contents of most of the letters found in
the grate, had tied them in neat packages and had them carefully stowed
away in her suitcase, the suitcase locked and the key in her pocket.