HUSBAND AND WIFE
"I have come for my wife. I am Stephen Waller."
Those words were simple enough but Dr. Harper seemed to find them most
confusing. He wagged his venerable beard like an angry goat and said
nothing at first, but like a goat he looked as though he might be
gathering his forces for a mighty butting.
"I don't know what you mean. I know nothing of your wife."
"Nothing of a Mrs. Waller who has been in your sanitarium for a year or
more?"
"Nothing!"
"See here! I am not going to stand any foolishness. Do you mean to say
you have not a patient named Mrs. Waller?"
"I do not! I have such a patient but she is a widow and I am sure she
knows nothing of you. How am I to know who you are?" asked Harper.
"You can get out of here faster than you got in. I have plenty of men
here who can put you out and none too gently. Mrs. Waller was put in my
care by a Mr. Chester and he, and he alone, has the authority to remove
her from my sanitarium."
Josie had slipped up to Mrs. Waller's room when she left Captain Waller
at the door and there, as gently and with as much composure as she
could command, she told her of her husband.
"I knew it, I knew it all the time. I must go to him." Lightly she ran
down the stairs and into the office, past the wagging beard of the
angry Harper and into the arms of the shabby soldier.
"Stephen!"
"Mary!"
Even the incredulous Dr. Harper could but be convinced that they really
were husband and wife.
"Well, she can't leave until her board is paid," he blustered. "It is
months in arrears and I have no idea of losing it."
Dr. Harper had not noticed that Josie had come in the office behind
Mrs. Waller. Josie had a way of being able to efface herself almost
entirely--she stood so still and was so silent.
At Dr. Harper's words she made herself seen and heard, however. From
her pocket she produced a small note book filled with cryptic
characters and from it she read solemnly like a recording angel. First
was the letter to Chester Hunt from Dr. Harper. Date and all she gave
with businesslike precision. Then she read Chester Hunt's answer to
that letter, with a copy of the check which was enclosed with it.
"You can't deny then," Josie said severely, "that Mrs. Waller's board
has been paid and paid in advance and also that you have been conniving
with this Chester Hunt in unlawfully detaining this lady in your
institution after she has been entirely cured of any nervous malady she
may have had."
Dr. Harper was speechless for a moment. He had tried to interrupt her
but with a warning finger Josie had held him spellbound. At last he
sputtered:
"You--you--why you are nothing more than a servant in my establishment.
Get out of my office!"
"I have been a servant in your establishment to further my own ends.
Now I am through with my job. I'll ask you, sir, to pay me off, as I am
leaving. I have served you well in the capacity of servant and the
laborer is worthy of his hire."
"Who are you, anyhow?" he exploded wrathfully.
"I am Josie O'Gorman. Perhaps you remember my father, Detective
O'Gorman. He had certain dealings with you and had not he been cut off
at the height of his career, his reckoning with you would have come,
much to your undoing. As it is, he only scared you a bit. I am merely
carrying on his work. I have scared you a bit more. Now I fancy you
will let Captain Waller take his wife away unmolested. No doubt Mr.
Chester Hunt will soon be here to settle with you. You owe me $17.35. I
prefer cash."
The angry old man counted out the money, his hand shaking and his beard
wagging. He was loath to have them go without giving them his heartfelt
curses, but he was speechless.
"Now I feel justified in having retained the room and bath at the
hotel," Josie said to herself. "Captain and Mrs. Waller can be
comfortable in it and no doubt my host can put me up in a smaller way."
The last train that might connect with the line going to Dorfield had
gone and there was nothing to do but wait until morning.
"The children are safe and not unhappy," smiled Mrs. Waller, "so we
must content ourselves for a few hours in realizing that."
"I am going to telegraph my friend Mrs. Danny Dexter--Mary Louise--and
tell her to prepare the children for the great happiness in store for
them. Or would you rather surprise them?"
"It is hardly fair to keep them in ignorance of their dear father's
being alive just for the pleasure we might get in surprising them,"
said the mother.
"That is so like you, Mary. I can't see how I ever could for one
instant have forgotten all your goodness," and Stephen Waller held his
wife closer, in spite of Josie's presence.
They had a merry little dinner that evening in the hotel, having the
dining room to themselves. The host was all smiles and good cheer. He
felt in a measure responsible for reuniting this interesting couple.
Had he not received with hospitality this young detective person who
was, to say the least, mysterious? Had he not told her first of the
poor soldier who had mislaid his memory? Had he not made her wise as to
the general unworthiness of Dr. Harper and his skinflint methods of
never throwing business to the hands of the local hotel keeper? Had he
not cheerfully reserved the best room in the house for days and days
for this strange little person?
And so Captain and Mrs. Waller and Josie were perfectly willing to
include him in the general festivities. Josie felt that the reunited
pair should have a tete a tete dinner but they would not hear of her
leaving them.
"Stephen must hear all you have to tell of the children," said Mrs.
Waller. "To think of the little things telling you of their porridge
and of those bowls being instrumental in restoring their father to us.
It sounds like the most romantic novel."
"Not at all," insisted Josie. "There has been too much coincidence in
this reality for it to go down as fiction. All the teachers of story
writing would tell you that. They might allow one bit of coincidence
but not so much as has occurred in this realistic plot. It wouldn't
even go down as a detective tale. I have had too much lost motion in my
plans for even that. I needn't have taken the job of canvasser in the
first place. That was plain foolishness and if I hadn't have run
against that peach of a girl, Alice Chisholm, I'd have been a total
loss to my boss, the man introducing household necessities and jeweled
novelties. I am wasting money even now in retailing that room at Mrs.
Denton's. A good detective wastes neither time nor money."
"Well, thank goodness we are real people and not characters in a
novel," laughed Captain Waller. "We are together and a dear girl
brought us together by her intelligence and diligence. If she is not
the type out of which a good detective tale can be manufactured then so
much the worse for the detective tales. Give me a live girl every time
and never mind the plot.
"The only thing I can't reconcile to reality is Chester Hunt. Why, he
has been like my own brother--at least I have felt that way about him,
ever since my mother married his father when I was nothing but a little
shaver. My stepfather only lived two years and then my mother had the
raising of Chester. He was five years older than I was and I always
looked up to him. He is so handsome and so clever."
"Handsome is as handsome does," said Josie "and if he had been a little
cleverer he would not have trusted that fake Swedish maid who had no
word to express her nationality but bane for been.
"Listen! Mrs. Waller, you must not get excited, but I think I hear Mr.
Chester Hunt's voice."