MR. CHEATHAM IS UNMASKED
“Cooled down a little by now?” asked Teddy Trask, after about a mile
of record-breaking trotting. “Now, Miss Friend--that’s the only name I
know you by--you listen to me a minute. I was Ursula Ellett’s friend.
In fact, I hoped I was going to be closer than a mere friend. My family
loved her from my father on down. We felt she must know we were to
be trusted and we trusted her. Imagine our feelings when she simply
departed from Louisville without saying one word to any of us, without
writing a line, even to my mother. Mr. Cheatham has been out to see us
and told us how her behavior has hurt him. He said she had requested
him not to inform us of her whereabouts and he was forced to respect
her wishes in the matter. He merely sends her a monthly remittance of
five hundred dollars, which surely should be enough for her to live on
very comfortably, without having to work so hard to support her little
brothers.”
“Lies! Lies! All a pack of lies!” Josie flashed.
“We might have thought that, if Ursula had done anything to contradict
what Cheatham has said, but her silence is enough to convince us that
we were not as dear to her as we had felt. He tells us she is soon to
be married to a multi-millionaire and also that she writes she cannot
pretend to any affection for him but that he is so rich she feels it
would be foolish to let such a chance slip.”
“Ursula to be married! Ursula with a monthly remittance of five hundred
dollars! Really, Mr. Trask, I can’t believe you are serious. She has
been as poor as poor can be but now she is conducting a tea room in
a little shop called the Higgledy Piggledy Shop, of which I am part
owner, and the boys come and help after school and eat up all the cold
waffles for accommodation. All of the Higgledy Piggledies love Ursula
and her boys and last night someone came and kidnaped little Philip and
Ursula is wild with grief and I have come to Louisville to see if I can
get a clue to a motive for stealing the child, and in that way perhaps
track the villains.”
“Well, Miss Friend, you sound convincing and what you say about the
cold waffles puts a human touch to your tale. But why, in the name of
Heaven, if all this is so, did Ursula not write to us?”
“She dreaded what Cheatham might do to your family if you seemed in any
way to connive with her. She could not stay another minute in the house
with him and she is terribly afraid of him and the evil he might do to
her friends and her boys, even more than what he might do to her.”
“She never told us she was afraid of Cheatham.”
“Didn’t she? But you must have known she was unhappy over her mother’s
second marriage.”
“She never said so. She always avoided the subject.”
“That’s the real flaw in Ursula’s otherwise admirable character. She is
too reticent.”
“That’s better than being a gusher,” exclaimed the young man vehemently.
“Yes,” smiled Josie, amused at the suddenness with which Teddy had
veered around concerning Ursula, “but it is hard on a detective, who
is trying to unravel a mystery, when the persons interested give one
nothing to go on. I had a terrible time worming out of Ursula that
there was such a person as you and even when she told me there was she
gave no intimation that you were--well, a tolerably good-looking young
man who had leanings in her direction. She grew pale when she mentioned
your name, which led me to think that you were small and dark, with
maybe a hare lip.”
Teddy laughed and spoke to his horses.
“And the multi-millionaire?” he asked.
“It’s a lie! I cannot see how you could believe Cheatham. I am sure
he has not known where Ursula was until lately, and he has never
communicated with her in any way, nor has she with him, since she left
Louisville. Has not your mother received a letter from Ursula? She
wrote one not long ago and hoped it would reach her before Christmas.
I persuaded her that she was wrong to keep silent any longer. Ursula
has been cowed by this terrible stepfather until she is afraid to do
anything but just hide away. You do believe me, don’t you?”
“Of course, Miss Friend, I can’t help trusting you. I want to trust you
so much. I’ll tell you I have been very unhappy over Ursula, but I
was determined to overcome my love for her because I felt she was not
worthy of my regard. I believed all Cheatham said. He is a pleasant,
plausible fellow and he has pretended so much feeling for my family
because of Ursula’s behavior.
“I see it all now! What fools we have been! Father doesn’t like Mr.
Cheatham but Father is such an old-fashioned gentleman that when
anyone is in his house he is as polite as can be. Cheatham has been
in our house a lot lately, too, when I come to think of it. By Jove,
he is coming to dinner today! You’ve simply got to see him. You said
something awhile back about detectives. Are you really one?”
“Yes, but don’t give me away. I’m supposed to be out here hunting up
rag rugs and hand-made brooms for my arts and crafts shop.”
“Give you away, indeed! I’m too excited about what you have told me and
too anxious to help. As for detectives: I read all the stories about
them I can get hold of and always think I could have managed the cases
better than they did.”
“Good for you!” laughed Josie. “Now please tell me what you would do
about this case?”
“First, I’d take you home to dinner and let you get a good look at Mr.
Cheatham. I’d like to wring his neck.”
“Well, don’t look that way at him or he’ll not be able to eat his
dinner. But tell me, please, Mr. Trask, how are you going to explain me
to your family?”
“Don’t Mr. Trask me! I’m Teddy now, even more so than when you first
got in my cutter.”
“All right, Teddy!”
“I tell you who you are. You’re a girl I used to know at Cornell, but
hanged if I haven’t forgotten your name.”
“Miss Friend, Josie Friend. At least that is a right good working name,
and since you christened me you should remember it. My real name is
Josie O’Gorman.”
“I used to read stories about Detective O’Gorman and his stunts. I tell
you he was a peach.”
“He was my father,” said Josie, for the second time that day.
“Jiminy crickets! I’d rather know you than Babe Ruth or Dempsey or
Douglas Fairbanks. Do you know you haven’t shaken hands with me yet?”
Josie solemnly shook hands with the young man.
“Remember to call me Miss Friend though, or Josie. I would not mention
the name of O’Gorman. Crooks are always shy of it and while Cheatham
hasn’t been found out yet, I’ll bet he knows who might have caught him
if he had broken the eleventh commandment.”
“Well, if I am supposed to have known you well enough at Cornell to
pick you up and bring you home to dinner, I reckon I know you well
enough to call you plain Josie.”
“Won’t your mother think I’m mighty forward to accept an invitation
from you to a family gathering on Christmas day?”
“Oh, I’ll fix Mother. Don’t worry about her. And now, Josie, what am I
to say you were doing in Peewee Valley on this cold day?”
“Why not let rag rugs and brooms be the motive? It went down with you
all right and why not with them?”
“Yes it did!” he exclaimed scornfully. “I knew all the time you weren’t
after rag rugs.”
“Then you knew a lot, because I really am going over to this cabin
and order a big lot for our shop. You have forgotten the shop. My
detective business is supposed to be a side issue and the shop is the
all important thing, since it is by running the shop that a number of
persons make a living. Being a detective is my art but helping to run
the Higgledy Piggledy Shop is my business.”
“All right then, rag rugs and home-made brooms it shall be! I found you
standing on your head in a snow drift on your way to Uncle Abe’s cabin
and when I set you right side up you turned out to be the Josie Friend
I had known at Cornell, where you were specializing in--in--”
“Psychology and domestic science!” said Josie, with a grin.
“Exactly! I then drove you to the cabin. By the way, we’ll get there
finally on this road, although it is a long way round, but there is
plenty of time before dinner and my horses are simply prancing for a
good spin. Now, nobody is to know you ever heard of Ursula and you are
to catch Cheatham entirely off his guard.”
“Fine! You have the makings of a real detective in you. In the meantime
can you furnish the slightest clue for the motive any one might have
had for kidnaping poor little Philip?”
Teddy Trask could think of no reason and then Josie related to him all
she knew concerning Miss Fitchet’s appearance in Dorfield; how she
seemed to shadow Ursula and then disappeared and then about the woman
with run-down heels and blonde hair who had evidently been in the room
adjoining the apartment occupied by Ursula and her brothers.
“I have a hunch that Cheatham is at the bottom of the whole thing and
that Fitchet is in his employ,” said Josie. “Fitchet came to Dorfield
to spy out the lay of the land before she went to Florida on this case
that she has just left within the last week. Cheatham wanted to know
what his stepchildren were doing and how they were living. Why he was
interested I do not know. Since then something has arisen that makes
him more interested. He sent for Fitchet and she dropped her case in
Florida and flew to do his bidding. Philip is now with her, but where?
Cheatham has not left Louisville, and as far as we know Fitchet has
not returned. I am trying to find out something about Ursula’s Uncle
Ben Benson, but nobody seems to know of his whereabouts since he left
Louisville when his sister married Cheatham.”
“Gee! You sound like the old lady in ‘The Circular Staircase’ or the
man in ‘The Gold Bug’.”
“Do you think you might casually bring in the name of Uncle Ben
Benson? Ask your father, for instance, if he ever knew him. Say you
heard someone mention him at the club and the man wondered if he had
died. Say another man at the club was under the impression he was
dead--thought he had seen something in a foreign dispatch concerning
his death. Just make up any old thing and don’t be too explicit or too
much interested.”
“Sure I can! I’ll be the casual one and you do the watching of
Cheatham. There’ll more than likely be a big bunch of folks at dinner.
Anita always has a crowd around her and Mother and Father rake in
guests with a heavy hand around Christmas time. I haven’t asked anyone
on my own hook this year, so it is pretty fine that I found you
standing on your head in the snowdrift. The truth of the matter is I
am really missing Ursula such a lot and I couldn’t seem to make up my
mind to jolly up much, with her away and getting ready to marry a
multi-millionaire.”
Josie patted the big glove on the hand next to her that held the reins
to the prancing steeds and the young man looked down at her gratefully.
She gave him a merry glance.
“By the way, Teddy, if you see me looking fish-eyed don’t be
astonished. I want Cheatham to think I’m so stupid he won’t have to
be on his guard with me. Another thing: my shop must not be spoken of
by name, as no doubt Fitchet has told him Ursula was working for the
Higgledy Piggledies at Dorfield, so suppose you let me represent a firm
in Youngstown, Ohio.”
“All right, Miss Particular! What you say goes and nothing you may say
and any way you may look won’t astonish me. Watch me be about as big a
sleuth as there is in America. Please let me tell you how much happier
I am since you got in my cutter.”
“I’m more cheerful, too,” said Josie, “although I shouldn’t be when
there is poor Ursula eating her heart out with misery. I couldn’t be
as cheerful as I am if I were not perfectly sure we will find little
Philip.”
“Sure we will find him,” said Teddy.