JOSIE MAKES A FIND
Josie’s impatience amounted almost to a fever, as she awaited the hour
for dinner with Mr. Cheatham. The day after Christmas had been a busy
one for her. She felt she must write a detailed account to Ursula
of her visit with the Trasks. Also Captain Charlie Lonsdale and Bob
Dulaney must be communicated with and the rest of the day was taken up
in unearthing everything concerning Cheatham and Miss Fitchet that a
female detective could hope to learn in a day.
Aunt Mandy was intensely interested in all Josie had to tell her of her
cousins at Peewee Valley and her excitement knew no bounds when she
learned that the young woman upon whom she looked as her own especial
boarder, since her husband had sent her to Miss Lucy Leech’s, should
have had Christmas dinner with such “highupity pussons” as the Trasks.
“An’ you done knowd young Mr. Teddy Trask at school! Well, bless Bob,
if life ain’t complexicated.”
Josie had felt it wise to account for her acquaintance with young
Trask to Aunt Mandy and her mistress. He was to come for her to take
her to Mr. Cheatham’s dinner party and Josie knew boarding houses and
the curiosity of the boarders well enough to be sure she must account
for being friends with a young man as well known in Louisville as the
handsome Teddy Trask. She had cautioned Teddy to ask for her by her
right name and not the assumed one.
“I’m sorry I got going with a dual personality,” she said, “but it’s
done now and Miss Lucy Leech thinks I’m named O’Gorman and Mr. Cheatham
thinks I am Miss Friend. It was a break on my part to be so free with
aliases. I can’t forgive that kind of stupidity. Sometimes one loses
out on a job just because of such carelessness.”
Josie always had a dinner dress neatly packed in her emergency kit, as
she called the suitcase she kept ready to take on a trip, and now that
she was to dine with Mr. Cheatham she was thankful that she would be
suitably clad.
“You’s de kinder boa’der to make money on,” Aunt Mandy declared, when
Josie told her she would not be home for dinner. “Mos’ boa’ders eats
in reg’lar. Looks like dey’s scairt dey won’t git dey money’s wuth an’
even when dey gits ’vited out dey comes home fer a filler. Why, honey,
I’s knowd boa’ders what’ll tu’n on de light in dey rooms when dey’s
goin’ out, ’fraid dey won’ git dey rights. But Miss Lucy kin tell ’em
wha ter git off, when dey gits too proudified and boa’derish. I tell
yer Miss Lucy ain’t never been one ter be back’ards in comin’ for’d
when boa’ders gits rampageous. She’ll rar’ up on her hin’ legs an’ tell
’em what’s what.”
“I’m sure she will,” laughed Josie, “and I’m sure the boarders deserve
all they get when she gives them what’s what. I’ll try my best to be
good and not deserve such things.”
“Lawsamussy, Miss! Anybody knows dat if my Peter an’ Brer Si recommends
a pusson dat pusson air sho ter be fust-class. Peter wouldn’t no mo’
send a onsuitable boa’der here dan Si would fotch one. Dem two niggers
air got both Miss Lucy an’ me ter reckon with an’ what dey reckons am
no lef’ over victuals if dey ain’t got gumption enough ter respec’ the
sanctity of a fust-class boa’din’ house kep’ by ’ristocrats.”
Teddy arrived on the stroke of the hour appointed. His mother and
sister were waiting in the automobile, having driven in from Peewee
Valley.
“Mother and I thought it wiser not to tell Anita what we suspect in
Cheatham, so remember,” he whispered as he greeted Josie in the hall.
“Perhaps you are right. She might find it difficult to be polite to
him,” said Josie, but in her heart she felt it a rather dangerous thing
to leave a young girl in ignorance of the character of a man who was
plainly paying court to her.
“Well,” she thought, “no doubt they know their own business best and
she could hardly elope with him to-night. I hope by to-morrow we may
know something definite.”
It was with a feeling of mingled rage and pity that Josie entered
the Ellett house--rage that it should be owned by Cheatham and pity
that Ursula should have had to give up such a home and go to live
in what seemed like squalor in comparison. She remembered the bare,
plain furnishings of Ursula’s apartment, made attractive only by the
indefinable touch of taste that the girl always evinced. Josie looked
critically at the damask hangings of the drawing room where Cheatham
stood to greet his guests, at the rich oriental rugs, the old portraits
of Ursula’s ancestors; the mahogany chairs and tables of antique
make--every stick with a pedigree!
It was a marvel to Josie that the citizens of Louisville had not
suspected this man of swindling his stepchildren. It seemed strange
that they had not arisen in a body and demanded a reckoning, but when
she remembered Ursula’s extreme reticence she realized that having kept
her own counsel the citizens of Louisville would have been officious
indeed to have thrust themselves into her affairs. No doubt Cheatham
had a perfectly plausible tale to tell concerning his possession of the
property and since Ursula had never attempted to correct his statements
it was natural for neighbors to accept them as true.
One of the things that Josie had unearthed in the sleuthing she had
done during the day was that Cheatham was endeavoring to sell the old
Ellett house and negotiations were pending with an investment company
with a view to making over the place into many small apartments.
A hitch in the title had kept the deal from going through, so a real
estate agent had informed her when she questioned him concerning the
property as though she herself were a possible buyer. “I wouldn’t mess
in it myself,” he declared, “but I reckon he’ll slick it up somehow by
letting the place to be sold for taxes and then buying it in himself.”
Mr. Cheatham’s dinner was quite perfect, and Josie could not help
wondering if the servants were some that poor Ursula had trained. A
butler of extreme elegance and ebony hue served the repast with the
airs of a Chesterfield. Cheatham seemed singularly out of place in this
home of gentle refinement. His color was so high, his moustache almost
blue black, the whites of his eyes so white and the blacks so black.
The make-up of a villain was his and still his manner was genial and
cordial and had not Josie been hunting the arch conspirator with a clue
given her by Ursula she knew in her heart her instinct would never
have directed her towards Cheatham. The table seated twenty and Josie
was thankful to be lost in the crowd. She decided to make herself as
inconspicuous as possible.
During dinner Josie managed so completely to efface herself that
her host forgot entirely there was any such person as a Miss Josie
Friend, an old schoolmate of Teddy Trask, at his table. Josie had a
way of effacing herself without calling attention to her silence. She
responded just enough to avoid having persons remark upon her seeming
stupidity. Colorlessness was what she aimed at and what she obtained.
After dinner the radio concert began. It was a simple matter for one
so unimportant as Josie to slip from the drawing room on a tour of
inspection. On arrival the guests had been shown into a front room
where they had left their wraps. Josie had noted that leading from
this room was a small study. She could see through the half-open door
a typewriter on a table with a reading light, and against the wall a
small rosewood desk--a lady’s desk and hardly appropriate for a man’s
study.
“That is the desk Ursula told me of; the one that had belonged to her
mother and that her stepfather had so cruelly refused to give to her
at her mother’s death,” murmured Josie.
The girl detective slid into the study, closed the door gently and
deftly fitted a small skeleton key into the lock of the rosewood desk.
It responded to her touch and opened easily. There were pigeonholes
filled with letters, receipts and bills. With a quick hand and keen
eye Josie rapidly ran through the piles of correspondence. Suddenly a
foreign stamp arrested her attention. She pulled out a slim envelope,
tucked in with others, and to her delight saw that it was addressed
to Miss Ursula Ellett. She slipped out the letter and quickly put the
empty envelope back in the pigeonhole where she had found it.
“No time to read it now, but how I’d like to know what it says! Anyhow,
I am sure Ursula has never read it, because the date on the envelope is
November of this year.”
Quickly the little sleuth ran through the other papers. In the drawer
she found a bulky epistle, also directed to Miss Ursula Ellett. This
too had a foreign stamp and was postmarked Kimberly, the date rubbed
so that Josie could not make it out. The contents of this envelope she
also confiscated and in its place stuffed some old time tables she
found on the table. Quickly she closed the desk and locked it and was
back downstairs listening to the radio concert before even Teddy had
missed her. She patted her pocket to reassure herself that the papers
were safe and then tried to compose herself to listen to the rather
thin music miraculously furnished.
Josie felt the evening would never be over, so anxious was she to read
the communications purloined from the rosewood desk. She was able to
whisper to Teddy that she had something of possible importance and that
young man’s eyes were also shining with anticipation.
“I am not crazy about snooping around a house or desk-breaking,” Josie
told him, “but he had something that did not belong to him and I am
merely carrying out Uncle Sam’s laws in delivering to the rightful
person her own mail. When can we go?”
“I’ll scare up Mother and tell her the weather is liable to get colder
or hotter or something and maybe we can leave in a few minutes,”
replied the astute Teddy.
The threat of a possible snowstorm did make Mrs. Trask decide to start
for Peewee Valley rather earlier than a dinner party usually breaks up
and at last Josie was free to read the letters to Ursula.
Poor Teddy must wait until morning to find out what was in them, as
Josie was dropped at Miss Lucy Leech’s, while he dutifully drove his
mother home.