A HURRIED LUNCH
Fourth Avenue having been reached, Miss Wiggin darted into a corner
delicatessen store. "What will you have for your lunch?" she turned to
ask of her companion. "I'm going to get five cents' worth of hot macaroni
and a dill pickle."
"Double the order," Bobs said, and then she added to the man who stood
behind the counter: "I'll also take two ham sandwiches and two chocolate
eclairs."
"Oh, Miss Dolittle, isn't that too much for you to spend at noon?" This
anxiously from pale, starved-looking little Miss Wiggin.
At the Vandergrift table there had always been many courses with a butler
to serve, and in her heedless, thoughtless way, Bobs had supposed that
everyone, everywhere, had enough to eat.
It was a queer little smile that she turned toward her new friend as she
replied: "This being our first lunch together, let's have a spread." Then
she paid the entire bill, which came to forty cents. "No," she assured
the protesting Nell Wiggin, "I won't offer to treat every day. After this
we'll go Dutch, honest we will! Now lead the way."
Again in the thronged street, little Miss Wiggin turned with an apology:
"Maybe I oughtn't to've asked you to come to my room. Probably you're
used to something better."
"Don't you believe it!" Bobs replied cheerily. "I live in the shabbiest
kind of a dump." She did not add that she had not as yet resided on New
York's East Side for more than twenty-four hours, at the longest, and
that prior to that her home on Long Island had been palatial. She was
eager to know how girls who had never had a chance were forced to live.
Miss Wiggin was descending rather rickety steps below the street level.
"Is your room in the basement?" Bobs asked, trying to keep from her voice
the shock that this revelation brought to her. No wonder there were no
roses in the wan cheeks of little Miss Wiggin.
"Yes," was the reply, "the caretakers of the buildings all live in the
basements, you know, and Mrs. O'Malley, the janitor of this one, is a
widow with two little boys. She had a room to rent cheap and so I took
it."
Then she led the way through a long, narrow, dark hall. Once Bobs touched
the wall and she drew back shuddering, for the stones were cold and
clammy.
The little room to which Bobs was admitted opened only on an air shaft,
but there was sunlight entering its one small window; too, there were
white curtains and a geranium in bloom on the sill.
"It's always pleasantest at noon, for that's the only time that the sun
reaches my window," the little hostess said, as she hurriedly drew a
sewing table out from behind the small cot bed, unfolded it and placed
the lunch thereon. Bobs' gaze wandered about the room, which was so small
that its three pieces of furniture seemed to crowd it. In one corner was
a bamboo bookcase which held the real treasure of Miss Wiggin. Row after
row of books in uniform dark red binding. They were all there--Oliver
Twist, David Copperfield, Old Curiosity Shop and the rest of them.
"Nights it would be sort of dismal sitting in here alone if 'twasn't for
those books," the little hostess confessed. "That's a real good kerosene
lamp I have. It makes a bright light. I curl up on the couch as soon as
my supper's eaten, and then I forget where I really am, for I go wherever
the story takes me. Come, everything is ready," she added, "and since
fifteen minutes of our time is gone already, we'd better eat without
talking."
This they did, and Gloria would have said that they gulped their food,
but what can one do with but half an hour for nooning?
They didn't even stop to put away the table. "I'll leave it ready for my
supper tonight," Miss Wiggin said, as she fairly flew down the dark, damp
basement hall.
Five minutes later they were entering the alley door of the antique shop
which had so fine an entrance on Fifth Avenue.
"May the Fates save us!" Bobs exclaimed. "I do believe we are one minute
late. Are we in for execution or dismissal?"
But that one minute had evidently escaped the watchful eye of Miss
Peerwinkle, for, when Nell Wiggin and Roberta entered the shop, they saw
the portly Mr. Queerwitz pacing up and down and in tragic tones he was
exclaiming: "Gone! Gone! I should have locked it up, but I didn't think
anyone else knew the value of it." Then, wheeling around, he demanded of
Bobs: "What good are you, anyway, in the book department? One of the
rarest books I possess was stolen this morning right beneath your very
eyes, and----"
Little Nell Wiggin, usually so timid, stepped forward and said: "It must
have happened while we were out at lunch. It couldn't have been while we
were here, for nobody at all went down to the books."
Mr. Queerwitz paid no more attention to the words of little Miss Wiggin
than he would at that moment to the buzzing of a fly.
"Dolittle, well-named, I should say," he remarked scathingly. How Roberta
wished that she had chosen a busier sounding name, but the deed was done.
One couldn't be changing one's name every few hours, but----
Her revery was interrupted by: "What have you to say for yourself?"
"Nothing," was the honest reply.
"You are discharged," came the ultimatum.
Bobs was almost glad. "Very well, Mr. Queerwitz," she replied, and
turning, she walked briskly toward the cloakroom.
When Bobs returned from the cloakroom, having donned her hat and jacket,
she was informed that Mr. Queerwitz had just driven away, but that he
hadn't said where he was going. Bobs believed that he was going to report
her uselessness as a detective to her employer, James Jewett. Ah, well,
let him go. Perhaps after all she had made a mistake in her choice of a
profession. As she was passing she heard the older women talking.
Miss Harriet Dingley was saying, "Now I come to think of it, just after
the girls went out to lunch, I did see a man come in, but I thought he
was looking at china."
The head lady shot a none too pleasant glance at the other clerk as she
said coldly, "Well, you aren't giving me any information. Didn't I watch
every move he made like a cat watches a mouse hole? Just tell me that!"
"Oh, yes, Miss Peerwinkle. I'm not criticizing anything you did. But you
remember when a boy ran by shouting fire, we did go to the door to see
where the fire was and a minute later the man went out and----"
"He went empty-handed," the head-woman said self-defendingly.
"I know he did. Now please don't think I'm criticizing you, but when he
went out I noticed that he was a hunch-back, and I'm certain that he
didn't have a hump when he came in."
"We'll not discuss the matter further," was said in a tone of finality as
Miss Peerwinkle walked away with an air of offended dignity.
Bobs looked about for Nell, to whom she wished to say good-bye. She was
glad that the youngest clerk was beyond the book shelves as Roberta was
curious to know which book had been taken. A gap on the top shelf told
the story. It was a rare old book for which one thousand dollars had been
offered if its mate could be found.
"Whoever has taken the book has the other volume. I'm detective enough to
know that," Roberta declared. Then she turned to find little Miss Wiggin
standing at her side looking as sad as though something very precious was
being taken away from her.
Impulsively Bobs held out both hands.
"Don't forget, Nell Wiggin, that you and I are to be friends, and what's
more, next Sunday morning at ten o'clock sharp I'm coming down to get you
and take you to my home for dinner. How would you like that?"
"Like it?" The dark eyes in the pale, wan face were like stars. "O, Miss
Dolittle, what it will mean to me!"
Miss Harriet Dingley did nod when she heard Bobs singing out "Good-bye,"
but Miss Peerwinkle seemed to be as deaf as a statue.
"I could laugh," Bobs said to herself as she joined the throng on Fifth
Avenue, "if my heart wasn't so full of tears. I don't know as I can stand
much more of seeing how the other half lives without having a good cry
over it. Dickens, the only friend and comforter of that frail little mite
of humanity!"
Then, as she turned again toward Avenue A, she suddenly remembered the
package of detective stories for which she had promised to call at the
shop where there was a spray of lilacs and a much-loved invalid woman.
"I guess I'll give up the detective game," she thought, as she hurried
along, "but I'll enjoy reading the stories just the same."
Half an hour later she had changed her mind and had decided that she
really was a very fine detective indeed.