THE NEIGHBORS IN APARTMENT 3
Josie reported for work bright and early Monday morning, so early that
she was able to have a private interview with Mr. Theodore Burnett
before the business of selling notions was booked to begin. He had the
list of employees and their addresses all neatly typed, also in what
department of the store each one worked.
“I may not be able to keep up the farce of selling notions for very
long,” Josie explained to him. “You may have to pretend to suspend me
or something so I can have time to be a detective but I’d like to hang
on there for a few days so I can get the run of things.”
“Suit yourself, young lady! We are in your hands. By the way, old Major
Simpson was rather curious about you. I do not understand why he wanted
to know so much about you.”
“I don’t either. Perhaps he met my father in days gone by.”
Whatever the reason, Josie could but notice that the pompous old
detective spent a great deal of time hanging around the notion counter.
He seemed to be vastly interested in what she was doing and was
constantly bumping into her whenever she left her department. She even
fancied he dogged her footsteps when she went out to lunch, and was
sure that he followed her all the way home.
“It can’t be my beauty that is attracting him, because there is no such
thing; and it can’t be my wit, for he has not heard me say a word. It
must be that I look like my father and somewhere in his profession as
detective he met my father.”
It was a well known fact that Detective O’Gorman had been one of the
homeliest men in the service, but such was his little daughter’s
admiration for him that she never could get a compliment that pleased
her so much as for someone to say she resembled him in the slightest
degree.
“Old Major Simpson would have been a joke to him, but there may be some
intelligence in the old fellow after all. There certainly is if he
admired my father.” So thought Josie as she walked through the streets
of Wakely, conscious that a bombastic old gentleman was dogging her
footsteps. In her work of selling notions she was sure that never a
paper of pins was sold by her without the house detective’s knowledge.
At first it irritated her, but in the end she found it an amusing game
to elude his watchful eye.
By carefully studying the list of employees she soon was able to fit
name to face over the whole store and place each person in his or her
proper department. Then came the job of finding the address of each
employee.
“It seems to me important to know if any of them are living beyond
their means,” she explained to Mr. Theodore when he asked her why
she went to work in such a systematic manner. “When persons begin
to do that, then it’s time to look out. They have a motive for
getting-rich-quick, and sometimes when there is a motive the action
follows fast.”
Poor old Major Simpson had a hard time keeping up with Josie. Every
evening after the store was closed the girl made it her business to
check off a certain number of fellow workers, quietly rounding up their
homes, sometimes walking with them under a pretext of having business
in their neighborhoods, sometimes merely following them. The panting
and puffing detective lost the scent continually, and then Josie felt
sorry for him and made it easier for him the next time. Gradually she
made friends with the employees, careful always to be the listener
and for that reason universally popular. So completely did she efface
herself when she happened to make one of a crowd that the girls would
actually forget her presence.
Miss Fauntleroy, the tall handsome girl at the jewel counter, was one
person to whom Josie found it difficult to make up. She had a cold
manner and attended strictly to business. The address given on the list
was a suburban one, 10 Linden Row, Linden Heights, and Josie was forced
to put off looking into her surroundings until the winter weather
abated somewhat in its ferocity.
“Not that I mind the weather,” she said to herself, “but it would be
too bad to take the old Major out where there are no paved streets
while snow is up to one’s knees. He might catch his death.”
There was a let up in the shoplifting, no trouble having occurred
since Josie entered the employ of Burnett & Burnett. She had been with
them two weeks and except for the fact that she proved to be an able
saleswoman of notions, she had accomplished nothing.
“You had better dismiss me and let me go back home,” she said to Mr.
Theodore. “You certainly have no need of me here, and the Higgledy
Piggledy Shop is missing me sorely.”
“Not at all!” declared the junior member of the firm. “We have plenty
of need of you. It may be that there is no shoplifting because the
thief is afraid of you.”
“But how could he know I was here?”
“Perhaps others know of the fame of your father as well as old Simpson.”
“Perhaps--but after all I am not supposed to be so much a watchdog as a
blood hound. If detectives were simply preventives they would lose all
their cunning and skill from disuse. I am sure you could find a cheaper
watchdog than I am.”
“Well, we are not kicking about the price so why need you?”
Josie had had many interviews with the members of the firm and felt
they were her friends and respected her. She especially liked Mr.
Theodore, who seemed somewhat more progressive than his brother, but
both of them were kindly and courteous. Mr. Theodore, who was an old
bachelor, had invited Josie to dine with his family; insisting that his
mother and sisters would come and call on her and that they would be
delighted to make her acquaintance, but Josie had firmly refused.
“Not while I am selling notions,” she had laughed. “It would leak out
in the store somehow and then someone would suspect immediately that
I was not what I seem to be. Major Simpson is already worried about
me and my job. I’ll wager he is standing outside of this door right
now and his moustache and goatee are both bristling with curiosity
concerning what the business is that brings me to your private office
before opening hours. He would have his ear at the key hole if he dared
and if his sense of dignity didn’t forbid. Why don’t you take him into
your confidence? It doesn’t seem quite fair somehow.”
“Fair enough! If he wasn’t so conceited we might have you work with
him but he is so cock sure of his own ability. I give you my word,
Miss O’Gorman, he has never yet landed a shoplifter. Sometimes they
have been caught by clerks or floor walkers, but old Simpson can’t see
beyond his own embonpoint. Of course if you want his help--”
“Heavens, no!” laughed Josie, “but I should like to know what he knows
about me and my being here, and why he doesn’t come out and say so if
he does know who I am. Is he at all peeved with you and Mr. Burnett,
your brother?”
“Not at all. In fact, he seems especially delighted with us as well as
himself. I can always tell when he is pleased by the way he smiles on
me and strokes his goatee.”
Three weeks had passed and Josie felt she was not earning her salt.
Carefully she watched the lower floor of the store from the vantage
ground of the notion counter. Two bargain Fridays had come and gone and
as far as Burnett & Burnett could tell not one single person had left
their emporium without either paying or promising to pay for the goods
carried off.
The evenings with the Leslies were quiet and peaceful. The neighbors at
No. 3 left early and returned late. Josie occasionally caught a glimpse
of the man and his wife but she had not seen the girl. The youth, she
had encountered twice in the street and still his appearance puzzled
her. She was more certain than ever that she had seen him before, but
where?
“I believe they are kind and charitable, anyhow,” said Mary. “I met a
terrible looking old beggar in the hall coming from their apartment and
I am sure they had given him something because the lady spoke to him
in such a gentle tone and he answered her gently and--”
“What did they say?” asked Josie.
“I couldn’t make out, but it sounded kind of foreign. That made me
think maybe the woman has found out there is someone of her nationality
here in Wakely and she is kind to him because he is from her own
country.” Mary was the type that always made the best of everything and
everybody.
“Well, for my part, I think it is a great mistake to encourage tramps
and beggars,” said Mrs. Leslie. “Now in the country we never could do
it. If we even so much as fed one tramp we had a swarm of them coming
to us for years. My husband once gave one an old suit of clothes and
some shoes and after I had fed him Mr. Leslie told him he could spend
the night in the barn because it was coming up to snow. After that a
week never passed that some disreputable old bum didn’t come whining to
my back door. It kept up until we had the road gate painted, posts and
all, and then they let up on us and we began to think that the first
one had put the tramp’s mark on our gate and all the others read it and
knew we were kind hearted. Of course the paint destroyed the mark.”
“What a wonderful mark to have on your gate!” exclaimed Mary. “I wish I
knew what it was and could put one on our door.”
“Perhaps one is there,” suggested Josie, “and I saw it and ventured in.”
“I don’t want any real tramps around here,” insisted Mrs. Leslie. “You,
Josie, are less like a tramp than any one I ever saw. I felt safe with
you from the moment you entered the door and I never have felt safe
with any tramp. I don’t like to think that tramps might be coming in
and out of this house and if I ever see or hear of another one being in
the hall I am going to complain to the landlord.”
“Oh, Mother, please don’t! What would our neighbors think of us?”
“It makes mighty little difference what they think. People who don’t
speak our language and have tramps calling on them have no business
thinking.”
Josie laughed. Mrs. Leslie’s feeling in regard to tramps and foreigners
was a common one with persons born and raised in the country. They
encouraged neither tramping nor immigration.
“We have two beggars at Burnett & Burnett’s,” said Josie, “one at the
front entrance and one at the back. It is against my principles to
give to street beggars but I have a hard time getting by those two. The
Associated Charities are constantly asking the public not to encourage
beggars but send them to the A. C. so that they can look into their
cases. I am sure they are right, and good citizens should uphold them;
but beggars such as we have at our front and back entrances seem to be
able to appeal against reason and I am sure they reap a substantial
harvest. When charitable ladies get up tag days for their pet concerns
they should man the stations with just such beggars instead of
attractive young girls.”
“I thought begging on the street was against the city ordinances,” said
Mrs. Leslie.
“Oh, they get around all laws by pretending to sell something. This
beggar man at the front door sells lead pencils and the woman at the
back goes through the motions of selling newspapers. She never has the
last edition and always whines if anyone wants change. She is a husky
looking person and I believe is well fed, in spite of the pretext she
makes of dining off crusts.”
“Poor thing!” exclaimed Mary. “I’m sorry for her even though she may be
a fraud.”
“Of course there is no easy way of making an honest living,” laughed
Josie, “whether it be pounding a typewriter or--selling notions.” It
was on the tip of Josie’s tongue to say lying in wait for shoplifters.
“Begging is not such a bad way to spend your time if you are interested
in human nature. Of course it must be rather hard on the man at the
front entrance because he wears a patch over one eye and part of his
game is to keep the other one half shut. That means he can’t see all
that is going on, but who knows? He may be able to see more with half
an eye than many persons can with two wide open ones.”
“The beggar I saw in the hall had a patch over his eye. I noticed it
particularly, and felt sorrier than ever for him. I’d have given him
something if he hadn’t hurried away so fast when I came in.”
“A great many beggars seem to be minus one eye,” said Josie. “I
remember reading once of a great French detective who captured a
notorious criminal, who was operating as a blind beggar with a patch
over his eye, because the _pseudo_-beggar inadvertently changed blind
eyes. The detective had passed him many times on the Pont Neuf in
Paris, where the beggar had stood for weeks and weeks whining a pitiful
tale. Now this detective, like all good ones, let nothing escape him,
and he had noticed that the blind beggar wore a patch over his right
eye. One morning the patch had moved to the left one. That set Mr.
Detective to thinking and he watched the man. When darkness came the
man stopped begging for the day, hobbled from the bridge into a nearby
crooked street and there he straightened up, took off the telltale
patch and walked briskly along the side walk. Then it was an easy
matter to track him to his luxurious lair. Begging was merely a side
line, as burglary on a large scale was his real profession. He was
attempting to conceal his identity under the cloak of a mendicant.”
“I still say, poor fellow,” said Mary.
“And I say,” said Mrs. Leslie shrewdly, “that if I were a detective
I’d wonder what on earth made you, Josie, go into being a shop girl. I
begin to think it is nothing but a side line with you.”
Josie, being completely off her guard, hardly knew how to answer Mrs.
Leslie. She did not deem it wise to take mother and daughter into
her confidence concerning her true business in Wakely. She blushed
and stammered like a veritable novice at the game of concealment and
falteringly assured Mrs. Leslie that she had been forced into selling
notions because of reverses in her family fortunes.
“To be sure the wages are not so very high,” she continued, “but
Burnett & Burnett’s is a pleasant place in which to work. Then, too, it
is so nice to be here with you and Mary that I don’t mind being in a
store all day.”
Mrs. Leslie expressed herself as satisfied concerning her lodger’s
profession but she afterwards said to her daughter: “She has a kind
of high-brow way with her at times that makes me doubt her being just
a poor girl; and her clothes, while they are simple, are made of such
good material. You can’t fool me on dry-goods. I tell you, Mary,
Josie’s dresses are made out of stuff that cost five dollars a yard.”