THE MAJOR TAKES UP A TRAIL
Josie jammed the rumpled paper in the big patch pocket of her sport
coat and thought no more about it. She boarded the interurban trolley
which passed through Linden Heights, wondering if Miss Fauntleroy could
be on it and doubtful whether it were better for her to get off at
Linden Row with that haughty and evidently bad tempered young woman
or to ride on for several blocks. The crowded car thinned out as they
approached the suburbs. Josie was soon able to make sure that the girl
was not on board.
“Let me off at Linden Row, please,” she asked the conductor.
“Sure, miss, an’ the sign was put up only yesterday so I know where it
is. The streets out here ain’t marked reg’lar.”
Linden Heights presented the appearance of much suburban property
aspiring to become urban; streets and avenues named, sidewalks laid
out, curbing placed, everything ready to make a thriving, prosperous,
homelike neighborhood--everything but the homes and the neighbors. The
houses were few and far between and Linden Row, though boasting a brand
new name on a brand new corner and a brand new row of spindling linden
trees, had not a house to its name. Josie walked north until the sad
young street lost itself in a corn field; then she retraced her steps,
crossed the car tracks and walked south until a swamp interrupted her
progress, and still no habitation. Bullfrogs were singing their spring
song in the swamp so Josie felt repaid for her long ride on the trolley.
“It means spring is almost here,” she said to herself, “is here, in
fact. It’s a surer sign than thunder and lightning; surer than the
robin’s whistle or trailing arbutus blossoms. How my dear father did
love to hear the bullfrogs!”
So far as Josie could ascertain Linden Heights was nothing more than a
real estate map. At any rate there was not a single house in the place
with the exception of an old farm house, the mansion of the original
owners of the tract, and when Josie knocked on the door with a trumped
up plea that she was hunting a place to board, she was met without much
encouragement by an old man with a tousled beard and mane who gave her
to understand that he couldn’t abide women and wouldn’t let one of them
stay on his place for five minutes. At least she had found out what she
wanted to know: Miss Fauntleroy did not live there.
“Very puzzling!” she mused. “Why did she give a fictitious address to
her employers? The first interesting thing that has happened since I
came to this town. I hope it will lead to something. Anyhow I’ll watch
this strange girl and find out something more about her. She certainly
was very rude to the old beggar.”
On the way back to the city Josie decided to read the paper she had
bought from the old woman, but at that moment she became engrossed
in the conversation of some of her fellow passengers and the Wakely
Journal remained in the patch pocket of her sport coat.
“The only thing I regret about my fruitless trip to Linden Heights is
that I didn’t have the company of old Major Simpson,” Josie amused
herself by thinking. “I shouldn’t call it fruitless, however, as it may
lead to something. Anyhow, I’m wondering what the dear Major did in my
absence.”
Had Josie realized what the dear Major was doing in her absence she
would not have been quite so nonchalant in her idle surmises. No
doubt his actions would have amused her but certainly they would have
irritated her as well.
In the first place, Josie had hardly made her escape by the rear
entrance of the department store when Min, whose surname was Tracy,
gave a hurry call from the lace counter that in putting up her goods
she had discovered the loss of many yards of the filmiest and finest
lace in stock. The counter next to her reported missing a very
expensive imported gold mesh bag. A hue and cry was raised by the
excited Major Simpson and after much pompous blustering he had rushed
to the office of the chief executives where he not only reported the
theft but demanded Josie O’Gorman’s address.
“So you have a suspicion of who she is then, this Miss O’Gorman?” asked
Mr. Theodore Burnett.
“Yes, I’ve had my eye on her for days. I have not been in the detective
business for all of these years without being able to distinguish a
girl of her type from a simple saleslady of buttons and what not.”
“Well, you are pretty clever, Major. I hope you two can get together.
You say she has gone for the day? Do you think she can clear up this
shoplifting mystery?”
“Of course she can if anyone can. Give me her address and maybe I can
overtake her.”
“Eleven, East Meadow, Apartment 4, is her address. It is remarkable
that a girl as young as she is can be so successful. She is very clever
I think.”
“Yes--altogether too clever!” muttered Major Simpson. “But she will
find there are others,” he intimated darkly.
“Yes, yes!” said Mr. Burnett uneasily, “but for goodness sake don’t be
short with her. I am sure that through her we may be able to track down
the whole gang of shoplifters.”
“Trust me, my dear Theodore, trust me!” said the Major, patting his
white vest comfortably. “I will use all the finesse that my long
service in this establishment has fostered. You need never fear that
Silvester Simpson will be anything but a diplomat.”
“Oh sure! Sure!” added Mr. Burnett quickly. “I’ll leave it to you but I
beg of you that you communicate with Miss O’Gorman at once.”
“Immediately!” and the Major strutted from the office.
“Eleven, East Meadow,” he mused. “That is the right address. I have
followed her home often enough to know, but I asked Theodore just to
see if the person had the temerity to give her real address.” And the
old gentleman, not trusting his short legs to carry him to number
eleven fast enough, hastily called a taxi.
When Major Simpson rang a bell he did not simply touch a button, he
pressed it, and that with no light finger but with the end of his
walking stick, leaning heavily against it until the bell was answered
or broken.
Mrs. Leslie answered it quickly and somewhat indignantly. She had a
sponge cake in the oven and the noise of the bell was enough to make it
fall.
“What is it, sir?” but her tone of asperity quickly changed when
she saw who was responsible for the clamor. “Well if it isn’t Major
Sylvester Simpson. Sakes alive, Major Simpson, how did you find me
out? I’ve been telling myself every day for two months that I ought
to let you know I was in Wakely because of our families being kind of
hereditary friends, but Mary and I are living in such a small way,
and--”
Major Simpson--Major by courtesy only--made up in gallantry what he
lacked in finesse. Not for worlds would he inform Mrs. Leslie that he
was not looking her up at all and was quite as astonished to see her
as she was to see him. He remembered her quite well as little Polly
Bainbridge, whose grandfather’s farm was just across the creek from
the Simpson’s farm. She had been a little girl when he was a grown man
spending his yearly holidays in the country. He remembered faintly once
having made her a present of a pink parasol on one of those visits. She
was a very small girl and he was even then a floor walker at Burnett &
Burnett’s. Perhaps that was how he happened to know the appeal a pink
parasol has for a little girl.
Now that he had found her he must come in and see her. Of course it
could not be that the person of whom he was really in search could
possibly be living with Polly Bainbridge--now Mrs. Leslie--who came
from his county and was of honest and respectable parentage as had also
been her husband, people of good blood and reputation.
The Leslies’ living room was homelike, pleasant, and spotlessly clean,
but with a certain feminine disorder in the way of a work basket
open on the table, a scarf thrown over the back of a chair, a bit of
embroidery on the sofa. This made an irresistible appeal to Major
Simpson who, though a bachelor, was a great admirer of “the ladies”
unless they happened to be “sales-ladies.” These he always regarded
with suspicion as being either incipient shoplifters or, worse than
that even, designing females who aspired to become Mrs. Simpson.
He settled himself in a comfortable overstuffed chair, conveniently low
enough to allow him to cross his plump legs, and sniffed the pleasing
odors emanating from the tiny kitchen.
“You must excuse me a minute,” blushed Mrs. Leslie, “but I have a cake
in the oven.”
“Ah, that sounds like home!” declared the gallant Major. “And when I
say home I mean the country. I fear me the city ladies trust to the
bakers for such--” But Mrs. Leslie could not wait to find out what
the city ladies trusted to the bakers as her cake had been in the
prescribed number of minutes and the gas must be turned off and the
cake turned out of the pan.
The major sniffed again. “Coffee!” was the verdict of his olefactory
nerves. Like the Raggedy Man: “His old nose didn’t tell no lies,” for
in a few minutes Mrs. Leslie returned with a tray of coffee and some
hot doughnuts she had just finished frying when her bell pealed so
loudly and persistently.
The guest _ummed_ and _ahhed_ with appreciation. He was self
congratulatory that the little girl to whom he had once presented a
pink parasol had grown into such a fine woman. He always had been a
person of discernment and from the beginning he had known that little
Polly Bainbridge was of the right sort. It was a pleasant thing to feel
that a pink parasol cast on the waters might after some thirty odd
years--or was it forty--be returned to one in the shape of fragrant
coffee and hot doughnuts.
First, all the county news must be retailed and a bit of mild gossip
concerning old neighbors be whispered. Major Simpson had long ago
given up the habit of spending his holidays back home since the old
folks had all died off and his ancestral halls passed into the hands
of strangers. But his interest in all pertaining to his county was as
strong as ever.
“I only go back for funerals, now,” said the old man sadly. Mrs. Leslie
thought of the last funeral she had attended in that part of the world,
that of Mr. Leslie, and her eyes filled with tears. The gay little
coffee and doughnut party seemed in danger of becoming as sad as a wake
but Mrs. Leslie brushed away her tears and smiled on her guest, filling
his cup and pressing upon him another doughnut. So by simple grace
happiness and good cheer were restored.
“Now tell me of your daughter. It seems strange for little Polly
Bainbridge to have a grown daughter. Do you two ladies live here all
alone?”
“Oh no! We have a lodger--Miss O’Gorman. By the way, Major Simpson, she
_says_ she is employed at Burnett & Burnett’s.”
Mrs. Leslie could not resist a slight emphasis on the “says” although
she had promised Mary to try and forget the strange suspicions that had
arisen in her mind concerning her gentle little lodger.
“She says right!” declared the Major shortly, suddenly remembering
that he was a detective out on a scent. “What do you know of the young
person?”
“Nothing--nothing at all! She came here in answer to an advertisement
my daughter and I put in a Sunday paper. We took her in without
references. Come to think of it, her saying she had a position with
Burnett & Burnett seemed to me all the reference I needed since you
were one of the firm.”
“No, no, dear lady--not yet--merely a trusted officer of the company.
But tell me more of this Miss O’Gorman. How does she impress you? Do
you feel that she is not--er--er exactly what she pretends to be?”
“Oh Major Simpson, it seems wrong to doubt the girl but--”
“But what?”
“She is a nice girl--a lady, in fact, but I can’t believe she is
exactly what she says she is--I mean a girl with a job selling bone
buttons and things. Not that there aren’t a great many ladies in
shops--I don’t mean that there aren’t--and elegant gentlemen, too, but
there is something about her and her clothes--”
“Ah! Her clothes! She seems to me to be simply dressed, more so than
most of her fellow employees.”
“Exactly, but have you felt of them?”
“Not exactly!” answered the detective with dignity.
“I mean the material is so good, it would take almost a month’s salary
to pay for one of her dresses, unless she makes a great deal more than
girls just beginning usually make. And she has all of her dresses
duplicated.”
“Was it only her clothes that made you think she was different?”
“Oh no, it was the way she talks. I hadn’t really had a positive
suspicion of her being something she said she wasn’t, or rather not
being what she said she was, until last night when we were sitting
around the table reading and sewing. Josie got to talking about noted
criminals and what they did and how detectives caught them--”
“Just stuff she had read in cheap magazines, I presume.”
“No, not fiction but facts.”
The Major became as eager as a hound on trail. Here were
facts--excellent things for a detective to know--and in the possession
of a woman. How easy it would be for him, with his years of experience,
to wheedle this artless soul into telling all she knew.
“Ah, facts! Now, er-er-my dear neighbor, just what do you mean by
facts?” asked the Major, making a great effort to appear unconcerned.
“Well, she spoke kind of familiarly of Paris and her accent sounded
like our teacher’s used to--not at all like pupils. I always have my
doubts about anybody who has too good an accent in French. I think
she felt I was suspicious of her because she shut up all of a sudden.
Please tell me, Major Simpson, have you also some suspicion concerning
our lodger?”