JOSIE O’GORMAN
Detective O’Gorman’s death while he was abroad on United States Secret
Service brought sadness to the hearts of many, even to some of the
criminals whom his almost uncanny powers had been instrumental in
bringing to justice.
“A good thief has some respect for a good detective,” one noted
cracksman, who was serving his term in the penitentiary, was heard to
say when the news came that his one-time enemy was no more. “There is
pleasure in trying to circumvent a man like O’Gorman, but most of these
so-called detectives have gone into the business because they have
failed as life insurance agents. It is no fun trying to get ahead of
them. They are too easy.”
Little Josie O’Gorman mourned keenly the loss of her father. He had
been everything to her and it was hard to feel that he was gone and she
was never to see his dear, homely face again. Not that Josie thought
his face was homely. She considered his funny fat nose more classic
than the one worn by the sculptured Adonis and much more fitting to
follow a scent; and his round eyes that could narrow down to slits
when he got on the right track in a big case were to the daughter more
expressive than Wallace Reid’s or any other movie hero’s.
Crushed at first by the blow of his sudden death, Josie had felt that
never again could she go about the business of living; but the girl
came of sturdy stock and she knew too well that her father would have
been disappointed in her if she had given up to the grief that was well
nigh overwhelming her.
“I must do as he would wish me to do. He would never sit and mope,” she
declared to herself and immediately wrote to Mary Louise that she was
thinking of coming to settle in Dorfield, as Washington was too sad for
her right then.
“I am not going to stay with you, though, honey,” she wrote. “But must
have a place of my own. I’ll engage in some business because I don’t
know how to be idle. I must hunt a partner and perhaps I might get a
flat and go to housekeeping.”
When Elizabeth Wright told Mary Louise of her unrest and determination
to leave the ranks of unproductive consumers, Mary Louise immediately
thought of Josie and how well the two girls might hit it off together.
Josie came, a sad little figure.
“Sadder than she would be if she had on mourning,” Mary Louise said to
herself as she embraced her friend at the station.
“I guess you expected to see me in mourning,” Josie said as they took
their seats in Mary Louise’s car. “Somehow I’d like to have it on, but
Father hated it so that I decided not to wear it. He used to say that
people in dripping black simply exuded gloom and had no right to impose
their sorrows an all around them. I must do what he wanted.”
“That’s a brave girl!” cried Mary Louise, holding her close for a
moment before she started the car. “I think the war has changed
people’s ideas concerning mourning. But you should have a gold star.
Your father certainly was serving Uncle Sam just as much as a soldier.”
“That is what I think and so I have a gold star, but I wear it where
it can’t be seen. It is just as much satisfaction to me and I can feel
it shining on my heart. But tell me about yourself! When are you and
Danny going to begin to trot in double harness?”
“In six weeks! This is the fifteenth of April and we have set the first
of June. I am so sorry you won’t be a bridesmaid.”
“Well, I will be one in spirit, but just now I can’t quite make up my
mind to go through with it in the flesh. When you wrote asking me, I
was just as happy as could be that you wanted me, but I felt that I
must not try. The fact that you did ask me though is shining on my
heart just like the gold star.”
“And now I believe I have a partner for you. I don’t know just what
you mean to do and neither does your partner, but she means to do
something.”
“Well so do I, and that makes a good beginning towards congeniality,”
laughed Josie.
“Have you any ideas?”
“A few!”
“So has Elizabeth Wright.”
“Is that my partner’s name? I know I shall like her. I always do like
Elizabeths. I’m awfully funny about names. Some names I simply can’t
stand. Persons who have those names have to prove themselves to be
worthy before I accept them, while the ones who have the names I like
have a hard time proving themselves unworthy. I try to have an open
mind where names are concerned, realizing that it is no fault of the
namee but of the parents.”
“Did I have to prove myself worthy before you accepted me?” asked Mary
Louise, amused as usual by her friend’s whimsical way of looking at
things.
“Not at all! Your name was one of my strongest reasons for coming to
your rescue, hiring myself to Mrs. Conant as a servant so that I might
guard your interests and prove your grandfather’s innocence. I felt in
my heart that the grandfather of a Mary Louise must be good.”
“Well, your instincts were right that time. I believe really and truly
that Grandpa Jim is the best man in the world.”
“Now that my father is gone, I think maybe he is,” said Josie earnestly.
The girls were silent for a while as they sped through the streets of
Dorfield. Finally, Mary Louise spoke:
“What are your ideas for an occupation?”
“Of course, my work in life is unraveling mysteries and I mean to be
as clever a detective as my father’s daughter should be, but I have an
idea that the best way to succeed is to keep it dark. Now this is my
plan: I want to have a shop of some sort where all kinds of persons
will come, where I can get in touch with all conditions of folk and
they will think I am just the shopkeeper and have no idea of my real
calling.”
“Oh, Josie, you are so clever!”
“Not a bit of it! Don’t begin flattering me or I’ll approach my work
in the wrong spirit. Father always said one must have a humble and
contrite heart or the fine points would slip by.”
“What kind of shop were you contemplating?”
“Something quite different from any shop Dorfield now boasts. But you
tell me what this Elizabeth was thinking of so she can get the credit
if she deserves it. We may have had the same plans in mind. Ideas seem
to be in the air like flocks of birds and the same ones or ones of the
same family light on several persons at the same time.”
“Elizabeth wants a literary work-shop, where one could get manuscript
typed and corrected. She thought she might combine a clipping bureau
with it and even write articles for persons who had not the brains to
do their own work. She says she could do obituaries and valedictories
and club papers for aspiring females, also speeches for politicians.
Elizabeth is very clever but comes of the stuffiest, most conservative
family. The mother is one of those women who are work crazy but never
want their daughters to raise their hands and the father is living
about fifty years too late. Mrs. Wright would have been a wonder
if she had had the outlook to go into business instead of wasting
all her energies on cleaning and cooking and getting husbands for
her daughters. Elizabeth is dead tired of being what she calls ‘an
unproductive consumer.’ The taste she had of being at work and drawing
a salary during the war has ruined her as far as taking her place in
the family of daughters, all of them striving towards the matrimonial
goal. Elizabeth is determined to break the bonds.”
“Bully for Elizabeth! She sounds fine to me. I like the idea of the
literary work-shop and clipping bureau. Does she know short-hand as
well as typewriting?”
“I believe she knows it but has no speed, having just picked it up by
herself.”
“Better and better! She is the kind that picks things up by herself.
When can I see my partner?”
“She will come to see you this morning. Elizabeth always wants to get
what she is interested in going immediately. She is like her mother in
some ways but a much more comfortable person to be with.”
They found Elizabeth Wright awaiting them when they arrived at Colonel
Hathaway’s residence.
“Please excuse me if I have come too soon, but I couldn’t wait,” she
cried as she came forward to embrace Mary Louise and shake hands with
her future partner.
“You couldn’t come too soon for me, but Josie may be tired after her
long trip,” suggested Mary Louise.
“Not at all! I never let a trip tire me. My father used to say that it
was nonsense for persons to get tired on a trip. ‘Just let the engine
do the work and sit back and read and think and mix with your fellow
passengers and you won’t get tired. The persons who let a journey make
them tired are usually the ones who feel somehow that they must help
pull the cars.’”
Elizabeth laughed. Already she was liking this funny little friend of
Mary Louise. What an amusing looking person she was! Her features were
not plain, although certainly not beautiful. Her hair was decidedly
red, her face freckled but with a healthy color which kept the freckles
from being too apparent. Her eyes were her best points, although at
times she could make those eyes as stolid and dim as a half-wit’s. Her
teeth were excellent, but as she usually laughed with her eyes one
seldom saw her teeth. Elizabeth thought her face was interesting.
Josie O’Gorman was older than Mary Louise and her other friends, but
there was something very youthful about her little figure and as
she always dressed in misses’ sizes and cuts she could easily have
passed for seventeen, although she was at least twenty-two. She said
she bought juvenile clothes because they fitted her small figure and
because they were especially designed for boarding school girls who
were late for breakfast and had no time to fool with hooks and eyes.
Her favorite style of dress was a one-piece affair that slipped over
her head like a middy blouse. It hung in straight pleats from yoke to
hem, confined loosely at the waist by a low hanging leather belt.
Her headgear was always a straight brimmed sailor and her shoes of a
broad-toed, low-heeled, sensible style. In the winter she wore blue
serge in the morning, white serge in the evening and heavy white rajah
silk for dress-up. In the summer, it was blue linen in the morning,
white linen in the evening and linen lawn or crepe de chine for
dress-up. Josie always looked fresh and well dressed, if not in the
latest fashion, and she had to take no thought whatsoever concerning
her apparel, not even as much as a man, since she had no collar
button with which to contend and no stiff collars to be frayed out by
heartless laundries. She could carry everything she possessed in a
small wardrobe trunk with its convenient compartments for different
garments. She always kept her clothes in her trunk whether she was at
home or on a visit and a neat handbag ready packed with a change of
linen and toilet articles in case of a sudden journey being sprung upon
her. That was the result of her father’s training.
Detective O’Gorman used to say: “If we are to track criminals we must
be as ready as criminals and I am sure no thief or murderer worthy of
the name would have to stop and pack a grip to go on an enforced trip
whether he knew he was hounded or not.”
Josie desired above all things to be as much like her father as a
young girl could be like a middle-aged man and she was bidding fair to
succeed.
She constantly quoted her father, who had been full of wise saws.
Sometimes Josie gave him credit for sayings that were well known to
have belonged either to Solomon or Good Richard, but the devoted
daughter was sure they had originated with Detective O’Gorman and those
other two less brilliant gentlemen had plagiarized his wisdom.
“Now tell us, Josie, what are your plans for a shop?” suggested Mary
Louise after Elizabeth and Josie had finished sizing each other up. “I
have told Josie what you are contemplating, Elizabeth.”
“My idea is a kind of higgledy-piggledy place, a place where one can
get anything under heaven that is needed, because, if we happen not to
be carrying it in stock, we will take orders for it if there is time
to wait for an order or we will go out and shop for it if the thing
can be bought in Dorfield. We will bargain to furnish anything from
strawberries in January to information concerning the identity of the
doorkeeper in Congress who dropped dead when news came of Cornwallis’
surrender. I know of a shop called ‘The Serendipity Shop.’ That,
I believe, is the name Leigh Hunt gave to a place where one could
go in and find out anything. But that has too erudite and obscure
a meaning for us, who mean to be quite plain and simple. I think
Higgledy-Piggledy Shop would be a grand name for us. Don’t you?”
“Splendid!” was the verdict of both her listeners.
“I have perhaps the most complete collection of encyclopedias and
dictionaries outside of the Congressional Library. Father was daffy
about exact information and had systematically collected all books that
professed to contain such information from ‘Inquire Within, 3,700 Facts
for the People,’ to the latest and most down-to-date dictionary of war
slang. These books will be invaluable.”
“Will you let our customers--clients--patients--whatever we will call
them, have access to these books?” asked Elizabeth.
“Not on your life! No more than doctors let us read their books for
fear we might cure ourselves and they would be minus fees.”