“Stop her! Stop her!” Mrs. Leslie called to Mary. “She’s a thief—an out and out thief!”
“Mother! You must be demented!” exclaimed Mary. “Do calm yourself. You can’t mean Josie O’Gorman.”
“I do mean Josie O’Gorman and I rue the day we ever took her in. I thought all the time her French accent was too good to be true. Now I have seen what she has stolen—seen it with my own eyes. Her clothes are of too good material for a girl who can’t make very large wages and her shoes are too fine for one who rents a little room from us—”
“Mother, Mother! Please calm yourself and tell me what you are talking about. What has Josie seemed to have stolen, because I am sure she has only seemed to have. I could swear she is honest—swear it on the Bible.”
“Major Simpson was right—horribly right—and now I must get hold of him immediately—I promised—Oh, but I also promised not to let you know anything about it and here I have blurted it out.” Mrs. Leslie was walking up and down the living room like a caged tigress, literally tearing her hair.
“Now, Mother, take this dose of aromatic spirits of ammonia and then sit down and tell me quietly all that is troubling you.”
“Here, give me the ammonia, but I haven’t time to sit down. I must phone to Major Simpson as soon as possible. Thank goodness we have had a phone put in. Only suppose we did not have one. What a time I would have. I’d have to dress myself and go out on the street and maybe wait in line at a public booth.”
“Major Simpson! Who on earth? Is he the old gentleman from our county you used to know when you were a little girl—the one who gave you a pink parasol once?”
“Yes, the same—and he has been here to see me—so kind and courtly—so anxious for our welfare—so pleased to see me and anxious to meet you. He is Burnett & Burnett’s private detective and is on the track of this Josie O’Gorman. I promised to help him and now that I have actually seen her with the stolen goods in her pocket I am going to tell him about it.”
“Oh, Mother, you surely cannot bring yourself to shame a dear girl like Josie. She can explain it I am sure. She is a member of the family and our duty is to protect her.”
“Not at all! Our duty is to bring her to justice. The law is the law and we have no right to take it in our own hands. I am not saying I am not fond of Josie—I cannot help liking her although I have seen, with my own eyes, stuff in her coat pocket; a great bunch of lace that Major Simpson says is worth hundreds of dollars and a gold mesh purse, imported and worth I don’t know how much. She saw I saw too, and when I asked her what she meant by having the things she said she was sure she didn’t know but would leave me to find out and then she hurried out as cool as you please. Major Simpson had just told me, not fifteen minutes before, that those identical things had been stolen from the shop and he had a kind of idea from various things that had occurred that Josie was the shoplifter they have been trying to catch for months. Indeed I think he is a marvelously clever gentleman to track her as he did. I promised him I would help if the slightest thing that looked suspicious should turn up, and now I must keep my word.”
Mrs. Leslie took down the receiver of the recently installed telephone and consulting the card Major Simpson had left with her, called a number.
“Mother, Mother!” cried Mary. “The only reason I can bear your doing this is that I know dear Josie can explain. Perhaps it is best to give her a chance rather than to go on suspecting her of a heinous crime. As soon as she comes in I shall quite frankly ask an explanation of her and I am sure she will be as anxious to clear her name of this charge as I am to have it cleared.”
Mrs. Leslie could not answer her daughter as at that moment she heard Major Simpson on the line.
“Yes, Major, it is Mrs. Leslie—Polly Bainbridge that was. That girl has come in and with my own eyes I have seen a package of lace that looked as fine as fine can be and a beautiful little gold mesh purse.
“Where is she, you say? Gone! Gone in the twinkling of an eye. Up and out before I could say ‘boo’ to her. She just stuffed the things in her pocket when she realized I had seen them and without endeavoring to make the least explanation, but feigning a kind of stupid ignorance of what she was doing with them, she clapped on her hat, pulled on her coat, and was gone.
“Will she come back, you say? I don’t know Major Simpson, I am sure. She has left all her things here, but I should think she would be afraid to come back when she knows I know she has stolen those things. I have no idea where she went. She just said she had urgent business to attend to and was gone.
“Could I swear to the things? Well, Major Simpson, I should hate to have to, but if the worst comes to the worst I certainly can put my hand on the Bible and swear that I saw Josie O’Gorman put in her pocket a parcel from which had fallen a gold mesh purse with one of Burnett & Burnett’s tags on it and that the parcel certainly contained a great deal of filmy lace. How much I could not say as it was twisted up into a tight package. I am sorry, Major, but my daughter was in the apartment at the time and I was forced to tell her of what I had learned about our lodger. Yes, she is very sad over it and says she will ask the girl all about it as soon as she returns. Mary is just like her father, so kind that she thinks nobody in the world is wicked.
“Oh, you say she must not mention the matter to Miss O’Gorman. All right, Major Simpson! Mary is a good girl and I am sure she will obey me, but she is so fond of this Miss O’Gorman that it will go hard with her to help trap the poor thing. Yes, of course I understand it is our duty to aid the law where criminals are concerned. I’ll do all I can, but it goes against the grain somehow. Yes, she was right down brazen about the things being in her room. Of course she didn’t know I knew anything about them—in fact, I pretended I didn’t hear her when she asked if you had been here. She thought she saw you coming out of the house as she turned the corner. Of course that shows she has a guilty conscience to think you had been here. Well, Major Simpson, I’ll do my best, not only because it is my duty but because you are an old neighbor. I’ll call you if she comes back. Oh, of course I must pretend it is some other matter and not call your name because she could hear me phoning. Perhaps I’d better go out to a public booth. That would be best.
“You say just call your number and ask for Mr. Silvester and say ‘The lemons have come’ and you will understand? That will be fine. Well, good bye!”
Mary had listened to the foregoing harangue with a sinking heart. It was easy to gather from her mother’s part in the conversation what the old gentleman’s share had been. She well knew her mother’s failing, if failing it was, a love of a mystery and how she had always flattered herself that she knew human nature. She also knew that her mother’s kind heart always got the better of what she was pleased to call ‘her better judgment,’ and if matters should come to a showdown that she would probably expend more energy in her endeavor to protect a criminal than in convicting one. Mary was sure that her friend was innocent and it was sorely against her will that she was made to promise that in the event of Josie’s return to the apartment she would say nothing to her about lace, mesh bags, shoplifting or portly old private detectives.
“Just be perfectly natural in your manner,” commanded her mother. “Behave as I do—not that I think she will return. It would be entirely too dangerous now that she suspects Major Simpson has been here. She certainly realizes that I saw the purloined articles.”
“But her clothes! What will she do without her clothes?”
“Why, my dear, criminals of that sort never stop for clothes. She may have rooms all over the city as far as we know and as many aliases as she has rooms. There is no telling how long she has been living in Wakely. Major Simpson says these robberies have been going on ever so long at Burnett & Burnett’s and he rather thinks this girl may be responsible for all of them.”
“Oh, Mother! I can’t believe this is really you talking this way. Why, Josie is almost like a sister to me I have grown so fond of her, and I am sure she loves you dearly. If we should have suspicion cast on us she would not believe we were wicked but would do her best to help us. After all, you have not a thing to go on but what a silly old man says.”
“Major Silvester Simpson is far from being a silly old man. He is an elegant, courtly gentleman,” Mrs. Leslie retaliated with some heat. “He is not only from our county but from the very best blood in the county, and what he says and thinks has much more weight with me than protestations of innocence from a little Miss Nobody.”
Mary felt that silence was the only thing with which to combat her mother’s argument, so with a sad face, and wiping away a few tears that she could not keep back, she endeavored to lose herself in a book until Josie should return, for certain she was that their little lodger would return.
Mary and her mother were usually in accord and both of them felt exceedingly uncomfortable that a disagreement had arisen. Mrs. Leslie busied herself with her embroidery, looking up every now and then at her daughter and sighing involuntarily. Mary endeavored to read but tears would dim her eyes which necessitated a furtive use of her handkerchief. Both of them missed the gay intimate chatter that it was their custom to indulge in. Mary was the first to break the silence.
“By the way, Mother, I saw another beggar in the hall. This time it was an old woman, at least her hair was gray, though she certainly could step along at a lively rate. I saw her actually running up the steps exactly as though a mad dog was after her. I was coming in our door and my impression was that she was going in No. 3, but it looked kind of prying for me to wait and see. That Mrs. Kambourian must be a very charitable lady with the tramp mark on her door.”
“Well, well! What have we come to? I think you and I had better go back to the country, Mary, what with beggars and shoplifters right in the same house with us. Now in the country we never had such things happen.”
Mary laughed.
“But, Mother, remember how the Taylor’s dog killed our sheep; and weasels slit the throats of the chickens; and the turtles in the branch got our ducklings; and the crows ate the corn before it had time to sprout; and the city man shot your prize gobbler thinking it was a wild turkey; and old Uncle Eben’s pipe burnt up the tobacco barn.”
“Yes, yes, but none of those things were human beings doing wrong, not even Uncle Eben’s pipe. Here in the city it is human beings that worry a poor woman to death.”
“Are you so worried, Mother? I thought you were rather enjoying yourself.”
“Well, Mary, I believe you are right. I am enjoying myself and feel that I am living in the pages of an exciting detective story.”
“If only it has a happy ending!” sighed Mary. “In detective tales the one you think did the crime never is the right one and I believe this tale will work out that way. I am sure my dear Josie will prove to be as good as we have thought she was all the time.”
“Perhaps you are right, Mary. Anyhow we must read the story to the end and not skip any. If Josie is innocent it will all come out in the last chapter.”
Then mother and daughter kissed and were happy again as they sat and waited for the detective story to develop.