*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 60974 ***

Josie O’Gorman




[Illustration: “Horrid ain’t de word”, said Aunt Mandy--Chapter VIII.]




  Josie O’Gorman

  By
  Edith Van Dyne

  Author of
  The “Mary Louise” Stories, in which
  Josie O’Gorman, the Girl Detective,
  was a leading character

  [Illustration]

  Frontispiece by
  Harry W. Armstrong

  The Reilly & Lee Co.
  Chicago




  _Printed in the United States of America_

  _Copyright, 1923
  by_
  The Reilly & Lee Co.

  _All Rights Reserved_

  _Josie O’Gorman_




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                             PAGE

      I Josie’s Funny Nose               7

     II Ursula Tells Her Story          19

    III A Rush Order for Dolls          32

     IV Lost and Found                  45

      V Ursula Writes a Letter          54

     VI Philip Is Kidnapped             66

    VII Josie Visits Louisville         79

   VIII Clues from Aunt Mandy           87

     IX Josie Finds a Friend            96

      X A Visit to Peewee Valley       103

     XI Mr. Cheatham Is Unmasked       113

    XII In an Old Kentucky Home        124

   XIII A Great Christmas Feast        133

    XIV A Trap for Mr. Cheatham        143

     XV An Anonymous Letter            152

    XVI Bob Dulaney’s Chase            164

   XVII Josie Makes a Find             175

  XVIII The Clue in the Film           185

    XIX Philip Is Found                197

     XX Miss Fitchet Is Surprised      207

    XXI Josie O’Gorman’s Triumph       215




Josie O’Gorman

CHAPTER I

JOSIE’S FUNNY NOSE


Josie O’Gorman’s appearance was one of her greatest assets. To the
general run of young girls who look upon beauty as the one and only
attribute necessary for success in life no doubt this statement would
sound absurd. Certainly there was little in Josie’s appearance that
to the casual observer would have passed muster as an asset. To be
sure her sandy hair was abundant and well kept; her complexion, though
subject to freckles, smooth and clear and milk-white where the sun
could not reach it; her teeth even and pearly; her figure, small but
erect with every muscle under the control of the alert mind of the
girl; her feet--well, her feet the most scornful flapper might have
envied. Even Josie, who was as free from vanity and self-consciousness
as any girl living, had much satisfaction in her feet which were as
smooth and guiltless of imperfections as those of a three-year-old
child.

Those good points mentioned were not, however, Josie’s greatest
assets. The features that gave Josie rank as one of the most astute
female detectives were a pair of colorless, nondescript eyes, that
could at the owner’s will take on an expression of absolute stupidity,
even imbecility; and a nose that could be described best by the word
“blobby.” No wrong-doer, attempting to evade detection, could have
any fear of a person whose eyes resembled those of a codfish. As for
the blobby nose, it was a nose that made a good foundation for any
disguise. Not only did false noses fit on it with ludicrous exactness
but Josie had the faculty of controlling that member and forcing it to
do her bidding in a manner most surprising. From a mere blob she could
wrinkle it into a turned-up nose, or by lifting one nostril and pulling
down her upper lip she could change her countenance so that her best
friends would have difficulty in recognizing her. This power of nose
control was one that she had but recently acquired.

“I always could do things to my eyes,” she said to her dear friend
Mary Louise, Mrs. Danny Dexter, “but I had always considered my nose a
hopeless give-away. I was sure there was not another one like it in all
the world, now that my dear father is dead.”

“How did you happen to discover your power over it?” asked Mary Louise,
who could not help smiling at her friend’s mention of the father’s
nose. The elder O’Gorman had been a famous detective and his shapeless
nose had been almost as famous as its owner.

“It was this way: I blame myself and my sensitive vanity for not
finding out about it long ago,” laughed Josie. “You see I never looked
in a mirror, at least hardly ever. I never liked what I saw there and I
saw no use in mortifying myself. Instead of facing the truth about my
ugly mug I put it behind me.”

“Your face? That was a great feat. Surely you are some juggler!”

Josie grinned.

“Excuse the Irish break. Anyhow, I looked at myself occasionally
only--to see that my hair was parted straight or my hat was not cocked
over one ear. It was after that experience I had in Atlanta getting
even with that arch fiend, Chester Hunt, and bringing the Waller
family together that I sat down in front of a mirror one day and looked
myself squarely in the face. I was very triumphant over having bested
and worsted the handsome Chester; but in spite of my satisfaction
there was a kind of sore spot in my heart, because you see, honey,
after all I’m nothing but a girl and no matter how indifferent I may
seem to things girls have and do I’m not really indifferent at all.
I’m just busy--too busy to brood over the things that can’t be helped.
But somehow Chester Hunt’s remarks sort of hurt me. He did not scruple
to let me know he considered me homely beyond words and he took a
real delight in making me feel that it was hard to believe I could be
the capable person he had decided I was because my appearance was so
against me. I fancy I wouldn’t have minded so much if he himself had
not been so extremely handsome. I give you my word, Mary Louise, he was
one of the most wonderful looking men I ever saw, and there was nothing
in his appearance to give away the black-hearted villainy of him.
Well, as I was saying, I sat down in front of the mirror and looked at
myself, trying to see myself as no doubt the handsome Chester saw me.”

“It’s my nose that is the insurmountable offender!” I exclaimed. “No
wonder he thought me so hideous. I wonder if he’d like me any better if
I had a turned-up nose.”

With that Josie turned up her nose, giving herself such a ridiculous
expression that Mary Louise laughed merrily.

“Well that’s when I found out I could do it. I practiced holding it
like this for minutes at the time. Then I discovered I could take on a
kind of hare-lip look and in fact could do almost anything that I had
a mind to with my despised nose. So you see Chester Hunt has been a
great friend to me, unwittingly however. I fancy he’d like to get even
with me in some way besides making it possible for me to make faces
that disguise my weird beauty. Anyhow, from being a person who used
never to look in a mirror, I spent all of my spare time making faces at
myself in the glass. What do you think of this one? I held it for two
miles the other day and met Captain Lonsdale, who did not recognize me,
although he has known me forever.”

“Oh, Josie, what a face! No wonder poor Captain Charlie didn’t know
you! Who would unless he had been present at the transformation?” Mary
Louise gave Josie an affectionate hug, as she spoke.

The girls were seated in the Higgledy Piggledy Shop, which was an
industry owned and run by Josie O’Gorman and her two associates,
Elizabeth Wright and Irene MacFarlane, and watched over by the guardian
angel, Mary Louise Dexter. In the Higgledy Piggledy Shop one found a
little of everything and the youthful proprietors prided themselves on
never turning down an order, no matter how impossible it might appear.
From a small undertaking it had grown to be a business of goodly
proportions. Elizabeth Wright was the business manager and also looked
after the literary end, writing club papers for the unwary females who
had got themselves in for such things and were powerless to deliver
the goods. She also did a pretty good business in obituary notices,
corrected and typed manuscripts and ran a correspondence course in
the art of scenario writing, passing on the knowledge she had picked
up during the summer she had spent at Columbia University. Many and
varied were the duties of Elizabeth, all of which she performed with
proficiency.

The lame girl, Irene MacFarlane, had charge of all needle work. At the
beginning of the venture Irene had merely been employed by Josie and
Elizabeth, giving a few hours a day to the work, but she had proven
herself so necessary to the establishment that she had been tendered
a full partnership and now every day the brave patient girl wheeled
herself to the shop in her invalid’s chair, which she never left; and
there she sat mending lace or doing the exquisite embroidery for which
the Higgledy Piggledy Shop was famous, or even minding the store when
the other partners were out on business. She managed her chair with
the ease of an expert bicycle rider, never bumping into furniture or
scraping her wheels, but gliding across the floor, weaving her way in
and out, with a positive grace of movement.

The Higgledy Piggledy Shop was on the second floor of an old building.
In the rear was a small electric elevator, entered from the alley.
This had been originally a clumsy dumb-waiter, manipulated by creaking
pulleys and ropes, but had been converted to its present state of
useful beauty by Danny Dexter, who ever strove to serve his darling
Mary Louise and her friends. Irene would enter the small lift from the
rear through a door just large enough to admit her chair. The door was
locked and Irene alone had the key. One touch of a button would send
her to the floor above, where the door would automatically open and
then she would glide into the shop. It always seemed to the girls a
kind of miraculous vision when Irene would so silently appear.

On the day when Josie was showing Mary Louise the control she had
gained over what she had hitherto looked upon as a despised and
useless feature--at least useless as far as the detective business was
concerned in the matter of disguises, although greatly prized as to its
ability to detect tell-tale odors--Irene appeared just in time to get
the full benefit of Josie’s last and most astounding face.

It was a sad face and a sinister one, the left nostril lifted and the
right one compressed; the mouth drawn down at the corners with the
under lip protruding loosely.

Irene greeted the girls gaily but stopped embarrassed.

“I--I--beg your pardon,” she said falteringly. “I thought for a moment
you were Miss O’Gorman.”

Mary Louise laughed delightedly and try as she might Josie could not
hold her expression but broke down in hopeless giggles.

“There now, I must practice a lot or I’ll never be able to fool a
flea,” she declared. “If my risibles get the better of me there is no
use in calling myself a detective.”

Irene looked worried, although she, too, was amused.

“What’s the matter with you, honey?” asked Josie.

“I can’t bear for you to make yourself look that way,” said Irene. “It
does not seem right, somehow, to twist one’s features so far from the
way God has meant them to be. I love your dear face, Josie, and it gave
me an awful turn to see it all out of shape.”

“Bless your dear heart!” exclaimed Josie. “I promise you never to twist
it except in the cause of righteousness, unless it is in practicing. Of
course I must practice a lot to perfect my detective make-up.”

“You make me think of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I only hope making
yourself look so frightful won’t make you sad,” said Irene. “Speaking
of sad looks, I have found a person to conduct our tea room--if you
others like her as much as I do--but she is awfully sad. I don’t blame
her. No doubt she has had her troubles--is still having them, but
she is very industrious. Indeed she has need to be since two little
brothers are entirely dependent on her for support.”

The tea room was one of the Higgledy Piggledy ventures that brought
in more money than any branch of the business, but gave the girls
more trouble than all of the other industries put together. Elizabeth
Wright’s talents did not lie in a domestic direction, Irene because
of her lameness was handicapped, and Josie was too often absent on
detective business to give any time to it. There had been times when
the Higgledy Piggledies had almost determined to abandon the tea room,
but it seemed like flying in the face of Providence to give up the
steady income that accrued from it.

“Tell us about this sad person,” urged Josie.

“Her name is Ursula Ellett and she came from Louisville, Kentucky. She
is well educated and really a lady. She must be about twenty-two, but
she seems much older because she has had so much trouble. She went to
see Uncle Peter Conant on legal business and it was with him that I met
her. Her father died when she was very young and the little brothers,
Ben and Philip, were tiny tots. Her mother married again, then died two
years ago and the stepfather, who is the root of all evil and source
of all woe, wished to put them in charge of a trained nurse, a most
impossible person with whom Ursula refused to live or to allow the
little brothers to live. The stepfather, by some dishonest juggling,
has got possession of the estate which belonged to the Elletts and
refuses to do a thing for Ursula or the boys unless they live with him.
His name is Cheatham, which seems to fit him to a dot.”

“How did she happen to come to Dorfield?” asked Josie.

“Her mother’s people came from here, and while there are none of them
left Ursula felt drawn to the place because of what her mother had told
of her childhood here and the kindly neighbors. The public schools of
Dorfield have a good name and she wants to educate Ben and Philip. She
loves Louisville but could not stay in the same city with Cheatham, who
busied himself making things unpleasant for her.

“I believe she is just the girl we want for the tea room. She has
managed a household, understands servants and serving, and she is
really a fine cook. What do you say to looking her over?”

“Sure, let’s give her the job,” agreed Josie. “Of course Elizabeth must
give her vote before we can settle on it.”

“Certainly, but I’m pretty sure that what our sane Irene says is safe
for the Higgledy Piggledies,” laughed Mary Louise. “I fancy Ursula
Ellett will take charge of the tea room at an early date.”




CHAPTER II

URSULA TELLS HER STORY


“Why didn’t you tell us how beautiful she was?” Josie asked Irene after
the partners had looked Ursula Ellett over, approved of her and engaged
her on the spot.

“I did not like to because I did not know whether you would think her
as beautiful as I do.”

“Thought you had a corner on taste, eh?” laughed Josie.

“Not that. But you know tastes differ so. Uncle doesn’t think she is
beautiful, merely sweet looking and Aunt Hannah says if it wasn’t for
her eyes she would call her positively homely. They say she has no
figure.”

“No figure! With that willowy slenderness!” exclaimed Elizabeth. “Why
she looks like a wood nymph!”

Ursula Ellett was not as old as Irene had thought, in fact she had
just reached her majority. But the cares that had fallen on her young
shoulders had added to her years and the troubles and anxieties had
given a gravity to her countenance that was pitiable to behold. Her
eyes were violet with dark pansy markings, her lashes long and thick
with brows delicately bowed, her nose of patrician perfection. Her
mouth needed only smiles to make it beautiful, but it was too sad at
the present, with the corners drooping and making lines of discontent
that were fast becoming permanent. Her hair was dark, almost black, but
with a coppery hue.

It meant much to Ursula to be taken in by the Higgledy Piggledies, and
it meant much to the partners to have a capable person to take hold of
their tea room and run it with the order necessary for its success.

“Where did you learn to do things so well?” Josie asked their new
manager, as she moved quickly around the tea room getting everything to
rights in preparation for the afternoon. It was the custom for many of
the young people of Dorfield to drop in at the Higgledy Piggledy, which
had established a reputation for cinnamon toast and waffles baked on an
electric iron.

“Training servants,” answered Ursula. “I have had dozens to break in
at my home in Louisville. My stepfather was very difficult to please
and my endeavor was to give him no just cause of complaint. I had to
learn to do all kinds of things about the house well so that I could
teach others. Mr. Cheatham was constantly dismissing the servants and
then my work was all to be done over. I like this kind of work very
much and do hope I can give satisfaction.” Ursula’s lip trembled as she
spoke.

“Give satisfaction! Why, my dear girl, we think we have found a
treasure in you. We only hope we can be the ones to give satisfaction.
Please feel that we are your friends. In the first place, in our shop
what Irene says goes. She doesn’t often make suggestions, being one of
the most modest of human beings, but when she does we all of us agree
with her. I have never known Irene to make a mistake in people. She has
put me right on several persons.”

Josie then recounted to Ursula the tale of the Markles, a perfidious
couple who had almost gotten away with all of Mary Louise’s wedding
presents, and she gave Irene the credit for being the first one of all
of the friends of the little bride to realize there was something
shady about Felix and Hortense Markle.

“She always knows when people are the right sort, too,” added Josie,
“and she gave you a mighty good name.”

“I am very happy at that,” said Ursula, a smile flashing for a moment
over her sad countenance. “My little brothers are quite in love with
Miss MacFarlane.”

“Oh, none of that, please!” interrupted Josie. “Don’t ‘Miss’ any of us.
We are Irene and Elizabeth and Josie and you are Ursula.”

“All right!” blushed Ursula, “but I did not want to be too familiar.
Anyhow the boys are very fond of Irene. Mrs. Conant is kind to them too
and has asked them to make themselves at home in her yard. Now that
school is over it is quite a problem to keep the little fellows happy.”

“How old are they?”

“Ben is ten and Philip, six.”

“Why, they are old enough to help around the shop. Let them come here
and they can be our delivery boys. We are always needing a boy to run
errands.”

“That would be wonderful, but they are such little fellows that I am
afraid they would be in the way.”

“Children are never in my way, and you know how Irene feels about them.
Elizabeth is fine to boys. She doesn’t take much stock in girls, having
been brought up in a house full of them. Let me talk it over with my
partners first, though.”

The partners were more than willing and the next day when Ursula came
to work she came hand in hand with her two brothers. Ben and Philip
were delighted with the idea of holding jobs, but more than anything
were they pleased at the thought of being near “The Lady in the Chair,”
which was the name they had given Irene.

“I’m the chief office boy an’ Phil is my clerk,” announced Ben. “I’m
gonter do all the work an’ he’s gonter trot along an’ watch me. He’s
just six an’ I’m in my ’leventh year. I’m gonter grow up an’ take care
of Sister an’ buy her a ring an’ some beads an’ a Stutz racer. I’m
gonter send Phil to college too, an’ buy him some long pants.”

“An’ I’m gonter save up my money that I make watchin’ you work an’ buy
The Lady in the Chair a all-day sucker,” announced Philip.

There could be no two opinions concerning those Ellett boys. They were
beautiful children--their loveliness almost unearthly. Ben was fair and
sturdy, large for his years, with the wide blue eyes and yellow hair
of a Viking child. Philip was more like his sister Ursula, slender and
patrician, with dusky hair and eyes like dark pools in a forest where
the blue sky is reflected unexpectedly. The boys adored first their
sister, whom they considered the most wonderful person in the world,
and then each other, Ben ever protecting his little brother and Philip
ever looking up to Ben as a superior being.

They were natural, normal boys and for that reason not at all saintly.
Ursula felt she could trust them as far as honesty was concerned but
was always very anxious about them when she had to be away from them
in the pursuit of a livelihood. This arrangement with the Higgledy
Piggledies was an ideal one. There she could have an eye ever on her
charges and she was sure the boys would be as good as boys could be,
which of course is not perfect.

Faithfully they delivered parcels for the Higgledy Piggledy shop,
Viking Ben carrying the burdens and Phil walking just two steps behind
his brother, admiring his prowess with loving eyes. Faithfully they
brought back money from the customers carefully pinned in Ben’s pocket
and painfully counted out by that future business man.

Josie got a knapsack in which small parcels could be securely strapped,
as often the articles to be delivered were quite valuable such as old
lace mended by Irene or rare linen laundered by Josie or manuscript
corrected or copied by Elizabeth. The boys were instructed to return
immediately and report at the shop after making a delivery. This they
did with a promptness surprising in such youngsters.

“It isn’t when they are busy that I feel anxious about them,” sighed
Ursula, “but when they are idle. Please hunt up more duties for them.”

“Poor dears! Don’t they eat up all the cold waffles? What more could we
demand?” laughed Josie. “Don’t you remember how sorry we always felt
about the cold waffles, girls?”

“Yes indeed, the Higgledy Piggledy garbage pail always mortified me,”
said Elizabeth. “No matter how carefully one plans there are always
cold waffles to be disposed of. Even my mother, who is an excellent
manager, I can tell you, has never mastered the cold waffle problem.”

“Well, it is no problem here,” smiled Ursula. “In fact there is nothing
left over since you dear girls insisted upon my giving my boys their
supper here. I wish I could tell you what it means to me, having this
place and being able to see Ben and Philip all the time.”

“Well I wish you knew what it means to us to have our tea room run like
a smart New York shop, with never a hitch and more and more persons
praising it and bringing their friends here to treat them--to say
nothing of the empty garbage pail. If things don’t stop prospering so
we are going to have to get new quarters, girls. Do you realize that?”
queried Josie.

“Oh, but please don’t let’s leave the dear old shop,” begged Elizabeth.
“These have been the happiest months of my whole life, I truly believe.
If we have to expand, let’s expand upward or downward. Why not see
about the rooms above or the rickety old store below?”

“Turn out the cleaners and dyers below, who certainly smell most
vilely and increase our insurance rates one hundred per cent and make
a kind of lunch club down there! Great scheme!” exclaimed Josie. “What
does our sage Irene think?”

“I think it is a fine idea but it would need a good deal of capital to
start such an undertaking,” said Irene thoughtfully. “Let’s go slowly
until we find someone with capital to invest.”

“I wish I could command my own little fortune,” blushed Ursula. “I
haven’t much--at least I don’t think I have, but what I own I have no
more power over than if it wasn’t mine. My stepfather, Mr. Cheatham,
has entire control of everything connected with my father’s estate.”

“Can’t you go to law about it?” asked Elizabeth.

“I--I--am helpless with him. He holds it over me that if I make any
trouble he will claim my boys. He says he has the right to keep them
from me. There is some quirk in the law that he quotes. I am sure I
don’t understand it but I am afraid to test it. I’d give up all the
money in the world rather than have my Ben and Philip under the
influence of such a man.”

“Haven’t you any relations?” asked Josie.

“Only Uncle Ben Benson, my mother’s brother, and I don’t know where
he is. He was very much put out with my poor little mother when she
married Mr. Cheatham. He left Louisville and we have never heard
anything from him. I loved Uncle Ben and he loved me. I felt he was
hard on Mother and told him so, although Heaven knows it almost killed
me for her to marry such a man. But she was young when my father died,
young and so beautiful. Mr. Cheatham evidently had some influence over
her that we could not understand.”

“What is his standing in the community?” asked Josie.

“He is not trusted or respected but he is so plausible that he has
a certain following. He makes an excellent impression on strangers
and Louisville is growing so, with such a large number of new people
settling there every year, that it is quite a simple matter for Mr.
Cheatham to worm himself into the good graces of the new and wealthy
people. He is clever and has an engaging manner until you know him.
Then you hate his manner as you hate him.”

“Does he know where you are?”

“I think not, but I am not sure. He always finds out everything he
wants to know. He doesn’t care where I am, just so I let him alone. The
thing that determined my leaving home was not only his threatening to
bring this woman, this Miss Fitchet, to the house, but an awful scene
we had with him when he tried to whip my Ben. It was because of some
trifling bit of naughtiness. Ben turned on the hydrant to which the
hose was attached and could not get it turned off.”

“All boys like to play in water,” laughed Josie. “I like it myself.”

“He began to beat him unmercifully and little Philip rushed in and bit
him on the leg and I--I’m not ashamed to tell you that I took a hand in
the fight myself, although it was in the front yard of our home on one
of the principal old residential streets of Louisville. I turned the
hose on the wretch and he got it full in the face. I am sure we looked
like a movie comedy; but he left off beating Ben.”

“Good for you!” laughed Josie.

“We left then and I have never seen him again. I took the boys to a
hotel and got a lawyer to go see him and try and get an allowance
from him but he refused any financial help. He said we would be taken
care of as long as we would stay under his roof and no longer. I could
not stand the thought of ever having to see him again and so I left
Louisville. He thought we would live with some old friends who are at
Peewee Valley, near Louisville, but I came to Dorfield, and oh, how
glad I am I chose this peaceful spot!”

Ursula beamed happily on her employers. Already the girl had a
different expression. The corners of her mouth were lifting and the
pained look in her pansy eyes had given place to one of peace and trust.

“How about Uncle Ben Benson? Don’t you fancy he’ll come rolling in one
day with his coat lined with thousand dollar bills and a potato sack
full of gold nuggets?” asked Elizabeth. “Uncles in the manuscripts I
correct always come home rich and generous.”

“I wouldn’t care much about the nuggets and coat lining, if he would
only come home or write to me and let me know he is alive and well and
no longer bears a grudge against me for standing up for my poor little
mother. I tried to let him know when she died but my letter came back
to me after having followed him around to all kinds of out-of-the-way
places. Sometimes I am afraid he is dead.”

“I’ll be bound he is not. Probably he is working away at some sort of
business that is going to bring in oodles of money,” insisted Elizabeth.

“Perhaps,” mused Ursula, “but in the meantime I had better get the
waffle batter mixed and the cinnamon toast under way, because the
hungry patrons will be pouring in soon.”




CHAPTER III

A RUSH ORDER FOR DOLLS


The weeks rolled by. The Higgledy Piggledies prospered. Many waffles
and much cinnamon toast were devoured by the elite of Dorfield. Each
partner was occupied in her especial line but often everyone would have
to lend a hand at afternoon tea time.

School opened and the diminutive delivery boys were forced to
relinquish their jobs during school hours, but afternoon always found
them at the shop ready for any kind of work their gentle employers
could find for them. Proudly they held up their heads at being able to
help Sister. Ben even learned to bake waffles on the electric iron and
was what Elizabeth called, quoting from real estate advertisements, “an
extra added feature” to the attractions of the tea room. Philip learned
to wait on the tables, never dropping or spilling a thing.

“So much for the Montessori method,” said Josie. “I believe carrying
soup without spilling it is the especial triumph of their system of
training. You told me the boys had been to a Montessori school, did you
not, Ursula?”

“Yes, that was one of the times when I had my way in spite of Mr.
Cheatham.”

Irene had made the boys little linen aprons and caps and wonderfully
charming they looked, with their flushed and eager faces, as they
seriously and conscientiously served the guests.

“The boys at school try to tease me for doin’ it,” Ben confessed to
Josie, “but I jes’ tell ’em that Alfred the Great had to mind the cakes
an’ what a king ain’t above doin’ I ain’t either--only ol’ Alfred let
the cakes burn an’ I don’t never let my waffles get mor’n a golden
brown. I reckon kings ain’t much account when it comes to head work. It
takes head work to do things ’zackly right.”

“It certainly does,” laughed Josie. “It is wonderful to find that out
when you are a boy, Ben, because some persons get to be old as old can
be and never know it. If you bake waffles as well as they can be baked,
when that is the job before you, it will be easier to tackle the bigger
job when it comes to you. I remember a story I heard a lecturer tell
once that always has stayed with me.”

“Please tell it to me,” begged Ben, who could not decide which to love
the more, the “Lady in the Chair” or Josie. He had almost decided on
Josie, since Philip could go on caring for Irene above all others
besides Sister. So Josie told this story:

“Well, this gentleman, who was a great preacher and lecturer, said
when he was a little boy his father, who was also a noted divine, drew
him to him one day when he was in his study and with his arm around
him said: ‘My boy, have you thought what you would like to be when
you grow to manhood?’ ‘Yes, Father! I want to be a hack driver.’ His
father paused for a moment evidently somewhat nonplused at the strange
ambition of his son, then he said earnestly: ‘All right, my boy, but
mind you, be the best hack driver in town.’”

“Oh I see what you mean. Well, I reckon I’m the best waffle baker in
town already--that is, the best boy waffle baker, and I’ll jes’ keep on
bein’ an’ tell the fellows what tease me to go swallow themselves.”

“Exactly!” laughed Josie, “but it might be more tactful to ask them to
come swallow some waffles.”

“Gee, no! That wouldn’t ever do. I ain’t sayin’ I can bake waffles fast
enough to fill up boys. They are reg’lar rat holes for emptiness.”

One afternoon, several weeks before Christmas, the Higgledy Piggledies
were especially busy, an order for dressed dolls having come in that
had to be filled immediately. Dressing dolls was one of the things they
had not been called on to do before, but if dolls had to be dressed
they must be dressed and the partners made it a rule never to turn down
any form of order.

“We’ll send an S. O. S. for our reserves,” said Josie. “And then the
faithful shall have to stay on and work overtime. It’s Saturday,
fortunately, and we can sleep late to-morrow.”

Ursula proved an able assistant, being very clever at fashioning the
miniature garments.

“I always loved to dress dolls,” she said, “but haven’t done it for
years and years. Of course, Ben and Philip did not want dolls.”

“I’d of wanted one,” declared Philip. “Nobody never asked me didn’t I!”
He had drawn a stool up close to his sister’s knee and watched her with
adoring and wondering eyes as she fashioned a tiny ruffled apron for a
blue-eyed beauty with a saucy turned-up nose and yellow hair. “I wisht
you’d let me hold that dolly until you finish her dress.”

“Aw, sissy!” jeered Ben. “I wouldn’t let the boys catch me playin’
dolls.”

“I ain’t a sissy,” objected Philip. “I’m all time seein’ fathers
wheelin’ their kids out on Sundays. One time I peeked in a window back
in Louisville an’ I saw a man a-huggin’ an’ a-kissin’ his baby an’
playin’ with it jes’ like girls do doll babies. What’s the reason that
boys that’re goin’ to grow up to be big mens can’t play doll babies as
much as men can play with their own babies made out of meat? I betcher
if Mr. Cheatham had played with doll babies some he wouldn’t of ’spised
little boys so much when he got growed up.”

The argument being unanswerable, Ben did not attempt to answer it, but
satisfied himself by asserting it was sissy all the same to play dolls.
Philip looked longingly at the blue-eyed beauty but made no further
request to be allowed to hold it, although the young dressmakers
encouraged him to practice being a father all he wished. He merely sat
and watched the fashioning of the dainty garments, ever on the alert
to pick up dropped spools of thread or wait on the busy seamstresses.

Mary Louise had come in to help and Laura Hilton and Lucile Neal.
Edna Barlow had promised to give her Saturday afternoon to the rush
order and Jane Donovan had missed a fashionable tea, so that she, too,
might have a finger in the doll pie. Some of the girls had worked all
day, not even going home for luncheon but having what Josie called a
“pick-up” at the shop.

“A gross of dolls to be dressed is no idle jest,” exclaimed Elizabeth,
“not meaning to fall into poetry, so don’t anybody accuse me of lisping
in numbers. What do you think of my flapper?” She held up a doll in
a fringed skirt and slipover sweater with neat collar and cuffs,
bobbed hair, rakish hat and even cleverly contrived gaiters unbuttoned
according to the last cry in flapperdom.

There was an outcry of approval from the workers.

“One doesn’t have to use a microscope to see my stitches, but I do
think my doll is cute,” declared Elizabeth.

“Cute is a silly word to use for her,” laughed Mary Louise. “To my
mind she has real literary value.”

“I want to dress one to look like an old-fashioned grandmother, now,”
said Elizabeth, “but we haven’t any black silk. I want her to frown on
the flapper.”

“What did I tell you? Elizabeth always has to bring literature into
life, even into the dressing of dolls. I’ll go get some black silk
suitable for grandmothers for all time,” cried Mary Louise, jumping
up and dropping her thimble and spool of cotton, which little Philip
quickly restored, thereby gaining a kiss from Mary Louise, to whom all
children appealed.

“I’ll go instead of you,” suggested Ursula. “I have a few other
purchases to make. It is very cold and you have a little cough.”

It was agreed that Ursula should do the shopping. Ben also had to go
out to deliver some linen Josie had laundered, as well as some other
parcels.

The girls settled themselves again, working rapidly, each one
endeavoring to outdo the other in fashioning clever and out-of-the-way
costumes--putting in the literary touch according to Mary Louise.

“This is quite like old times,” said Laura Hilton. “This is the same
crowd we had when we were working on Mary Louise’s wedding clothes.”

“Except for that terrible Hortense Markle,” shuddered Jane Donovan.

“She didn’t seem terrible on that morning, however,” said Edna Barlow.
“I thought she was the loveliest person I had ever seen, and do you
remember the song she sang as she embroidered the rose?”

“Yes, it was ‘Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May,’ and I also remember
she embroidered a faded place on the edge of one petal. I couldn’t
help hating her for doing it, too,” said Irene. “It seemed so cynical.
You remember she declared it was because the song suggested it to her.
She might have put a worm in the heart of the rose if suggestion was
anything.”

“Well, well, poor Hortense! She loved her Felix anyhow,” sighed
Mary Louise, who had a hard time being persuaded that anyone was
really wicked. “Let’s change the subject. Don’t you think Miss
Ellett--Ursula--is lovely?”

“She is indeed!” from all of the girls.

“Where on earth did you make the find?”

Then the story of Ursula and her misfortunes had to be recounted.

“Well, I call her pretty spunky,” said Lucile.

“And aren’t the little boys precious?” put in Mary Louise. “Did Philip
go with Ben?”

“No!” answered Josie, “Ben went alone; he thought it was too cold for
Philip. He must have gone with Ursula.”

Ursula returned from her shopping expedition. An unwonted pallor had
spread over her face and her mouth was drooping at the corners as it
had when she first came to the Higgledy Piggledy Shop.

“Here is the black silk,” she said. Her voice had a strange
tonelessness. Josie looked up quickly at her friend. The other girls
seemed not to notice the change in the girl.

“What is it, Ursula?” Josie asked following her to the rear of the shop.

“What is what?”

“Now, of course, Ursula, if something has happened that you don’t want
to mention to me, it is your own business; but I want you to understand
that if it is anything I can assist you in I am ready.”

Ursula looked into Josie’s honest face and hesitated a moment.

“Somehow everything is so wonderful and peaceful and happy up here with
the Higgledy Piggledies that I can’t bear to bring any troubles among
you. I haven’t a real trouble but just a nameless dread.”

“Out with it then! If you name it perhaps we can dispel it. The girls
can’t hear us talking back here--and besides they are chattering so
they couldn’t make out our conversation if we shouted.”

Ursula, however, did not shout but only gasped:

“Miss Fitchet is in Dorfield!”

“You mean the woman--the nurse--your stepfather wanted to have live in
your home as housekeeper?”

“Yes! Oh Josie, she is a terrible person and as unscrupulous as the
worst character in fiction! I feel she is in Dorfield for some evil
purpose. I can’t imagine just why, but her being here depresses me so I
can hardly bear life.”

“You mean she may work some ill on you or your brothers? But what could
she do?”

“I can’t tell. Mr. Cheatham already has all the money we should have
and--oh, Josie, I just can’t tell what it is but--but--” and here the
poor girl burst into tears.

Josie drew her into her own bedroom, which was a small cubby hole
tucked away in the rear of the shop.

“Now, now, you poor, dear thing!” Josie could be remarkably tender,
considering she was such a determined and relentless little detective.
Her voice now had a motherly ring. “You mustn’t feel so despondent over
a thing like this. I don’t know what you dread--”

“I don’t know myself.”

“Well, whatever it is I can promise you that I am here to see you
through. Tell me what was this Fitchet person doing?”

“I think she was following me, because I saw her several times as I
went in and out of shops. She was heavily veiled, but her face isn’t
what gives her away. I’d know her figure anywhere, under any disguise.
She is quite stout, with abnormally small feet, and always carries her
head a little on one side and she has a peculiar way of walking, never
keeping on a straight line but unconsciously zigzagging.”

“Why, bless my soul! You’d make a good detective,” laughed Josie. “I
can actually see the person from your description. Now I’ll go out and
take Captain Charlie Lonsdale into my confidence and have him keep an
eye on the person. He is chief of police, you know, and my very good
friend. How old is Fitchet?”

“About thirty-five, I should say. She is a trained nurse and Mr.
Cheatham had her nurse my poor little mother in her last illness. Thank
goodness the boys did not have to know her. I sent them to friends in
Peewee Valley during Mother’s illness.

“Oh, she is horrible, and such a liar and so unkind! I couldn’t begin
to tell you of all the despicable things she is capable of doing and
saying.”

“Well, never mind thinking about such things, my dear. You wash your
face now and calm yourself. It is such a cold day I am sure there will
be nothing doing in the tea room this afternoon. Why don’t you get the
boys and go home and have a nice little cozy time away from the old
Higgledy Piggledy?”

“And leave you girls with all those dolls to finish? Indeed, my dear
Josie, I’m not made of that kind of stuff. I’ll be with you in a
minute.”

“I might have known it,” smiled Josie. “You are not of the deserter
type. After all you would be better off here with us. I believe I’ll
keep you all night. There is always plenty of room in the Higgledy
Piggledy for visitors.”




CHAPTER IV

LOST AND FOUND


In a few moments Ursula was back at work on the dolls, all trace of
tears banished from her pretty face. Josie was preparing to go out,
declaring she must purchase a pot of glue--that she could not dress
dolls without glue. In reality, she was going to call on the chief of
police. Ben came running in, cheeks rosy, eyes shining and pockets
bulging with money collected from patrons to whom he had delivered
parcels.

“Sis, where’s Phil?” he cried, “I got a pink sucker for him.”

“Philip! Why, I thought he was with you,” said Ursula, looking up from
her work.

“No, he didn’t go with me. It was so cold an’ he was so stuck on that
doll baby. I reckon he’s up in the tea room. Phil, oh Phil!” he called.

There was no answer. Irene was sure he had gone with his sister and
Mary Louise thought he had gone with Ben.

“Maybe he went home,” suggested Ben. The Elletts lived in a tiny
apartment across the street from Mr. and Mrs. Conant.

“But he knew we were to have tea here,” objected Ursula, who had turned
deathly pale. “But maybe you had better go see, Ben, and oh, please
hurry!”

“Sure I will, Sister, you needn’t get scairt. Phil ain’t far away. I
reckon he’ll turn up before I get to the corner an’ I’ll have the run
for nothin’--but I ain’t mindin’.”

“Dear Ben!” Ursula smiled on the sturdy boy, in spite of the nameless
terror that possessed her soul in regard to the little brother.

“If only I didn’t know that Fitchet was in Dorfield!” Ursula whispered
to Josie.

“Well, maybe it’s a good thing you do know it,” said Josie. “Everybody
turn in and give a good hunt through the shop.”

Mary Louise and Elizabeth, with the other girls helping, had already
looked high and low, under the bed in Josie’s room, behind an antique
high-boy for sale in the shop, and had even shaken the draperies lying
across a table and peeped in a carved Florentine chest.

At first it was more or less a game all were playing, as they were
sure the little fellow was somewhere in the shop, but as a thorough
search did not reveal him, the matter began to take on a more serious
tone and the game was changed.

Without a word, Josie hurried to her old friend, Chief Lonsdale.
Quickly she told him her errand.

“Stout woman, about thirty-five, abnormally small feet, always carries
her head on one side and has a way of zigzagging when she walks.”

“You have seen her then?” laughed the chief.

“No, but that is the way Ursula Ellett describes her.”

“What color hair?”

“She didn’t say, but you know and I know and the wig maker knows that
the color of hair doesn’t cut much ice. Anyhow, please keep your eyes
open for this person, who goes by the name of Fitchet at home and is a
trained nurse.”

The chief promised and rang for a plain clothes man to get immediately
on the job, while Josie hurried back to the Higgledy Piggledy Shop.

Ben had returned and reported no sign of his little brother at their
home. Darkness had set in and snow had begun to fall like a fine
powder. Ursula sat like a statue, dolls piled around her. She looked up
as Josie entered and tried to smile. Josie reported that she had set
the police on the track of Fitchet and if it could be possible that she
had anything to do with the disappearance of little Philip she would be
found forthwith.

“What could she want with him?” Josie asked. “Not that he isn’t wholly
desirable and lovely, but would that be anything to the type of woman
Miss Fitchet seems to be?”

“I don’t know, but Mr. Cheatham is capable of any villainy and not
above any small meanness. I must get out on the street and help hunt my
darling,” cried Ursula.

“No, my dear, you must stay right here. It is very cold and you are so
wrought up you could do no good. The boy will be found in no time and
you must be ready to hold him in your arms when he gets back,” declared
Josie.

“I’ll go mad waiting here, doing nothing,” wailed Ursula.

“Well, do something then,” suggested the practical Josie. “Put the
dolls that have been dressed in their boxes and pile them up in the
back of the shop. All on that table are done.”

“I didn’t quite finish the school girl I was dressing,” said Ursula,
beginning mechanically to sort out the dressed dolls. “I mean the one
little Philip liked so much. Why, I can’t find her! Where can she be? I
left a needle sticking in her apron. She must be in this pile--No, she
is gone! Strange!”

“Well, there is one thing that is not gone,” said Josie suddenly making
a dive under the table where the young seamstresses had been so busy
plying their needles, “and that’s Phil’s muffler and mittens. And
here’s his cap! Bless me, if there isn’t his overcoat under that pile
of scraps!”

Ursula caught the little red mittens and held them to her aching heart.

“Philip! Philip! My precious baby!” she moaned.

Josie straightened up and smiled down on Ursula.

“Did you girls look in every crack and cranny of the shop and tea room?”

“Every one,” declared Elizabeth, who was preparing to go out on the
street and aid in the search for the lost child.

“Are you sure?”

“I can’t think of any spot we have not searched,” answered Mary Louise,
whose eyes were brimming over in sympathy for the sorrowing Ursula.

Josie stood in the middle of the shop and into her eyes came the
strange dull look she often had when she was “picking up a scent” as it
were.

“Philip missing--also the blue-eyed, yellow-haired doll he admired so
much,” Josie muttered.

“Ye-es--an’ I went an’ called him a sissy,” sobbed Ben, who suddenly
realized that things looked pretty serious.

“He wouldn’t go out in the cold, hunting his sister or brother, without
his overcoat and mittens,” Josie murmured. Then she lost the strange,
dull look in her eyes and, giving a short laugh, she snapped: “That kid
is in this Higgledy Piggledy Shop!”

“Well, he must have made himself mighty little,” said Mary Louise.
“I’m going home and get Danny. He’s working on some blue prints this
afternoon. Danny will help us. Irene, if you come now I can take you
home. I’ll bring my car up the alley. It is too blizzardy for you to
think of going home in your chair.”

Irene could let herself down the little dumb-waiter, converted into
an elevator, and when Mary Louise would bring her car close up in the
alley the lame girl would by the aid of crutches swing herself from
chair to car.

“Oh, thank you, my dear,” replied Irene, “but I can’t think of going
until Philip is found. The snow is so dry I am sure I can get my chair
through it. You go and get Danny, though. I know he will be helpful.”

At the mention of Irene’s going, Josie walked to the little door which
opened on the elevator shaft. As she started to open it Mary Louise
called to her:

“Irene is not going yet, Josie!” thinking that Josie was preparing to
assist the lame girl.

“I have an idea she is going pretty soon,” Josie answered. She flung
open the door and then began to laugh.

“Come here, Ursula! All of you come here!” she called softly.

The girls and Ben hurried to the rear of the store, Ursula running
like the wind. Lying on the floor of the tiny elevator was little
Philip. He was fast asleep and clasped in his arms was the blue-eyed,
fluffy-haired doll with the ruffled apron, Ursula’s needle sticking in
it. It was lucky it had stuck in the apron and did not find its way
into little Philip.

The child made a beautiful picture at which the girls gazed breathless.

“Poor lamb, he’s playing papa,” said Josie softly and Philip stirred in
his sleep, restless from the light turned on him, and then he opened
his violet eyes.

“I ain’t a sissy, Ben,” he declared, “but this little doll baby had the
tummy ache an’ I hadter take her off an’ put her to sleep. She likes
this little bitsy house an’ I reckon The Lady in the Chair ain’t a
mindin’ if I borrow it from her.”

When everything settled down and the Higgledy Piggledy Shop was cleared
of its visitors and helpers and Josie was left alone she got Chief
Lonsdale on the telephone.

“Hello, Chief,” she said, “the little boy is found and the fat woman
with the little feet and head on one side had nothing to do with his
disappearance, but Captain, I wish you would have Clancy look her
up all the same and kind of keep an eye on her while she stays in
Dorfield. You can do that for me, cannot you, Captain?”

“All right!” boomed the captain. “What you say goes.”




CHAPTER V

URSULA WRITES A LETTER


The Christmas rush came on the Higgledy Piggledies with such force that
the fright about little Philip was soon banished from all their minds.

“I may have been mistaken about Miss Fitchet,” Ursula confessed. “That
woman I saw may not have been she. I dread her so that I can’t help
thinking about her. I may have fancied a resemblance.”

“So you may,” said Josie solemnly. “Anyhow you have not been worried
by her and the chances are she will never turn up again, even if the
person you saw was Miss Fitchet.”

With the help of Captain Lonsdale, Josie had come to the conclusion
that the dreaded nurse had been in Dorfield, but for what purpose the
detective put on the case had not been able to discover. At any rate
she had left in a day or so and had not returned.

“Probably she was here just to satisfy the curiosity of herself and
her employer,” Josie decided. “I hope she will stay away now.”

The girl detective said nothing to Ursula about the information gained
by the police concerning Fitchet. It was meager and not very satisfying
and if Ursula had begun to feel that she had been mistaken and had
only fancied she had seen the woman, so much the better for Ursula.
Certainly the trained nurse had a perfect right to visit Dorfield and
even to go heavily veiled if she had a mind to.

Josie regretted, in a way, that Ursula had so entirely cut herself
off from Louisville and her girlhood friends. She had, in a measure,
flitted from her old home and left the situation in the hands of an
unscrupulous man. No doubt he was making the most of the power he had
thereby gained.

“Suppose letters for you come to Mr. Cheatham. What directions did you
leave about forwarding them?” she asked Ursula.

“It would do no good to leave directions. Mr. Cheatham would see to
it that nothing I want would ever reach me. There is no way to get
satisfaction of my stepfather. I realized that and so I left. If I can
just be allowed to keep my darlings with me and bring them up without
his contaminating presence, that is all I ask,” said Ursula.

“In what way could he contaminate the boys?”

Ursula considered--and answered:

“In the way a wicked person could influence impressionable children--by
making fun of high ideals; mocking at religion; applauding any clever
evasion of the truth and then flying into a rage at the slightest
excuse and whipping the boys if they happen to do something that
annoyed him for the time being, although that same action might at a
former period have brought forth commendation. I have heard him, in
all seriousness, tell my little brothers that the greatest crime of
all was to break the eleventh commandment, which is: ‘Thou shalt not
get found out.’ There is a sturdiness about Ben that usually resisted
his influence, still he is nothing but a little boy and was not always
proof against Mr. Cheatham’s wiles and cleverness. As for poor little
Philip, he actually was fond of the man at times and I believe Mr.
Cheatham had a spark of affection for him, but nothing could be worse
than to have such a man care for you. He is dishonorable, unscrupulous
and vacillating in everything but villainy.”

“I thought you said both of the boys hated and feared him.”

“So they did usually, but Philip is such a baby and an ice cream cone
had a marvelous effect on the poor kiddy--that and a few gentle joking
words.”

“Have you never communicated with any friends in Louisville since you
left?”

“I have very few friends,” and Ursula flushed painfully. “I have for
so many years been so taken up with my sick mother and the children,
and then Mr. Cheatham has in some underhand way cut me off from what
intimates I might have had. The Trasks, at Peewee Valley, are the only
real friends I own.”

“And the Trasks--have you written them?”

“No. You see I knew Mr. Cheatham would take it for granted they
would keep in touch with me and would worm out of them all they knew
concerning me and so I simply could not put them in the uncomfortable
position of having connived with me in leaving as I did.”

“Is Mrs. Trask a young woman?”

“About fifty, I think.”

“Any children?”

“Two--a daughter and a son.”

“Are they about your age?”

“Anita is my age and Teddy is several years older.”

“Do you think it is quite fair to keep your friends in ignorance of
your whereabouts?”

“I don’t know, Josie. I acted for the best, I felt, at the time. Now I
don’t know.”

“Put yourself in the place of your friends,” suggested Josie. “How
would you like it if Anita Trask were to be in trouble and needing a
friend and she did not call on you?”

“Oh, but she has her mother and father and her brother!”

“Certainly, and so had you at one time, but she might lose them and
have nobody left but you to help her. Would you not have been willing
to share to the last crumb and drop with her?”

“Indeed I would have, or with any member of the family!”

“Exactly! And don’t you see that by trying to save them worry and
annoyance you have, in a measure, caused them bitter sorrow and
trouble?” Josie’s tone was a little stern.

“I know it--I know it, but not so much trouble as they would have had,
had Mr. Cheatham been given any cause for complaint against them. He is
a terrible man.”

“I believe you exaggerate his power for evil. He may want to be a
terrible man, but I can’t see what he could do to the Trasks if you
should communicate with them and let them know you are well and, we
might add, happy.”

“Indeed we might, Josie, thanks to you and my other wonderful friends
here in Dorfield. If you think it best I’ll write to Mrs. Trask
this very night. I always saw them on Christmas, and now at least I
can write to them so the letter will reach them before that day and
reassure them. I know I am obsessed with fear of Mr. Cheatham and what
he might be able to accomplish in the way of harming us. I must get
over the feeling.”

“You certainly must! Remember there is a perfectly good law in this
land of the free and home of the brave, and a fairly good police force
to carry out the law. There is nothing Cheatham can do to you, either,
for that matter. You tell me he was not appointed your guardian?”

“No, my father appointed Uncle Ben executor of his will and guardian in
case my mother should marry again, but Mother was influenced by Mr.
Cheatham to dispute Uncle Ben’s rights to dictate to us and so Uncle
Ben left the matter in her hands. If Uncle Ben would only come back!”

“Well, suppose he does come back--has come back, in fact. How under
Heaven would he find his wards, if they go off and run a tea room in a
quiet little spot like Dorfield?”

Ursula wrote to her friends at Peewee Valley that same evening,
giving them a detailed account of the happenings to herself and small
brothers, begging their forgiveness for her long silence and explaining
to them the reason for her running off without informing them of her
plans. When the letter was in the mail the girl felt happier than she
had for a long time, but still doubts would arise as to the wisdom of
having written.

Poor Ursula had fallen in the habit of worrying. She was naturally of a
timid disposition and the hard life she had endured with her stepfather
had increased the tendency to fear imaginary evils as well as the ones
of which there was no doubt. She could not say what it was she feared
from Mr. Cheatham and the evil Miss Fitchet, but with her at all
times was a kind of nameless dread. The gay, bright atmosphere at the
Higgledy Piggledy Shop did much to dispel this gloom, but at times it
enveloped her in spite of her endeavors to break through it. Now that
she had at last written the dear old friends the cloud seemed somewhat
lifted.

“I hope it is for the best,” she said to Josie, with a note of cheer in
her voice.

“Sure it is for the best! Brace up, Ursula! I can’t see what good it is
to worry so much about it. Do what you think is right and then trust in
the Lord. What harm could come of writing to old friends? No harm in
the world. I’m glad you have told them as to your whereabouts.”

In her heart Josie could not help a feeling of impatience over Ursula’s
timidity. Josie herself never acknowledged fear of anything, known or
unknown. She had a philosophy that carried her through all dangers.

“I wish she would buck up and not give in to this nameless fear about
what Cheatham might or might not do,” Josie mused. “Of course, if I
had two little brothers like Ben and Phil I might not be so sure of
myself,” she continued, “but what under Heaven could happen to those
kids here in Dorfield?”

It was Christmas Eve and the Higgledy Piggledy Shop was closed for a
week. It had been a strenuous time and all of the girls were tired and
needed a rest. Orders of all descriptions had poured in and in the
midst of the rush Josie had been employed in her capacity of detective
to track a lavender suit belonging to a dressy woman, who sent it to a
cleaner by her colored maid. Suit and maid had disappeared off the face
of the earth. Josie had found both maid and suit. The maid was the same
color but the suit, alas! was a vivid scarlet. Cleaners are also dyers.

Josie was glad the rush was over. Even her iron nerves were stretched
by the Christmas rush. She was alone in the shop. It was good to be
alone even if it did happen to be Christmas Eve. The partners had gone
for the week. Mary Louise had come in laden with parcels, her cheeks
glowing with the crisp December air and her eyes shining from the joy
of giving. She had insisted upon taking Josie home with her for the
holidays but to no avail.

“I’ll come and have Christmas dinner with you. I have a lot of things
to do and loose ends to tie up and I’ll get it over with while the shop
is closed. I’m not lonesome, dear, so don’t worry about me. Go on home
to your Danny and forget your spinster friends.”

“Oh, Josie, how funny to call yourself a spinster! You won’t be a
spinster for years and years.”

“Look in the dictionary and see if I’m not one already. That book says
a spinster is one who spins and also an unmarried woman. I certainly am
an unmarried woman even though I’m not a very old one as yet. I am also
a spinster in that I am spinning a web in my mind in which to catch
poor Ursula’s unscrupulous stepfather. I may never need the web but I
am on the alert in case I should have to spread it out in the path of
the unwary. I’ll see you to-morrow, dear. Good-bye! It was like you to
get those presents for Ben and Philip. Ursula was very happy over them.
She is planning a lovely to-morrow for them. She is a wonderful girl
but I wish she would cheer up.”

Night closed down on Dorfield. It was a white Christmas. Josie could
hear the sleigh bells ringing, as merry parties passed the shop. She
made herself cosy by the open grate which was one of the attractions of
the Higgledy Piggledy. She settled herself snugly in a winged chair, an
antique they were selling on commission, and drawing her reading light
closer with a contented sigh she opened her book--a new detective story.

“Clever, very clever!” she said aloud. Josie had a habit of talking to
herself when left alone. “Clever as to story but the author is afraid
to draw characters with any clearness for fear of giving away his plot.
If the characterization is good then the characters must act according
to the way such persons are bound to behave and so the secret is out
long before the book has reached its climax. A detective tale leaves
one in doubt right to the end, as to who has done the direful deed.
That is because the folks in the books are like so many paper dolls,
as far as being real people is concerned--painted on one side with no
innards.”

The girl read on and on. The shop was quiet, with that abnormal
stillness that settles on the business section of a town after business
hours. As it was Christmas Eve and business is not over on that day
until midnight, this extreme quiet meant that the hour had struck and
it was really the dawn of Christmas Day. Still Josie read on.

“It’s my one excess and I’m going to indulge in it since Christmas
comes but once a year,” she announced to the accusing ship’s clock over
the mantel as it chimed out “eight bells.” She mended the fire with a
large lump of coal from the hod and settled herself again.




CHAPTER VI

PHILIP IS KIDNAPED


The detective story ended, as all good detective stories do, with the
mystery solved, the criminals brought to justice and the most unlikely
person in it rounded up as the villain.

“Good enough, but I could write a better one if I had time and paper
and knew how to write,” yawned Josie.

Suddenly the telephone bell broke the stillness. It made Josie, the
dauntless, jump.

“Stuff and nonsense--this time o’ night! I’ve a great mind not to
answer it. I bet it’s somebody playing a joke on me and when I take
down the receiver will just say, ‘Christmas gift!’”

The ringing persisted and Josie grumblingly called, “Well? Higgledy
Piggledy Shop! Miss O’Gorman at the ’phone!”

“Josie! Josie! This is Ursula! Can you hear me?” The voice was faint
from agitation.

“Yes! What’s up?”

“Little Philip is gone!”

“Gone where?” Josie asked. She was ashamed of herself the instant she
had asked what she considered a very foolish question. If Ursula had
known where, she would naturally have gone and found her little brother
without delay.

“I don’t know,” continued the frantic sister. “The boys went to bed
early and I sat up putting the finishing touches on some little
presents I was making. They were fast asleep. I looked in on them for
a moment before I ran across the street to take some things to the
Conants and Irene. I did not latch the door to the apartment as I did
not expect to be gone a minute. That was about nine o’clock. I am sure
I was not out of the house five minutes in all. Mr. and Mrs. Conant
begged me to come in but I merely left my Christmas parcels and after
chatting with them a moment in the hall ran back home. I did not even
go in to see Irene, but sent her a message. When I got home I did not
go to bed but very foolishly sat up and sewed awhile and then read.
I wanted to be sure the boys were fast asleep before I filled their
stockings which they had hung up for Santa’s visit. I only went in
their room a few minutes ago. Ben was fast asleep and Philip was--gone.
His clothes are gone, too--overcoat, hat and mittens, but they took him
off wrapped in a blanket.”

“Have you looked everywhere?”

“Everywhere!”

“I’ll be right over,” said Josie, hoping she kept from her voice
a certain impatience and weariness she could not help but feel.
Remembering the scare about little Philip before and the frantic search
of some six or eight persons and how easy it had been to find him, she
was sure that the little boy was safely tucked away under the bed or
behind the bureau or somewhere.

“You can’t lose that kid,” she declared, as she drew on her goloshes
preparing for the snow, which was deep and drifting. “If Ursula would
only buck up! I was a fool not to get my beauty sleep when I had a
chance. I think I’ll get Bob Dulaney in on this. He did me a good turn
in the Markle case.”

Bob Dulaney was a young newspaper reporter who was rapidly making a
name for himself. It was he who had grappled with Felix Markle and had
overcome that doughty if evil knight with the terrible scissors-hold
known to wrestlers. But that is another tale. At any rate he was a fast
friend to the Higgledy Piggledies, ever ready to do their bidding. He
was all devotion to Irene, his great strength always at the service of
the lame girl.

It took but a moment to get the young man on the wire.

“Hello, Bob! Josie O’Gorman! Want to help me?”

“Sure!”

“There may be a story in it, but more likely not. Anyhow, you will be
of great assistance. Ursula Ellett’s kid brother is missing. I am on
my way there now. She’s just phoned me. If I don’t find him under the
bed or behind the door I will let you know.” Josie always used the
telephone as though someone were counting words on her.

“Let me know much! I’ve got my Lizzie racer here and will come pick you
up. Snow’s mighty high for runts. Be at your door by the time you get
bundled up. So long!” And he’d hung up.

Josie laughed. Bob Dulaney always treated her like a boy, and she
enjoyed it. It was rather nice not to have to plough through the
drifts. She put on a thick ulster and heavy gloves, started to lock the
door of the shop but paused a moment in thought.

“I’d better take my grip,” she mused. “I may have to catch a train.”

Josie kept a suitcase packed for an emergency--“As clever crooks and
detectives always do,” she had said.

A muffled toot announced Bob and his tiny racer.

“What! Going on a trip?” he asked, as Josie came running down the steps
with the suitcase.

“Never can tell. I hope not. I also hope there is no story for your
paper at the end of this mad ride, but we must be prepared.”

The racer was slipping through the dry snow with the ease that an
airplane might breast a bank of clouds.

“If you weren’t you and I, I,” laughed Josie, “we might be taken for an
eloping couple.”

“I’d much prefer being taken for that than to be taken for speeding,”
declared Bob, as they swirled around a corner almost knocking the brass
buttons off a belated policeman. The poor man rubbed his stomach sadly
as though he had been actually touched.

“Them youngsters better be glad they didn’t hit me,” he grumbled. “If
it wasn’t Christmas Eve I’d follow ’em up.”

They found the house in which Ursula lived all astir. It was an old
mansion that had been converted into an apartment house, where the
shabby genteel had taken refuge, but kind hearts beat under the worn
coats and the lodgers had one and all come to Ursula’s assistance. To
be sure some of them told dismal stories about the lost Charlie Ross of
the last century, and how his mother and father had hunted him high and
low, spending fortunes on the search, but never giving up, following in
vain clue after clue that took them in all kinds of places and climes
until they were an old white-haired couple bent and broken in spirit.

Others of the fellow lodgers were more practical in demonstrations of
sympathy. One old lady put on her spectacles and solemnly began to look
over the pieces in her scrap bag. She had always been finding things
that were lost in that capacious bag. A nervous, middle-aged bachelor
was going around to the different apartments and solemnly poking up
the chimneys with a hearth broom.

“Persons often hide up flues in motion pictures,” he said.

Poor little Ben, who felt somehow that he was responsible for his
brother’s disappearance, since he had slept through his flitting, was
profiting by Josie’s success in finding Philip when he was lost before
by making a systematic search. With tense mouth and burning eyes he was
examining every crack and corner of the old house.

“Th’ain’t any dumb-waiter or elevators here,” he sobbed when Josie made
her appearance, “but oh, Miss Josie, I’ve looked between the mattresses
an’ behind the bureaus an’ up on top the wardrobes in every ’partment
here.”

“I know you have, my dear,” said Josie gently, “but tell me, Ben, who
is in the apartment next to yours?”

“Th’ain’t nobody. That’s been vacant three months.”

Josie considered, and asked:

“Have you looked in there?”

“No’m! The door is locked.”

Josie slipped from her pocket a skeleton key which she fitted neatly in
the lock of the door, and with a sure turn of her strong little wrist
she turned the bolt.

“Humph! It looks as though we were none of us safe in our beds,”
remarked a sharp-nosed dressmaker, who had the apartment directly
across the hall from Ursula’s. “If it’s that easy to open a door.”

“Inside bolts are safer,” said Josie, “but even those are not proof
against crooks and their tools.”

The room was dark and dusty. Josie produced a flash light but
discovered the electric light had not been turned off since the
departure of the former tenant and by touching the proper button she
quickly had a flood of light with which to continue her investigations.
With no ceremony she closed the door on the curious crowd of lodgers,
admitting only Bob Dulaney.

“Stand still, please,” she commanded. “We must examine the tracks in
this room. It is covered with the dust of ages but someone has been in
it recently. Look! It’s a woman with short rather broad feet and high
heels, run down--a tendency to fallen arches I should say because of
the heels being worn on the inside. Whoever has been in here has been
at this window. See! It is possible to look into Ursula’s living room
from this window. Look! She has even scraped the frost from the pane
to get a better view. This pane is not so covered with grime as the
others. Umhum! She is a little taller than I am, but not much. Rather a
chunky party I should say.”

“Wears gilt hairpins, too,” laughed Bob, stooping and picking up what
was even more a give away as to sex than the uncertain tracks of high
heels.

“Oh, you jewel!” cried Josie. “Meaning you and not the hairpin, Bob.
I’m certainly glad you are in on this. I didn’t see the hairpin and it
will mean a lot more to me than anything.”

“Let me present it to you,” said Bob, bowing low with mock courtesy.
“Josie, you delight my soul. I feel like Dr. Watson in attendance on
Sherlock Holmes. But joking aside, I believe if poor little Philip has
really been kidnaped it was by some person or persons who had been
hiding in this room.”

“Sure! But it was only one person because there are no signs of other
footprints. Thank goodness the floor was stained with a dark varnish.
It makes the footprints so much easier to define. Well, Bob, there is
no use in hanging around here. I reckon we’d best get out and hustle.”

Josie regretted that she had not telephoned police headquarters
immediately after hearing from Ursula that Philip was missing, but
remembering the last time, she had felt the chief might think that like
the boy in the fable she had called “wolf” too often. Now he must be
informed of the trouble and get his men busy on the case. The kidnapper
had several hours start and no time was to be lost or, as Josie
expressed it, “the scent might get cold.”

Ursula was in a state of mind bordering on frenzy. She walked up and
down the room wringing her hands and moaning piteously.

“If only I had not gone over to the Conants’,” she wailed. “Or if I
only had locked the door. I’ve always been afraid to lock the boys up
in a room for fear of fire and they couldn’t get out. My baby Philip!
My baby Philip!”

Josie stood by her side and endeavored to calm her.

“See here, Ursula, you must listen to me a moment and you must tell
me some things I want to know. You must be very frank and conceal
nothing.”

“I never have, Josie--nothing of the least importance, that is.”

“All right! Now tell me why anybody would want Philip--except of course
that he is a lovely child. But people don’t steal boys just because
they are charming.”

“Don’t they? Well, Josie, I don’t know what they would get but charm.
You know how poor I am.”

“Well, I can’t help feeling there is something besides charm in this
transaction. Now, Ursula, give me the names and addresses of any
friends or connections you have in Louisville. I want Mr. Cheatham’s
full name and his address and also what hospital had the honor of
graduating Miss Fitchet as a nurse. Write all your information in this
little book. Now, my dear girl, you must spunk up all you can. I know
it is hard, but Philip is going to be found, and that within a few days
or maybe hours. You must promise me something: it makes no difference
what communication you receive from these persons who have seen fit to
carry off our Philip, you will call up Captain Lonsdale and tell him
all about it. It will be a plain case of blackmail. If they tell you to
meet them in a quiet spot with all of your diamonds in a black bag,
don’t you do it. You let the chief of police do your meeting.”

“But Josie, where will you be that you give me all these directions?”

“Me? I’m going to take the next train for Louisville. I feel it in my
bones that I can learn something to my advantage there. I’ll learn the
motives and work from that.”

“Oh, let me go too!” begged Ursula. Josie considered a moment. Then she
said:

“I really think it would be wiser for you to stay right where you are.
You see Irene and her aunt and uncle will be good to you and little
Ben and Mary Louise will be here, and Elizabeth Wright. Philip may be
brought back any minute, and you certainly don’t want to be away from
home when they bring him back.”

“No, I just had a feeling maybe he might be in Louisville and I could
get him sooner if I went there,” sighed the poor girl, who was trying
desperately to keep back the tears that would course down her pale
cheeks.

Josie carried away a sad picture of her friend. She left the Dorfield
end in the hands of Bob Dulaney, who was to inform the police of the
kidnapping and also keep busy on his own account, following up every
clue that might present itself.

“Good-bye, Bob!” called Josie as she jumped aboard the train. “Keep me
informed of the case and I’ll do the same with you.”




CHAPTER VII

JOSIE VISITS LOUISVILLE


Christmas morning in Louisville! Josie was still regretting the hours
spent in reading the detective story that should have been dedicated to
sleep, but she was happily constituted and could do with very little
sleep if the case she was on necessitated it. At other times she put in
eight hours at night--never more and never less.

“Humph! This place might be London, it is so foggy,” she mused as the
train crawled along the river bank. On one side the Ohio river, muddy
and trying to freeze, on the other side the slums of the city, smoky
and full of deep puddles that had succeeded in freezing.

Josie had been planning a campaign through the hours spent in her
berth. First she must find out things. What type of man she had to
deal with in Cheatham? What reason might he have for abducting Philip?
Where was Miss Fitchet at the present, and what was her reputation in
Louisville?

Experience had taught Josie that the way to find out things about
persons was to seek a boarding house, not too fine, but where those
who wanted to keep up appearances on limited incomes had their abode.
By diligent inquiry she had learned of such a place from the colored
Pullman porter.

“Yassum, I’s bawn an’ bred in Lou’ville,” he had said as he whisked
every imaginary speck of dust from Josie’s coat. “Th’ain’t nothin’ I
don’ know ’bout dat town. I kin ’member when mule cyars uster fotch th’
folks up ’n down Fo’th Street befo’ trolleys wuz ever hearn tell about.”

“Maybe you can tell me of a good boarding house then,” Josie had
ventured, “one not too expensive but respectable.”

“Sho I kin! Miss Lucy Leech air got a nice place for a lone young lady
ter go. Miss Lucy ain’t above puttin’ on some style but th’ swell part
er town am kinder moved off an’ lef’ Miss Lucy high an’ dry. But plenty
er good folks am still a-boa’din’ with Miss Lucy Leech. Mah wife she’s
de cook ter Miss Lucy an’ she been thar so long I reckon she’ll stay
thar till she er Miss Lucy goes ter jine the heavenly throng. Th’ain’t
no need fer mah Mandy ter wuck out no mo’ but she ’lows I’m off on the
road mo’n most er the time an’ she mought as well be wuckin’ as gaddin’
about.”

Josie was sure Miss Lucy Leech’s was exactly the place she wanted for a
temporary home. The porter gave her the address and when the train drew
into the station he put her in care of a negro driver, who proudly bore
her off to his ancient hack oblivious to the jeers of the taxi drivers
who were lined up waiting for passengers.

Christmas morning is not a very popular one for arriving in a city and
Josie might have had the pick of automobiles meeting the early train,
but the hack driver had got her first and she was determined to stay
with him and see the adventure through. Besides, she liked the looks of
the man.

The streets were flowing with slush, a mixture of mud and snow that had
melted the day before and was freezing again on that Christmas morning.
The ancient hackman cracked his whip over the backs of his bony team
and the shabby vehicle that was bearing Josie to Miss Lucy Leech’s
select boarding house creaked and groaned as though the young girl’s
weight was too much for it. Josie bounced helplessly up and down on
the back seat.

“Well, I should be thankful it isn’t an ox cart,” she thought. “Time
was when a hack was considered the height of luxury. At any rate I
can get some idea of the city, which is next to impossible when one
is whizzed in an automobile. This sea-going hack is a singularly
appropriate vessel in which to sail this turgid stream that no doubt
the Louisvillians call a street. Somehow I feel as though we ought to
blow a fog horn.”

The winter sun was up and trying to shine, but looked like a huge
orange, as seen through the veil of fog and smoke. Tall buildings made
the narrow streets of the down-town district seem like canyons. The
city seemed deserted, except for an occasional taxi and the inevitable
early bird of a newsboy crying his papers. Nothing is more forlorn than
a usually busy section of a city on a foggy Christmas morning. Josie
was relieved when her craft tacked down a side street that showed signs
of life, although the life of the shabby genteel.

There was no doubt about the neighborhood having at one time been
fashionable. The houses were built on a lavish scale, with high
ceilings and broad, hospitable steps and yards, front, back and side.
On that street boarding houses were the rule and private homes the
exception. Trade had begun to encroach on the one time residential
block and yards were disappearing in some places and small shops being
erected fronting on the street and backing on the handsome old houses.

Miss Lucy Leech’s remained intact, however. One fancied her house
could no more put up a different front than Miss Lucy herself would.
The house, a huge mansion with columned portico, was guarded by two
peacefully inclined iron lions. Miss Lucy wore water waves, iron
grey. She had always worn them through changing fashions of bangs,
pompadours, and the marcel. The house had been originally painted grey,
the lions black. Once in a decade Miss Lucy managed a new coat of
paint. She would not have thought of changing the color of her house
and the faithful lions any more than of giving her own respectable
water waves a henna dip.

Miss Lucy’s back was straight and stiff; so was her upper lip. Her
back was stiff because of the dignity of the Leeches, which she felt
compelled to uphold. Her lip was stiff from necessity. Running a
boarding house for almost half a century gives one “a stiff upper lip.”
Running a boarding house had become second nature to Miss Lucy. It was
as much a part of her as the iron grey waves in her hair. To be sure if
it had not been for Mandy, the faithful cook, it would not have been
such an easy matter to keep going. Mandy was cook and housekeeper as
well. She it was who planned the meals and kept Miss Lucy from serving
unbalanced rations to her select boarders.

“Lawsamussy, Miss Lucy, don’t go a-habin’ cabbage an’ cauliflowers
de self-same meal. Deys one an’ de same ’cept cauliflowers am mo’
’ristocratic an’ eddicated like. An’ fergetti, even when it’s got
cheese on it, is kinder taterish in de way it sticks ter yo’ ribs,
so when you ’lows you air gonter order fergetti I wouldn’t be havin’
scalloped taters.”

Aunt Mandy had never heard of calories and vitamins but she had a
genius for food and Miss Lucy’s boarders appreciated the old cook’s
prowess in the art and stayed on in the dilapidated old house, putting
up with the old-fashioned plumbing and the one bath room with its
rusty tin tub and many other inconveniences for the sake of Mandy’s
culinary achievements.

“Sometimes I air fo’ced ter ’form miracles on de victuals,” Aunt Mandy
had said once. “Miss Lucy air oftentimes fergitful in her orderation. I
knows she gits in de market an’ gits ter talkin’ ’bout befo’ de wah an’
sech an’ boa’ders goes out’n her haid an’ mealtime comes ’round an’ I
gotter stir up soup mostly out’n water but, lawsamussy, if’n you season
up water right it’s tasty. Gumption air de maindes’ thing in cookin’.
Gumption air mo’ ’liable dan ’gredients.”

To this house came Josie on Christmas morning. Aunt Mandy was sweeping
the bottom step as the old hack lumbered up the street and came to a
halt in the slush-filled gutter. The old woman beat her broom on the
back of one of the peaceful black lions and called out to the grinning
hackman:

“Hi yer, Brer Si?”

“Hi yer se’f, Sis Mandy? Brer Peter done sent you an’ Miss Lucy a
Chris’mus gif’--a new boa’der. I hope you air got room.”

“Sho we air got room--an’ if’n we ain’t we kin make room,” responded
the old woman.

Aunt Mandy was dressed in a purple calico dress, with a voluminous
skirt that suggested the days of hoops. Her head was wrapped in a red
bandanna handkerchief. Her kind old face was wreathed in smiles as she
bobbed a curtsey to Josie, who scrambled from the depths of the hack.

“Come right in, miss! Fust breakfas’ air under way an’ I’ll hump it up
some. I knows how hongryfyin’ sleepin’ cyars is. Whe’fo’ you didn’t
brung Peter up from the depot alongst with yo’ fare, Brer Si?”

“He gotter bresh up some fust, but he’ll be long in three shakes.”

“Well, me’n Miss Lucy air ’bleeged ter you fer a boa’der an’ I wouldn’t
be ’stonished if a leetle later on Miss Lucy would be a passin’ out
some Chris’mus. You mought kinder stop in on us if you air a comin’
this a-way.”

“I’ll be! I’ll be!” bowed the hackman. Even the bony horses seemed
cheered up at the prospect of Miss Lucy’s passing out “some Christmas,”
and they pranced up the street with quite an air of gaiety.




CHAPTER VIII

CLUES FROM AUNT MANDY


Aunt Mandy ushered Josie into a cheerful, shabby parlor. The furniture
was a mixture of fine old mahogany, cheap varnished oak, and odds
and ends of wicker and mission. There were some beautiful dignified
portraits, hanging cheek by jowl with simpering chromos of girls
kissing roses and stern faced persons, represented by crayon drawings
of enlarged photographs in plush frames. There was a soft coal fire in
the broad, deep grate and the flames leapt merrily up the sooty flue.
Josie was chilled to the bone and was grateful for the warmth and cheer
of the room.

“I low as how you’d like a cup er cawfee this very minute,” suggested
Aunt Mandy. “Breakfas’ ain’t quite ready but de cawfee air givin’ out a
odium dat means it air jes’ about done. Suppos’n’ you come on back to
de kitchen an’ let Mandy fix you up a tray, if you ain’t too proud ter
eat in de kitchen?”

“I’m proud to be allowed to eat in the kitchen,” smiled Josie. “I don’t
often get in a real kitchen. I have nothing but a kitchenette.”

“Humph! I don’ know what dat am but it sounds ter me like it’s a
kitchen whar folks done et ’stid of a dinin’ room.”

Josie laughed merrily and explained, to Mandy’s delight, that it was a
little kitchen not much bigger than a china closet.

“An’ what air you a-doin’ here in Lou’ville on Chris’mus mornin,’
chil’? Ain’t you got no folks?”

“No real folks--that is none that belong to me,” said Josie sadly. She
remembered the old days with her father and could not keep back a tiny
tear that rolled from the corner of her eye before she could stop it.

“Now, now, honey! You kin jes’ be to home here wiv Miss Lucy an’ me.
Lots er folks have spent Chris’mus wiv us an’ ’tain’t sech a bad place
ter be on dat day, I kin tell yer. Now you drink yo’ cawfee. Bless Bob,
if de sun hain’t done bust through the fawg! It’s gonter be a bright
day arfter all.”

The old woman beamed on her guest, who was seated in the big kitchen
sipping coffee from a huge blue willow-ware cup, minus a handle. The
coffee was delicious and there was a pleasing aroma stealing from the
oven that told of hot rolls almost done.

“An’ whatcher say you air doin’ here in Lou’ville?” asked Aunt Mandy.

Josie hadn’t said, but she had her answer ready and it was a good
answer--one she meant to make come true.

“I help run a little shop in my town and I’m hunting up some things
for that shop,” she explained. What she told of the nature of the shop
delighted and interested Mandy. So Josie went on to explain:

“I want to find someone who plaits rag rugs and also someone who makes
hand-made brooms, that round kind with split oak handles.”

“Well, bless Bob, if you ain’t done struck de right pusson to d’rick
you!” exclaimed Aunt Mandy. “I got a kinder cousin what lives out back
er Peewee Valley an’ she air de greates’ han’ fer cyarpet plaitin’ an’
quilt piecin’ I ever seed, an’ her ol’ man kin make the nices’ brooms
an’ split oak cheers in dis hyar lan’ o’ Kaintuck. Dey do say dat he
learnt his trade at the pen’tent’ary, but dat don’ matter nuthin a
tall. De thing is he air got a trade, what is mo’n mos’. Sis Minerva
an’ Brer Abe is dey names.”

“Peewee Valley, you say?” Josie remembered that was where Ursula’s
friends, the Trasks, lived.

“Yessum! Jes’ up back er Peewee! You kin take ’lectric cyar right down
here at de interbourbon station. Dey am moughty bold a-namin’ a station
arfter Bourbon whiskey when it air ’gainst de law ter sell it no mo’,
but I reckon so many bottles air been a carried back an’ fo’th on dat
road from Lou’ville ter Peewee Valley dat de name done stuck fer good.”

Josie laughed delightedly and asked for further information concerning
the cousin who was such a wonder at quilts and rag rugs.

“Well, you git off’n de cyar right at Colonel Trask’s. De driver’ll
tell you what dat is. Everybody knows Colonel Trask an’ his wife, Miss
Anita Bowles as was.”

Then followed minute directions as to lanes and stiles and short cuts
through gaps in fences, which Josie must take to find the cousin. Josie
felt the detective business was too easy if information was handed out
in this manner without any questions on her part. Peewee Valley--the
Trasks! The very things she wanted to know and now she knew how to find
them without so much as asking a question!

“Did you ever know some people here named Ellett?” Josie asked. “A Mr.
Philip Ellett. I believe he died and his widow married again. I know
some people who used to know them.”

“Sho I knowed ’em. Po’ li’l’ fool! She’s daid too, now.”

“Oh, is she?”

“Yessum--daid, an’ dat man Cheatham livin’ in de Ellett house, which
ain’t fur from here; in fac’, we backs on de same alley. I done hear
tell he driv his stepchillun off’n de premus. Some say he owns de
house, havin’ paid cash money down fer it an’ he couldn’t live wiv his
steps ’cause de boy done tried ter kill him an’ de gal was a holpin’
of him. But I knows dat old Cheatham too well to believe no sich tale.
If dey was any killin’ goin’ on he was de killer an’ not de killdee.
Anyhow de chilluns am gone off somewhars an’ he am a holdin’ high
carnal whur his wife’s fust husban’s folks done liv’ long befo’ de wah
an’ long befo’ dat.”

“He must be a horrid man.”

“Horrid ain’t de word, but he done got some folks in Lou’ville fooled
case he air right smooth talkin’ an’ he could keep a piece er col’
butter in his mouth all day ’thout its meltin’. He wa’ a boa’din hyar
wiv Miss Lucy when he married de widow Ellett an’ I hears lots er talk
back an’ fo’th concernin’ him an’ de bride. The boa’ders was divided
’bout him: some holdin’ he wa’ a very pleasant gemman, an’ dey wa’
mostly de maiden ladies, an’ others dat he wa’ a scamp an’ slick as dey
make ’em. He wa’ too shifty-eyed fer me an’ too free with his orders
an’ too constrained-like with his cash money.”

“Is he stingy?” laughed Josie.

“Stingy? Is he? Why dat dere man will squeeze a nickel so tight de
heads an’ tails git mixed up. He don’t min’ spendin’ money fo’ show.
I knowed a ooman what cooked fo’ dem when his wife was a-dyin’ on her
death baid an’ she said de po’ thing had all kinds er fine silks an’
satins an’ furs what he done buyed her but she didn’t have underclo’s
’nough ter flag a han’ cyar. I reckon he mus’ a-been a so’ trial to dem
steps cause dey paw an’ all de Elletts air jes’ tother way.”

“Didn’t the children have any relations?”

“Kin, you mean? Yes deir maw had a brother, Ben Benson, but he wa’
right put out ’bout his sister marryin’ agin an’ marryin’ sich a man
an’ he lit out an’ nobody ain’t seed hide or har er him sence. Some
says he’s daid an’ some says he’s diggin’ gol’ an’ maybe di’ments but
nobody don’t rightly know whar dat Ben air took hisse’f.”

“Has this Mr. Cheatham married again or does he live all alone in the
big Ellett house?”

“No’m, he ain’t married but dey do say he air took up with a nuss named
Fitchet. He’ll git his ’serts if’n he gits her cause I done seed enough
er that ooman to speak the truf ’bout her. One time she nussed one of
us-alls boa’ders an’ whilst dey do say she’s a good nuss an’ takes
good keer er de sick she sho am some rest breaker fo’ de niggers. She
had me waitin’ on her han’ an’ foot an’ fo’ de fust time sence me’n
Miss Lucy’s been running dis house I come moughty nigh pickin’ up an’
leavin’ her. ’Twas Mandy dis an’ Mandy dat ’til I wished the debil had
her.”

This was exactly the character Ursula had given Fitchet and Josie was
glad to have Mandy verify it. The old woman then rambled on at Josie’s
instigation to tell her other Louisville gossip until the information
she had given concerning the business in hand was completely swamped
in her mind by other more stirring happenings and when Miss Lucy Leech
finally made her appearance to begin the business of looking out for
her boarders the cook had forgotten all about the Elletts and was under
the impression the new boarder was especially interested in the direful
happenings of a one time famous wedding, when half the county had been
mysteriously poisoned.

Miss Lucy sailed into the kitchen with the air of entering the queen’s
drawing-room. She seemed not at all surprised to find a new boarder
sharing the warmth of the kitchen with the old cook. Miss Lucy was used
to Mandy and her ways and accepted both. She met Josie with an air of
condescension that put that young person in the category of being a
kind of pensioner instead of a boarder.

“Certainly we can take you for a while at least,” she said when Mandy
explained who Josie was and what she wanted. Josie was amused to see
that Mandy’s information concerning her business and antecedents had
grown considerably and she made such a convincing tale of her affairs
that she began to feel quite important.

“Peter done sen’ her,” Aunt Mandy continued. “Peter he done know all
about her an’ when Peter speaks up fo’ white folks you know dey is
white folks fo’ fair. Yassum, Peter sent her an’ Si brung her.”

“Be sure and ask Peter and Si in for some eggnogg and a piece of black
cake,” Miss Lucy commanded.

“Thank you, ma’m! Thank you ma’m!” exclaimed Aunt Mandy, not divulging
that the invitation had already been extended. Mandy knew very well how
to manage her mistress, and that was never to let her know whose was
the hand that directed the destinies of the boarding house.

“I’ll take dis hyar young lady up to her room, if you think bes’, Miss
Lucy, an’ den I’ll hump myse’f an’ dish up dis fust breakfas’.”




CHAPTER IX

JOSIE FINDS A FRIEND


The hall bedroom that Mandy had decided was the suitable place for
Josie proved to be clean and comfortable. To be sure it was a third
floor back, but Josie liked to be high up and she also liked the
outlook on the back yards of the neighbors.

“Yonder’s de ol’ Ellett place,” pointed Aunt Mandy. “It’s some run
down, but it wa’ sho a el’gant home in de ole days. I reckon dat ol’
skinflint Cheatham will en’ by buildin’ ’partments dar. Some say he
cyarn’t git a clar title or he’d a been tearin’ down an’ puttin’ up
befo’ now. Yonder’s him dis blessed minute! Done step out ter view his
prop’ty.”

Josie craned her neck to see the rear of poor Ursula’s home, and if
possible to get a good look at the villain, Cheatham. At any rate he
was in Louisville and not flying across the continent with poor little
Philip.

“First, I must see the police here,” she decided ruefully. Seeing the
police--any police but her old friend Captain Charlie Lonsdale--was a
sore trial to Josie. Like most private detectives she was inclined to
look down somewhat on the regular force, but she was more interested in
having the wrongdoer tracked than in gaining honor and glory by being
the one to bring him in.

“The important thing is to find little Philip and unless Captain
Charlie has already wired the Louisville police it is up to me to see
them.”

One reason for Miss Lucy Leech’s success in running a boarding house
was that she attended strictly to her own business and let the guests
of her home attend to theirs. She had not gotten rich on this policy,
as it is said one may do, but she was at least able to keep her house
well filled and to save a comfortable sum for her old age, which was
in truth upon her, although she did not realize it. Now that the new
and somewhat mysterious young boarder, so highly recommended by the
hackman and the porter, decided to brave the slush and the fog and go
for a walk on Christmas morning, Miss Lucy asked no questions and in
consequence was told no lies. Josie thanked her in her heart and went
bravely forth.

Two things were happening to the weather. The sun was clearing away the
fog and no longer looked so like an orange, and the thermometer was
dropping rapidly. Josie was glad of both changes. It was good to find
Louisville not the dismal place she had thought it on arriving, but a
very pleasing city. A fog is beautiful to an artist but the lay brother
prefers a clear day. As for the drop in temperature, it meant less
slush and easier walking and a bracing atmosphere that made Josie sniff
the air like a colt that has been pent up long in a stable.

The young detective missed the homely friendliness of the Dorfield
chief, but had a feeling that the police force of Louisville was really
very adequate. The captain in charge was an alert, business-like
person, who took hold of the facts, as Josie expressed it to herself,
“like a woman.”

“Now what are your plans?” he asked. Josie liked him because he didn’t
call her “miss.” Captain Charlie would have said: “What are your plans,
miss?” Josie liked being a girl but she hated being “missed” when she
was at work.

“I reckon I’m going to hunt the motive first. I can’t see why anyone
would want to steal a little orphan boy, when the homes and asylums
are full of darling children waiting to be adopted. Philip is a lovely
child, but not the loveliest I have ever seen. Of course, I suspect
this Mr. Cheatham, but he is in Louisville this minute. I am going to
ascertain if he has been on a trip recently and look into his financial
standing. I am also going to Peewee Valley to see some old friends of
Miss Ellett. Miss Ellett is a peculiarly reticent person and it is very
difficult to get information from her as to her early life. She does
not intend to conceal anything, but the only way to get any information
out of her is to worm it out. She had very few friends owing to her
mother’s long illness and the peculiarities of her stepfather. Colonel
Trask’s family at Peewee Valley were her only intimates.”

“She chose well while she was choosing,” said the police captain.
“Well, Miss O’Gorman, you seem to leave very little to the local police
force to do. Your name, combined with your methods, make me think
you must be some kin to the famous O’Gorman whose place can never be
filled. Am I right?”

“My father,” said Josie softly.

“Well! Well! Well!” he cried, jumping up from his desk and shaking the
girl by both hands. “I’ve worked with O’Gorman on many a case. My, he
was a wonder! I think you look like him.”

Josie blushed with delight. Most girls would not like to be told they
resembled a funny looking little man with a blobby nose, but Josie
was as pleased as though the police captain had told her she must be
related to Mary Pickford. Anything at all connected with her beloved
father was almost sacred to the girl. When someone told her she looked
like him, or resembled him in traits, she had a better opinion of
herself all day.

“Well, O’Gorman’s daughter will know how to coöperate,” said the
captain, “and that is more than can be said of most detectives. They
are always so anxious to get the credit that they will let the criminal
escape rather than see someone else capture him. O’Gorman was in the
business for the joy he got out of righting wrongs. He never waited to
be thanked and sometimes not even to be paid. I’ll be bound he died a
poor man.”

“Not a rich one,” said Josie, “but if I live to be old there’ll be
enough to keep me out of the poorhouse and if I die young, enough to
bury me decently and start someone else in life.”

“Spoken like your father!” laughed the captain. “He never told an
inquisitive person to mind his own business in so many words but he
usually let him know where to ‘get off’.”

“I didn’t mean--” faltered Josie.

“I know you didn’t mean, but you just did, and I respect you all the
more for it.”

“Well, Father always did say that if you could not be trusted with your
own affairs you could not be trusted with other folks’. I have a habit
of taking it for granted that my business is of no interest to others.
I did not intend to be snippy.”

“Exactly!” The man laughed silently. He could but mark that Josie still
kept to herself what money her father may or may not have left to his
only heir.

“If you think best, I’ll go immediately to Peewee Valley and see the
Trasks. Miss Ellett tells me they are her best friends and I feel
perhaps they may know something of the movements of Cheatham. Before I
go, however, I’ll make a call on the nurses’ registrar and look into
the supposed whereabouts of this nurse Fitchet.”

“I don’t see what you are leaving to me to do then,” said the captain,
smiling.

“Well, I guess you have other cases on your docket just now, while this
is my sole interest. Good-bye, sir, and thank you for your courtesy!”
Josie was up and gone before the surprised man could say anything more.

“Her father all over!” he grinned. “‘Waste not, want not!’ meant words
as well as food to Detective O’Gorman.”




CHAPTER X

A VISIT TO PEEWEE VALLEY


“Thank the Lord for gossipy women!” Josie exclaimed as she left the
office of the nurses’ registrar, where she had readily engaged the
young woman at the desk in a spirited discussion concerning the various
nurses whose names were there registered.

It was a simple matter to find out that Miss Fitchet was considered an
excellent nurse; also that she was thoroughly unpopular with her sister
nurses. She was in demand, however, because of her steady nerves.

“Nothing knocks her out,” declared the registry clerk. “She wouldn’t
mind holding a man’s legs while the doctor cut off his arm. Blood’s
nothing more than water to her. Doctors like her because she attends
strictly to business, but the patients get fed up on her. They say she
isn’t human.”

All this was poured forth in a gushing stream, when Josie asked
quite mildly if the girl happened to know a nurse by the name of
Fitchet, explaining she did not know her personally but that she had
some friends who knew her and they had suggested her as a person who
might care for Josie’s great uncle (a purely fictitious person). The
great uncle had not arrived in Louisville, but was expected shortly,
and would perhaps need a nurse. Josie was not sure of this. She just
thought she would step around and ask about Fitchet.

“She’s got a job just now in Florida--at least she did have one--but
we’ve word from the party employing her that she has left them without
giving notice and now they’re trying to have us send them another.
It is no trouble for Fitchet to get a job, so I don’t mind telling
you that if you love your great uncle, I wouldn’t fool with Fitchet.
She’s liable to make him will her all his money and then starve him to
death. I’ve heard plenty of patients say that she eats up the goodies
sent to them right before their eyes, declaring they are too rich for
sick folks. I don’t like her, and I don’t care who knows it. I don’t
generally talk out this way to customers but I take such an interest in
your poor, dear great uncle. She’d land the poor dear man in the grave
in a month and then you’d find a will in her favor. She’s a slick one,
with her head cocked on one side and a grin like a panther.”

“Did she come back to Louisville when she left the people in Florida?”
asked Josie, laughing.

“Not yet! I reckon she’s frying fish somewheres else. But, young lady,
if you are hunting a nurse you let me recommend a lovely girl I know.
She’s as sweet as a peach and so accommodating she’ll cook and clean up
if need be and wash out the baby’s little sacques and socks--and press
his cap, strings and all.”

“But my great uncle doesn’t wear sacques and caps and I fancy he can
get someone else to wash his socks,” teased Josie.

“Oh, yes, I forgot. I was thinkin’ ’twas a baby. Anyhow, don’t get
Fitchet.”

“All right, I won’t,” agreed Josie.

“Won’t you leave your name and address?” suggested the girl. “My boss
always wants folks to leave their names and addresses.”

“There’s hardly any use,” said Josie. “I’m not sure my great uncle is
coming, and if he does it is but a step to come to your office and
see you. I think a personal interview is so satisfactory. Don’t you?
Besides, I shall enjoy seeing you again.”

The girl at the desk was flattered by Josie’s remarks and let her make
her escape without further insistence concerning names and addresses.

“Well, I know where Fitchet isn’t, at least,” muttered Josie. “And now
for Peewee Valley!”

The interurban car was on time and so was Josie. She could not help
smiling when she remembered Aunt Mandy’s description of this car and
her calling it the interbourbon. There were two men aboard who might
very well keep up the alleged reputation of the line, as their hip
pockets bulged suspiciously, and their gait suggested that they might
have been imbibing quite freely.

The car filled rapidly with holiday makers and parties going to spend
Christmas day in the country with relations and friends.

“I might feel sorry for myself if I wanted to,” thought Josie, “but
somehow I don’t. Here I am having no Christmas to speak of, but feeling
as chipper as you please, with a wonderfully interesting day ahead of
me. Poor Ursula is the one who may well feel sorry for herself, but I
am as sure as anything I’ll find Philip, and that before so very long.
But the motive for stealing him--what can it be? Ursula is as poor as
a church mouse. If it only wasn’t Christmas I’d sleuth around and find
out something about Cheatham’s business and his financial standing.”

So Josie mused as those on Christmas pleasure bent squeezed her into
a corner of the car. She was thankful to have a seat next the window,
although at first the prospect of dirty snow and empty streets was not
so very pleasing.

The trolley soon whizzed through the city into the suburbs and then
into open country, past pleasant homes where prosperity was the
keynote. Now the snow was clean and, wherever it had drifted aside,
instead of a bare brown patch, green grass met the eye, as is the way
in Kentucky. Blue grass will remain green through the winter under the
snow.

Peewee Valley was remarkable for its wonderful beech trees, and the
fact that it was not a valley at all. In truth the trolley seemed to be
going up grade. The sun, which had seemed nothing but a round orange
through the smoke and fog of Louisville, was now shining brilliantly,
but the mercury was steadily falling in spite of old Sol and the air
was crisp and bracing. Josie remembered Mandy’s directions and stopped
the car at the post office.

“That must be Colonel Trask’s,” she decided, standing for a moment in
the snow as the trolley whizzed out of sight, and gazing across the
road at a pleasant looking home well back from the road, approached by
an avenue bordered by maple trees. They were bare and gaunt on that
winter’s morning, but it was not difficult to picture them in full leaf
shading the road. Indeed, here and there was a bench which, though
covered with snow, made one think instinctively of summer days.

The snow had been beaten down to a hard path on one side of the road
and the road itself gave evidence of much travel--prints of horses’
hoofs and of automobile tires. The house, which could be seen from the
approach, was white with grey gabled roof, the sky line much broken
with dormer windows and great red chimneys. Josie counted five, with
smoke curling from every one of them.

A sudden sound of sleigh bells and trotting horses! Josie was in a
brown study, trying to untangle the web woven around Ursula Ellett. She
found it difficult to fix her thoughts, since the general appearance
of the hospitable home she was approaching made her think, in spite
of herself, of roast turkey and goose, plum pudding and mince pies,
bulging Christmas stockings and fir trees blazing with candles. The
sound of sleigh bells made her jump. She felt almost that Santa Claus
himself was coming. So swiftly were the horses drawing the red cutter
over the beaten snow they had passed her almost before she could
collect her scattered senses.

“Whoa!” commanded the driver, stopping his team a few feet beyond the
spot where Josie stood rooted in the snow. “Have a ride?”

The driver was a young man of engaging manner and wonderfully even
teeth. That was the first impression made on Josie. Afterwards she
realized that he was an exceedingly handsome young Kentuckian,
blue-eyed, straight-nosed, clean cut and athletic.

“Certainly!” She answered his invitation without hesitation. Female
detectives cannot afford to be squeamish, but it was not a detective
who sprang so readily into the red cutter--rather a young girl away
from home on Christmas morning, in whose ears the music of the sleigh
bells played an alluring tune and who was, in spite of the serious
business that had brought her to Louisville, longing for companionship.

“Where are you going?” asked the young man. “I can take you wherever it
is, because my horses are eating their heads off in the stable and are
as wild to be up and out and racing as I am. I came on you so suddenly
I couldn’t tell which way you were headed.”

“This way,” pointed Josie. “I am hunting some colored people. The woman
makes rag rugs and the man brooms. I was directed through Colonel
Trask’s place. I am on the right road, am I not?”

“You are indeed. Colonel Trask is my father. But why hunt rag rug and
broom makers on Christmas morning?”

“Because--but--oh, please tell me, are you Teddy?”

“The same--and you?”

Josie looked into the kind, clear, boyish, blue eyes and determined to
trust their owner with her story.

“I am Ursula Ellett’s friend and I’m not really very much interested in
rag rugs and brooms.”

The eyes hardened from blue to ice.

“Ah, indeed!” he said with cold politeness.

“I want to see your mother and father. Ursula--”

“Miss Ellett is well, I hope.”

“As well as could be expected, considering she is among strangers,
making a living for herself and her two little brothers and now the
younger brother, little Philip, has been stolen from her. Yes, very
well, thank you. I see I was mistaken in thinking Mr. Theodore Trask
was her friend, and since I have evidently touched on an uninteresting
subject, I shall ask you to stop your horses and let me get out.”

Josie was angry--so angry she felt it almost impossible to refrain from
slapping the handsome face of her driver. His “Miss Ellett is well, I
hope,” was what had aroused her anger. The tone with which he had made
the seemingly harmless remark had enraged Josie, and the usually calm
little detective was in a boiling passion.

The icy eyes melted a little, but the young man made no movement
towards stopping the horses. Instead, he turned them sharply around
in the avenue and headed them for the open road. With a word of
encouragement the beautiful creatures were urged to greater speed.
Josie was compelled to grasp her companion’s arm to steady herself. A
seat in an open cutter is a precarious one when a reckless driver and
his horses are feeling too full of pep.

Josie took a long breath. She couldn’t help enjoying the sensation of
being forcibly carried off by an ice king, even though she did hate his
superciliousness.




CHAPTER XI

MR. CHEATHAM IS UNMASKED


“Cooled down a little by now?” asked Teddy Trask, after about a mile
of record-breaking trotting. “Now, Miss Friend--that’s the only name I
know you by--you listen to me a minute. I was Ursula Ellett’s friend.
In fact, I hoped I was going to be closer than a mere friend. My family
loved her from my father on down. We felt she must know we were to
be trusted and we trusted her. Imagine our feelings when she simply
departed from Louisville without saying one word to any of us, without
writing a line, even to my mother. Mr. Cheatham has been out to see us
and told us how her behavior has hurt him. He said she had requested
him not to inform us of her whereabouts and he was forced to respect
her wishes in the matter. He merely sends her a monthly remittance of
five hundred dollars, which surely should be enough for her to live on
very comfortably, without having to work so hard to support her little
brothers.”

“Lies! Lies! All a pack of lies!” Josie flashed.

“We might have thought that, if Ursula had done anything to contradict
what Cheatham has said, but her silence is enough to convince us that
we were not as dear to her as we had felt. He tells us she is soon to
be married to a multi-millionaire and also that she writes she cannot
pretend to any affection for him but that he is so rich she feels it
would be foolish to let such a chance slip.”

“Ursula to be married! Ursula with a monthly remittance of five hundred
dollars! Really, Mr. Trask, I can’t believe you are serious. She has
been as poor as poor can be but now she is conducting a tea room in
a little shop called the Higgledy Piggledy Shop, of which I am part
owner, and the boys come and help after school and eat up all the cold
waffles for accommodation. All of the Higgledy Piggledies love Ursula
and her boys and last night someone came and kidnaped little Philip and
Ursula is wild with grief and I have come to Louisville to see if I can
get a clue to a motive for stealing the child, and in that way perhaps
track the villains.”

“Well, Miss Friend, you sound convincing and what you say about the
cold waffles puts a human touch to your tale. But why, in the name of
Heaven, if all this is so, did Ursula not write to us?”

“She dreaded what Cheatham might do to your family if you seemed in any
way to connive with her. She could not stay another minute in the house
with him and she is terribly afraid of him and the evil he might do to
her friends and her boys, even more than what he might do to her.”

“She never told us she was afraid of Cheatham.”

“Didn’t she? But you must have known she was unhappy over her mother’s
second marriage.”

“She never said so. She always avoided the subject.”

“That’s the real flaw in Ursula’s otherwise admirable character. She is
too reticent.”

“That’s better than being a gusher,” exclaimed the young man vehemently.

“Yes,” smiled Josie, amused at the suddenness with which Teddy had
veered around concerning Ursula, “but it is hard on a detective, who
is trying to unravel a mystery, when the persons interested give one
nothing to go on. I had a terrible time worming out of Ursula that
there was such a person as you and even when she told me there was she
gave no intimation that you were--well, a tolerably good-looking young
man who had leanings in her direction. She grew pale when she mentioned
your name, which led me to think that you were small and dark, with
maybe a hare lip.”

Teddy laughed and spoke to his horses.

“And the multi-millionaire?” he asked.

“It’s a lie! I cannot see how you could believe Cheatham. I am sure
he has not known where Ursula was until lately, and he has never
communicated with her in any way, nor has she with him, since she left
Louisville. Has not your mother received a letter from Ursula? She
wrote one not long ago and hoped it would reach her before Christmas.
I persuaded her that she was wrong to keep silent any longer. Ursula
has been cowed by this terrible stepfather until she is afraid to do
anything but just hide away. You do believe me, don’t you?”

“Of course, Miss Friend, I can’t help trusting you. I want to trust you
so much. I’ll tell you I have been very unhappy over Ursula, but I
was determined to overcome my love for her because I felt she was not
worthy of my regard. I believed all Cheatham said. He is a pleasant,
plausible fellow and he has pretended so much feeling for my family
because of Ursula’s behavior.

“I see it all now! What fools we have been! Father doesn’t like Mr.
Cheatham but Father is such an old-fashioned gentleman that when
anyone is in his house he is as polite as can be. Cheatham has been
in our house a lot lately, too, when I come to think of it. By Jove,
he is coming to dinner today! You’ve simply got to see him. You said
something awhile back about detectives. Are you really one?”

“Yes, but don’t give me away. I’m supposed to be out here hunting up
rag rugs and hand-made brooms for my arts and crafts shop.”

“Give you away, indeed! I’m too excited about what you have told me and
too anxious to help. As for detectives: I read all the stories about
them I can get hold of and always think I could have managed the cases
better than they did.”

“Good for you!” laughed Josie. “Now please tell me what you would do
about this case?”

“First, I’d take you home to dinner and let you get a good look at Mr.
Cheatham. I’d like to wring his neck.”

“Well, don’t look that way at him or he’ll not be able to eat his
dinner. But tell me, please, Mr. Trask, how are you going to explain me
to your family?”

“Don’t Mr. Trask me! I’m Teddy now, even more so than when you first
got in my cutter.”

“All right, Teddy!”

“I tell you who you are. You’re a girl I used to know at Cornell, but
hanged if I haven’t forgotten your name.”

“Miss Friend, Josie Friend. At least that is a right good working name,
and since you christened me you should remember it. My real name is
Josie O’Gorman.”

“I used to read stories about Detective O’Gorman and his stunts. I tell
you he was a peach.”

“He was my father,” said Josie, for the second time that day.

“Jiminy crickets! I’d rather know you than Babe Ruth or Dempsey or
Douglas Fairbanks. Do you know you haven’t shaken hands with me yet?”

Josie solemnly shook hands with the young man.

“Remember to call me Miss Friend though, or Josie. I would not mention
the name of O’Gorman. Crooks are always shy of it and while Cheatham
hasn’t been found out yet, I’ll bet he knows who might have caught him
if he had broken the eleventh commandment.”

“Well, if I am supposed to have known you well enough at Cornell to
pick you up and bring you home to dinner, I reckon I know you well
enough to call you plain Josie.”

“Won’t your mother think I’m mighty forward to accept an invitation
from you to a family gathering on Christmas day?”

“Oh, I’ll fix Mother. Don’t worry about her. And now, Josie, what am I
to say you were doing in Peewee Valley on this cold day?”

“Why not let rag rugs and brooms be the motive? It went down with you
all right and why not with them?”

“Yes it did!” he exclaimed scornfully. “I knew all the time you weren’t
after rag rugs.”

“Then you knew a lot, because I really am going over to this cabin
and order a big lot for our shop. You have forgotten the shop. My
detective business is supposed to be a side issue and the shop is the
all important thing, since it is by running the shop that a number of
persons make a living. Being a detective is my art but helping to run
the Higgledy Piggledy Shop is my business.”

“All right then, rag rugs and home-made brooms it shall be! I found you
standing on your head in a snow drift on your way to Uncle Abe’s cabin
and when I set you right side up you turned out to be the Josie Friend
I had known at Cornell, where you were specializing in--in--”

“Psychology and domestic science!” said Josie, with a grin.

“Exactly! I then drove you to the cabin. By the way, we’ll get there
finally on this road, although it is a long way round, but there is
plenty of time before dinner and my horses are simply prancing for a
good spin. Now, nobody is to know you ever heard of Ursula and you are
to catch Cheatham entirely off his guard.”

“Fine! You have the makings of a real detective in you. In the meantime
can you furnish the slightest clue for the motive any one might have
had for kidnaping poor little Philip?”

Teddy Trask could think of no reason and then Josie related to him all
she knew concerning Miss Fitchet’s appearance in Dorfield; how she
seemed to shadow Ursula and then disappeared and then about the woman
with run-down heels and blonde hair who had evidently been in the room
adjoining the apartment occupied by Ursula and her brothers.

“I have a hunch that Cheatham is at the bottom of the whole thing and
that Fitchet is in his employ,” said Josie. “Fitchet came to Dorfield
to spy out the lay of the land before she went to Florida on this case
that she has just left within the last week. Cheatham wanted to know
what his stepchildren were doing and how they were living. Why he was
interested I do not know. Since then something has arisen that makes
him more interested. He sent for Fitchet and she dropped her case in
Florida and flew to do his bidding. Philip is now with her, but where?
Cheatham has not left Louisville, and as far as we know Fitchet has
not returned. I am trying to find out something about Ursula’s Uncle
Ben Benson, but nobody seems to know of his whereabouts since he left
Louisville when his sister married Cheatham.”

“Gee! You sound like the old lady in ‘The Circular Staircase’ or the
man in ‘The Gold Bug’.”

“Do you think you might casually bring in the name of Uncle Ben
Benson? Ask your father, for instance, if he ever knew him. Say you
heard someone mention him at the club and the man wondered if he had
died. Say another man at the club was under the impression he was
dead--thought he had seen something in a foreign dispatch concerning
his death. Just make up any old thing and don’t be too explicit or too
much interested.”

“Sure I can! I’ll be the casual one and you do the watching of
Cheatham. There’ll more than likely be a big bunch of folks at dinner.
Anita always has a crowd around her and Mother and Father rake in
guests with a heavy hand around Christmas time. I haven’t asked anyone
on my own hook this year, so it is pretty fine that I found you
standing on your head in the snowdrift. The truth of the matter is I
am really missing Ursula such a lot and I couldn’t seem to make up my
mind to jolly up much, with her away and getting ready to marry a
multi-millionaire.”

Josie patted the big glove on the hand next to her that held the reins
to the prancing steeds and the young man looked down at her gratefully.
She gave him a merry glance.

“By the way, Teddy, if you see me looking fish-eyed don’t be
astonished. I want Cheatham to think I’m so stupid he won’t have to
be on his guard with me. Another thing: my shop must not be spoken of
by name, as no doubt Fitchet has told him Ursula was working for the
Higgledy Piggledies at Dorfield, so suppose you let me represent a firm
in Youngstown, Ohio.”

“All right, Miss Particular! What you say goes and nothing you may say
and any way you may look won’t astonish me. Watch me be about as big a
sleuth as there is in America. Please let me tell you how much happier
I am since you got in my cutter.”

“I’m more cheerful, too,” said Josie, “although I shouldn’t be when
there is poor Ursula eating her heart out with misery. I couldn’t be
as cheerful as I am if I were not perfectly sure we will find little
Philip.”

“Sure we will find him,” said Teddy.




CHAPTER XII

IN AN OLD KENTUCKY HOME


The cabin of Sis Minerva and Brer Abe was so picturesque that Josie
regretted not having a camera with her. It was of logs with a stone
chimney, that leaned outward as though bowing an invitation to Santa
Claus to enter. Bright geraniums peeped from the windows, where
hung wreaths of holly and swamp berries. A hound barked as they
approached and then ran under the house, routing out a hog that had
been comfortably scratching his back on the joists of the floor of the
lean-to summer kitchen. Several coon skins were nailed to the side of
the house, there to tan in the wind and sun--a natural method often
employed in the country.

The old couple were at home, enjoying themselves according to their
respective tastes. Sis Minerva was stirring up a custard, which she
intended to freeze with the timely snow and Abe playing on his old
accordion, which was so much the worse for wear it was necessary to
bribe several of the many grandchildren to stand by and pinch the
cracks together to extract anything like a tune from the ancient
instrument.

“I done mended and mended ’til ’tain’t no use in mendin’ no mo’. Fas’
as I mends in one place she bus’ out in another, an’ bein’ as I’s
got mo’ gran’babies dan I is time I jes uses ’em stid er glue,” Abe
explained.

The interior of the cabin was even more picturesque than the exterior.
Brer Abe, in his clean Christmas shirt and long tailed brass-buttoned
coat, a relic of his coachman days, sat in an arm chair, his feet in
grey yarn socks stretched to the cheerful burning logs piled up in the
great fireplace. He was playing a sad and mournful hymn on the cracked
accordion with three little children hanging desperately to the places
that were beyond mending. Sometimes the air demanded that he must
stretch his arms far apart and then one little girl would be lifted
almost from her feet in her endeavor not to let the “chune git out de
wrong way.”

Teddy and Josie peeped in the window for a moment before knocking. The
barking of the dog had not been noticed, because of the wailing hymn,
and all unconscious of an audience the old man squirmed out his melody.

Sis Minerva appeared at the door of the kitchen, a huge yellow bowl in
her arms.

“Hi, you, Abe, cain’cha play a perkier chune? My cake dough am likely
ter fall with me tryin’ to keep time ter sech a buried-an’ dug-up song.
This yer cake air gotter be beat fas’ an’ stiddy so you jes’ change yo’
chune or quit playin’.”

“How kin I carry a fas’ chune when every time I draws out for wind I
haster carry two, three gran’babies?” whined the old husband.

“Here, gimme that aircawjun!” exclaimed Sis Minerva, putting down
her bowl of cake batter on the highboy out of reach of the many
grandchildren. “I’ll mend it in no time. I done saved more’n a sheet or
so o’ dat tangle-yo-foot fly paper an’ I boun’ it’ll stick fas’ as yo’
hide.” She produced the fly paper and mended the instrument while Josie
and Teddy peered through the flowering geraniums on the homely, happy
scene.

Teddy’s knock on the door silenced the noise of the grandchildren, but
old Abe must finish his tune, explaining later with many apologies that
it was “wuss ter quit in the middle of a chune than ter lay off befo’
a sneeze wa’ properly snuz.”

“Please go on with your tune,” begged Teddy.

“And don’t stop stirring your cake,” Josie insisted when Sis Minerva
prepared to remove the yellow bowl to the lean-to. “Let me stir it for
you. I know how, really and truly.”

She took the bowl from the old woman and, with a practiced hand, began
a rhythmic beat that satisfied Sis Minerva her guest was no idle
boaster.

“I smell ’possum roasting,” sniffed Teddy.

“Deed an’ you do, an’ sweet ’taters ’long with. I been a-fattenin’ dat
’possum fo’ nigh onter two months, not dat he wa’ no spindle shanks
when I cotched him. De trouble am de chilluns done got so ’tached ter
de animule I feel kinder like I’d done skun a gran’baby fo’ Chris’mus
dinner. De smell of him a cookin’ air put heart in us all, an’ I
reckons by de time we sets up to de table we won’t feel so like we’s
a-eatin’ of kinfolks.”

“We done ruminated right smart ’bout whether we’d make a burnt offerin’
of de tame possum or my ol’ gander an’ I puts in a word fo’ de gander
an’ cas’ my vote for de ’possum,” Sis Minerva explained. “You see dat
ol’ gander air already so tough he cain’t git no tougher an’ de ’possum
wa’ so fat he couldn’t git no fatter, so all things bein’ ekal we skun
de ’possum.”

“I’ve been sent to you by your cousin in Louisville, Aunt Mandy at Miss
Lucy Leech’s. She tells me you weave carpets and make quilts and that
Uncle Abe can make those lovely brooms with the handles formed of the
broom straw wrapped with split oak,” said Josie.

“Well, ain’t it the trufe? Lawsamussy chil’, Mandy am right. Me’n Abe
keeps right well, with me a plaitin’ rugs an’ patchin’ quilts an’ him
a-fashionin’ brooms dat one time folks scorned when fact’ry brooms got
so plentiful like, but now air come back inter fashion sence white
folks took ter livin’ in one story houses what they calls bugaboos,
with open fire-places an’ brick hearths what has ter be swep’ up.”

Josie must see the quilts Sis Minerva had on hand and admire the
log-cabin, pine-tree and rising-sun patterns. Orders were given
for several quilts and rugs and as many brooms as Uncle Abe could
spare. The shipping of the wares to another state seemed to be an
insurmountable obstacle to the old couple, but Teddy promised to
attend to it for them and their minds were set at rest.

“I’ll have ter git busy an’ raise mo’ broom straw,” sighed Uncle Abe.
“I’s gittin’ right stiff in de jints fer breakin’ up lan’ an’ I ain’t
got a single gran’baby big enough ter mo’n han’le a hoe.”

“But where there are so many grandchildren there must be some
children,” suggested Josie. “Haven’t you any sons and daughters?”

“Plenty of ’em, but dey’s mos’ly lef’ dese parts. We hears from some er
’em now an’ den an’ dey ’members us when dey gits flush an’ when dey
gits broke an’ evy now an den one er de litter turns up with a baby fer
de ol’ folks ter raise. De gals all got married but mos’ of ’em is out
in service an’ nobody don’t want ter hire ’em with ’cumbrances. An’ de
boys dey all got married but looks lak dey wives air all time dyin’ or
something an’ den de offspring lands up here at Peewee Valley. Me’n my
Minervy ain’t a kickin’. De chilluns air right smart comp’ny fer us an’
we air a bringin’ ’em up ter wuck. De bigges’ gal kin make the purties’
baskets out’n biled honeysuckle vines you ever seen. Dey done sol’ de
whole lot in Lou’ville befo’ Chris’mus so they ain’t got none on han’,
but I’s a-wonderin’ if you ain’t wantin’ some er dem too.”

“I certainly do,” said Josie. “No doubt they could be shipped with the
other things and I am sure there would be a sale for the baskets in
Dorfield.”

The young basket maker grinned with delight. “Does you fancy big uns
or lil’ uns?” she asked with an air of being ready to go to work
immediately.

“Both, and medium-sized ones, too.”

The price for the various commodities being settled upon, Teddy
suggested it might be time to eat their own turkey and let Uncle Abe
and Aunt Minerva eat their ’possum. With many protestations of mutual
satisfaction from buyer and sellers, Josie was tucked in the cutter and
the eager horses started on their homeward journey.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll stop at the post office on my way home,” said
Teddy. “The postmistress is mighty nice about letting you have mail on
holidays if she happens to be around.”

She did happen to be around and Teddy came out bearing the letter from
Ursula to Mrs. Trask.

“Do you know I’ve more than half a mind not to give this to Mother yet?
She’d be so full of it she couldn’t help giving herself away to old
Cheatham and he mustn’t know we know a thing about Ursula yet.”

“Young man, Uncle Sam needs you in the diplomatic service and needs
you badly,” declared Josie. “May I ask what you do when you are not
befriending female detectives?”

“I am a lawyer,” answered Teddy. “Some day I intend to be a justice of
the Supreme Court, but up to this time I have collected a few bad debts
and sued the Louisville and Nashville Railroad for one cow belonging
to a disreputable family living over by the crossing. I won my case
and the disreputable family not only got paid for the cow but had
beefsteaks to burn, to say nothing of the hide which they sold to a
tanner.”

“Good!” laughed Josie. “I wish I had studied law, too. I am really
contemplating taking it up if I can ever get time to spare. It might
have been a good stunt if I had put my imaginary time at Cornell on law
instead of domestic science.”

“Well, please don’t mix me up on what you did at Cornell. I’ve got it
firmly fixed in my mind that psychology and domestic science were your
tickets and I mustn’t get involved in my story.”

“All right, I’ll keep dark about the law if you wish me to, but I
certainly do wish I might have taken even an imaginary course.”




CHAPTER XIII

A GREAT CHRISTMAS FEAST


The Christmas guests had gathered when Teddy drew rein at the yard gate
of his father’s hospitable mansion. There were several cars parked
along the driveway and a large family sleigh was being unloaded just
ahead of him.

“Christmas gift, Jo! Christmas gift, Sue--you, too, Billy! Christmas
gift, Aunt Julia! Christmas gift, Uncle Tom!” he called, and in turn
was deluged with cries of “Christmas gift” from the occupants of the
sleigh.

“It was bully of you all to drive over. Mother was so afraid you might
not venture in the snow, but I was sure you would come. I want all of
you to meet my friend Miss Friend, Josie for short. She’s heard a lot
about you and is just dying to know you.”

“I am sure we have heard a lot about you, too,” murmured Aunt Julia
politely.

“More about you than you have about us, I’ll be bound,” said Uncle Tom
with a genial wink.

As Josie had never heard a word about them and was not even aware of
the surnames of these kindly kinsmen of her host, she could vouch
for their having at least heard as much about her as she had about
them and as they knew her last name--that is the last name she had
assumed--she might even agree that they knew more of her than she did
of them. At any rate, they were kind and cordial and willing to take
her on Teddy’s say-so. It was Christmas day and Josie was determined to
make the most of the opportunity to have a good old-fashioned time in
a good old-fashioned way, while she was engaged in picking up as much
information as possible concerning Ursula and the kidnaping of little
Philip.

The house was gay with holly and running cedar, with great bunches of
mistletoe hung from the chandeliers and wreaths of swamp berries in
every window. The piny odor of the evergreens, mingled with that of
choice foods, made Josie’s nostrils twitch with pleasure.

“Mother, I’ve brought a friend in to dinner,” Teddy said simply. He
took Josie’s arm and presented her to the sweet-faced lady who was
standing in the middle of the spacious parlor. “Josie Friend, Mother.”

“I am so glad to see you.” The words were so simple and so genuinely
spoken that Josie was sorry, even for a short time, to have to seem to
be something she was not. She longed to be able to tell this lovely
woman who she was and how she happened to be in Peewee Valley on that
white Christmas. However, she realized the importance of carrying out
the program she and Teddy had planned and merely said, “Thank you,” in
response to Teddy’s mother and, “Thank you,” again when Colonel Trask
was equally cordial.

“That is Cheatham!” Teddy whispered, as a tall, rather commanding,
figure appeared in the doorway. Josie controlled herself not to look at
the man too closely, but began talking to Uncle Tom, who had taken a
stand near her. Uncle Tom was easy to talk to because all one had to do
was listen.

“Pleasant gathering,” he said “Mighty pleasant. Been coming here to
Christmas dinner ever since I can remember. Married Julia Bowles, you
know, Anita’s sister--Mrs. Trask, that is--but I reckon Teddy has told
you all the ins and outs of the family. Fine family, good housekeepers,
good friends, plenty of looks, plenty of money, good characters, good
citizens. I don’t always like their friends, but it’s none of my
business who comes here.”

“Who is that man in the doorway?” asked Josie, designating Cheatham,
thinking she might get a side line on his traits from Uncle Tom.

“Cheatham! He’ll do it, all right, all right. I can’t abide that man.
But I’m not obeying the rules of hospitality to be criticizing a fellow
guest to a fellow guest.”

“I won’t tell,” laughed Josie.

“Of course not. Anybody that’s a friend of Teddy’s is sure to be a
good sport--that is, anybody but Cheatham. I never could understand my
sister-in-law and her son in allowing that man to darken their doors.
That’s what he does to a door when he enters it. He sure does darken
it. As for Colonel Trask, I know he can’t stand the man any more than I
can, but he’s one of these old time courtly men who let the women folk
rule them. Me? I tell you nobody bosses me. If my Julia tried that game
on me, I tell you I’d--I’d--”

“Tom, go out and look in the sleigh for my glasses. Don’t say ‘send one
of the children,’ because I’m sure they would break them. Go along,
Tom! That’s a dear,” said Aunt Julia in a tone not to be questioned.

“Yes, my dear!” from the valorous Tom.

“I’ll go help find them,” suggested Josie. “Men never know how to find
things,” and then she whispered to Uncle Tom as they started towards
the front door, “I really believe your wife’s glasses are hanging by
a hook on the front of her dress. I saw something dangling there. Why
don’t you look?”

“I’ll bet they are. Won’t I have a good laugh on her, though!”

Josie was right and Uncle Tom was jubilant over the joke on Aunt Julia.

“I tell you, Miss Friend, you are a regular detective.”

As a detective was the last thing Josie wanted to seem to be, she was
almost sorry she had seen the eyeglasses, but at least she was able to
detain Uncle Tom in conversation concerning Mr. Cheatham.

“You were saying you didn’t like that handsome man over there,” she
suggested.

“Handsome! As handsome as ten-cent store silver! He’s a crook, I tell
you--a veritable crook. How decent people receive him is more than I
can see.”

“What does he do that is crooked?” asked Josie innocently.

“That’s just where his crookedness comes in,” exploded Uncle Tom.
“Nobody can put their fingers on his crookedness. He always manages to
get out before he gets in.”

“Is he married?”

“Widower with stepchildren, and now pretending he has to keep the
children in luxury although they even tried to kill him. Some people
in Louisville believe him, but not me. You can fool some of the people
all of the time and all the people some of the time but Cheatham hasn’t
ever fooled me. I know a crook when I see him and he is as crooked as a
snake.”

At this moment Josie was carried off by Teddy to meet some more of the
friends gathered under his father’s roof for Christmas dinner.

“Related to the Virginia Friends?” one old man asked. “Petersburg
people?”

Josie was fearful that she might get caught in a genealogical web and
quickly repudiated Virginia kin, explaining she was the last of her
line.

Dinner soon was announced, much to Josie’s relief. Not only was she
hungry, but she felt that when the guests began to eat they would not
evince quite so much interest in her relations. Teddy arranged matters
so that they sat directly opposite Cheatham.

“We can look right down his throat,” he explained in a whisper. “You
watch him and I’ll get him going.”

Josie had heard of groaning boards, but she had never heard one before.
The table at the Trasks’--although it was of solid mahogany--literally
creaked with the weight of the Christmas dinner. The fact that it was
stretched to its utmost length and the drop-leaf side-tables pressed
into service to make it even longer may have been responsible for
its audible groaning. A twenty-pound turkey at one end, and a huge
home-cured ham at the other, were flanked with dishes of escalloped
oysters, mashed potatoes, squash, spinach, celery, chicken salad, every
kind of pickle known to housewives, cranberry sauce, currant jelly and
other things that escaped one’s eye in the multiplicity of dishes.

Little attempt was made to serve the guests by the numerous servants,
who contented themselves by standing against the walls, grinning
happily over the prospect of the “leavin’s” that were sure to follow
such a feast and the “totin’s” they could no doubt accomplish on that
blessed Christmas day.

There were at least thirty guests seated at the long table in the great
dining room, and in the breakfast room adjoining the children were
holding high carnival at a table prepared especially for them. Their
happy voices and loud clamorings for turkey gizzards and drum sticks
could be heard above the clatter of knives and forks and tongues in the
grown-ups’ dining room.

“We always have a general scramble on Christmas day,” Teddy explained
to Josie. “There is no use in trying to have orderly service or put on
any style. It is always catch-as-catch-can at this Christmas dinner.
The same people come year after year, with an occasional addition.
Ursula used always to come, but this is the first time Cheatham has
been here on this day. He has been getting powerful thick out here
lately, now I come to think about it, and I’m just wondering why.”

Josie was not wondering at all. It was plain to see that Mr. Cheatham
was paying court to Anita Trask, but, brother like, Teddy was the last
to suspect that anyone was attentive to his sister. Anita was a very
pretty girl, with her brother’s fair hair and blue, blue eyes. She was
young and a bit shy, and evidently flattered by the devotion of the
handsome, middle-aged man who was seated next to her at the table.

“Ursula, Ursula,” thought Josie, “what a mistake you have made in
concealing from these kind friends the trouble you have had with your
stepfather! Had Mr. Trask dreamed of the real character of the man, he
never would have permitted him the freedom of his house and the right
to pay court to his daughter. Too great reticence and secretiveness is
worse than being a downright blabber. I only hope it is not too late to
spare Anita a heartache. She is certainly interested in her neighbor,
who no doubt can be as fascinating as he can be cruel and overbearing.”

Josie began to feel sorrier than ever for Ursula, because she was not
in her usual place at this unique gathering. Such a genial host and
gracious hostess! Such hungry guests and such plentiful food! Such
willing, if ineffectual, servants! Such gay badinage and good-natured
raillery! In ten minutes Josie felt almost as though she belonged.
Everybody accepted her simply and naturally. If she was Teddy’s friend,
she was everybody’s friend. She never was called on to explain her
presence in Peewee Valley and the tale of rag rugs and brooms and bed
quilts and baskets did not have to be told. Uncle Tom had begun to be
a little curious and was beginning on his questionnaire when cranberry
sauce and a turkey thigh switched him off the track and he forgot he
had not found out all he wanted to know.




CHAPTER XIV

A TRAP FOR MR. CHEATHAM


The time had come for mince pie and plum pudding, wine, jelly and ice
cream--not that anyone had room for everything, but one could always
try. The table was being cleared and there was a lull in the hubbub of
conversation as well as the clatter of knife and fork.

“Father,” Teddy said quite distinctly and in a voice that carried to
the foot of the table where Colonel Trask had been carving the ham as
only he could, “Father, I heard the other day at the club, at least I
think it was there, but I can’t remember just who it was that said it,
that Mr. Ben Benson was dead.”

“Ah, indeed!”

“Yes! The man said he had seen a notice of it in some foreign
newspaper. At least, I think that was what he said.”

“Poor Ursula!” ejaculated Mrs. Trask. “I wonder if it is true. But you
must know, Mr. Cheatham,” she said, turning to that guest.

“By Jove! Of course!” said the perfidious Teddy, pretending he had
forgotten the connection between Cheatham and the subject of his
remark. “Why he was your brother-in-law!”

If at this juncture a fellow diner had taken the trouble to notice the
young lady introduced by the son of the house as Miss Josie Friend, he
would have seen a remarkably stupid-looking young person with dull eyes
and no expression to speak of--quite a different person from the gay,
clever girl who had been riding in Teddy’s cutter not so many minutes
before. In fact, Mr. Cheatham did glance at her when Teddy had first
mentioned the name of Ben Benson. Not that he was attracted by her in
the least, or had any curiosity concerning her, but he had to look
somewhere and it happened to be at her. In spite of his confusion over
Teddy’s announcement it flashed through his mind that the girl across
the table had no doubt eaten too much turkey and roast ham. He wondered
if she could hold plum pudding.

The truth of the matter was Josie had eaten sparingly, although every
mouthful had been enjoyed, but she felt that her wits must not be
dulled by over-feeding. Mr. Cheatham, not foreseeing that his wits
would be in demand, had helped himself plentifully and genially to
every dish that came his way and was in consequence not in a condition
to control his countenance when Teddy blurted out that he had heard Ben
Benson was dead.

Mrs. Trask’s “poor Ursula” but added to his discomposure, and when
she turned on him and demanded of him further information he could
cheerfully have twisted her gentle neck. When Teddy had announced in
his loud, ringing tones that Ben Benson was his brother-in-law, Mr.
Cheatham felt the blood mounting to his face and for a moment a strange
dizziness held him.

“Arrested digestion!” was Josie’s mental diagnosis. “A shock coming too
closely on the heels of ham and turkey and various side dishes.”

Had Mr. Cheatham realized that his face had taken on first a crimson
then a purple tinge, and now was fading to green, he would have been
more unhappy than he was, and he was uncomfortable enough. He found his
voice somewhere and seemed to raise it as if through packed-down layers
of dinner. He wondered if it sounded as strange to other persons as to
him.

“I--I know nothing about Ben Benson, but I do not believe he is dead.
I can assure you my stepdaughter has been in constant correspondence
with him and surely if he had died she would have known. Although her
behavior to me has been unnatural beyond belief, I am sure she would at
least inform me should she learn of her uncle’s death.”

“Of course she would!” declared Teddy heartily.

“Of course!” murmured Mrs. Trask.

Mr. Cheatham’s digestive process was resumed, so decided Josie. Green
gave place to violet and then to his accustomed ruddy complexion. He
heaved a great sigh and accepted the wedge of mince pie handed him by
Anita.

Josie felt Teddy’s arm give hers a gentle pressure. She was grateful to
him for not attempting to catch her eye.

“You might hit him again before so very long,” she suggested, as the
clatter of pie forks again made a confidential remark possible.

“Watch me!” murmured Teddy in an audible tone, and a casual listener
would have thought he meant watch him eat pie.

“I wonder if Mr. Benson has made any money,” Teddy ventured in a
loud conversational tone. “I gathered from the men I happened to hear
speak of him that the general opinion was he had done pretty well
since he left home. I can’t recall what they said he did--sheep in
Australia--diamond mines in Africa--”

“Give me sheep every time,” broke in Uncle Tom. “Ben Benson was a
good fellow and loyal to the core. I do hope he hasn’t died and that
he has made money and will come back here and look after his sister’s
children.”

Uncle Tom had over-eaten, too, and it had made him slightly crabbed and
inclined to pick a quarrel. So, not liking Cheatham, he felt a row with
him would be a grand top-off to the heavy dinner. Cheatham, however,
only turned purple again and let the insult pass.

“I understand Ursula is to be married soon,” said Mrs. Trask gently,
“and to a very rich man, but no doubt she would be overjoyed to see her
uncle again.”

“Well! Well! Who is the man?” asked Uncle Tom. He addressed his remark
to Mr. Cheatham and that unhappy man was compelled to answer.

“My stepdaughter has not confided in me to the extent of informing me
of her fiance’s name. She has merely formally announced her intention
of marrying and divulged that the man is a millionaire.”

At this point Josie felt it difficult to hold the stupid expression she
had assumed. She could but remember poor Ursula’s poverty and her brave
struggle to support her little brothers. Even now she was in sorrow and
misery at the loss of Philip. Was Ursula having any Christmas turkey
or any dinner at all for that matter? She trusted Irene and the kind
Conants to see to her creature comforts. She determined the moment
she got back to Louisville to get Bob Dulaney on the long distance
telephone and find out all about her forlorn friend.

It seemed hard that the truth should be kept for even one hour from
Colonel and Mrs. Trask and Anita. Here they were believing the most
cruel things of their former friend, while the poor girl was in extreme
misery in a strange town. Josie was thankful when she remembered
the kind Conants and Irene. She was sure Elizabeth Wright and Mary
Louise would come forward to offer their friendship and help and
that Bob Dulaney and Danny Dexter and all of the persons connected
remotely with the Higgledy Piggledies would be ready with sympathy and
assistance.

“I can’t see that I am getting anywhere,” Josie said to Teddy when
dinner was finally over and the guests sought drawing room, hall and
sitting room. “We know that Cheatham does not like to mention his
stepchildren and avoids the subject of Ben Benson, but can you make
anything else of the business?”

“Sure I can! He knows something about Ben Benson and he wishes to
appear innocent of all concern about him.”

“I wish I could get into his house. I am sure I could find
incriminating evidence of some kind.”

“That’s easy. You just leave it to me and also follow me.” Teddy
sauntered up to where Mr. Cheatham was standing talking to Mrs. Trask.
He was evidently bent on disabusing his hostess’ mind of any belief in
the report of Ben Benson’s death.

“Just idle rumor,” he asserted.

“I am sure it was,” broke in Teddy amiably. “Of course, if you know
nothing of it it could not be true. By the way, Mr. Cheatham, how is
your radio machine coming on? Is it satisfactory?”

“Very! I am quite a fan.”

“So I understand. Do you know here is a young lady who has never heard
a concert or lecture by wireless?” said Teddy, drawing Josie into the
circle. “She is curious to hear one, too. She just told me it was the
height of her ambition. Anita is a novice at radio also. As for me, I
get quite fed up on wireless at the club.”

“And you, Mrs. Trask, are you interested?” asked Mr. Cheatham.

“Yes, indeed!”

“Well, suppose we make up a little party--say for to-morrow. All of
you, your guest of course,” turning with stiff courtesy to Josie,
whom he had taken for granted was a house guest of his hostess. “We
will have dinner at seven and then we can listen in on the radio all
evening. Will Colonel Trask do me the honor to be one of the party?”

Colonel Trask pleaded other engagements. Teddy whispered to his mother
not to disabuse Cheatham’s mind concerning Josie’s being for the time
a member of their household. Mrs. Trask had taken a liking to Josie
from the first and in spite of being somewhat mystified at her sudden
appearance at the Christmas party was ready to accept her as Teddy’s
friend and willing to defer all questionings as to who she was or how
she happened to be in Peewee Valley.

“Now aren’t you getting somewhere?” whispered Teddy.

Josie had to acknowledge that she was. To enter the old Ellett house as
a guest of the present master was surely an opportunity to search for
the motive of the kidnaping.

“After everyone is gone we must tell your mother about Ursula, and you
must give her the letter from the poor dear,” said Josie.

The guests soon dispersed and then Josie and Teddy were closeted with
Mrs. Trask, who listened with eagerness to all they had to say of
Ursula. She wept over the letter and was violent in what she had to say
of Cheatham, who had so wickedly estranged them from the poor girl. She
readily agreed with her son and Josie that for the time being they must
not let Cheatham know that his perfidy was known to them.




CHAPTER XV

AN ANONYMOUS LETTER


While Josie feasted and schemed in the pleasant home of Colonel and
Mrs. Trask in Peewee Valley, there were sad hearts in Dorfield. With no
news of little Philip, and no word from Josie, Ursula had almost wept
her spirit from her eyes.

Uncle Peter and Aunt Hannah Conant had done all they could to make
Ursula and Ben feel that they were a real uncle and aunt instead of
chance acquaintances. Irene had begged them to come and stay with her
and had eagerly insisted upon sharing her room with Ursula while Ben
was to have the tiny hall room next to the old couple, but Ursula felt
she must remain in her own little apartment, in case some word from
Philip might arrive.

Josie had departed on the midnight train and the rest of the night
dragged by, Ben sleeping in spite of himself, because he did not
want to sleep at all, but his heavy eyelids refused to stay open.
Ursula occasionally dropped into a doze but would awaken with a start,
dreaming someone was bringing news of her little brother.

Christmas morning dawned with a bright sun sparkling on the deep snow.
Dorfield was alive with sleighing parties and holiday noises, the
popping of fire crackers and shouts of boys and girls coasting down the
hill on the main street of the town, regardless of traffic regulations.
There was a good hill on that street and coasting was a sport long
before traffic regulations were even heard of--and so it continued.

Mary Louise and her Danny came immediately to Ursula as soon as the
news of Philip was telephoned to them by Irene. They, too, insisted
upon taking the Elletts home with them, but Ursula still was determined
upon staying in her own home. Elizabeth Wright appeared on the wings of
the wind and eager to do anything possible for the girl whom she had
learned to love and respect.

“And dear Philip,” she cried, with tears running down her cheeks, “you
know how much I loved him, Ursula. I didn’t mean to say loved him--I
mean love him. We are going to have him back with us in no time.”

Captain Charlie Lonsdale telephoned from police headquarters that no
stone was being left unturned in the search for the child and Bob
Dulaney came twice within an hour to find out if any news had been
received by Ursula and to assure her that he was getting busy.

The day passed, as days do, whether they be gay or sad. At dusk a boy
brought two telegrams for Ursula, one from Josie and one from Teddy
Trask.

Josie’s was merely a ten-word message of hope and cheer with directions
as to how to reach her in case of news of the missing child. Teddy
did not confine himself to the usual ten words, but spread himself as
though he were writing a night letter. In it he assured Ursula of his
lasting regard and informed her that he was doing what he could to
assist Josie.

Ursula’s heart was a little lighter after reading the telegrams. She
felt that Josie was sure to do the wise and prudent thing, and the fact
that her dear friends, the Trasks, were once more in touch with her,
made her feel that her trouble was at least shared.

Bob Dulaney came in again to tell her he had just had a talk over the
long distance ’phone with Josie, who had called him up asking for
news, and had told him she was hard at work on the case and had got the
police force of Louisville interested also.

“Josie is a regular peach when it comes to finding kids and she will
land little Philip in no time,” declared Bob. “That girl has a born
instinct for going right. She’d sure make a good gum-shoe reporter. Did
you ever hear how she and I nabbed the thief who was going off with
Mary Louise’s wedding presents?”

Ursula had heard it but she pretended she hadn’t and Bob had the
extreme pleasure of recounting the whole adventure in his best
newspaper style.

“Now don’t forget, Miss Ellett, that if you receive any communication
of any sort you will inform me or Chief Lonsdale.”

“Yes, Josie made me promise that I would do that. Why do you think they
have taken my little brother, Mr. Dulaney? Do you think there was any
motive but simply one to annoy and distress me?”

“I do. People don’t engage in such dangerous crime just to be annoying.
Josie is out hunting a motive and I am working with that thought as a
basis of investigation too. I don’t know how the police are proceeding.
They usually work with a kind of sledge hammer method that hits what
gets in its way but doesn’t get into the cracks much, or seek out the
hidden things.”

Bob’s visit cheered Ursula. It was a comforting thing to know that
something was being done. She felt helpless and useless herself. All
she could do was sit by the window in her living room and gaze out on
the snow, wondering where her little brother was and if he thought of
her and missed her as she did him. She was thankful that the kidnaper
had taken his overcoat and warm sweater. At least he would not be cold.
She remembered that his shoes had but recently been half soled. His
feet would be dry. Whoever stole him did not want him to suffer or he
or she would not have taken his clothes. Even his little red mittens
and woolen comforter were gone. Perhaps he was being well treated after
all. Who could want to be unkind to little Philip? So ran Ursula’s
thoughts.

That night Ursula slept. A confidence in the goodness of God enveloped
her like a mantle. A strange feeling of peace came over her. Ben
noticed it as he kissed her good-night after they had knelt together
and prayed.

“Why, Sister, your face looks as if a light was behind it.”

“There is, Ben. It is the light of Hope and Faith. It is wicked of
me to be so despondent. I am going to keep on hoping and praying and
believing and I am sure our baby will be brought back to us.”

“Oh, Sister, how glad I am! I won’t be ashamed if I go to sleep
to-night. Last night I kept pinchin’ myself to keep awake, although I
felt all the time that Phil was comin’ back to us.”

“My dear, indeed you must sleep so you will grow big and strong and can
take care of little Philip and me,” smiled Ursula.

The morning after Christmas found them much calmer and the confidence
of the night before remained with them. Ursula busied herself by
cleaning her apartment and darning all the stockings, although she
could not help shedding a few tears over the big holes in the knees of
Philip’s.

“He got those playin’ bear,” said Ben. “Phil sure does love to play
grizzly.”

Another day passed and no news. The same persons called and the same
telephoned. Mary Louise sent Ursula a dainty tray of food and insisted
upon Ben’s dining with Danny and her. Ursula could not make up her mind
to leave her apartment. The moment she left might be the one chosen for
some news to come from her boy. She was delighted, however, to have
Ben dine with the Dexters, in fact, she endeavored to have Ben enjoy
himself much as he would had Philip been at home.

“One of the shortest days of all the year,” thought Ursula, “and yet
how long it has seemed.” She looked out on the darkening street. In a
moment the electric lights on the corners were shining, but Ursula sat
in the dusk. They lived on a quiet street where few vehicles passed.
She saw an automobile stop at the corner and idly watched a man get
out and start walking along the snowy sidewalk. There was nothing at
all interesting about the man except that the car from which he had
alighted did not move off. If he had business up this street why should
he walk when he might have ridden. It was a battered car of an old
make, swung on high springs, and had evidently seen better days. The
light on the corner was bright and the newly fallen snow made that
part of the street as visible as it would have been in broad daylight.
Ursula had not turned on her burners, but peered from a darkened room.

The man walked rapidly along the street and then disappeared. The girl
put her face close to the pane but could see no sign of him.

“I believe he came into this house,” she said to herself. “Ah, but
there he is again!” She saw him hurry down the street, jump into the
old-fashioned car and then he was gone.

Ursula pulled down her shade and turned on the light. She glanced at
her watch. At least two hours must pass before Ben would be returning
from dinner at the Dexters’. What could she do with those long two
hours? She could not believe she was the same girl who had been busy
every moment of the day and eager always for a few free moments that
she might conscientiously give to reading. There were new books on her
table, gifts from the friends she had made in Dorfield, magazines with
the leaves uncut--but she could not put her mind on reading.

Ursula glanced about the room, her eyes wandering. A piece of white
paper was under her door, put there since Ben had gone out. An
advertisement, no doubt.

She picked it up. It was a letter in a dirty envelope, sealed but not
stamped, addressed in pencil to Miss Ursula Ellett, in a handwriting
that looked as though each letter had been painfully drawn. Ursula
feverishly tore open the envelope and read:

    “Yore uncle Ben is ded and you are his air. He maid a lot of
    money in africa on dimonds. I knowed him in africa and by rites
    I orter have half of his money but he cheted me. I rekon I have
    beet the news of Ben’s deth to the states but now I have yore
    kid bruther in my keepin and I will keep the same until you
    sware to hand over my part of what you will get as air when you
    come in to the same.

    “Yore bruther is enjoyin good helth and hopes this finds you
    the same. I will not say what will hapen if you do not promis
    to give me half the douh. If you tell anybody about this I will
    beat yore bruther. All you have to do is sware you will do as
    I say and when you get yore hands on the money which will be
    handed to you by a english lawyer you put aside one half and
    I will let you know wat you are to do with it and at the same
    time you will get back yor bruther.

    “The english lawyer will be in lewisville this weke. If you
    will do as I say and want to get yore bruther back safe you
    must put a ad in the lewisville currier journal and I will
    note the same. Just say Barkis is willin that is enuf. You are
    a honnerable girl and will keep yore promise if not beware.
    Excuse haste and a bad pen. Most respectful yore well wisher
    but one who Ben Benson cheted. Annonermus.”

Ursula sank on a chair. She felt that she might faint but that fainting
would be a very foolish performance when action was necessary.

“Uncle Ben dead!” she cried. “I always hoped he would come back to me.
What shall I do? What shall I do? Of course I’ll give half of whatever
he has left me to get my Philip back. I’ll give all of it--anything.”

Suddenly she remembered that she had promised Josie that no matter what
communication came she would report immediately to Bob Dulaney or
Captain Lonsdale.

“But he says he will beat Philip if I tell anybody about this. How am
I to know Uncle Ben is really dead and if he is that he has left me a
fortune. How will this person know whether I have told anybody or not?
How could this person have found me? Who is he and how could he have
slipped up to my apartment without my hearing him in the hall?”

Suddenly the remembrance of the man who had got out of the rickety old
car at the corner flashed through her mind. Could he be the kidnaper?

“It says I am honorable and I promised Josie to let them know and
I will do it.” She went to the telephone and called up police
headquarters. Captain Charlie was on the wire in a moment and deeply
interested in what she had to tell him.

“Perhaps I am wrong, but I can’t help thinking a man I saw get out of a
car at the corner brought the letter,” she said.

“Well, well, perhaps!” he answered. “I’ll send a plain clothes man
around to see you immediately.”

Ursula then called up Bob Dulaney. He was all excitement and greatly
interested in the man in the high old car.

“I’m going out in my Lizzie and get that man right now. You say it was
headed south? Then it must have come from the north and no doubt will
turn around and go back the way it came. So long!”

“Please take a policeman with you,” begged Ursula.

“Not on your life! They are too heavyweight for me. I am like the
heroes in the movies and go for my man alone. I may even tie a
handkerchief around my face and make him hold up his hands.”




CHAPTER XVI

BOB DULANEY’S CHASE


Ursula could not help smiling at Bob’s enthusiasm. She knew that he
had great sympathy for her, but at the same time she was sure he was
enjoying himself hugely being what he called “a gum-shoe reporter.”

It seemed to her as though she had hardly put down the receiver after
telephoning him when a prolonged tooting called her to the window, and
there was Bob in his small, shabby racer whizzing by the house.

“Anyhow, I’ll soon know something,” sighed the girl. “I wish I had
Josie here to counsel me. So it isn’t Mr. Cheatham and Miss Fitchet
after all! I can’t telegraph such a complicated thing as this letter,
but I will write immediately and get the letter to Josie on the
midnight train, special delivery.”

She was glad of the occupation of writing and with great care she
copied the communication found under her door and enclosed the copy in
her letter to Josie.

“I am enclosing the envelope in which the letter came so you may see
the kind of writing, dear Josie,” she wrote. “I know you set great
store by such things. The letter itself I am afraid to trust to the
mails, but will keep it carefully until I see you. Bob has gone to
catch the man who put the letter under my door, but in the meantime I
shall mail this and will follow it by a telegram.”

She was afraid to leave the apartment to mail the letter, thinking news
of some kind might some while she was out, so she knocked on the door
of the nervous, middle-aged bachelor, the one who had so carefully
poked up the chimneys with a hearth broom in vain search of Philip, and
asked him to attend to getting the letter off for her. He was glad to
be of any assistance to his pretty neighbor and gallantly donned his
goloshes and set out for the post office.

Then Ursula sat down to wait. She felt happier. Anyhow her beloved
child was not dead. As for poor Uncle Ben, she was not at all sure he
was dead, and although she had been very fond of him, he had been away
from Louisville so long she could not make up her mind to weep very
much over him--certainly not until she knew for sure that he had really
passed away. The fortune reputed to have been left her she almost
forgot about. The realization came to her with a start. Suppose she
really had been left a fortune! What a difference it would make in her
life.

“I’d rather have Uncle Ben here to love and protect me than all kinds
of money,” she said to herself. “Anyhow I’ll have to go to Louisville
as soon as my boy is found. Since Mr. Cheatham is not the one at the
back of the kidnaping I shall not dread seeing him as much as I fancied
I would. Indeed, I am ashamed to have harbored such a suspicion of him.
Perhaps I have been to blame too. Maybe he is not so black as I have
always painted him.”

The plain clothes man from Captain Lonsdale was the next person to
mount the stairs to Ursula’s apartment. He was a stolid individual, but
had a kind blue eye and no doubt was more keen witted than he appeared
to be. Ursula remembered Josie’s assumed stupidity when she was working
on a case and felt perhaps this man Donner was pursuing the same
tactics. She showed him the letter and told him what had happened,
describing the ancient automobile and the man who had walked up the
street immediately before she had noticed the letter under her door.

“You done right to phone the Cap’n,” said Donner. “These here
blackmailers would be brought to justice oftener if the folks weren’t
so scairt of them. Ladies are usually the worst of the bunch for taking
them serious like and letting them get the bits between their teeth.
Most ladies in your fix would have laid low about the letter and handed
over whatever they asked just to make sure the kid was safe. I tell
you, lady, the kid is just as safe, and a deal sight safer, with your
telling us about this letter than he would have been if you had just
kep’ it to yourself.”

“I had to let Captain Lonsdale know about it, because I promised Miss
O’Gorman I would. Somehow I feel as though she knows best about my
affairs.”

“Sure she does! I wasn’t strong for women policemen--policewomen, I
believe they call them--until I had a case to work up alongside of that
Miss Josie O’Gorman, and I tell you then I got to thinking that the
Almighty must have took out some of Adam’s brains along with the rib
when he made Eve, and that Josie girl got a good share of them. Did you
ever hear about how she caught the thieves that were carrying off Mrs.
Danny Dexter’s wedding presents?”

Ursula quickly assured him she had, as she could not contemplate
having to hear the tale again and she felt that the sooner the kindly
officer got on his job of hunting up the kidnapers the better for all
concerned. She wished him good luck and politely got rid of him.

Ben came home full of the delightful time he had spent with the
Dexters, also full of a good dinner.

“Did you eat anything, Sister?” he asked, pressing his rosy cheek to
Ursula’s pale one.

“I forgot to eat,” confessed Ursula.

“Well, you must remember,” declared Ben. “I’m gonter get you some
supper. There’s oodles in the ice box. Now you just sit still and I’ll
fix you up in no time.”

Ursula held the boy to her and told him of the letter she had found
under the door, and then read it to him.

“The dirty pup!” was all he could say. “Don’t let him fool you, Sis.
You call up the police--”

“I’ve done it, dear, and already they have started in to hunt for the
person who brought the letter.”

“Ain’t Uncle Ben the one I’m named for?”

“Yes, dear!”

“Well, he never cheated this hound.”

“Of course not! That hasn’t worried me for a moment. Uncle Ben was the
soul of honor. I feel very sad at the thought he may be dead. I wish I
might have seen him again. Poor Uncle Ben!”

The boy busied himself with a tray of food for his sister, and then
began the process of endeavoring to keep his eyes open. He was ashamed
of being so sleepy when his beloved sister was certainly not going to
close her eyes until some report was brought her by either Bob Dulaney
or Donner.

“Go on to bed, honey,” insisted Ursula. “It is much better for you to
go to sleep. Didn’t I tell you you must sleep a lot so you can grow up
big and take care of me?”

“Will you call me if you need me?”

“Of course I will, because I depend on you all the time.”

“Well, let me keep on my clothes and sleep on the sofa, so I can wake
up easy.”

“All right, dear, wherever you want to sleep, just so you sleep.”

So Ben was tucked in on the sofa, with the light carefully screened
from his eyes, and again Ursula waited.

At eleven o’clock Bob Dulaney stopped his little car in front of the
door and ran lightly up the steps.

“I saw your light and stopped in.”

“Please, what news?” she asked excitedly.

“Well, I’ve done some eliminating, but that’s all,” said Bob
dejectedly. “But don’t you get down-hearted because we’ll keep going
until the kid is found.”

“I’ll keep on hoping. Only tell me, please.”

“I raced along the road I thought the old car had taken and in spite
of a puncture and getting out of gas and then out of water I finally
came up with the worst looking old automobile I ever saw. It looked as
though the Forty-Niners might have used it to travel over the old trail
to California. It was pulled up in front of a half-way house, midway
between Dorfield and Benton. I tell you I parked behind it in a jiffy
and slipped into what used to be the bar, where I found some village
bums and two or three transient guests eating ice cream cones and
drinking ginger pop. One old cove was warming himself at the stove and
loudly deploring the dry state of the country. He had on a great fur
coat and looked as though he might have been traveling some distance.

“I cottoned to the old chap and began warming myself, too.”

“Come from far?” he asked with a nice, warm, kindly voice.

“The other side of Dorfield,” I answered.

“So did I, but I live over at Benton. I tell you a country doctor
leads some life. One of my old patients has moved beyond Dorfield and
nothing would suit him but that I should come and treat him for a bad
cold--nothing but a bad cold, mind you! He ’phoned me he was coming
down with pneumonia. Here I had to ride ’way over there in all this
weather and when I got there, bless you, if the fellow wasn’t having a
party. He did have a bad cold. I wish he’d sneeze his head off! That
was last night. Yes, I had a good time but it was a mean way to get me
to go to a party. My old car won’t stand many such trips. I’ve had it
going on fifteen years as it is.

“I had a funny experience coming back from my patient’s. About six
miles the other side of Dorfield a man got off the train at a wayside
station--Dorset. I reckon he thought he had got to Dorfield, because
he seemed rather astonished that there were so few houses in what he
had evidently been told was a flourishing town. He’d got Dorfield and
Dorset mixed and when the conductor hollered Dorset he thought he’d
got where he was going. Said he had a little business to attend to
in Dorfield and then was going on beyond, and was mighty glad when I
picked him up and gave him a ride. I always give people rides along the
country pikes. He wasn’t my kind of passenger though, because he had
such a low forehead and a kind of wry neck. I talked along to him and
he never answered a word more than just to ask me if that was all the
speed I could get out of my old locomotive. I got right peeved, but I
never said so.

“When we got to Dorfield he said he’d like me to stop on the corner of
Spruce street, as he had a little errand to do. I had to get a pint of
iodine and some gauze at the drug store near by, so it suited me very
well. It didn’t take me a minute to make my purchases, but, by golly,
that fellow was back in the car the minute I was and when we crossed
the track and he saw a freight train coming he never said thank you,
but jumped out of my car and ran like fun and got onto that car while
it was moving, just like Douglas Fairbanks or Harold Lloyd. He was a
rum customer, I can tell you.”

“Which way was the freight headed?” I asked.

“West--that six o’clock freight where the engineer plays a tune on his
locomotive whistle.”

Ursula had listened to Bob with breathless interest.

“That man’s business in Dorfield was to deliver that letter to your
address,” declared Bob. “The doctor in the funny old car had no more to
do with it than I had myself.”

“I believe you are right,” agreed Ursula. “And now what next?”

“Next, I must let Captain Lonsdale know what I know and maybe he can
put a watch on that freight. Gee, I hate to ask help, but I must
remember the way Josie works and how the important thing with her is
always to get the criminal landed, whether she does it herself or not
being of no importance.”




CHAPTER XVII

JOSIE MAKES A FIND


Josie’s impatience amounted almost to a fever, as she awaited the hour
for dinner with Mr. Cheatham. The day after Christmas had been a busy
one for her. She felt she must write a detailed account to Ursula
of her visit with the Trasks. Also Captain Charlie Lonsdale and Bob
Dulaney must be communicated with and the rest of the day was taken up
in unearthing everything concerning Cheatham and Miss Fitchet that a
female detective could hope to learn in a day.

Aunt Mandy was intensely interested in all Josie had to tell her of her
cousins at Peewee Valley and her excitement knew no bounds when she
learned that the young woman upon whom she looked as her own especial
boarder, since her husband had sent her to Miss Lucy Leech’s, should
have had Christmas dinner with such “highupity pussons” as the Trasks.

“An’ you done knowd young Mr. Teddy Trask at school! Well, bless Bob,
if life ain’t complexicated.”

Josie had felt it wise to account for her acquaintance with young
Trask to Aunt Mandy and her mistress. He was to come for her to take
her to Mr. Cheatham’s dinner party and Josie knew boarding houses and
the curiosity of the boarders well enough to be sure she must account
for being friends with a young man as well known in Louisville as the
handsome Teddy Trask. She had cautioned Teddy to ask for her by her
right name and not the assumed one.

“I’m sorry I got going with a dual personality,” she said, “but it’s
done now and Miss Lucy Leech thinks I’m named O’Gorman and Mr. Cheatham
thinks I am Miss Friend. It was a break on my part to be so free with
aliases. I can’t forgive that kind of stupidity. Sometimes one loses
out on a job just because of such carelessness.”

Josie always had a dinner dress neatly packed in her emergency kit, as
she called the suitcase she kept ready to take on a trip, and now that
she was to dine with Mr. Cheatham she was thankful that she would be
suitably clad.

“You’s de kinder boa’der to make money on,” Aunt Mandy declared, when
Josie told her she would not be home for dinner. “Mos’ boa’ders eats
in reg’lar. Looks like dey’s scairt dey won’t git dey money’s wuth an’
even when dey gits ’vited out dey comes home fer a filler. Why, honey,
I’s knowd boa’ders what’ll tu’n on de light in dey rooms when dey’s
goin’ out, ’fraid dey won’ git dey rights. But Miss Lucy kin tell ’em
wha ter git off, when dey gits too proudified and boa’derish. I tell
yer Miss Lucy ain’t never been one ter be back’ards in comin’ for’d
when boa’ders gits rampageous. She’ll rar’ up on her hin’ legs an’ tell
’em what’s what.”

“I’m sure she will,” laughed Josie, “and I’m sure the boarders deserve
all they get when she gives them what’s what. I’ll try my best to be
good and not deserve such things.”

“Lawsamussy, Miss! Anybody knows dat if my Peter an’ Brer Si recommends
a pusson dat pusson air sho ter be fust-class. Peter wouldn’t no mo’
send a onsuitable boa’der here dan Si would fotch one. Dem two niggers
air got both Miss Lucy an’ me ter reckon with an’ what dey reckons am
no lef’ over victuals if dey ain’t got gumption enough ter respec’ the
sanctity of a fust-class boa’din’ house kep’ by ’ristocrats.”

Teddy arrived on the stroke of the hour appointed. His mother and
sister were waiting in the automobile, having driven in from Peewee
Valley.

“Mother and I thought it wiser not to tell Anita what we suspect in
Cheatham, so remember,” he whispered as he greeted Josie in the hall.

“Perhaps you are right. She might find it difficult to be polite to
him,” said Josie, but in her heart she felt it a rather dangerous thing
to leave a young girl in ignorance of the character of a man who was
plainly paying court to her.

“Well,” she thought, “no doubt they know their own business best and
she could hardly elope with him to-night. I hope by to-morrow we may
know something definite.”

It was with a feeling of mingled rage and pity that Josie entered
the Ellett house--rage that it should be owned by Cheatham and pity
that Ursula should have had to give up such a home and go to live
in what seemed like squalor in comparison. She remembered the bare,
plain furnishings of Ursula’s apartment, made attractive only by the
indefinable touch of taste that the girl always evinced. Josie looked
critically at the damask hangings of the drawing room where Cheatham
stood to greet his guests, at the rich oriental rugs, the old portraits
of Ursula’s ancestors; the mahogany chairs and tables of antique
make--every stick with a pedigree!

It was a marvel to Josie that the citizens of Louisville had not
suspected this man of swindling his stepchildren. It seemed strange
that they had not arisen in a body and demanded a reckoning, but when
she remembered Ursula’s extreme reticence she realized that having kept
her own counsel the citizens of Louisville would have been officious
indeed to have thrust themselves into her affairs. No doubt Cheatham
had a perfectly plausible tale to tell concerning his possession of the
property and since Ursula had never attempted to correct his statements
it was natural for neighbors to accept them as true.

One of the things that Josie had unearthed in the sleuthing she had
done during the day was that Cheatham was endeavoring to sell the old
Ellett house and negotiations were pending with an investment company
with a view to making over the place into many small apartments.

A hitch in the title had kept the deal from going through, so a real
estate agent had informed her when she questioned him concerning the
property as though she herself were a possible buyer. “I wouldn’t mess
in it myself,” he declared, “but I reckon he’ll slick it up somehow by
letting the place to be sold for taxes and then buying it in himself.”

Mr. Cheatham’s dinner was quite perfect, and Josie could not help
wondering if the servants were some that poor Ursula had trained. A
butler of extreme elegance and ebony hue served the repast with the
airs of a Chesterfield. Cheatham seemed singularly out of place in this
home of gentle refinement. His color was so high, his moustache almost
blue black, the whites of his eyes so white and the blacks so black.
The make-up of a villain was his and still his manner was genial and
cordial and had not Josie been hunting the arch conspirator with a clue
given her by Ursula she knew in her heart her instinct would never
have directed her towards Cheatham. The table seated twenty and Josie
was thankful to be lost in the crowd. She decided to make herself as
inconspicuous as possible.

During dinner Josie managed so completely to efface herself that
her host forgot entirely there was any such person as a Miss Josie
Friend, an old schoolmate of Teddy Trask, at his table. Josie had a
way of effacing herself without calling attention to her silence. She
responded just enough to avoid having persons remark upon her seeming
stupidity. Colorlessness was what she aimed at and what she obtained.

After dinner the radio concert began. It was a simple matter for one
so unimportant as Josie to slip from the drawing room on a tour of
inspection. On arrival the guests had been shown into a front room
where they had left their wraps. Josie had noted that leading from
this room was a small study. She could see through the half-open door
a typewriter on a table with a reading light, and against the wall a
small rosewood desk--a lady’s desk and hardly appropriate for a man’s
study.

“That is the desk Ursula told me of; the one that had belonged to her
mother and that her stepfather had so cruelly refused to give to her
at her mother’s death,” murmured Josie.

The girl detective slid into the study, closed the door gently and
deftly fitted a small skeleton key into the lock of the rosewood desk.
It responded to her touch and opened easily. There were pigeonholes
filled with letters, receipts and bills. With a quick hand and keen
eye Josie rapidly ran through the piles of correspondence. Suddenly a
foreign stamp arrested her attention. She pulled out a slim envelope,
tucked in with others, and to her delight saw that it was addressed
to Miss Ursula Ellett. She slipped out the letter and quickly put the
empty envelope back in the pigeonhole where she had found it.

“No time to read it now, but how I’d like to know what it says! Anyhow,
I am sure Ursula has never read it, because the date on the envelope is
November of this year.”

Quickly the little sleuth ran through the other papers. In the drawer
she found a bulky epistle, also directed to Miss Ursula Ellett. This
too had a foreign stamp and was postmarked Kimberly, the date rubbed
so that Josie could not make it out. The contents of this envelope she
also confiscated and in its place stuffed some old time tables she
found on the table. Quickly she closed the desk and locked it and was
back downstairs listening to the radio concert before even Teddy had
missed her. She patted her pocket to reassure herself that the papers
were safe and then tried to compose herself to listen to the rather
thin music miraculously furnished.

Josie felt the evening would never be over, so anxious was she to read
the communications purloined from the rosewood desk. She was able to
whisper to Teddy that she had something of possible importance and that
young man’s eyes were also shining with anticipation.

“I am not crazy about snooping around a house or desk-breaking,” Josie
told him, “but he had something that did not belong to him and I am
merely carrying out Uncle Sam’s laws in delivering to the rightful
person her own mail. When can we go?”

“I’ll scare up Mother and tell her the weather is liable to get colder
or hotter or something and maybe we can leave in a few minutes,”
replied the astute Teddy.

The threat of a possible snowstorm did make Mrs. Trask decide to start
for Peewee Valley rather earlier than a dinner party usually breaks up
and at last Josie was free to read the letters to Ursula.

Poor Teddy must wait until morning to find out what was in them, as
Josie was dropped at Miss Lucy Leech’s, while he dutifully drove his
mother home.




CHAPTER XVIII

THE CLUE IN THE FILM


The letter was from Uncle Bob Benson to Ursula. Josie felt justified in
reading it, in order that she might get all the light possible on the
doings of Cheatham. It was a sad little letter, evidently written by a
very sick man. The writing was shaky and dim, with many words almost
illegible, but Josie managed to make them out.

Uncle Ben was deeply contrite at having left his sister and her
children when no doubt they needed him most. He had just learned of his
sister’s death and showed much feeling and distress. He wrote:

“But soon I may join her, dear Ursula, if one so unworthy as I can hope
to join a saint in Heaven. I have not many weeks to live, but am hoping
I can reach Louisville to die, if I can but muster enough strength to
start on the journey. In the meantime I am instructing my lawyer to put
my affairs in order and am making a will leaving what small fortune I
have amassed to you, my dear niece. I am not including my nephews in
my will, as I think it best for boys to have to hustle for a living
and not have things made too easy for them. I am sure they are well
provided for by the estate your father left.

“I am writing you all this although I am hoping to spend my last days
under your tender and forgiving care. I am hoping also that that man
who married your mother has left Louisville, now that he can no longer
control that poor, sweet, misguided woman. I cannot forgive myself for
having left her to his merciless power. I shall be with you in a few
weeks now and, in the meantime, love me if you can and try to forgive
me.”

That was all. Josie found herself weeping over the letter. Her
rage knew no bounds when she thought of Cheatham’s keeping such a
communication from Ursula. No doubt it was on receipt of this letter
that he had sent Miss Fitchet to spy upon his stepdaughter in Dorfield.

The more bulky letter was from Toler & Smith, a firm of attorneys at
Kimberly. Ben Benson was dead and Toler & Smith had been appointed
administrators of his last will and testament. They enclosed a copy of
his will, in which his whole estate, amounting to about one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars, had been bequeathed to Ursula. Toler expected
to arrive in Louisville during the month of January, or perhaps
earlier. Cheatham deliberately kept the knowledge from Ursula and no
doubt his game was to say he had either not received the mail or had
forwarded it to the girl.

Josie decided that Ursula must come to Louisville immediately.

“I’ll telegraph in the morning,” said Josie. “I can’t bear to get
the poor girl out on the midnight train, and in the meantime I must
get some sleep, in spite of the fact that my brain is going around
like a whirligig. Now let’s see. We’ve got a lot of evidence against
Cheatham that he is as crooked as a snake, but we have nothing to prove
he kidnaped little Philip or caused him to be kidnaped. Where is the
child? All of the money from the diamond mines will mean nothing to
Ursula if her baby brother isn’t found.”

The problem spun over and over in Josie’s mind, until at last she
dropped asleep. It seemed to her she had only lost consciousness a
moment when she heard a brisk knocking on her door. It was broad
daylight. A glance at her watch informed her it was eight o’clock.

“Here am a letter fo’ you, honey,” Aunt Mandy was calling as she kept
up a steady tapping on the door. “One er them there ’portant ’pistles
wiv a blue stamp an’ a boy a-ridin’ fer dear life on it. I reckon some
er yo’ folks mus’ be daid ter be in sich a hurry ter let you know ’bout
it.”

Josie jumped from her bed and opened the door.

“I do hope I’m not late for breakfast, Aunt Mandy! It won’t take me
a minute to get down. I don’t want Miss Lucy to be telling me what’s
what.”

“Lawsamussy, honey, any time befo’ nine ’ll go in dis house,” Aunt
Mandy went off grinning happily over the quarter Josie had slipped into
her hand.

The special delivery letter was from Ursula and there was much in it
to cause our little detective to ponder. Could it be that she was
wrong and Cheatham had nothing to do with the crime of carrying off
little Philip? Josie sat hunched up in bed, lost in thought. She
read over and over Ursula’s copy of the letter found under her door.
One thing sure, Ursula had better take the next train to Louisville.
Sitting hunched up in bed and thinking was not getting anywhere, so
Josie quickly got ready for breakfast. Teddy must be communicated with
immediately, but that young man had caught an early trolley from Peewee
and before Josie finished her breakfast he was ringing Miss Lucy’s
doorbell and eagerly asking for Miss Josie O’Gorman.

“I must talk to you somewhere, but where?” asked Josie. “A
boarding-house parlor is hardly the place for a chat, and it’s too cold
and sloppy to talk while we walk.”

“How about my office?”

“All right, if it is private.”

“Well, I share it with two other fellows and there is a flapper
stenographer and I must say lots of people loaf on us.”

“I tell you, let’s go to an early movie,” said Josie. “There is no
place on earth so quiet and private as an early movie. How soon do they
open up here?”

“One of them makes a specialty of being open all the time with a
continuous performance. Let’s go there.”

Before acting on this plan, Ursula was wired to come to Louisville at
once.

“She can’t get here until late this afternoon and in the meantime we
can snoop around. Ho! for the cinema!” said Josie.

The motion picture theatre was dark and warm. The performance was
beginning as the young people entered. They were the only ones on
pleasure bent so early in the morning and had the place to themselves,
except for two men in the center of the house who were evidently
left-overs from the night before and were now peacefully sleeping.

“This is not much of a place, except that they do run a good news
reel,” apologized Teddy. “They get the happenings of the world hot off
the bat.”

“I dote on the Travelaughs and news reels,” said Josie. “I go to the
movies a lot just to be quiet and in the dark and think. I follow the
show with half my brain and think with the other half.”

“Well, what do you say to watching the news reel and then talking
business through the slapstick comedy that is sure to follow?”

Josie thought that a fine plan and gave her attention to the screen,
upon which this item was soon displayed:

    “A large fire in Cincinnati on Christmas Day did much damage
    and injured several persons. The crowd has gathered to see the
    firemen search the smouldering ruins for the charred remains of
    a night watchman who is supposed to be under the debris.”

Josie clutched Teddy’s arm, as the picture followed.

“Look! Look at that woman on the left, dragging a little boy by the
hand. I mean that woman with her head on one side, who is hurrying
along the sidewalk. Oh, now they are gone! I must see them again.
Teddy! Teddy! That little boy is Philip Ellett and I believe in my soul
the woman is Miss Fitchet! I never laid eyes on her before but Ursula
told me how she carried her head on one side and how she walked in a
zigzag course. Could we possibly see that news reel again?”

“We could wait until the show begins again or perhaps we could get the
manager to run it over for us,” said Teddy.

“That would be fine, but I fancy waiting is our only chance. I don’t
really see the use in viewing it again. I am as sure the little boy was
Philip as I can be of anything. Seeing it again wouldn’t help matters a
bit. The caption read that it was Cincinnati on Christmas Day. That is
where they have taken the boy. I’ll just light out for Cincinnati.”

“And I’ll go too,” declared Teddy.

“Not at all, my dear fellow! If you go trapesing off to Cincinnati, who
is to meet Ursula when she arrives on that night train? She may need
your protection and need it badly. I’ll bet you a hat that Cheatham
is meeting every train that comes in. But I haven’t had time to talk
to you at all about what I have discovered and now I must fly to the
station and get the first train out for Cincinnati. We didn’t get much
business discussed in the movies after all.”

“Well, there’s a train out in half an hour. Let’s jump in a taxi and
you can go by Miss Lucy’s and get your grip and catch the train too, if
you are the hustler I think you are.”

Josie agreed, and they rushed to Miss Lucy’s where, with a flying
good-bye to Aunt Mandy, with instructions to take good care of her
mail and assurances that she would return in a day and maybe sooner,
Josie was quickly back in the taxi with the excited young man.

“I won’t have time to tell you all about these letters,” said Josie,
“but I am going to give them over to your keeping and you hang onto
them through thick and thin, until Ursula has her rights. Be sure to
meet her on the train arriving at seven and take her to Miss Lucy’s.
Tell Aunt Mandy to give her my room. I wish I had thought about that
before. Perhaps I’ll have time to telephone from the station.”

“I’d like to take her out to my mother,” suggested Teddy.

“Sure you would, but she had better be right here in town, where we can
put our hands on her. Watch out for Cheatham, though. Don’t tell anyone
about the letters I purloined from his desk. He may take action if he
finds out about it and have me arrested for housebreaking or something.
The thing to do is to keep quiet. He won’t know the papers are gone
unless he gets wind of what we are up to and goes over his pigeonholes.”

The taxi drew up at the station, giving Josie five minutes to spare
before the Cincinnati train was called. She flew to a telephone booth
and in a moment had Aunt Mandy on the wire.

“Aunt Mandy, please, if Mr. Teddy Trask brings a young lady to the
house this evening, take good care of her and put her in my room. She
is a great friend of mine, also of Mr. Trask’s, and she is in deep
distress, so I am sure you will be kind to her.”

“Lawd love you, sho I will! I reckon she done los’ some er her foks.
Anyhow, I’m gonter take de bes’ care er any frien’ er yourn.”

“Thank you! Thank you!” and Josie hung up the receiver.

As she darted from the booth she ran straight into Mr. Cheatham. He
looked slightly puzzled as she bowed to him. Evidently he had forgotten
that such a person existed. He took off his hat and gave a perfunctory
nod. His brow was furrowed and he looked worried. Suddenly he saw Teddy
and evidently the sight of the young man refreshed his memory as to who
Josie was.

“Ah! seeing your friend off?” he asked endeavoring to be cordial.

“Yes. Are you going on a trip?”

“Well, er--, just a little business trip to Cincinnati. I will be gone
only a short while. Please tell your sister, if you should happen to
mention the fact that you saw me starting off, that I expect to be back
in plenty of time to keep our engagement for to-morrow evening.”

“Certainly!” said Teddy, but Josie noticed that his jaw shot out in a
very pugnacious angle as he answered.

“Good-bye, Josie!” and Teddy held her hand in a firm grip. “I’ll tell
the world you are some sport.”

“Good-bye, Teddy! It is mighty nice to have seen you and I hope we
shall meet again soon. Thank you for all your kindness.” Her tone was
that of a conventional young lady saying farewell to an old schoolmate
she had happened to run across. Teddy realized she was putting on the
social graces for the benefit of Mr. Cheatham, who was watching the
parting with some show of interest.

Josie was almost sorry she had acted so well when, after the train
pulled out, Cheatham sank in the seat by her and with an evident effort
began to try to make himself agreeable. Of course she realized fully
it was because he felt it incumbent upon him to pay some attention
to a young person, no matter how unattractive in his eyes, who was
evidently a close friend of the brother of Anita Trask.

“I’ll meet him halfway,” was her resolve, and forthwith she began a
line of so-called flapper talk that completely overwhelmed the man.




CHAPTER XIX

PHILIP IS FOUND


Had Cheatham harbored the slightest suspicion against Teddy Trask’s
friend, her conversation on the journey from Louisville to Cincinnati
would have completely dispelled it. Cheatham was an intelligent
villain, with some culture, and Josie’s deliberately silly patter bored
him intensely. He stood it for about an hour and then made a plea of
having to see a business acquaintance in the smoker.

“Well, I’ll see you again,” said Josie, “good-bye! Where are you
going to stop in Cincinnati? I may go out to Walnut Hills with some
friends or I’d just love to see you sometime. Where’d you say you were
stopping? Not that I’d have any time for you. My friends are awfully
smart. Money to burn. Cars and just everything. I’ll be dated up for
every minute. Only going to be here one night anyhow. Where’d you say?”

“Hotel Haddon!”

“Gee! I never even heard of it. Is it slummy?”

“Not at all! Very decent. An old downtown hotel!” Mr. Cheatham beat a
hasty retreat.

Josie dropped her flapperish expression as soon as Cheatham passed from
her coach and then she leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes with
a sigh of relief. She wanted to think and to think fast. The porter
passed down the aisle. Why not find out from him just where the Hotel
Haddon was? Giving an adroit twist to the shade at the window, she
pulled it out of place, which gave her an excuse to call on the porter
for his services.

“Awfully sorry,” she said, slipping some silver in his hand after he
had adjusted the shade. “Please tell me, do you know a Hotel Haddon in
Cincinnati?”

“Yes, miss! Down-town place--uster be a fambly hotel but now it’s
kinder taken over by theatre people. Travelin’ men use it some. I
wouldn’t ’vise it for a lone young lady.”

Josie thanked him and listened attentively to the list of hotels he did
advise for one in her situation.

“Now, there’s a real ladylike hotel right acrost the street from the
Haddon if you’ve a mind to be down-town. It’s called the Alpha,” said
the friendly porter.

When the train pulled in at Cincinnati Josie managed to make herself
invisible behind the curtains of the ladies’ dressing room. She hardly
expected Cheatham to look her up, but there was a chance of his doing
it, and she wanted him to forget she was in Cincinnati if possible.
When the train was about emptied, she darted out, seized a belated red
cap and had him put her safely into a taxi.

“Hotel Alpha,” she called, and at that moment had the satisfaction
of seeing Cheatham enter a bus bearing the inscription Hotel Haddon.
Evidently he had told the truth about his stopping place, because
he had no suspicion of her wanting to know for any reason but idle
curiosity.

Now came for Josie a period of watchful waiting. Fortunately the
parlors of the Alpha Hotel were situated on the mezzanine floor and
overlooked the street. Having registered and engaged a room, Josie
ensconced herself in an easy chair behind a sash curtain that gave
her a full view of the street and the Hotel Haddon which was directly
across the way.

She was excited. There was no use in denying it. She felt her heart
beats distinctly and her hands trembled a bit.

“Here, girl! Pull yourself together!” she commanded. “This is no time
to behave in a womanish way, even if you are stopping at a ladylike
hotel.”

She eagerly scanned the windows of the Haddon, beginning at the second
floor and working systematically to the top. The building was only
four stories high. The windows were blank and empty and gave away no
secrets. Once she saw a man with a black moustache look out of one on
the third floor, but he so quickly turned that Josie could not be sure
of his identity. She marked the window, however--third floor at the
extreme right.

So busy was she gazing at that window she almost missed seeing Cheatham
emerge from the hotel accompanied by a woman, rather handsome, with
auburn hair, carrying her head decidedly on one side. They were talking
animatedly and walking rapidly. Josie also marked the gait of the woman
which took a zigzag course--so much so that at times she bumped into
the man by her side.

Again she looked up to the window on the third floor. It was blank but
on the second floor directly below she was sure she could distinguish a
wistful little face pressed close to the pane.

Josie paused not a moment. She did not wait for the elevator, but
darted down the steps from the mezzanine and was across the street
and in the Hotel Haddon before Cheatham and Miss Fitchet had even
turned the corner. The Hotel Haddon was rather a haphazard place and,
there being no clerk at the desk at the time, it was not necessary for
her to explain her business. The elevator landed Josie at the second
floor and, with an air of being a guest, she walked to the extreme
end of the hall and turned the knob of the door of Number 220. She
had her skeleton key in case it was necessary to use it, but was much
relieved when the door opened. Evidently the kidnapers were so sure of
themselves they had not thought of locking the child in the room.

“Hello, Philip!” Josie said quietly. “I’ve come to take you home,
dear.”

Her tone was so composed that Philip did not cry out at all, but his
face was so bright with happiness that Josie almost gave herself up to
the tears that were well nigh choking her.

“Get your coat and hat and let’s hurry,” she said. “Don’t talk any now.
We can talk later.”

It was quite as easy to get out of the hotel with the boy as it had
been to get in without him. She used the stairs this time, however.
It was a matter of five minutes for Josie to release the room she had
engaged at the ladylike hotel, jump in a taxi with Philip and make for
the station. There was a train just ready to pull out, which she caught
by the greatest good luck. It was a local, but its destination was
Louisville. Josie would have taken it no matter what its destination,
as she was sure it was a wise plan to leave Cheatham and Fitchet at any
cost, and she hoped they would do some worrying.

Once they were settled in the train the little boy poured forth his
soul to his liberator.

“I wasn’t doin’ nothin’ but jes’ sleepin’ when all of a sudden somebody
jes’ picked me up an’ carried me off. I kinder thought it was Sister at
first an’ I didn’t wake up all the way. I jes’ went on dreamin’, kinder
half awake, but bye’m’bye I woke up ’cause somehow it didn’t smell
like Sister but like powder. I was so scairt by that time I didn’t know
what to do, so I kicked an’ hollered an’ clawed at that ol’ woman till
she spanked me good.

“We were in a automobile an’ I don’t know where we was goin’ or where
we’ve been but she made me put on my clothes an’ my overcoat, that she
had brung along with me, an’ she tol’ me if I didn’t hush up cryin’
she’d tell Santa Claus I was a bad boy an’ he wouldn’t bring me a thing
an’ I ’membered nex’ day was Christmus an’ I tried to stop bawlin’ but
I missed Sister an’ Ben so bad I didn’t care after a while whether ol’
Santy brought me anything or not. I didn’t see how he was gonter know
I wasn’t home with Sister. At last we went to that hotel where there
weren’t any chimbleys an she tol’ me if I acted ugly she’d give me to
the ash man, but if I ’haved she’d take me to the movies. There was a
big fire here when we first came an’ I saw the men digging for dead
folks but Aunty wouldn’t let me stop.”

“Oh, so she made you call her Aunty, did she?” asked Josie.

“Yes, but I don’t believe she’s any mo’ kin to me than the ash man.
She ain’t never lef me ’til jes’ befo’ you came for me, an’ then
somebody called her up on the ’phone an’ she jes’ powdered herself up
an’ put on her hat an’ tol’ me if I didn’t stay right still until she
got back a ol’ witch would git me. She said she was waitin’ out in the
hall for me, but I didn’t believe her a bit ’cause Sister already tol’
me there wasn’t any witches ’cept in books an’ Aunty didn’t have any
books.

“The man that called her up on the ’phone was waitin’ in the hall for
her but I never saw him. He tol’ her she’d better lock me up in the
room, but she said she was afraid of fire an’ I wouldn’t be no good to
them any more if I got burnt up. I don’t see what good I am to them
now, but Aunty made out she loved me mor’n Sister an’ Ben did, an’ she
was jes a borrowin’ me for a while an’ if I ’haved like a gemman maybe
sometime I could go see Sister. That’s the reason I didn’t holler, an’
was a gonter stay quiet in the room if you hadn’t come for me. She said
she was gonter bring me back some all-day suckers an’ all kinds of
things ’cause Santa Claus didn’t find me after all. An’ I pretty near
knew he wouldn’t.”

“I am pretty sure Santa Claus left your things at your home,” said
Josie softly. “I am also pretty sure you are going to see Sister and
Ben in a few hours. Sister has been very sad over your going away and
Ben has been miserable.”

“Now, didn’t I say so? But ol’ Aunty kep’ on tellin’ me Sister was glad
to get rid of me an’ had asked her to take me off. I never did b’lieve
her, ’cause I’d already caught her lyin’ ’bout Santa Claus. I sure have
missed all of you, The Lady in the Chair an’ Mrs. Danny an’ Uncle Peter
an’ Aunt Peter. I reckon I’m gonter go to sleep. I ain’t slep’ much
since Aunty grabbed me up an’ carried me off. I been thinkin’ so much
an’ then when I’d git mos’ asleep Aunty would pipe up an’ snore to beat
the band. I ain’t been away from home but ’bout three nights but it
seems to me as if I been born away from home an’ been a livin’ with ol’
Aunty all my life.”

“Tell me, Philip, before you go to sleep, was there anybody else with
you and Aunty--a man?”

“One time there was. I think he was Aunty’s brother, only he didn’t
make out he was my uncle. I heard them talkin’ an’ they writ a letter
together. That was in the hotel after we saw the fire a burnin’. She
called him Bill an’ she told him not to let ol’ C. lay eyes on him an’
he said he had some sense left. An’ then he went off with the letter
an’ I ain’t never seen him since an’ I ain’t sorry neither, cause he
was a turrible lookin’ man an’ I don’t see what ol’ C. would want to
lay eyes on him for.”

Philip then put his head in Josie’s lap and slept peacefully until the
porter gave warning that Louisville was the next stop.




CHAPTER XX

MISS FITCHET IS SURPRISED


If after Josie left the Hotel Haddon with little Philip she had again
ensconced herself in the ladies’ parlor of the Alpha, at the window
overlooking the street, instead of hurrying off as she did to the
station, she would have seen an interesting drama enacted. About
fifteen minutes after Cheatham and his companion left the hotel a
rough-looking man in a tweed suit and battered derby came slinking
along the street. He stopped in front of the hotel and looked furtively
around and then, evidently seeing nothing disconcerting, he darted
within. He, too, avoided the desk and also saved the elevator boy the
trouble of taking him upstairs. He almost ran down the hall and turned
the knob of Number 220. The door opened to him as it had to Josie.

“Humph! Where’s that blasted kid?” he muttered. “Hi! You kid, where
yuh hiding? You better come on out from under the bed. I ain’t one to
be easy on bad boys.” His tone was rough and commanding. Receiving no
answer, he jerked open the closet door and looked under the bed. He
even pulled out the drawers of the bureau, poked behind the radiator,
and then turned up the mattress, as though he expected someone to be
hid under it.

“She sure said 220,” he muttered, and drew from his pocket a note
written on Hotel Haddon paper. He read:

    “Dear Bill: Old C. will be here at three. I will take him out
    walking and will leave the door unlocked. Get the brat and make
    for L. on the night boat. Sis.”

“Something’s gone wrong,” he growled, “but she needn’t think she can
double-cross me. She took the kid with her more’n likely and left me in
a hole.” The man’s expression was brutal and lowering. Without stopping
to straighten the room, which he had succeeded in making look as though
a cyclone had struck it, he walked down the stairs and out of the
hotel. He then lounged across the street and, taking his stand near the
Hotel Alpha, he awaited the return of Cheatham and Miss Fitchet.

They were gone about an hour and then they came, walking very
leisurely, still talking animatedly but not so amicably as when they
had started on their ramble.

“I told you all the time Cincinnati was too close to Louisville and
Atlanta would be the better place,” Cheatham was saying.

“Well, Cincinnati suited me better,” she said with her panther-like
grin. “I reckon I’ve had all the trouble of this thing and I might be
considered a little.”

“So you have, but I have financed it,” he said.

“Oh, yes, financed it with a room in a cheap hotel and not even taxi
fare if you could help it!”

“Oh, well, I haven’t got so much, and you know it. I have managed to
keep Ursula Ellett from having the slightest inkling of Ben Benson’s
having left her a fortune. I wanted to be sure the boy was well hidden
and then I would get to work with letters telling her of her fortune,
following by demands for a large sum if the child was safely returned.
Ursula is such a softy and so close-mouthed she would be easy to do
out of this fortune, just as she has been easy to persuade that her
father’s fortune belonged to me. If she had had the gumption to go to a
good lawyer, I should have had to pursue other tactics. Well, I’ll bid
you good-bye, my dear. I’d like to take you to dinner but the boy knows
me too well for me to let him see me. It is a blessing he never saw you
before.”

“Good-bye then,” she smirked, “but it would be just as well to give
me a little cash. I am about broke and considering you expect to make
such large sums out of this business you might afford a little more
sumptuous quarters for your tool.”

He reluctantly separated several large bills from a roll.

“Not half enough,” she said. “Keep it up! You needn’t think I’ll do
your dirty work for nothing.”

He sullenly peeled off two more bills and put the roll back in his
pocket.

“Well, keep me informed how things are with you. It won’t be long
before I can make my haul.”

“Your haul, is it? I was thinking it would be our haul.”

“Oh, yes! Certainly! I have a man to see on business while I am in
Cincinnati and then I must catch the night train for Louisville. I’ll
see you again before I go. My room is 320--directly over yours. You can
telephone me there!”

The man in the tweed suit waited until Cheatham was out of sight and
then he darted across the street and again mounted the stairs to Room
220. He found the woman standing in the middle of the floor gazing with
disgust on the dismantled state of her room. One bureau drawer had been
pulled entirely out and the contents strewn over the floor. The open
closet door disclosed clothing jerked from the hooks and the mattress
was turned over, with bed clothes thrown around anywhere and everywhere.

“Well, Bill,” she said sharply, “you managed to get things in a nice
mess! Where’s the brat? You were to take him and keep him and not come
back until you heard from me. I don’t see that you need have turned up
my things in this way. Of course you were hunting money, but you might
have known I wouldn’t have left it around where you could get hold of
it.”

“Money, is it? You--you--you two-faced----!” The man was so angry he
could hardly speak. “You think you can double-cross me, do you, and get
by with it? Not on your life!”

The woman stared at him in astonishment. She looked at him fixedly and
her grin turned to a snarl.

“Bill, you are crazy. I don’t know what you are talking about. You stop
your carrying on and tell me where that boy is.”

“You tell me! When I got here he was gone and I messed up the room
hunting for him, thinking he was hiding.”

“Gone!” Miss Fitchet’s tone was one of such genuine dismay that the
brother was forced to recognize her sincerity.

“Yes, gone!”

“Well then you have got to find him. I don’t trust you, Bill. You have
lied to me before now.”

“Trust me or not--the kid’s gone and I reckon we’d best get busy
finding him. I’d have started before now, but I thought you were
playing me a trick.”

“He’s somewhere here in the hotel, I am sure. He’s always trying to
make friends and I guess as soon as I had my back turned he was out of
the room. I’ll settle things when I do find him.”

Inquiry at the desk for her “nephew” disclosed nothing. The clerk had
been off duty. The elevator boy had seen no child coming or going. The
chambermaid had no knowledge of the boy. The hotel was ransacked from
basement to roof.

“I fancy you’d better get in touch with the police,” suggested the
clerk. As that was the last thing Fitchet wished to do, she became
angry at mention of the officers of the law and began to berate the
management of the Hotel Haddon for their carelessness.

“Come, lady, we don’t run a nursery,” laughed the clerk. “You’d have
been better off at the Alpha if you’d wanted a day nurse for the boy.
We don’t make a specialty of kids.”

“I wonder if old Cheatham himself could have had the boy spirited away
while I was off,” Miss Fitchet suggested to her brother. “He’s capable
of it.”

“Of course! That’s exactly the ticket. I’ll wring his neck for him. He
ain’t got any honor,” said Bill.

“We’ll take the night train for Louisville and give him what’s what.
I reckon he’ll be expecting me to come to him with a tale of Philip’s
being stolen and he’ll have some big lie ready. I’ll fool him. I won’t
tell him the boy’s gone.”

While Fitchet was berating Cheatham to her brother, a messenger came
with a letter for her. It was from her employer and confederate telling
her he was taking the afternoon express for Louisville and would not
see her again but that he would be back in Cincinnati in a few days.

“The villain!” she cried. “Come on, Bill, we’ll catch the express!”
Literally throwing her clothes into a valise, and without stopping to
pay the jocular clerk, she and the disreputable brother jumped into a
taxi and sped to the station. They barely made the train, just as it
was pulling out.




CHAPTER XXI

JOSIE O’GORMAN’S TRIUMPH


Obedient to Josie’s telegram, Ursula took the first train from Dorfield
for Louisville. The Conants wanted her to leave Ben in their care, but
she could not bear to be parted from him and he felt that he must take
care of his sister and must be with her all the time.

“Josie wouldn’t have sent for me unless she felt sure it was necessary,
and what is important to me is important to Ben,” she declared as she
thanked her friends.

“Josie will meet us, I am sure,” she said to Ben as they neared their
destination.

At a junction not far from Louisville, the coach from Dorfield
was joined to the Cincinnati express. At the same junction the
accommodation train that Josie and little Philip had boarded so
hurriedly had been tied up for reasons best known to the train
dispatchers and after a long, long wait, the passengers were
transferred to the express.

“Plenty of room in the forward coach, miss,” the brakeman said to
Josie, and the astute female detective, all unconscious of what waited
her in the forward coach, walked innocently in, holding her charge by
the hand, and there sat Ursula and Ben.

A love feast followed, Ursula smiling happily as she hugged little
Philip to her bosom. It was such a wonderful denouement to the
kidnaping that Josie was sorry to have to confess that she had not
planned it.

“I never dreamed this was the Dorfield train,” she said. “Philip and I
were dumped at this junction and all I knew was that we were on our way
to Louisville and would get there sometime.”

She had so much to tell Ursula, and Ursula had so much to tell her, and
Philip had so much to say about his wanderings, that the station at
Louisville was reached all too soon.

Teddy was there waiting for them, his eyes aglow with a new light as
Ursula stepped from the train.

At the same time, from the forward coach, two men and a woman alighted
on the platform. They were Cheatham, Miss Fitchet and her brother.
All of them were angry. Cheatham was trying to pacify Miss Fitchet,
who was violently accusing him of having abducted little Philip. He
in his turn was eying Bill with disfavor, feeling sure that he was in
some way responsible for the disappearance of the boy. Never having
heard of Miss Fitchet’s having a brother until they boarded the moving
train at Cincinnati and burst in upon him with violent invective and
vituperation, it was but natural for him to be suspicious of the two.
Still it behooved him to endeavor to calm the woman, as she already
knew too much about his underhand operations for it to be safe for him
to make an enemy of her.

All unconscious of the happy group at the far end of the platform, the
three persons united by villainy and divided by distrust approached.
Bill was the first to see Philip.

“Yonder’s the brat, you hound!” he cried out in a rage. “So you had him
on the train with you all the time! But we’ve trapped you.”

Miss Fitchet was quick to see that Ursula had hold of her little
brother’s hand and at the same moment Mr. Cheatham realized that
standing by her were Teddy Trask, Ben and, strange to say, the silly
little flapper person who had talked to him on the way up to Cincinnati
only that morning.

Looking down the long platform, Ursula saw the sinister trio. Her
instinct was to clasp her little brother to her heart and run, but a
fine something that was in the girl made her stand up and, with head
erect and eyes flashing, face the persons who had caused her as bitter
hours as could be spent by the innocent.

“That man with Mr. Cheatham and Miss Fitchet is the one who brought
the note to me; I recognize the man I saw coming up the street,” she
whispered to Josie.

“He’s the one she calls Bill,” said Philip. “He wrote the note, ’cause
I saw him doin’ it. You ain’t gonter let them take me away again, are
you, Sister?”

Teddy picked the boy up and put him on his shoulder.

“Now you are bigger than anybody,” he said, “and you need never be
afraid any more.”

Josie was a generous antagonist and she could not help feeling sorry
for Cheatham. He looked like a whipped hound as he approached them,
cringing pitiably. He must make an effort and try to appear at his
ease.

He whispered to Miss Fitchet: “Go on! Take your brother and pretend we
are not together.”

“I’ll do no such thing,” she answered, showing her teeth like a
snarling tiger. “The jig’s up and you are to take the blame, so watch
your step.”

Cheatham tried to think quickly. Should he pass Ursula without
recognition? What should he do? He could not turn tail and run, as he
would have liked to do. If it were not for the hateful Fitchet and her
rowdy brother he might have faced the situation. How could he explain
his conduct to Teddy Trask? How could his stepdaughter have found her
brother and got him away from their clutches? What had that colorless
Miss Friend to do with it all? Why had she gone to Cincinnati by one
train and returned to Louisville by the next? What proof would they
have that he had been implicated in the kidnaping?

Such thoughts brought him up to where Ursula stood, with her two good
friends and her brothers. Evidently she would leave it to him whether
or not speech was to pass between them. She moved not a muscle, but
stood with erect head and flashing eyes, as if about to pass judgment
on a criminal.

Josie broke the spell by saying: “Ah, Mr. Cheatham, so we came back on
the same train! If I had only known! Wasn’t it wonderful, too, that I
met my dear friend Ursula Ellett on the train? Such a sweet girl! It
was so fortunate that quite by chance I ran across her little brother
at the Hotel Haddon.

“You see, I went to the Alpha, directly across the street. When you
told me you were going to the Haddon I didn’t like to go there, too,
because you might have thought I was pursuing you, and far be it from
me to give any man that impression, but since you had assured me the
neighborhood was respectable, I just stopped at the Alpha.

“I saw little Philip peeping out of the second-story window, and as
I knew his sister was very uneasy about him, I gave up my date in
Cincinnati and just brought him along with me. You see, Miss Ellett and
I are very dear friends. In fact, we are partners in a little business
in Dorfield. She runs the tea room and I do the washing and dabble a
bit in detective work.”

All of this chatter Josie got off without drawing breath, and with
the mincing manners of a very silly young person. Teddy found himself
laughing and Ursula could not help giggling, in spite of the deep
emotion that was mastering her.

Josie continued: “This is Miss Fitchet, I take it, and her brother,
known as Bill? This gentleman, I understand, was in Dorfield only last
night, where he went to deliver a letter to Miss Ellett. He got off
the train at Dorset instead of Dorfield and there got a lift from a
country doctor who was riding in an old-fashioned car of the vintage
of 1912. He left the doctor without saying ‘thank you’ and boarded a
freight train going west. The letter he delivered to Miss Ellett is
very incriminating.”

At these words the man called Bill turned and began to run, but his
course took him directly into the arms of a big policeman, who held him
tightly until he could give an account of himself.

“I reckon you’d better hold on to him, Captain, for a while,” said
Josie. “He might be needed.”

At the mention of a letter having been sent to Ursula, Mr. Cheatham
looked very much mystified. He turned on Miss Fitchet.

“What does this mean?”

“I reckon it means there is double-crossing going on. What do you want
to do about these people, Ursula?” asked Josie.

“Oh, let them all go,” said the girl. “I have my baby back and that is
all that makes any difference.”

“Yes, that is all that makes much difference,” said Teddy Trask, “but
I think you’d better not let them get away until you have a business
understanding with your stepfather. If you will employ me as your
attorney, I’ll attend to that.”

“I do, I do!” With Ursula’s response, Teddy Trask swung into action.

“All right then. Mr. Cheatham, I shall ask you to be in my office
to-morrow morning at nine o’clock. You had best not attempt to get
out of this or I shall have to advise Uncle Sam concerning certain
tampering with mails. Letters addressed to Miss Ursula Ellett from her
Uncle Ben Benson, and from an attorney in Kimberly, have been held by
you and unlawfully opened.”

“I--I--could not forward mail to my stepdaughter when I did not know
her address,” stammered Cheatham.

“Your confederate, Miss Fitchet, saw Miss Ellett in Dorfield in
November. The police of that town have a record of her having been in
Dorfield at that time, immediately after Mr. Benson wrote to Ursula.
His letter is now in my possession, so you need not worry to look it
up. I also hold the will of the late Mr. Benson and will expect to
see the representative from the firm of Toler & Smith, who will be in
Louisville shortly, so I understand.

“I shall ask you in the morning to account in full for the estate of
the late Philip Ellett. What belongs to the children you have defrauded
shall be returned to them unless you are willing to spend some twenty
years behind the bars.

“As for you,” and Teddy Trask turned on Miss Fitchet, who had been
rather enjoying the ragging her employer was undergoing, “you had
best be very quiet and behave very well. You have been guilty of a
great crime and it rests with Miss Ellett whether or not you shall be
punished for it. The police in Louisville have you under surveillance,
so you need not hope to escape if it is desirable to keep you.”

“Anything more?” asked Cheatham sullenly.

“Yes, don’t trust silly flappers with the name of the hotel where you
expect to stop,” said Josie, in her natural voice and manner, which
were in startling contrast to the one which she had hitherto used in
addressing Cheatham.

Turning to the abashed nurse, Josie said: “As for you, Miss Fitchet,
when you are running off with poor little boys and almost breaking
their sisters’ hearts, don’t pass by fires where the camera man is no
doubt on his job. News reels are quickly developed and on the screen.
If I had not seen you on the screen, dragging poor little Philip along
the sidewalk near where the big fire was on Christmas morning in
Cincinnati, I might have taken much longer to trace you. I say ‘thank
goodness for the movies.’ Also please let me add that the world would
have more respect for all of you if you could realize that there should
be honor among thieves.”




Transcriber’s Note:

Spelling, hyphenation and punctuation have been retained as
they appear in the original publication, except as follows:

  Page 45
    said Ursula, looking up from her work.” _changed to_
    said Ursula, looking up from her work.

  Page 58
    her mother and father and her brother? _changed to_
    her mother and father and her brother!

  Page 68
    she could not help but feeling _changed to_
    she could not help but feel

  Page 80
    mule cyars uster fotch th _changed to_
    mule cyars uster fotch th’

  Page 84
    vitamines but she had a genius _changed to_
    vitamins but she had a genius

  Page 156
    She rememberd that his shoes had but _changed to_
    She remembered that his shoes had but

  Page 163
    go back the way it came. So long! _changed to_
    go back the way it came. So long!”

  Page 176
    “Josie had felt it wise _changed to_
    Josie had felt it wise





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Josie O'Gorman, by 
Emma Speed Sampson and Edith Van Dyne

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 60974 ***