Josie O’Gorman and the Meddlesome Major

The package tore and disclosed a mass of filmy lace.—Chapter VII

Josie O’Gorman and the Meddlesome Major

By Edith Van Dyne Author of The Mary Louise Stories, and Josie O’Gorman

Frontispiece by Isabel Bush Mack

The Reilly & Lee Co. Chicago

Printed in the United States of America Copyright, 1924 by The Reilly & Lee Co. All Rights Reserved Josie O’Gorman and the Meddlesome Major

CHAPTER I JOSIE BECOMES A SALES GIRL

“Not much on looks!”

“Who?”

“That new girl the boss has just hired. Got no style to speak of. I reckon they’ll begin her at the notion counter. It don’t take much looks to hold down a job there.”

“Brains, perhaps!” suggested a trim looking girl with twinkling grey eyes and wavy brown hair, noticeable in that it was not so elaborately coiffured as her companions’. “My opinion is, Gertie Wheelan, that Mr. Burnett thinks more about brains than beauty where his business is concerned.”

“Don’t you fool yourself, Jane Morton. He may hire a plain one now and then because the[8] good lookers give out, but take it from me, there ain’t a man livin’ that don’t fall for beauty.”

“Well, since you are already so pretty, Gertie, suppose you give us folks that run to brains a chance to doll up a bit. You’ve been standing in front of that looking glass for ten minutes and lunch hour’s most up,” said a stylish little black-eyed girl who might have laid claim to beauty as well as wit.

“Stop shoving me, Min,” begged Gertie. “Here, get in front of me. I can see over your head, you are such a little thing.”

“I’m young yet,” snapped back Min. “By the time I am as old as you are I may grow some.”

Age was Gertie’s tender point and Min’s sally drew a delighted laugh from the girls assembled in the employees’ room of the department store of Burnett & Burnett.

While they were talking and laughing and primping a young girl quietly entered the room, so quietly that she had removed her hat and wrap and put them away in the locker room before the group around the mirror was even aware of her presence. It was the new girl and Gertie Wheelen was right—she was not much on looks,[9] even less than that according to the standards of the employees of Burnett & Burnett. She was small, sandy haired, and her features, while not displeasing, were without distinction; eyes pale blue and nose more or less shapeless. Her mouth showed character and her teeth were white and even. Her complexion was good, being clear and healthy with a sprinkling of freckles over the formless nose.

Gertie was wrong about the lack of style. Josie O’Gorman, while not modish, had style; a style that was all her own. She managed by arrangement of hair and cut of gown to look enough like other persons to pass unnoticed in a crowd, and yet Josie’s dress changed but little with the passing fashions and her intimate friends declared that the only alteration of hair dressing she ever indulged in was to show her ears or not show her ears according to the latest decree of fashion. Her dress was always immaculate and always the same—in the winter, blue serge with white collars and cuffs for the day, and white canton crepe trimmed with lace for evening; in the summer blue linen took the place of the blue serge and the canton crepe gave way to white linen or organdy. Her immaculate state was due to the[10] fact that she had many gowns of the same model and innumerable collars and cuffs which she always laundered herself.

“That’s her now,” said Gertie as she caught a glimpse of the new girl in the mirror over Min’s head.

“She!” corrected Jane Morton. “The last lecture on salesmanship laid especial stress on the importance of good English.”

Josie bowed politely and smiled pleasantly but impersonally at the girls.

“How do you do?” said Jane. “I hope you will like Burnett & Burnett’s. It is really a great place to work. I want to introduce you to the girls.”

“Glad to meet all of you—my name’s Josie O’Gorman.”

“Where are you to begin?” asked Gertie.

“Tapes, darning cotton and the like.”

“What did I tell you?” Gertie whispered audibly to Min.

“It is a good counter,” said Min. “It’s in the middle of the store where you can see everything that goes on. I tell you a lot is going on here lately—more ‘kleps’ have been busy. I’ve been working for Burnett & Burnett ever since I was[11] a kid and I know they have lost more in the last month than they have since I was a cash girl. Seems like things just vanish. It certainly made me hot when that box of point lace just disappeared off the face of the earth. I wish Mr. Burnett would take me away from the lace counter and put me over with the safety pins. Nobody ever bothers to steal safety pins from a shop but just borrows them from friends.”

Josie laughed and decided she was going to like little Min and Jane Morton.

“Do you think somebody stole the whole box of point lace?” Josie asked.

“No I don’t think it—I know it. One minute it was there and the next minute it wasn’t there. I reported it the second that I missed it and Major Simpson, the detective, got busy right off but it was remnant day and the store was packed and jammed with bargain hunters and that lace was gone and gone for good. I sure did feel bad about it. I had to go up to the office and answer a million questions and before they got through with me I felt like I had swallowed the stuff and it was choking me. There was about five hundred dollars worth of lace in that box.”

“Well how’d you like to be me and have some[12] woman walk off with a whole bottle of perfume at ten dollars an ounce?” asked Gertie. “Old Burnett was sniffin’ around me so any body’d a thought I’d taken a bath in the stuff. I just howled and cried to beat the band. I made so much racket it took six floor walkers and the boss to pacify me and they finally sent me home in a taxi. I reckon the next time a thief gets busy at the toilet goods counter they won’t call on me to testify.”

“Your tears cost ten dollars an ounce, do they?” laughed Josie.

“Exactly!”

“I fawncy the thief is someone from the outside,” drawled a girl who had hitherto been silent and who had been introduced to Josie as Miss Fauntleroy either because Jane Morton did not know her first name or did not care to use it. Miss Fauntleroy was a very striking looking young woman, tall, slender, and broad shouldered; a decided brunette with wonderfully arched brows and lashes long enough to marcel, at least so her co-workers at Burnett & Burnett’s declared. Her blue-black hair was done after the latest mode, with waves and puffs and ringlets galore and never a lock out of place even after the strenuous[13] ordeal of bargain day. Her voice was a deep contralto with a slightly foreign intonation, although she had divulged to Min that she was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, and intimated that she had cultivated the drawl and accent because she considered it elegant.

Of course Min had handed this information on to her best friends and it had become common property at the department store that Miss Fauntleroy was not near so mysterious as she would have one think. Her hands and feet were large but her shoes were stylishly cut and her nails showed much care and attention. She walked with a slow swinging gait and seemed never to be in a hurry, even when closing hour was approaching. She had proven herself an efficient saleswoman in the jewel and novelty department.

Josie O’Gorman’s ostensible business at Burnett & Burnett’s was the selling of tapes and darning cotton, and so ably did she play the part of shop girl that no one but her employers dreamed she was there for any other purpose. There was nothing in the girl’s appearance to indicate that she was the cleverest detective of her age and sex in the United States.

[14]Shoplifting had developed into a serious matter in the department store of Burnett & Burnett, so serious that they had found it necessary to call in outside help on their detective force. Up to this time the detective force had been more or less of a farce since it was what the younger member of the firm, Mr. Theodore Burnett, designated as an inherited failing, one handed down from father to son to grandsons. The “force” consisted of one old gentleman known as Major Simpson.

“I’m not saying poor old Simpson is not a good man, as good as they make them,” Mr. Theodore Burnett said to Josie when she reported to the firm in regard to entering their employ.

“Good man but poor detective,” put in the elder brother, Mr. Charles Burnett. “See here, Miss O’Gorman, we’ve got you over here from Dorfield because Captain Lonsdale has recommended you so highly. I fancy there are detectives right here in our own city of Wakely that could do the business for us but you understand we don’t want poor old Simpson to know we are employing outside help. He is very touchy—”

“And very conceited!” interrupted Mr. Theodore.

[15]“Be that as it may, we don’t want to hurt his feelings as he has been with the firm from the beginning. My grandfather stated in his will that Major Simpson should have a job with us as long as he wanted it and after that was to be pensioned.”

“But the old duck refuses to be pensioned although we offered to pay him more for not working than for working,” laughed Mr. Theodore.

“I rather like that in him,” said Josie. “But now to come down to what you want me to do. As I understand it I am to be employed by you secretly and you are to turn me loose, giving me carte blanche as to my methods.”

“Ahem!” hesitated Mr. Charles, who had his own idea about how everything connected with the department store should be run. “N-n-ot exactly.”

“Of course you are to work it your own way,” put in Theodore. “My brother just means he’d take it as a favor if you report to us now and then.”

“Naturally! Well then, in the first place perhaps I had better have another name to start with as somebody may know my true name. Not because of my own reputation as a detective—I have[16] none to speak of—but because of my father’s. Perhaps you are aware of the fact that my father was one of the most able detectives in America, and that means the world, because we are up with the French and ahead of the Russians in the detective business.”

The Burnetts did not know it but they had the tact to pretend they did, so Josie’s one tender point was spared a jab. Mary Smith was agreed upon as a good working name and the notion counter as a fair vantage point from which to view the comings and goings of possible shoplifters.

“I should like a list of the names and addresses of all your employees,” suggested Josie.

“Certainly, Miss O’Gorman,” agreed the brothers.

“Smith! Just forget my name is O’Gorman, please.”

“Oh, sure! Miss Smith!”

At this juncture there came a light knock on the door and without waiting for permission a dapper little old gentleman entered the private office of the president. Josie decided that the new comer was as pompous in the back as he was in the front and when he seated himself stiffly in a high backed[17] chair she came to the conclusion that he had achieved something which she had hitherto considered impossible—for a person to be as pompous sitting down as standing up. Evidently there was no doubt in the old gentleman’s mind that he was a more important personage than either the president or vice-president of Burnett & Burnett’s. As for the little sandy haired shop girl, who was no doubt being employed by the firm—she was of no importance whatsoever.

“I wish to speak with you alone, Mr. Charles. Of course Mr. Theodore may remain if he so desires, but—” he looked meaningly at Josie, “others may retire. New girl, I presume.”

“Yes—let me introduce you to Miss O’Gorman, Major Simpson,” said the senior member of the firm.

“Smith,” hastily corrected the junior member. Major Simpson did not hear the correction and Josie was registered on the tablets of the old gentleman’s memory as O’Gorman and O’Gorman she was forced to remain, since it was deemed wiser not to take the present incumbent of house detective into their confidence and being introduced by one name and employed by another would certainly have caused suspicion.

[18]“I am sorry Brother Charles made the break,” Theodore said as he accompanied Josie to the elevator, leaving his brother alone with Major Simpson.

“Oh, that’s all right,” laughed Josie. “I’m not much on aliases anyhow and really prefer working in my own name. Please let me have the list of employees and their addresses as soon as possible.”

CHAPTER II THE NEW HOME ON MEADOW STREET

Wakely classed itself as a city, while Dorfield was content to be listed as a mere town that might someday grow up. In spite of its size, Wakely seemed to our young detective to be a very lonesome place on that first Sunday she was compelled to spend away from all her dear friends in Dorfield, where she had lived since her father’s death. There were plenty of people in Wakely, too many people, in fact, making the housing problem a serious one. But nobody knew Josie and nobody cared to know her. Nobody paid the least attention to her at the beautiful old church where she had gone to worship in the morning; nobody spoke to her at the clean little restaurant where she had eaten her Sunday dinner; and now as she sat on a bench in the city park, nobody in all the surging throngs out for the usual Sunday stroll even so much as glanced her way.

Josie was not inclined to be lonesome. She was too interested in people and things to think very[20] much of her own aloneness, but there were times when in spite of herself she felt a crying need for a real home of her own; something more than the partitioned off rear end of a shop, which was where she had been living for some time before coming to Wakely. The place was called The Higgledy Piggledy Shop, conducted by Josie and her friends Elizabeth Wright and Irene Mae Farlane, and they had managed it to their profit and to the delectation of the citizens of Dorfield, who found in it a long felt want.

If the Higgledy Piggledies did not have what you wanted they would get it for you, and if they could not do what you wished done they would see to it that someone else did do it. For Josie the shop was in reality a side line of the detective business, but it was of great interest to her and she missed the gay chatter of the partners, the daily visits of her dear Mary Louise—young Mrs. Danny Dexter—and she sorely missed the kindly interest and advice of Captain Charlie Lonsdale, the Chief of Police of Dorfield. He it was who had so highly recommended Josie to Burnett & Burnett.

“I almost wish he hadn’t,” sighed Josie as she sat on the park bench in the wintry sunshine[21] and watched the people of Wakely swarm past. “I don’t care much who steals the stupid old dry-goods. It’s a dull job and I’d be glad to be out of it.”

“Hello! There’s somebody I know—but who on earth is it? Where have I seen that boy before? Certainly I don’t remember ever having laid eyes on his companions, rare birds that they are!”

Many persons pride themselves on never forgetting a face, but Josie might have patted herself on the back for never forgetting a pair of shoulders, a set of head, a contour of cheek or chin. However, she was completely baffled by the youth who had passed her as she sat on the hard, cold bench. Our little detective was irritated that she could not remember where she had seen that turn of cheek and line of shoulder, so irritated that she decided the seat in the park was very uncomfortable and she would trail along behind the trio and find out something about them. Her curiosity was idle but was it not Sunday afternoon? Why not let curiosity be idle as well as persons?

The man and woman walking with the youth appeared too young to be the father and mother[22] of the boy and too old to be brother and sister, yet there was an intangible resemblance to both that led Josie to conclude they were his parents. The man was swarthy, black-eyed, and flashily dressed in a checked suit, gray spats and a brown derby. He walked with a slight swagger, twirling a slender cane in his lemon colored gloved hand.

The woman was small, inclined to be stout, and a great mop of henna colored hair elaborately dressed in waves and puffs defied oversight and invited scrutiny. She wore a handsome fur cloak and a purple velvet hat. Her cheeks and lips were tinted a bright coral and her nose was powdered like a marshmallow. In spite of the paint and powder there was something youthful and attractive about the woman. She walked with a light step and had a gay bird-like manner.

The younger man, or boy—he looked about eighteen, Josie decided—had an elegance that his companions lacked, although they would have been greatly astonished had they been told that the quiet unimportant little person, whom they had passed in the park and who later had passed them on the sidewalk, considered them anything but the last cry of elegance and fashion. Josie was able to get a good look at the trio at a crossing. Undoubtedly[23] the boy was the son of the bizarre couple. He had his father’s bold black eyes and his mother’s delicate tilted nose and softly rounded cheek.

“Where—where have I seen him before?” Josie asked herself. “Never mind, I’ll remember someday. In the mean time I think I’ll find out where they live—not that it is any of my business—but one never can tell when information will come in handy in this business of detecting criminals. Anyhow I don’t trust those two, although I reckon the boy is all right. He looks too young to be anything else but all right and he looks honest, at least he looks honest in contrast to his father. My opinion is that the old one is in checks now but has been in stripes, or should have been. I wonder what they do. People, I’ll bet anything, and they do them brown while they are about it.”

Josie stopped to look in a window in order to let the trio get ahead of her and then nonchalantly followed them at a safe distance. They talked animatedly and their gestures were decidedly foreign-like in their swift and jerky repetition. It was impossible for Josie to catch what they were saying without seeming too interested[24] in them, but it was easy to see that both man and woman were endeavoring to pacify the youth and persuade him to do something to which he was opposed. Once he stopped short on the sidewalk and Josie came within earshot as the boy said in a tone of suppressed violence:

“I tell you I’m sick of the whole game. I’m going to quit!”

“Oh, Roy, darling, not just now,” purred the woman, and Josie noted that the R in Roy and darling was softly rolled, giving a slightly foreign accent. “Not now when—” but the woman whispered the rest and the listener could not hear what was the big reason for not quitting just yet, nor could she gather what the game was that Roy wanted to quit.

The man said nothing, merely stood gnawing his moustache in a manner highly melodramatic and cut the air viciously with his slender cane. Josie loitered after them, wondering what part of the city they lived in, what they did for a living, and in the back of her brain was always the question: “Where have I seen the boy before?”