“Won’t she wonder at your asking?” Peg was fearful lest their secret would be divulged.
“No, indeed,” Merry shook her head. “Mums isn’t even remotely curious about what our club is doing. She knows we are holding a meeting, but that’s all.”
In less than ten minutes she was back again with two names written on a magazine cover. “I don’t think these will help us much,” she informed the girls, whose alert attitudes proved their eager interest. “One is Myra Comely. She lives below the tracks and takes in washing. Mother thinks she may be about forty. The other is Myra Ingersol. She lives out on the old Dorchester road. Mother doesn’t just know where, but it’s a farm that makes a specialty of chickens and eggs. The woman makes jelly and sells it, too. That’s really all Mother knows about her. The name is on each jar, Mums says. ‘Myra Ingersol’s Jams,’ like that. We get them from the grocery. You ought to know about them, Bertha.”
“I do,” that maiden replied, “and, what’s more, I know the woman. I’ve been in the store when she brought in her wares. I’ve been trying to picture her, Merry, while you were talking, as having ever been young and pretty, but I just can’t. She is a big-boned, awkward person with red-grey hair drawn back as though it had a weight on it, and sharp blue eyes.” The girl shook her head. “I’m convinced she is not the Myra Mr. Cornwall wants to find.”
“How old is the jam person?” Gerry contributed her first inquiry.
“Oh, close to sixty, perhaps, although she may be younger. She’s had a hard life, I judge.”
“We might call them up on the telephone and ask them if they ever lived in Arizona,” Betty Byrd naively suggested. How the others laughed. “Little one,” Bertha remonstrated, “don’t you know that if they ran away from Arizona and are in hiding, so to speak, they would, of course, refuse to tell that it had once been their home. I mean in answer to such an abrupt question as would have to be asked over the ’phone. My suggestion is that we make some legitimate excuse for calling at the homes of the two Myras and finding, if we can, some clues without arousing their suspicion.”
“Hats off to Sleuth Bertha!” Peg sang out. “When and how shall we make the first call?”
Doris leaped up in her eagerness. “If one of the Myras is a washwoman, let’s drive over there tomorrow with the Drexel weekly laundry. Mother said yesterday that the Palace New Method injures the clothes and she wants to find someone to do it by hand.”
“Say, Boy, but we’re in luck!” the slangy member exulted.