“She is very much interested in Mary and me and encourages us to tell her all kinds of things about our home in the country. I am afraid we have told her many family secrets, nothing of grave importance because we have led quiet, sheltered lives up to the last few months, but just stories of the farm and Mary’s childhood and my girlhood. She is such a good listener and we have talked to her very freely.”
“Of course you have. That’s part of her game; to get information of all kinds about neighborhoods and then work some kind of fraud on them. She is more than likely to go down to our county and get in with folks there and steal the spoons and the registered letters or something. I tell you, Polly, I know their game—these slick ones. I’ll be bound she has talked mighty little about herself. Do you know any more about her home life, where she came from, what she did before she started to ‘do you’ than you did when she first came to you?”
“No, I’m afraid we don’t.”
“Exactly!”
“But tell me what you think the poor girl has done?” asked Mrs. Leslie, who could but feel sorry for criminals even though they spoke French with a French accent.
“Done! Why I have my suspicions that she had stolen from Burnett & Burnett many hundreds of dollars worth of real lace as well as a gold mesh bag that is easily worth a hundred. She is suspected by Mr. Burnett, too, but we are to go easy with her as we hope to track to their lair others who were able to get away with thousands of dollars worth of goods a few weeks ago.”
“What makes you think she has done it?” gasped Mrs. Leslie, her backbone continuing to tingle deliciously over such expressions as “Track to their lair.”
“Many things have led me to suspect her,” said the Major with impressive gravity. “She has studiously avoided my scrutiny and when I have attempted to follow her on the street she has with great ingenuity evaded my pursuit—given me the slip, as we say in the profession.”
“Then you have followed her?”
“Repeatedly! No doubt you have noticed that she seldom comes home immediately after closing hours, but walks around town, up one street and down another. Now is not that in itself a peculiar way for a nice young woman to behave?”