“Of course these two are the ones to watch now—Miss Fauntleroy and the old beggar woman at your back entrance. Miss Fauntleroy does not live at the address she gave Burnett & Burnett.”
“Are you sure? How do you know?”
“Yes, I am sure, and I know because this afternoon I went out to the address she gave and there is nothing but a frog pond at that number on Linden Row, Linden Heights. In fact, there are no houses at all on Linden Row. It has but recently been put on the market—a half-hearted attempt at a real estate boom, I fancy, and the houses are all ‘castles in Spain.’ The question now is: Where does Miss Fauntleroy live and what connection has she with the beggar at the gate? We must go very quietly so as not to scare her off. I am a little uneasy now that you tell me Major Simpson is to cooperate with me.”
“Ah, but I did not say that! Merely that he seems to be aware of the fact that you are not just a shop girl. He came to the office in great excitement a little while after the theft was reported and wanted your address. He seemed to think that through you he might track the whole gang, if gang there is, of shoplifters.”
“That being the case, why should he be so secret about it when once he found my address? Why should he not wait until I got home and talk the thing over with me? Why should he persuade Mrs. Leslie, the dear lady with whom I am boarding, to keep so dark about his having been there? Why, Mr. Burnett, he has even snooped around my bedroom and peeped in my bureau drawers.”
“Surely not, Miss O’Gorman! How do you know?”
“I know because a little book, of which I am very fond, had been moved.”
“Taken away?”
“Oh no, just turned around with the edges out instead of in. I always put it in the corner of my drawer, turning the back out.”
Mr. Burnett laughed. “Heaven’s above! What an inventory taker you would make—or housekeeper for Sherlock Holmes. But, my dear young lady, why should you think that poor old Sylvester Simpson was guilty of such—such sacrilege? Could not your nice landlady have done that? Did he leave finger prints on the book and have you examined it with a magnifying glass?”