Major Simpson was the recipient of several of Miss Willie’s efforts. “The Lovers’ Tryst,” painted in a wooden mixing bowl, was touching indeed. Of course the poor man never did know what he was expected to do with a wooden bowl so he did nothing with it—just had it around. The small rolling pin tastefully decorated in new born cupids and suspended by silken cords and tassels attached to the handles, he guessed was meant for a cravat holder and so the vivid pink cupids peeped out from behind the old gentleman’s sober ties, constantly reminding him that the fool that the cynics tell us is born every minute may also be a lover.
On this evening Major Simpson was in his glory. The paying lady guests at Maison Blanche were gathered together in the parlor, listening in wrapt admiration while the star boarder recounted with becoming modesty the almost superhuman intelligence he had exercised in tracking down the desperate criminal, little Josie O’Gorman. Of course he named no names for fear that by some means the terrible truth might be conveyed to his victim and she might escape.
“How thrilling!” trilled a sweet young thing of some forty summers. “Oh, Major, you are wonderfully clever! I wish I might see you work. How will you proceed now? Will you swear out a warrant and go and arrest the wicked creature?”
“No, no, not yet! It is most important to round up all of the girl’s confederates. In the mean time she is safe in the apartment of my friend, the widow from my county—”
“A widow!” exclaimed Miss Willie Watts. “So she is a widow?”
Miss Willie was a contented little woman and envied no woman anything except a dead husband. In her heart she had always longed to be a widow. Her imagination could not picture for her a live husband but she could easily see herself in a widow’s ruche with a long crepe veil. Her imagination even carved a name on the tombstone marking the grave over which she mourned so piteously. It was not always the same name, for Miss Willie allowed herself to be fickle in regard to her imaginary dead husbands; but for many months now she had thought how blissful it would be to be called the Widow Simpson and how handsome the name Major Sylvester Simpson would look on an imposing marble shaft—“beloved husband of Willie Watts”—or should it be Wilhelmina? Willie would look so boyish on a tombstone.
Had Major Simpson realized the little artist was regarding him in “that bony light” no doubt he would have refused to let his cravats hang over the cupid covered rolling pin, but he merely counted her as one of the many lovely ladies who did him homage at the Maison Blanche, listening to his stories and applauding his cleverness.
“Burnett & Burnett could hardly get along without you,” murmured Miss Willie, thinking of herself as cruel even to imagine the efficient righthand man of the department store as carved on a tombstone.
“Well, they won’t have to. I could retire to-morrow if I chose, but the work of a detective is so engrossing that once one has engaged in it, it is impossible to relinquish it.”