But to return to the wedding breakfast and the fortunes of Mary Louise: Everything went off as it should have and the theft of the presents was not discovered until the bride and groom were off on their honeymoon and then Chief Lonsdale had the trunks brought from Somerville and, so carefully had the things been packed by the experts, that not even one piece of cut glass had been broken. The trunkful of things purloined from the Wrights had also been held at the station and was returned intact. Of course Elizabeth was blamed by her family when the whole thing came out for having introduced them to such people but Elizabeth only smiled, being very happy way down deep in her heart that Billy McGraw was saved from the wiles of the beautiful Hortense.
The beautiful Hortense simply faded out of sight. By some occult means she must have known of the pursuit of her husband and the vigilance of the police in regard to herself. It may have been through a confederate employed by the caterers who perhaps saw Josie and Bob speeding away on the motorcycle. At any rate, she did not return to her apartment, but as soon as the ceremony was over, she excused herself to Mary Louise, regretting exceedingly not being able to be present during the breakfast and sit at the bride’s table, but her poor Felix was so miserable she must go to him. She tripped down the terrace and as has been said, simply faded out of sight. The detectives who had been set by the astute chief to guard the apartment and to arrest her when she made her appearance had a long and unfruitful vigil. It seemed strange that a beautiful woman dressed so strikingly in pale grey over iridescent silk could in a town no bigger than Dorfield escape the notice of everyone and disappear.
Bob Dulaney got, as he expressed it, “the scoop of his life.” He was able to get his story in one of the big New York papers before the A. P. got on to it, thereby reaping a reward in reputation as well as money. The whole country rang with the daring scheme practiced by the gang of thieves and Chief Lonsdale and his force received compliments from every city. Josie asked not to be put in the papers as the one who had really done the work.
“It isn’t newspaper notoriety I want,” she explained. “My father never wanted that kind of credit. He just wanted to have the consciousness that he had delivered the goods and to be sure he had the respect of the profession. If it gets out I was active in this, I might lose my chance to nab others by being the insignificant little person I appear. It’s better for me to go on keeping the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop with Elizabeth. I can learn all kinds of things that I’d miss if I were known to be a real detective. I am here if you need me,” she said to Chief Lonsdale, and he smiled at her.
“How like your father you are, child!”
Markle had one consolation while he was in prison awaiting his trial: he had the notebook which had belonged to Detective O’Gorman which he had not yet been able to decipher. The long hours of solitary prison life gave him the opportunity to put his whole mind on it and at last he felt sure he had mastered the cipher. With painstaking care he translated the first page. Then he sat and looked at it with an expression on his handsome face that beggared description. After all he had been fighting Fate and trying to escape his own sin. And this is what he had translated:
“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears