Mary Louise at Dorfield

by Emma Speed Sampson

After an early tea, Josie, in spite of objections raised by Mary Louise, insisted upon going back to her Higgledy-Piggledy apartment.

“I might just as well get used to it, honey. It is going to be in a mess for a while yet, but if I can be there early and late just so much the sooner will we begin operations. To-morrow is Sunday and I can have a nice long day to write letters that must be written and look over some papers. That won’t be too much like working on the Sabbath, and I can begin to work in dead earnest early Monday morning. I’ll see you at church to-morrow though, however.”

Josie refused the offer Mary Louise made of sending her home in her car but insisted her legs were made to use, and if she got too accustomed to riding around in cars, it would spoil her for more primitive forms of locomotion.

Josie did not go directly to her shop after leaving Colonel Hathaway’s, but slipping down a side street she walked quietly into the police station. Josie had a power inherited directly from her father of being almost invisible, that is she moved so quietly and was so unobtrusive in manner and dress that she could pass in a crowd absolutely unnoticed, and even where there was not a crowd, she had a way of effacing herself so that she might stand in one’s presence for minutes without being observed. And after she was observed, it would tax the powers of the most alert to describe the girl, so neutral could she appear. Her red hair even seemed to become dun and colorless when she, for some reason, was intent on being unnoticed.

The police station was quiet. It was too early for the usual Saturday night bustle of business. An officer was dozing at his exalted desk with a great book open in front of him, the book where the business of the day was recorded. At the door sat another policeman. He too was napping with his stiff belt unbuttoned and his helmet cocked over his closed eyes, his legs stretched out as though to trip up the unwary.

Josie was far from being in that class, however. She quietly and lightly jumped over the hurdle of legs and slipped under the nose of the man at the desk and made her way down a hall to the door of the Chief of Police, Captain Charley Lonsdale.

The chief was not asleep, far from it, but he was lost in the perusal of some closely written sheets over which he was knotting his beetling brows. His door was ajar and with a small tap to announce herself Josie entered and stood before him. He grunted in acknowledgment that he knew someone was in his presence to whom he would give his attention when he solved some troublesome problem.

“Well, what is it?” he finally jerked out, looking up from his papers. “Why, bless my soul! If it ain’t little O’Gorman. Child, I am glad to see you. I can’t tell you how I have felt about your father. Why, we’ll never get over his loss in the service. What he didn’t know about criminals was not worth knowing. A good man too! A good man, for sure! I wish I had him here right now to help me out with a case. I don’t see why those fellows in the East think their crooks are working around here. I don’t believe they are,” he declared, glancing again at the papers which had so absorbed his attention on Josie’s entrance.

“What is the case?” she asked, looking keenly at the chief.

“Oh, just the same old tale of crooks, but this time they seem to be stealing lots of things besides money. They have actually walked off with the entire furnishings of apartments, rugs, sideboards, pictures, even beds and wardrobes and whole sets of china. There must be an unbroken chain of them extending through the states. It is post-war conditions that we might have expected, but it seems to be even worse than we had anticipated and now they are worrying me about things that were lost in New York and Boston. I am sure nobody would come to Dorfield with stolen goods. Aren’t you?”