“Well, I guess we can safely say we have found the other two napkins,” whispered Josie. “They went to make the patches. Also someone besides Hortense did the cutting. Clever Hortense! Not clever enough, however, to get by with it! My father used to say that only the people who went to work taking for granted that others were cleverer than they kept out of the penitentiary. Hortense thinks I am a dullard and you a sweet person who has taken a dislike to her and not to be worried about one way or the other.”
“But what do you mean, Josie? Penitentiary—you can’t—”
“Yes, I can—but don’t tell Elizabeth—anybody in fact—we must catch the whole bunch and, if we jump too soon, we may get only an innocent bystander. I am going to call on you to help me if I need you.”
“What’s that you are not going to tell me?” asked Elizabeth. “This old typewriter makes just enough noise to keep me from catching secrets. Is it ice cream you are going to have up for lunch or are you going to make me pay the gas bill? Is it a pleasant secret or otherwise?”
“Well, it may be both,” answered Josie. “I wasn’t going to tell you because my father always said the more persons you took in on a case the harder it was to get at the bottom of it. He thought they kind of crowded each other when the business narrowed down to the final outcome.”
“But I’m a partner here and if there is anything I might make use of in the way of copy in the literary career I hope to follow, I think it is mean not to tell me,” laughed Elizabeth.
“I guess you are right,” decided Josie. “I may get help from you girls too. But mind not a word or look to a soul to let on you suspect a thing! Swear!”
“We swear!” chorused Irene and Elizabeth in hollow excited tones.
Then Josie told them the whole thing from the beginning; told how she had had some suspicion of the Markles because of something intangibly mysterious about them; told of her visit to the chief of police and the information he had given her concerning a chain of thefts being committed all over the country; told of the mission she had had confided to her before she reached Dorfield; told how she had been confident of something being a bit fishy in Hortense’s not being willing to take off the orchid pin and show it to Billy McGraw, for the reason that it had the Tiffany mark on it, no doubt the initials of his friend Mrs. Thomas. Then she made their blood run cold when she described her first night in the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop and the entrance of the Markles and their theft of the contents of the book.
“But, Josie, weren’t you scared to death?” asked Irene, her eyes big at the thought. “I am not a timid person ordinarily, but I believe I’d have died of fright when they came into the bedroom.”