Simpkins & Markle were doing a flourishing business, specializing in small, elegantly furnished apartments. They had branch offices in all the neighboring towns, Mr. Markle being the traveling member who kept in touch with the branch offices.
These apartments were always let with the greatest care as to the form of lease. The empty apartment would be rented to a young couple who would sign the lease and pay a month’s rent in advance. Then their household goods would arrive from some distant state and be installed. Rugs, pictures, beautiful furniture of all kinds, silver, china, table linen, etc. The couple would live in the apartment for about a month and then the young husband would report at the real estate office that he had a raise, a new job, a sick mother, or something and wanted to sub-let his apartment, furnished. Of course, the beautiful furnishings would double and sometimes triple the value of the rooms and Simpkins & Markle would reap a reward. Simpkins would never be called upon to interview this couple and would therefore never be struck with its likeness to the couple before. He seemed merely to see that the firm was doing well and their kind of business was a lucrative one. He stayed in Dorfield and kept the books and attended to the old Dorfield business, which was slow but steady, while his more active partner attended to the furnished apartment rentals. His was the duty to pass on to the distant young couple the profits reaped by their contract in sub-renting.
The unerring taste of Hortense was often called in play to arrange the furniture in these apartments. She could put a touch to them that would add greatly to their value. Strangers, warned beforehand of the difficulty of finding any place to live and almost hopeless of obtaining even a roof over their heads, would be carried off their feet when shown these beautiful rooms where Hortense had had her artistic will. No price seemed too high for such a haven of rest and beauty.
There can be little doubt in the minds of my readers where this furniture came from. A chain of burglars reaching from New York to San Francisco were ever busy robbing any and every house where they could make an entrance. Then the spoils were carefully sorted and shifted to far away points where detection was not likely. Felix and Hortense Markle were head and brains for this bold undertaking. They worked under many aliases and sometimes appeared as father and daughter, sometimes brother and sister, sometimes they worked singly, but usually they were husband and wife. They were clever beyond the belief of ordinary mortals, so clever that their existence was doubted by some of the most astute and highly esteemed detectives. O’Gorman had been on their track and was in a fair way to come up with them when the war broke out and he was compelled to serve his country in other ways besides bringing to justice a pair of the cleverest thieves he confessed himself ever to have seen. He had talked to Josie of his ambition and had given her what information he possessed. This form of real estate hoax was a new one with the Markles, but their method was the one they had always used, that of living in a respectable and decent way and making friends with the best people in the town where they hoped to get the most loot.
Sleepy Dorfield was a good place for their machinations. There was a good deal of wealth in town and the friendship of Mary Louise and her grandfather was “open sesame” to the society of Dorfield.
CHAPTER XVI
A DINNER PARTY
There was some excitement in the Wright family when Elizabeth came speeding home in Billy McGraw’s stylish little racer. They had grown accustomed if not resigned to the peculiarities of this member of the family who insisted upon working all day in a funny shop with an unstylish little person, the daughter of a policeman so they understood. Her only value in their eyes was that she was a friend of Mary Louise’s. As has been remarked before, that fact went a long way in the opinion of Dorfield towards establishing a person as worthy of being cultivated.
Another thing that was reconciling the Wright family somewhat to Elizabeth’s erratic mode of life was that she had begun to put money in the bank. This they were sure of, as one of the sisters had had a peep in her bank book. The shop was proving a financial success and in the eyes of one’s family nothing succeeds like monetary success.
And here was Elizabeth driving up in style in the car of the young man conceded by all Dorfield mothers and daughters to be the most desirable catch in town. Next to catching him themselves the sisters of Elizabeth would have liked to have her catch him. The mother was perfectly impartial as to which member of her family should land such a large game fish.