On this visit she found the man at the door awake and taking notice.
“You can’t see the chief,” he announced decisively, looking at Josie as though she were thin air. “He’s that busy he says he can’t see a soul. If you are after making a complaint about a neighbor’s hens? or the like, there’s a man at the desk for such business.”
Josie’s eyes took on the dull look she loved to assume when there was important business on hand.
“It’s worse than hens—it’s tigers!” she exclaimed. “A man at the desk can’t attend to tigers. I must see the chief.”
The astonished man let her pass. Of course tigers were a little too important for a small man like the one at the desk to cope with.
The chief was alone and busy looking over some papers. A worried frown was on his brow. He looked up a moment after Josie entered.
“Ah, the little O’Gorman! Nothing doing, I fancy, and you have come for help.”
“I have come for help but not because there is nothing doing. I could handle that situation alone,” replied Josie in a cool drawl that was ludicrously like the tone her father had used and it made Chief Lonsdale smile. “There is so much doing that I have had to come for help. I hate to do it, as I’d like the glory along with the work, but I can’t let the whole school of fish escape just so I can have the honor of landing the biggest one of the lot. Father used to say that a detective must first consider his duty to society; that is, to get the wrong-doers caught, never mind who does the catching.”
“Humph! I wish there were more of his way of thinking. Now tell us all about it.”
Josie sat down and unfolded her tale from the beginning. She made the man’s eyes wide with astonishment when she told of the Markles’ entrance into her shop and the purloining of the notebook. He laughed delightedly over what Markle was spending so much time trying to master.