The Colonel’s old car was left in the garage at the big house.
“It will be safe enough there, poor old thing,” sighed Mary Louise. “It looks real lonesome with the new car gone. Grandpa Jim surely did love his old car. He never enjoyed riding in the new one as much as he did in his old rattle-trap. The first time I realized that Grandpa Jim was not getting along so well with Danny was when he got irritated because Danny teased him about his old car. I always teased him about it and he used to tease himself at times and had never minded when Danny joined in. He seemed rather to like it. But one day he suddenly flared up over the car and said—but never mind what he said—it wasn’t Grandpa Jim saying those things—I realize it all now and I believe Danny knows too.”
“Certainly he does,” declared Josie with a tone of conviction.
The big house had been securely closed, one key left with the Conants in case a tenant might want to see it, one with a real estate agent and another in Mary Louise’s purse.
The old darkeys were gone and Mary Louise entered into her new life as a business woman.
How strange it was! How different from what her life had been less than one short year ago.
At night she lay in her little bed and looked up at the high ceiling dimly lit by the smouldering fire in the front of the shop. How amusing it was to sleep in a room with partitions reaching only half way to the ceiling! It was like living in a beauty parlor where one had one’s hair shampooed. She felt she would not like to stay all alone in such a place and wondered if it had not been hard on Josie to be there by herself. She remembered Josie’s tale of how the Markles had come and entered the shop by means of a skeleton key, stolen what they had thought to be Detective O’Gorman’s wonderful thieves’ journal, replacing it with blank pages neatly inserted in the original covers; and how they had actually come into her bedroom, thinking she was safely off spending the night at the Hathaways’. Josie, hiding under the bed, had heard their incriminating talk and had carefully laid her net and then left them to entangle themselves in its meshes.
What a clever little person Josie was! Mary Louise, as she thought of her, had a feeling of security as though all would finally be well if she could remain under Josie’s wing.
“Grandpa Jim liked her and Danny liked her—they trusted her so absolutely. I am glad I am here with her.” Mary Louise closed her eyes and, snuggling down in her little bed, was soon lost to the world. She did not dream of burglars but that Chinese idols, curiously carved, and hideous bronze Buddhas were perched in rows on the top of the partitions forming her bedroom and they looked down on her with benignant expressions on their quizzical countenances and seemed to be watching over her and guarding her. One great Buddha wagged his forefinger at her and told her he would watch over Danny too and she need have no fear, and, in spite of being a very good little Christian girl, she found that the heathen deity gave her great comfort in her loneliness.