Mary Louise Stands the Test

by Emma Speed Sampson

Josie’s warning to Captain Lonsdale was given none too soon. The man Irene and her aunt had seen prowling around the Hathaway house was not the only one who made a tour of inspection on the very first night Mary Louise left her home. As the man, who was one of the chief’s most trusted detectives, went in the alley to get a good look at the rear of the premises, the figure of a boy flattened itself against the side of the garage where the ivy grew thick and close and where the shadow was not penetrated by the electric light at the corner of the alley.

Had the trusted detective seen the boy in the light, he would have reported him as about fifteen, perhaps an Italian, with curly black hair that escaped rebelliously from the confines of the shabby cloth cap; a dirty face, pinched and rather hungry looking, with great eyes of a beauty almost unearthly but with something in their expression that gave a lie to the first statement of the lad’s being only fifteen. Anyhow, the trusted detective did not see him, saw nothing in fact but a large cat humped up on the roof of the garage, and heard nothing but the unearthly caterwauling from Tom, who was probably singing a dirge incident to the cutting off of supplies by the departure of Aunt Sally, who always saved scraps for all the stray cats of the neighborhood.

“Idiot!” the boy muttered under his breath as the detective gave a cursory glance in the back yard and then made his way to the front again. “He might have found me if he had had any sense, but sense is the last thing to look for in a detective.”

If the detective lacked the sense that the boy had asserted, he had, at least, the quality of faithfulness and stuck to his job until daylight when he was relieved by another man. Whatever had been the purpose of the boy who clung so closely to the shadow of the garage, he had not been able to accomplish it on that night. His object seemed to be to gain access to the big house, but, unfortunately for him, the strong light in the alley was thrown directly on the back of the house, making it impossible to accomplish his purpose with the tiresome detective constantly tramping around, appearing when least expected rather as though he suspected something.

When daylight came the boy hooked a ride on the back of an early milkcart, leaving the detective none the wiser and unconscious that his vigil had been shared by an interested person.

During the morning Josie made an excuse for visiting the Hathaway house, stating she wanted to borrow a book from the Colonel’s library. Carefully she went over the house to make sure nobody had entered since she and Mary Louise had left it the day before. Everything was as it had been, not a sign of meddlers! She then went to the garage. Some one had been in there, it was plain to see. The old-fashioned lock, fastened by a large brass key, was easy enough to open with a skeleton key. Not only had it been picked, but Josie saw that some one had been in the Colonel’s dilapidated old car which now reigned supreme in the place where the fine new car had been wont to shine with polished supremacy. The scuffed cushions had been ripped open and some one in feverish haste must have searched in the stuffing. The back of the car was full of the hair torn from the inside of the cushions and springs and strips of leather thrown on the floor gave evidence of a thorough search having been made.

“I bet they didn’t find a thing,” grinned Josie. “This doesn’t look like the leavings of a successful hunt.”

Nevertheless, she made a close examination of the garage, even going upstairs to the room intended for a chauffeur. She then felt it necessary to pay a visit to the chief. As usual, he was in his inner office knitting his brows over an intricate problem of how to catch wrongdoers.

“Well, General O’Gorman, how goes it?” was his playful greeting.

“Who had the watch last night at the Hathaway house?” Josie didn’t seem to want to play.