“May the Fates save us!” Bobs exclaimed. “I do believe we are one minute late. Are we in for execution or dismissal?”
But that one minute had evidently escaped the watchful eye of Miss Peerwinkle, for, when Nell Wiggin and Roberta entered the shop, they saw the portly Mr. Queerwitz pacing up and down and in tragic tones he was exclaiming: “Gone! Gone! I should have locked it up, but I didn’t think anyone else knew the value of it.” Then, wheeling around, he demanded of Bobs: “What good are you, anyway, in the book department? One of the rarest books I possess was stolen this morning right beneath your very eyes, and——”
Little Nell Wiggin, usually so timid, stepped forward and said: “It must have happened while we were out at lunch. It couldn’t have been while we were here, for nobody at all went down to the books.”
Mr. Queerwitz paid no more attention to the words of little Miss Wiggin than he would at that moment to the buzzing of a fly.
“Dolittle, well-named, I should say,” he remarked scathingly. How Roberta wished that she had chosen a busier sounding name, but the deed was done. One couldn’t be changing one’s name every few hours, but——
Her revery was interrupted by: “What have you to say for yourself?”
“Nothing,” was the honest reply.
“You are discharged,” came the ultimatum.
Bobs was almost glad. “Very well, Mr. Queerwitz,” she replied, and turning, she walked briskly toward the cloakroom.
When Bobs returned from the cloakroom, having donned her hat and jacket, she was informed that Mr. Queerwitz had just driven away, but that he hadn’t said where he was going. Bobs believed that he was going to report her uselessness as a detective to her employer, James Jewett. Ah, well, let him go. Perhaps after all she had made a mistake in her choice of a profession. As she was passing she heard the older women talking.