Mary Louise at Dorfield/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
A SKELETON KEY
It was dusk when Josie fitted the great brass key into the door of the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop. The place looked very large and bleak and Josie felt small and lonesome, but she said to herself that it was no time to give way to such weakness. She did not switch on the light, although the amateur plumbers and electricians had not left until everything was in O. K. condition. Instead she produced a small search light and with its aid went to work on a mysterious bit of business. Peering along the shelves, she put her hand on the book of her father’s notes, the one with the home-made binding. Diving into the tray of a small trunk, she produced a handful of papers covered with cryptic hieroglyphics similar to those found in the precious notebook. With deft fingers she ripped the back from the notebook, carefully placing the contents in a large pocket in her petticoat. Securely pinning it with a huge safety pin, then smoothing out the loose papers she had extracted from the trunk, she proceeded to do a clever and neat job of amateur book binding sewing on the old back of the notebook. Then she put the book between the ponderous tomes where it had been before.
Patting her pocket where reposed the precious notes and also the huge brass key which she had removed from the door after locking it, Josie then made her way by the packing boxes and debris, that all the willing workers had not been able to clear away on that busy Saturday afternoon, back to the bedroom. Her little iron bed was made up with fresh linen and pretty dimity spread and looked very inviting to the tired girl.
“I’d certainly like to tumble in,” she yawned, “but this is no time for sleep. Father always said: ‘Work first and then sleep!’”
Shutting the door to the partition which divided her bedroom from the shop, she turned on the shaded reading light which Danny had placed at the head of the bed, under the directions of Mary Louise, and drawing up a low chair she unpinned the notes and drew them from her pocket.
“Dear Father!” she sighed. “What a man he was!”
Detective O’Gorman had taught his daughter the code in which he made his notes and Josie could read the hieroglyphics as easily as she could printed English. She could write it as rapidly as a first-class stenographer can short-hand. Turning over the leaves she came to one that riveted her attention.
“Exactly!” she muttered. “He could have been a great novelist if he had not have been so busy being a great detective. There never were such accurate, concise descriptions. Here are their aliases too: my, what a lot of names they can answer to—and as many crimes as names if one can only catch them in the act. They have so many confederates they always go scot free. Won’t my father be proud of me if I am the one to get them? I mean to be that one, too.”
She put the notes back in her pocket, pinning them carefully as before. Then she produced from another pocket a small revolver which she examined critically.
“I’m not going to use it, but it must be ready—in case—”
She stopped suddenly.
“What’s that? Tenants stumping around overhead? Rats in the wainscoting? There are rats.” She listened intently, switching off the light hanging over her bed.
“That old-fashioned brass lock will be easy to open with a skeleton key,” she decided. “If they are coming here it will be only a moment before they are in the room.” Grabbing her tell-tale hat and gloves and small bag, she dived under the bed, the pretty dimity spread hanging down on the side making a curtain for her retreat.
The town clock was striking twelve as the skeleton key finally unlocked the door. Josie lay very still listening eagerly.
“We might just as well switch on the light,” said a man’s voice.
“A bit imprudent, but, of course, nobody in this stupid old town would notice.” The voice was undoubtedly Mrs. Markle’s.
“I fancy everybody, even the police force, is asleep by now,” laughed the man.
Josie felt for her detective’s badge pinned in the breast pocket of her dress, and smiled happily in her retreat behind the dimity spread.
“Here is the book, Felix, exactly where that dull little O’Gorman girl put it. Do you think you will ever be able to make out the code?”
“Sure! There is no code I can’t work. It may take time but it will be great fun to find out what that old devil O’Gorman thought of us. It will be helpful too to find out exactly what he knew; and think of destroying all trace of our identity.”
“Umhum! I am dull and my father was a devil,” mused Josie. “Two more reasons for catching you red-handed, you Markles!”
“Here are the scissors,” went on the rich voice of Mrs. Markle. “Let me rip out the notes, Clumsy! Here, these blank papers can be stitched in their place. The girl will no doubt not think of opening this book for weeks, maybe never, but she knows the code and might want to read the notes sooner. There you are! Now put it back in between those big books. Now shall we be off?”
“Let’s look around now that we are here. This is a clever idea of that O’Gorman girl’s, to run this shop. Are you sure she is so dull?” asked the man.
“Sure! She has a fish eye and a face like a dumpling.” “O’Gorman had too, and he wasn’t dull,” said Mr. Markle with some doubt in his tone.
“Oh, trust me, Felix, to know when a woman has sense. I don’t believe she even has any humor.”
Josie smothered a giggle and drew her little revolver from her pocket. The interlopers were pushing open the door of her bedroom and without further ceremony switched on the light. The girl could see their feet from her hiding place, and exceedingly shapely, well shod feet they were.
“A pretty snug place,” said Felix. “Nothing worth lifting, however.”
“Not now, but wait until they begin to stock up with antique furniture and jewelry and what not. There will be plenty then. I am going to give them lots of work so I can come here often. One will get to know very desirable persons through these girls. That little soft fool, Mary Louise, knows everybody and she is very much interested in this venture and is going to push it for all it is worth. My first job for them is laundering those napkins I have just finished.”
“Oh, what a clever pet it is!” and Felix stopped and kissed Hortense. “A man never had such a partner before, I am sure.”
“What an old goose you are!” Her voice was as pleased and affectionate as any woman’s might have been who had won her husband’s approbation by some wifely act.
“Come on now! Let’s get out. We have what we came for and I am eager to get busy on that old devil O’Gorman’s code.”
They switched off the light and locked the door carefully. Josie scuttled from under her bed and ran to the front window. Peeping down into the faintly lighted street she saw the Markles walking off affectionately, arm in arm.
“And poor man, he is going to master Father’s code so he can read Francis Thompson’s ‘The Hound of Heaven,’” and Josie allowed herself a good laugh.
The notes Mr. Markle had so carefully carried off were nothing more than Josie’s lessons she had written out when her father was teaching her the code.
“Maybe it will do them some good,” said the girl with a feeling akin to sympathy in her heart. “I feel kind of sorry for the poor wretches. Father said he always felt sorry for criminals.”
As the girl undressed she recited “The Hound of Heaven.”
“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd tears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’”