“She isn’t much of a detective,” remarked the old Colonel, “but she wins as often as she loses, and she’s earnest and hard-working; moreover, she has her father’s brains to appeal to, and there are no more skillful ones in all Washington than those of John O’Gorman.”
“To be sure,” said Mary Louise, as she clung to her grandfather’s arm. “They first sent him to France to take charge of the Secret Service bureau there, but he was recalled because there were more important duties here. Josie wrote me there were a thousand suspects in America to one abroad. Besides, each nation has its corps and band of detectives and some are especially clever.”
“It’s a good thing for us,” declared the old gentleman, “for it gives us Josie, and with her the advioe of the shrewdest secret service man in America.”
CHAPTER VIII
THE ARRIVAL OF JOSIE O’GORMAN
Josie O’Gorman did not bother to ring the doorbell next morning. She went around to Aunt Sallie’s outside kitchen door, which always stood open at this hour, and after a word of greeting to the black mammy, made her way to the cosy little room which she always occupied when visiting there. Afterward she quietly unpacked the contents of her suitcase. This being accomplished Josie went downstairs to find Colonel Hathaway there alone, sipping his coffee behind his newspaper while awaiting Mary Louise.
“Good momin’,” she said, and threw her arms around her old friend and heartily kissed him.
“I hope that cackle I hear from the kitchen means an egg, and the egg another kiss,” remarked the old Colonel, smiling at her. “I am very glad you are here. You’ll be a great comfort to Mary Louise, I can assure you, for she has already exhausted our resources, and I’m quite sure she’s on the ragged edge of nothing.”
“What’s wrong, Colonel?” asked Josie, as Aunt Sallie brought in her coffee.
“Everything — and nothing,” replied Colonel Hathaway, in a way, testily, and yet with an amusing expression. “But here she comes and you can get all the points of the terrible tragedy.” Mary Louise entered the breakfast room briskly, as if fully expecting to find her old friend there, for she knew that Josie would not lose a minute in answering her summons. Indeed, her telegram of the evening before quite settled the matter as far as she was concerned.
“What’s gone wrong?” she asked again, when they had seated themselves, after the exchange of a hearty kiss, at the table.
Mary Louise, in a despondent voice, replied: “Everything has gone wrong, dear. There was a beautiful automobile at the auto show a while ago, and as Gran’pa Jim’s big old car had no one, from Uncle Sam to a grasshopper, to care for it any longer, I induced him to let me trade it in for the beauty I have referred to. I didn’t care much for Gran’pa’s rattletrap, but its wheels went round nevertheless.”
“I know,” nodded Josie, over her ham and eggs.
Then Mary Louise went on about her discovery of Danny Dexter, and bis quaint manners, and the methods be employed in abdication.
“We’ve tried every method we could think of,” concluded the girl, and the result is that yesterday we wired you, at Gran’pa’s suggestion.”
“What!” in amazement. “Do you mean that the dear Colonel has at last acquired sufficient confidence in my ability to entrust me with a job of this sort?”
The Colonel’s eyes could be seen just above the edge of his newspaper, and both Josie and Mary Louise thought they twinkled.
“If it can be done,” he muttered, “Josie is as likely to do it as anyone on earth. And she’s fond of Mary Louise, so I’ve an idea she’s better fitted than anyone else. But it’s a stiff job.”
“Yes, it is,” said Josie, in the same monotonous voice. “To recover lost automobiles is almost impossible in small towns,” added Josie. “Tourists are mighty numerous, and if one of these transients took the machine, such a person would surely drive off as soon as possible.”
“But how can that be,” protested Mary Louise, “when Danny Dexter had the car in his keeping, and now he is missing as well as the machine?”
Josie laughed joyously.
“But who told you it was Danny who ran away with your beauty,” demanded Josie. “On the other hand, I’m growing more and more to favor this young man. If he can’t ‘own the dear little thing,’ the next best thing is to be its chauffeur. Tell me some more about him — all you know.”
Mary Louise flushed at this tribute, but she allowed the Colonel to depict Danny’s character before she gave her own glowing opinion of him.
Josie slowly shook her head.
“There’s something wrong about this whole affair,” she reflected; “either he’s suspiciously bad, or he’s undeniably good — one of those perfect examples given us by the good Lord to pattern after. I’m afraid of those goody-goodies till I can make a hole in them and see what they’re stuffed with.”
“At present your chauffeur is as invisible as your machine,” she said at last, “and so we rnust wait for a more promising clue.”
“Well, what’s to be done first?” inquired Mary Louise, impatiently. “While we’re talking and fussing here, that car is getting farther and farther away from us.”
“True,” assented the girl detective, calmly, “but I need a good breakfast to fit me for a hard day’s work — and I’m getting it.”
“You’re stuffing yourself like a cormorant!” said Mary Louise. “Why, I’ve seen you go for twenty-four hours without eating, Josie O’Gorman.”
“Under other circumstances. My! how good this ham and these eggs taste after a foodless night. But I’m thinking while I chatter, Mary Louise, and if you don’t like my methods of detection, discharge me on the spot, Miss Burrows,” she said with mock dignity.
“Oh, hurry up, Josie. What’s first on your program!”
“First, we must visit an old friend, Charlie Olmstead — and — ”
“Oh, we’ve been through all that yesterday — — and the evening before,” Mary Louise retorted. “What do you imagine we’ve been doing all this time?”
“Can’t imagine,” said Josie, meekly; “but anyone who would let a youth and a bran’ new auto get away from them so easily would do ‘most anything. I suppose you’ve interviewed the postmaster, also?” She asked in a tone that was meant to be casual.
“One of our first acts, of course.” Josie smiled over Mary Louise’s head, but the old Colonel caught the expression and answered, to assist his dearly beloved grand-daughter:
“We may have acted foolishly, Josie, but you may be sure we acted. The interview has, you must admit, rendered it unnecessary for you to do the same thing and so has saved you the loss of considerable time.”
Josie again smiled.
“You’ve now told me all you know about the automobile, and all you know about the queer fellow who acted as chauffeur and did other jobs around the place. You have practically ended your resources and want to put the case in my hands. I want to take it, for it’s one of those odd cases that appeal to an amateur detective. Why, even daddy has been mixed up in some of these ‘lost automobile’ cases, and has found to his embarrassment that some of them have baffled him to this day. Some of those mysteries of stolen cars proved so tame that dear old daddy fairly blushed to discover how cleverly, yet simply, they had fooled him.”
“But you say he recovered some of them?” asked Mary Louise.
“Why, yes; I must credit daddy with the fact that he has recovered most of the machines — and some of the thieves.”
“Is it so hard, then, to arrest the drivers?” inquired the Colonel, curiously.
“Yes, indeed,” was the answer. “For if an auto thief discovers he is being followed by one with a faster engine or more ‘gas’ in his tank, he can just hop out and take to the woods. In some unusual cases the driver is also caught but you can see how easy it is for him to dodge his pursuers.”
“Then if no one is chasing, he can get a long way in a couple of days?” questioned Mary Louise, anxiously.
&nbs
p; “So he can,” assented the other girl, “but I’ve had the idea that the periods an auto thief may best be arrested are, — first, just after the theft; and secondly, after time enough has elapsed to create a sense of security in the mind of the thief and cause him to cease to worry.”
“Then you think our pirate has ceased to worry?” asked Colonel Hathaway, in a misbelieving tone.
“Yes, and he’s given us a chance to follow one or two clues to our advantage.”
“In what way?” questioned Mary Louise with interest.
“The ‘dear little car’ — of course, you must have named it? All automobiles belonging to girls must be named, I believe.”
“Of course. My car is called ‘Queenie.’”
‘‘Certainly; and with a monogram on each side door.”
“Another very good clue,” said Mary Louise, “concerns the driver himself. Danny Dexter is a rather conspicuous returned solder — not conspicuous because of his garb; he now wears the uniform of the Hathaways’ instead of Uncle Sam’s — but because of a bad scar across his forehead, which he cannot get rid of. So far, I admit we have only circumstantial evidence against the soldier, who won a ‘distinguished service medal’ and through modesty — or for other reasons — keeps this thing in his pocket instead of wearing it on his breast, as others seem proud to do. But that is no warrant for his taking ‘Queenie.’ But now let us visit the police headquarters and secure any further information there.”
Josie was following Mary Louise out when she turned and asked: “Coming with us, Colonel Hathaway?”
“Not this morning,” he replied. “You’ll want to get started and have the case well in hand before you need my assistance. If I remember rightly, Josie O’Gorman likes to work alone, so I predict it won’t be long before she’ll fire even Mary Louise and shoulder the whole thing.”
“This isn’t like the other cases in which Josie has come to our rescue,” protested Mary Louise. “It’s more like open warfare — get your eye on the thief, or on the car, and you can raise the hue-and-cry as much as you care to.”
CHAPTER IX
THE MAN FROM BOSTON
On their way to the police headquarters the two girls gossiped pleasantly concerning the events that had happened since they last saw each other, for there are other things in the world besides lost automobiles and strange young men. There are even winter coats, and how much fur it is good taste to trim them with this year. There were, also, round hats, three-cornered hats and four-cornered hats to discuss, as well as the broad-brimmed hats and matinee, church or street hats. And by the time they reached the police station they had scarcely touched upon shoes and stockings — ’never mentioned gowns at all!
They found Mr. Charles Lonsdale, Chief of Police, at his desk.
“Oh, here you are,” said Josie. “Good morning, Chief.”
“Good morning, I’ve been waiting for you for over an hour,” was his response.
“Yes,” said Josie, “I knew you’d wait, knowing I’d arrived on the morning train. You see, Chief, this is one of those peculiar cases that can begin or stop at any moment, as we may decide. I don’t know what the ‘dear little thing’
— — eh — eh — ‘Queenie,’ I believe, is her proper name — is worth, but — ”
“Without a ‘trade,’ and with the accessories we loaded it with, our poor little Queenie is worth thirty-two hundred dollars,” confessed Mary Louise.
The Chief looked astonished; Josie regarded her friend with amazement.
“Whatever its cost,” commented Lonsdale, “the thing has been stolen, and it’s my duty to try and find it. As for you, Josephine, you may tackle it or not, as it pleases you. Thirty-two hundred dollars is a good bit of money for a little automobile.”
“It isn’t entirely the money that bothers me or Gran’pa Jim,” remarked Mary Louise, with another deep sigh. “We’d have paid a thousand more, gladly, if necessary. It’s the thought that Danny would betray the confidence we held in him.”
There as a brief silence, during which Josie took out her memorandum book.
“What’s the record, so far?” she asked carelessly. “Well, I’ll answer myself: not much, although the whole tpwn knows that Mary Louise’s new auto has been stolen and Danny Dexter has disappeared at the same time. Meantime certain details have reached my ears that lead me to believe that Danny Dexter is but one of half a dozen assumed names used by this ex-soldier. The fellow accepted his position with the Colonel as half-chauffeur and half-gardener so that, at the slightest warning, he could use the little auto in making a getaway. In other words, he’s playing a bigger game than we’ve given him credit for.”
“Who told you all this?” inquired Mary Louise, in amazement.
Josie O’Gorman laughed, but before she could answer, there burst into the room from a side closet a big man with the marks of smallpox scattered about his face, a broad, sensitive nose, and shrewd eyes. It was evident at once that he was interested in their discussion.
“Anyone could see that with half an eye,” he made answer. “I’ll buy you half a dozen better automobiles than ‘Queenie’ if you’ll find its driver for me.”
“What about him?” asked Josie staring at him.
“Well, one name’s as good as another, just now, so we’ll still call him Danny Dexter,” responded the detective, leaning back in the chair so as to rest his feet against the wall. “For instance, I’m from Boston, and my name’s Crocker. Understand?”
Josie shook her head. She’d met a lot of detectives at one time or another, and this one seemed familiar, in a way.
“Then it’s a Boston case, after all,” she said in a disappointed voice.
“No, it’s just a Danny Dexter case, let us say,” responded the big man, also in a disappointed voice. “They gave him up in Boston as a bigger crook than they had time to handle, and the Bank was unwilling to spend more money on so elusive an individual. But I had some information of a floating character that came back to me time after time from the war zone that justified me in resigning from the government deal and taking up the case personally. So I’ve been in Dorfield ever since its famous regiment arrived — for the truth is that the Dorfield boys put up as game a fight as any Americans in the Expeditionary Force. Your boys had no press agent, nor any motion picture concern to back them up, so the truth will never be heralded broadcast in newspaper headlines, but take it from me, Dorfield comes under the A-No. 1 class.”
They regarded him a time in silence.
“How did you make your way here?” asked Josie.
“I saw you arrive in town and recognized you as John O’Gorman’s daughter. Was on old John’s force at one time. Josie O’Gorman is a friend of Mary Louise Burrows, whose auto was stolen by the man I’m hunting. That’s simple enough.”
“Have you been searching for him long in this locality?” asked Chief Lonsdale, handing him a business card.
“Oh, you’re not unknown to me, Charles Lonsdale,” he said; “I’ve hung around here for two days or more, and that’s long enough to tag any man.”
“What’s the name of your Boston fugitive?”
“Here they call him Danny Dexter — his war name. In Boston he was best known as Jim O’Hara.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Josie O’Gorman, in a low tone of surprise. “Then he’s well worth finding. Forger?”
“Yes — and more,” replied the big man, gravely.
Chief Lonsdale was staring at both of them.
“What is your real name?” he asked the man. “A business card doesn’t amount to much in our profession,” and he spun the proferred card across the table.
“Well, where I live we don’t often resort to aliases. They just call me Bill Crocker.”
“Oh!” again said John O’Gorman’s daughter, both surprised and interested in the turn events had taken. “I’ll go bond for him, Chief,” she continued. “It’ll do us both good to know Bill Crocker.”
The man with the pock-marks, who
leaned back against the wall in careless attitude, his clothing wrinkled and unpressed, his whole appearance unkempt and unattractive, returned their looks with a mild smile.
“Reputation is a vague thing,” said he, “and often undeserved or exaggerated. To-day Bill Crocker of Boston might be called the John O’Gorman of his city, but what will he be to-morrow? A few failures and he is totally forgotten.” Josie gave one of her sympathetic nods.
“That’s true,” she affirmed. “If you’re pretty big you’re given a headline; perhaps your picture is printed, but in a few days no one remembers who you were. That’s a good idea, for otherwise the Book of Fate would be packed with nonsense. An author, painter or sculptor stands a chance of living in name, but no one else has a ghost of a chance.”
“Are you prepared to spend some money on this game?” asked Bill Crocker. “The Bank offers a big reward for the man, with all expenses. I’m going to try and get him,”
“Try for it,” repeated the Chief of Police.
“We’re prepared to do all the Bank would — and then some,” added Lonsdale calmly. “Eh, Miss Burrows? But we want the auto more than the man.”
“That is true,” agreed Mary Louise, “and yet I will leave the whole matter in your hands. With Charlie Lonsdale, who is regarded as an especially clever Chief, and Josie O’Gorman, whom I have evidence to prove is the brightest girl detective in America, and Bill Crocker of Boston, who is regarded with such awe by his confreres, we certainly ought to win against one common soldier who has turned criminal because he likes a pretty automobile and thinks it safe to steal it from a country town.”
Complete Works of L. Frank Baum Page 629