Bobs, a Girl Detective

Impulsively the new clerk exclaimed, “I’ll be your friend, if you’ll let me.” Just then a strident voice called, “Miss Wiggin, forward!”

“You stay with the books,” Nell said softly, “and I’ll do the china.”

Bobs watched the slight figure that was hurrying toward the front, and she sighed, with tears close to the hazel eyes, and in her heart was a prayer, “May I be forgiven for the selfish, heedless years I have lived. But perhaps now I can make up for it. Surely I shall try.”

Roberta had been told by Mr. Jewett that she must not reveal to anyone her real reason for being at the antique shop, and, as Mr. Queerwitz had no faith in the girl’s ability to waylay a pilferer, he did not care to have Miss Nell Wiggin devote more time to teaching her the business of selling antiques. This information was conveyed by Miss Peerwinkle to Nell, who was told to stay away from the new clerk, with the added remark: “If she didn’t get on to the ropes with one hour’s showing, she’s too stupid for this business, anyhow.”

Why the head lady had taken such a very evident dislike to her, Bobs could not understand, for surely she was willing to do whatever she was told. Ah, well, she wasn’t going to worry. “Worrying is what makes one old,” she thought, as she mounted a small step-ladder on casters that one could push along the shelves. From the top of it she examined the books that were highest. Suddenly she uttered an exclamation of delight, then looked about quickly to be sure that she had not been heard. Customers in the front part of the store occupied the attention of the three clerks, so Roberta reached for a volume that had attracted her attention. It was indeed rare and old, so very old that she wondered that the covers did not crumble, and it had illumined letters. “Perhaps they were made by early monks,” Bobs was thinking. She sat down on the ladder and began turning the fascinating pages that were yellow with age. Suddenly she was conscious that someone stood near her. She looked up to find the accusing gaze of the head clerk fixed upon her.

Bobs was startled into exclaiming: “Say, Miss Peerwinkle, a cat has nothing on you when it comes to walking softly, has it?”

The reply was frigidly given: “Miss Do-little,” with emphasis, “you are supposed to dust the books, not read them; and what’s more, that particular book is the rarest one in the whole collection. There’s a mate to it somewhere, and when Mr. Queerwitz finds it, he can sell the two of them to Mr. Leonel Van Loon for one thousand dollars in cool cash.”

Roberta was properly impressed, and replaced the book; then, taking a duster, she proceeded to tidy her department.

At eleven o’clock Bobs wondered if she ought to wander about the shop and watch the occasional customer. This she did, and was soon in the neighborhood of Miss Wiggin. “You’re to go out to eat when I do,” Nell told her.

“I’m glad to hear it,” was the reply.

Promptly at noon Miss Wiggin beckoned and said: “Come, Miss Dolittle, be as quick as you can. We only have half an hour nooning, and every minute counts. I go around to my room. You might buy something, then come with me and eat it.”

Roberta could hardly believe what she had heard. “Only half an hour to wash, go somewhere, eat your lunch and get back?

“Why the mad rush?” she exclaimed. “Doesn’t Mr. Queerwitz know there’s all eternity ahead of us?”

A wan smile was the only answer. Miss Nell Wiggin was not wasting time. She led the way to the cloakroom, donned her outdoor garments, and then, taking her new friend by the hand, she said: “Hold fast to me. We’ll take a short cut through the back stockroom. It’s black as soot in there when it isn’t lit up. Mr. Queerwitz won’t let us burn lights except for business reasons.”

Bobs found herself being led through a room so dark that she could barely see the two walls of boxes that were piled high on either side, with a narrow path between.

They soon emerged upon a back alley, where huge cans of refuse stood, and where trucks were continually passing up and down or standing at the back entrances of stores loading and unloading.

“Now walk as fast as you can,” little Miss Wiggin said, as away she went toward Fourth Avenue, with Roberta close behind her. If Bobs had known what was going to happen that noon, she would not have left the shop.

CHAPTER IX.

A HURRIED LUNCH

Fourth Avenue having been reached, Miss Wiggin darted into a corner delicatessen store. “What will you have for your lunch?” she turned to ask of her companion. “I’m going to get five cents’ worth of hot macaroni and a dill pickle.”

“Double the order,” Bobs said, and then she added to the man who stood behind the counter: “I’ll also take two ham sandwiches and two chocolate eclairs.”

“Oh, Miss Dolittle, isn’t that too much for you to spend at noon?” This anxiously from pale, starved-looking little Miss Wiggin.

At the Vandergrift table there had always been many courses with a butler to serve, and in her heedless, thoughtless way, Bobs had supposed that everyone, everywhere, had enough to eat.

It was a queer little smile that she turned toward her new friend as she replied: “This being our first lunch together, let’s have a spread.” Then she paid the entire bill, which came to forty cents. “No,” she assured the protesting Nell Wiggin, “I won’t offer to treat every day. After this we’ll go Dutch, honest we will! Now lead the way.”

Again in the thronged street, little Miss Wiggin turned with an apology: “Maybe I oughtn’t to’ve asked you to come to my room. Probably you’re used to something better.”

“Don’t you believe it!” Bobs replied cheerily. “I live in the shabbiest kind of a dump.” She did not add that she had not as yet resided on New York’s East Side for more than twenty-four hours, at the longest, and that prior to that her home on Long Island had been palatial. She was eager to know how girls who had never had a chance were forced to live. Miss Wiggin was descending rather rickety steps below the street level. “Is your room in the basement?” Bobs asked, trying to keep from her voice the shock that this revelation brought to her. No wonder there were no roses in the wan cheeks of little Miss Wiggin.

“Yes,” was the reply, “the caretakers of the buildings all live in the basements, you know, and Mrs. O’Malley, the janitor of this one, is a widow with two little boys. She had a room to rent cheap and so I took it.”

Then she led the way through a long, narrow, dark hall. Once Bobs touched the wall and she drew back shuddering, for the stones were cold and clammy.

The little room to which Bobs was admitted opened only on an air shaft, but there was sunlight entering its one small window; too, there were white curtains and a geranium in bloom on the sill.

“It’s always pleasantest at noon, for that’s the only time that the sun reaches my window,” the little hostess said, as she hurriedly drew a sewing table out from behind the small cot bed, unfolded it and placed the lunch thereon. Bobs’ gaze wandered about the room, which was so small that its three pieces of furniture seemed to crowd it. In one corner was a bamboo bookcase which held the real treasure of Miss Wiggin. Row after row of books in uniform dark red binding. They were all there – Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Old Curiosity Shop and the rest of them.

“Nights it would be sort of dismal sitting in here alone if ’twasn’t for those books,” the little hostess confessed. “That’s a real good kerosene lamp I have. It makes a bright light. I curl up on the couch as soon as my supper’s eaten, and then I forget where I really am, for I go wherever the story takes me. Come, everything is ready,” she added, “and since fifteen minutes of our time is gone already, we’d better eat without talking.”

This they did, and Gloria would have said that they gulped their food, but what can one do with but half an hour for nooning?

They didn’t even stop to put away the table. “I’ll leave it ready for my supper tonight,” Miss Wiggin said, as she fairly flew down the dark, damp basement hall.

Five minutes later they were entering the alley door of the antique shop which had so fine an entrance on Fifth Avenue.

“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.

Miss Harriet Dingley was saying, “Now I come to think of it, just after the girls went out to lunch, I did see a man come in, but I thought he was looking at china.”

The head lady shot a none too pleasant glance at the other clerk as she said coldly, “Well, you aren’t giving me any information. Didn’t I watch every move he made like a cat watches a mouse hole? Just tell me that!”

“Oh, yes, Miss Peerwinkle. I’m not criticizing anything you did. But you remember when a boy ran by shouting fire, we did go to the door to see where the fire was and a minute later the man went out and – ”

“He went empty-handed,” the head-woman said self-defendingly.

“I know he did. Now please don’t think I’m criticizing you, but when he went out I noticed that he was a hunch-back, and I’m certain that he didn’t have a hump when he came in.”

“We’ll not discuss the matter further,” was said in a tone of finality as Miss Peerwinkle walked away with an air of offended dignity.

Bobs looked about for Nell, to whom she wished to say good-bye. She was glad that the youngest clerk was beyond the book shelves as Roberta was curious to know which book had been taken. A gap on the top shelf told the story. It was a rare old book for which one thousand dollars had been offered if its mate could be found.

“Whoever has taken the book has the other volume. I’m detective enough to know that,” Roberta declared. Then she turned to find little Miss Wiggin standing at her side looking as sad as though something very precious was being taken away from her.

Impulsively Bobs held out both hands.

“Don’t forget, Nell Wiggin, that you and I are to be friends, and what’s more, next Sunday morning at ten o’clock sharp I’m coming down to get you and take you to my home for dinner. How would you like that?”

“Like it?” The dark eyes in the pale, wan face were like stars. “O, Miss Dolittle, what it will mean to me!”

Miss Harriet Dingley did nod when she heard Bobs singing out “Good-bye,” but Miss Peerwinkle seemed to be as deaf as a statue.

“I could laugh,” Bobs said to herself as she joined the throng on Fifth Avenue, “if my heart wasn’t so full of tears. I don’t know as I can stand much more of seeing how the other half lives without having a good cry over it. Dickens, the only friend and comforter of that frail little mite of humanity!”

Then, as she turned again toward Avenue A, she suddenly remembered the package of detective stories for which she had promised to call at the shop where there was a spray of lilacs and a much-loved invalid woman.

“I guess I’ll give up the detective game,” she thought, as she hurried along, “but I’ll enjoy reading the stories just the same.”

Half an hour later she had changed her mind and had decided that she really was a very fine detective indeed.

CHAPTER X.

BOBS AS BOOKSELLER

It was three o’clock in the afternoon when Bobs entered the musty book shop on the East Side and found the place unoccupied. However, the tinkling of a bell sounded in the back room and the little old man shuffled in. His expression was troubled, and when Roberta inquired for his invalid wife, he replied that she wasn’t so well. “Poor Marlitta,” he said, and there was infinite tenderness in his voice, “she’s yearning to go back to the home country where our children are and their children, and the doctor thinks it might make her strong once again to be there, but the voyage costs money, and Marlitta would rather die here than not go honest.”

The old man seemed to be overcome with emotion, then suddenly recalling his customer’s errand, he shuffled away to procure the package of detective stories for which she had called. During his absence Roberta went back of the counter, reached for a book on an upper shelf and, while so doing, dislodged several others that tumbled about her, revealing, as though it had been hidden in the dark recess back of them, the rare book which that morning had been taken from the Queerwitz Antique Shop.

That, then, was what the old man meant when he said that his Marlitta would not go unless she could “go honest.”

The girl quickly replaced the books and then stood deep in thought. What could she do? What should she do? She knew that the gentle bookseller had taken the rare volume merely to try to save the life of the one dearest to him. When he returned with the package the girl heard herself asking:

“But you, if your Marlitta went to the home country, would you not be very lonely?”

There was infinite sadness in the faded eyes and yet, too, there was something else, a light from the soul that true sacrifice brings.

“Ah, that I also might go,” he said; then with a gesture that included all of the small dark shop, he added, “but these old books are all I have and they do not sell.”

At that moment Roberta recalled the name of Lionel Van Loon, who, as Miss Peerwinkle had assured her, would pay one thousand dollars for the rare book and its mate. For a thoughtful moment the girl gazed at the lilac, then decided to tell the little old man all that she knew.

At first she regretted this decision when she saw the frightened expression in his gentle, child-like face, but she hastened to assure him that she only wanted to help him, and so she was asking him to send the stolen book back to the antique shop by mail.

When this had been done, Roberta, returning from the corner post box, found the old man gazing sadly at another volume which the girl instantly knew was the prized mate of the one she had just mailed.

“It’s no use without the other,” the bookseller told her, “and Mr. Queerwitz wouldn’t pay what it’s worth. He never does. He crowds the poor man to the wall and then crushes him.”

“I have a plan,” the girl told him. “Will you trust me with this book for a little while?”

Trust her? Who would not? For reply the old man held his treasure toward her. “Heaven bless you,” was all that he said.

It was four o’clock when Bobs descended from a taxicab and mounted the steps of a handsome brown stone mansion on Riverside Drive. Mr. Van Loon was at home and, being a most kindly old gentleman and accustomed to receiving all manner of persons, he welcomed Roberta into his wonderful library, listened courteously at first, but with growing interest, when he realized that this radiant girl had a book to sell which she believed to be both rare and valuable. The eyes of the cultured gentleman plainly revealed his great joy when he actually saw the long-sought first volume.

“My dear young lady,” he said, “you cannot know what it means to me to be able to obtain that book. I know where I can find its mate and so, I assure you, I will purchase it, the price being? – ” He paused inquiringly.

Roberta heard, as though it were someone else speaking, her own voice saying: “Would one thousand dollars be too much, Mr. Van Loon?”

To a man whose hobby was collecting books, and who was many times a millionaire, it was not too much. “Will you have cash or a check?” he inquired.

“Cash, if you please.”

It was six o’clock when Bobs handed the money to the overjoyed bookseller, who could not thank her enough. The little old woman again was by the window and she smiled happily as she listened to the words of the girl that fairly tumbled over each other in their eagerness to be spoken.

Then reaching out a frail hand to her “good man,” and looking at him with a light in her eyes that Bobs would never forget, she said: “Caleb, now we can both go home to our children.”

Roberta promised to return the following day to help them prepare for the voyage. She was turning away when the little woman called to her: “I want you to have my lilac,” she said, as she held the blossoming spray toward the girl.

It was half past six o’clock when Bobs reached home. Gloria was watching for her rather anxiously, but it was not until they were gathered about the fireplace for the evening that Bobs told her story.

“Here endeth my experience as a detective,” she concluded.

But Roberta was mistaken.

CHAPTER XI.

A QUEER GIFT

True to her promise Roberta had gone on the following afternoon to assist her new friends to prepare for their voyage, but to her amazement she found that they had departed, but the janitress living in the basement was on the watch for the girl and at once she ascended the stone stairs and inquired: “Are you Miss Dolittle?”

Bobs replied that she was, and the large woman, in a manner which plainly told that she had a message of importance to convey, whispered mysteriously, “Wait here!”

Down into the well of a stairway she disappeared, soon to return with an envelope containing something hard, which felt as though it might be a key.

This it proved to be. The writing in the letter had been painstakingly made, but the language was not English, and Bobs looked at it with so frankly puzzled an expression that the woman, who had been standing near, watching curiously, asked: “Can I read it for you?”

Strange things surely had happened since the Vandergrifts had gone to the East Side to live, but this was the strangest of all. It was hard for Roberta to believe that she heard aright. The old man had written that his entire stock was worth no more than five hundred dollars, and since Roberta had procured more than that sum for him, he was making her a gift of the books that remained, and requested that she remove them at once, as the rent on the shop would expire the following day.

The janitress, with an eye to business, at once said that her son, Jacob, was idle and could truck the books for the young lady wherever she wished them to go. It was two o’clock in the afternoon when this conversation took place, and at five o’clock Gloria and Lena May, returning from the Settlement House, were amazed to see a skinny horse drawing a two-wheeled ash cart stopping at the curb in front of the Pensinger mansion. The driver was a Hebrew lad, but at his side sat no less a personage than Roberta, who beamed down upon her astonished sisters.

After a moment of explanation the three girls assisted the boy Jacob to cart all the books to one of the unoccupied upper rooms, and when he had driven away Roberta sank down upon a kitchen chair and laughed until she declared that she ached. Lena May, busy setting the table for supper, merrily declared: “Bobs, what a girl you are to have adventures. Here Glow and I have been on the East Side just as long as you have, and nothing unusual has happened to us.”

“Give it time,” Roberta remarked as she rose to wash her hands. “But now I seem to have had a new profession thrust upon me. Glow, how would it do to open an old book shop out on the front lawn?”

“I’ll prophesy that these books will fill a good need some day, perhaps, when we’re least expecting it,” was Gloria’s reply.

Then, as they sat eating their evening meal together and watching the afterglow of the sunset on the river, that was so near their front door, at last Bobs said: “Do see those throngs of poor tired-out women trooping from the factory. Now they will go to the Settlement House and get their children, go home and cook and wash and iron and darn and – ” she paused, then added, “How did we four girls ever manage to live so near all this and know nothing about it? I feel as though I had been the most selfish, useless, good-for-nothing – ”

“Here, here, young lady. I won’t allow you to call my sister such hard names,” Glow said merrily as she rose to replenish their cups of hot chocolate. Then, more seriously, she added as she reseated herself: “Losing our home seemed hard, but I do believe that we three are glad that something happened to make us of greater use in the world.”

“I am,” Lena May said, looking up brightly. She was thinking of the sandpile at the Settlement House over which she had presided that afternoon.

And Gloria concluded: “I know that I would be more nearly happy than I have been since our mother died, if only I knew where Gwendolyn is.”

And where was Gwendolyn, the proud, selfish girl who had not tried to make the best of things? Gloria would indeed have been troubled had she but known.

CHAPTER XII.

A YOUNG MAN ENTERS

It was early Sunday morning. “Since we are to have your little friend, Nell Wiggin, to dinner today,” Gloria remarked as the three sat at breakfast, “suppose we also invite Miss Selenski. It will be a nice change for her.”

“Good!” Bobs agreed. “That’s a splendid suggestion. Now what is the program for the day?”

“Lena May has consented to tell Bible stories to the very little children each Sunday morning at the Settlement House,” Gloria said, “and I have asked a group of the older girls who are in one of my clubs to come over here this afternoon for tea and a quiet hour around the fireplace. I thought it would be a pleasant change for them, and I want you girls to become acquainted with them so when I mention their names you will be able to picture them. They really are such bright, attractive girls! The Settlement House is giving them the only chance that life has to offer them.” Then, smiling lovingly at the youngest, Gloria concluded: “Lena May has consented to pour, and you, Bobs, I shall expect to provide much of the entertainment.”

Roberta laughed. “Me?” she asked. “What am I to do?”

“O, just be natural.” Gloria rose and began to clear the table as she added: “Now, Bobs, since you have to go after your friend, Miss Wiggin, Lena May and I will prepare the dinner. We have it planned, but we’re going to surprise you with our menu.”

It was nine o’clock when Roberta left the Pensinger mansion. It was the first Sunday that the girls had spent on the East Side, and what a different sight met the eyes of Bobs when she started down the nearly deserted street, on one side of which were the wide docks.

Derricks were silent and the men who lived on the barges were dressed in whatever holiday attire they possessed. They were seated, some on gunwales, others on rolls of tarred rope, smoking and talking, and save for an occasional steamer loaded with folk from the city who were sailing away for a day’s outing, peace reigned on the waterfront, for even the noise of the factory was stilled.

Turning the corner at Seventy-eighth Street, Roberta was surprised to find that the boys’ playground was nearly deserted. She had supposed that at this hour it would be thronged. Just as she was puzzling about it, a lad with whom she had a speaking acquaintance emerged from a doorway and she hailed him: