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 the116 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!”

117 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 are118 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, exa............