The detective story ended, as all good detective stories do, with the mystery solved, the criminals brought to justice and the most unlikely person in it rounded up as the villain.

“Good enough, but I could write a better one if I had time and paper and knew how to write,” yawned Josie.

Suddenly the telephone bell broke the stillness. It made Josie, the dauntless, jump.

“Stuff and nonsense—this time o’ night! I’ve a great mind not to answer it. I bet it’s somebody playing a joke on me and when I take down the receiver will just say, ‘Christmas gift!’”

The ringing persisted and Josie grumblingly called, “Well? Higgledy Piggledy Shop! Miss O’Gorman at the ’phone!”

“Josie! Josie! This is Ursula! Can you hear me?” The voice was faint from agitation.

“Yes! What’s up?” “Little Philip is gone!”

“Gone where?” Josie asked. She was ashamed of herself the instant she had asked what she considered a very foolish question. If Ursula had known where, she would naturally have gone and found her little brother without delay.

“I don’t know,” continued the frantic sister. “The boys went to bed early and I sat up putting the finishing touches on some little presents I was making. They were fast asleep. I looked in on them for a moment before I ran across the street to take some things to the Conants and Irene. I did not latch the door to the apartment as I did not expect to be gone a minute. That was about nine o’clock. I am sure I was not out of the house five minutes in all. Mr. and Mrs. Conant begged me to come in but I merely left my Christmas parcels and after chatting with them a moment in the hall ran back home. I did not even go in to see Irene, but sent her a message. When I got home I did not go to bed but very foolishly sat up and sewed awhile and then read. I wanted to be sure the boys were fast asleep before I filled their stockings which they had hung up for Santa’s visit. I only went in their room a few minutes ago. Ben was fast asleep and Philip was—gone. His clothes are gone, too—overcoat, hat and mittens, but they took him off wrapped in a blanket.”

“Have you looked everywhere?”

“Everywhere!”

“I’ll be right over,” said Josie, hoping she kept from her voice a certain impatience and weariness she could not help but feel. Remembering the scare about little Philip before and the frantic search of some six or eight persons and how easy it had been to find him, she was sure that the little boy was safely tucked away under the bed or behind the bureau or somewhere.

“You can’t lose that kid,” she declared, as she drew on her goloshes preparing for the snow, which was deep and drifting. “If Ursula would only buck up! I was a fool not to get my beauty sleep when I had a chance. I think I’ll get Bob Dulaney in on this. He did me a good turn in the Markle case.”

Bob Dulaney was a young newspaper reporter who was rapidly making a name for himself. It was he who had grappled with Felix Markle and had overcome that doughty if evil knight with the terrible scissors-hold known to wrestlers. But that is another tale. At any rate he was a fast friend to the Higgledy Piggledies, ever ready to do their bidding. He was all devotion to Irene, his great strength always at the service of the lame girl.

It took but a moment to get the young man on the wire.

“Hello, Bob! Josie O’Gorman! Want to help me?”

“Sure!”

“There may be a story in it, but more likely not. Anyhow, you will be of great assistance. Ursula Ellett’s kid brother is missing. I am on my way there now. She’s just phoned me. If I don’t find him under the bed or behind the door I will let you know.” Josie always used the telephone as though someone were counting words on her.

“Let me know much! I’ve got my Lizzie racer here and will come pick you up. Snow’s mighty high for runts. Be at your door by the time you get bundled up. So long!” And he’d hung up.

Josie laughed. Bob Dulaney always treated her like a boy, and she enjoyed it. It was rather nice not to have to plough through the drifts. She put on a thick ulster and heavy gloves, started to lock the door of the shop but paused a moment in thought.

“I’d better take my grip,” she mused. “I may have to catch a train.”

Josie kept a suitcase packed for an emergency—“As clever crooks and detectives always do,” she had said.

A muffled toot announced Bob and his tiny racer.

“What! Going on a trip?” he asked, as Josie came running down the steps with the suitcase.

“Never can tell. I hope not. I also hope there is no story for your paper at the end of this mad ride, but we must be prepared.”

The racer was slipping through the dry snow with the ease that an airplane might breast a bank of clouds.

“If you weren’t you and I, I,” laughed Josie, “we might be taken for an eloping couple.”

“I’d much prefer being taken for that than to be taken for speeding,” declared Bob, as they swirled around a corner almost knocking the brass buttons off a belated policeman. The poor man rubbed his stomach sadly as though he had been actually touched.

“Them youngsters better be glad they didn’t hit me,” he grumbled. “If it wasn’t Christmas Eve I’d follow ’em up.”

They found the house in which Ursula lived all astir. It was an old mansion that had been converted into an apartment house, where the shabby genteel had taken refuge, but kind hearts beat under the worn coats and the lodgers had one and all come to Ursula’s assistance. To be sure some of them told dismal stories about the lost Charlie Ross of the last century, and how his mother and father had hunted him high and low, spending fortunes on the search, but never giving up, following in vain clue after clue that took them in all kinds of places and climes until they were an old white-haired couple bent and broken in spirit.

Others of the fellow lodgers were more practical in demonstrations of sympathy. One old lady put on her spectacles and solemnly began to look over the pieces in her scrap bag. She had always been finding things that were lost in that capacious bag. A nervous, middle-aged bachelor was going around to the different apartments and solemnly poking up the chimneys with a hearth broom.

“Persons often hide up flues in motion pictures,” he said.

Poor little Ben, who felt somehow that he was responsible for his brother’s disappearance, since he had slept through his flitting, was profiting by Josie’s success in finding Philip when he was lost before by making a systematic search. With tense mouth and burning eyes he was examining every crack and corner of the old house.

“Th’ain’t any dumb-waiter or elevators here,” he sobbed when Josie made her appearance, “but oh, Miss Josie, I’ve looked between the mattresses an’ behind the bureaus an’ up on top the wardrobes in every ’partment here.”

“I know you have, my dear,” said Josie gently, “but tell me, Ben, who is in the apartment next to yours?”

“Th’ain’t nobody. That’s been vacant three months.”

Josie considered, and asked:

“Have you looked in there?”

“No’m! The door is locked.”

Josie slipped from her pocket a skeleton key which she fitted neatly in the lock of the door, and with a sure turn of her strong little wrist she turned the bolt.

“Humph! It looks as though we were none of us safe in our beds,” remarked a sharp-nosed dressmaker, who had the apartment directly across the hall from Ursula’s. “If it’s that easy to open a door.”

“Inside bolts are safer,” said Josie, “but even those are not proof against crooks and their tools.”

The room was dark and dusty. Josie produced a flash light but discovered the electric light had not been turned off since the departure of the former tenant and by touching the proper button she quickly had a flood of light with which to continue her investigations. With no ceremony she closed the door on the curious crowd of lodgers, admitting only Bob Dulaney.

“Stand still, please,” she commanded. “We must examine the tracks in this room. It is covered with the dust of ages but someone has been in it recently. Look! It’s a woman with short rather broad feet and high heels, run down—a tendency to fallen arches I should say because of the heels being worn on the inside. Whoever has been in here has been at this window. See! It is possible to look into Ursula’s living room from this window. Look! She has even scraped the frost from the pane to get a better view. This pane is not so covered with grime as the others. Umhum! She is a little taller than I am, but not much. Rather a chunky party I should say.”

“Wears gilt hairpins, too,” laughed Bob, stooping and picking up what was even more a give away as to sex than the uncertain tracks of high heels.

“Oh, you jewel!” cried Josie. “Meaning you and not the hairpin, Bob. I’m certainly glad you are in on this. I didn’t see the hairpin and it will mean a lot more to me than anything.”

“Let me present it to you,” said Bob, bowing low with mock courtesy. “Josie, you delight my soul. I feel like Dr. Watson in attendance on Sherlock Holmes. But joking aside, I believe if poor little Philip has really been kidnaped it was by some person or persons who had been hiding in this room.”

“Sure! But it was only one person because there are no signs of other footprints. Thank goodness the floor was stained with a dark varnish. It makes the footprints so much easier to define. Well, Bob, there is no use in hanging around here. I reckon we’d best get out and hustle.”

Josie regretted that she had not telephoned police headquarters immediately after hearing from Ursula that Philip was missing, but remembering the last time, she had felt the chief might think that like the boy in the fable she had called “wolf” too often. Now he must be informed of the trouble and get his men busy on the case. The kidnapper had several hours start and no time was to be lost or, as Josie expressed it, “the scent might get cold.”

Ursula was in a state of mind bordering on frenzy. She walked up and down the room wringing her hands and moaning piteously.

“If only I had not gone over to the Conants’,” she wailed. “Or if I only had locked the door. I’ve always been afraid to lock the boys up in a room for fear of fire and they couldn’t get out. My baby Philip! My baby Philip!”

Josie stood by her side and endeavored to calm her.

“See here, Ursula, you must listen to me a moment and you must tell me some things I want to know. You must be very frank and conceal nothing.” “I never have, Josie—nothing of the least importance, that is.”

“All right! Now tell me why anybody would want Philip—except of course that he is a lovely child. But people don’t steal boys just because they are charming.”

“Don’t they? Well, Josie, I don’t know what they would get but charm. You know how poor I am.”

“Well, I can’t help feeling there is something besides charm in this transaction. Now, Ursula, give me the names and addresses of any friends or connections you have in Louisville. I want Mr. Cheatham’s full name and his address and also what hospital had the honor of graduating Miss Fitchet as a nurse. Write all your information in this little book. Now, my dear girl, you must spunk up all you can. I know it is hard, but Philip is going to be found, and that within a few days or maybe hours. You must promise me something: it makes no difference what communication you receive from these persons who have seen fit to carry off our Philip, you will call up Captain Lonsdale and tell him all about it. It will be a plain case of blackmail. If they tell you to meet them in a quiet spot with all of your diamonds in a black bag, don’t you do it. You let the chief of police do your meeting.”

“But Josie, where will you be that you give me all these directions?”

“Me? I’m going to take the next train for Louisville. I feel it in my bones that I can learn something to my advantage there. I’ll learn the motives and work from that.”

“Oh, let me go too!” begged Ursula. Josie considered a moment. Then she said:

“I really think it would be wiser for you to stay right where you are. You see Irene and her aunt and uncle will be good to you and little Ben and Mary Louise will be here, and Elizabeth Wright. Philip may be brought back any minute, and you certainly don’t want to be away from home when they bring him back.”

“No, I just had a feeling maybe he might be in Louisville and I could get him sooner if I went there,” sighed the poor girl, who was trying desperately to keep back the tears that would course down her pale cheeks.

Josie carried away a sad picture of her friend. She left the Dorfield end in the hands of Bob Dulaney, who was to inform the police of the kidnapping and also keep busy on his own account, following up every clue that might present itself.

“Good-bye, Bob!” called Josie as she jumped aboard the train. “Keep me informed of the case and I’ll do the same with you.”