“Cooled down a little by now?” asked Teddy Trask, after about a mile of record-breaking trotting. “Now, Miss Friend—that’s the only name I know you by—you listen to me a minute. I was Ursula Ellett’s friend. In fact, I hoped I was going to be closer than a mere friend. My family loved her from my father on down. We felt she must know we were to be trusted and we trusted her. Imagine our feelings when she simply departed from Louisville without saying one word to any of us, without writing a line, even to my mother. Mr. Cheatham has been out to see us and told us how her behavior has hurt him. He said she had requested him not to inform us of her whereabouts and he was forced to respect her wishes in the matter. He merely sends her a monthly remittance of five hundred dollars, which surely should be enough for her to live on very comfortably, without having to work so hard to support her little brothers.” “Lies! Lies! All a pack of lies!” Josie flashed.

“We might have thought that, if Ursula had done anything to contradict what Cheatham has said, but her silence is enough to convince us that we were not as dear to her as we had felt. He tells us she is soon to be married to a multi-millionaire and also that she writes she cannot pretend to any affection for him but that he is so rich she feels it would be foolish to let such a chance slip.”

“Ursula to be married! Ursula with a monthly remittance of five hundred dollars! Really, Mr. Trask, I can’t believe you are serious. She has been as poor as poor can be but now she is conducting a tea room in a little shop called the Higgledy Piggledy Shop, of which I am part owner, and the boys come and help after school and eat up all the cold waffles for accommodation. All of the Higgledy Piggledies love Ursula and her boys and last night someone came and kidnaped little Philip and Ursula is wild with grief and I have come to Louisville to see if I can get a clue to a motive for stealing the child, and in that way perhaps track the villains.” “Well, Miss Friend, you sound convincing and what you say about the cold waffles puts a human touch to your tale. But why, in the name of Heaven, if all this is so, did Ursula not write to us?”

“She dreaded what Cheatham might do to your family if you seemed in any way to connive with her. She could not stay another minute in the house with him and she is terribly afraid of him and the evil he might do to her friends and her boys, even more than what he might do to her.”

“She never told us she was afraid of Cheatham.”

“Didn’t she? But you must have known she was unhappy over her mother’s second marriage.”

“She never said so. She always avoided the subject.”

“That’s the real flaw in Ursula’s otherwise admirable character. She is too reticent.”

“That’s better than being a gusher,” exclaimed the young man vehemently.

“Yes,” smiled Josie, amused at the suddenness with which Teddy had veered around concerning Ursula, “but it is hard on a detective, who is trying to unravel a mystery, when the persons interested give one nothing to go on. I had a terrible time worming out of Ursula that there was such a person as you and even when she told me there was she gave no intimation that you were—well, a tolerably good-looking young man who had leanings in her direction. She grew pale when she mentioned your name, which led me to think that you were small and dark, with maybe a hare lip.”

Teddy laughed and spoke to his horses.

“And the multi-millionaire?” he asked.

“It’s a lie! I cannot see how you could believe Cheatham. I am sure he has not known where Ursula was until lately, and he has never communicated with her in any way, nor has she with him, since she left Louisville. Has not your mother received a letter from Ursula? She wrote one not long ago and hoped it would reach her before Christmas. I persuaded her that she was wrong to keep silent any longer. Ursula has been cowed by this terrible stepfather until she is afraid to do anything but just hide away. You do believe me, don’t you?”

“Of course, Miss Friend, I can’t help trusting you. I want to trust you so much. I’ll tell you I have been very unhappy over Ursula, but I was determined to overcome my love for her because I felt she was not worthy of my regard. I believed all Cheatham said. He is a pleasant, plausible fellow and he has pretended so much feeling for my family because of Ursula’s behavior.

“I see it all now! What fools we have been! Father doesn’t like Mr. Cheatham but Father is such an old-fashioned gentleman that when anyone is in his house he is as polite as can be. Cheatham has been in our house a lot lately, too, when I come to think of it. By Jove, he is coming to dinner today! You’ve simply got to see him. You said something awhile back about detectives. Are you really one?”

“Yes, but don’t give me away. I’m supposed to be out here hunting up rag rugs and hand-made brooms for my arts and crafts shop.”

“Give you away, indeed! I’m too excited about what you have told me and too anxious to help. As for detectives: I read all the stories about them I can get hold of and always think I could have managed the cases better than they did.”

“Good for you!” laughed Josie. “Now please tell me what you would do about this case?”

“First, I’d take you home to dinner and let you get a good look at Mr. Cheatham. I’d like to wring his neck.”

“Well, don’t look that way at him or he’ll not be able to eat his dinner. But tell me, please, Mr. Trask, how are you going to explain me to your family?”

“Don’t Mr. Trask me! I’m Teddy now, even more so than when you first got in my cutter.”

“All right, Teddy!”

“I tell you who you are. You’re a girl I used to know at Cornell, but hanged if I haven’t forgotten your name.”

“Miss Friend, Josie Friend. At least that is a right good working name, and since you christened me you should remember it. My real name is Josie O’Gorman.”

“I used to read stories about Detective O’Gorman and his stunts. I tell you he was a peach.”

“He was my father,” said Josie, for the second time that day.

“Jiminy crickets! I’d rather know you than Babe Ruth or Dempsey or Douglas Fairbanks. Do you know you haven’t shaken hands with me yet?”

Josie solemnly shook hands with the young man.

“Remember to call me Miss Friend though, or Josie. I would not mention the name of O’Gorman. Crooks are always shy of it and while Cheatham hasn’t been found out yet, I’ll bet he knows who might have caught him if he had broken the eleventh commandment.”

“Well, if I am supposed to have known you well enough at Cornell to pick you up and bring you home to dinner, I reckon I know you well enough to call you plain Josie.”

“Won’t your mother think I’m mighty forward to accept an invitation from you to a family gathering on Christmas day?”

“Oh, I’ll fix Mother. Don’t worry about her. And now, Josie, what am I to say you were doing in Peewee Valley on this cold day?”

“Why not let rag rugs and brooms be the motive? It went down with you all right and why not with them?”

“Yes it did!” he exclaimed scornfully. “I knew all the time you weren’t after rag rugs.”

“Then you knew a lot, because I really am going over to this cabin and order a big lot for our shop. You have forgotten the shop. My detective business is supposed to be a side issue and the shop is the all important thing, since it is by running the shop that a number of persons make a living. Being a detective is my art but helping to run the Higgledy Piggledy Shop is my business.”

“All right then, rag rugs and home-made brooms it shall be! I found you standing on your head in a snow drift on your way to Uncle Abe’s cabin and when I set you right side up you turned out to be the Josie Friend I had known at Cornell, where you were specializing in—in—”

“Psychology and domestic science!” said Josie, with a grin.

“Exactly! I then drove you to the cabin. By the way, we’ll get there finally on this road, although it is a long way round, but there is plenty of time before dinner and my horses are simply prancing for a good spin. Now, nobody is to know you ever heard of Ursula and you are to catch Cheatham entirely off his guard.”

“Fine! You have the makings of a real detective in you. In the meantime can you furnish the slightest clue for the motive any one might have had for kidnaping poor little Philip?”

Teddy Trask could think of no reason and then Josie related to him all she knew concerning Miss Fitchet’s appearance in Dorfield; how she seemed to shadow Ursula and then disappeared and then about the woman with run-down heels and blonde hair who had evidently been in the room adjoining the apartment occupied by Ursula and her brothers.

“I have a hunch that Cheatham is at the bottom of the whole thing and that Fitchet is in his employ,” said Josie. “Fitchet came to Dorfield to spy out the lay of the land before she went to Florida on this case that she has just left within the last week. Cheatham wanted to know what his stepchildren were doing and how they were living. Why he was interested I do not know. Since then something has arisen that makes him more interested. He sent for Fitchet and she dropped her case in Florida and flew to do his bidding. Philip is now with her, but where? Cheatham has not left Louisville, and as far as we know Fitchet has not returned. I am trying to find out something about Ursula’s Uncle Ben Benson, but nobody seems to know of his whereabouts since he left Louisville when his sister married Cheatham.”

“Gee! You sound like the old lady in ‘The Circular Staircase’ or the man in ‘The Gold Bug’.”

“Do you think you might casually bring in the name of Uncle Ben Benson? Ask your father, for instance, if he ever knew him. Say you heard someone mention him at the club and the man wondered if he had died. Say another man at the club was under the impression he was dead—thought he had seen something in a foreign dispatch concerning his death. Just make up any old thing and don’t be too explicit or too much interested.”

“Sure I can! I’ll be the casual one and you do the watching of Cheatham. There’ll more than likely be a big bunch of folks at dinner. Anita always has a crowd around her and Mother and Father rake in guests with a heavy hand around Christmas time. I haven’t asked anyone on my own hook this year, so it is pretty fine that I found you standing on your head in the snowdrift. The truth of the matter is I am really missing Ursula such a lot and I couldn’t seem to make up my mind to jolly up much, with her away and getting ready to marry a multi-millionaire.”

Josie patted the big glove on the hand next to her that held the reins to the prancing steeds and the young man looked down at her gratefully. She gave him a merry glance.

“By the way, Teddy, if you see me looking fish-eyed don’t be astonished. I want Cheatham to think I’m so stupid he won’t have to be on his guard with me. Another thing: my shop must not be spoken of by name, as no doubt Fitchet has told him Ursula was working for the Higgledy Piggledies at Dorfield, so suppose you let me represent a firm in Youngstown, Ohio.”

“All right, Miss Particular! What you say goes and nothing you may say and any way you may look won’t astonish me. Watch me be about as big a sleuth as there is in America. Please let me tell you how much happier I am since you got in my cutter.”

“I’m more cheerful, too,” said Josie, “although I shouldn’t be when there is poor Ursula eating her heart out with misery. I couldn’t be as cheerful as I am if I were not perfectly sure we will find little Philip.”

“Sure we will find him,” said Teddy.