Josie’s impatience amounted almost to a fever, as she awaited the hour for dinner with Mr. Cheatham. The day after Christmas had been a busy one for her. She felt she must write a detailed account to Ursula of her visit with the Trasks. Also Captain Charlie Lonsdale and Bob Dulaney must be communicated with and the rest of the day was taken up in unearthing everything concerning Cheatham and Miss Fitchet that a female detective could hope to learn in a day.

Aunt Mandy was intensely interested in all Josie had to tell her of her cousins at Peewee Valley and her excitement knew no bounds when she learned that the young woman upon whom she looked as her own especial boarder, since her husband had sent her to Miss Lucy Leech’s, should have had Christmas dinner with such “highupity pussons” as the Trasks.

“An’ you done knowd young Mr. Teddy Trask at school! Well, bless Bob, if life ain’t complexicated.”Josie had felt it wise to account for her acquaintance with young Trask to Aunt Mandy and her mistress. He was to come for her to take her to Mr. Cheatham’s dinner party and Josie knew boarding houses and the curiosity of the boarders well enough to be sure she must account for being friends with a young man as well known in Louisville as the handsome Teddy Trask. She had cautioned Teddy to ask for her by her right name and not the assumed one.

“I’m sorry I got going with a dual personality,” she said, “but it’s done now and Miss Lucy Leech thinks I’m named O’Gorman and Mr. Cheatham thinks I am Miss Friend. It was a break on my part to be so free with aliases. I can’t forgive that kind of stupidity. Sometimes one loses out on a job just because of such carelessness.”

Josie always had a dinner dress neatly packed in her emergency kit, as she called the suitcase she kept ready to take on a trip, and now that she was to dine with Mr. Cheatham she was thankful that she would be suitably clad.

“You’s de kinder boa’der to make money on,” Aunt Mandy declared, when Josie told her she would not be home for dinner. “Mos’ boa’ders eats in reg’lar. Looks like dey’s scairt dey won’t git dey money’s wuth an’ even when dey gits ’vited out dey comes home fer a filler. Why, honey, I’s knowd boa’ders what’ll tu’n on de light in dey rooms when dey’s goin’ out, ’fraid dey won’ git dey rights. But Miss Lucy kin tell ’em wha ter git off, when dey gits too proudified and boa’derish. I tell yer Miss Lucy ain’t never been one ter be back’ards in comin’ for’d when boa’ders gits rampageous. She’ll rar’ up on her hin’ legs an’ tell ’em what’s what.”

“I’m sure she will,” laughed Josie, “and I’m sure the boarders deserve all they get when she gives them what’s what. I’ll try my best to be good and not deserve such things.”

“Lawsamussy, Miss! Anybody knows dat if my Peter an’ Brer Si recommends a pusson dat pusson air sho ter be fust-class. Peter wouldn’t no mo’ send a onsuitable boa’der here dan Si would fotch one. Dem two niggers air got both Miss Lucy an’ me ter reckon with an’ what dey reckons am no lef’ over victuals if dey ain’t got gumption enough ter respec’ the sanctity of a fust-class boa’din’ house kep’ by ’ristocrats.”

Teddy arrived on the stroke of the hour appointed. His mother and sister were waiting in the automobile, having driven in from Peewee Valley.

“Mother and I thought it wiser not to tell Anita what we suspect in Cheatham, so remember,” he whispered as he greeted Josie in the hall.

“Perhaps you are right. She might find it difficult to be polite to him,” said Josie, but in her heart she felt it a rather dangerous thing to leave a young girl in ignorance of the character of a man who was plainly paying court to her.

“Well,” she thought, “no doubt they know their own business best and she could hardly elope with him to-night. I hope by to-morrow we may know something definite.”

It was with a feeling of mingled rage and pity that Josie entered the Ellett house—rage that it should be owned by Cheatham and pity that Ursula should have had to give up such a home and go to live in what seemed like squalor in comparison. She remembered the bare, plain furnishings of Ursula’s apartment, made attractive only by the indefinable touch of taste that the girl always evinced. Josie looked critically at the damask hangings of the drawing room where Cheatham stood to greet his guests, at the rich oriental rugs, the old portraits of Ursula’s ancestors; the mahogany chairs and tables of antique make—every stick with a pedigree!

It was a marvel to Josie that the citizens of Louisville had not suspected this man of swindling his stepchildren. It seemed strange that they had not arisen in a body and demanded a reckoning, but when she remembered Ursula’s extreme reticence she realized that having kept her own counsel the citizens of Louisville would have been officious indeed to have thrust themselves into her affairs. No doubt Cheatham had a perfectly plausible tale to tell concerning his possession of the property and since Ursula had never attempted to correct his statements it was natural for neighbors to accept them as true.

One of the things that Josie had unearthed in the sleuthing she had done during the day was that Cheatham was endeavoring to sell the old Ellett house and negotiations were pending with an investment company with a view to making over the place into many small apartments.

A hitch in the title had kept the deal from going through, so a real estate agent had informed her when she questioned him concerning the property as though she herself were a possible buyer. “I wouldn’t mess in it myself,” he declared, “but I reckon he’ll slick it up somehow by letting the place to be sold for taxes and then buying it in himself.”

Mr. Cheatham’s dinner was quite perfect, and Josie could not help wondering if the servants were some that poor Ursula had trained. A butler of extreme elegance and ebony hue served the repast with the airs of a Chesterfield. Cheatham seemed singularly out of place in this home of gentle refinement. His color was so high, his moustache almost blue black, the whites of his eyes so white and the blacks so black. The make-up of a villain was his and still his manner was genial and cordial and had not Josie been hunting the arch conspirator with a clue given her by Ursula she knew in her heart her instinct would never have directed her towards Cheatham. The table seated twenty and Josie was thankful to be lost in the crowd. She decided to make herself as inconspicuous as possible.

During dinner Josie managed so completely to efface herself that her host forgot entirely there was any such person as a Miss Josie Friend, an old schoolmate of Teddy Trask, at his table. Josie had a way of effacing herself without calling attention to her silence. She responded just enough to avoid having persons remark upon her seeming stupidity. Colorlessness was what she aimed at and what she obtained.

After dinner the radio concert began. It was a simple matter for one so unimportant as Josie to slip from the drawing room on a tour of inspection. On arrival the guests had been shown into a front room where they had left their wraps. Josie had noted that leading from this room was a small study. She could see through the half-open door a typewriter on a table with a reading light, and against the wall a small rosewood desk—a lady’s desk and hardly appropriate for a man’s study.

“That is the desk Ursula told me of; the one that had belonged to her mother and that her stepfather had so cruelly refused to give to her at her mother’s death,” murmured Josie.

The girl detective slid into the study, closed the door gently and deftly fitted a small skeleton key into the lock of the rosewood desk. It responded to her touch and opened easily. There were pigeonholes filled with letters, receipts and bills. With a quick hand and keen eye Josie rapidly ran through the piles of correspondence. Suddenly a foreign stamp arrested her attention. She pulled out a slim envelope, tucked in with others, and to her delight saw that it was addressed to Miss Ursula Ellett. She slipped out the letter and quickly put the empty envelope back in the pigeonhole where she had found it.

“No time to read it now, but how I’d like to know what it says! Anyhow, I am sure Ursula has never read it, because the date on the envelope is November of this year.”

Quickly the little sleuth ran through the other papers. In the drawer she found a bulky epistle, also directed to Miss Ursula Ellett. This too had a foreign stamp and was postmarked Kimberly, the date rubbed so that Josie could not make it out. The contents of this envelope she also confiscated and in its place stuffed some old time tables she found on the table. Quickly she closed the desk and locked it and was back downstairs listening to the radio concert before even Teddy had missed her. She patted her pocket to reassure herself that the papers were safe and then tried to compose herself to listen to the rather thin music miraculously furnished.

Josie felt the evening would never be over, so anxious was she to read the communications purloined from the rosewood desk. She was able to whisper to Teddy that she had something of possible importance and that young man’s eyes were also shining with anticipation.

“I am not crazy about snooping around a house or desk-breaking,” Josie told him, “but he had something that did not belong to him and I am merely carrying out Uncle Sam’s laws in delivering to the rightful person her own mail. When can we go?”

“I’ll scare up Mother and tell her the weather is liable to get colder or hotter or something and maybe we can leave in a few minutes,” replied the astute Teddy.

The threat of a possible snowstorm did make Mrs. Trask decide to start for Peewee Valley rather earlier than a dinner party usually breaks up and at last Josie was free to read the letters to Ursula.

Poor Teddy must wait until morning to find out what was in them, as Josie was dropped at Miss Lucy Leech’s, while he dutifully drove his mother home.