The Girl from Sunset Ranch by AMY BELL MARLOWE (best ereader for manga .TXT) 📖

by the lower door; will you? The basement door, you know."

"Sure!" replied Helen, cheerfully. "Saves the servants work, I suppose, answering the bell."

But she knew as well as Belle why the request was made. Belle was ashamed to have her appear to be one of the family. If she went in and out by the servants' door it would not look so bad.

Helen walked over to the avenue and looked at the frocks in the store windows. By their richness she saw that in this neighborhood, at least, to refit in a style which would please her cousins would cost quite a sum of money.

"I won't do it!" she told herself, stubbornly. "If they want me to look well enough to go in and out of the front door, let them suggest buying something for me."

She went back to the Starkweather mansion in good season; but she entered, as she had been told, by the area door. One of the maids let her in and tossed her head when she saw what an out-of-date appearance this poor relation of her master made.

"Sure," this girl said to the cook, "if I didn't dress better nor her when I went out, I'd wait till afther dark, so I would!"

Helen heard this, too. But she was a girl who could stick to her purpose. Criticism should not move her, she determined; she would continue to play her part.

"Mr. Starkweather is in the den, Miss," said the housekeeper, meeting Helen on the stairs. "He has asked for you."

Mrs. Olstrom was a very grim person, indeed. If she had shown the girl from the ranch some little kindliness the night before, she now hid it all very successfully.

Helen returned to the lower floor and sought that room in which she had had her first interview with her relatives. Mr. Starkweather was alone. He looked more than a little disturbed; and of the two he was the more confused.

"Ahem! I feel that we must have a serious talk together, Helen," he said, in his pompous manner. "It--it will be quite necessary--ahem!"

"Sure!" returned the girl. "Glad to. I've got some serious things to ask you, too, sir."

"Eh? Eh?" exclaimed the gentleman, worried at once.

"You fire ahead, sir," said Helen, sitting down and crossing one knee over the other in a boyish fashion. "My questions will wait."

"I--ahem!--I wish to know who suggested your coming here to New York?"

"My father," replied Helen, simply and truthfully.

"Your father?" The reply evidently both surprised and discomposed Mr. Starkweather. "I do not understand. Your--your father is dead----"

"Yes, sir. It was just before he died."

"And he told you to come here to--to us?"

"Yes, sir."

"But why?" demanded the gentleman with some warmth.

"Dad said as how you folks lived nice, and knew all about refinement and eddication and all that. He wanted me to have a better chance than what I could get on the ranch."

Mr. Starkweather glared at her in amazement. He was not at all a kind-hearted man; but he was very cowardly. He had feared her answer would be quite different from this, and now took courage.

"Do you mean to say that merely this expressed wish that you might live at--ahem!--at my expense, and as my daughters live, brought you here to New York?"

"That begun it, Uncle," said Helen, coolly.

"Preposterous! What could Prince Morrell be thinking of? Why should I support you, Miss?"

"Why, that don't matter so much," remarked Helen, calmly. "I can earn my keep, I reckon. If there's nothing to do in the house I'll go and find me a job and pay my board. But, you see, dad thought I ought to have the refining influences of city life. Good idea; eh?"

"A very ridiculous idea! A very ridiculous idea, indeed!" cried Mr. Starkweather. "I never heard the like."

"Well, you see, there's another reason why I came, too, Uncle," Helen said, blandly.

"What's that?" demanded the gentleman, startled again.

"Why, dad told me everything when he died. He--he told me how he got into trouble before he left New York--'way back there before I was born," spoke Helen, softly. "It troubled dad all his life, Uncle Starkweather. Especially after mother died. He feared he had not done right by her and me, after all, in running away when he was not guilty----"

"Not guilty!"

"Not guilty," repeated Helen, sternly. "Of course, we all know that. Somebody got all that money the firm had in bank; but it was not my father, sir."

She gazed straight into the face of Mr. Starkweather. He did not seem to be willing to look at her in return; nor could he pluck up the courage to deny her statement.

"I see," he finally murmured.

"That is the second reason that has brought me to New York," said Helen, more softly. "And it is the more important reason. If you don't care to have me here, Uncle, I will find work that will support me, and live elsewhere. But I must learn the truth about that old story against father. I sha'n't leave New York until I have cleared his name."

CHAPTER XIII (SADIE AGAIN)

 

Mr. Starkweather appeared to recover his equanimity. He looked askance at his niece, however, as she announced her intention.

"You are very young and very foolish, Helen--ahem! A mystery of sixteen or seventeen years' standing, which the best detectives could not unravel, is scarcely a task to be attempted by a mere girl."

"Who else is there to do it?" Helen demanded, quickly. "I mean to find out the truth, if I can. I want you to tell me all you know, and I want you to tell me how to find Fenwick Grimes----"

"Nonsense, nonsense, girl!" exclaimed her uncle, testily. "What good would it do you to find Grimes?"

"He was the other partner in the concern. He had just as good a chance to steal the money as father."

"Ridiculous! Mr. Grimes was away from the city at the time."

"Then you do remember all about it, sir?" asked Helen, quickly.

"Ahem! That fact had not slipped my mind," replied her uncle, weakly.

"And then, there was Allen Chesterton, the bookkeeper. Was a search ever made for him?"

"High and low," returned her uncle, promptly. "But nobody ever heard of him thereafter."

"And why did the shadow of suspicion not fall upon him as strongly as it did upon my father?" cried the girl, dropping, in her earnestness, her assumed uncouthness of speech.

"Perhaps it did--perhaps it did," muttered Mr. Starkweather. "Yes, of course it did! They both ran away, you see----"

"Didn't you advise dad to go away--until the matter could be cleared up?" demanded Helen.

"Why--I--ahem!"

"Both you and Mr. Grimes advised it," went on the girl, quite firmly. "And father did so because of the effect his arrest might have upon mother in her delicate health. Wasn't that the way it was?"

"I--I presume that is so," agreed Mr. Starkweather.

"And it was wrong," declared the girl, with all the confidence of youth. "Poor dad realized it before he died. It made all the firm's creditors believe that he was guilty. No matter what he did thereafter----"

"Stop, girl!" exclaimed Mr. Starkweather. "Don't you know that if you stir up this old business the scandal will all come to light? Why--why, even my name might be attached to it."

"But poor dad suffered under the blight of it all for more than sixteen years."

"Ahem! It is a fact. It was a great misfortune. Perhaps he was advised wrongly," said Mr. Starkweather, with trembling lips. "But I want you to understand, Helen, that if he had not left the city he would undoubtedly have been in a cell when you were born."

"I don't know that that would have killed me--especially, if by staying here, he might have come to trial and been freed of suspicion."

"But he could not be freed of suspicion."

"Why not? I don't see that the evidence was conclusive," declared the girl, hotly. "At least, he knew of none such. And I want to know now every bit of evidence that could be brought against him."

"Useless! Useless!" muttered her uncle, wiping his brow.

"It is not useless. My father was accused of a crime of which he wasn't guilty. Why, his friends here--those who knew him in the old days--will think me the daughter of a criminal!"

"But you are not likely to meet any of them----"

"Why not?" demanded Helen, quickly.

"Surely you do not expect to remain here in New York long enough for that?" said Uncle Starkweather, exasperated. "I tell you, I cannot permit it."

"I must learn what I can about that old trouble before I go back--if I go back to Montana at all," declared his niece, doggedly.

Mr. Starkweather was silent for a few moments. He had begun the discussion with the settled intention of telling Helen that she must return at once to the West. But he knew he had no real right of control over the girl, and to claim one would put him at the disadvantage, perhaps, of being made to support her.

He saw she was a very determined creature, young as she was. If he antagonized her too much, she might, indeed, go out and get a position to support herself and remain a continual thorn in the side of the family.

So he took another tack. He was not a successful merchant and real estate operator for nothing. He said:

"I do not blame you, Helen, for wishing that that old cloud over your father's name might be dissipated. I wish so, too. But, remember, long ago your--ahem!--your aunt and I, as well as Fenwick Grimes, endeavored to get to the bottom of the mystery. Detectives were hired. Everything possible was done. And to no avail."

She watched him narrowly, but said nothing.

"So, how can you be expected to do now what was impossible when the matter was fresh?" pursued her uncle, suavely. "If I could help you----"

"You can," declared the girl, suddenly.

"Will you tell me how?" he asked, in a rather vexed tone.

"By telling me where to find Mr. Grimes," said Helen.

"Why--er--that is easily done, although I have had no dealings with Mr. Grimes for many years. But if he is at home--he travels over the country a great deal--I can give you a letter to him and he will see you."

"Thank you, sir."

"You are determined to try to rake up all this trouble?"

"I will see Mr. Grimes. And I will try to find Allen Chesterton."

"Out of the question!" cried her uncle. "Chesterton is dead. He dropped out of sight long ago. A strange character at best, I believe. And if he was the thief----"

"Well, sir?"

"He certainly would not help you convict himself."

"Not intentionally, sir," admitted Helen.

"I never did see such an opinionated girl," cried Mr. Starkweather, in sudden wrath.

"I'm sorry, sir, if I trouble you. If you don't want me here----"

Now, her uncle had decided that it would not be safe to have the girl elsewhere in New York. At least, if she was under his roof, he could keep track of her activities. He began to be a little afraid of this very determined, unruffled young woman.

"She's a little savage! No knowing what she might do, after all," he thought.

Finally he said aloud: "Well, Helen, I will do what I can. I will communicate with Mr. Grimes and arrange for you to visit him--soon. I will tell you--ahem!--in the near future, all