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

partner of the firm is convinced that the only person guilty of that embezzlement was one Allen Chesterton, who was the firm's bookkeeper. How about that? Wouldn't that fill the bill?" asked Mr. Grimes, rubbing his hands together.

"If we had such an article published in the papers and circulated among his old friends, wouldn't that satisfy you, my dear? Then you would do no more of this foolish probing for facts that cannot possibly be reached--eh? What do you say, Helen Morrell? Isn't that a famous idea?"

But the girl from Sunset Ranch was, for the moment, speechless. For a second time, it seemed to her, she was being bribed to make no serious investigation of the evidence connected with her father's old trouble. Both Uncle Starkweather and this old man seemed to desire to head her off!

CHAPTER XIX (JONES)

 

"Isn't that a famous idea?" demanded Mr. Grimes, for the second time.

"I--I am not so sure, sir," Helen stammered.

"Why, of course it is!" he cried, smiting the desk before him with the flat of his palm. "Don't you see that your father's name will be cleared of all doubt? And quite right, too! He never was guilty."

"It makes me quite happy to hear you say so," said the girl, wiping her eyes. "But how about the bookkeeper?"

"Who--Allen?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, we couldn't find him now. If he kept hidden then, when there was a hue and cry out for him, what chance would there be of finding him after seventeen years? Oh, no! Allen can't be found. And, even if he could, I doubt but the thing is outlawed. I don't know that the authorities would take it up. And I am pretty sure the creditors of the old firm would not."

"That is not what I mean," said Helen, softly. "But suppose we accuse this bookkeeper--and he is not guilty, either?"

"Well! Is that any great odds? Nobody knows where he is----"

"But suppose he should reappear," persisted Helen. "Suppose somebody who loved him--a daughter, perhaps, as I am the daughter of Prince Morrell--with just as great a desire to clear her father's name as I have to clear mine---- Suppose such a person should appear determined to prove Mr. Chesterton not guilty, too?"

"Ha, but we've beat 'em to it--don't you see?" demanded Mr. Grimes, heartlessly.

"Oh, sir! I could not take such an apparent victory at such a cost!" cried Helen, wiping her eyes again. "You say you believe Allen Chesterton was guilty instead of father. But you put forward no evidence--no more than the mere suspicion that cursed poor dad. No, no, sir! To claim new evidence, but to show no new evidence, is not enough. I must find out for sure just who stole that money. That is what dad himself said would be the only way in which his name could be cleared."

"Nonsense, girl!" ejaculated Fenwick Grimes, scowling again.

"I am sorry to go against both your wishes and Uncle Starkweather's," said Helen, slowly. "But I want the truth! I can't be satisfied with anything but the truth about this whole unfortunate business.

"It made poor dad very unhappy when he was dying. It troubled my poor mother--so he said--all her life out there in Montana. I want to know where the money went--who got it--all about it. Then I can prove to people that it was not my father who committed the crime."

"This is a very quixotic thing you have undertaken, my girl," remarked Mr. Grimes, with a sudden change in his manner.

"I hope not. I hope I shall learn the truth."

"How?"

He shot the question at her as from a gun. His face had grown very grim and his sly little eyes gleamed threateningly. More than ever did Helen dislike and fear this man. The avaricious light in his eyes as he noted the money she carried on the train, had first warned her against him. Now, when she knew so much more about him, and how he was immediately connected with her father's old trouble, Helen feared him all the more.

Because of his love of money alone, she could not trust him. And he had suggested something which was, upon the face of it, dishonest and unfair. She rose from her seat and shook her head slowly.

"I do not know how," Helen said, sadly. "But I hope something may turn up to help me. I understand that you have never known anything about Allen Chesterton since he ran away?"

"Not a thing," declared Mr. Grimes, shortly, rising as well.

"It is through him I hoped to find the truth," she murmured.

"So you won't accept my help?" growled Mr. Grimes.

"Not--not the kind you offer. It--it wouldn't be right," Helen replied.

"Very well, then!" snapped the man, and opened the door into the outer office. As he ushered her into the other room the outer door opened and a shabby man poked his head and shoulders in at the door.

"I say!" he said, quaveringly. "Is Mr. Grimes----"

"Get out of here, you old ruffian!" cried Fenwick Grimes, flying into a sudden passion. "Of course, you'd got to come around to-day!"

"I only wanted to say, Mr. Grimes----"

"Out of my sight!" roared Grimes. "Here, Leggett!" to his clerk; "give Jones a dollar and let him go. I can't see him now."

"Jones, sir?" queried the clerk, seemingly somewhat staggered, and looking from his employer to the old scarecrow in the doorway.

"Yes, sir!" snarled Mr. Grimes. "I said Jones, sir--Jones, Jones, Jones! Do you understand plain English, Mr. Leggett? Take that dollar on the desk and give it into the hands of Jones there at the door. And then oblige me by kicking him down the steps if he doesn't move fast enough."

Leggett moved rapidly himself after this. He seemed to catch his employer's real meaning, and he grabbed the dollar and chased the beggar out into the hall. Grimes, meanwhile, held Helen back a bit. But he had nothing of any consequence to say.

Finally she bade him good-morning and went out of the office. She had not given him Uncle Starkweather's letter. Somehow, she thought it best not to do so. If she had been doubtful of the sincerity of her uncle when she broached the subject nearest her heart, she had been much more suspicious of Fenwick Grimes.

She walked composedly enough out of the building; but it was hard work to keep back the tears. It did seem such a great task for a mere girl to attempt! And nobody would help her. She had nobody in whom to confide--nobody with whom she might discuss the mystery.

And when she told herself this her mind naturally flashed to the only real friend she had made in New York--Sadie Goronsky. Helen had looked up a map of the city the evening before in her uncle's library, and she had marked the streets intervening between this place where she had interviewed her father's old partner, and Madison Street on the East Side.

She had ridden downtown to Washington Arch; so she felt equal to the walk across town and down the Bowery to the busy street where Sadie plied her peculiar trade.

She crossed the Square and went through West Broadway to Bleecker Street and turned east on that busy and interesting thoroughfare. Suddenly, right ahead of her, she beheld the shabby brown hat and wrinkled coat of the old man who had stuck his head in at the door of Mr. Grimes's office, and so disturbed the equilibrium of that individual.

Here was "Jones." At first Helen thought him to be under the influence of drink. Then she saw that the man's erratic actions must be the result of some physical or mental disability.

The old man could not walk in a straight line; but he tacked from one side of the walk to the other, taking long "slants" across the walk, first touching the iron balustrade of a step on one hand, and then bringing up at a post on the edge of the curb.

He seemed to mutter all the time to himself, too; but what he said, or whether it was sense, or nonsense, Helen (although she walked near him) could not make out. She did not wish to offend the old man; yet he seemed so helpless and peculiar that for several blocks she trailed him (as he seemed to be going her way), fearing that he would get into some trouble.

At the busy crossings Helen was really worried. The man first started, then dodged back, scouted up and down the way, seemed undecided, looked all around as though for help, and then, at the very worst time, when the vehicles in the street were the most numerous, he darted across, escaping death and destruction half a dozen times between curb and curb.

But somehow the angel that directs the destinies of foolish people who cross busy city streets, shielded him from harm, and Helen finally lost him as he turned down one of the main stems of the town while she kept on into the heart of the East Side.

And to Helen Morrell, the very "heart of the East Side" was right in the Goronsky flat on Madison Street. She had been comparing that home at the same number on Madison Street with that her uncle's house boasted on Madison Avenue, with the latter mansion. The Goronsky tenement was a home, for love and contentment dwelt there; the stately Starkweather dwelling housed too many warring factions to be a real home.

Helen came, at length, to Madison Street. She had timed her coming so as to reach Jacob Finkelstein's shop just about the time Sadie would be going to dinner.

"Miss Helen! Ain't I glad to see you?" cried Sadie. "Is there anything the matter with the dress, yet?"

"No, Miss Sadie. I was downtown and thought I would ask you to go to dinner with me. I went with you yesterday."

"O-oo my! I don't know," said Sadie, shaking her head. "I bet you'd like to come home with me instead--no?"

"I would like to. But it would not be right for me to accept your hospitality and never return it," said Helen.

"Chee! you must 'a' had a legacy," laughed Sadie.

"I--I have a little more money than I had yesterday," admitted Helen, which was true, for she had taken some out of the wallet in the trunk before she left her uncle's house.

"Well, when you swells feel like spendin' there ain't no stoppin' youse, I suppose," declared Sadie. "Do you wanter fly real high?"

"I guess we can afford a real nice dinner," said Helen, smiling.

"Are you good for as high as thirty-fi' cents apiece?" demanded Sadie.

"Yes."

"Chee! Then I can take you to a stylish place where we can get a swell feed at noon, for that. It's up on Grand Street. All the buyers and department store heads go there with the wholesale salesmen for lunch. Wait till I git me hat!" and away Sadie shot, up the tenement house stairs, so fast that her little feet, bound by the tight skirt she wore, seemed fairly to twinkle.

Helen had but a few moments to wait on the sidewalk; yet within that short time something happened to change the entire current of the day's adventures. She heard some boys shouting from the direction of the Bowery; there was a crowd crossing the street diagonally;