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

alarm. She backed away from him a bit toward the door.

"Tell me your real name!" she cried. "It's not Lurcher. Nor is it Jones. No! don't tell me. I know--I know! You are Allen Chesterton, who was once bookkeeper for the firm of Grimes & Morrell!"

CHAPTER XXIX (THE WHIP HAND)

 

An hour later Helen and the old man hurried out of the lodging house and Helen led him across town to the office where Dudley Stone worked. At first the old man peered all about, on the watch for Fenwick Grimes or his clerk.

"They have been after me every few days to agree to leave New York. I did not know what for, but I knew Fenwick was up to some game. He always was up to some game, even when we were young fellows together.

"Now he is rich, and he might have found me better lodgings and something to do. But after I came back from the South and was unfit to do clerical work because of my eyes, he only threw me a dollar now and then--like throwing a bone to a starving dog."

That explained how Helen had chanced to see the old man at Fenwick Grimes's door on the occasion of her visit to her father's old partner. And later, in the presence of Dudley Stone--who was almost as eager as Helen herself--the old man related the facts that served to explain the whole mystery surrounding the trouble that had darkened Prince Morrell's life for so long.

Briefly, Allen Chesterton and Fenwick Grimes had grown up together in the same town, as boys had come to New York, and had kept in touch with each other for years. Neither had married and for years they had roomed together.

But Chesterton was a plodding bookkeeper and would never be anything else. Grimes was mad for money, but he was always complaining that he never had a chance.

His chance came through Willets Starkweather, when the latter's brother-in-law was looking for a working partner--a man right in Grimes's line, and who was a good salesman. Grimes got into the firm on very limited capital, yet he was a trusted member and Prince Morrell depended on his judgment in most things.

Allen Chesterton had been brought into the firm's office to keep the books through Grimes's influence, of course. By and by it seemed to Chesterton that his old comrade was running pretty close to the wind. The bookkeeper feared that he might be involved in some dubious enterprise.

There was flung in Chesterton's way (perhaps that was by the influence of Grimes, too) a chance to go to New Orleans to be bookkeeper in a shipping firm. He could get passage upon a vessel belonging to the firm.

He had this to decide between the time of leaving the office one afternoon and early the next morning. He took the place and bundled his things aboard, leaving a letter for Fenwick Grimes. That letter, it is needless to say, Grimes never made public. And by the time the slow craft Chesterton was on reached her destination, the firm of Grimes & Morrell had gone to smash, Morrell was a fugitive, and the papers had ceased to talk about the matter.

The true explanation of the mystery was now plain. Chesterton said that it was not himself, but Grimes, who had been successful as an amateur actor. Grimes had often disguised himself so well as different people that he might have made something by the art in a "protean turn" on the vaudeville stage.

Chesterton had known all about the thirty-three thousand dollars belonging to Morrell & Grimes in the banks. Grimes had hinted to his friend how easy it would be to sequestrate this money without Morrell knowing it. At first, evidently, Grimes had wished to use the bookkeeper as a tool.

Then he improved upon his plan. He had gotten rid of Chesterton by getting him the position at a distance. His going out of town himself had been merely a blind. He had imitated Prince Morrell so perfectly--after forging the checks in his partner's handwriting--that the tellers of the two banks had thought Morrell really guilty as charged.

"So Fenwick Grimes got thirty-three thousand dollars with which to begin business on, after the bankruptcy proceedings had freed him of all debts," said Dud Stone, reflectively. "Yet there must have been one other person who knew, or suspected, his crime."

"Who could that be?" cried Helen. "Surely Mr. Chesterton is guiltless."

"Personally I would have taken the old man's statement without his swearing to it. That is the confidence I have in him. I only wished it to be put into affidavit form that it might be presented to the courts--if necessary."

"If necessary?" repeated Helen, faintly.

"You see, my dear girl, you now have the whip hand," said Dud. "You can make the man--or men--who ill-used your father suffer for the crime----"

"But, is there more than Grimes? Are you sure?"

"I believe that there is another who knew. Either legally, or morally, he is guilty. In either case he was and is a despicable man!" exclaimed Dud, hotly.

"You mean my uncle," observed Helen, quietly. "I know you do. How do you think he benefited by this crime?"

"I believe he had a share of the money. He held Grimes up, undoubtedly. Grimes is the bigger criminal in a legal sense. But Starkweather benefited, I believe, after the fact. And he let your father remain in ignorance----"

"And let poor dad pay him back the money he was supposed to have lost in the smashing of the firm?" murmured Helen. "Do--do you think he was paid twice--that he got money from both Grimes and father?"

"We'll prove that by Grimes," said the fledgling lawyer who, in time, was likely to prove himself a successful one indeed.

He sent for Mr. Grimes to come to see him on important business. When the money-lender arrived, Dud got him into a corner immediately, showed the affidavit, and hinted that Starkweather had divulged something.

Immediately Grimes accused Helen's uncle of exactly the part in the crime Dud had suspected him of committing. After the affair blew over and Grimes had set up in business, Starkweather had come to him and threatened to tell certain things which he knew, and others that he suspected, unless he was given the money he had originally invested in the firm of Grimes & Morrell.

"I shut his mouth. That's all he took--his rightful share; but I've got his receipts, and I can make it look bad for him. And I will make it look bad for that old stiff-and-starched hypocrite if he lets me be driven to the wall."

This defiance of Fenwick Grimes closed the case as far as any legal proceedings were concerned. The matter of recovering the money from Grimes would have to be tried in the civil courts. All the creditors of the firm were satisfied. To get Grimes indicted for his old crime would be a difficult matter in New York County.

"But you have the whip hand," Dud Stone told the girl from Sunset Ranch again. "If you want satisfaction, you can spread the story broadcast by means of the newspapers, and you will involve Starkweather in it just as much as you will Grimes. And between you and me, Helen, I think Willets Starkweather richly deserves just that punishment."

CHAPTER XXX (HEADED WEST)

 

Just at this time Helen Morrell wasn't thinking at all about wreaking vengeance upon those who might have ill-treated her when she was alone in the great city. Instead, her heart was made very tender by the delightful things that were being done for her by those who loved and admired the sturdy little girl from Sunset Ranch.

In the first place, Jess and Dud Stone, and their cousins, gave Helen every chance possible to see the pleasanter side of city life. She had gone shopping with the girls and bought frocks and hats galore. Indeed, she had had to telegraph to Big Hen for more money. She got the money; but likewise she received the following letter:

"Dear Snuggy:--

"We lets colts get inter the alfalfa an' kick up their heels for a while; but they got to steady down and come home some time. Ain't you kicked up your heels sufficient in that lonesome city? And it looks like somebody was getting money away from you--or have you learnt to spend it down East there? Come on home, Snuggy! The hull endurin' ranch is jest a-honin' for you. Sing's that despondint I expects to see him cut off his pigtail. Jo-Rab has gone back on his rice-and-curry rations, the Greasers don't plunk their mandolins no more, and the punchers are as sorry lookin' as winter-kept steers. Come back, Snuggy, and liven up the old place, is the sincere wish of, yours warmly,

"Henry Billings."

Helen only waited to see some few matters cleared up before she left for the West. As it happened, Dud Stone obtained a chance to represent a big corporation for some months, in Elberon and Helena. His smattering of legal knowledge was sufficient to enable him to accept the job. It was a good chance for Jess to go out, too, and try the climate and the life, over both of which her brother was so enthusiastic.

But she would go to Sunset Ranch to remain for some time if Helen went West with them and--of course--Helen was only too glad to agree to such a proposition.

Meanwhile the Western girl was taken to museums, and parks, and theaters, and all kinds of show places, and thoroughly enjoyed herself. May Van Ramsden and others of those who had attended Mary Boyle's tea party in the attic of the Starkweather house hunted Helen out, too, in the home of her friends on Riverside Drive, and the last few weeks of Helen's stay were as wonderful and exciting as the first few weeks had been lonely and sad.

Dud had insisted upon publishing the facts of the old trouble which had come upon the firm of Grimes & Morrell, in pamphlet form, including Allen Chesterton's affidavit, and this pamphlet was mailed to the creditors of the old firm and to all of Prince Morrel's old friends in New York. But nothing was said in the printed matter about Willets Starkweather.

Fenwick Grimes took a long trip out of town, and made no attempt to put in an answer to the case. But Mr. Starkweather was a very much frightened man.

Dud came home one afternoon and advised Helen to go and see her uncle. Since her departure from