After dinner Frank and Markham put on some old clothes and set briskly at work. They mended the back stoop of the cottage, propped up a fence, raked the yard and got the wood shed in order.
About four o’clock both started in at the cistern at the side of the house. Its top had settled in, and new boards were required here and there, and a new trough from the house eaves.
Markham was holding a board that Frank was nailing, when some one passing by on the street whistling caused both to look up.
“Don’t let go—the board will spring loose,” warned Frank, turning quickly as the pressure from the board end was suddenly removed—“why, Markham—”
“Oh, the mischief!” muttered Markham.
In wonderment and consternation at a swift glance Frank noticed a strangely startled expression on his companion’s face.
Then, his eyes fixed steadfastly upon the street, Markham deliberately jumped down into the cistern out of sight.
“Quick, grab the pole!” shouted Frank.
As he spoke he thrust a long scantling down into the cistern.
“Reach for my hand—grab it. You’ll be drowned,” continued Frank.
“Don’t bother—I’m all safe,” came up Markham’s hollow tones. “There’s only about three feet of water here.”
“How did you ever come to slip in?” asked Frank.
“Say,” spoke Markham, not replying to the direct inquiry, “while I’m in here I may as well see if everything is sound and straight with the cistern.”
Frank saw him flare a match. Some curious thoughts were running through Frank’s mind as to the strange actions of his companion and helper.
Before he could analyze them, however, Frank saw Bob Haven turn in at the gate. He had a package under his arm. Bob stood still for a moment to gaze after the person who had just preceded him.
This latter was a young man, dressed loudly in brand new clothes, waving a slender cane with a dandified air, his whole bearing suggesting a person trying to look important and attract attention. This was the fellow the sight of whom had apparently induced Markham to plunge out of sight into the cistern.
Bob Haven stared hard after the receding figure of the stranger.
“Well, well!” he was saying as he approached Frank.
“What’s the matter, Bob?” inquired Frank.
“Did you see that fellow just passed by?”
“Yes, do you know him?”
“I did once—thoroughly. Heard he was in town. The nerve, now!”
“Who is he?”
“He’s bad all through. Name is Dale Wacker. When Bart Stirling first took his father’s place as express agent here, that fellow’s uncle plotted to down him. Worse than that, he stole a lot of stuff from the express people. The police were after him. Dale, his nephew, was mixed up in it, and had to leave town. Heard he was in jail somewhere for some new exploits. Came back yesterday, I learned. Seemed to have plenty of money and tried to cut a figure showing it. Sayshe’s a travelling man now, and earning untold wealth. Guess he’s on the way to the depot now, to find new victims to swindle where he isn’t so well known as he is here. I say, who’s in there, anyhow?”
As Bob spoke, Markham came climbing up the scantling out of the cistern. He was wet to the knees and looked troubled of face.
Frank noticed that he glanced anxiously in the direction of the street.
“Better go and get on dry clothes,” suggested Frank.
“Oh, this job won’t take us long to finish, now,” answered Markham.
“Well, I’ve got some printing to deliver,” said Bob. “Come over to the house after supper, fellows.”
“All right,” acquiesced Frank, but Markham said nothing. He acted subdued and worried until the cistern was finished. He stuck closely to the house after the work was done, and made some excuse for not going over to visit Bob and Darry after supper.
Frank was slightly disturbed at these actions—secretly he feared that a sight of the fellow Bob had called Dale Wacker had caused Markham to get out of sight. Frank wished he knew why.
Frank found his mother and Markham both reading when he came home, about nine o’clock. He kept his eye on the latter as he remarked to his mother that Darry had read to him a little news item he had gathered in for theHeraldlate that afternoon.
It was about a fellow named Dale Wacker, Frank narrated. It seemed he was on his way to the railroad depot, when an old German peddler to whom he had owed money for over two years recognized and hailed him.
The peddler gave Wacker a great scoring and demanded his money. A crowd gathered, and Wacker started on his way at a fast walk. The peddler whipped up his horse to keep pace with him, whilst administering a continuous tongue-lashing.
The sorry nag did not keep up with the procession as Wacker broke into a run. Seizing a basket of eggs, the peddler jumped down from the wagon. He was a big, fat, unwieldly person, but he pursued the fugitive vigorously.
The crowd hooted and yelled as the German began to pelt the eggs after the fugitive. Two eggs struck Wacker in the middle of the back. One shied off his hat and broke on the back of his head. Bespattered and hatless, the fellow reached the depotjust in time to grab the platform rail of the last car on a departing train.
“Oh, got out of town, did he?” asked Markham quite eagerly.
“Yes, it seems so—faster than he had calculated on,” responded Frank.
“Won’t be likely to come back again after that reception, eh?” said Markham.
“I should think not. He’ll be afraid of something worse.”
Markham brightened up. He acted like a different person at once. He laughed, told some funny stories, was his natural self once more, and Frank was very glad of it.
“Poor fellow,” he mused. “He’s got some harrowing secret on his mind, that’s sure, and he doesn’t want to meet certain people for some reason or other, and this Dale Wacker is one of them. Well, he’s been true blue to me, and I won’t worry him by asking about this mystery. It will come out some time, and if he’s in danger of trouble I’ll stick to him like a brother, for I know he hasn’t got a grain of real badness in his nature.”
With the morning all of Markham’s recent disquietude seemed to have entirely disappeared. When they got down to the office he kept a close watch until nine o’clock.
“Mail’s in, Frank,” he announced at last, putting on his cap.
“All right,” nodded Frank, keeping on with his writing.
“Fatal hour approaches. We shall soon know our doom,” continued Markham in a mock-alarm way.
He picked up a new canvas mail satchel marked “F. M. O. H.,” and started for the door.
“See here,” hailed Frank, “don’t you think you can about carry all of our first morning’s mail in some modest pocket?”
“Don’t care if I can. Big mail satchel makes a good business impression, see?” and Markham darted off, wondering if Frank’s heart was beating as fast as his own over the suspense attached to their first mail results.
Frank was indeed anxious, but he tried to go on with his writing. All the same his nerves were on keen edge and his hand was a trifle unsteady, as Markham returned from the post office and placed the satchel on the desk before him.
“Eight letters,” said Frank, drawing out the mail in the satchel. “That isn’t so bad. Well, let us see what our correspondents have to say.”
Frank cut open the end of the first missive, and Markham watched him like a ferret.
“No money in this one,” reported Frank, the enclosure in hand. “Well, well, listen to this now! ‘You are a frod. I bot an apple corer last munth, and it was no good. You out to be persecuted.’”
Frank was quite disappointed, and Markham gulped several times as each succeeding letter produced no money or stamps. Two people asked for a catalogue. One correspondent wanted a “Twelve Tools in One” sent to him, and if found satisfactory would remit forthwith.
Another correspondent sent an order for a ring, and wanted it “charged.” Then there was a man who asked if they could furnish him with a cheap second-hand thrasher for his farm.
One client wrote that if they would send him samples of their entire list, he would show the goods in his town and possibly get them lots of customers.
“Ah,” said Frank, feeling of the last letter, “here is something tangible, sure, Markham. I can feel the coin.”
“Maybe it’s a cent,” suggested Markham, with a slight tinge of sarcasm.
“No, a ten-cent piece, sure enough,” declared Frank. “For your puzzle, Markham, too.”
“Yes,” put in Markham, picking up the cointhat Frank had placed on his desk, “but the dime is—lead!”
Frank pulled a dismal face. Markham looked actually mad. Then their glances met. They broke into a hearty laugh mutually.
“Humph!” commented Markham.
“Amusing, isn’t it?” asked Frank, trying hard to keep up his courage.
“Oh, well, there’s the afternoon mail,” suggested Markham, getting up and beginning to fold some more circulars. “Who expected any mail of consequence this morning, anyhow?”
Frank resumed his task of working on the catalogue. He whistled a cheery bar or two, felt too serious to keep it up, and went on with his work in a half-hearted way.
“This Frank’s Mail Order House?” demanded a brisk voice, half an hour later.
“Don’t you know it is?” challenged Frank, arising to welcome Ned Davis, a bright young fellow, who was the messenger of the local bank.
“All right,” chirped Ned. “Got a letter this morning from a correspondent at Bayview. Enclosure. Man running a small store there asks us if Frank’s Mail Order House is a reliable concern. If so, instructs us to place this order with you.”
Ned importantly spread out quite a voluminous order list before Frank.
“Accompanied with the cash,” added Ned, and set down a crisp, encouraging-looking five-dollar bill beside the document.
“Oh!” ejaculated Markham, almost falling off his chair with surprise.
“Ned,” said Frank, with a touch of genuine feeling, “thank you.”
“That’s all right,” responded Ned. “We’re simply working to get your bank account when it runs up into the thousands, see?”
“Will it ever, I wonder?” murmured Frank.
“Isn’t that a nest egg?” challenged the practical young financier.
Frank looked up from his work with an eager flush on his face. Markham, who had gone to the post office, was returning. His light, springy step coming up the walk, and cheery, ringing whistle told Frank that he was the bearer of good news.
“Afternoon mail,” sang out Markham, putting the satchel down on Frank’s desk. “And she’s a cracker-jack!”
“Good,” said Frank.
“Over thirty letters,” continued Markham gaily. “Stamps in some, coin in others. My finger tips just itched to feel those letters, Frank. I just had to do it. Oh, if this suspense keeps up I’ll be rifling the mails next.”
Frank slitted all the letters in turn. Four postal cards asking for catalogues were promptly disposed of. The first of the letters was from a country newspaper offering reduced terms for advertising.
There was an application for an agency. No.3 wanted to be hired in the office—could count money and put on postage stamps fast.
Frank was not given to being very demonstrative on any occasion. As, however, he now began to stare at the next letter he opened and almost uttered a shout, Markham knew that something very much out of the ordinary had come up.
“What is it, Frank?” he questioned eagerly.
“Markham,” said Frank, quite unnerved with excitement, “it’s a big, big order.”
“How big?” demanded Markham. “Quick, I’m on the edge of nervous prostration.”
“Fifty to one hundred dollars,” announced Frank, in quite a husky voice. “A few more of such orders and we’ll know where we stand. It’s from the owner of a general store at Decatur. He writes that he has purchased from an advertising agency fifty-two picture rebuses—easy ones—one for each week in the year. Accompanying them are fifty-two separate advertisements. These he intends to insert in his weekly paper. He wants to offer each week ten prizes for the ten persons who first appear at his store with correct solutions of the rebuses.”
“I see,” nodded Markham—“good idea.”
“He wants us to designate fifty-two novelties that we can supply, about half and half ten-and-twenty-centarticles. He will take ten of each article, or five hundred and twenty in all. Think of it, Markham!”
“It’s grand, yes, just grand!” declared Markham, in a tone of suppressed excitement.
“He says he will trust to our judgment to select the most catchy novelties, only he expects us to give him special figures on the lot.”
“Of course you’ll do it, Frank?”
“Yes, and make a neat profit, too. Well, this is encouraging.”
“Yes, Frank, that one order will cover the cost of all the circularizing we have done to date. Hello! hello! hello!”
In three different crescendo tones Markham tallied off three letters which Frank opened next in turn, and in each instance with cash results—two silver dimes and thirty cents in postage stamps.
When the entire mail was opened, Frank had a little heap at his elbow representing six dollars and eighty cents, three dollars of which was to pay for two rings.
“Seven orders for your puzzle, Markham,” announced Frank, “besides what goes in the big order. Only one apple corer ordered. I’m afraid my prized invention is a frost.”
“Not at all,” dissented Markham. “Lookhere, it’s plain from the letter you got this morning that the Riverton hardware man had already used at least some of the names in the mail order lists. If I were you, Frank, in any new printed matter you get out I would refer to your apple corer as a decided improvement on the old one. I think, even, I would illustrate these improvements.”
“An excellent idea, Markham,” declared Frank. “Further, I don’t know but it would be a good thing to offer one of the new corers, free on return of an old one, charging only the postage.”
“Oh, we’re learning,” declared Markham, buoyantly. “This thing is a decided go.”
Frank was immersed in business during the rest of that week. Markham proved an energetic and reliable assistant. There were circulars to send out, orders to fill, letters to write.
Saturday night they had to work till eleven o’clock to clean up their desks. Frank was rushing the catalogue copy. Mrs. Haven was busy making new drawings, which had to be sent to the city to be photo-engraved. Orders, too, were sent daily to the city supply houses.
Up at the novelty factory they were filling Frank’s first big order for a thousand of the wire puzzles and a thousand of the new apple corers.
This latter device was really a very meritorious article. Retaining the form and dimensions of the original sheath, Frank had set inside two moving pieces of tin that acted as knives. These ran into a spiral tube which penetrated the apple without injuring it, and a twist on a knob cut the core out clean as a whistle.
Monday morning’s mail was the largest yet received, due, Frank believed, to some little advertising Haven Bros. had caused to be inserted in a few neighboring country newspapers.
His little capital was now again nearly at the two hundred dollar mark. About noon Frank made up a package of about two hundred dollars. He had arranged to pay this amount to Haven Bros., draw against it if he ran short of funds, otherwise leave it in their hands to pay for the catalogue, which would be quite an expensive job.
Markham had gone to the post-office with some mail. Frank looked up as a footstep sounded on the walk outside of the office door.
It was not Markham, as Frank at first expected. Instead, a person he regarded in a decidedly unfavorable light came into view.
The visitor was Dale Wacker, the boy BobHaven had designated to Frank the day that Markham made his sensational dive into the cistern.
He was not dressed as jauntily as on that occasion. His appearance was shabby and unkempt now. He slouched up to the door with a sneak-thief air, yet withal the brass and effrontery of a person possessed of few fine sensibilities.
“Say,” spoke Wacker to Frank, “you run this shop?”
“I’m interested in this business, yes,” answered Frank distantly.
“Pretty good graft? Looking for some such fake myself. What I wanted to know, though, was about one of your samples in the show case out there.”
“Well?” demanded Frank.
“That wire puzzle.”
“What about it?”
“Where did you run across it?”
Frank did not like the speech nor manner of his visitor.
“Is that particularly any of your business?” he asked.
“Why, you see, just curious about it, that’s all,” stammered Wacker, somewhat taken aback atFrank’s sharp challenge. “Do you own it?”
Frank’s eye flashed with manifest resentment at Wacker’s cool effrontery.
“See here,” he said pretty firmly, “I have no time to waste answering idle and impertinent questions,” and turned away from the door.
“Well, I’d seen it before, that’s all,” muttered Wacker.
“Oh, I fancy not,” said Frank.
“Oh, yes, I did. Huh! guess I did—I was with the fellow who first made it when he got it up.”
Frank was surprised. He must have shown it to the keen-eyed fellow quizzing him, for Wacker exclaimed:
“Aha—interested now, hain’t you? Tell you something more: the owner made me a duplicate of his original puzzle, and—there it is.”
And to Frank’s amazement Mr. Dale Wacker pulled from his pocket a crude copy of the wire puzzle.
It was the exact counterpart of the one Markham had furnished as a model for those now being sold broadcast by Frank’s Mail Order House.
Frank was a good deal upset. In the light of the cistern episode and the knowledge that Markham seemed afraid to meet certain people, he believed that the advent of his present visitor boded no good for his friend and helper.
As Dale Wacker showed the wire puzzle, stating that he knew its inventor, Frank felt that he was in the presence of a mystery.
“Let me look at that, will you?” he said.
“Sure,” grinned Wacker. “Why not? Take a good look, too. Seems familiar? Quite the right thing, eh?”
“What do you mean?” demanded Frank.
“Why, just this,” retorted Wacker: “How do you come to be selling an article that no one has a right to sell except my friend who made it? I happen to know he invented that puzzle. I was with him when he did.”
“When was that?” asked Frank.
“Oh, about six months ago.”
“And where?”
“Now you’re asking questions, hey?” said Wacker, with a cunning air. “You tell me first: do you know the fellow who made that puzzle?”
“What’s his name?” asked Frank.
“Dick Welmore.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Aha!” cried Dale Wacker triumphantly, “then I’ve got you. I say, young fellow, you’re violating the law, you are. See here, I’m hard up. I know where Dick Welmore is snug and tight. If you don’t make it worth my while, I’ll go to him and have you prosecuted for stealing his invention.”
“Get out of here,” cried Frank, with flashing eyes.
“Hold on, now. Say, give me a job, and I’ll keep mum. Say, I can write a good hand. Once I took stock, see—”
“Yes, I reckon you’ve taken stock to your cost, if what I hear is true. March out, and it won’t be healthy for you to come around here again.”
“I can make you trouble.”
“Try it.”
Frank gave Wacker a decided push through the open doorway. Wacker was muttering under his breath all kinds of dire threats.
At exactly that moment Frank looked along the walk to the street at the echo of a cherry whistle. It was instantly checked. Markham, tripping towards the office, halted with a shock. Like a flash he turned at a sight of Wacker. He disappeared so quickly that Frank wondered if Wacker got a clear look at him.
The latter, with a malignant growl at Frank, went away without another word. In some perplexity Frank sat down at his desk, thinking hard and fast.
“I just couldn’t truckle with that fellow,” he said. “Dick Welmore, eh? Can that be Markham’s real name? Evidently, though, this Wacker doesn’t know Markham is here. He thinks he is somewhere else, ‘snug and tight.’ Oh, bother! there’s only one right course to take in such a case, and I’ll follow it.”
Frank decided that at quitting time he would lock himself and Markham into the office, and ask for an explanation of his fear and dread of meeting Dale Wacker.
“It won’t be to Markham’s discredit, I’ll guarantee,” reflected Frank. “He’s square, if there ever was a square boy. Here he is now.”
Markham appeared, breathing hard and looking excited. He tried, however, to appear calm. Hisface was quite pale. Frank saw that he was under an intense nervous strain.
“Oh, Markham,” said Frank, not indicating that he noticed his friend’s perturbation, “I want you to take that money to Darry Haven.”
“All right,” answered Markham, glancing over his shoulder towards the street.
“Be careful of it, won’t you now?” directed Frank, with a little laugh. “Remember, it’s our entire capital, and here’s the mailing lists. Tell Darry to get them set up and printed just as quick as he can. We need them at once.”
Frank had decided to have the mailing list names printed, each on a separate line with a broad margin. This he did so they could keep a permanent record of the result of using each name. Besides that, in the fire at Riverton the lists had got charred, and some of them were brittle and broken away, and some pages hard to decipher.
Markham clasped the wallet containing the money tightly in one hand, thrust it into his outside coat pocket, and tucked the rolled-up lists under his arm.
“Be back soon,” he said.
“All right, do so. Want to have a little talk with you.”
Markham looked up quickly, hesitated, gave a sigh, and started rapidly down the walk.
“I’ll have it over and done with, soon as he comes back,” reflected Frank. “Poor fellow. Something’s on his mind. I’m going to help him get rid of it.”
Frank resumed his task. He was soon engrossed in finishing up a page of writing.
“Good,” he said finally, with satisfaction, “the last copy for the catalogue. It will make twenty-four printed pages. The cuts I have had made and the cuts the supply houses have loaned me make a very fine showing. Well, the first two weeks show up pretty good. Business started, and paying expenses. Why, that’s queer,” exclaimed Frank with a start, as he chanced to glance at the clock—“Markham has been gone a full half-hour.”
It was queer. Markham had less than three squares to go on his errand. Usually he made the trip to Haven Bros. in five minutes.
Frank walked to the door and looked out. He stood there, growing restless and anxious, as ten minutes went by. Then he grew restless, put on his cap, waited five minutes longer, and, closing the office door, went out to the street.
“Pshaw,” he said, looking up and down the street, “what am I worrying about? Got that Dale Wacker on my mind, and it has upset me. Markham is probably chatting with Bob Haven. Well, I’ve gone so far, I’ll step over to the printing office and see.”
Frank walked rapidly to the principal street, and up the flight of stairs in a business block to Haven Bros.’s office.
As he entered he noticed all hands busy at cases and presses. Bob, shirt sleeves rolled up, was working on some chases on an imposing stone. Darry was reading proof at his desk.
But there was no Markham. Frank experienced a sensation of dread for which he could not account. He tried to keep cool, but the first word he spoke as he approached Darry made the latter look up quickly.
“Got the money I sent you, Darry?” asked Frank.
“Why, no—did you send it?”
“Yes—over half-an-hour ago.”
“Who by?”
“Markham.”
“Oh, then, he’s doing some other errand first,” said Darry. “Sit down, if you’re going to wait for him.”
“No, I’ll watch them doing things,” answered Frank, with an assumed lightness of tone.
He strolled about the neat little office, pretending to be interested. It was a dead failure. A lump of lead seemed bearing him down. Frank glanced at his watch. An hour had passed since he had sent Markham on his errand.
“Be back soon, Darry,” he said, and went out of the printing office with a dull, sick feeling at heart.
Frank returned to his office. Markham was not there. He went back to the print shop.
“Markham been here yet?” he inquired in a failing voice to Darry.
“Not yet, Frank.”
“Then something’s wrong,” suddenly burst out Frank, unable longer to endure the strain of suspense and dread.
“Why, how pale you are,” began Darry, rising from his chair.
“Yes, Darry,” said Frank in a quivering tone—“Markham is missing, and with him my mailing lists and over two hundred dollars in cash.”
Frank came down to the office the next morning looking haggard and troubled. Stet was hanging around the door.
“Darry Haven told me to wait till you came down, and then let him know,” said the little fellow.
“All right,” nodded Frank in a dull way.
Stet darted off with his usual elfish nimbleness. Frank unlocked the door and sat down before his desk rather gloomily. He mechanically arranged some papers. Darry was with him before he had accomplished much. Stet accompanied him.
“Well, Frank,” questioned Darry, “any word of Markham?”
“Not a trace, Darry.”
“Strange, isn’t it?” observed Darry in a musing way. “I declare I can’t understand it.”
“Nor I,” said Frank. “It’s him I’m thinking of, not of myself. I haven’t slept a wink all night.Honest, Darry, if he was an own brother I couldn’t feel more anxious. Mother is quite as worried. I went everywhere about town last evening till the stores shut up. I telephoned several neighboring towns. I saw trainmen around the depot.”
“And found no one who had seen Markham after you sent him on that errand with the money and the mailing lists?”
“Not a soul, Darry.”
“How do you explain it?”
“I can’t. I suppose some people who don’t know Markham as I do, would say I was a fool to take up a stranger and put so much trust in him, that it served me right to have him run away with all I have in the world first chance he got. Well, let me tell you, Darry, that boy wouldn’t do me a wrong turn wilfully for a million dollars, and I know it.”
Darry sighed and was silent. He had liked Markham, but his young business career had brought him in contact with so many weak and absolutely bad people, that secretly he feared that Markham had yielded to temptation, and they would not hear of him again.
“Have you no theory as to the reason why Markham should be missing so mysteriously?” he asked.
“Why, yes, I have, in a way, Darry,” responded Frank, “but it is all guess-work. I told you last night about some secret in his life.”
“Yes, I know,” nodded Darry.
“I also told you that I was convinced that Dale Wacker knew Markham, and that Markham for some reason dreaded meeting him.”
“It certainly looked that way, judging from Markham’s actions.”
“Very well, I think they ran into each other after Markham went on the errand to you. Wacker is a blackmailer, as his talk to me about the puzzle plainly shows. Does he know something about Markham that might make him trouble? It certainly looks that way. He may have terrorized Markham into running away.”
“All right, if that is true, then Markham, if he is an honest boy, will send back your money and the mailing lists.”
“Of course he will,” declared Frank. “I’ve been expecting to receive them every hour.”
“And if he doesn’t,” suggested Darry, somewhat skeptically.
“If he doesn’t,” repeated Frank, slowly but steadily, “then make up your mind to one thing.”
“And what is that?”
“That Markham is in the power of some onewho holds him a prisoner, and can’t get word to me.”
“H’m,” said Darry simply. Frank’s eyes flashed.
“Furthermore,” he went on, “assuming that, I shall make it my business to investigate along that line, I shall never lose faith in Markham’s honesty and fidelity to me till I have used every endeavor to find out when, where and why he dropped out of sight so mysteriously.”
“You’re a staunch friend, you are,” commented Darry. “In the meantime, though, Frank, your capital is gone. Worse than that, the whole basis of your business has gone with it.”
“Yes, the mailing lists,” said Frank. “I’ve thought that all out, Darry. You will have to stop work on the catalogue and the rest of the printing. I can’t pay for the work.”
“We’ll trust you.”
“No,” said Frank steadily, “I can’t run into debt.”
“We might spare a little cash till—till you hear from the other.”
“I won’t involve my friends. I have planned it all out. My mother is coming down to the office to take care of the little business that will come in from the advertising.”
“And what will you do?” asked Darry curiously.
“I have arranged to hire a horse and wagon. I shall go out and visit small towns and sell from door to door, or even from the wagon, till I hear from that missing money, or get on my feet again.”
“You’re a good one,” pronounced Darry with an admiring sparkle in his eye, slapping Frank heartily on the shoulder. “You’re a stubborn one, too, so I won’t intrude offers of assistance only to be turned down.”
“All the time,” resumed Frank, “I shall be looking out for a trace of Markham. See here, Darry, I can’t get that Dale Wacker off my mind. Who are his companions? Where does he hang out? How am I going to set a watch on him?”
“He may not even be in town,” suggested Darry. “You know Bob and I went all over Pleasantville last evening, like yourself seeking a trace of Markham. It looked as if Wacker had flashed into town and out again. We didn’t run across him, and we didn’t find anybody who had seen him since late in the afternoon.”
“Say, can I speak a word?” piped in an anxious voice.
It was little Stet who had spoken. Frank andDarry had forgotten all about him. Now Stet got up timorously from the door step.
“Oh, it’s you,” said Darry. “Heard all we’ve said, too, I suppose, Stet?”
“Yes, I have,” replied Stet. “Had to—ought to—I’m interested, I am. I like you. I like Mr. Newton. You’re both my friends. I like Markham, too. He gave Hemp Carson, theEaglemanager, a setting down for pitching onto me. I don’t like Dale Wacker. Huh! hadn’t ought to. He robbed me of two dollars once. Well, Dale Wacker is in Pleasantville. I saw him this morning. He came in on a farmer’s wagon from somewhere out of town.”
“That’s news, anyway,” said Darry.
“You were going to give me my regular ten days’ vacation next week, you know,” continued Stet to Darry. “Make it begin to-day, and I’ll soon find out for you all there is to find out about Dale Wacker’s doings.”
“But that is hardly a vacation, Stet?” suggested Frank.
“It will be,” chuckled the little fellow, “if I can get my two dollars’ worth of satisfaction out of him by showing him up.”
“All right,” said Darry, “try it, Stet, if you want to.”
Stet went away forthwith. Frank went into details with Darry as to the mail order business. It must remain partially inactive until something encouraging developed.
The morning mail was a pretty good one. About ten o’clock Mrs. Ismond came down to the office, and Frank initiated his mother into the business routine.
“Just get the mail each day, and fill what orders you can,” said Frank. “When you can’t fill an order, return the money. You see, mother, I want to take the bulk of stock on hand with me for quick sales, and I can’t order any more until I get some money ahead.”
Frank put in two hours about town trying to look up Markham. The result was quite as discouraging as upon the day previous. He closed an arrangement for the hire of a horse and a light wagon, and packed up some goods at the office, ready for his trip into the country.
Mrs. Ismond, with a woman’s instinctive capacity for neatness, had the office in attractive order by late afternoon, and all the work attended to.
“Don’t get discouraged, Frank,” she said, as they were on their way home. “It won’t take a great deal of money to keep up the business in a small way. I sent out a hundred circulars thisafternoon, and I will keep on at that average while you are away.”
“Why,” spoke Frank, “how can you do that, with no mailing list addresses?”
“Oh, I set my wits at work and made quite a discovery,” responded Mrs. Ismond with a bright smile. “The PleasantvilleHeraldhas quite a list of exchanges. I asked Darry to send me some. They come from all over the State. I selected a number of promising names from little news items in the papers. For instance: I took girls’ names from church and society items, and boys’ names from baseball club items and the like. Good, fresh names, Frank—don’t you see?”
“I do see,” said Frank, “and it’s a grand idea, mother.”
After supper Mrs. Ismond went upstairs to make up a little parcel of collars, handkerchiefs and the like for her son’s journey.
Frank looked up from the county map from which he was formulating a route, as his mother reappeared. At a glance he saw that she was very much agitated.
“Oh, Frank!” she panted, sinking into a chair pale and distressed-looking.
“Why, what’s the matter, mother?” exclaimed Frank, arising quickly to his feet.
Mrs. Ismond had a worn yellow sheet of paper in her hand.
“Markham,” she said, in a sad, pained way. “I was getting out some neckties for you, and by mistake opened the bureau drawer where he kept his belongings. I found this.”
“What is it, mother?” asked Frank, taking the paper from her hand. He saw for himself, and his face turned quite as white and troubled as her own.
“Too bad—too bad,” said Frank, looking down at the time-worn sheet of paper in a disheartened way.
It was a depressing discovery that Mrs. Ismond had made. Frank sat staring at the paper in his hand in silence for some minutes.
This was a printed sheet. It was headed: “Reward—One Hundred Dollars.” In short, the warden of the Juvenile Reformatory at Linwood, offered that amount for the return to that institution of an escaped inmate—Richard Markham Welmore.
“Yes, it is our Markham,” murmured Frank—“that is his middle name. The description answers him exactly,” and again Frank said in a troubled way: “Too bad—too bad.”
Frank knew what his mother was thinking of—that they had harbored a convicted criminal, who had weakly yielded to temptation, beggaring them, and going back to his old evil ways.
He now knew what Dale Wacker meant when he spoke of the inventor of the wire puzzle as being in a “snug, tight place.” Markham hadsought relief from his irksome confinement getting up the pleasant little novelty that had taken so well. Evidently Wacker, when he first called on Frank, was not aware of the fact that Markham had escaped.
Wacker had probably once himself been an inmate of the reformatory. He knew its rules and routine. Coming across Markham on his way to Haven Bros., what more natural, Frank reasoned, than that he should take advantage of this knowledge? His recognition by Wacker would crush Markham. Had Wacker terrified him so that he had led him to some quiet spot, bargained with him, robbed him, sent him back to the reformatory, and laid claim to the reward?
“I am going to find out,” cried Frank, starting for his cap, but instantly quieting down again as he reflected farther.
His impulse was to hurry downtown and telegraph the reformatory at Linwood for information. Suddenly, however, he reflected that if his surmises were wrong, and things turned out differently than he theorized, he would simply be putting the authorities on the track of the unfortunate Markham.
“Mother,” he said, “nothing will make me believe that Markham voluntarily stole my money.No, this Dale Wacker had a hand in this disappearance. Perhaps poor Markham met him and fled, and is in hiding. We may hear from him yet.”
“But, Frank,” suggested Mrs. Ismond in a broken tone of voice, “we are sure now that Markham was a—a bad boy.”
“Why so?” asked Frank.
“He was the inmate of a reformatory.”
“When I think of the old wasted days in my own life when I ran away from home,” said Frank, “and the evil men I met who would have got me into any kind of trouble to further their own schemes, and I innocently walking into their trap, I shall give Markham the benefit of a doubt, every time. What right have we to assume that he was not a victim of wrong? No, no! He was a true friend, an honest worker. I won’t desert or forget him until I have cleared up all this mystery.”
Frank was up before five o’clock the next morning. He had just finished cutting a week’s supply of kindling wood in the wood shed, when Stet popped into view over the back fence.
Stet tried to look like a real detective. He glanced back over his shoulder. He even said “Hist!” in first hailing Frank. Then he asked:
“Going away to-day?”
“I’ve got to, Stet,” answered Frank. “Have you been looking up that Wacker fellow?”
“I’ve been doing nothing else,” answered Stet, putting on a serious, careworn look. “Say, he’s a bad one. Hangs out at the worst places on Railroad Street, and plays cards all the time.”
“Throwing away his money, eh?”
“He don’t seem to have much. No,” said Stet, “I saw him borrow from two or three chums. But he’s got great prospects, I heard him say. He’s waiting for somebody to come to Pleasantville, or for something to happen. You leave it to me. I’ll watch him like a ferret, only you’d better leave word where I can find you, if anything important comes up.”
“All right, Stet. My mother will know where I am each day I am gone.”
“And say,” continued Stet, “I want you to say something to me.”
“Say something to you, Stet?” repeated Frank in a puzzled way.
“Uh—huh.”
“What?”
“I want you to look at me fierce, and frown, and say that you order me out of your place, and if I show up again you’ll break every bone in my body.”
“See here—” began Frank in wonderment.
“Now, you just say it,” persisted Stet. “I know my business,” and he blinked and chuckled craftily.
“All right—here goes.”
“Good as a play,” declared Stet, as Frank went through the rigmarole. “Now I needn’t tell any lies. Thrown out by my friends, discharged from my job, O—O—Oh!” and Stet affected sobs of the deepest misery. “Had Bob Haven kicked me—not hard—out of the shop last night. See? Object of abuse and sympathy. Oh, I’m fixed now to play Mr. Dale Wacker good and strong.”
Stet disappeared the way he had come in a high state of elation. Frank went into the house for breakfast. He walked as far as the office with his mother. Then he went to the livery stable where he had hired the turnout.
He was soon on the road. Frank tried to forget the anxieties of the mail order business and his missing friend. He planned to cover six little towns by nightfall.
Frank had good luck from the start. At a crossroads there was a country schoolhouse, a general store and some twenty houses. The man running the store was just stocking in for the fall term of school. Frank came in the nick of time. Hesold the man over ten dollars worth of notions and novelties.
Watering his horse at a roadhouse, a little later on, he interested some loungers on the veranda. Frank got rid of two rings, a cheap watch, a pedometer and three of Markham’s puzzles.
At noon he took dinner at Carrollville, quite a good-sized town. A small circus was playing here. Frank conceived the idea of buying a privilege to sell on the circus grounds. The manager wanted ten dollars for a permit, however, so Frank took up his stand near the railway depot.
As the crowds came for their trains at five o’clock, he opened up his novelty stock.
“A pretty thrifty day,” mused Frank, an hour later, as he started for his final stop of the day at Gray’s Lake. “Profits eleven dollars and twenty cents. Why, thirty days of this kind of trade will give me back my lost capital.”
Gray’s Lake was a settlement and a summer resort. Frank put up the horse, got a good supper, and then selected the newest and most salable of the trinkets and novelties he carried in stock.
Among these was a good assortment of leather souvenir postal cards, just then a decided novelty outside of the large cities. He had brought along a large jewelry tray. This he suspended by astrap from his neck, and went up to the big hotel at the end of the lake.
A group of girls in a summer house running out over the water furnished Frank with his first customers. He sold two friendship rings and sixteen postal cards.
A crowd of idle men took fire on the puzzle proposition, as two men examining the wire devices got rating one another as to their respective ability to get the ring off first. A dozen puzzles were purchased in as many minutes.
Frank went the rounds of the verandas, meeting with very fair success. The people there had plenty of money to spare, time hung rather heavy on their hands, and they welcomed his arrival as a diversion.
Frank grew to have a decided respect for Markham’s little puzzle. He had struck the right crowd to sell it to, this time. At the end of an hour fully fifty persons could be seen on the well-lighted verandas and in the hotel rotunda, working over the clever puzzle. An occasional utterance of satisfaction would greet the solution of the puzzle.
“Markham has certainly left me a money-winner, if he never came back,” reflected Frank.
He was passing along a lighted walk near thelake beach, when a young lady ran past him towards a group of friends.
A foppishly-dressed man with a great black moustache was hastening after her, but she was calling laughingly back at him:
“No, no, count, you would take all night getting that ring off—I’ll try some one else.”
“It ees a meestake. Allow me to try once more, my dear young lady.”
“Hello!” ejaculated Frank, with a violent start. Then in a flash he slipped the tray from place, set it hastily on a vacant bench, and as the man was passing by him caught him deliberately by the sleeve.
“Sare!” challenged the man, with a supercilious stare. “Oh!” he added, wilting down in an instant.
“I suppose you don’t know me?” demanded Frank.
“Nevare, sare.”
“I am Frank Newton, of Greenville, and, for all your false moustache and broken English, you are Gideon Purnell.”
“Let go!” hissed the man, with a rapid glance at the group just beyond them.
“No,” replied Frank firmly, only tightening his grasp on the man’s coat sleeve. “I have beenlooking for you for over a year. I knew I should find you some time. I have found you now.”
“What do you want?” stammered his crestfallen companion.
“Ten minutes’ quiet conversation with you.”
“About what?”
“You know. You were the tool Mr. Dorsett used to rob my mother of her fortune. He got what he was after. You overstepped yourself. You forged two names in your crooked dealings, as Mr. Beach, our lawyer at Greenville, has the proof.”
“Boy,” said Purnell, in a low, quick tone, “don’t make a rumpus here. Come and see me to-morrow, and I will do the square thing by you.”
“You’ll do it now,” declared Frank definitely, “or I will expose you to the people here, and wire Mr. Beach for instructions.”
“At least let me go and make some excuse to my friends yonder,” pleaded “the count.”
“Go ahead,” said Frank.
Frank kept a close watch on Purnell. He had reason to do so. Upon what he might by threats or persuasion compel this man to divulge, hung all the future prospects of his mother ever recovering her stolen fortune.
When Frank’s step-father died, this person, one of his former associates, had produced notes and deeds apparently giving him the ownership to everything that Mr. Ismond owned.
There were many flaws to his claim. Mrs. Ismond’s lawyer, Mr. Beach, discovered two arrant forgeries. Before any action at law could be taken, however, Purnell transferred all the property to “an innocent purchaser,” Dorsett.
Mrs. Ismond brought suit against the latter, but even Mr. Beach did not believe the law would force him to restore what he claimed to have bought for a valid consideration. Their only hope seemed to be to find Purnell, who had disappeared. If through him they could connect Dorsettwith a conspiracy, Mrs. Ismond would win her case.
This was the first time since he had fled from Greenville that Frank had seen this man. Now he forgot his sample case, Markham, and the whole mail order business amid the keen importance of keeping track of the slippery fugitive, and forcing from him a confession.
Purnell approached the party of young ladies, still acting the exquisite and playing the foreign count he pretended to be. He bowed and smirked, and backed away to Frank.
Instantly his face lost its mask. With a scowl he dropped his affected foreign drawl.
“You will have it out, here and now, will you?” he growled, grinding his teeth viciously.
“Yes, I’ll have it out, or you in,” responded Frank pointedly.
“Then come to my room.”
The false count led the way into the hotel, hurried up a staircase, and, unlocking a door on the second floor, ushered Frank into a room. He lit the gas and threw himself into a chair, glaring at Frank in a savage and desperate way.
“You’re a determined young man, you are,” he observed.
“Why not?” demanded Frank. “It has beenthe resolve of my life to hunt you down. If you escape me this time, I shall find you later. You are masquerading here under false pretences. I can expose you. Should I telegraph Mr. Beach, he would at once send an officer to arrest you.”
“That won’t help your case any,” observed the man.
“I don’t care. It will prove that Dorsett had a criminal for a partner, and that will influence the court when my mother’s suit comes to trial.”
“Name your terms,” spoke Purnell suddenly.
“Very well,” said Frank gravely: “you helped rob my mother of the estate her husband left her. What you got out of it I don’t know, but it seems to have made it necessary for you to continue the career of a fugitive and a fraud.”
“What I got!” snapped out Purnell, springing to his feet in hot anger. “I got what everybody gets who deals with that old rascal—the bad end of the trade, drat him!”
“I’ll leave you alone to your own devices,” said Frank. “I’ll promise to see that you get some money when my mother recovers hers, if you will write out, sign and swear to the facts of your conspiracy with Dorsett against my mother.”
“All right,” answered Purnell, after a momentof thought. “I’ve got some papers that apply to the matter. They are in my sitting room. I’ll get them.”
The speaker walked to a door, turned a key and disappeared beyond the threshold. Frank sat awaiting his return. He congratulated himself on the ease with which he had intimidated the man to his purposes.
Two minutes passed by, and Frank became impatient, five, and his suspicions were aroused. He walked to the door and knocked, tried it, pushed it open, and found himself, not in a connecting room, but in a side corridor.
“Well, he has slipped me,” instantly decided Frank.
He realized that he had been tricked badly. Frank went to the hotel office to make some inquiries, made a tour of the grounds, and, finally surmising that the object of his search had fled for good, regained his sample tray and returned to the town.
Frank did not stay all night at the local hotel, although he went there to ask for mail. He had given his mother a list of the hotels in the various towns he expected to visit, secured from a guide book.
There was a brief note from his mother. Itimparted no particular news, saying only that she was attending to orders as they came in.
Frank found a cheap lodging, and was back at the hotel at the lake by six o’clock the next morning. A brief talk with the clerk convinced him that Purnell would not be likely to return to that hostelry.
He had gone, owing a week’s bill, and the two valises left in his room were found to be filled with bricks.
“I’ve missed my man this time,” reflected Frank, as he hitched up the horse an hour later. “I may as well go right on my route. I’ll find him again, some time.”
At Derby, Frank upon his arrival went to the telegraph office. He sent a message to the reformatory at Linwood, asking if one Richard Welmore was still an inmate of that institution. He asked, further, if one Dale Wacker had ever been a prisoner there.
He went on selling in the town, with fair returns, until mid-afternoon. A reply to his message awaited him on his next visit to the telegraph office. It read: