“HERE’S THE VERY NICEST GIRL WHO EVER CAME OUT OF MONTANA.”(Page 246.)
“HERE’S THE VERY NICEST GIRL WHO EVER CAME OUT OF MONTANA.”(Page 246.)
“Not in the least!” laughed Helen. “And Idolove you already. I am so, so glad that you and Dud both like me,” she added, “for my cousins do not like me at all, and I have been very unhappy since coming to New York.”
“Here we are!” cried Jess, without noting closely what her new friend said. “And there is Dud waiting for us on the porch. Dear old Dud! Whatever should I have done if you hadn’t got him out of that tree-top, Helen?”
CHAPTER XXIIIMY LADY BOUNTIFUL
That was a wonderful breakfast at the Casino. Not that Helen ever remembered much about what she ate, although Dud had ordered choice fruit and heartier food that would have tempted the most jaded appetite instead of that of a healthy girl who had been riding horseback for two hours and a half.
But, it was so heartening to be with people at the table who “talked one’s own language.” The Stones and Helen chattered like a trio of young crows. Dud threatened to chloroform his sister so that he and Helen could get in a word or two during Jess’s lapse into unconsciousness; but finallythatdid not become necessary because of the talkative girl’s interest in a story that Helen related.
They had discussed many other topics before this subject was broached. And it was the real reason for Helen’s coming East to visit the Starkweathers. “Dud” was “in the way of being a lawyer,” as he had previously told her, andHelen had come to realize that it was a lawyer’s advice she needed more than anything else.
“Now, Jess, will you keep still long enough for me to listen to the story of my very first client?” demanded Dud, sternly, of his sister.
“Oh, I’ll stuff the napkin into my mouth! You can gag me! Your very first client, Dud! And it’s so interesting.”
“It is customary for clients to pay over a retainer; isn’t it?” queried Helen, her eyes dancing. “How much shall it be, Mr. Lawyer?” and she opened her purse.
There was the glint of a gold piece at the bottom of the bag. Dud flushed and reached out his hand for it.
“That five dollars, Miss Helen. Thank you. I shall never spend this coin,” declared Dud, earnestly. “And I shall take it to a jeweler’s and have it properly engraved.”
“What will you have put on it?” asked Helen, laughing.
He looked at her from under level brows, smiling yet quite serious.
“I shall have engraved on it ‘Snuggy, to Dud’—if I may?” he said.
But Helen shook her head and although she still smiled, she said:
“You’d better wait a bit, Mr. Lawyer, and seeif your advice brings about any happy conclusion of my trouble. But you can keep the gold piece, just the same, to remember me by.”
“As though I neededthatreminder!” he cried.
Jess removed the corner of the napkin from between her pretty teeth. “Get busy, do!” she cried. “I’m dying to hear about this strange affair you say you have come East to straighten out, Helen.”
So the girl from Sunset Ranch told all her story. Everything her father had said to her upon the topic before his death, and all she suspected about Fenwick Grimes and Allen Chesterton—even to the attitude Uncle Starkweather took in the matter—she placed before Dud Stone.
He gave it grave attention. Helen was not afraid to talk plainly to him, and she held nothing back. But at the best, her story was somewhat disconnected and incomplete. She possessed very few details of the crime which had been committed. Mr. Morrell himself had been very hazy in his statements regarding the affair.
“What we want first,” declared Dud, impressively, “is to get thefacts. Of course, at the time, the trouble must have made some stir. It got into the newspapers.”
“Oh, dear, yes,” said Helen. “And that is what Uncle Starkweather is afraid of. He fearsit will get into the papers again if I make any stir about it, and then there will be a scandal.”
“With his name connected with it?”
“Yes.”
“He’s dreadfully timid for his own good name; isn’t he?” remarked Dud, sarcastically. “Well, first of all, I’ll get the date of the occurrence and then search the files of all the city papers. The reporters usually get such matters pretty straight. To misstate such business troubles is skating on the thin ice of libel, and newspapers are careful.
“Well, when we have all the facts before us—what people surmised, even, and how it looked to ‘the man on the street,’ as the saying is—then we’ll know better how to go ahead.
“Are you willing to leave the matter to me, Helen?”
“What did I give you a retainer for?” demanded the girl from Sunset Ranch, smiling.
“True,” he replied, his own eyes dancing; “but there is a saying among lawyers that the feminine client does not really come to a lawyer for advice; rather, she pays him to listen to her talk.”
“Isn’t that horrid of him?” cried Jess, unable to keep still any longer. “As though we girls talked any more than the men do. I should say not!”
But Helen agreed to let Dud govern her future course in trying to untangle the web of circumstance that had driven her father out of New York years before. As Dud said, somebody was guilty, and that somebody was the person they must find.
It encouraged Helen mightily to have someone talk this way about the matter. A solution of the problem seemed so imminent after she parted from the fledgling lawyer and his sister, that Helen determined to hasten to their conclusion certain plans she had made, before she returned to the West.
For Helen could not remain here. Her uncle’s home was not the refined household that dear dad had thought, in which she would be sheltered and aided in improving herself.
“I might as well take board at the Zoo and live in the bear’s den,” declared Helen, perhaps a little harsh in her criticism. “There are no civilizing influences inthathouse. I’d never get a particle of ‘culture’ there. I’d rather associate with Sing, and Jo-Rab, and the boys, and Hen Billings.”
Her experience in the great city had satisfied Helen that its life was not for her. Some things she had learned, it was true; but most of them were unpleasant things.
“I’d rather hire some lady to come out to Sunset and live with me and teach me how to act gracefully in society, and all that. There are a lot of ‘poor, but proud’ people who would be glad of the chance, I know.”
But on this day—after she had left her riding habit at a tailor’s to be brushed and pressed, and had made arrangements to make her changes there whenever she wished to ride in the morning—on this day Helen had something else to do beside thinking of her proper introduction to society. This was the first day it had been fit for her to go downtown since she and Sadie Goronsky had had their adventure with the old man whom Sadie called “Lurcher,” but whom Fenwick Grimes had called “Jones.”
Helen was deeply interested in the old man’s case, and if he could be helped in any proper way, she wanted to do it. Also, there was Sadie herself. Helen believed that the Russian girl, with her business ability and racial sharpness, could help herself and her family much more than she now was doing, if she had the right kind of a chance.
“And I am going to give her the chance,” Helen told herself, delightedly. “She has been, as unselfish and kind to me—a stranger to her and her people—as she could be. I am determinedthat Sadie Goronsky and her family shall always be glad that Sadie was kind to the ‘greenie’ who hunted for Uncle Starkweather’s house on Madison Street instead of Madison Avenue.”
After luncheon at the Starkweathers’ Helen started downtown with plenty of money in her purse. She rode to Madison Street and was but a few minutes in reaching the Finkelstein store. To her surprise the front of the building was covered with big signs reading “Bankrupt Sale! Prices Cut in Half!”
Sadie was not in sight. Indeed, the store was full of excited people hauling over old Jacob Finkelstein’s stock of goods, and no “puller-in” was needed to draw a crowd. The salespeople seemed to have their hands full.
Not seeing Sadie anywhere, Helen ventured to mount to the Goronsky flat. Mrs. Goronsky opened the door, recognized her visitor, and in shrill Yiddish and broken English bade her welcome.
“You gome py mein house to see mein Sarah? Sure! Gome in! Gome in! Sarah iss home to-day.”
“Why, see who’s here!” exclaimed Sadie, appearing with a partly-completed hat, of the very newest style, in her hand. “I thought the wet weather had drowned you out.”
“It kept me in,” said Helen, “for I had nothing fit to wear out in the rain.”
“Well, business was so poor that Jacob had to fail. And that always gives me a few days’ rest. I’m glad to get ’em, believe me!”
“Why—why, can a man fail more than once?” gasped Helen.
“He can in the clothing business,” responded Sadie, laughing, and leading the way into the tiny parlor. “I bet there was a crowd in there when you come by?”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed Helen.
“Sure! he’ll get rid of all the ‘stickers’ he’s got it in the shop, and when we open again next week for ordinary business, everything will be fresh and new.”
“Oh, then, you’re really not out of a job?” asked Helen, relieved for her friend’s sake.
“No. I’m all right. And you?”
“I came down particularly to see about that poor old man’s spectacles,” Helen said.
“Then you didn’t forget about him?”
“No, indeed. Did you see him? Has he got the prescription? Is it right about his eyes being the trouble?”
“Sure that’s what the matter is. And he’s dreadful poor, Helen. If he could see better he might find some work. He wore his eyes out, hetold me, by writing in books. That’s a business!”
“Then he has the prescription.”
“Sure. I seen it. He’s always hoping he’d get enough money to have the glasses. That’s all he needs, the doctor told him. But they cost fourteen dollars.”
“He shall have them!” declared Helen.
“You don’t mean it, Helen?” cried the Russian girl. “You haven’t got that much money for him?”
“Yes, I have. Will you go around there with me? We’ll get the prescription and have it filled.”
“Wait a bit,” said Sadie. “I want to finish this hat. And lemme tell you—it’s right in style. What do you think?”
“How wonderfully clever you are!” cried the Western girl. “It looks as though it had just come out of a shop.”
“Sure it does. I could work in a hat shop. Only they wouldn’t pay me anything at first, and they wouldn’t let me trim. But I know a girl that ain’t a year older nor me what gets sixteen dollars a week trimming in a millinery store on Grand Street. O’ course, she ain’t themadame; she’s only assistant. But sixteen dollars is a good bunch of money to bring home on a Saturday night—believe me!”
“Is that what you’d like to do—keep a millinery shop?” asked Helen.
“Wouldn’t I—just?” gasped Sadie. “Why, Helen—I dream about it nights!”
Helen became suddenly interested. “Would a little shop pay, Sadie? Could you earn your living in a little shop of your own—say, right around here somewhere?”
“Huh! I’ve had me eye on a place for months. But it ain’t no use. You got to put up for the rent, and the wholesalers ain’t goin’ to let a girl like me have stock on credit. And there’s the fixtures—Aw, well, what’s the use? It’s only a dream.”
Helen was determined it should not remain “only a dream.” But she said nothing further.
CHAPTER XXIVTHE HAT SHOP
“Them folks you’re living with must have had a change of heart, Helen,” said Sadie Goronsky, as the two girls sallied forth—Sadie with her new hat set jauntily on her sleek head.
“Why do you say that?”
“If they are willing to spend fourteen dollars on old Lurcher’s eyes.”
“Oh, it isn’t a member of my uncle’s family who is furnishing the money for this charity,” Helen replied. Sadie asked no further questions, fortunately.
It was a very miserable house in which the old man lodged. Helen’s heart ached as she beheld the poverty and misery so evident all about her. “Lurcher” lived on the top floor at the back—a squalid, badly-lighted room—and alone.
“But a man with eyes as bad as mine don’t really need light, you see, young ladies,” he whispered, when Sadie had ushered herself and Helen into the room.
He had tried to keep it neat; but his housekeepingarrangements were most primitive, and cold as the weather had now become, he had no stove save a one-wick oil stove on which he cooked his meals—such as they were.
“You see,” Sadie told him, “this is my friend, Helen, and she seen you the other day when you—you lost that dollar, you know.”
“Ah, yes, wonderful bright eyes you have, Miss, to find a dollar in the street.”
“Ain’t they?” cried Sadie, grinning broadly at Helen. “Chee, it ain’t everybody that can pick up money in the streets of New York—though we all believed we could before we come over here from Russia. Sure!”
“You see,” said Helen, softly, “I had seen you before, Mr.—er—Lurcher. I saw you over on the West Side that morning.”
“You saw me over there?” asked the old man, yet still in a very low voice—a sort of a faded-out voice—and he seemed not a little startled. “You saw me over there, Miss?Wheredid you see me?”
“On—on Bleecker Street,” responded Helen, which was quite true. She saw that the man evidently did not wish his visit to Fenwick Grimes to be known. Perhaps he had some unpleasant connection with the money-lender.
“Yes, yes!” said Lurcher, with relief. “I—Icome through there frequently. But I have such difficulty in seeing my way about, that I follow a beaten path—yes! a beaten path.”
Helen was very curious about the old man’s acquaintance with Fenwick Grimes. The more she thought over her own interview with the money-lender and mine-owner, the deeper became her suspicion that her father’s one-time partner was an untrustworthy man.
Anybody who seemed to know him better thanshedid, naturally interested Helen. Dud Stone had promised to find out all about Grimes, and Helen knew that she would wait impatiently for his report.
But she was interested in Lurcher for his own miserable sake, too. He had lived by himself in this wretched lodging for years. How he lived he did not say; but it was evident that his income was both infinitesimal and uncertain.
Nevertheless, he was not a mean-looking man, nor were his garments unclean. Theywereragged. He admitted, apologetically, that he could not see to use a needle and so “had sort o’ got run down.”
“I’ll come some day soon and mend you up,” promised Helen, when the old man gave her the prescription he had received from the oculist at the Eye and Ear Hospital. “And you shall havethese glasses just as soon as the lenses can be ground.”
“God bless you, Miss!” said the old man, simply.
He had a quiet, “listening” face, and seldom spoke above a whisper. He was more the shadow of a man than the substance.
“Ain’t that a terrible end to look forward to, Helen?” remarked Sadie, seriously, as they descended the stairs to the street. “He ain’t got no friends, and no family, and no way to make a decent livin’. They wouldn’t have the likes of him around in offices, writin’ in books.”
“Oh, you mean he is a bookkeeper?” cried Helen.
“Sure, I do. That’s a business! My papa is going to be in business for himself again. And so will I—you see! That’s the only way to get on, and lay up something for your old age. Work for yourself——”
“In a millinery store; eh?” suggested Helen, smiling.
“That’s right!” declared Sadie, boldly.
“Where is the little store you spoke of? Do you suppose you can ever get it, Sadie?”
“Don’t! You make me feel bad here,” said Sadie, with her hand on her heart. “Say! I justacheto try what I can do makin’ lids for theEast Side Four Hundred. The wholesale houses let youse come there and work when they’re makin’ up the season’s pattern hats, and then you can get all the new wrinkles. Oh, I wish I was goin’ to start next season in me own store instead of pullin’ greenies into Papa Yawcob’s suit shop,” and the East Side girl sighed dolefully.
“Let’s go see the shop you want,” suggested Helen.
“Oh, dear! It don’t do no good,” said Sadie. “But I often go out of my way to take a peek at it.”
They went a little farther uptown and Helen was shown the tiny little store which Sadie had picked out as just the situation for a millinery shop.
“Ye see, there’s other stores all around; but no millinery. Women come here to buy other things, and if I had that little winder full of tasty hats—Chee! wouldn’t it pull ’em in?”
They stood there some minutes, while the young East Side girl, so wise in the ways of earning a living, so sharp of apprehension in most things, told her whole heart to the girl who had never had to worry about money matters at all—told it with no suspicion that My Lady Bountiful stood by her side.
She pointed out to Helen just where she wouldhave her little counter, and the glass-fronted wall cases for the trimmed hats, and the deep drawers for “shapes,” and the little case in which to show the flowers and buckles, and the chair and table and mirror for the particular customers to sit at while they were being fitted.
“And I’d take that hunchback girl—Rosie Seldt—away from the millinery store on my block—shehatesto work on the sidewalk the way they make her—she could help me lots. Rosie is a smart girl with some ideas of her own. And I’d curtain off the end of the store down there for a workroom, and for stock—Chee, but I’d make this place look swell!”
Helen, who had noted the name and address of the rental agent on the card in the window, cut her visit with Sadie short, so afraid was she that she would be tempted to tell her friend of the good fortune that was going to overtake her. For the girl from Sunset Ranch knew just what she was going to do.
Dud Stone had given her the address of the law firm where he was to be found, and the very next morning she went to the offices of Larribee & Polk and saw Dud. In his hands she put a sum of money and told him what she wished done. But when Dud learned that the girl had the better part of eight hundred dollars in cash with her, he tookher to a bank and made her open an account at once.
“Where do you think you are—still in the wild and woolly West where pretty near everybody you meet is honest?” demanded Dud. “You ought to be shaken! That money here in the big city is a temptation to half the people you pass on the street. Suppose one of the servants at your uncle’s house should see it? You have no right to put temptation in people’s way.”
Helen accepted his scolding meekly as long as he did not refuse to carry out her plan for Sadie Goronsky. When Dud heard the full particulars of the Western girl’s acquaintanceship with Sadie, he had no criticism to offer. That very day Dud engaged the store, paid three months’ rent, and bought the furnishings. Sadie was not to be told until the store was ready for occupancy. There was still time enough. Helen knew that the millinery season did not open until February.
Meanwhile, although Helen’s goings and comings were quite ignored by Uncle Starkweather and the girls, some incidents connected with Helen Morrell had begun to stir to its depth the fountain of the family’s wrath against the girl from Sunset Ranch.
Twice May Van Ramsden had come to call on Helen. Once she had brought Ruth and MercyDe Vorne with her. And on each occasion she had demanded that Gregson take their cards to Helen.
Gregson had taken the cards up one flight and then had sent on the cards by Maggie to Helen’s room. Gregson said below stairs that he would “give notice” if he were obliged to take cards to anybody who roomed in the attic.
May and her friends trooped up the stairs in the wake of their cards, however—for so it had been arranged with Helen, who expected them on both occasions.
The anger of the Starkweather family would have been greater had they known that these calls of their own most treasured social acquaintances were really upon the little old lady who had been shut away into the front attic suite, and whose existence even was not known to some of the servants in the Starkweather mansion.
May, as she had promised, was bringing, one or two at a time, her friends who, as children when Cornelius Starkweather was alive, had haunted this old house because they loved old Mary Boyle. And May was proving, too, to the Western girl, that all New York people of wealth were neither heartless or ungrateful. Yet the crime of forgetfulness these young women must plead to.
The visits delighted Mary Boyle. Helen knewthat she slept better—after these little excitements of the calls—and did not go pattering up and down the halls with her crutch in the dead of night.
So the days passed, each one bringing so much of interest into the life of Helen Morrell that she forgot to be lonely, or to bewail her lot. She was still homesick for the ranch—when she stopped to think about it. But she was willing to wait a while longer before she flitted homeward to Big Hen and the boys.
CHAPTER XXVTHE MISSING LINK
Helen met Dud Stone and his sister on the bridle-path one morning by particular invitation. The message had come to the house for her late the evening before and had been put into the trusty hand of old Lawdor, the butler. Dud had learned the particulars of the old embezzlement charge against Prince Morrell.
“I’ve got here in typewriting the reports from three papers—everything they had to say about it for the several weeks that it was kept alive as a news story. It was not so great a crime that the metropolitan papers were likely to give much space to it,” Dud said.
“You can read over the reports at your leisure, if you like. But the main points for us to know are these:
“In the two banks were, in the names of Morrell & Grimes, something over thirty-three thousand dollars. Either partner could draw the money. The missing bookkeeper couldnotdraw the money.
“The checks came to the banks in the course of the day’s business, and neither teller could swear that he actually remembered giving the money to Mr. Morrell; yet because the checks were signed in his name, and apparently in his handwriting, they both ‘thought’ it must have been Mr. Morrell who presented the checks.
“Now, mind you, Fenwick Grimes had gone off on a business trip of some duration, and Allen Chesterton had disappeared several days before the checks were drawn and the money removed from the banks.
“It was hinted by one ingenious police reporter that the bookkeeper was really the guilty man. He even raked up some story of the man at his lodgings which intimated that Chesterton had some art as an actor. Parts of disguises were found abandoned at his empty rooms. This suggestion was made: That Chesterton was a forger and had disguised himself as Mr. Morrell so as to cash the checks without question. Then Fenwick Grimes returned and discovered that the bank balances were gone.
“At first your father was no more suspected than was Grimes himself. Then, one paper printed an article intimating that your father, the senior partner of the firm, might be the criminal. You see, the bank tellers had been interviewed. Before thatthe suggestion that by any possibility Mr. Morrell was guilty had been scouted. But the next day it was learned your father and mother had gone away. Immediately the bookkeeper was forgotten and the papers all seemed to agree that Prince Morrell had really stolen the money.
“Oddly enough the creditors made little trouble at first. Your Uncle Starkweather was mentioned as having been a silent partner in the concern and having lost heavily himself——”
“Poor dad was able to pay Uncle Starkweather first of all—years and years ago,” interposed Helen.
“Ah! and Grimes? Do you know if he made any claim on your father at any time?”
“I think not. You see, he was freed of all debt almost at once through bankruptcy. Mr. Grimes really had a very small financial interest in the firm. Dad said he was more like a confidential clerk. Both he and Uncle Starkweather considered Grimes a very good asset to the firm, although he had no money to put into it. That is the way it was told to me.”
“And very probable. This Grimes is notoriously sharp,” said Dud, reflectively. “And right after he went through bankruptcy he began to do business as a money-lender. Supposedly he lent other people’s money; but he is now worth a million,or more. Question is: Where did he get his start in business after the robbery and the failure of Grimes & Morrell?”
“Oh, Dud!”
“Don’t you suspect him, too?” demanded the young man.
“I—I am prejudiced, I fear.”
“So am I,” agreed Dud, with a grim chuckle. “I’m going after that man Grimes. It’s funny he should go into business with a mysterious capital right after the old firm was closed out, when before that he had had no money to invest in the firm of which he was a member.”
“I feared as much,” sighed Helen. “And he was so eager to throw suspicion on the lost bookkeeper, just to satisfy my curiosity and put me off the track. He’s as bad as Uncle Starkweather.Hedoesn’t want me to go ahead because of the possible scandal, and Mr. Grimes is afraid for his own sake, I very much fear. What a wicked man he must be!”
“Possibly,” said Dud, eyeing the girl sharply. “Have you told me all your uncle has said to you about the affair?”
“I think so, Dud. Why?”
“Well, nothing much. Only, in hunting through the files of the newspapers for articles about the troubles of Grimes & Morrell I cameacross the statement that Mr. Starkweather was in financial difficulties about the same time.Hesettled with his creditors for forty cents on the dollar. This was before your uncle came intohisuncle’s fortune, of course, and went to live on Madison Avenue.”
“Well—is that significant?” asked the girl, puzzled.
“I don’t know that it is. But there is something you mentioned just now thatisof importance.”
“What is that, Dud?”
“Why, the bookkeeper—Allen Chesterton. He’s the missing link. If we could get him I believe the truth would easily be learned. In one newspaper story of the Grimes & Morrell trouble, it was said that Grimes and Chesterton had been close friends at one time—had roomed together in the very house from which the bookkeeper seemed to have fled a couple of days before the embezzlement was discovered.”
“Would detectives be able to pick up any clue to the missing man—and missing link?” asked Helen, thoughtfully.
“It’s a cold trail,” Dud observed, shaking his head.
“I don’t mind spending some money. I can send to Big Hen for more——”
“Of course you can. I don’t believe you realize how rich you are, Helen.”
“I—I never had to think about it.”
“No. But about hiring a detective. I hate to waste money. Wait a few days and see if I can get on the blind side of Mr. Grimes in some way.”
So the matter rested; but it was Helen herself who made the first discovery which seemed to point to a weak place in Fenwick Grimes’s armor.
Helen had been once to the poor lodging of Mr. Lurcher to “mend him up”; for she was a good little needlewoman and she knew she could make the old fellow look neater. He had got his glasses, and at first could only wear them a part of the day. The doctor at the hospital gave him an ointment for his eyelids, too, and he was on a fair road to recovery.
“I can cobble shoes pretty good, Miss,” he said. “And there is work to be had at that industry in several shops in the neighborhood. Once I was a clerk; but all that is past, of course.”
Helen did not propose to let the old fellow suffer; but just yet she did not wish to do anything further for him, or Sadie might suspect that her friend, Helen, was something different from the poor girl Sadie thought she was.
After the above interview with Dud, Helen went downtown to see Sadie again; and she ranaround the corner to spend a few minutes with Mr. Lurcher. As she went up the stairs she passed a man coming down. It was dark, and she could not see the person clearly. Yet Helen realized that the individual eyed her sharply, and even stopped and came part way up the stairs again to see where she went.
When she came down to the street again she was startled by almost running into Mr. Grimes, who was passing the house.
“What! what! what!” he snapped, staring at her. “What brings you down inthisneighborhood? A nice place for Mr. Willets Starkweather’s niece to be seen in. I warrant he doesn’t know where you are?”
“You are quite right, Mr. Grimes,” Helen returned, quietly.
“What are you doing here?” asked Grimes, rather rudely.
“Visiting friends,” replied Helen, without further explanation.
“You’re still trying to rake up that old trouble of your father’s?” demanded Grimes, scowling.
“Not down here,” returned Helen, with a quiet smile. “That is sure. But Iamdoing what I can to learn all the particulars of the affair. Mr. Van Ramsden was a creditor and father’sfriend, and his daughter tells me thathewill do all in his power to help me.”
“Ha! Van Ramsden! Well, it’s little you’ll ever find out throughhim. Well! you’d much better have let me do as I suggested and cleared up the whole story in the newspapers,” growled Grimes. “Now, now! Where’s that clerk of mine, I wonder? He was to meet me here.”
And he went muttering along the walk; but Helen stood still and gazed after him in some bewilderment. For it dawned on the girl that the man who had passed her as she went up to see old Mr. Lurcher, or “Jones,” was Leggett, Fenwick Grimes’s confidential man.
CHAPTER XXVITHEIR EYES ARE OPENED
As her cousins were not at all interested in what became of Helen during the day, neither was Helen interested in how the three Starkweather girls occupied their time. But on this particular afternoon, while Helen was visiting Lurcher, and chatting with Sadie Goronsky on the sidewalk in front of the Finkelstein shop, she would have been deeply interested in what interested the Starkweather girls.
All three chanced to be in the drawing-room when Gregson came past the door in his stiffest manner, holding the tray with a single card on it.
“Who is it, Gregson?” asked Belle. “I heard the bell ring. Somebody to see me?”
“No, mem, it his not,” declared the footman.
“Me?” said Hortense, holding out her hand. “Who is it, I wonder?”
“Nor is hit for you, mem,” repeated Gregson.
“It can’t be forme?” cried Flossie.
But before the footman could speak again, Belle rose majestically and crossed the room.
“I believe I know what it is,” she said, angrily. “And it is going to stop. You were going to take the card upstairs, Gregson?”
“No, mem!” said Gregson, somewhat heated. “Hi do not carry cards above the second floor.”
“It’s somebody to see Helen!” cried Flossie, clapping her hands softly and enjoying her older sister’s rage.
“Give it to me!” exclaimed Belle, snatching the card from the tray. She turned toward her sisters to read it. But when her eye lit upon the name she was for the moment surprised out of speech.
“Goodness me! who is it?” gasped Hortense.
“Jessie Stone—‘Miss Jessie Dolliver Stone.’ Goodness me!” whispered Belle.
“Not the Stones of Riverside Drive—theStones?” from Hortense.
“Dud Stone’s sister?” exclaimed Flossie.
“And Dud Stone is the very nicest boy I ever met,” quoth Hortense, clasping her hands.
“I know Miss Jessie. Jess, they all call her. I saw her on the Westchester Links only last week and she never said a word about this.”
“About coming to see Helen—it isn’t possible!” cried Hortense. “Gregson, you have made a mistake.”
“Hi beg your pardon—no, mem. She askedfor Miss Helen. I left ’er in the reception parlor, mem——”
“She thinks one of us is named Helen!” cried Belle, suddenly. “Show her up, Gregson.”
Gregson might have told her different; but he saw it would only involve him in more explanation; therefore he turned on his heel and in his usual stately manner went to lead Dud Stone’s sister into the presence of the three excited girls.
Jessie by no means understood the situation at the Starkweather house between Helen and her cousins. It had never entered Miss Stone’s head, in fact, that anybody could be unkind to, or dislike, “such a nice little thing as Helen Morrell.”
So she greeted the Starkweather girls in her very frankest manner.
“I really am delighted to see you again, Miss Starkweather,” Jess said, being met by Belle at the door. “And are these your sisters? I’m charmed, I am sure.”
Hortense and Flossie were introduced. The girls sat down.
“You don’t mean to say Helen isn’t here?” demanded Jess. “I came particularly to invite her to dinner to-morrow night. We’re going to have a little celebration and Dud and I are determined to have her with us.”
“Helen?” gasped Belle.
“Not Helen Morrell?” demanded Hortense.
“Why, yes—of course—your Cousin Helen. How funny! Of course she’s here? She lives with you; doesn’t she?”
“Why—er—we have a—a distant relative of poor mamma’s by that name,” said Belle, haughtily. “She—she came here quite unexpectedly—er quite uninvited, I may say. Pa isso-oeasy, you know; he won’t send her away——”
“Send her away! Send Helen Morrell away?” gasped Jess Stone. “Are—are we talking about the same girl, I wonder? Why, Helen is a most charming girl—and pretty as a picture. And brave no end!
“Why, it was she who saved my brother’s life when he was away out West——”
“Mr. Stone never went to Montana?” cried Flossie. “He never met Helen at Sunset Ranch?”
“Be still, Floss!” commanded Belle; but Miss Stone turned to answer the younger girl.
“Of course. Dud stopped at the ranch some days, too. He had to, for he hurt his foot. That’s when Helen saved his life. He was flung from the back of a horse over the edge of a cliff and fortunately landed in the top of a tree.
“But the tree was very tall and he could not have gotten out of it safely with his wounded foothad not Helen ridden up to the brink of the precipice, thrown him a rope, and swung him out of the tree upon a ledge of rock. Then he worked his way down the side of the cliff while Helen caught his horse. But his foot hurt him so that he could never have got into the saddle alone; and Helen put him on her own pony and led the pony to the ranch house.”
“Bully for Helen!” ejaculated Flossie, under her breath. Even Hortense was flushed a bit over the story. But Belle could see nothing to admire in her cousin from the West, and she only said, harshly:
“Very likely, Miss Stone. Helen seems to be a veritable hoyden. These ranch girls are so unfortunate in their bringing up and their environment. In the wilds I presume Helen may be passable; but she is quite, quite impossible here in the city——”
“I don’t know what you mean by being ‘impossible,’” interrupted Jess Stone. “She is a lovely girl.”
“You haven’t met her?” cried Belle. “It’s only Mr. Stone’s talk.”
“I certainlyhavemet her, Miss Starkweather. Certainly I know her—and know her well. Had I known when she was coming to New York I would have begged her to come to us. It is plainthat her own relatives do not care much for Helen Morrell,” said the very frank young lady.
“Well—we—er——”
“Why, Helen has been meeting me in the bridle-path almost every morning. And she rides wonderfully.”
“Riding in Central Park!” cried Hortense.
“Why—why, the child has nothing decent to wear,” declared Belle. “How could she get a riding habit—or hire a horse? I do not understand this, Miss Stone, but I can tell you right now, that Helen has nothing fit to wear to your dinner party. She came here a little pauper—with nothing fit to wear in her trunk. Padidfind money enough for a new street dress and hat for her; but he did not feel that he could support in luxury every pauper who came here and claimed relationship with him.”
Miss Stone’s mouth fairly hung open, and her eyes were as round as eyes could be, with wonder and surprise.
“What is this you tell me?” she murmured. “Helen Morrell a pauper?”
“I presume those people out there in Montana wanted to get the girl off their hands,” said Belle, coldly, “and merely shipped her East, hoping that Pa would make provision for her. She has been a great source of annoyance to us, I do assure you.”
“A source of annoyance?” repeated the caller.
“And why not? Without a rag decent to wear. With no money. Scarcely education enough to make herself intelligibly understood——”
Flossie began to giggle. But Jessie Stone rose to her feet. This volatile, talkative girl could be very dignified when she was aroused.
“You are speaking ofmyfriend, Helen Morrell,” she interrupted Belle’s flow of angry language, sternly. “Whether she is your cousin, or not, she ismyfriend, and I will not listen to you talk about her in that way. Besides, you must be crazy if you believe your own words! Helen Morrell poor! Helen Morrell uneducated!
“Why, Helen was four years in one of the best preparatory schools of the West—in Denver. Let me tell you that Denver is some city, too. And as for being poor and having nothing to wear—Why, whatever can you mean? She owns one of the few big ranches left in the West, with thousands upon thousands of cattle and horses upon it. And her father left her all that, and perhaps a quarter of a million in cash or investments beside.”
“Not Helen?” shrieked Belle, sitting down very suddenly.
“Little Helen—rich?” murmured Hortense.
“Does Helen reallyownSunset Ranch?” cried Flossie, eagerly.
“She certainly does—every acre of it. Why, Dud knows all about her and all about her affairs. If you consider that girl poor and uneducated you have fooled yourselves nicely.”
“I’m glad of it! I’m glad of it!” exclaimed Flossie, clapping her hands and pirouetting about the room. “Serves you right, Belle!Ifound out she knew a whole lot more than I did, long ago. She’s been helping me with my lessons.”
“And sheisa nice little thing,” joined in Hortense, “I don’t care what you say to the contrary, Belle. She was the only one in this house that showed me any real sympathy when I was sick——”
Belle only looked at her sisters, but could say nothing.
“And if Helen hasn’t anything fit to wear to your party to-morrow night, I will lend her something,” declared Hortense.
“You need not bother,” said Jess, scornfully. “If Helen came in the plainest and most miserable frock to be found she would be welcome. Good-day to you, Miss Starkweather—and Miss Hortense—and Miss Flossie.”
She swept out of the room and did not even need the gorgeous Gregson to show her to the door.