CHAPTER XXVIITHE PARTY
Helen chanced that evening to be entering the area door just as Mr. Starkweather himself was mounting the steps of the mansion. Her uncle recognized the girl and scowled over the balustrade at her.
“Come to the den at once; I wish to speak to you Helen—Ahem!” he said in his most severe tones.
“Yes, sir,” responded the girl respectfully, and she passed up the back stairway while Mr. Starkweather went directly to his library. Therefore he did not chance to meet either of his daughters and so was not warned of what had occurred in the house that afternoon.
“Helen,” said Uncle Starkweather, viewing her with the same stern look when she approached his desk. “I must know how you have been using your time while outside of my house? Something has reached my ear which greatly—ahem!—displeases me.”
“Why—I—I——” The girl was really at aloss what to say. She did not know what he was driving at and she doubted the advisability of telling Uncle Starkweather everything that she had done while here in the city as his guest.
“I was told this afternoon—not an hour ago—that you have been seen lurking about the most disreputable parts of the city. That you are a frequenter of low tenement houses; that you associate with foreigners and the most disgusting of beggars——”
“I wish you would stop, Uncle,” said Helen, quickly, her face flushing now and her eyes sparkling. “Sadie Goronsky is a nice girl, and her family is respectable. And poor old Mr. Lurcher is only unfortunate and half-blind. He will not harm me.”
“Beggars! Yiddish shoestring pedlars! A girl like you! Where—ahem!—wheredid you ever get such low tastes, girl?”
“Don’t blame yourself, Uncle,” said Helen, with some bitterness. “I certainly did not learn to be kind to poor people fromyourexample. And I am sure I have gained no harm from being with them once in a while—only good. To help them a little has helped me—I assure you!”
But Mr. Starkweather listened not at all to this. “Where did you find these low companions?” he demanded.
“I met Sadie the night I arrived here in the city. The taxicab driver carried me to Madison Street instead of Madison Avenue. Sadie was kind to me. As for old Mr. Lurcher, I saw him first in Mr. Grimes’s office.”
Uncle Starkweather suddenly lost his color and fell back in his chair. For a moment or two he seemed unable to speak at all. Then he stammered:
“In Fenwick Grimes’s office?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What—what was this—ahem!—this beggar doing there?”
“If he is a beggar, perhaps he was begging. At least, Mr. Grimes seemed very anxious to get rid of him, and gave him a dollar to go away.”
“And you followed him?” gasped Mr. Starkweather.
“No. I went to see Sadie, and it seems Mr. Lurcher lives right in that neighborhood. I found he needed spectacles and was half-blind and I——”
“Tell me nothing more about it! Nothing more about it!” commanded her uncle, holding up a warning hand. “I will not—ahem!—listen. This has gone too far. I gave you shelter—an act of charity, girl! And you have abused my confidence by consorting with low company, andspending your time in a mean part of the town.”
“You are wrong, sir. I have done nothing of the kind,” said Helen, firmly, but growing angry herself, now. “My friends are decent people, and a poor part of the city does not necessarily mean a criminal part.”
“Hush! How dare you contradict me?” demanded her uncle. “You shall go home. You shall go back to the West at once! Ahem! At once. I could not assume the responsibility of your presence here in my house any longer.”
“Then I will find a position and support myself, Uncle Starkweather. I have told you I could do that before.”
“No, indeed!” exclaimed Mr. Starkweather, at once. “I will not allow it. You are not to be trusted in this city. I shall send you back to that place you came from—ahem!—Sunset Ranch, is it? That is the place for a girl like you.”
“But, Uncle——”
“No more! I will listen to nothing else from you,” he declared, harshly. “I shall purchase your ticket through to-morrow, and the next day you must go. Ahem! Remember that Iwillbe obeyed.”
Helen looked at him with tear-dimmed eyes for fully a minute. But he said no more and his stern countenance, as well as his unkind words andtone, repelled her. She put out her hand once, as though to speak, but he turned away, scornfully.
It was her last attempt to soften him toward her. He might then, had he not been so selfish and haughty, have made his peace with the girl and saved himself much trouble and misery in the end. But he ignored her, and Helen, crying softly, left the room and stole up to her own place in the attic.
She could not see anybody that evening, and so did not go down to dinner. Later, to her amazement, Maggie came to her door with a tray piled high with good things—a very elaborate repast, indeed. But Helen was too heartsick to eat much, although she did not refuse the attention—which she laid to the kindness of Lawdor, the butler.
But for once she was mistaken. The tray of food did not come from Lawdor. Nor was it the outward semblance of anybody’s kindness. The tray delivered at Helen’s door was the first result of a great fright!
At dinner the girls could not wait for their father to be seated before they began to tell him of the amazing thing that had been revealed to them that afternoon by Jessie Stone.
“Where’s Cousin Helen, Gregson?” asked Belle, before seating herself. “See that she is called. She may not have heard the gong.”
If Gregson’s face could display surprise, it displayed it then.
“Of course, dear Helen has returned; hasn’t she?” added Hortense.
“I’ll go up myself and see if she’s here,” Flossie suggested.
“Ahem!” said the surprised Mr. Starkweather.
“I listened sharply for her, but I did not hear her pass my door,” said Hortense.
“I must ask her to come back to that spare room on the lower floor,” sighed Belle. “She is too far away from the rest of the family.”
“Girls!” gasped Mr. Starkweather, at length finding speech.
“Oh, you needn’t explode, Pa!” ejaculated Belle. “We are aware of something about Helen that changes the complexion of affairs entirely.”
“What does this mean?” demanded Mr. Starkweather, blankly. “Something about Helen?”
“Yes, indeed, Pa,” said Flossie, spiritedly. “Who do you suppose owns that Sunset Ranch she talks about?”
“And who do you suppose is worth a quarter of a million dollars—more thanyouare worth, Pa, I declare?” cried Hortense.
“Girls!” exclaimed Belle. “That is very low.If we have made a mistake regarding Cousin Helen, of course it can be adjusted. But we need not be vulgar enough to saywhywe change toward her.”
Mr. Starkweather thumped upon the table with the handle of his knife.
“Girls!” he commanded. “I will have this explained. What do you mean?”
Out it came then—in a torrent. Three girls can do a great deal of talking in a few minutes—especially if they all talk at once.
But Mr. Starkweather got the gist of it. He understood what it all meant, and he realized what it meant tohim, as well, better than his daughters could.
Prince Morrell, whom he had always considered a bit of a fool, and therefore had not even inquired about after he left for the West, had died a rich man. He had left this only daughter, who was an heiress to great wealth. And he, Willets Starkweather, had allowed the chance of a lifetime to slip through his fingers!
If he had only made inquiries about the girl and her circumstances! He might have done that when he learned that Mr. Morrell was dead. When Helen had told him her father wished her to be in the care of her mother’s relatives, Mr. Starkweather could have then taken warning and learnedthe girl’s true circumstances. He had not even accepted her confidences. Why, he might have been made the guardian of the girl, and handled all her fortune!
These thoughts and a thousand others raced through the scheming brain of the man. Could he correct his fault at this late date? If he had only known of this that his daughters had learned from Jess Stone, before he had taken Helen to task as he had that very evening!
Fenwick Grimes had telephoned to him at his office. Something Mr. Grimes had said—and he had not seen Mr. Grimes nor talked personally with him for years—had put Mr. Starkweather into a great fright. He had decided that the only safe place for Helen Morrell was back in the West—he supposed with the poor and ignorant people on the ranch where her father had worked.
Where Prince Morrell hadworked! Why, if Morrell had owned Sunset Ranch, Helen was one of the wealthiest heiresses in the whole Western country. Mr. Starkweather had asked a few questions about Sunset Ranch of men who knew. But, as the owner had never given himself any publicity, the name of Morrell was never connected with it.
While the three girls chattered over the details of the story Mr. Starkweather merely played withhis food, and sat staring into a corner of the room. He was trying to scheme his way out of the difficulty—the dangerous difficulty, indeed—in which he found himself.
So, his first move was characteristic. He sent the tray upstairs to Helen. But none of the family saw Helen again that night.
However, there was another caller. This was May Van Ramsden. She did not ask for Helen, however, but for Mr. Starkweather himself, and that gentleman came graciously into the room where May was sitting with the three much excited sisters.
Belle and Hortense and Flossie were bubbling over with the desire to ask Miss Van Ramsden ifsheknew that Helen was a rich girl and not a poor one. But there was no opportunity. The caller broached the reason for her visit at once, when she saw Mr. Starkweather.
“We are going to ask a great favor of you, sir,” she said, shaking hands. “And it does seem like a very great impudence on our part. But please remember that, as children, we were all very much attached to her. You see,” pursued Miss Van Ramsden, “there are the De Vorne girls, and Jo and Nat Paisley, and Adeline Schenk, and some of the Blutcher boys and girls—although the younger ones were born in Europe—and Sue Livingstone,and Crayton Ballou. Oh! there really is a score or more.”
“Ahem!” said Mr. Starkweather, not only solemnly, but reverently. These were names he worshipped. He could have refused such young people nothing—nothing!—and would have told Miss Van Ramsden so had what she said next not stricken him dumb for the time.
“You see, some of us have called on Nurse Boyle, and found her so bright and so delighted with our coming, that we want to give her a little tea-party to-morrow afternoon. It would be so delightful to have her greet the girls and boys who used to be such friends of hers in the time of Mr. Cornelius, right up there in those cunning rooms of hers.
“We always used to see her in the nursery suite, and there are the same furniture, and hangings, and pictures, and all. And Nurse Boyle herself is just the same—only a bit older—Ah! girls!” she added, turning suddenly to the three sisters, “you don’t know what it means to have been cared for, and rocked, and sung to, when you were ill, perhaps, by Mary Boyle! You missed a great deal in not having a Mary Boyle in your family.”
“Mary Boyle!” gasped Mr. Starkweather.
“Yes. Can we all come to see her to-morrowafternoon? I am sure if you tell Mrs. Olstrom, your housekeeper will attend to all the arrangements. Helen knows about it, and she’ll help pour the tea. Mary thinks there is nobody quite like Helen.”
These shocks were coming too fast for Mr. Starkweather. Had anything further occurred that evening to torment him it is doubtful if he would have got through it as gracefully as he did through this call. May Van Ramsden went away assured that no obstacle would be placed in the way of Mary Boyle’s party in the attic. But neither Mr. Starkweather, nor his three daughters, could really look straight into each other’s faces for the remainder of that evening. And they were all four remarkably silent, despite the exciting things that had so recently occurred to disturb them.
In the morning Helen got an invitation from Jess Stone to dinner that evening. She said “come just as you are”; but she did not tell Helen that she had innocently betrayed her true condition to the Starkweathers. Helen wrote a long reply and sent it by special messenger through old Lawdor, the butler. Then she prepared for the tea in Mary Boyle’s rooms.
At breakfast time Helen met the family for the first time since the explosion. Self-consciousnesstroubled the countenances and likewise the manner of Mr. Starkweather and his three daughters.
“Ahem! A very fine morning, Helen. Have you been out for your usual ramble, my dear?”
“How-do, Helen? Hope you’re feeling quite fit.”
“Dear me, Helen! How pretty your hair is, child. You must show me how you do it in that simple way.”
But Flossie was more honest. She only nodded to Helen at first. Then, when Gregson was out of the room, she jumped up, went around the table swiftly, and caught the Western girl about the neck.
“Helen! I’m just as ashamed of myself as I can be!” she cried, her tears flowing copiously. “I treated you so mean all the time, and you have been so very, very decent about helping me in my lessons. Forgive me; will you? Oh, please say you will!”
Helen kissed her warmly. “Nothing to forgive, Floss,” she said, a little bruskly, perhaps. “Don’t let’s speak about it.”
She merely bowed and said a word in reply to the others. Nor could Mr. Starkweather’s unctuous conversation arouse her interest.
“You have a part in the very worthy effort to liven up old Nurse Boyle, I understand?” saidMr. Starkweather, graciously. “Is there anything needed that I can have sent in, Helen?”
“Oh, no, sir. I am only helping Miss Van Ramsden,” Helen replied, timidly.
“I think May Van Ramsden should have toldmeof her plans,” said Belle, tossing her head.
“Or,me,” rejoined Hortense.
“Pah!” snapped Flossie. “None of us ever cared a straw for the old woman. Queer old thing. I thought she was more than a little cracked.”
“Flossie!” ejaculated Mr. Starkweather, angrily, “unless you can speak with more respect for—ahem!—for a faithful old servitor of the Starkweather family, I shall have to—ahem!—ask you to leave the table.”
“You won’t have to ask me—I’m going!” exclaimed Flossie, flirting out of her chair and picking up her books. “But I want to say one thing while I’m on my way,” observed the slangy youngster: “You’re all just as tiresome as you can be! Why don’t you own up that you’d never have given the old woman a thought if it wasn’t for May Van Ramsden and her friends—and Helen?” and she beat a retreat in quick order.
It was an unpleasant breakfast for Helen, and she retired from the table as soon as she could. She felt that this attitude of the Starkweathers toward her was really more unhappy than theirformer treatment. For she somehow suspected that this overpowering kindness was founded upon a sudden discovery that she was a rich girl instead of an object of charity. How well-founded this suspicion was she learned when she and Jess met.
Hortense brought her up two very elaborate frocks that forenoon, one for her to wear when she poured tea in Mary Boyle’s rooms, and the other for her to put on for the Stones’ dinner party.
“They will just about fit you. I’m a mite taller, but that won’t matter,” said the languid Hortense. “And really, Helen, I am just as sorry as I can be for the mean way you have been treated while you have been here. You have been so good-natured, too, in helping a chap. Hope you won’t hold it against me—anddowear the dresses, dear.”
“I will put on this one for the afternoon,” said Helen, smiling. “But I do not need the evening dress. I never wore one quite—quite like that, you see,” as she noted the straps over the shoulders and the low corsage. “But I thank you just the same.”
Later Belle said to her airily: “Dear Cousin Helen! I have spoken to Gustaf about taking you to the Stones’ in the limousine to-night. And he will call for you at any hour you say.”
“I cannot avail myself of that privilege, Belle,” responded Helen, quietly. “Jess will send for me at half-past six. She has already arranged to do so. Thank you.”
There was so much going on above stairs that day that Helen was able to escape most of the oppressive attentions of her cousins. Great baskets of flowers were sent in by some of the young people who remembered and loved Mary Boyle, and Helen helped to arrange them in the little old lady’s rooms.
Tea things for a score of people came in, too. And cookies and cakes from the caterer’s. At three o’clock, or a little after, the callers began to arrive. Belle, and Hortense, and Flossie received them in the reception hall, had them remove their cloaks below stairs, and otherwise tried to make it appear that the function was really of their own planning.
But nobody invited either of the Starkweather girls upstairs to Mary Boyle’s rooms. Perhaps it was an oversight. But it certainlydidlook as though they had been forgotten.
But the party on the attic floor was certainly a success. How pretty the little old lady looked, sitting in state with all the young and blooming faces about her! Here were growing up into womanhood and manhood (for some of the boyshad not been ashamed to come) the children whom she had tended and played with and sung to.
And she sung to them again—verses of forgotten songs, lullabies she had crooned over some of their cradles when they were ill, little broken chants that had sent many of them, many times, to sleep.
Altogether it was a most enjoyable afternoon, and Nurse Boyle was promised that it should not be the last tea-party she would have. “If you are ’way up here in the top of the house, you shall no more be forgotten,” they told her.
Helen was the object next in interest to Nurse Boyle. May Van Ramsden had told about the Starkweathers’ little “Cinderella Cousin”; and although none of these girls and boys who had gathered knew the truth about Helen’s wealth and her position in life, they all treated her cordially.
When they trooped away and left the little old lady to lie down to recuperate after the excitement, Helen went to her own room, and remained closely shut up for the rest of the day.
At half-past six she came downstairs, bag in hand. She descended the servants’ staircase, told Mr. Lawdor that her trunk, packed and locked, was ready for the expressman when he came, and so stole out of the area door. She escaped anyinterview with her uncle, or with the girls. She could not bid them good-by, yet she was determined not to go back to Sunset Ranch on the morrow, nor would she remain another night under her uncle’s roof.
CHAPTER XXVIIIA STATEMENT OF FACT
Dud Stone had that very day seen the fixtures put into the little millinery store downtown, and it was ready for Sadie Goronsky to take charge; there being a fund of two hundred dollars to Sadie’s credit at a nearby bank, with which she could buy stock and pay her running expenses for the first few weeks.
Yet Sadie didn’t know a thing about it.
This last was the reason Helen went downtown early in the morning following the little dinner party at the Stones’. At that party Helen had met the uncle, aunt, and cousins of Dud and Jess Stone, with whom the orphaned brother and sister lived, and she had found them a most charming family.
Jess had invited Helen to bring her trunk and remain with her as long as she contemplated staying in New York, and this Helen was determined to do. Even if the Starkweathers would not let the expressman have her trunk, she was prepared to blossom out now in a butterfly outfit, and take the place in society that was rightfully hers.
But Helen hadn’t time to go shopping as yet. She was too eager to tell Sadie of her good fortune. Sadie was to be found—cold as the day was—pacing the walk before Finkelstein’s shop, on the sharp lookout for a customer. But there were a few flakes of snow in the air, the wind from the river was very raw, and it did seem to Helen as though the Russian girl was endangering her health.
“But what can poor folks do?” demanded Sadie, hoarsely, for she already had a heavy cold. “There is nothing for me to do inside the store. If I catch a customer I make somet’ings yet. Well, we must all work!”
“Some other kind of work would be easier,” suggested Helen.
“But not so much money, maybe.”
“If you only had your millinery store.”
“Don’t make me laugh! Me lip’s cracked,” grumbled Sadie. “Have a heart, Helen! I ain’t never goin’ to git a store like I showed you.”
Sadie was evidently short of hope on this cold day. Helen seized her arm. “Let’s go up and look at that store again,” she urged.
“Have a heart, I tell ye!” exclaimed Sadie Goronsky. “Whaddeyer wanter rub it in for?”
“Anyway, if we run it will help warm you.”
“All ri’. Come on,” said Sadie, with deep disgust,but she started on a heavy trot towards the block on which her heart had been set. And when they rounded the corner and came before the little shop window, Sadie stopped with a gasp of amazement.
Freshly varnished cases, and counter, and drawers, and all were in the store just as she had dreamed of them. There were mirrors, too, and in the window little forms on which to set up the trimmed hats and one big, pink-cheeked, dolly-looking wax bust, with a great mass of tow-colored hair piled high in the very latest mode, on which was to be set the very finest hat to be evolved in that particular East Side shop.
“Wha—wha—what——”
“Let’s go in and look at it,” said Helen, eagerly, seizing her friend’s arm again.
“No, no, no!” gasped Sadie. “We can’t. It ain’t open. Oh, oh, oh! Somebody’s gotmyshop!”
Helen produced the key and opened the door. She fairly pushed the amazed Russian girl inside, and then closed the door. It was nice and warm. There were chairs. There was a half-length partition at the rear to separate the workroom from the showroom. And behind that partition were low sewing chairs to work in, and a long work-table.
Helen led the dazed Sadie into this rear room and sat her down in one of the chairs. Then she took one facing her and said:
“Now, you sit right there and make up in your mind the very prettiest hat formethat you can possibly invent. The first hat you trim in this store must be for me.”
“Helen! Helen!” cried Sadie, almost wildly. “You’re crazy yet—or is it me? I don’t know what you mean——”
“Yes, you do, dear,” replied Helen, putting her arms about the other girl’s neck. “You were kind to me when I was lost in this city. You were kind to me just for nothing—when I appeared poor and forlorn and—and a greenie! Now, I am sorry that it seemed best for me to let your mistake stand. I did not tell my uncle and cousins either, that I was not as poor and helpless as I appeared.”
“And you’re rich?” shrieked Sadie. “You’re doing this yourself? This isyourstore?”
“No, it isyourstore,” returned Helen, firmly. “Of course, by and by, when you are established and are making lots of money, if you can ever afford to pay me back, you may do so. The money is yours without interest until that time.”
“I got to cry, Helen! I got to cry!” sobbed Sadie Goronsky. “If an angel right down out ofheaven had done it like you done it, I’d worship him on my knees. And you’re a rich girl—not a poor one?”
Helen then told her all about herself, and all about her adventures since coming alone to New York. But after that Sadie wanted to keep telling her how thankful she was for the store, and that Helen must come home and see mommer, and that mommer must be brought to see the shop, too. So Helen ran away. She could not bear any more gratitude from Sadie. Her heart was too full.
She went over to poor Lurcher’s lodgings and climbed the dark stairs to his rooms. She had something to tell him, as well.
The purblind old man knew her step, although she had been there but a few times.
“Come in, Miss. Yours are angel’s visits, although they are more frequent than angel’s visits are supposed to be,” he cried.
“I do hope you are keeping off the street this weather, Mr. Lurcher,” she said. “If you can mend shoes I have heard of a place where they will send work to you, and call for it, and you can afford to have a warmer and lighter room than this one.”
“Ah, my dear Miss! that is good of you—that is good of you,” mumbled the old man. “And why you should take such an interest inme——?”
“I feel sure that you would be interested in me, if I were poor and unhappy and you were rich and able to get about. Isn’t that so?” she said, laughing.
“Aye. Truly. And youarerich, my dear Miss?”
“Very rich, indeed. Father was one of the big cattle kings of Montana, and Prince Morrell’s Sunset Ranch, they tell me, is one of thegreatproperties of the West.”
The old man turned to look at her with some eagerness. “That name?” he whispered. “Whodid you say?”
“Why—my father, Prince Morrell.”
“Your father? Prince Morrell your father?” gasped the old man, and sat down suddenly, shaking in every limb.
The girl instantly became excited, too. She stepped quickly to him and laid her hand upon his shoulder.
“Did you ever know my father?” she asked him.
“I—I once knew a Mr. Prince Morrell.”
“Was it here in New York you knew him?”
“Yes. It was years ago. He—he was a good man. I—I had not heard of him for years. I was away from the city myself for ten years—in New Orleans. I went there suddenly to take theposition of head bookkeeper in a shipping firm. Then the firm failed, my health was broken by the climate, and I returned here.”
Helen was staring at him in wonder and almost in 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 alwayswasup 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 relatedthe 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 thathemight be involved in some dubious enterprise.
There was flung in Chesterton’s way (perhapsthatwas by the influence of Grimes, too) a chance to go to New Orleans to be bookkeeper in a shippingfirm. 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 positionat 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.Thatis 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 yousure?”
“I believe that there is another whoknew. Either legally, or morally, he is guilty. In eithercase 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. Andhelet 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 certainthings 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 Iwillmake 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 XXXHEADED 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 downEast 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.”
“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 downEast 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.”
“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 thehome 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 the Starkweather mansion she had seen neither the girls nor Uncle Starkweather himself.
“He doesn’t know what you are going to do with him. He brought the money he received from your father to my office; but, of course, I would not accept it. You’ve got the whip hand, Helen——”
“But I do not propose to crack the whip, Dud,” declared the Western girl, quickly.
“You’re a good chap, Snuggy!” exclaimed Dud, warmly, and Helen smiled and forgave him for using the intimate nickname.
But Helen went across town the very next day and called upon her uncle. This time she mounted the broad stone steps, instead of descending to the basement door.
Gregson opened the door and, by his manner, showed that even with the servants the girl from Sunset Ranch was upon a different footing in her uncle’s house. Mr. Starkweather was in his den and Helen was ushered into the room without crossing the path of any other member of the family.
“Helen!” he ejaculated, when he saw her, and to tell the truth the girl was shocked by his changed appearance. Mr. Starkweather was quite broken down. The cloud of scandal that seemed to be menacing him had worn his pomposity to a thread, and his dignified “Ahem!” had quite disappeared.
Indeed, to see this once proud and selfish man fairly groveling before the daughter of the man he had helped injure in the old times, was not a pleasant sight. Helen cut the interview as short as she could.
She managed to assure Uncle Starkweather that he need have no apprehension. That he hadknown all the time Grimes was guilty, and that he had benefited from that knowledge, was the sum and substance of Willets Starkweather’s connection with the old crime. At that time he had been, as Dud Stone learned, in serious financial difficulties. He used the money received from Grimes’s ill-gotten gains, to put himself on his feet.
Then had come the death of old Cornelius Starkweather and the legacy. After that, when Prince Morrell sent Starkweather the money he was supposed to have lost in the bankruptcy of Grimes & Morrell, Starkweather did not dare refuse it. He feared always that it would be discovered he had known who was really guilty of the embezzlement.
Flossie met Helen in the hall and hugged her. “Don’t you go away mad at me, Helen,” she cried. “I know we all treated you mean; but—but I guess I wouldn’t act that way again, to any girl, no matter what Belle does.”
“I do not believe you would, Floss,” agreed Helen, kissing her warmly.
“And are you really going back to that lovely ranch?”
“Very soon. And some time, if you care to and your father will let you, I’ll be glad to have you come out there for a visit.”
“Bully for you, Helen! I’ll surely come,” cried Flossie.
Hortense was on hand to speak to her cousin, too. “You are much too nice a girl to bear malice, I am sure, Helen,” she said. “But we do not deserve very good treatment at your hands. I hope you will forgive us and, when you come to New York again, come to visit us.”
“I am sure you would not treat me again as you did this time,” said Helen, rather sternly.
“You can be sure we wouldn’t. Not even Belle. She’s awfully sorry, but she’s too proud to say so. She wants father to bring old Mary Boyle downstairs into the old nursery suite that she used to occupy when Uncle Cornelius was alive; only the old lady doesn’t want to come. She says she’s only a few more years at best to live and she doesn’t like changes.”
Helen saw the nurse before she left the house, and left the dear old creature very happy indeed. Helen was sure Nurse Boyle would never be so lonely again, for her friends had remembered her.
Even Mrs. Olstrom, the housekeeper, came to shake hands with the girl who had been tucked away into an attic bedroom as “a pauper cousin.” And old Mr. Lawdor fairly shed tears when he learned that he was not likely to see Helen again.
There were other people in the great city who were sorry to see Helen Morrell start West. Through Dud Stone, Allen Chesterton had been found light work and a pleasant boarding place. There would always be a watchful eye upon the old man—and that eye belonged to Miss Sadie Goronsky—rather, “S. Goron, Milliner,” as the new sign over the hat shop door read.
“For you see,” said Miss Sadie, with a toss of her head, “there ain’t no use in advertisin’ it that you are a Yid.Thatdon’t do no good, as I tell mommer. Sure, I’m proud I’m a Jew. We’re the greatest people in the world yet. But it ain’t good for business.
“Now, ‘Goron’ sounds Frenchy; don’t it, Helen? And when I get a-going down here good, I’ll be wantin’ some time to look at a place on Fift’ Av’ner, maybe. ‘Madame Goron’ would be dead swell—yes? But you put the ‘sky’ to it and it’s like tying a can to a dog’s tail. There ain’t nowhere to go then buthome,” declared this worldly wise young girl.
Helen had dinner again with the Goronskys, and Sadie’s mother could not do enough to show her fondness for her daughter’s benefactor. Sadie promised to write to Helen frequently and the two girls—so much alike in some ways, yet as farapart as the poles in others—bade each other an affectionate farewell.
The next day Helen Morrell and her two friends, Dud and Jess Stone, were headed West. That second trip across the continent was a very different journey for Helen than the first had been.
She and Jess Stone had become the best of friends. And as the months slid by the two girls—Helen, a product of the West, and Jessie, a product of the great Eastern city—became dearer and dearer companions.
As for Dud—of course he was always hanging around. His sister sometimes wondered—and that audibly—how he found time for business, he was so frequently at Sunset Ranch. This was only said, however, in wicked enjoyment of his discomfiture—and of Helen’s blushes.
For by that time it was an understood thing about Sunset Ranch that in time Dud was going to have the right to call its mistress “Snuggy” for all the years of her life—just as her father had. And Helen, contemplating this possibility, did not seem to mind.