The Fifth Ace Part 35

"Confidential agent, she said I was to tell you." Dan could scarcely suppress a grin of importance. "She told me to remind you that she asked you particular last night if she might send for the copies of the papers, not call for them herself, and you said 'yes.' And you'll excuse me, Sir, but I'm not to answer any more questions."

The attorney shrugged and turned to the telephone, but Dan interposed quietly:

"Miss Murdaugh ain't at home, Sir. She's waiting for me and she says she'll not set foot in the house until I bring her the copies of the papers."

"Very well." Mason North capitulated, and, opening a drawer in his desk, handed over a rolled package. "Here you are. I shall want a receipt, of course."

He made out one, which Dan signed, and with a nod turned to leave, when the attorney halted him on the threshold.

"Ask Miss Murdaugh if she can find it convenient to call here this afternoon; tell her I would like to talk things over with her and will expect her between four and five o'clock."

"Very good, Sir."

Dan departed, colliding violently as he did so with an elderly gentleman who entered the inner office and banged the door behind him.

"Mason, have you heard from her? Do you know where she has gone?"

"Who?" North rose hurriedly. "What is it, Ripley? What has happened?"

"Willa. She's gone!" Ripley Halstead dropped despondently into a chair beside the desk. "Here's the note the poor, proud little thing left behind her. Mason, I feel as if, between us, we've given her a beastly, rotten deal."

But the attorney did not heed the final observation. He pressed the b.u.t.ton in his desk excitedly and when a wondering clerk appeared he barked:

"That young man who just went out of here! Follow him, stop him!"

"Too late, Sir. He went down in the express elevator as I stepped out of the local."

North seated himself again with a gesture of hopelessness.

"All right; never mind, then. Ripley----" as the door closed once more--"if you'd been five minutes sooner I could have located her. Why under the sun didn't you telephone me?"

"Her absence was only discovered as I was leaving the house and I came straight to you." Halstead stared. "What young man were you speaking of?"

"Her messenger. He came with a note from Willa authorizing him to bring her the photographic copies of those doc.u.ments, and like a fool I gave them to him! We've lost our chance of tracing her, and heaven only knows what difficulties that headstrong wilful child will get into by herself,"

groaned North. "I took her away from her home and friends in Mexico on this mistaken matter of her inheritance and I feel responsible for her.

I'm fond of the child, too; I like her independent spirit even if it did raise the deuce with us, and if any harm comes to her----"

"I won't let myself think of that!" Ripley Halstead's kind face had grown suddenly haggard. "I have a good deal of respect for her clear-headed ability to take care of herself; nevertheless, I sha'n't feel easy until she is found. I've taken more comfort in her than in my own daughter, Mason. My wife doesn't need Willa's share of the Murdaugh money and I wish young Wiley had never unearthed the truth!"

The attorney had picked up the little note.

"'My dear Mrs. Halstead,' he read.

"'I hope you will forgive me for leaving you so unceremoniously. I do not mean to be rude or seem ungrateful, but I am afraid that in your hospitality you would urge me to remain until the doc.u.ments are verified at least, and I really cannot do so. If I have been an impostor, it was an unconscious one. Nevertheless, I could not endure a false position.

Will you permit me once more to thank you and your family for all your kindness to me, and believe me to be,

"'Ever gratefully yours,

"'BILLIE ABERCROMBIE.'"

"----Poor little girl! I say, where did she get that 'Abercrombie' from?"

"Don't you see?" Ripley Halstead bent forward.

"That's the name on that doc.u.ment; the name of the man who adopted her, 'Gentleman Geoff.' She won't claim 'Murdaugh' and doesn't accept 'Hillery,' so she's chosen the one name she's sure of. Do you suppose that means she is going to contest the validity of this new claim?"

"Possibly." North shook his head. "It would be a losing fight for her, though, Ripley. There isn't a chance in the world that Wiley's discovery could be anything but authentic. No one profits by the affair except your own family and no one could have any possible incentive for faking the story. It's too bad the truth didn't come out before, and I'll always blame myself for my negligence, but as long as a mistake was made, it is lucky for us that Wiley stumbled on those records now instead of later, when the fortune was in her hands."

His mission accomplished, Dan was returning to the garage to put the car up and proceed on foot to his daily round of the hospitals and bureaus of inquiry, when half-way down the block a shrill voice piped at him.

"Hot tomales! Very fine hot tomales. Try one, Mister!"

Idly he glanced toward the curb. A diminutive, ragged vender crouched there beside a bright, new hand-cart which contained a huge pot simmering above a charcoal fire, and bore a sign with the legend "Hot Tomales, 5 cents," in obviously home-made lettering.

His mind intent on his errand of the morning, Dan gave it but pa.s.sing heed and drove on into the garage, yet as he busied himself about the car, the incident kept recurring to his mind. Hot tomales were a queer commodity for a street-seller to deal in; Dan didn't know exactly what they were, but he believed them to be some sort of Spanish or Mexican concoction----

At this point in his cogitations he stopped work abruptly and stood staring into vacancy.

There had been something appealingly familiar even in that fleeting glimpse of the tattered crouched figure, and could it be that it had been hunchbacked?

With an excited cry he dropped the wrench from his hand and sprang out into the street. Cart and vender were gone, but in the gutter lay a crushed, greasy mess which had been a tomale. It was still smoking and as Dan stirred it with his foot, he saw that a wisp of sodden paper clung to it.

Seizing it, he smoothed it out and read the two jerkily penciled words:

"Manana. Jose."

CHAPTER XX

WINNIE MASON STANDS BY

"I say, h.e.l.lo there! Wait a minute, Kearn!" Winnie Mason called as he brought his roadster to a halt with a sudden grinding of brakes. It was two days later and a cutting east wind skirled about the driveway of the Park, rattling the naked branches of the trees like the fleshless arms of a legion of skeletons.

The tall figure on the path waited, but his face was averted and there was a listless, dispirited droop to his whole form which was not lost upon the quick, sympathetic gaze of his friend.

"I'll back her up. . . Now get in, old man, and we'll take a little spin. Jolly glad I ran across you, but what brings you out on a bl.u.s.tering rotten afternoon like this? You're not very fit yet, you know, after that bout of fever you had in Mexico, in spite of the lacing you managed to give Starr Wiley."

"I came to try and walk off a brace of blue devils that have been camping on my trail," Thode explained, climbing into the car with manifest reluctance. "You won't find me very good company, Win, but you've brought it on yourself."

"What's the matter, anyhow?" the other demanded. "It's not like you to load up with a grouch. Has one of those blasted oil wells sprung a leak?"

Thode shrugged.

"I wouldn't care if every gusher in Mexico went up in smoke!" he affirmed, drearily. "I've had a nasty stab in the back, the kind of thing a man doesn't get over in a hurry, that's all. Don't let's talk about it."