The Fifth Ace Part 36

"You're not the only one. I say, you'll keep this to yourself, of course, but I've got to tell some one, and you were her friend down there. She told me about that magnificent ride of yours for the troops at the time of the raid, and she just about thought you were ace high.

She's such a plucky little thing herself, confound it? That's what makes it so devilish hard, now."

"What are you talking about?" Thode looked up with the first gleam of interest he had shown. "Not Miss Murdaugh?"

Winnie nodded.

"Only she isn't Miss Murdaugh at all, according to Starr Wiley. He's dug up proof that the real Willa Murdaugh died and she is just a trapper's daughter from the wilds somewhere, whom that gambler adopted in order to bilk the estate later. The governor told me all about it, he was so wrought up he couldn't keep it to himself."

"Not Willa Murdaugh!" repeated Thode in stunned accents. "And Starr Wiley brought forward the proof? You'd better tell me all about it, Win, now that you've started."

Nothing loth, Winnie complied and the other heard him through in silence, until he told of Willa's disappearance the morning after the revelation, and the little note she had left behind her.

"I swear I thought the governor would spill over when he read it to me," Winnie concluded. "It was sort of fine for her to go away like that. I don't care who she really is, she's the most wonderful girl I know. She wouldn't even sign herself 'Murdaugh' after they questioned her right; she used the name of the gambler chap who'd been so good to her."

"How did she learn it?" Thode asked quickly. "He was known only as 'Gentleman Geoff' in Limasito. I'm certain she herself never heard the name there."

"It was signed to the adoption agreement he and the trapper, Hillery, made out when he took her in place of the real Willa. The governor showed me the paper and there it was in black and white: Geoff Abercrombie."

"Abercrombie!" Kearn Thode seized the other's arm in a convulsive grip which made the steering-wheel jerk. "You're sure--you're sure of the name, Win?"

"Dead sure! I'll get the governor to show you the doc.u.ment if you like. But why the excitement? You nearly landed us up against that rock, then."

"Never mind the rock!" exclaimed Thode. "I'm going to take you up on that; I'd give a good bit to see that paper and the signature."

"I'll fix it." Winnie shot a quick glance at his companion. "I say, you don't think it's phony, do you? The governor says it is absolutely the straight goods."

"It isn't that," Thode hastened to explain cautiously. "But I knew Gentleman Geoff personally, you know. It isn't etiquette to ask a man for more of a name than he chooses to give below the border, but I had a hazy idea of Gentleman Geoff's ident.i.ty and the name in my mind was not Abercrombie. It was just a suspicion of my own and I had nothing to substantiate it, but the old chap interested me and I've always been curious about him. I wonder if he could possibly have been related to the Abercrombies of the Coast?"

"Whoever he was, he must have been rather a fine old codger himself for he brought Will--his adopted daughter up splendidly," Winnie observed with enthusiasm. "There isn't a girl in our set that can come anywhere near her, and I think it is a dashed shame that she's thrown out on her own. She took the whole business like a thoroughbred, walking calmly out like that and leaving them to haggle over the details."

"And she has utterly disappeared?" asked Thode. "No one knows where she is?"

"n.o.body but your Uncle Sherlock!" Winnie grinned, and thumped himself upon the chest. "I did a little detecting on my own and I found her all right. She doesn't know yet that anyone has discovered her whereabouts and I don't mean to pa.s.s it on to the Halsteads or the governor, either. She's her own mistress now and if she wants to go away by herself, it's no one's concern but hers."

"I can't imagine you in the role of a gumshoe!" The other laughed outright, and it was Winnie's turn to gape in amazement.

The change which had come over his companion was too marked to go unnoted; the listless, disheartened mood was gone and in its place the old eager alertness manifested itself, intensified by a sort of half-suppressed excitement.

"I turned the trick, anyway," Winnie remarked complacently after a pause. "You see, old man, I'd heard about the way she'd held on to the money Gentleman Geoff left her and I've caught glimpses of her more than once riding around town in a speedy gray car with a nifty chauffeur. I knew the Halstead bunch didn't know anything about it so I kept quiet. I recognized the chauffeur in the chap she sent to the governor's office for photographic copies of the doc.u.ments Wiley dug up, but the governor sent me away just when things promised to be interesting.

"I scouted around outside the building and there, sure enough, drawn up at the curb across the way, was the gray car. I slipped over and took its number. Later, when we heard about her going away, I didn't say anything, but I looked up the record of the car. The license had been taken out under a man's name; the chauffeur's, maybe, but I traced it to a garage up on the West Side. I took this car up there two days ago, and whenever he took his own out I was right on the job after him.

"He found out that I was shadowing him, of course, and he tried like blazes to shake me off, but I was foxy and beat him at his own game yesterday. He drove up to a certain house and she came out herself, as if she'd been waiting for him. I jotted down the address, and beat it as hard as I could. It's lucky I found her when I did, because the car was moved to another garage this morning and I lost its trail."

"What are you going to do?" inquired the other. "Call on her to extend your sympathy? That's about the last thing on earth that Gentleman Geoff's Billie wants, under any circ.u.mstances."

He uttered the name with an unconscious note of tenderness in his voice which would have been illuminating to Winnie North, but that young man was busied at the moment with embarra.s.sing thoughts of his own. His face at the other's abrupt question had turned a bright pink, but he replied steadily:

"I don't want to intrude upon her, but I'd like to tell her that I'm standing by in case of need.--I'll tell you what I'll do; I'll drop her a line and ask her if I may bring you up to call, shall I? She can tell you all about this thing better than I----"

Thode shook his head decisively.

"No. I am an old friend, as you say, and if she should want to see me she knows how to reach me. I'm going away in a few days, at any rate."

"Away?" Winnie said impulsively. "Why, old man, you're not returning to Mexico, are you? I thought you were going to stay around town for a month or two."

"No!" There was a determined ring, not without a touch of grimness, in his tones. "I'm going to take Horace Greeley's advice once more: 'Young man, go West.' I'll hit the trail for the setting sun----"

"And find your pot of gold, like the old fairy tale of the rainbow's end? By Jove, but you fellows are dreamers!" Winnie laughed, then touched his friend's shoulder persuasively. "Why don't you stay on here where the money is and work this end of the game for a change?

You engineer chaps get out and do all the hard work, and the smug brokers who sit tight in their offices down on the Street reap all the profits. Get in on the ground floor, old man, and let the other fellow do the prospecting."

Thode laughed also.

"Without a working capital? Besides, I know nothing and care less about the manipulations of the financial end of it; the prospecting is all I'm cut out for and it's more fascinating than the market game could possibly be! However, I'm not going West for the elusive pot of gold this trip; I'm going for something far more important, on a little private hunch of my own. You'll wish me luck, I know, old man?"

"I will indeed, whatever your hunch is," Winnie responded heartily.

"That stab in the back hasn't downed you, after all. I knew it wouldn't, after you got your second wind! You look like a different chap than you were an hour ago----"

"I feel it!" laughed the other, but again that undernote of grimness rang in his tone. "It's done me a lot of good, this little talk with you, Win. You'll never realize just how you've bucked me up."

Winnie puzzled over the significance of the last remark after he had dropped his friend at the Park entrance and turned north again. Could the stab in the back to which Thode referred have come from Starr Wiley, and had their conversation given Thode a clue to a way of striking back at his enemy? Not through Willa and the lost inheritance, of course; that was a bona-fide discovery, even if Wiley had been the instrument in bringing it to light. However, the fact that Wiley had stumbled upon the doc.u.ments while in Arizona might have given Thode a lead on some ulterior project out there in which Wiley was trying to cut the ground out from under his feet.

In going over their conversation in retrospect, an idea came which Winnie determined impulsively to act upon. Willa's car had been removed from the garage to which he had traced it, but that did not necessarily mean that it had been taken to another. What if she had sold the car, in preparation for a return to Mexico? He felt that she must not go before he had seen her. Heretofore he had not, as he said, intruded upon her retreat, but he could not bear the thought of her departure without at least her knowing what he had to tell her.

He would go to her now, without giving her an opportunity to refuse to see him! She might be angry, and Willa's anger was something to be reckoned with, but he would make her hear him out!

Darkness had already fallen as he drew up before the neat little house with its twin front doors. He rang the bell of the one to the right and when the tall pleasant-faced woman appeared in answer to his summons, he asked without hesitation for Miss Abercrombie.

The woman eyed him somewhat doubtfully, but ushered him into a tiny immaculate parlor.

"Please, tell her it is Mr. Winthrop North. I haven't a card with me, but be sure about the first name. Say that I have an important message for her and no one knows that I have come."

"Yes, Sir." The woman hesitated. "I'm thinking you've made a mistake and got hold of the wrong Miss Abercrombie, but I'll find out."

In a moment, however, there was a rustle of silk on the narrow stairs and Willa entered. Her eyes sought his in a defensive, questioning stare as she held out her hand.

"Your visit is a surprise, Winnie. I thought--I was not aware that any of my friends knew where I was."

"No one does but me. I followed your chauffeur. Please, don't be angry! I was so afraid I should lose you; that you would return to Limasito before I had an opportunity to see you, that I was desperate."

"Why should you want to see me?" Willa demanded, frankly. "I don't mean to be ungracious, Winnie, we've grown to be awfully good friends in these two months, but I've been through so much just lately that the Willa Murdaugh episode seems far away, and all the people I knew then are like dream people. I--I'm starting in all over again, you see, and I meant to do it with a clean, blank sheet."

"But surely you don't mean to put us all behind you? Our friendship, our admiration, all the happy times we've had together--oh, Willa, you can't drop it all like this!" he stammered. "You can't go back now, you belong to us!"

She smiled.

"You're very good to say so, Winnie, but remember I'm not Willa any more! My place is gone, or rather it never was mine. I do believe in your friendship, but how many of the rest bothered with me because of myself alone? It was the Murdaugh position they accepted, the Murdaugh interests. I'm not cynical, but I try to look things squarely in the face. How many would admit within their circle the waif adopted by a gambler?"

Winnie drew a deep breath.