The Girl from Sunset Ranch Part 47

"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 got _my_ shop!"

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 part.i.tion at the rear to separate the workroom from the showroom. And behind that part.i.tion 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 for _me_ that 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 is _your_ store?"

"No, it is _your_ store," 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 of heaven 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 grat.i.tude 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 in _me_----?"

"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 you _are_ rich, 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 the _great_ properties of the West."

The old man turned to look at her with some eagerness. "That name?" he whispered. "_Who_ did 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 the position 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 always _was_ up 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 related the 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 that _he_ might be involved in some dubious enterprise.

There was flung in Chesterton's way (perhaps _that_ was by the influence of Grimes, too) a chance to go to New Orleans to be bookkeeper in a shipping firm. He could get pa.s.sage 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 position at 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.