“I asked him how long ago he’d been in prison, and he said ten years. Good heavens, ten years ago! If a man’s managed to go straight for ten years, I should think that ought to be long enough for people to forget everything that happened before that. Besides, he’d been quite young at the time, and you can always hold out more hope for a young person who’s gone wrong.
“I told Mr. Woodring that Blue Harvest was looking for salesmen, and that I knew as a matter of company policy they didn’t check back references for more than five years. When he heard that, he decided to give it a try, and the Blue Harvest company hired him. Of course, I told him he’d have to have some sort of story ready about where he did work ten years ago, just in case somebody asked him, but I knew that the company wouldn’t check on it. Funny thing, I would have given you ten-to-one odds that Mr. Woodring would never get off the track again—but it just goes to show you.”
His tone sounded exceedingly bitter. They were unable to tell whether it was owing to his disappointment in human nature, or whether he felt his prestige with the company had slipped because of having recommended Mr. Woodring.
“Oh, this Blue Harvest outfit is all right, but It’s a young, new company,” Mr. Harridge went on, “and it’s made a lot of mistakes. Not checking references properly is just one of them. I could tell you some others. They don’t pay their salesmen enough. Oh, they give good bonuses for selling new customers, and that’s why I’ve stayed with them so far. But after you’ve pretty well covered your territory, you know you aren’t going to get very many new customers after that. It becomes mostly a matter of keeping the old customers serviced and satisfied. But without those bonuses coming in, the salesmen will all soon drift off, and the company will find itself high and dry. I could tell them, but they wouldn’t listen to me. They’ll find out in time. I won’t be around very much longer myself.”
Ted didn’t think it either a very loyal or a very wise policy for a man to criticize his employer, especially to strangers. But Mr. Harridge went on:
“I can tell you another thing they’re doing wrong: those premiums. What sort of items make the best premiums? It’s things that people want, but would probably never buy for themselves. By allowing them to purchase premiums with stamps, you give them the feeling that they’re getting them for nothing. What you’re really doing is getting them to buy things they wouldn’t otherwise buy, because they’re a little bit too much of a luxury. Now toys don’t come into that class at all. People will always buy toys, if they’ve got the money—you probably know that from your own parents. This puts us too much in competition with the regular stores.”
Ted wasn’t quite sure he followed this reasoning. It seemed to him that if customers were in the market for toys, then toys would make the best possible premiums. He wondered if Mr. Harridge wasn’t being just a little bit too worldly, too all-knowing, too cynical.
“And you want to know something else that’s wrong?” Mr. Harridge had apparently forgotten that he was in a hurry.
“‘Blue Harvest’ is wrong; I mean the name of the stamps. It sounds too countrified. Rural people don’t want to be reminded that they live in the sticks. They want to pretend they’re doing things just the way people in the big cities do them. If it were up to me, I’d change the name—make it Blue something else, and I wouldn’t have a shock of corn on the stamps, you can bet your last dollar.”
To Ted, the Blue Harvest stamps looked very attractive, and he didn’t believe that all rural people were ashamed of living in the country and spent most of their time envying city people. However, he didn’t see any point in arguing the matter, though he found it a little difficult to disguise his growing distaste for Mr. Harridge.
“Well, I don’t suppose you can do anything about helping us find Mr. Woodring?” he asked.
“No, not a thing that I know of. Mr. Woodring never talked much about himself. As far as I’m concerned, I hope I never see him again. He talked me into recommending him one time, but he’ll never get me to do anything more for him. Once burned, you know.” He laughed.
Ted rose to go, and Nelson followed his lead. “Well, thanks anyway,” Ted offered.
“Oh, sure.” Mr. Harridge called after them, as Ted was about to open the door, “Say, do you know somebody named Ken Kutler?”
“Yes, I do,” Ted admitted, turning partly around. “What about him?”
“Oh, not much, except that he was here yesterday, asking me most of those same questions. Claimed to be a newspaper reporter.”
“He is,” Ted assured him, and they went outside.
“Ken’s always right there in the middle of whatever’s happening, isn’t he?” said Nelson, shaking his head.
“Yes, if he isn’t breathing down your neck he’s out there a step ahead of you.”
“Think there’s a story in this, Ted?”
“Must be—or anyway Ken thinks so. Well, as far as I’m concerned it’s all between Carl and Ken. Carl wouldn’t let me help him on it, even if I wanted to.”
“No, and you don’t want to—not any more than I want a double-scoop chocolate malted right this minute. How about it?”
“You’re on!”
They stopped at a drugstore, and were soon sipping away at their favorite drink. At last Ted said thoughtfully:
“What did you think of Mr. Harridge?”
“Him? Oh, why bother about him? You can see exactly the kind of guy he is. He’s one of those slick salesmen who can put on his best company manners, slap you on the back, tell the latest stories, and all that sort of thing. Only we weren’t customers, and so he didn’t have to put on his act for us. We saw him the way he really is. I think there’s something insincere about all salesmen.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. It’s true they have to keep cheerful and smiling, whether they feel like it or not, and pretend the customer’s always right, even when they’d like to give him a good kick in the pants. But everybody has to do the same thing, sometime or other. After all, you don’t tell company to go home, just because it’s past your bedtime. I guess salesmen have their troubles, like everyone else. Mr. Harridge is just an example of the kind I don’t like.”
“I like sincere people,” Nelson maintained.
“Oh, he was sincere, all right, especially when he told us everything that was wrong with the Blue Harvest company. I think he meant every word of it.”
“I guess we had our trip out here for nothing, didn’t we?” asked Nelson, sipping happily.
“Oh, mostly, unless you call it important not finding out something—I suppose it sometimes is. We picked up a few little things, though. For instance, Mr. Woodring was the only salesman who had the counterfeit stamps. Of course that’s what we thought all along. Well, I guess that about ends it. I couldn’t do anything more even if—” He bit his lip sharply. He was about to mention his promise to the Treasury man to do what he could to help find Mr. Woodring, but fortunately caught himself in time. “I guess I might as well spend my time looking for Nancy’s lost town.”
“You seeing Nancy pretty steadily?”
“Oh, yes. She and Miss Monroe are coming to dinner tonight. I wish I could do something to help Nancy, but she doesn’t seem to know very much about Freeport. She said there’s a waterfall—”
Suddenly Ted caught himself. “A waterfall! Say, we’re already looking for a waterfall, or a twin waterfall. I wonder if they could be the same?”
“Sure,” Nelson agreed sarcastically. “Nancy lost a town—you can’t find it. A waterfall is missing—you can’t find it. That means they must be lost together. It sounds like good logic to me.”
This cooled Ted off a little, but he wasn’t quite ready to give up his idea. “Well, I don’t know. Remember, there aren’t very many waterfalls in this state. It couldn’t be a very big waterfall, or we’d have heard about it. It just could be that there’s something else sp
ecial about it. Maybe it was a twin waterfall near Freeport, the same twin waterfall we’re looking for now.”
“The main thing about this waterfall,” Nelson remarked, “is that it disappears every time anyone tries to find it. Do you think it swallowed up the whole town of Freeport?”
Ted didn’t know exactly what he did think, except that the idea that the waterfalls were connected intrigued him. Sometimes someone puts two such ideas together, without very much reason to do so. Ted realized this, and while he proposed to be cautious about the whole thing, he still hoped the opportunity might come up to test out his idea.
“I wonder just where Freeport could have been anyway?” he mused.
“Port,” Nelson pointed out. “That must mean water.”
“Yes, and if it’s in this state, it’s not on the coast, so that must mean a lake or a river. Well, which is it?”
“I don’t think it could be a lake,” Nelson decided. “None of our lakes are large enough to be called really navigable—just large enough for pleasure boats. Oh, I suppose there’d be nothing to stop a town from calling itself a port, even if it was only on a shallow lake. But a river sounds more likely to me. Some of our rivers are navigable—for smaller ships, that is.”
“Yes, but suppose it is a river, which one can it be?”
“If Nancy’s and Mr. Woodring’s waterfalls are the same, it must be north. That was the way Mr. Woodring indicated. But his car was found south of here.”
“All the more reason to think he went in any direction but south. Well, even if it is north, that doesn’t quite pinpoint it down. I wonder what we can do now?”
“How about taking a motor trip up every river, and seeing if we can find a town they forgot to put on the maps?”
Ted shook his head. “That’s always the problem. Why isn’t the town on the maps, and how could it disappear? I don’t know, but I’m afraid we’re not going to find it—not until we have a little more to go on than we do now.”
“You still set on finding Mr. Woodring, Ted? After all, it might be pretty difficult to prosecute him, as long as Mr. Bentley refuses to cooperate.”
“I know that. I wonder if Mr. Smith could help out there? If he could identify Mr. Woodring as the man who took that picture, it should link Mr. Woodring to the crime, even without Mr. Bentley’s help.”
“But do you think Mr. Smith could identify him? He sounded awfully vague about it to me.”
“I know—a left-handed young man wearing a raincoat. I don’t suppose that’s the kind of evidence which would hold up in court.”
Ted sighed, and placing some coins on the counter, they left the drugstore.
CHAPTER 15
THE PEOPLE’S VOICE
Ted and his mother enjoyed a pleasant dinner and evening with their visitors. During the evening Ted found a chance to ask Nancy once more about Freeport and the waterfall.
“Was there anything unusual about this waterfall, Nancy?” he inquired. “Did your grandmother say anything particular about it in her letters?”
Nancy tried to recollect. “Nothing very special that I remember, Ted. She described it as being very pretty, without being particularly spectacular.” She frowned for a moment. “I recall one puzzling thing. She mentioned taking a visitor out for a ride to see the waterfall—I suppose she meant with a horse and buggy—and on a different route back they saw the waterfall again. I suppose that’s possible—but her second description didn’t quite match the first. You would almost have thought it was a different waterfall.”
Ted’s heart leaped up. “Maybe it was a twin waterfall, Nancy. Do you think it could have been?”
“Well, I suppose it could be,” she returned hesitantly. “Will that help us to find it?”
“No, I guess not,” Ted was forced to admit. “But at least Mr. Woodring mentioned a twin waterfall, so it must exist somewhere. And if it exists, you’d think somebody would know about it.”
Friday morning the Town Crier came out with its account of the Blue Harvest mix-up. The story was very much as Ted had expected. Mr. Bentley’s statement concerning the genuineness of the stamps was given prominent mention, but the other side of the question was also covered. And, as Mr. Dobson had promised, there was a long article on an inside page discussing the trading-stamp situation. Quite a number of townspeople were asked to give their opinion of the stamps. In general the women tended to support the idea, while the men were less enthusiastic.
Ted went out to buy a copy of the North Ridge News-Record, and he found that Ken Kutler also had a story about the Blue Harvest stamps. The story was entitled boldly, “Is There a Purple Cow?” and Ken discussed the situation much more bluntly than Mr. Dobson. Although a statement from Mr. Bentley was also included, any reader of the News-Record, was going to get the idea that there was some skullduggery going on. However, both stories were very careful not to accuse Mr. Woodring of any criminal act, nor even an alleged criminal act. This was very necessary, since there was no warrant out for Mr. Woodring, nor had he been indicted.
When Ted got home and was able to read the Town Crier more carefully, he found another item to interest him. There was a column of letters to the editor, called The People’s Voice. One of the letters came from Rideaway, a considerable distance from Forestdale. The letter discussed the painting by Jan Fountaine, called A Study at Twilight, but more popularly known as The Purple Cow.
Were the people of Forestdale aware, the letter asked, that the painting had been done very close to Forestdale? In fact, the artist had worked in a quaint building known as the Dutch Mill. If visitors to the mill would look out the south window on the second story, they would see the very same view which had so inspired the artist. The letter went on to tell something about the artist’s life and some of his other work.
This letter was puzzling to Ted. Although the writer had not mentioned that this painting had been used on the Blue Harvest stamps, he must have known it. It was the Blue Harvest stamps which had inspired all this renewed interest in The Purple Cow. But how could the letter writer have known all that he did? Some of this information was not yet general knowledge. It seemed to Ted there were some people who knew a good deal more about what was going on than they were likely to admit.
The writer of this letter was of particular interest to Ted, He wondered, if the signature was genuine—very often signatures were not, especially coming from a distant town where it would be difficult to check. If Francis Masters, the name signed to the letter, was the name of a real person, Ted wished he might meet him, and perhaps learn all that he knew about this matter. If it was not a real name, then it offered all sorts of possibilities. In any case, the writer of the letter must have had a good reason for writing such a letter at that particular time.
There was an easy way to check it. Ted addressed a special-delivery letter to Mr. Masters. In it he asked some rather unimportant question about the painting. He didn’t really expect any answer to the letter; he was more interested in seeing whether the letter was delivered at all. He could hardly expect to know before Monday, and on Monday, when the mailman came, he had his answer. His own letter was returned to him, stamped “No Such Address.” That letter in the Town Crier had been clearly a plant.
Again he put through the inevitable call to Nelson. “How about taking a ride out to the Dutch Mill this morning?” he suggested.
“O.K. Anything special?”
“I don’t know,” said Ted briefly. “I’ll tell you later.”
Out at the mill they made their way in, and went upstairs to the south bedroom, the scene of their scare on the night of the hayride. By this time Ted had explained to Nelson about the letter, and Nelson looked out the window critically.
“What do you think, Ted?” he asked.
“I couldn’t really say,” said Ted doubtfully. “It’s awfully hard to tell.”
“I know. It isn
’t twilight, and there isn’t any cow coming along a country lane. Even if there was a cow, the artist would have to imagine it as being a lot closer than it could have been really.”
“Yes, that’s the trouble. Artists use their imaginations so much that it’s hard to say where reality leaves off and imagination begins. It could be that the artist painted The Purple Cow standing right here where we’re standing now. There’re several hills in the background, just as there are on the stamps. And there’s a fence, even if there aren’t any cornshocks. I’m confused.” Ted shook his head rapidly.
“I don’t get it, Ted. What difference does it make to us whether the artist painted the picture here or not? Oh, there might be a little bit of local glory about it, but I don’t think it’s going to help us find Mr. Woodring.”
“I don’t know what to think about it, Nel. All I’m sure of is that the writer of that letter in the Town Crier had some special purpose in drawing our attention to this room. But I don’t know what it is. I don’t see anything in here, do you?”
They looked around carefully, but the room was empty—very empty. There were no expected traces of debris. The Dutch family had been careful to leave everything in tiptop shape when it moved out. They left the room, and looked around through the other rooms upstairs, all of them empty. There was a ladder leading to a loft through a trapdoor in the ceiling. Ted climbed the ladder, pushed open the door, and stuck his head inside. Then he came down and shook his head once more.
The Counterfeit Mystery Page 12
