“I didn’t do anything more than I ought to have done,” Ted assured him, “after the things I almost did to hurt you.”
“Well, we can forget all that now. I’m looking forward to years of service in Forestdale. I still like my cabin up in the hills, but I guess I’d grow tired of it if I were there all the time.”
Even before the Town Crier came out, the police, working together with the Treasury man, Mr. Dunfield, had moved in for an arrest, and had caught Mr. Harridge before he could take alarm. It seemed certain that prosecution and conviction would follow.
Ted had one more person who felt grateful to him. Nancy came over, just before leaving town, to thank him for the diaries.
“They’re wonderful, Ted. Mr. Wiley was right when he called my grandmother a remarkable woman. I’m going to copy these diaries completely, and then return them to Mr. Wiley as you promised. Someday, I think, someone may want to write a book about her. But best of all for me I feel that for the first time I’m getting acquainted with my family.”
Ted walked out with her to the car, where Miss Monroe was waiting to drive her to the station.
“Good-by, Nancy. May I write to you while you’re at college?”
“It would be awfully nice if you would, Ted. Aunt Marian will give you my address. Good-by, Ted. This summer has been fun.”
One last call came for Ted, the night before he was to leave for two weeks with his brother in the city and then college. Ken Kutler called to offer his best wishes and his congratulations for Ted’s work on the purple-cow story.
“Oh, I know you had your finger in that pie all right, Ted. It would only have been a few more days before I found Mr. Woodring myself, but you beat me to it. Well, I think this affair has had at least one lasting effect. The Blue Harvest company can try its darnedest, but from now on people around here won’t call those stamps anything but Purple Cows.”
“What did you think of Carl Allison’s story about it?” asked Ted.
“As a matter of fact, Ted, I called him up to congratulate him about it. I noticed in particular that he didn’t write about Mr. Woodring’s past criminal record, or some of the mistakes he made—all things he could have put in if he’d wanted to be nasty.”
“Mr. Dobson probably told him not to do that.”
“Quite possibly, but Mr. Dobson didn’t set the tone of the whole story. That showed the mark of a real newspaperman. I had my doubts about Allison before, but I can tell you right now: he’ll do!”
The Counterfeit Mystery Page 17
