CHAPTER XXI
AN UNEXPECTED MEETING
It was a depressing discovery that Mrs. Ismond had made. Frank satstaring at the paper in his hand in silence for some minutes.
This was a printed sheet. It was headed: “Reward--One HundredDollars.” In short, the warden of the Juvenile Reformatory at Linwood,offered that amount for the return to that institution of an escapedinmate--Richard Markham Welmore.
“Yes, it is our Markham,” murmured Frank--“that is his middle name. Thedescription answers him exactly,” and again Frank said in a troubledway: “Too bad--too bad.”
Frank knew what his mother was thinking of--that they had harbored aconvicted criminal, who had weakly yielded to temptation, beggaringthem, and going back to his old evil ways.
He now knew what Dale Wacker meant when he spoke of the inventor of thewire puzzle as being in a “snug, tight place.” Markham had soughtrelief from his irksome confinement getting up the pleasant littlenovelty that had taken so well. Evidently Wacker, when he first calledon Frank, was not aware of the fact that Markham had escaped.
Wacker had probably once himself been an inmate of the reformatory. Heknew its rules and routine. Coming across Markham on his way to HavenBros., what more natural, Frank reasoned, than that he should takeadvantage of this knowledge? His recognition by Wacker would crushMarkham. Had Wacker terrified him so that he had led him to some quietspot, bargained with him, robbed him, sent him back to the reformatory,and laid claim to the reward?
“I am going to find out,” cried Frank, starting for his cap, butinstantly quieting down again as he reflected farther.
His impulse was to hurry downtown and telegraph the reformatory atLinwood for information. Suddenly, however, he reflected that ifhis surmises were wrong, and things turned out differently than hetheorized, he would simply be putting the authorities on the track ofthe unfortunate Markham.
“Mother,” he said, “nothing will make me believe that Markham voluntarilystole my money. No, this Dale Wacker had a hand in this disappearance.Perhaps poor Markham met him and fled, and is in hiding. We may hear fromhim yet.”
“But, Frank,” suggested Mrs. Ismond in a broken tone of voice, “we aresure now that Markham was a--a bad boy.”
“Why so?” asked Frank.
“He was the inmate of a reformatory.”
“When I think of the old wasted days in my own life when I ran away fromhome,” said Frank, “and the evil men I met who would have got me intoany kind of trouble to further their own schemes, and I innocentlywalking into their trap, I shall give Markham the benefit of a doubt,every time. What right have we to assume that he was not a victim ofwrong? No, no! He was a true friend, an honest worker. I won’t desert orforget him until I have cleared up all this mystery.”
Frank was up before five o’clock the next morning. He had just finishedcutting a week’s supply of kindling wood in the wood shed, when Stetpopped into view over the back fence.
Stet tried to look like a real detective. He glanced back over hisshoulder. He even said “Hist!” in first hailing Frank. Then he asked:
“Going away to-day?”
“I’ve got to, Stet,” answered Frank. “Have you been looking up thatWacker fellow?”
“I’ve been doing nothing else,” answered Stet, putting on a serious,careworn look. “Say, he’s a bad one. Hangs out at the worst places onRailroad Street, and plays cards all the time.”
“Throwing away his money, eh?”
“He don’t seem to have much. No,” said Stet, “I saw him borrow from twoor three chums. But he’s got great prospects, I heard him say. He’swaiting for somebody to come to Pleasantville, or for something tohappen. You leave it to me. I’ll watch him like a ferret, only you’dbetter leave word where I can find you, if anything important comes up.”
“All right, Stet. My mother will know where I am each day I am gone.”
“And say,” continued Stet, “I want you to say something to me.”
“Say something to you, Stet?” repeated Frank in a puzzled way.
“Uh--huh.”
“What?”
“I want you to look at me fierce, and frown, and say that you order meout of your place, and if I show up again you’ll break every bone in mybody.”
“See here--” began Frank in wonderment.
“Now, you just say it,” persisted Stet. “I know my business,” and heblinked and chuckled craftily.
“All right--here goes.”
“Good as a play,” declared Stet, as Frank went through the rigmarole.“Now I needn’t tell any lies. Thrown out by my friends, discharged frommy job, O--O--Oh!” and Stet affected sobs of the deepest misery. “HadBob Haven kicked me--not hard--out of the shop last night. See? Objectof abuse and sympathy. Oh, I’m fixed now to play Mr. Dale Wacker goodand strong.”
Stet disappeared the way he had come in a high state of elation. Frankwent into the house for breakfast. He walked as far as the office withhis mother. Then he went to the livery stable where he had hired theturnout.
He was soon on the road. Frank tried to forget the anxieties of the mailorder business and his missing friend. He planned to cover six littletowns by nightfall.
Frank had good luck from the start. At a crossroads there was a countryschoolhouse, a general store and some twenty houses. The man running thestore was just stocking in for the fall term of school. Frank came inthe nick of time. He sold the man over ten dollars worth of notions andnovelties.
Watering his horse at a roadhouse, a little later on, he interested someloungers on the veranda. Frank got rid of two rings, a cheap watch, apedometer and three of Markham’s puzzles.
At noon he took dinner at Carrollville, quite a good-sized town. A smallcircus was playing here. Frank conceived the idea of buying a privilegeto sell on the circus grounds. The manager wanted ten dollars for apermit, however, so Frank took up his stand near the railway depot.
As the crowds came for their trains at five o’clock, he opened up hisnovelty stock.
“A pretty thrifty day,” mused Frank, an hour later, as he started forhis final stop of the day at Gray’s Lake. “Profits eleven dollars andtwenty cents. Why, thirty days of this kind of trade will give me backmy lost capital.”
Gray’s Lake was a settlement and a summer resort. Frank put up thehorse, got a good supper, and then selected the newest and most salableof the trinkets and novelties he carried in stock.
Among these was a good assortment of leather souvenir postal cards, justthen a decided novelty outside of the large cities. He had brought alonga large jewelry tray. This he suspended by a strap from his neck, andwent up to the big hotel at the end of the lake.
A group of girls in a summer house running out over the water furnishedFrank with his first customers. He sold two friendship rings and sixteenpostal cards.
A crowd of idle men took fire on the puzzle proposition, as two menexamining the wire devices got rating one another as to their respectiveability to get the ring off first. A dozen puzzles were purchased in asmany minutes.
Frank went the rounds of the verandas, meeting with very fair success.The people there had plenty of money to spare, time hung rather heavy ontheir hands, and they welcomed his arrival as a diversion.
Frank grew to have a decided respect for Markham’s little puzzle. He hadstruck the right crowd to sell it to, this time. At the end of an hourfully fifty persons could be seen on the well-lighted verandas andin the hotel rotunda, working over the clever puzzle. An occasionalutterance of satisfaction would greet the solution of the puzzle.
“Markham has certainly left me a money-winner, if he never came back,”reflected Frank.
He was passing along a lighted walk near the lake beach, when a younglady ran past him towards a group of friends.
A foppishly-dressed man with a great black moustache was hastening afterher, but she was calling laughingly back at him:
“No, no, count, you would take all night getting that ring off--I’ll try
some one else.”
“It ees a meestake. Allow me to try once more, my dear young lady.”
“Hello!” ejaculated Frank, with a violent start. Then in a flash heslipped the tray from place, set it hastily on a vacant bench, and asthe man was passing by him caught him deliberately by the sleeve.
“Sare!” challenged the man, with a supercilious stare. “Oh!” he added,wilting down in an instant.
“I suppose you don’t know me?” demanded Frank.
“Nevare, sare.”
“I am Frank Newton, of Greenville, and, for all your false moustache andbroken English, you are Gideon Purnell.”
“Let go!” hissed the man, with a rapid glance at the group just beyondthem.
“No,” replied Frank firmly, only tightening his grasp on the man’s coatsleeve. “I have been looking for you for over a year. I knew I shouldfind you some time. I have found you now.”
“What do you want?” stammered his crestfallen companion.
“Ten minutes’ quiet conversation with you.”
“About what?”
“You know. You were the tool Mr. Dorsett used to rob my mother ofher fortune. He got what he was after. You overstepped yourself. Youforged two names in your crooked dealings, as Mr. Beach, our lawyer atGreenville, has the proof.”
“Boy,” said Purnell, in a low, quick tone, “don’t make a rumpus here.Come and see me to-morrow, and I will do the square thing by you.”
“You’ll do it now,” declared Frank definitely, “or I will expose you tothe people here, and wire Mr. Beach for instructions.”
“At least let me go and make some excuse to my friends yonder,” pleaded“the count.”
“Go ahead,” said Frank.
Bound to Succeed; or, Mail Order Frank's Chances Page 21
