CHAPTER XXI
AN UNEXPECTED MEETING
It was a depressing discovery that Mrs. Ismond had made. Frank sat staring at the paper in his hand in silence for some minutes.
This was a printed sheet. It was headed: "Reward—One Hundred Dollars." In short, the warden of the Juvenile Reformatory at Linwood, offered that amount for the return to that institution of an escaped inmate—Richard Markham Welmore.
"Yes, it is our Markham," murmured Frank—"that is his middle name. The description answers him exactly," and again Frank said in a troubled way: "Too bad—too bad."
Frank knew what his mother was thinking of—that they had harbored a convicted criminal, who had weakly yielded to temptation, beggaring them, and going back to his old evil ways.
He now knew what Dale Wacker meant when he spoke of the inventor of the wire puzzle as being in a "snug, tight place." Markham had sought relief from his irksome confinement getting up the pleasant little novelty that had taken so well. Evidently Wacker, when he first called on Frank, was not aware of the fact that Markham had escaped.
Wacker had probably once himself been an inmate of the reformatory. He knew its rules and routine. Coming across Markham on his way to Haven Bros., what more natural, Frank reasoned, than that he should take advantage of this knowledge? His recognition by Wacker would crush Markham. Had Wacker terrified him so that he had led him to some quiet spot, 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, but instantly quieting down again as he reflected farther.
His impulse was to hurry downtown and telegraph the reformatory at Linwood for information. Suddenly, however, he reflected that if his surmises were wrong, and things turned out differently than he theorized, he would simply be putting the authorities on the track of the unfortunate Markham.
"Mother," he said, "nothing will make me believe that Markham voluntarily stole 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 from him yet."
"But, Frank," suggested Mrs. Ismond in a broken tone of voice, "we are sure 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 from home," said Frank, "and the evil men I met who would have got me into any kind of trouble to further their own schemes, and I Innocently walking 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 of wrong? No, no! He was a true friend, an honest worker. I won't desert or forget him until I have cleared up all this mystery."
Frank was up before five o'clock the next morning. He had just finished cutting a week's supply of kindling wood in the wood shed, when Stet popped into view over the back fence.
Stet tried to look like a real detective. He glanced back over his shoulder. 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 that Wacker 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 on Railroad 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 two or three chums. But he's got great prospects, I heard him say. He's waiting for somebody to come to Pleasantville, or for something to happen. You leave it to me. I'll watch him like a ferret, only you'd better 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 me out of your place, and if I show up again you'll break every bone in my body."
"See here—" began Frank in wonderment.
"Now, you just say it," persisted Stet. "I know my business," and he blinked 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 from my job, O—O—Oh!" and Stet affected sobs of the deepest misery. "Had Bob Haven kicked me—not hard—out of the shop last night. See? Object of abuse and sympathy. Oh, I'm fixed now to play Mr. Dale Wacker good and strong."
Stet disappeared the way he had come in a high state of elation. Frank went Into the house for breakfast. He walked as far as the office with his mother. Then he went to the livery stable where he had hired the turnout.
He was soon on the road. Frank tried to forget the anxieties of the mall order business and his missing friend. He planned to cover six little towns by nightfall.
Frank had good luck from the start. At a crossroads there was a country schoolhouse, a general store and some twenty houses. The man running the store was just stocking in for the fall term of school. Frank came in the nick of time. He sold the man over ten dollars worth of notions and novelties.
Watering his horse at a roadhouse, a little later on, he interested some loungers on the veranda. Frank got rid of two rings, a cheap watch, a pedometer and three of Markham's puzzles.
At noon he took dinner at Carrollville, quite a good-sized town. A small circus was playing here. Frank conceived the idea of buying a privilege to sell on the circus grounds. The manager wanted ten dollars for a permit, 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 his novelty stock.
"A pretty thrifty day," mused Frank, an hour later, as he started for his final stop of the day at Gray's Lake. "Profits eleven dollars and twenty cents. Why, thirty days of this kind of trade will give me back my lost capital."
Gray's Lake was a settlement and a summer resort. Frank put up the horse, got a good supper, and then selected the newest and most salable of the trinkets and novelties he carried in stock.
Among these was a good assortment of leather souvenir postal cards, just then a decided novelty outside of the large cities. He had brought along a large jewelry tray. This he suspended by a strap from his neck, and went up to the big hotel at the end of the lake.
A group of girls in a summer house running out over the water furnished Frank with his first customers. He sold two friendship rings and sixteen postal cards.
A crowd of idle men took fire on the puzzle proposition, as two men examining the wire devices got rating one another as to their respective ability to get the ring off first. A dozen puzzles were purchased in as many 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 on their hands, and they welcomed his arrival as a diverson.
Frank grew to have a decided respect for Markham's little puzzle. He had struck the right crowd to sell it to, this time. At the end of an hour fully fifty persons could be seen on the well-lighted verandas and in the hotel rotunda, working over the clever puzzle. An occasional utterance 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 young lady ran past him towards a group of friends.
A foppishly-dressed man with a great black moustache was hastening after her, 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 he slipped the tray from place, set it hastily on a vacant bench, and as the 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 and broken English, you are Gideon Purnell."
"Let go!" hissed the man, with a rapid glance at the group just beyond them.
"No," replied Frank firmly, only tightening his grasp on the man's coat sleeve. "I have been looking for you for over a year. I knew I should find 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 of her fortune. He got what he was after. You overstepped yourself. You forged two names in your crooked dealings, as Mr. Beach, our lawyer at Greenville, 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 to the 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.