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CHAPTER XXVII
THE POST-OFFICE INSPECTOR
“Now then, my friend, behave yourself.”
“Haven’t I paid the damages?”
“You have, but don’t get into any further expensive mischief.”
“H’m!” observed the victim of Dale Wacker’s mail order swindle, “that’s to be seen, if I ever get my hands on the real fellow who robbed me. As to you, stranger,” to Frank, “just send in your bill double. Sorry I disturbed you, but we all make mistakes.”
“No, Mr. Halsey,” replied Frank, “I only ask you to pay the cost of that window you smashed and the door you broke.”
“How much – let me settle it now,” urged Halsey.
“I’ll trust you,” said Frank. “I will send the bill when the carpenter gets the repairs done.”
The trial had come off. A small fine had been imposed by the village judge on Halsey for his disorderly conduct. The marshal had explained to him that Frank was not the person who had swindled him. He added that very probably through Frank’s investigation they would soon discover the identity of the United States Mail Order House.
“You can come with us, but you will have to curb your fighting proclivities,” warned the marshal. “Here is where the law steps in, and you must not interfere with its course.”
“I came a long way to get satisfaction,” muttered Halsey. “Somehow, I’ll have it too.”
The marshal led the way, and they were soon mounting the stairs of Main Street Block. They proceeded quietly, so as to give no warning or create any curiosity with other occupants of the building.
“There is the door,” said Frank in a guarded tone, as they reached the landing of the third story.
The marshal advanced and gave a firm resounding knock on its panels. They could detect a stir within. Then the wicket shot back.
“Who are you – what do you want? Thunder! it’s the marshal.”
Frank fancied he recognized the tones as belonging to Dale Wacker.
“That’s who it is,” answered the official. “Here, here I want a word with you, young man.”
The wicket was shot as suddenly as it had been opened. They could hear a quick scramble in the room beyond.
“Open this door,” loudly demanded the marshal, resuming his knocking.
“They won’t do it,” spoke up Halsey, advancing a step. “Say,” lifting his ponderous fist, “I’ll soon clear the way, if you say the word.”
“No,” responded the marshal, putting up a detaining hand. “We have no legal right to invade the premises. Whoever is in there, cannot escape. There is no other stairway leading to the street except this one.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Frank.
“Why, you had better go back to the town hall with Halsey,” advised the officer. “See the clerk, and let Halsey swear out a criminal warrant against Dale Wacker and others concerned in a swindling scheme at this place.”
“All right,” nodded Frank. “Come Mr. Halsey, let us make haste.”
“I will save you any delay, gentlemen,” spoke up a new voice.
All three turned, to observe a keen-faced, bright-eyed man who had come quickly up the stairs. There was a certain half-military, half-official precision to his make up that at once impressed Frank.
“Yes,” continued the newcomer, coming forward on the landing as though he had a perfect right there, “I’ll soon get action here. You are the town marshal, I believe?”
“That’s right,” nodded the officer, regarding the speaker in some wonderment.
“Well, I am a post-office inspector. Came on a telegram. Got the birds caged in there? Give me a few facts, will you?”
The marshal briefly recited his suspicions and the case of Halsey. The inspector as tersely told of a telegram the post-office department had received, exposing the operations of the United States Mail Order House. Frank at once decided that Stet was its author.
“No dilatory fraud order case here,” observed the inspector briskly. “It’s got to be a raid, I see. Here, let me have a try. In there!” called out the official in a loud tone of voice, pounding on the door panels, “open in the name of the law, or we shall be obliged to use force.”
There was no response whatever to this mandatory challenge. The inspector placed his ear to the door. Then he said sharply.
“Watch out close. I will be back at once.”
“He’s brought the locksmith with him,” announced the marshal a few minutes later, peering over the banisters. “Those government fellows act pretty swiftly when they make up their minds. We haven’t the power that they have.”
The inspector, arrived with the locksmith, ordered the latter to open the door.
Frank looked about him curiously as, the door once opened, all hands passed into the room beyond. Its tables were littered with envelopes, circulars and letters.
The big lodge chamber was partitioned off at one end by a cambric curtain. Here there was a couch, a small oil stove and some eatables and dishes, evidences of light housekeeping on the premises.
The inspector darted about from corner to corner, and into all the little apartments that had formerly been in service as lodge and rooms.
“H’m,” he observed, coming back from his inspection to the others, “birds have flown.”
He moved to an open window. Pendant from an iron shutter hinge was a strong portable knotted fire escape. Its ground end trailed into an inside court of the building.
“If you think you know the people who were here and who have certainly escaped,” suggested the inspector to the marshal, “you had better get your men on their track before they leave town.”
“All right,” said the marshal glumly making for the door.
“Here, I’m in on that arrangement,” observed Halsey.
The inspector with an eagle glance at the letters on the tables and a business-like air, sat down to look over a mass of correspondence lying before him. Frank went up to him.
“Can I be of any assistance to you, sir?” he asked.
“You helped in this thing. Yes, yes you can help me,” said the inspector. “Take this note to the local postmaster, will you?”
The inspector wrote a few words on his own card. It summoned the postmaster. The inspector directed that official to deliver all future mail of the Wacker outfit to himself or his representative.
When the postmaster was gone the inspector impressed Frank into service. This consisted in sorting out the letters and taking down the names of the persons who had been swindled.
“Now you can go for the marshal, if you will,” said the inspector, about an hour later.
Frank found that official just returned from an unsuccessful search for Dale Wacker and the old man with the big beard, his presumable partner, whom Stet had vaguely described to Frank.
“I must catch the afternoon train for the city and make my report to headquarters,” said the inspector, when Frank returned to him with the marshal. “I want you to put a trustworthy custodian in charge here until we can send a regular man to close up the matter, and start after those swindlers.”
“I’ll put one of my deputies in charge,” said the marshal. “As to Wacker and his partner, they’re probably safe and far by this time.”
The inspector regarded the speaker with a half-pitying, half-contemptuous look.
“That’s as may be,” he observed, “for the present. We don’t let matters drop that easily, ourselves. There’s something you mustn’t forget officer: When the United States Government gets after a guilty man, if he fled to the furthest corners of the earth, we never let up till we find him.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
A HEART OF GOLD
It had been a strenuous day for Frank. He and his mother had put in double duty at the office that afternoon. Everything in the mail order business was moving along smoothly. Only this complication of Dale Wacker and Markham comprised a disturbing, unsettled element in the situation.
It was a beautiful moonlight night. Frank enjoyed the quiet of the hour after the stirring turmoil of the day, and prolonged his stroll. Almost instinctively his footsteps led him in the direction of the scene of the main commotion of the day – Main Street Block.
“Hello,” said Frank suddenly and in some surprise, as, passing its gloomy entrance, he observed a solitary figure seated on a step in its shadow.
Frank recognized the man whom the marshal had appointed as custodian of the raided mail order concern up-stairs.
“Oh, that you, Newton?” spoke the man in a somewhat embarrassed way.
“Yes,” replied Frank, “just headed for bed. Enjoying the fine evening?”
“Well,” said the custodian slowly, “I can’t say I am. Sort of lonely. Don’t be in a rush. Dull and sleepy hanging around this desolate old barracks.”
“Why don’t you go to bed, then?” suggested Frank. “There’s a comfortable cot upstairs there.”
“Ugh,” responded the custodian, with a grim shudder – “catch me!”
“Why, what’s the matter?” pressed Frank, discerning that something really was wrong.
“I believe the place is haunted. I have heard some awful groans.”
Frank was interested, and finally said he would go with the watchman and make an investigation. For quarter of an hour they found nothing, then Frank discovered the form of a man lying in the bottom of a disused coal chute. The man was in great pain. Much to the youth’s amazement the fellow proved to be Gideon Purnell.
Frank questioned the rascal and found out Purnell had been Wacker’s partner in the dishonest mail order scheme. Purnell had fallen down the chute while trying to escape from the marshal. His back was injured and the fellow was in a dying condition. He begged Frank to take him to some place where he could die in peace.
“I am sorry for you,” said Frank. “If you really are badly hurt – ”
“Don’t doubt it. I know what I’m talking about,” said Purnell. “I’ve only a few days left.”
“I want to do right,” said Frank slowly.
“Then help a poor, broken wretch to die in peace,” pleaded Purnell.
“I’ll be back soon,” said Frank simply, deeply affected himself.
Frank acted on an impulse he could hardly control. He ran to the Haven home and roused up Darry and Bob. There was animated explanation and discussion.
Half-an-hour later, secret and stealthy as midnight marauders, the trio of friends wheeled the Haven Brothers’ delivery hand cart down the alley behind Main Street Block.
“Bet the fellow played you – bet he’s made off,” predicted Bob.
However, they found Purnell just where Frank had left him, only insensible now. They lifted him, a dead weight, into the cart. Then Bob, piloting the way, warned Frank and Darry of late pedestrians, and thus they reached Frank’s home.
“Where am I – in a hospital?” spoke Purnell weakly, arousing from his stupor an hour later.
“You are at my home,” said Frank, coming to the side of the comfortable bed where the sufferer lay.
“Oh, no! no!” panted Purnell. “Let me hide my head with shame – let me die. In your home – under the roof of the people I ruined – robbed! Heaven have pity on me!”
“Don’t think about that,” said Frank soothingly. “We have tried to make you comfortable. In the morning we will get a doctor.”
“Not a doctor, boy, no, but a lawyer,” spoke Purnell in broken tones. “Boy, the meanest thing I ever did was to rob your mother of her fortune. Let the last thing I can do on earth be to give it back to her.”
Frank remained by the side of the sufferer until early morning. Then Bob Haven came with a telegram from Stet.
“Hurrah! Markham is found!” cried Frank, reading the message. “Stet found him in a coal mine. He was a prisoner.”
“Good for Stet!” said Bob.
“Just what I say. Markham is coming here. Bob, the skies are clearing, it would seem.”
“I am glad of it, Frank.”
The news about Markham was indeed true. He had been kept a prisoner in an abandoned mine by an old man who was a tool of Wacker. The old man had been well-thrashed by Stet and had fled to parts unknown. Markham had quite a story to tell, as we shall soon see.
CHAPTER XXIX
CONCLUSION
There was no regret with Frank for the kindness he had shown Gideon Purnell. That man had died three days after Frank had removed him to the little cottage, leaving a signed confession that meant the defeat of Dorsett in his suit at law.
Markham referred to the matter of his disappearance, but in a vague, constrained way.
He stated that Dale Wacker had a certain power to do him great harm. So great was his dread, that he had consented to accompany Wacker away from the town. He had managed, however, first to drop the two hundred dollars where it was later recovered by Frank.
“Never mind what it was,” explained Markham, “but that boy could do me great harm. I hoped to temporize with him. He took me to a lonely farmhouse. Here he had a friend as bad as himself. They locked me up, took the mailing lists away from me, and said I should never go free till I told what I had done with your money, which, somehow, Wacker knew I had in my possession when he first overtook me. It was at the farmhouse that I made up that letter to Haven Brothers. I dropped it next day from a wagon in which they drove me to the mine.”
“All right, Markham,” said Frank, “there’s more to tell I know, but you’ll tell me when the right time comes, I am sure.”
“The right time will soon be here, never fear,” declared Markham, with emotion. “I have written a letter that will bring me a friend who will quickly clear up all this mystery.”
The old office had been cut up into four rooms. A young lady kept the books. Frank had engaged a crippled young man as a stenographer, and he was a good one. Markham and himself had each an office to himself. Upstairs was the stock and shipping rooms employing four boys.
“System and sense” had been Frank’s watchwords – the mail order business was a pronounced success on that basis.
“A gentleman to see you,” spoke the stenographer, arousing Frank from a most pleasing day dream.
Frank looked up to greet a bronzed, earnest-eyed man of middle age. He was erect and military in his bearing.
“Is a young man named Markham employed here?” inquired the stranger.
“He is interested in the business here, yes,” said Frank.
This would have been news to Markham himself. The wire puzzle had brought in lots of money. Frank had planned to tell Markham that very evening that the latter should have a settled, tangible interest in the mail order business.
“I did not know that,” said the visitor, with a quick sparkle in his eyes that Frank could not at all understand. “I very much wish to see him.”
“He is away on some business,” explained Frank, “but I think he will return within an hour.”
“May I wait?” politely inquired the gentleman.
“Certainly,” said Frank, “just step into his office.”
Frank ushered the stranger into the next office, pulled a chair near the window, and handed him the daily paper from the city.
He resumed his work. Engrossed in this, he almost forgot about the waiting stranger. Frank finally discovered that over an hour had gone by. He stepped to the door of the adjoining office.
“I am sorry for your long wait, sir,” he said, “but I feel certain Markham will be here soon. Is it anything I can attend to for him?”
“No,” was the definite reply.
Just then Frank heard some one inquiring for him in the outer office. This seemed to be a day for strangers. Two men whom he had never seen before entered his room.
One free and easy of manner at once addressed Frank.
“Is your name Newton?”
“Yes,” responded Frank, none too well pleased at the man’s familiarity.
“Believe you telegraphed to the reformatory at Linwood some time since about a boy named Welmore – Richard Markham Welmore?”
Frank started. He was greatly taken aback.
“Did I?” he said simply.
“You did,” asserted the stranger promptly. “You’ve given us some trouble running you down. Welmore, under the name of Markham, is now in your employ.”
“What of it?” inquired Frank, with dire forebodings of trouble.
“We want him, that’s all, my dear young friend,” broke in the other man. “Dangerous character, escaped criminal. This is an officer of the institution.”
“What is your interest in this matter, may I ask?” demanded Frank.
“Distant relative, guardian, best friend. Sad case. Left on my hands, cared for him, spent my means educating him. Repaid kindness by robbing me.”
“That is a falsehood!”
Like a thunder clap the words sounded out. The waiting stranger in the next room spoke them. As he appeared in the open doorway, the man whose veracity he challenged looked as though confronted by an accusing nemesis.
“Welmore!” he almost screamed. He turned white as a sheet and cowered back.
“Yes, Jasper Lane – false friend, perjurer and thief,” flashed out the other. “You cared for Dick Welmore? You expended your means on him? Where is the two thousand dollars I left you for his education?”
“Keep him off – don’t let him touch me,” pleaded the other man.
“Pah!” coarsely uttered the reformatory man, giving Lane a disgusted push to one side. “Mister,” he continued, addressing Lane’s accuser, “if there’s been crooked business here, we didn’t know it.”
“There has been,” affirmed the other. “My boy wrote me about it. I have hastened from the Philippines to right his wrongs. This creature, Lane, accused him falsely, had him imprisoned. I secured the proofs of it before I came here to find my son Dick Welmore.”
“Markham’s father!” murmured Frank.
“Well,” said the officer, “your boy will have to go with me, but if you can prove what you say, the court will not long hold him.”
“You, Jasper Lane,” spoke Mr. Welmore sternly, “you do not leave my side till you have righted my boy.”
“I’ll do it, I’ll do it! Don’t expose me, don’t ruin my reputation!” whined Jasper Lane.
“There is Markham – Dick – now,” announced Frank, as a cheery whistle sounded outside.
The next moment Markham entered the room, grew pale as he first noticed Lane, saw his father, and flew to his parent’s arms with a wild cry of delight.
“Father,” he said, leading Mr. Welmore towards Frank, “this is Frank Newton, the best friend I ever had in the world.”
“Seen your sign outside – Boy Wanted – I need a job.”
“All right, in a moment. Sit down.”
Frank did not look up from the letter he was reading to give attention to the applicant for work.
It was a very interesting letter for Frank, for it was from Dick Welmore, or Markham, as we have known him.
It told that the youth had been completely vindicated and released, and would be back at his business post of duty in the morning.
It also enclosed an item cut from a city paper, telling of the arrest and conviction of Dale Wacker for robbing street mail boxes.
“All right,” said Frank now, for the first moment glancing at the boy he had requested to be seated. “Want work, do you – Why, Nelson Cady!”
“It’s me, yes,” confessed Frank’s visitor.
“Why,” said Frank, “I thought you were in Idaho?”
“Was – ain’t now. Never will be again,” declared Nelson.
“And you have come back to try something more congenial, Nelson?” insinuated Frank, with a friendly smile.
“Yes. I want work. Give it to me, will you?” pleaded Nelson.
“Have you been home yet?” asked Frank.
“No, nor won’t go there until I have earned enough to pay back the money my father started me out with.”
“I’ll hire you, Nelson,” said Frank readily, “only I must advise your father where you are.”
The result of his decision to put aside roaming and adventure for practical business will be told in another volume, to be entitled “The Young Storekeeper.” In that volume we shall meet Frank and some of our other friends again.
The following week Frank found that the business needed more space, and closed an advantageous lease for the third floor of Main Street Block.
Right in the heart of the bustling little town, one morning, a big gilt sign announced to the public the new and enlarged quarters of Frank’s Mail Order House.
