"No, I--I"m all right," she said excitedly. "I didn"t sleep well, that"s all. Do sit down. I"ve so many things to say, so much to ask, I don"t know where to begin. It was such a surprise, your coming like this! And you"re looking so well. You got my letter, of course?"
Glen sat down, and Beth sat near, her hand upon his arm. They had been more like companions than mere half-brother and sister, all their lives. The bond of affection between them was exceptionally developed.
"I came up on account of your letter," he said. "Either my perceptive faculties are on the blink or there"s something decaying in Denmark.
It"s you for the G.o.ddess of Liberty enlightening the unenlightened savage. I"m from Missouri and I want you to start the ticker on the hum."
"You know what Searle has done?" she said. "How much do you know of what has happened?"
"Nothing. I"ve been retired on half knowledge for a month," said Glen.
"I haven"t been treated right. I"m here to register a roar. n.o.body tells me you"re in the State till I read that account in the paper. I dope it out to Searle that I am b.u.mping the b.u.mps, and there is nothing doing. He shows up at last and hands me a species of coma and leaves me with twenty-five dollars! That"s what I get. What I"ve been doing is a longer story. I apologize for not having seen your friend who brought the letter, but it"s up to you to apologize for a b.u.m epistle to the Prodigal."
"Wait a minute, Glen--wait a minute, please; don"t go so fast," she said, gripping tighter to his arm. "I must get this all as straight and plain as possible. You don"t mean to say that Searle really drugged you, or something like that--what for?"
"I want to know," said Glen. "What"s the answer? Perhaps he preferred I should not behold your Sir Cowboy Gallahad."
"There is something going on," she said, "something dark and horrible.
How did you happen to show Mr. Van Buren--let him see the last page of my letter?"
"I didn"t let him see anything," said Glen. "I was dopy, I tell you.
I didn"t even see the letter myself. Searle sat on the bed and read it aloud--and lit his cigar with part of it later."
"My letter?" she said, rising abruptly, and immediately sitting down again. "You never saw---- Searle got it--read it! Oh, the shamelessness! Then--it must have been Searle who made the mistake--let Mr. Van Buren see it--see what I wrote--see---- What did he read you--read about Van--Mr. Van Buren--almost the last thing in the letter?"
Glen was surprised at her agitation. He glanced at her blankly.
"Nothing," he said. "He read me nothing--as I remember--about your friend. Was it something in particular?"
She arose again abruptly and wrung her hands in a gesture of baffled impatience.
"Oh, I don"t know what it all means!" she said. "To think of Searle being there, and intercepting my letter!--daring to read it!--burning it up!--reading you only a portion! Of course, he didn"t read you my suspicions concerning himself?"
"Not on your half-tone," Glen a.s.sured her. "What"s all this business, anyway? Put me wise, Sis, I"m groping like a blind snail in the mulligatawny."
Beth sat down as before and leaned her chin in her palm in an att.i.tude of concentration.
"Don"t you know what Searle has done--taking the "Laughing Water"
claim?--Mr. Van Buren"s claim?"
"I don"t know anything!" he told her convincingly. "I"m a howling wilderness of ignorance. I want to know."
"Let"s start at the very beginning," she said. "Just as soon as Searle brought your letter--the first one, I mean--in which you asked for sixty thousand dollars to buy a mine----"
"Whoap! Jamb on the emergency!" Glen interrupted. "I never wrote such a letter in my life!"
She looked at him blankly.
"But--Glen--I saw your letter. I read it myself--at this very table."
Glen knitted his brows and became more serious.
"A letter from me?--touching Searle for sixty thou? Somebody"s nutty."
"But Glen--what I saw with my own eyes----"
"Can"t help it. Nothing doing!" he interrupted as before. "If Searle showed you any such letter as that he wrote it him--hold on, I wrote him for a grub-stake, fifty dollars at the most, but I haven"t even seen a mine that any man would buy, that the other man would sell, and Searle sure got my first before I was bug-house from that wollop on the block." He put his hand to the sore spot on his head and rubbed it soothingly.
Beth was pale. She failed to observe his gesture, so absorbed were all her faculties in the maze of facts in which she was somewhat helplessly struggling.
"Could Searle have written such a letter as that?" she said. "What for?"
"For money--if he wrote it," said Glen. "Did he touch you for a loan?"
Beth"s eyes were widely blazing. Her lips were white and stiff.
"Why, Glen, I advanced thirty thousand dollars--I thought to help you buy a mine. Searle was to put in a like amount--but recently----"
"Searle! Thirty thousand bucks!" said Glen. "He hasn"t got thirty thousand cents! The man who drove me up last night knows the bank cashier, Mr. Rickart, like a brother--and Rickart told him Searle is a four-flusher--hasn"t a bean--and looks like a mighty good imitation of a crook. Searle! You put up thirty--stung, Beth, stung, good and plenty!"
Beth"s hand was on her cheek, pressing it to whiteness.
"Oh, I"ve been afraid that something was wrong--that something terrible---- Why, Glen, that would be _forgery_--obtaining money under false pretences! He may have done anything--_anything_ to get the "Laughing Water" claim! He may have done something--said something--written something to make Van--Mr. Van Buren think that I---- Oh, Glen, I don"t know what to do!"
Her brother looked at her keenly.
"You"re in trouble, Sis," he hazarded. "Is "Van" the candy boy with you?"
She blushed suddenly. The contrast from her paleness was striking.
"He"s the one who is in trouble," she answered. "And he may think that I--he does think something. He has lost his mine--a very valuable property. Searle and some Mr. McCoppet have taken it away from Mr. Van Buren and all those poor old men--after all their work, their waiting--everything! You"ve got to help me to see what we can do!"
"McCoppet"s a gambler--a short-card, tumble weed," said Glen. "You"ve got to put me next. Tell me the whole novelette, beginning at chapter one."
"As fast as I can," she answered, and she did. She related everything, even the manner in which she and Searle had first become engaged--a business at which she marveled now--and of how and when she had encountered Van, the results of the meeting, the subsequent events, and the heart-breaking outcome of the trip that Van had made to carry her letter to Starlight.
In her letter, her love had been confessed. She glossed that item over now as a spot too sensitive for exposure. She merely admitted that between herself and Van had existed a friendship such as comes but once in many a woman"s life--a friendship recently destroyed, she feared, by some horrible machinations of Bostwick.
"You can see," she concluded, "that Mr. Van Buren must think me guilty of almost anything. He doubtless knows my money, that I thought was helping you, went to meet the expense of taking away his property. He probably thinks I sent him to you to get him out of the way, while Searle and the others were driving his partners off the claim.
"My money is gone. I asked for its return and I"m sure Searle cannot repay me. I"m told he couldn"t have used so much as thirty thousand dollars in anything legitimate, so far, on the "Laughing Water" claim.
If he"d forge a letter from you, and lie like this and deceive me so, what wouldn"t he do to rob these men of their mine?"
"I scent decay," said Glenmore gravely. "Have you got any plans in your attic?"
"Why, I don"t know what to do, of course!" she admitted. "But I"ve got to do something. I"ve got to show Mr. Van Buren I"m not a willful party to these horrible things. I don"t believe I"ll ever get my money back. I don"t want a share of a stolen mine. I"d be glad to let the money go, and more--all I"ve got in the world--if only I could prove to Van that I haven"t deceived him, haven"t taken part in anything wrong--if only I could make these cheats give the "Laughing Water"
back!"
"Van _is_ the candy. I"ll have to meet him, sure," said Glen with conviction, looking on her face. "I wish you were wise to more of this game--the way they worked it--how they doped it out. I"ll look around and find out how the trick was done, and then we"ll go to it together.
Guess I"ll look for Van right off the bat."