Bound to Succeed: or, Mail Order Frank's Chances

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 mail 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 diversion.

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.

CHAPTER XXII

GOOD NEWS

Frank kept a close watch on Purnell. He had reason to do so. Upon what he might by threats or persuasion compel this man to divulge, hung all the future prospects of his mother ever recovering her stolen fortune.

When Frank’s step-father died, this person, one of his former associates, had produced notes and deeds apparently giving him the ownership to everything that Mr. Ismond owned.

There were many flaws to his claim. Mrs. Ismond’s lawyer, Mr. Beach, discovered two arrant forgeries. Before any action at law could be taken, however, Purnell transferred all the property to “an innocent purchaser,” Dorsett.

Mrs. Ismond brought suit against the latter, but even Mr. Beach did not believe the law would force him to restore what he claimed to have bought for a valid consideration. Their only hope seemed to be to find Purnell, who had disappeared. If through him they could connect Dorsett with a conspiracy, Mrs. Ismond would win her case.

This was the first time since he had fled from Greenville that Frank had seen this man. Now he forgot his sample case, Markham, and the whole mail order business amid the keen importance of keeping track of the slippery fugitive, and forcing from him a confession.

Purnell approached the party of young ladies, still acting the exquisite and playing the foreign count he pretended to be. He bowed and smirked, and backed away to Frank.

Instantly his face lost its mask. With a scowl he dropped his affected foreign drawl.

“You will have it out, here and now, will you?” he growled, grinding his teeth viciously.

“Yes, I’ll have it out, or you in,” responded Frank pointedly.

“Then come to my room.”

The false count led the way into the hotel, hurried up a staircase, and, unlocking a door on the second floor, ushered Frank into a room. He lit the gas and threw himself into a chair, glaring at Frank in a savage and desperate way.

“You’re a determined young man, you are,” he observed.

“Why not?” demanded Frank. “It has been the resolve of my life to hunt you down. If you escape me this time, I shall find you later. You are masquerading here under false pretences. I can expose you. Should I telegraph Mr. Beach, he would at once send an officer to arrest you.”

“That won’t help your case any,” observed the man.

“I don’t care. It will prove that Dorsett had a criminal for a partner, and that will influence the court when my mother’s suit comes to trial.”

“Name your terms,” spoke Purnell suddenly.

“Very well,” said Frank gravely: “you helped rob my mother of the estate her husband left her. What you got out of it I don’t know, but it seems to have made it necessary for you to continue the career of a fugitive and a fraud.”

“What I got!” snapped out Purnell, springing to his feet in hot anger. “I got what everybody gets who deals with that old rascal – the bad end of the trade, drat him!”

“I’ll leave you alone to your own devices,” said Frank. “I’ll promise to see that you get some money when my mother recovers hers, if you will write out, sign and swear to the facts of your conspiracy with Dorsett against my mother.”

“All right,” answered Purnell, after a moment of thought. “I’ve got some papers that apply to the matter. They are in my sitting room. I’ll get them.”

The speaker walked to a door, turned a key and disappeared beyond the threshold. Frank sat awaiting his return. He congratulated himself on the ease with which he had intimidated the man to his purposes.

Two minutes passed by, and Frank became impatient, five, and his suspicions were aroused. He walked to the door and knocked, tried it, pushed it open, and found himself, not in a connecting room, but in a side corridor.

“Well, he has slipped me,” instantly decided Frank.

He realized that he had been tricked badly. Frank went to the hotel office to make some inquiries, made a tour of the grounds, and, finally surmising that the object of his search had fled for good, regained his sample tray and returned to the town.

Frank did not stay all night at the local hotel, although he went there to ask for mail. He had given his mother a list of the hotels in the various towns he expected to visit, secured from a guide book.

There was a brief note from his mother. It imparted no particular news, saying only that she was attending to orders as they came in.

Frank found a cheap lodging, and was back at the hotel at the lake by six o’clock the next morning. A brief talk with the clerk convinced him that Purnell would not be likely to return to that hostelry.

He had gone, owing a week’s bill, and the two valises left in his room were found to be filled with bricks.

“I’ve missed my man this time,” reflected Frank, as he hitched up the horse an hour later. “I may as well go right on my route. I’ll find him again, some time.”

At Derby, Frank upon his arrival went to the telegraph office. He sent a message to the reformatory at Linwood, asking if one Richard Welmore was still an inmate of that institution. He asked, further, if one Dale Wacker had ever been a prisoner there.

He went on selling in the town, with fair returns, until mid-afternoon. A reply to his message awaited him on his next visit to the telegraph office. It read:

“Dale Wacker paroled on bond of his uncle. Richard Welmore escaped about six months since. One hundred dollars reward for his capture. If know his whereabouts, wire at once.”

“That upsets one of my theories,” thought Frank. “Markham has not been captured for the reward.”

Brandon was his next town. The day following he made Essex. He was pretty tired as he drove to its livery stable, about eight o’clock in the evening.

After supper he went to the local hotel, and asked if there was any mail for Frank Newton.

“No,” replied the clerk whom he questioned, “but here’s a telegram been waiting here for you since noon.”

“Thank you for your trouble,” said Frank, rather anxiously tearing open the yellow envelope.

“That’s all right,” nodded the hotel clerk. “Good news, I reckon?” he smiled, as Frank’s face lit up magically at a hasty perusal of the message.

“I should say so!” declared Frank.

The message was from Darry Haven, at Pleasantville, and it read:

“Come home at once. Money found.”

CHAPTER XXIII

A RIVAL CONCERN

“I call that extraordinary,” declared Bob Haven.

“Certainly a sensational and a puzzling piece of business,” echoed his brother, Darry.

“It is the best news I have had for a long time,” said Frank, buoyantly. “I tell you, fellows, you don’t know what a load it has lifted from my mind.”

“I should think so,” nodded Darry – “to get back all that two hundred dollars, when you had given it up as lost.”

It was ten o’clock in the morning. Frank’s clothing was covered with dust. His eyes looked tired and sleepy. Upon the receipt of the telegram at Essex, he had hitched up the horse promptly and started for Pleasantville.

Darry welcomed him with effusion, and he and Bob at once led Frank into their little editorial sanctum.

There were some quick developments, and now Frank sat, a queerly decorated sheet of paper in his hand. On the table before him was the wallet which had disappeared four days previous with Markham.

“Tell your story all over again, slowly and carefully,” said Frank to Darry. “It’s something to get back that money, but it’s a good deal more to find out what has become of Markham.”

“Well,” said Darry, “it’s just as I told you. Yesterday noon in our mail we found that letter you have. As you see, it has an envelope bearing our name and address printed. We send these out when we solicit business, and I supposed it was some new customer asking an estimate on a printing job. Judge of my surprise, when I found enclosed that letter.”

“Yes,” murmured Frank, “it’s a queer-looking affair.”

“You can see how it was put together. It must have taken hours for its sender to cut all kinds of letters from a printed newspaper, and slowly and patiently paste them onto that blank sheet. Letter by letter he built up those words and sentences.”

Frank once more read over the letter in his hands, which ran:

“tell frAnk newTon Money is beHind coAl BoX, thiRd flooR, YoUr buiLDiNg – mARkHAm.”

“Well,” resumed Darry, “Bob and I went up stairs here at once. None of the offices on the third floor has been occupied for a long time. In the hall is a big box with a slanting cover, to hold fuel for tenants in winter time. Everything was dirty, and plainly across the dusty box cover it showed where someone had recently rested, or been pushed over against the wall. We pulled out the box. Sure enough, in the four-inch space behind the box was your money.”

“Then a hot wire, and here you are,” observed Bob briskly.

“See here, fellows,” said Frank, “I think I can figure this thing out.”

“Go ahead,” encouraged Darry.

“Markham sent that letter. He didn’t write, because he had no pencil. A pencil is usually an easy thing to get, so he must have been shut up somewhere. He found in his pocket a sheet of paper – ”

“Oh, by the way,” here interrupted Darry, “I forgot to explain something. I recognize the sheet of paper as a blank sample I gave Markham, enclosed in that same envelope, stamped, to give to Mr. Dawes up at the novelty works when he went there again. Mr. Dawes asked for a sample of one linen letter paper. If he wanted a lot, he was to write the amount on the sheet, and mail to us.”

“Well,” continued Frank, “somehow Markham made paste – probably out of a piece of bread. He compiled that letter.”

“But how did he get it mailed?” suggested Bob.

“Suppose he was a prisoner, and threw it from a window into the road, chancing its discovery and mailing by some passer-by.”

“That’s so,” nodded Darry. “I believe you are correct in your conclusions, Frank. As to the mailing lists, which Markham also had with him, that’s a later mystery to develop.”

“Now then,” spoke Frank, “I think I can also figure out something else. I believe that Dale Wacker followed Markham. He was probably right on his heels when Markham entered this building. Markham saw him, got scared, and, to evade him, ran up to the third floor. There he found no rooms open to hide in. He was cornered, intimidated, maybe attacked by Wacker. He thought of that two hundred dollars, and dropped it behind the fuel box. Then – ”

Frank paused here, and shook his head in doubt and perplexity.

“Poor Markham,” commented Bob. “It looks likely that he is held a prisoner somewhere. Maybe because his captor knows he threw away that package of money, and won’t let him go free till he tells where. Anyhow, he’s a good one, surmounting all the difficulties of his situation and getting that letter to you.”

“I suppose you will take up the mail order business actively again, now you are in funds?” suggested Darry.

“Surely,” said Frank. “Here, take the money and hurry up the catalogue.”

Frank felt immensely relieved as he proceeded to his office. His mind, however, was full of plans looking to the discovery of Markham’s place of captivity.

The letter had been mailed at Hazelhurst, a mining town about thirty miles distant. Frank noted this fact, determining to make that town the starting point of his investigations, as soon as he got present pressing business in such a shape that he might leave the office in charge of his mother for a day or two.

Mrs. Ismond was very happy over Frank’s return, and greatly pleased over the recovery of the missing money. She had quite an encouraging report to make concerning orders received during that day and the one preceding.

“Oh, by the way, Frank,” she said, suddenly recollecting something, “here is a letter addressed to you marked ‘personal.’ I found it pushed under the office door this morning.”

“It’s from Stet,” said Frank, glancing at the enclosure, which interested him very much.

“On account of our strained relations,” wrote Stet, “being ordered from your premises and kicked out of Haven Bros., I have wormed myself into the confidence of Dale Wacker. He has rented a room in the Main Street Block, and started into the mail order business. An old fellow is sending out circulars for him, and they have got a bunch of printed matter from the Eagle Job Print, and he ordered one thousand watches from the city last night.”

CHAPTER XXIV

AN UNWELCOME VISITOR

“If Markham were only here!”

Frank Newton said this, with a sigh in a fervent way. His mother had some household duties to attend to, and had asked to be spared from the office for the rest of that afternoon. Frank had accompanied her as far as the neat, convenient cottage they now claimed as home.

“Yes, Frank,” she said, in quite a sad tone, “it is a pity he is not here to share our good fortune, just as he did your first hard efforts to establish business.”

“That business is certainly a winner now,” said Frank. “Mother, I feel it my duty to take a day off, or even two, if necessary.”

“To look for a trace of Markham?”

“Yes.”

“That would be only right, Frank.”

“It shall be to-morrow,” said Frank. “Good-bye till supper time.”

Frank walked slowly back to the office reviewing the immediate past of the mail order business, and speculating as to the demands and prospects of the future.

“Sense and system” had worked wonders in the past few days. With the recovery of the missing money Frank had been enabled to take up his old plans afresh.

The catalogues were rushed to a finish. He paid up all the small accumulated bills, and ordered fresh supplies from the city. He put himself in touch with attractive novelty markets, and there was scarcely a mail that did not bring a proposal to have him advertise and sell some catchy mail order specialty.

Haven Brothers increased their advertising for him. Then Frank had conceived a clever follow-up system for both prospective and old customers. He took care to sell just what he had advertised, and there were no complaints.

The wire puzzle was still the leading seller of his list, but the apple-corer, strengthened by the special notices Markham had suggested, was beginning to take hold, too.