|TAKING up his satchel, the merchant strode heavily from the room.
Doubting if he had heard aright, Walton tore open the envelope and
took out the bills. He spread them on the desk; he fumbled them with
quivering fingers; he took out a big magnifying glass and essayed to
examine them one by one, but his excitement and perturbation rendered
it impossible. Dropping his hand on his call-bell, he gave a sharp ring,
and Toby Lassiter came in quickly. Brushing the money toward his clerk,
Walton said:
“See if they are counterfeit. By gum!”
The clerk examined them with the glass while Walton watched him with
staring eyes.
“They seem to me to be all right, Mr. Walton,” Toby said, wonderingly,
as he laid the bills down.
“I reckon they are--my Lord, I reckon they are!” the banker said, in his
throat. “Credit it on my private account, Toby. Credit me with three--my
Lord, I didn't think--I had no idea that the dang fellow--no, I'll
attend to the money. Toby, you run out and see where he goes. He may
make for a hotel, or he may--but hurry!”
Twenty minutes later Toby came back and found Walton still at his desk,
the money before him; his face had taken on an ashen tinge, the eye he
raised had a lacklustre expression.
“Well?” he said, eagerly.
“I missed him for the first few minutes,” the clerk said. “He was on the
way to the train. I took the belt-line down. He was on the car ahead. I
was just in time to see him board the Atlanta special.”
“So he's gone?”
“Yes, he's gone, Mr. Walton.”
The old man stared helplessly for a minute into the puzzled face of his
clerk, and then he drew the pad to him on which he had written the name
of his caller.
“Me 'n' him had a tiff,” he said. “We had a sort o' tiff--I reckon you
might call it that--after he had told me a long cock-and-bull tale about
Fred reforming, and I laughed at him. I reckon I was rough. Then he
threw this money at me all in a chunk to settle off the boy's account,
and said it might talk plainer than _he_ had. Toby, it don't look
_exactly_ like a fake. Fakes ain't worked that way. You see, it was all
up between me and him, and there wasn't a thing he could gain by it, and
yet he yanked out this wad and threw it at me like so much waste paper.
He refused to say where he lives, but here's his name. Fred wrote that
the fellow he was with was a merchant, and a big one at that. I wonder
if there is any way of finding out just who and what the dang fool is?”
“You say you didn't get his address?” Toby inquired, as he helplessly
stroked his colorless face and sparse mustache.
“No.” The banker uttered something like a moan of self-disgust. “He
intimated that he kept it back to keep me from running the boy down.
I reckon I made a big fool of myself in the presence of a man that may
have unlimited capital for all I know. That's where my judgment slipped
a cog for once, I reckon. I set in to believe he was out after my money,
and went a little mite over the limit. He didn't _look_ rich, covered
with dust like he was, but he _may_ be--he may be all Fred has claimed.
Can you think of any way, Toby, to get a report on him?”
“I might take Bradstreet's by States,” the clerk suggested, “and run
through all the towns and cities far and near.”
“It would take a month to go through that big book,” Walton said,
dejectedly, “and I want to know to-day, right off. If--if I've made
a break as big as that, and--and gone and insulted a man who has
befriended my boy, and one who, in fact, says he intends to provide for
him liberally, why, it would be nothing but good business to make what
amend lies in my power. If the boy really _has_ built himself up, and
made good connections, and the like, why, you see, Toby, I ought not to
be the _first_--the very _first_--to--to damage his interests. What I
said, in my rough way, you see, might have a tendency to sort o' make
this Whipple--if he is all right--think twice before helping out the son
of a man who rode as high a horse as I was astride of just now. I must
have a report on him, I tell you.”
“I'll go through the book, Mr. Walton,” the clerk said. “It wouldn't
take so awful long. I would only have to run through the W's, you know,
and needn't look in the _little_ places. If he is in the wholesale line,
he must be in a town of over ten thousand.”
“That's a fact, that's a fact,” Walton agreed. “I reckon he didn't think
of that when he gave me his name, though I acknowledge I kinder gouged
it out of him when he was good and hot. Go bring the book here and set
at my desk. I'll not let the rest bother you. My Lord! my Lord! What a
mess!”
All that afternoon the clerk bent over the huge volume with its
closely printed columns on very thin paper. The closing hour came. The
typewriters and clerks went home and the front door was shut, but still
Toby read, patiently running the point of his pencil down column after
column. Night came on, and less than half of the book still remained to
be scanned.
“Go home to supper and come back,” Walton said, a strange light burning
in his shrewd eyes. “I'll meet you here. I want this thing settled. I
don't believe I could sleep with the doubt on my mind as to whether that
man was fooling me or not. It is a big thing--a powerful big thing. If
Fred has made himself of enough importance to have a man like that come
a long distance in his behalf, why, you see, I ought to know about it,
that's all--I ought to know about it.”
“Yes, you ought to know, Mr. Walton,” Lassiter said, as he laid a
blotter between the pages and reached for his hat. They went out
together and walked side by side to the corner, where the clerk had to
turn off.
“You sort o' believed in Fred all along, Toby,” the banker said,
tentatively--“that is, you used to talk him up to some extent.”
“I thought he was in earnest about what he wrote in that last good-bye
letter, Mr. Walton. It made a deep impression on me. It sounded
perfectly straight. And awhile back, when his _other_ letter came,
bringing all that cash, I was more sure than ever. Even when you said
you believed it was a trick, somehow I couldn't exactly look at it that
way.”
“Well, see if you can locate this Whipple,” Walton said, and, turning
off, he trudged heavily homeward through the gathering shadows.
He was on his way back to the bank about nine o'clock when he saw Toby
coming toward him. The clerk was walking rapidly, swinging his long arms
to and fro like pendulums.
“Well, well?” Walton exclaimed, as they met face to face on the sidewalk
in the flare of a gas-light.
“I have found him!” Toby chuckled. “There is no mistake. Stephen Whipple
is a whopping big wholesale grocer at Gate City, Oklahoma. He's rated at
over a million, with credit at the top notch.”
“You don't say!” A negro laborer with a bag of flour on his shoulder was
passing close by, and Walton laid his hand warmingly on the arm of his
clerk and drew him slowly along.
“You don't say!” he repeated, under his breath, as he clutched Toby's
thin arm, “and I talked to him like a dog--like a hound-dog. I did that,
when he could buy and sell me over and over. I sneered at him, and just
as good as called him a thief, when he was right then befriending the
son I'd cast off. Say, Toby, you've got a sight more sense than I have;
what do you think I ought to do about it?”
“I really don't know, Mr. Walton,” Toby replied, awkwardly. “Maybe it
would be a good idea for you to go out there. From the way Fred wrote,
it stands to reason he'd be glad to see you, anyway, and--”
“I couldn't do that, Toby,” Walton said, under his breath. “After the
stand I took and have held all these years, I couldn't go running after
him. I could do _some_ things, but I couldn't do that. Besides, you
see, Whipple would know we'd looked up his standing, and think I'd come
because he was rich. But, say, I have an idea, Toby. Don't you think you
could get on the train and go out there and take a look around?”
“Why, yes, if you advise it, Mr. Walton.”
“And you could go and hang about, in a quiet, know-nothing way, without
letting Fred see you, I reckon?”
“Easy enough, Mr. Walton, in a bustling place like that.”
“Well, then, I'll tell you what you do. Pack your grip to-night,
and take the eight-thirty train in the morning. Put up at some
out-of-the-way hotel, and lie low and pick up what information you can.
Don't go about Whipple's place of business; if Fred saw you, it would
spoil it all. I'll defray your expenses. You deserve a trip, anyway.
Of course, even if the boy has made such a good, comfortable nest for
himself out there, that woman business is still hanging over him, and he
wouldn't feel exactly like facing Stafford folks right now. But I reckon
he's been doing an honest man's part by her along with his rise. He's
been providing for her and the child pretty well, I'll be bound. And in
case he _does_ come back, even on a visit, we'll help him smooth over
the matter as far as is in our power. He ain't the first young chap
that's let his blood get the upper hand. Some of the great men of
history have made like slips along at the start. Yes, we'll try to
manage that some way. We might even get her and her mother to move
off somewhere. I don't know--I only say it _might_ be done. Folks in
a plight of that sort will do most anything when they are paid, and it
looks like Fred won't go a-begging. Now, good-bye, Toby. You've got a
job of detective work before you, but I believe you'll be smart enough
to put it through.”
“I'll do my best, Mr. Walton,” the clerk said. “Goodbye.”