A CRIME WITHIN A CRIME.
"Well, friend, have you decided to come out to my ranch, and look my
stock over?"
It was Colonel Billings, the genial ranchman, who addressed Ted, meeting
him in the lobby of the hotel.
"Yes, I think I will," answered Ted. "When will it be convenient for you
to be there?"
"I am going out to-morrow, and will be glad to see you and your
friends."
"There are a good many of us," said Ted, laughing.
"The more the merrier. The house is large, and I could drop you all down
into it, and the house would hardly know it."
"How do we get out there?"
"I see you have a couple of ladies with you, and I shall telephone over
to my manager to send a carriage in for them, and horses for the use of
you boys. How many horses and saddles will you need? There are plenty at
the ranch."
"We will need eight horses. One of the ladies prefers to ride, and we'll
need a gentle pony for the small boy, whose experience is limited."
"Sidesaddle for the lady?"
"No," said Ted, with a grin, "this young lady will not use one. She is a
cowgirl, and rides a man's saddle."
"All right, my boy. The outfit will be here in the morning. By the way,
I am going to have some other guests. I suppose you will not object."
"Certainly not."
"One of them is a young New Yorker, who has come West to invest in ranch
property, and who has brought his sister with him. Charming people. The
other is a rather uncouth person, but you will forgive his
eccentricities, I am sure. To tell you the truth, he often grates on me,
but I overlook it because he has lacked advantages. He made his money in
the liquor business, in which he has been all his life. But he is a good
fellow at heart, and is my partner in a way, having invested a large sum
of money with me in cattle."
"I shall be very glad to meet them, although, I'm afraid I shall not be
able to see much of them, as I shall be very busy."
"When you are under my roof, sir, you are as free as if you had been
born there. I am glad you and your friends are coming. It does my old
heart good to have young people around me. I will see you in the
morning, and shall feel honored to escort you to my home."
With this they parted.
"Jolly old chap," said Ted to himself. "I know just how he feels about
having a lot of people come to visit him. I like it myself."
Stella had been out for a ride with little Dick. She had secured a
couple of ponies from the stable connected with the hotel, and had given
Dick his first riding lesson.
Ted met them as they were dismounting in front of the hotel.
"Ted, that boy is going to be a second edition of you in the saddle,"
cried Stella enthusiastically. "I never saw such a seat for a kid. Why
he takes to a horse like a young duck to water."
"That's good," said Ted. "Do you like to ride, Scrub, I mean Dick?"
The boy flushed at the name Scrub, but he recovered himself immediately.
"Yes, it's fine," he answered. "I like horses, and they seem to take to
me. I'd like to ride a horse all the time."
"Well, you'll have all you want of it when you get out to Moon Valley,"
said Ted. "Would you like to go out again? If you do, go ahead. I guess
we can trust you not to break your neck."
The boy smiled and nodded, and climbed into his saddle again, and was
off.
"Ted, that boy is going to be a credit to us all," said Stella. "But he
must have an education. Although he speaks well and doesn't use much
slang, that is, for a boy, he knows absolutely nothing that he hasn't
picked up. He must go to school some day, but not now, for he hardly
knows his alphabet, and as for other branches of knowledge, why, he
doesn't know they exist, and he is as full of superstition as a Cocopo
squaw. Wherever he got his beliefs, I can't imagine."
"All right, Stella, he shall go to school. It doesn't really matter
much, that he has never been to school before. He'll learn so fast that
he'll make up for lost time, don't fear. That boy has a good head."
"I'm going to teach him myself until he is able to take his place in
school with boys of his own age. He's just crazy to learn."
"His early education is up to you. I'm not afraid he will learn anything
he shouldn't from you. Go at him slowly and sensibly. Don't try to stuff
it all into him at once. Meanwhile, I'll teach him to ride, shoot, herd,
rope, and all that, occasionally impressing upon him the cardinal
principles of the broncho boys--truth, honesty, sincerity, courage, and
kindness."
"He'll be a fine fellow some of these days, Ted, and a good-looking and
good-tempered one."
"I think he will. Suppose we take a little walk, if you have nothing
better to do. I want to get your opinion on some matters."
"The very thing. I saw a pretty little park on the bank of a river.
We'll walk there."
"I have promised to go out to Colonel Billings' ranch to-morrow, and I
took the liberty of accepting the invitation for you all, as there is
nothing to do around here, and I have a hunch that something good will
come of it."
"I'll be glad to go. You know how much I like the town. I wouldn't care
if I never saw one again."
"It's all right, then. We'll start in the morning. I am more than
anxious to go now, especially as Billings tells me he has invited
several other people to be his guests."
"Who are they?"
"You remember the girl who slipped the note into my pocket in the St.
Louis station, and the young fellow with the pointed beard. Well, I saw
them both in town this morning. The girl ran away from me on the street,
jumped into a carriage, and drove away."
"There's nothing about you to cause a girl to run." Stella looked up at
Ted in a teasing way.
"That'll be all right," said he. "But a few minutes after I saw the
fellow with the pointed beard coming out of the private office of
Norcross, the president of the bank that was robbed of the forty
thousand dollars. He went by me like a rocket, as if he were afraid of
me."
"Sure it was he?"
"Positive. But the strange part of it was my interview with the banker.
He acknowledged that the bank had been robbed of the money, and
identified the bill dropped by Checkers in his flight, as one of the
shipment, but when I announced that it was a counterfeit, he went all to
pieces, and, after trying to bluff me into giving him the note, wanted
to buy it, asking me to name my own price."
"What does that mean, I wonder?"
"It means, that this case of the robbery and the murder of the express
messenger is not the simple thing I thought. There is a crime within a
crime."
"What in the world do you mean?"
"Just this, Norcross, the banker, is mixed in the crime, and Heaven only
knows how many more men quite as prominent as he. The express-robbing
syndicate is a strong one, and hard to beat."
"But you'll beat it yet. I know you."
"Thank you for your faith and encouragement, Stella. But it's going to
be a hard pull, and it will take all of us to do it."
"What do you think of it now?"
"My idea is, that the alleged forty thousand dollars was not real money
at all, and that Norcross was trying to double-cross the very men he was
standing in with."
"Still, I hardly understand."
"Well, Norcross agreed with the members of the syndicate to ship forty
thousand dollars to St. Louis, which was to be stolen en route by the
syndicate's own men. They would then have their forty thousand back, and
the forty thousand which they could make the express company pay them.
The original forty thousand would come back to Norcross, and he would
get his share of the money which the express company would pay."
"That was easy."
"It would have been, but for the fact that Norcross insisted upon being
insured for the use of his forty thousand in case anything else happened
to it. In this way he got another large sum."
"I see. But from what you have found out so far, I don't quite
understand how you figure it out."
"All I have to go by is my own way of deducing things. The forty
thousand dollars which was to be stolen was supposed by the other
members of the syndicate to be real money. It was for this that the
syndicate insured Norcross. But, instead, he substituted counterfeits,
if, indeed, most of the supposed money was not just blank paper."
"He is a real financier, eh?"
"Yes, but he didn't take into consideration that he had scoundrels just
as shrewd as himself to deal with. For instance, I believe when the
truth is known, it will be found out that the syndicate was going to
beat Norcross. But that is mere supposition. The tug of war is coming
soon. It will take place at the ranch of Colonel Billings."
"I thought you believed in him."
"I do. I have made a few inquiries about him. I wanted to find out what
sort of a chap he was before taking you and your aunt out to his place.
Every one speaks of him as one of the leading men in the county and
State."
"Then why should he be drawn into this mess?"
"I think he has done it unconsciously. He has a partner who has invested
money in Billings' cattle. Do you remember the fellow in the train whom
Kit knocked down? The chap who insulted that pretty girl."
"Yes."
"From the description given me of one of his coming guests by the
colonel, I believe the man with the red necktie is he."
"What? That horrid thing."
"I didn't tell you, but Kit and I saw him talking to a man at the
station where we stopped for dinner, whom I am convinced was no other
than Checkers himself."
"Whew! That looks suspicious."
"In addition to that, the colonel has invited a man and his sister to
visit him while we are there. This man is a New Yorker; I don't know his
name, but the colonel says he is out here to buy a ranch. Who do you
suppose it is?"
"Haven't an idea."
"The girl who dropped the warning note into my pocket, and the young man
with the pointed beard."
"Whew! again."
"Looks pretty complicated, doesn't it?"
"Worse than that. Ted, are you sure about this Colonel Billings?"
"One is sure of nothing in this world, but I have taken a fancy to
Billings, and when I like a man he generally turns out all right, making
allowances for minor faults and habits. Yes, I think I can trust
Billings."
"But not his friends. Ted, do you want to know what I think?"
"Certainly."
"I feel that the invitation out there is a trap to catch you, and
possibly keep you away from the town."
"Nonsense! Why should they want to keep me away from the town? There
doesn't seem to be anything wrong in town that I could bother them in,
except the Norcross incident, and if, as I suspect, he has duped his
partners, he will say nothing to them about me."
"Suppose they want to get out there to do away with you."
"They wouldn't ask all of you out there with me in that case."
"That is where you are mistaken. They are too shrewd to excite your
suspicions by inviting you alone. It will not be hard for them to get
you away from the ranch to look at some cattle and then kill you. Ted,
you are too dangerous to them to be let alone."
"Well, it can't be helped now, and being right in among them is a hope I
did not expect to see realized so easily. But they will have no
advantage over me, for none of the syndicate, I take it, know of the
counterfeits as yet, except Norcross and the inevitable Checkers. But at
that, I don't think they will resort to violence. We are too strong for
them, at the ranch, at least I believe they will use diplomacy."
"Well, we can play at the game ourselves. There, perhaps, I can help
you."
"You bet you can. But let us go down to the station and see if the red
motor car, 118, has arrived yet."
When they reached the station, Ted went to the express agent and asked
for the car.
"Yes," said the agent, "the car arrived this morning, Mr. Strong, and I
delivered it according to your instructions. The charges are not paid
yet. Your messenger said you would call later and settle for them, and,
knowing you by reputation, I let it go."
Ted was staring at the agent.
"You delivered it according to my instructions?"
"Yes, sir."
"I didn't give any one an order for the car."
"Why, you must have forgotten it. Here it is. I happened to see one of
your boys down here, and called him to one side and asked him if it was
your signature, and he very promptly identified it."
"Let me see that order."
The agent produced an order written on the note paper of the hotel.
Ted stared at it incredulously.
"It looks like my writing, but I didn't write it. I'll swear to that.
Look at this, Stella. Is that my hand?"
Stella looked at the paper studiously for a minute or two, then handed
it back.
"A casual look at it would deceive me, but you did not write it. It
lacks several of your individualisms, and has others that are not
yours."
"That is right. This order is a forgery. I did not write it. The
express-robber syndicate is getting bolder every minute. They'll come in
and steal you some day," Ted said to the agent. "Notify your company
that my car has been stolen, and that I want it restored to me."
"Great Scott!" was all the agent could say.
"What sort of looking chap was it that presented the order?" asked Ted.
"Well, he was an ordinary-looking chap. He had on a--"
"Checked suit?"
"Yes, sir. How did you know?"
"Checkers has come into his own at last," said Ted, turning to Stella.