GLEN AND REVELATIONS
How she spent that night Beth never could have told. Her mind had
refused to work. Only her heart was sensible of life and emotions, for
there lay her wound, burning fiercely all the long hours through. That
Van had made excuses to his partners and disappeared on "business" was
a matter of which she received no account.
In the morning the unexpected happened. Her brother Glen arrived in
Goldite, having driven from Starlight with a friend. He appeared at
Mrs. Dick's while Beth was still in her room, indisposed. She had
eaten no dinner. She took no breakfast. But with Glenmore's advent
she was suddenly awakened to a new excitement, almost a new sort of
hope.
Young Kent was a smooth-faced, boyish chap, slightly stooped,
exceedingly neat, black-haired, and of medium height. He was like Beth
only in a "family" manner. His nose was a trifle large for his face,
but something in his modest, good-natured way, coupled to his earnest
delivery of slang in all his conversation, lent him a certain charm
that no one long resisted.
He was standing in his characteristic pose, with one hand buried in his
pocket, as he laughingly explained himself to Mrs. Dick, when Beth came
running down the stairs.
"Glen!" she cried, as she ran along the hall, and casting herself most
fervently upon him, with her arms about his neck, she had a good,
sky-clearing cry, furious and brief, and looked like a rain-wet rose
when she pushed him away and scrutinized him quickly through her tears.
"I say, Sis, why this misplaced fountain on the job?" he said. "Do I
look as bad as that?"
"Oh, Glen," she said, "you've been ill! You were hurt! I've worried
so. You're well? You've entirely recovered? Oh, I'm so glad to see
you. Glen! There's so much I've got to say!"
"Land snakes!" said Mrs. Dick. "If I don't hurry----" and off she went.
"You're the phonograph for mine," said Glen. "What's the matter with
your eyes? Searle hasn't got you going on the lachrymals already?"
"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 Goddess 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. Nobody
tells me you're in the State till I read that account in the paper. I
dope it out to Searle that I am bumping the bumps, 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 bum 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 assured 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 attitude
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."
She glanced at him with startled eyes.
"No, Glen--please don't. I'd rather you wouldn't--just yet. You don't
understand. I can't let him think I'm--making overtures. He must
think I have a _little_ pride. If his mine has been stolen I want to
give it back--before he ever sees me again. If you knew how much--oh,
how very much, I wish to do that----"
"I'm on," he interrupted. "It will do me good to put a crimp in
Searle."