SANDY'S VISIT
The next day, Ebenezer Waldstricker met Lysander Letts, just back from
Auburn, loitering along Buffalo Street near the Lehigh Valley station.
The prison-pallor of the squatter's face and hands and the ill-fitting,
cheap prison clothes on his big body made him conspicuous among the men
on the street. Waldstricker pulled up his team.
"Sandy," he called, "come to the office when you're uptown. I want to
see you."
An hour or so later, the squatter slouched into Waldstricker's private
room.
The elder rose and greeted him.
"So you're out again?" The question was really a statement.
"Yes," assented Letts, sitting down on the edge of the chair, "an' I
wouldn't a been if I hadn't been let out on good behavior. I made up my
mind I wouldn't stay a minute longer'n I had to."
"I guess after this you won't be stealing dead bodies, will you?" asked
the rich man.
"Nope, you bet I won't! I've enough of Auburn. It ain't like the Ithaca
jail!... Heard anythin' of Tess Skinner?"
"Yes, she's got a boy over three years old."
Lysander nodded his head slowly, as if he'd received confirmation of a
conclusion previously formed.
"Thought likely," he muttered. "Where air she livin'? I met Jake Brewer
on the street an' he says she air left the shack."
"So she has, but not very far away.... Letts, I want you to do something
for me. Are--or I might put it--do you still want to make up to the
Skinner girl?"
Sandy's face grew dark with uncontrollable anger.
"I want to rip the skin offen her inch by inch," he snarled.
The other man gave a low, mirthless laugh. The picture of the girl he
disliked so intensely, writhing in the great hands of the brute opposite
him, appealed to the elder's sardonic humor.
"That wouldn't be a bad idea," he averred. "But she's got some one who
won't see her hurt."
Letts jumped up and stepped close to the desk where the other was
sitting. Here was a complication he hadn't anticipated. He moistened his
dry lips with a tobacco stained tongue and demanded,
"Who air he?... Air she married?"
"No, she's living in Graves' old place, the house I, now, own, with
Deforrest Young."
"Ye mean, your wife's brother, the lawyer?"
Waldstricker nodded.
"An' ye say she air livin' with him?"
"Well not exactly that, I suppose, but she's keeping house for him.
She's got her child there, too."
"Has, eh?" said Sandy, dryly.
A wicked look came over his face and he slouched back into his chair.
Ebenezer went to his office window and looked into the street.
"Want to earn some money, Letts?" he demanded, without turning around.
"You bet! Ye bet I do!"
Ebenezer returned to his desk and sat down again facing his visitor.
"You'll have to go about this business carefully."
"Trust me," promised the squatter.
"I am. There's a mystery about Young's house--I mean, there's some one
in it beside my brother-in-law, the Skinner girl, and the boy."
"Who air it?" The question was no perfunctory expression of interest.
Anything relating to Tess was vitally important.
"That's what I want you to find out. It's a man!"
"Mebbe it's the brat's pa," offered the other.
"No, it isn't, and by the way, you let up trying to find out about
that."
"What do ye mean?" interjected Sandy, sullenly.
"I mean I want that matter dropped."
Letts merely grunted, for to acquire that information was one of the
first things he intended to do, but there was no use telling the elder
so.
"What ye want?" he muttered.
"I'll give you a hundred dollars to find out the name of the other man
living at Young's."
"Done!" cried the squatter. "Do I get any of the dough, now?"
"Part of it, if you like," replied Waldstricker, slipping his hand into
his pocket. "But listen to me. You're to come directly back here and
tell me, when you find out. Discover his name, if you don't know the
man. Do you understand?"
"I does that. You leave it to me. Then, I'll settle with Tess Skinner."
"As you please about her," consented Waldstricker. "Go along now. I'm
busy."