Dot Huntington, though fascinated with Longwell Seminary on the one
hand, scorned it on the other. As an institution of learning she
believed it quite perfect, all that could be desired; but she
resented its strict discipline, those rigid rules which deprived her
of certain privileges which she had, with parental consent, enjoyed
all her life, chiefly, the right to come and go unchaperoned
whenever she wished and to read any book that pleased her fancy.
However, a sudden overwhelming appetite for education seized her,
and this very readily reconciled her to the loss of her personal
liberty, for while she inherited none of her father’s passion for
culture, her ambition and pride were such as to impel her to set for
her goal those high honors for which the seminary was noted. So,
brought face to face with tomes of fact and instruction, she threw
herself whole-heartedly into the task of mastering them in order to
attain that grade of erudition which her age and matureness of mind
made necessary. In order to bring this last about, Lemuel had made
special arrangements that she take instructions from a private
teacher in order that she might go more rapidly forward.
Again, displeased as she was with the institution’s system of
discipline, she was deeply interested in its student body. She had
never known the companionship of girls of her age before, and here
there were scores of them, and not a few daughters of the most
prominent families of the West. Having a prepossessing personality
that attracted people to her, she made friends; and these vivacious
newfound companions, added to the fascination with which her studies
gripped her, contributed greatly in causing her to put aside that
one haunting worry that had periodically harrassed her ever since
she left Geerusalem, for she was still the unwilling custodian of
the white-elephant fortune in bills. Mrs. Liggs had not arrived, nor
had she answered Lemuel’s telegram for that matter. Dot could not
imagine what had happened to their little old friend, on whom she
depended to solve the problem for her.
Three days after Lemuel had wired Mrs. Liggs, asking her to come to
San Francisco, they had given up hope of hearing from her.
Considerably mystified, they had been finally driven into visiting
the manager of one of the big stores and confessing that Dot was
going to attend a select seminary and needed a complete wardrobe. As
a result, Dot was now the proud possessor of as dainty and chic a
collection of gowns, expensive lingerie, hats and shoes, as had been
displayed in Longwell’s in more than a decade.
However, Mrs. Liggs’ strange absence and silence remained a mystery;
and, as a consequence, the twenty thousand dollars remained wrapped
in the old silk shawl in Dot’s room, which she shared with the
daughter of a shipbuilder of Portland, Oregon. Yet, let it not be
assumed that Dot was for one moment unmindful of the ultimate
disposition of this money. On the contrary, she was determined that
it should eventually find its way back to its rightful owners. The
thing is, that her first nervousness had left her. Constant
reflection on a subject of fearful moment in due time robs that
subject of its alarms.
She now calmly reasoned that since Mrs. Liggs had failed her she
would simply abide the coming of that hour when she could get up
sufficient courage to write to the Mohave & Southwestern Railroad
Company, telling them she had Billy Gee’s loot and explaining the
entire situation in such a way as to protect herself from the
possibility of subsequent newspaper notoriety. This, she made up her
mind to do; and then suddenly, a day or two after, she remembered
with a thrill of joy, Bob Warburton, her father’s friend. Why had
she not thought of Warburton before? He was the very man who could
and would return this ill-gotten treasure to its owners and in all
probability even go so far as to withhold her name in the case.
It was late one afternoon when the happy thought struck her. She was
in her room and she immediately sat down and wrote out a telegram to
Warburton, asking him to come to San Francisco at once, as she had
something of the utmost importance to tell him.
Then she ran downstairs and stole away across the garden to a
secluded arbor in the far corner of the seminary grounds. On a small
ledge beneath one of the old rustic benches, among a mass of other
clandestine correspondence, she placed the message and the money for
the coachman—a sympathetic individual who, because of the handsome
tips he enjoyed from his precluded side line, was a stanch advocate
of drastic academic rules against letter writing.
Dot, having taken the first definite step to rid herself of the
responsibility which had weighed her down since the morning she had
opened her bureau drawer and discovered the prodigality of Billy
Gee’s gratitude, hurried back through the garden. As she reached a
point where she could command a view of the walk leading from the
street to the seminary’s front door, she came to an abrupt halt.
Slowly approaching along the walk came a familiar figure, that of a
little old woman, dressed in a neat, correct street dress. One
glance, and the girl gave a glad cry. It was Mrs. Liggs! Shrilling
her name, Dot raced toward her.
“Mrs. Liggs! Mrs. Liggs! Where have you been? We waited so long. We
didn’t know what—— You darling!” she cried. She caught the frail
form in her strong young arms and hugged and kissed her until the
pale-blue eyes glistened with joy.
Locked in each other’s arms they stood on the seminary’s steps for
some minutes talking in a fury of happy excitement. It developed
that Mrs. Liggs had come to the city a few days after she had
received Lemuel’s telegram. She had not been able to meet them as
she had intended because of a sudden change of plans, which had
required her presence in the southern part of the State prior to
journeying north. Inquiry at the Golden West Hotel on her arrival
elicited the information that Dot’s trunks had been checked out to
Longwell’s Seminary, but Mrs. Liggs had postponed her visit until
she got settled in a quiet place, away from the nerve-racking noise
of the city’s business district. She told the girl all this in a
hesitant, wistful voice, much as if she were relating something that
was not entirely to her liking.
Presently, Dot led the way inside and thence into one of the gloomy
parlors, grim in its austere furnishings, high ceiling and
scrupulous cleanliness. On one of the walls, in a plain black
mahogany frame, the stern visage of one of the Longwell sisters
glared icily down on them. Authorization to conduct the Longwell
Seminary as an educational institution was strikingly displayed in a
gold-bordered parchment, bearing the seal of the State of
California, and a hundred words of beautiful handwriting painfully
difficult to decipher under the most favorable conditions.
As they were about to seat themselves a maid attired in severe black
made her noiseless appearance at the door and, with a cautious
glance over her shoulder, motioned hurriedly to Dot.
“Something terrible has happened, Miss Huntington,” she whispered,
when the girl joined her in the hall. “Miss Jessie Longwell phoned
the trustees, and they’re holding a meeting in the office now,
about——” She broke off, her eyes seeking the floor.
“Go on, Mary! They’re holding a meeting, you say, and it’s over me,
isn’t it?” said Dot quietly.
The maid nodded. “They’re trying to decide whether to expel you or
not.”
“Expel me? Why—why, you surely must be mistaken. I can’t imagine——”
“It’s something that’s in the afternoon papers. I haven’t been able
to see it. I heard them talking about it. Miss Longwell’s taken all
of them and given strict orders for us not to allow any more in the
seminary until further notice from her.”
Bewilderment, then anxiety struggled in Dot’s face. Her thoughts
flashed to her father.
“Are you sure, Mary? Did you hear what it was over? Was anything
said?” she asked, trusting herself to speak finally.
“I only heard them mention your name, Miss Huntington, and—and
something about disgrace,” said the maid. “I tried to catch what
they accused you of, but Miss Longwell closed the door. I’m so
sorry—if there’s any trouble.”
Dot thanked her and went back to Mrs. Liggs. The old lady studied
her narrowly as she resumed her seat.
“It’s bad news, ain’t it, Dot? I can see it in your face, so don’t
story to me, deary. And it’s about your father and—and Billy Gee,
ain’t it?” She drew up her chair as she spoke, and took the girl’s
hand affectionately in her own.
Dot told her what the maid had said, and Mrs. Liggs nodded
comprehendingly.
“Well, that’s what it is—an account of Billy Gee and your dad,
sweetheart,” she said. “The papers are full of it, and that’s why I
come to-day to see you. I wanted you to know the truth.”
“But—but what has happened?” cried Dot, pale and starting to
tremble.
“Nothing, honey, and that’s the worst of it. If it was true I
wouldn’t care, ’cos it couldn’t be helped. It’s just a whole lot of
rot that them reporters glory to write about.”
Thereupon, she gave the girl the details of a sensational first-page
story telling of Billy Gee’s sudden reappearance at the Huntington
ranch, after the authorities of San Buenaventura County had
conclusively stated that he had perished on the desert following his
escape from Warburton; how he had made away in the railroad
detective’s automobile, and an account of Lemuel’s arrest on
suspicion of having appropriated the stolen funds of the Mohave &
Southwestern Railroad Company, and his subsequent release pending
further investigation, as a result of the note written by the outlaw
declaring that he had dug up and taken with him the
twenty-thousand-dollar cache.
Dot listened attentively throughout that simple recital, an odd
admiration she could not subdue dancing in her eyes at this latest
of Billy Gee’s reckless exploits. Even while her little old friend
was speaking, she understood the reason for this daring bandit’s
action; her father had been suspected of the theft, and Billy Gee
had lied to save him. Moreover, Billy Gee had lied to make wholly
secure his twenty-thousand-dollar gift to her! Her heart beat fast;
she could hear it pounding in her ears. Billy Gee had not forgotten,
was not forgetting her. He was magnificent, romantically magnificent
in his outlawry.
“And no matter how I’ve hated your dad, Dot, I know he never took
that money,” resumed Mrs. Liggs, after a short pause. “He’s honest
and wouldn’t do such a thing.”
“You’ve hated dad?” echoed the girl, staring incredulously at the
bowed gray head.
She thought there was something infinitely pathetic in the
appearance of that small figure before her, the droop of its narrow
shoulders, the forlornness of its pose. This was not the sprightly,
merry, little storekeeper she had known these last three years in
far-off Geerusalem.
“I did, yes. But that’s all passed now. I’ve been happy to
forget—and forgive, Dot.”
“Why, Mother Liggs! I won’t believe it. You and father have always
been such good friends.”
The older woman nodded uncertainly at the carpet. She did not answer
at once. The faint flush of excitement, which her cheeks had worn
until now, vanished. Her gentle face was white and drawn; her lips
were twitching.
“I’ve—I’ve come to tell you something, honey—not because I want to,
but because he asked me to. I’m—I’m Billy Gee’s mother, Dot.” Her
whisper, broken, scarcely audible, penetrated to the farthest recess
of that cold, silent room.
She turned brimming eyes to the girl now, and there was an appeal in
them that could not be misunderstood—a dumb, fearful eagerness, a
hungry waiting for a word, a touch, a smile; a look like that of
some wretched penitent craving mercy. A painful, tragic pause
ensued.
“You’re _his_ mother?” repeated Dot slowly at last. She gazed almost
in ludicrous unbelief at the withered, wistful, old countenance
raised to hers. Then suddenly an ineffable tenderness suffused the
girl’s face, poured from her eyes. She fell on her knees beside Mrs.
Liggs and gathered her close in her arms. “You’re a wonderful little
mother, and I love you better for being _his_ mother—because I know
it,” she breathed, half sobbing, and kissed the aged cheeks again
and again, and fondled the thin, tired hands against her bosom.
For the next quarter of an hour Mrs. Liggs opened her heart, laid it
bare of its secrets—for the first time since the criminal career of
her only child, Jerome, had darkened the future for her and filled
her life with fears and heartaches. Weeping softly, she told that
tragic story, from that awful morning in Marysville, three years
before, when the police came to the Liggs home searching for
Jerome—charged by City Treasurer Gene Miles with embezzlement of
city funds—up to the day of his capture by Lemuel Huntington.
As any mother would, she tried to excuse her wayward boy for
everything he had subsequently done in defiance of law, by pointing
out that the criminal authorities had hounded him, made him a social
outcast, thereby forcing him to pursue his desperate calling as a
means of living. Nor was she wholly wrong in her accusation, as any
ex-convict will straightway affirm. A penitentiary record—though
Billy Gee had never known the interior of a prison cell—is a full
brother to guilt forever after, in the eyes of the law’s
bloodhounds.
Society seems to forget that the man who pays the debt it imposes on
him regains, by every moral principle, his standing among the ranks
of righteous humankind. Instead, breaking faith with the very
justice it presumes to mete out, it claps the stigma of ignominy on
the wrongdoer and never removes it; once a jailbird, always a
jailbird, is the tenor of its smug opinion, and being itself
ruthless in the exercise of its self-bestowed powers, it gives to
men of the Coates and Tyler type authority to apprehend
law-breakers. Incompetency and political patronage rule the system
of law enforcement, making it a stupid, clumsy institution whose
methods of operation serve rather to increase than decrease the
commission of crime.
Mrs. Liggs was still speaking when a sharp rap sounded on the parlor
door. It was the maid, coming to inform Dot that Miss Jessie
Longwell, president of the seminary, wished to speak with her in the
office. The girl thought for a moment; then, insisting that her
little old friend accompany her, she escorted Mrs. Liggs out of the
room and down the spacious hall to another apartment, fitted with
correct businesslike furnishings, including a large flat-top oak
desk before which sat the head of the school.
Miss Longwell was, at a glance, a most unattractive specimen of
middle-aged person, haughty, self-contained, precision itself, and
thin as a lath. She sat rigid as a steel spring in her straight-back
chair, and let her stony, gimlet eyes back of their immense
shell-rimmed glasses, rest icily on Dot; then she focused them
inquiringly on Mrs. Liggs.
“Miss Huntington,” she began, in a quick, crisp voice, “I said, I
believe, that I wished to speak with you privately.”
“This is Mrs. Liggs, Miss Longwell, a very dear friend of mine,”
returned Dot, by way of explanation, at the same time going through
the formalities of introduction. “Whatever must be said may be done
so in her presence. I think I know the nature of the interview,” she
added.
Miss Longwell’s lips tightened, then she got up very decidedly and
closed the door. On her way back to her desk she halted before Dot.
“I regret very much, Miss Huntington,” she said, speaking in slow
impressive tones, “that an unfortunate condition has arisen which
makes it quite impossible for you to continue as a student of
Longwell Seminary. Indeed, it distresses me greatly to have to make
this fact known to you. Your conduct has been most exemplary in the
short time you have been here, and as to your application and
progress in the several lines of study you have taken up, you have
exceeded our fullest expectations. But——”
“What is this condition you just mentioned, Miss Longwell?” broke in
Dot.
“Why—er—it concerns your father. Now, while I have not the slightest
doubt that the—er—thing is simply a newspaper canard, still the
long-standing reputation of Longwell’s Seminary as an institution of
high ideals cannot be placed in jeopardy under any circumstances.
Why, your father, Miss Huntington, I am very grieved to state is
accused of possible complicity in a—in a theft.”
Dot flushed angrily. The manner of the speaker as she pronounced the
word was insulting, she thought.
“But you have met my father, Miss Longwell. Do you absolutely think
he’s that kind of man?” she asked quietly.
“To be frank with you, I don’t. Still, as you must certainly
realize, that does not alter the case. The mere accusation is so
serious as to cause unfavorable comment, if not cast discredit on
this institution, did we allow you to remain a member of our student
body. This was the unanimous verdict of our board of trustees at a
meeting which just now adjourned. Acting under its instruction, I am
wiring your father. You will get your effects together, preparatory
to leaving. I would add that I am extremely sorry, Miss
Huntington——”
“I’m not!” interrupted Dot suddenly. She drew her slim figure up
with queenly defiance, her eyes glittering dangerously. “And what is
more, Miss Longwell, I do not want your sympathy. I am glad that I
have at least found out just how really elevating a school of this
kind is. You pride yourselves on building up character. You help
ruin reputations as readily, I notice. By sending me home, you
advertise to the world that Lemuel Huntington is a thief, that I,
his daughter, am the child of a thief—a person too low to attend so
pure and undefiled an institution as——”
“Oh, deary, you mustn’t say such awful things!” burst out Mrs. Liggs
nervously.
“Miss Huntington, the interview is over,” snapped the preceptress, a
flush mantling her prominent high cheek bones. “You will retire to
your room, where you will await my orders.”
“Your orders?” cried Dot. “Madam, I’m serving notice on you that I’m
leaving your spotless institution just as soon as I can pack my
belongings! And you will please return me the balance of my tuition
fee before I go.”
Reluctantly she allowed pacifying little Mrs. Liggs to lead her from
the room and back into the parlor. Burning with shame and
indignation, she paced the floor for some minutes, while the older
woman talked, counseling her against the reënactment of the scene in
the office when she applied to Miss Longwell for her money.
Presently, they had arranged it between them that Dot was to stop
with her friend until word could be got to Lemuel. Within the hour,
they were descending the front steps, the tuition fee in Dot’s
purse, the sympathetic maid instructed to send the girl’s baggage to
Mrs. Liggs’ home.
As they took their seats in a taxi, and Dot kissed sprightly fingers
at Longwell’s Seminary, another machine came to a stop on the
opposite side of the street. The lone passenger, on the point of
getting out, stopped and stared after the other cab now whirling
rapidly away. It was Lex Sangerly. He had been told at the Golden
West Hotel that Lemuel had departed for Geerusalem, after presumably
having entered his daughter in Longwell Seminary. Whereupon, Lex had
decided to visit the girl, introduce himself through the medium of
Mrs. Liggs’ friendship, and question her in the hope that she might
throw some light on the mysterious disappearance of the contents of
Billy Gee’s saddlebags.
From this it may be deduced that Lex had not read the sensational
newspaper story that day, incriminating Lemuel Huntington in the
affair. Just now, he gazed in growing amazement at the taxi speeding
down the street.
“By George! If that isn’t Mrs. Liggs, I’ll——” he burst out and ended
by shouting hurried instructions to the chauffeur. The next moment
he had started in pursuit of the cab.