Part 40 (1/2)

CHAPTER x.x.xII--CONCLUSION

”You had best know just how things stand,” remarked Van Sherwin, as he proceeded to tell an interesting story.

Van had learned from Ralph's note sent to him to the town jail that Ike Slump or Mort Bemis had the doc.u.ments stolen from Mrs. Davis' little tin box.

He had watched his fellow prisoners closely, finally discovering that the papers were carried by Slump in a secret inner coat pocket.

The very night that Slump and Bemis escaped, Van with a window pole reached into the cell, got the garment in question, and left his own coat in its place.

He secured the stolen doc.u.ments. Folded in with them was a receipt for somebody's board at a place called Millville. Van decided that this was the place where Mrs. Davis was imprisoned, or detained.

He intended to gain his freedom in the morning early. In the meantime, as the reader is aware, Slump and Bemis escaped. The former was probably unaware in the darkness that he was wearing Van's coat instead of his own.

Van started forthwith to locate Mrs. Davis. He found there were two Millvilles, and it was several days before he settled down on the right one. It took several more to locate Mrs. Davis' present guardians.

They proved to be a wretched couple in an isolated farmhouse. They kept their prisoner in a barred attic room.

Mrs. Davis had missed a paper which told where the tin box was secreted.

This her jailers had probably given to Slump, who thus obtained a clew as to the whereabouts of the doc.u.ments.

Van managed to rescue Mrs. Davis without being discovered by her guardians. That very day he came upon Slump and Bemis near the old farmhouse.

He secreted himself and overheard some of their conversation. They had squandered all of their ready money, and dared not return to Stanley Junction. They had come to the farmhouse to remove Mrs. Davis, and with her in their hands blackmail Farrington afresh.

They had discovered her escape, and then they talked of a last desperate scheme. It was to ”hold up” something or somebody at South Dover.

Van could not leave Mrs. Davis, to follow or pursue them. He wrote the hurried postal to Ralph that had got wet and blurred in transmission, but, despite which fact, Ralph had managed to utilize with such grand results.

Mrs. Davis' secret was a simple one. As has been said, her husband was none other than Van's adopted father, Farwell Gibson, who had been fleeced by Gasper Farrington along with Ralph's own father.

The magnate had maligned Gibson so that Mrs. Gibson left him. They became strangers, and later Farrington claimed he was dead.

Mrs. Gibson, or Mrs. Davis as she now called herself, became quite poor.

She discovered among some old papers an agreement between herself, Mr.

Fairbanks, and Gasper Farrington about the twenty thousand dollars'

worth of railroad bonds.

This doc.u.ment showed plainly that in equity she had a quarter interest, and Mrs. Fairbanks the balance in these bonds really held in trust by Farrington.

She had come to Stanley Junction to sell this paper to Farrington.

Embittered by her sad past, she had no thoughts of the rights of others, until Ralph did her a kindly act and changed all the motives of her life.

Now, after learning from Van how her husband had been wronged and misrepresented by Farrington, she longed to secure her five thousand dollars to a.s.sist him in beginning his short-line railroad.

”There will be a happy reunion,” Van told Ralph. ”As to the money, the twenty thousand dollars, I have had a lawyer working on her claim and yours all day long. They say that Slump wrote a letter to some friend here, telling all about Farrington's dealings with him. The local paper threatens an expose, and this, with the factory fire and our claim, has driven the miserable old schemer nearly to his wits' end. Ah, there is the lawyer now.”

Ralph knew the legal gentleman in question. They rejoined the others in the front parlor.