Chapter 2 A NEW ALLY

"I guess you haven't met Billy Trenwith properly yet, Eleanor," said Charlie Jamieson, smiling.

"Maybe not," said Eleanor, returning the smile, "but I regard him as a friend already, Charlie. He was splendid this morning. If he hadn't understood so quickly, and acted at once, the way he did, I don't know what would have happened."

"I'm afraid I didn't really understand at all, Miss Mercer," said Trenwith, a good looking young fellow, with light brown hair and grey blue eyes, that, although mild and pleasant enough now, had been as cold as steel when Bessie had seen him on the yacht. "But I could understand readily enough that you were in trouble, and I knew that Charlie's cousin wouldn't appeal to me unless there was a good reason. So I didn't feel that I was taking many chances in doing what you wished."

"I'm afraid you took more chances than you know about, Billy," said Charlie, gravely. "You're in politics, aren't you? And you have ambitions for more of a job than you've got now?"

"Oh, yes, I'm in politics, after a fashion," admitted Trenwith. "But I guess I could manage to keep alive if I never got another political office. I had a bit of a practice before I became district attorney, and I think I could build it up again."

"Well, I hope this isn't going to make any difference, Billy. But it's only fair for you to know the sort of game you're running into. I don't want to feel that you're going ahead to help us without understanding the situation just as it is."

"You talk as if this might be a pretty complicated bit of business, Charlie. Suppose you loosen up and tell me about it. Then I may be able to figure better on how I can help you."

"That's just what I'm going to do, old man. I want you to meet two of cousin's protegees here-Bessie King and Zara, the mysterious. If we knew more about Zara and her affairs this wouldn't be such a Chinese puzzle. But here goes! Ask me all the questions you like. And you girls-if I go wrong, stop me.

"In the first place, Miss Mercer here took a party of her Camp Fire Girls, these same ones that you can see there so busy about getting breakfast, over the state line, and they went to a camp on a lake a little way from a village called Hedgeville."

"I know the place," nodded Trenwith. "Never been there, but I know where it is."

"Well, one morning they discovered these two-Bessie and Zara. And they'd had a strange experience. They were running away!"

"Bad business, as a rule," commented Trenwith. "But I suppose there was a good reason?"

"You bet there was, old chap! Bessie had lived for a good many years with an old farmer called Hoover and his wife. They had a son, too, a worthless young scamp named Jake, lazy and ready for any sort of mischief that turned up."

"Is she related to them in any way, Charlie?"

"Not a bit of it! When she was a little bit of a kid her parents left her there as a boarder, and they were supposed to send money to pay for her keep until they came back to get her. For a while they did, but then the money stopped coming."

"But they kept her on, just the same?"

"Yes, as a sort of unpaid servant. She did all the work she could manage, and she didn't have a very good time. Zara, here, has a father. How long ago did Zara and her father come to Hedgeville, Bessie?"

"They'd been there about two years when we-we had to run away, Mr. Jamieson. They came from some foreign country, you know."

"Yes. And the people around Hedgeville couldn't make much out about them, so they decided, of course, being unable to understand them, that there must be something wrong about Zara's dad. No real reason at all, except that he only spoke a little English, and liked to keep his business to himself."

Trenwith laughed.

"I know," he said. "I see a lot of that sort of thing."

"Well, the day before the two of them ran away-or the day before they found the girls, rather-there'd been a fine shindy at the Hoovers. Zara went over to see Bessie, and Jake Hoover locked her in a tool shed. Then he managed, without meaning to do it, to set the tool shed afire, and said he was going to say that Bessie had done it."

"Fine young pup, he must be!"

"Yes-worth knowing! Anyhow, Bessie had only too good reason to know that his mother would believe him and take his word, no matter what she and Zara said. So, being scared, she just ran. I don't blame her; I'd have done the same thing myself. You and I both know that knowing he's innocent doesn't keep a man who is unjustly accused from being afraid."

"No," said Trenwith, thoughtfully. "I've had to learn that it doesn't pay to think a man's guilty because he's scared and confused. It's an old theory that innocence shows in a prisoner's eyes, and it's very pretty-only it isn't true."

"Well, even so, they might not have run away if it hadn't happened that that was the day Zara's father was arrested. Apparently with an old miser and money lender called Weeks as the moving spirit, a charge of counterfeiting was cooked up against him, and they took him off to my town to jail."

"But it's in another state!"

"United States case, you see. My town's the centre of the Federal district. Zara and Bessie happened to get on to this, and when they crept up to Zara's house to find out if it was true, they overheard enough to show them that it was-and, what was more, that old Weeks meant to get himself appointed Zara's guardian, and take her home with him."

"Oh, that was his game, eh?"

"Yes, and if you'd ever seen him, you wouldn't blame Zara for being ready to run away before she went with him. He's the meanest old codger you ever saw. But he had a big pull in that region, because he held mortgages on about all the farms, and he could do about as he liked."

"Well, I don't see why they didn't have a perfect right to run away," said Trenwith, "legally and morally. They didn't owe anything in the way of gratitude to any of these people."

"That's just what I said!" declared Eleanor, vehemently. "I looked into the story they told me, and I found out it was perfectly true. So we helped them, and took them into this state."

"Yes. And old Weeks chased them, and got Zara away from them once. Bessie tricked him and got her back," said Jamieson. "And then the old rip got a court order making him Zara's guardian, but he tried to serve it across the state line, and got dished for his trouble. So it looked as if they'd shaken him pretty well."

"I should say so! Do you mean that he kept it up after that?"

"He certainly did! And he got pretty powerful help too. Here's where the part of it that ought to interest you really begins. Miss Mercer took the two girls home with her, and almost at once, in the middle of the night, Zara was spirited away. At first we thought she'd been kidnapped but later it turned out that she'd been deceived, and gone with them willingly."

"This is beginning to sound pretty exciting, Charlie."

"I got interested in the case, Billy, and I tried to do what I could for Zara's father. He didn't trust me much, and I had a dickens of a time persuading him to talk. And then, just as I was about on the point of succeeding, he shut up like a clam, fired me as his lawyer, and hired Isaac Brack!"

"That little shyster? Good Heavens!"

"Right! Well, she-Zara, I mean-seemed to have vanished into thin air. We couldn't get any trace of her at all, until Bessie here dug up a wild idea that it was in Morton Holmes's car she'd been taken off."

"Holmes, the big dry goods merchant?" said Trenwith, with a laugh. "How in the world did she ever get such a wild idea as that? He wouldn't be mixed up in anything shady!"

"Just what we told her," said Charlie, unsmilingly, "but she insisted she was right. And, a little while later, after Miss Mercer had taken the girls to her father's farm, Holmes came along, tricked her into getting in his car with another girl, and ran them over the state line. He met Weeks and this Jake Hoover-but Bessie was too smart for them, and got back over the state line safely. And the same day, putting two and two together, I found Zara, held a prisoner in an old house that Holmes had bought!"

"Good Lord!" said Trenwith, blankly. "So Holmes had been in it from the start?"

"I don't know how long he's been mixed up in it, but he was in it then, with both feet. He was hand in glove with old Weeks, and for some reason he was mighty anxious to get both the girls across the state line and into old Weeks's care as guardian appointed by one of their courts over there."

"But why, Charlie-why?"

"I wish I knew. I've been cudgelling my brains for weeks to get the answer to that question, Billy. It's kept me awake nights, and I'm no nearer to it now than I was at the beginning. But hold on, you haven't heard it all yet, by a good deal!"

"What? Do you mean they weren't content with that?"

"Not so that you could notice it, they weren't! The girls went to Long Lake, up in the woods, and while they were there, a gypsy tried to carry them off. He mixed them up a bit, and, partly by good luck, and partly by Bessie's good nerve and pluck, he was caught and landed in jail at Hamilton, the county seat up there."

"Was Holmes mixed up in that?"

"Yes. He'd been fool enough to write a letter to the gypsy, and sign his own name to it. He hired lawyers to defend the gypsy, too, but that letter smashed his case, and the gypsy went to jail. They were afraid of Holmes, though, at Hamilton and we couldn't touch him. He's got a whole lot of money and power, too, especially in politics. So he can get away with things that would land a smaller man in jail in a jiffy."

"His money and pull won't do him any good down here," said Trenwith, his eyes snapping. "Have you any reason to think he was mixed up in this outrage here this morning and last night, Charlie?"

"Every reason to think so, Billy, but mighty little proof to back up what I think. There's the rub. Still-well, we'll see what we see later. I'll give you some of the reasons."

"You'd better," said Trenwith, grimly. "I think it's pretty nearly time for me to take a hand in this." He shot a look at Eleanor that Bessie did not fail to notice. Evidently her charms had already made an impression on him.

"Yesterday, when Miss Mercer brought the girls down to Bay City from Windsor," Jamieson went on, "the train was to stop for a minute at Canton, which, though they had none of them thought of it, is in Weeks's state. And Bessie happened to discover that Jake Hoover was spying on them. She stayed behind the others at Windsor, discovered that he was telegraphing the news to Holmes, and guessed the plot."

"Good for her!" exclaimed Trenwith.

"So she got a message through to Miss Mercer on the train, and, being warned, Zara was able to elude the people who searched the train for her at Canton. Bessie went on a later train that didn't stop at Canton at all, so they were all right."

"That looks like pretty good evidence," said Trenwith, frowning. "He knew they were coming here and he'd made one attempt to get hold of them on the way."

"Yes, and there's more. When this yacht turned up here last night, Miss Mercer and the girls were nervous. And Bessie and her chum Dolly Ransom happened to overhear two men who were put at the top of that bluff to watch the camp. They talked about 'the boss' and how he meant to get those girls and had been 'stung once too often.' But they didn't mention Holmes by name."

"Too bad. Still, that fire was too timely to have been accidental. I think maybe we can convict them of starting it. Then if these fellows think they're in danger of going to prison, we might offer them a chance of liberty if they confess and implicate Holmes, do you see?"

"It would be a good bargain, Billy."

"That's what I think. I'd let the tool escape any time to get hold of the man who was using him. They and the yacht are held safely at Bay City, in any case, and we have plenty of time to decide what's best to be done there."

"If I know Holmes, he'll show you his hand pretty soon, Billy. I believe he thinks that every man has his price, and he probably has an idea that he can get you on his side if he works it right and offers you enough."

"He's got several more thinks coming on that," said Trenwith, angrily. "What a hound he must be! We've got to get to the bottom of this business, Charlie. That's all there is to it!"

"Won't Jake Hoover help, Charlie?" suggested Eleanor. "He told Bessie he would go in to see you."

"He did come, but I was called away, and meant to talk to him again this morning, Nell. Then of course I had to come down here when I got this news from you and so I didn't have a chance. But I may get something out of him yet."

"We've decided, Mr. Trenwith," Eleanor explained, "that the reason Jake is doing just what they want is that he's afraid of them-that they know of some wrong thing he has done, and have been threatening to expose him if he doesn't obey them."

"Well, if they're scaring him," said Charlie, "the thing for us to do is to scare him worse than they can. He'll stick to the side he's most afraid of."

"Let's get him down here," said Trenwith. "Then we can not only handle him better, but we can keep an eye on him. I'm with you in this, Charlie, for anything I can do."

"Good man!" said Charlie. "Then you're not afraid of Holmes? He's pretty powerful, you know."

Trenwith looked at Eleanor. And when he saw the smile she gave him, and her look of liking and of confidence, he laughed.

"I guess I can look after myself," he said. "No, I'm not afraid of him, old man! We'll fight this out together."

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