Amorelle (19 page)

There was silence a second while the tree toads chimed an antiphony; and then Amorelle lifted her head and said half-ashamedly, with almost a roguish sound in her voice, “I—am—not mad, Aunt Lavinia.”

“Thank the Lord,” said Miss Landon earnestly. “I think you’ll see your way clear very soon. That man is not fit for you. If there’s not somebody different in the world for you, you’d much better walk your way alone.”

“I’ve been thinking that, too,” said the girl softly, “but I wasn’t sure it was fair to him when I let it go on so long. I was lonely, and it seemed a pleasant way out. I thought I loved him.”

Miss Landon was still a minute then she burst out, “Amorelle, do you remember your father well?”

“Indeed I do, Aunt Lavinia.”

“Well, do you know what a grand, unselfish man he was? Do you remember how he and your mother were like one big, beautiful human soul?”

“I do. Oh, I do!”

“Well, child, can you imagine this George being like him?”

“No,” breathed Amorelle very softly.

“Don’t you know any other young men? Didn’t you ever meet one you thought could be grand and unselfish and brave and tender?”

Amorelle hesitated.

“Yes, I met one, just for a day. But he wasn’t
my
friend. It was just a happening. I’ll never see him again, of course. It was he that made me see the truth—about George. But of course he’s nothing to me, nor I to him.”

“Well, if there’s one, there are others. Don’t you worry, child. You don’t ever know what good things your heavenly Father has in store for you. Just you lie back and trust Him, and don’t take up with the first thing that comes along just to save you from being lonely. There are worse things than loneliness in this world. Worse things than being an old maid! Now, child, it’s time to go to bed, and I hear Bonny coming. Kiss me, and forget all your troubles. You kneel down and pray when you get to your room, and you’ll find our Father will straighten it all out for you. That was your father’s way, and it’s straightened many a trouble for me, too. ‘Casting all your care upon Him, for He careth for you,’ he used to say so often. Try it, child. Try it!”

Amorelle, on her knees in the moonlight beside the white bed, accepted the challenge and laid her troubles like a little child in the hands of a strong, loving parent, and then lay down to sweet sleep.

“There’s something important I forgot to tell you last night,” said Miss Landon when Amorelle went in to see her in the morning. “We had a burglar here a few days ago! Lemuel Pike! He tried to get into the kitchen chamber window where your things are stored.”

“Oh yes, Bonny wrote a few words about it. I meant to ask you how it happened. What do you suppose he wanted?”

“Well, that’s what we can’t understand. There is nothing gone. In fact, he hadn’t been in yet when he was caught, for they found nothing incriminating on him. You know the old-fashioned catches on those windows aren’t very reliable, and he must have loosened the spring, for it fell down on him and caught, and he couldn’t stir or get away. It was really very funny. He was gasping and squealing and kicking around, hitting his toes against the clapboards, till he knocked the ladder out from under him and just hung there high and dry. Couldn’t help himself, because the catch of the window held firmly, and he couldn’t reach it.”

“He must be crazy,” said Amorelle thoughtfully.

“They say not,” said Miss Landon. “One of the trustees of the bank, Mr. Aiken, was here yesterday just before you arrived. He went upstairs to look around as the police had done, but they found no evidence that he had been in there, and he
said
that he was only trying to measure the house for the tax estimate. You know they do that by the cubic feet in the house. I don’t quite understand that, but it’s some new method they have, and he’s just been made tax assessor. How he ever got elected nobody knows, but he did. However nobody could quite see why he couldn’t have done his measuring on the ground instead of taking a ladder and climbing up to the second story with his head inside a window that had been closed fast enough a few hours before, nor why he should come at midnight to do it either.”

A startled look came over Amorelle’s face as she remembered her own midnight intruder.

“Well, it seems,” went on Miss Landon, “that the bank has something on this Pike man, something they’re sure of but can’t prove, and they have been trying for a long time to catch him in something red-handed. When Mr. Aiken found the furniture in the kitchen chamber was yours, he asked me if I could get in touch with you and get your permission for someone to look over things and see if they could find out what the man was after. He said it was very important. And I was just about to write to you when you arrived yesterday. The joy of your coming put it out of my head. My dear, do you know of anything among your papers, or in your father’s desk, that that man could be after?”

“No,” said Amorelle. “I don’t. But I guess I ought to look and see. I didn’t go over Father’s papers in his desk before I went away. I was in such a hurry to get things out of the manse before the Ladies’ Aid came in to tell me what to do.” She could laugh over the memory now. “Also, I couldn’t bear to do it just then,” she added more soberly. “I’ve thought all winter I should have done it. But there is something strange about that man Pike. You know he came to see Father the night he died.”

“He
did?”

“Yes, just a few minutes before. And then, you remember, I told you I thought he was the one who broke into the manse the night after the funeral. He got away, you know, in spite of Hannah’s throwing a can of paint over him on the back steps.”

“Yes, I remember reading about it in the local paper,” laughed Miss Landon. Then growing more serious, “But I guess you should have told somebody else, too, child. That may be pretty important. There is something behind all this, you may be sure.”

“I’m afraid there is,” said Amorelle, “though I can’t imagine what. But there was a reason why I didn’t want to say anything. You remember my telling you about Mrs. Brisbane and her hateful suggestions of husbands for me? Well, Lemuel Pike was one of the ones she suggested!”

“You poor child!” laughed Miss Landon. “What an utter fool that woman is! Why, nobody ever had any respect for Lemuel Pike!”

“Well,” said Amorelle, “he wrote me a letter and proposed!”

“He
did?
It does look as if he must be crazy!”

“I never read the whole of the letter,” confessed Amorelle. “I was too disgusted. It came after he had broken into the manse. But can’t you see why I didn’t want to get mixed up with Lemuel Pike’s name in any way?”

“I surely can,” said Miss Landon, looking troubled. “But now, dear, I’m not so sure in spite of that but you ought to tell Mr. Aiken all about it in confidence. Mr. Aiken was your father’s friend and will keep the matter to himself if possible.”

“Oh, I don’t mind telling now,” laughed Amorelle. “It seems ages ago and rather funny when I think back to it. I’ll go right up and see what’s in that desk. I ought to have done it long ago. I’m not altogether sure there wasn’t something that Father wanted me to see after he was gone, but I didn’t think about that till after I went away.”

Just then there came a knock on the door, and Bonny ushered in a caller and appeared at Miss Landon’s door.

“That same man is here again that came yesterday,” she said. “He says he heard Miss Amorelle was here and he wants to see her.”

So it was in the company of her father’s old friend and lawyer that Amorelle, after explaining to him what she had just told Miss Landon about Lemuel Pike, finally approached her father’s desk and unlocked the secret drawer.

“I’m so glad you are here with me,” she said to him as she turned the key. “I’ve dreaded this because I knew it would be so hard to go over Father’s intimate papers.”

“Well, I’m glad I’m here, too,” said the man, patting her shoulder tenderly. “It is hard to do these things, I know, but it ought to be done at once, always. There might be something important.”

“I know,” sighed Amorelle, “but I didn’t realize then.”

Then she pulled out the secret drawer and set it on the desk under the light.

The first thing she took out was her father’s book of receipt blanks, laid on the top of all the other papers as if it had been put there in a hurry, and suddenly Amorelle remembered seeing that book lying on her father’s desk when she went to the door to let in Lemuel Pike.

“Oh,” she said, taking up the book and opening it, and then started back. “Oh! What in the world can this mean?”

For there, lying smoothly in the little book, just fitting inside its long, narrow covers, was a pile of crisp bank bills.

“Why! Now I remember Father had money in his hand as I looked back when I went to let Lemuel Pike out!” she exclaimed. “And this book of blanks was lying on his desk when I let him in.”

She held the money in one hand and the book in the other and stared at Mr. Aiken.

“Count it!” said the bank trustee with kindling eyes. “There is something behind all this, just as I suspected.”

Amorelle counted it. There were five one-thousand-dollar bills, new and smooth as if they had never been folded.

“Five thousand dollars!” said Amorelle incredulously. “What can it mean?”

“Is there a record stub in that book? Is it made out?”

Amorelle looked at the book again.

“Yes, Father always made out stubs. It says ‘Received of Lemuel Pike, five thousand dollars—payment loan.’ ”

“Ah,” said Mr. Aiken soberly. “That shows what Lemuel was after. He figured that nobody would know about that money yet and he could get it back before you found it. But there’s something strange about his having paid it in money and not a check. I wonder if your father would have left any record of that loan. When it was made and why. Wasn’t it rather odd for Lemuel to borrow of your father? But perhaps he borrowed it long ago when he was a poor boy.”

“Father always kept a diary,” said Amorelle. “It’s in his desk somewhere, I’m sure. He might have a record there. But here, what’s this? A letter! No, a
copy
of a letter, to Lemuel Pike.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Aiken.

Amorelle read the letter aloud. “ ‘My dear sir: May I recall to your memory that seven years ago at the above date you came to my study in deep distress and confessed to me that you had from time to time been taking certain sums from the Rivington Bank—where you were then employed—for the purpose of investment, intending to replace them before their loss should be discovered. But your investment had failed and discovery was imminent. You begged me to help you and promised faithfully that the offense should never be repeated.

“ ‘For the sake of your old mother to whom your disgrace would have been crushing, you will recall that I borrowed on my life insurance the sum of five thousand dollars, the amount which you had embezzled from the bank, and loaned it to you. You knew that my life insurance represented my lifelong savings and was all that I had to keep me from poverty in my old age and to leave to my daughter if I should die. You gave me a written promise to pay this back from time to time as you were able and to clear off the entire sum at the end of five years.

“ ‘It is now seven years since I loaned you this money. In all that time you have given me only promises as interest and have never made but one payment on the principle, and that of only twenty-five dollars at my most urgent request. You have persistently excused yourself when I have suggested your paying a small sum every month or every quarter, although you have all the time been employed with reputable firms who have paid you good salaries.

“ ‘It has recently come to my knowledge that you are no longer a penniless man needing assistance but are rated one of the wealthiest men in Rivington.

“ ‘Since this is true, and since my health is precarious and I have been able to save almost nothing since loaning you this money, I feel that the time has come to demand my own again, and I feel thoroughly justified before God in what I am about to say to you.

“ ‘I am therefore serving you notice that if you do not return to me
all
that you owe me on or before eight o’clock Thursday evening of this week, I shall immediately place the facts and all papers connected with this matter,
together with a copy of this letter
, in the hands of my friend and attorney, H. T. Aiken, who, as you are aware, is one of the trustees of the Rivington Bank. Sincerely, Reuben L. Dean.’ ”

The face of the bank trustee was filled with satisfaction as Amorelle finished the reading of the letter.

“That is just what we need!” he said. “This will put a stop to the steady crimes in every direction, which have been going on for years and which we have been working on for a long time. Your father was not the only one on whom things of this sort have been practiced, and yet we could not get evidence because the victims, as a rule, were people whose sympathy and integrity prevented them from coming forward and giving information. He victimized only those he could trust to keep his confidence for him. I think this letter copy will be the key with which we shall be able to unlock a vast amount of evidence, which will put this man where he cannot do any more harm in Rivington. And the story you have told me concerning his proposal of marriage makes it plain that he feared you would come on this very letter. It may have been more the letter than the money he was after when he broke into both houses, though he is a miser, there is no doubt of that. A search of his house has been made for evidence, and already a number of secret hiding places have been discovered where he has been hoarding money. The great puzzle has been to understand how he always escaped by suddenly disappearing when he was almost caught. But this morning a small boy in his neighborhood casually made known that he had seen him many times at night disappearing up a tree. We are going to investigate that, and if he was the one who broke into the manse last fall, there ought to be some white paint in evidence to mark his going.”