Helen sat down quickly and stared across the room at the queer old man. The latter at first seemed to pay her no attention. But finally she saw that he was skillfully “taking stock” of her from behind the shelter of the printed sheet.

The Western girl was more direct than that. She got up and walked across to him. The clerk uttered a very loud “Ahem!” as though to warn her to drop her intention; but Helen said coolly:

“Don’t you remember me, sir?”

“Ha! I believe it is the little girl who came from the coast with me last week,” said the man.

“Not from the coast; from Montana,” corrected Helen.

“But you are dressed differently now and I was not sure,” he said. “How have you been?”

“Very well, I thank you. And you, sir?”

“Well. Very. But I did not expect to see you again er here.”

“No, sir. And you are waiting to see Mr. Grimes, too?”

“Er something like that,” admitted the old man.

Helen eyed him thoughtfully. She had already glanced covertly once or twice at the clerk across the room. She was quite bright enough to see between the rungs of a ladder.

“You are Mr. Grimes,” she said, bluntly, looking again at the old man, who was adjusting his wig.

He looked up at her slily, his avaricious little eyes twinkling as they had aboard the train when he had looked over her shoulder and caught her counting her money.

“You’re a very smart little girl,” he said, with a short laugh. “What have you come to see me about? Do you think of investing some of your money in mining stocks?”

“No,” said Helen. “I have no money to invest.”

“Humph. Did you find your folks?” he asked, turning the subject quickly.

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s the matter with you, then? What do you want?”

“You are Mr. Grimes?” she pursued, to make sure.

“Well, I don’t deny it.”

“I have come to talk to you about about Prince Morrell,” she said, in a very low voice so that the clerk could not hear.

“Who?” gasped the man, falling back in his chair. Evidently Helen had startled him.

“Prince Morrell,” she replied.

“What are you to Prince Morrell?” demanded the man.

“I am his daughter. He is dead. I have come here to talk with you about the time the time he left New York,” said the girl from Sunset Ranch, hesitatingly.

Mr. Grimes stared at her, with his wig still awry, for some moments; then the color began to come back into his face. Helen had not realized before that he had turned pale.

“You come into my office,” he snapped, jumping up briskly. “I’ll get to the bottom of this!”

His movements were so very abrupt and he looked at her so strangely that, to tell the truth, the girl from Sunset Ranch was a bit frightened. She trailed along behind him, however, with only a hesitating step, passing the wondering clerk, and heard the lock of the door of the inner office snap behind her as Mr. Grimes shut it.

He drew heavy curtains over the door, too. The place was a gloomy apartment until he turned on the electric light over a desk table. She saw that there were curtains at all the windows, and at the other door, too.

“Come here,” he said, beckoning her to the desk, and to a chair that stood by it, and still speaking softly. “We will not be overheard here. Now! Tell me what you mean by coming to me in this way?”

He shot such an ugly look at her that Helen was again startled.

“What do you mean?” she returned, hiding her real emotion. “I have come to ask some questions. Why shouldn’t I?”

“You say Prince Morrell is dead?”

“Yes, sir. Nearly two months, now.”

“Who sent you, then?”

“Sent me to you?” queried Helen, in wonder.

“Yes. Somebody must have sent you,” said Mr. Grimes, watching her with his little eyes, in which there seemed to burn a very baleful look.

“You are mistaken. Nobody sent me,” said Helen, recovering a measure of her courage. She believed that this strange man was a coward. But why should he be afraid of her?

“You came clear across this continent to interview me about about something that is gone and forgotten almost before you were born?”

“It isn’t forgotten,” returned Helen, meaningly. “Such things are never forgotten. My father said so.”

“But it’s no use hauling everything to the surface of the pool again,” grumbled Mr. Grimes.

“That is about what Uncle Starkweather says; but I do not feel that way,” said Helen, slowly.

“Ha! Starkweather! Of course he’s in it. I might have known,” muttered the old man. “So he sent you to me?”

“No, sir. He objected to my coming,” declared Helen, quite convinced now that she should not deliver her uncle’s letter.

“The Starkweathers are the people you came East to visit?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And how did they receive you in their fine Madison Avenue mansion?” queried Mr. Grimes, looking up at her slily again.

“Just as you know they did,” returned Helen, briefly.

“Ha! How’s that? And you with all that 

He halted and for a moment had the grace to blush. He saw that she read his mind.

“They do not know that I have some money for emergencies,” said Helen, coolly.

“Ho, ho!” chuckled Mr. Grimes, suddenly.

“So they consider you a pauper relative from the West?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ho, ho!” he laughed again, and rubbed his hands. “How did Prince leave you fixed?”

“I I have something beside the money you saw me counting,” she told him, bluntly.

“And Willets Starkweather doesn’t know it?”

“He has never asked me if I were in funds.”

“I bet you!” cackled Grimes, at last giving way to a spasm of mirth which, Helen thought, was not nice to look upon. “And how does he fancy having you in his family?”

“He does not like it. Neither do his daughters. And one of their reasons is because people will ask questions about Prince Morrell’s daughter. They are afraid their friends will bring up father’s old trouble,” continued Helen, her voice quivering. “So that is why, Mr. Grime’s, I am determined to know the truth about it.”

“The truth? What do you mean?” snarled Grimes, suddenly starting out of his chair.

“Why, sir,” said Helen, amazed, “dad told me all about it when he was dying. All he knew. But he said by this time surely the truth of the matter must have come to light. I want to clear his name 

“How are you going to do that?” demanded Mr. Grimes.

“I hope you will help me if you can, sir,” she said, pleadingly.

“How can I help more now than I could at the time he was charged with the crime?”

“I do not know. Perhaps you can’t. Perhaps Uncle Starkweather cannot, either. But, it seems to me, if anything had been heard from that bookkeeper 

“Allen Chesterton?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well! I don’t know how you are going to prove it, but I have always believed Allen was guilty,” declared Mr. Grimes, nodding his head vigorously, and still watching her face.

“Oh, have you, Mr. Grimes?” cried the girl, eagerly, clasping her hands. “You have always believed it?”

“Quite so. Evidence was against my old partner yes. But it wasn’t very direct. And then what became of Allen? Why did he run away?”

“That is what other people said about father,” said Helen, doubtfully. “It did not make him guilty, but it made him look guilty. The same can be said of the bookkeeper.”

“But how can you go farther than that?” asked Mr. Grimes. “It’s too long ago for the facts to be brought out. We can have our suspicions. We might even publish our suspicions. Let us get something in the papers I can do it,” and he nodded, decisively, “stating that facts recently brought to light seemed to prove conclusively that Prince Morrell, once accused of embezzlement of the bank accounts of the firm of Grimes & Morrell, was guiltless of that crime. And we will state that the surviving partner of the firm is convinced that the only person guilty of that embezzlement was one Allen Chesterton, who was the firm’s bookkeeper. How about that? Wouldn’t that fill the bill?” asked Mr. Grimes, rubbing his hands together.

“If we had such an article published in the papers and circulated among his old friends, wouldn’t that satisfy you, my dear? Then you would do no more of this foolish probing for facts that cannot possibly be reached eh? What do you say, Helen Morrell? Isn’t that a famous idea?”

But the girl from Sunset Ranch was, for the moment, speechless. For a second time, it seemed to her, she was being bribed to make no serious investigation of the evidence connected with her father’s old trouble. Both Uncle Starkweather and this old man seemed to desire to head her off!