“But you telephoned,” Bob continued. “We were quite alarmed over it. You said——”
“Young ladies aren’t always responsible for what they say over the ’phone,” put in Mr. Akerson, with what he meant to be a genial smile at Bob. “I fancy—er—we men of the world realize that. If Miss Dale has any complaint to make——” he paused suggestively.
“Oh, I don’t know what to do!” cried Dorothy. “There certainly seems to be some need of a complaint, and yet——”
“Doro, dear, have you been trying to straighten out my business for me?” demanded Mrs. White, with a gracious smile.
“Aunt Winne—I don’t exactly know. Tavia here, she——”
“We’re trying the straightening-out process,” put in Tavia. “We had just started after being locked——”
“Careful!” warned the agent. “I cautioned you about libel, you remember, and that snapping shut of the lock on the door was an error, I tell you.”
“Never mind about that part,” broke in Tavia. “Tell us about the business end of it. About the rents, why they have fallen off, and all the rest.”
“Have you really been going over the books with him, Dorothy?” asked Mrs. White, in wonder.
“Allow me to tell about matters,” interrupted Akerson. “I think I understand it better.”
“I will listen to you, Mr. Akerson,” said Mrs. White, gravely. “You may proceed.”
“As I have just been saying to Miss Dale,” he went on, pointing to the ledgers on his desks, “this matter can be explained in two minutes, if you will just glance over these entries.”
“Don’t look at them, Aunt Winnie,” cried Dorothy. “The entries are false! We have his own words to prove his wrong-doing! His statements to Tavia and Miss Mingle’s word to us are different.”
And by a peculiar net of circumstances, which invariably occur when one thread tightens about a guilty man, Miss Mingle at that moment walked into the room! She had come to demand justice from the man who had served removal notice upon herself and her sister, Mrs. Bergham. She held the notice in her hand. Major Dale took it, and tearing it in small pieces, placed it in a waste paper basket.
“He admitted to me, quite freely,” protested Tavia, “that every tenant in the house paid eighty or one hundred dollars for his or her apartment!”
Miss Mingle at first could not grasp the meaning of it, but as Dorothy quickly explained that her aunt was the owner of the apartment, it dawned on Miss Mingle just how, after all, the guilty are punished, even though the road to justice be a long and crooked one.