Gregson had taken the cards up one flight and then had sent on the cards by Maggie to Helen's room. Gregson said below stairs that he would "give notice" if he were obliged to take cards to anybody who roomed in the attic. May and her friends trooped up the stairs in the wake of their cards, however--for so it had been arranged with Helen, who expected them on both occasions. The anger of the Starkweather family would have been greater had they known that these calls of their own most treasured social acquaintances were really upon the little old lady who had been shut away into the front attic suite, and whose existence even was not known to some of the servants in the Starkweather mansion. May, as she had promised, was bringing, one or two at a time, her friends who, as children when Cornelius Starkweather was alive, had haunted this old house because they loved old Mary Boyle. And May was proving, too, to the Western girl, that all New York people of wealth were neither heartless or ungrateful. Yet the crime of forgetfulness these young women must plead to. The visits delighted Mary Boyle. Helen knew that she slept better--after these little excitements of the calls--and did not go pattering up and down the halls with her crutch in the dead of night. So the days passed, each one bringing so much of interest into the life of Helen Morrell that she forgot to be lonely, or to bewail her lot. She was still homesick for the ranch--when she stopped to think about it. But she was willing to wait a while longer before she flitted homeward to Big Hen and the boys. CHAPTER XXV THE MISSING LINK Helen met Dud Stone and his sister on the bridle-path one morning by particular invitation. The message had come to the house for her late the evening before and had been put into the trusty hand of old Lawdor, the butler. Dud had learned the particulars of the old embezzlement charge against Prince Morrell. "I've got here in typewriting the reports from three papers--everything they had to say about it for the several weeks that it was kept alive as a news story. It was not so great a crime that the metropolitan papers were likely to give much space to it," Dud said. "You can read over the reports at your leisure, if you like. But the main points for us to know are these: "In the two banks were, in the names of Morrell & Grimes, something over thirty-three thousand dollars. Either partner could draw the money. The missing bookkeeper could _not_ draw the money. "The checks came to the banks in the course of the day's business, and neither teller could swear that he actually remembered giving the money to Mr. Morrell; yet because the checks were signed in his name, and apparently in his handwriting, they both 'thought' it must have been Mr. Morrell who presented the checks.