"If you'll show me the books, so that I can explain matters to my aunt, while Miss Travers is looking over the plan of the apartment she may wish to take," said Dorothy seriously, "we can bring this rather unpleasant call to an end."

"I'm sure I am sorry for any unpleasantness," said Mr. Akerson, "but you'll admit your manner of talking business is just a little crude. No man wants to be almost called a scoundrel and a cheat."

"The books, I hope," Dorothy answered bringing out her words slowly and clearly, "will show where the error lies. By the way, do you collect these rents in person, or do you employ a sub-agent?"

"This, you understand, is not a company matter. It's a little investment of my own, and I take such pride in that house, that I allow no one to interfere with it. Yes, I collect the rents and give my personal attention to all repairing. If I do say it myself, it is the best-cared-for apartments in this city to-day. And I'll tell you this confidently, Miss Dale, five per cent. for collecting doesn't pay me for my time. But I'm interested in the up-building of that house, you understand."

Tavia strolled leisurely back to the private office, while Mr. Akerson went into a smaller office just off the private one, and while he was bending over the combination of the safe, quick as a flash, Dorothy took off the receiver of the desk telephone from the hook, and, in almost a whisper, asked central for their Riverside home number.

"Ned," she gasped, when she heard his voice, "quick, don't waste a moment! This is Dorothy. We are in Akerson's office and are frightened!

Come downtown at once! I'm afraid we won't be able to hold out much longer! Quick, quick, Ned!" Then she softly put the receiver back and turned just in time to see Mr. Akerson rising from before the safe with a bundle of books in his arms. Dorothy to hide her confusion bent over a blue print that had been hanging on the walls, but all she saw was a confused bunch of white lines drawn on a blue background, and from the outer room came the sound of Tavia's voice, as she and Mr. Akerson went over the pages of the ledger, the alert girl seizing the opportunity to dip into the books as well as look at the floor plans in order to gain more time.

CHAPTER XXII CAPTURED BY TWO GIRLS

Dorothy pored over the blue print for a long time. She was growing so nervous that all the little white lines on the paper began dancing about and grinning at her, and Mr. Akerson's voice and Tavia's in the other room became louder and louder. Every footstep as the clerks returned, one by one, from lunch, set her heart palpitating, and she clenched her hands nervously. She feared that Mr. Akerson would in some way evade them, disappear before Ned and the boys could arrive!

Tavia seemed so calm and self-possessed and examined the books so critically that Dorothy marveled at her! Surely Tavia could not understand so complicated a thing as a ledger! Off in the distance, at the end of the suite, Dorothy suddenly saw a familiar brown head, and behind a s.h.a.ggy white head, and then a pair of great, braid shoulders, and in back of them a modish bonnet framing the dignified face of Aunt Winnie!

"Dorothy," she called, running forward. "Here they are!"

Dorothy's interest in the prints ceased instantly, and she sprang after Tavia.

Mr. Akerson's face blanched and he withdrew to his private office.

All the clerks returned discreetly to their work, typewriters clicking merrily, as the family filed down through the offices and into Mr.

Akerson's private room. He faced them all until he met the clear eyes of Mrs. White, then he shifted uneasily and requested Bob, who came in last, to close the door.

"What's it all about, Dorothy?" asked Bob in clear, cool tones, as he looked with rather a contemptuous glance at the agent. "Has someone been annoying you?" and he seemed to swell up his splendid muscles under his coat-sleeves-muscles that had been hardened by a healthy, active out-of-door life in camp.

"If there has," continued Bob, as he looked for a place in the paper-littered office to place his hat, "if there has, I'd just like to have a little talk with them-outside," and the lad nodded significantly toward the hall.

"Oh, Bob!" began Dorothy. "You mustn't-that is-Oh, I'm sure it's all a mistake," she said, hastily.

"That's more like it," said Mr. Akerson, and he seemed to smile in relief. Somehow he looked rather apprehensively at Bob, Tavia thought.

She, herself, was admiring the lad's manliness.

"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."

"You ought to," murmured Tavia.

"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."

He pushed the books toward Aunt Winnie.

"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 circ.u.mstances, 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.

"You never spent a penny on that place," growled Mr. Akerson, "I spent a good pile of my own money, just to fix it up after my own ideas of a studio apartment."

"I spent more than half of my income of thirty-five dollars per month from each apartment, for constant repairs, and when I discussed with you, as you well know, the advisability of advancing the rents a few dollars to cover the outlay, you discouraged it, said it was impossible in that section of the city to ask more than thirty-five dollars," said Mrs.

White sternly.

"What these books really show," said Dorothy, "is the enormous amount that is due Aunt Winnie from Mr. Akerson!"

"The tenants are so dissatisfied," explained Miss Mingle, "the constant increases in the rent were so unreasonable! The porter in the house, so we have found, was in league with Mr. Akerson, and kept him informed of everything that happened."

"That's how," said Tavia, with a hysterical laugh, "he knew whom it was we called on at the Court Apartments!"

"Easy there," said Bob to Tavia, "don't start laughing that way, or you'll break down, and I'll have to take care of you."

"It's been so awful, Bob," said Tavia, his name slipping naturally from her lips. "We tried to carry it through all alone!"

"Just as soon as you're left to yourselves," he said with a smile, "you begin to get into all sorts of trouble!"

"There is only one thing to say," declared Major Dale, advancing toward Mr. Akerson. "Nat will figure up what you owe to Mrs. White, you will sit down and write out a check for the amount, and that will close further transactions with you!"