Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/151

Rh Trant, gathering up the papers, "except to give me Gordon's home address."

"Five hundred and thirty-seven Leavenworth Street, on the South Side."

"I will come back to-morrow after banking hours. Meanwhile, as Gordon warned you, put an extra guard over the bank to-night. I hope to be able to tell you all that underlies this case when I have been to Gordon's home this evening, and seen his son, and"—Trant turned away—"that old typewriting machine of his."

He went out, the banker staring after him, perplexed.

Trant knew already that forty years of service for the little bank of Howell & Son had left Gordon still a poor man; and he was not surprised when, at seven o'clock that night, he turned into Leavenworth Street, to find Number 537 a typical "small, comfortable home," put up twenty years before in what had then been a new real estate subdivision and probably purchased by Gordon upon the instalment plan. Gordon's daughter, who opened the door, was a black-haired, gray-eyed girl of slender figure. She had the air of the housekeeper, careful and economical in the administration of her father's moderate and unincreasing means. But a look of more direct responsibility upon her face made Trant recollect, as he gave his name and stepped inside, that since her brother's default and her father's sacrifice to make it up, this girl herself was going out to help regain the ownership of the little home.