THE RED LEDGER. Frank L. Packard

      Chapter I.

       C,305

       Table of Contents

      Ewen Stranway slid his knife blade into the paper, and cut from the "personals" of the evening edition of the Times-Press the few lines at which he had been staring with startled eyes. And then, as though to focus the words and convince himself that it was not some astounding hallucination, he held the clipping nearer to him to read it again:

      "If Ewen Stranway, son of the late John J. and Mary Stranway, of Kenora, Midland County, Pennsylvania, will communicate by mail with C,305, care of this paper, enclosing his photograph, he will hear from one who is in his debt."

      What did it mean? A stranger in the city, and arrived but a few hours before, there was not a soul in New York he knew—none who knew him! What did it mean? What was it? A game? A plant? Debt? There was certainly no one in his debt, worse luck! It was quite the other way around! A photograph! Why a photograph? What did it mean?

      Stranway frowned as he got up from his chair, and walking to the window stood looking out on that section of Sixteenth Street, just west of Eighth Avenue, where he had taken a room that afternoon on his arrival. Only one thing was certain. The author of the "personal" was not jumping in the dark. Whoever had written it had, to a certain extent at least, an intimate knowledge of his, Stranway's, recent family affairs. Events in the last two weeks had surged upon him with blinding force: the telegram that had summoned him home from college; his parents' death in a motor accident; his father's estate found to be deeply involved, and, in consequence, himself, at twenty-four, reduced from affluence to sudden penury—and now, as a climax, this mysterious advertisement greeting him before he had literally had time to unpack his trunk and settle himself in the new surroundings that he had chosen as promising most in opportunity for the future.

      What did it mean? There was something that seemed almost uncanny about it. One person, and one only knew that he was in New York—Redell, the old family lawyer. But he had left Redell in Kenora only that morning. Redell was out of the question. Who, then?

      Stranway turned abruptly from the window and began to pace up and down the room, his brows furrowed, his strong, firm jaws a little out-flung, his broad, athletic shoulders squared back with a hint of aggressiveness. Suddenly, a new thought struck him. He swung quickly to the door, opened it, went down the stairs and passed out into the street. He walked rapidly to the avenue, purchased a copy of every evening paper on the news-stand and returned to his room.

      He spent ten minutes over these, and then, in spite of himself, laughed a little nervously. Each and every one of them contained the same advertisement word for word. Certainly, whoever had written it was leaving nothing to chance;