was it purchased? See here, Porter, what sort of tom-foolery is this?” cried Asa Dickley. “You know as well as I do when you got the things. I wouldn’t be so harsh with you, only you promised me faithfully that you would come in and settle up long before this.”
“Mr. Dickley, I haven’t had any goods from you for a long, long time–and what I have had I have paid for,” answered Dave, doing his best to keep his temper, because he knew the storekeeper must be laboring under a mistake. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t been in your store for several months.”
“What!” ejaculated the storekeeper. “Do you mean to deny that you bought those goods from me, young man?”
“I certainly do deny it. As I said before, I haven’t been in this store for several months.”
At this plain declaration made by Dave, Mr. Asa Dickley grew fairly purple. He leaned over his counter and shook his clenched fist in Dave’s face.
“So that is the way you are going to try to swindle me out of my money, is it, Dave Porter?” he cried. “Well, let me tell you, it won’t work. You came here and got those goods from me, and either you’ll pay for them or I’ll sue your father for the amount. Why, it’s preposterous!” The storekeeper turned to his clerk, who was gazing on the scene in open-mouthed wonder. “Here a customer comes in and buys a lot of goods and I am good-hearted enough to trust him to the amount, twenty-six dollars, and then he comes here and declares to my face that he never had the things and he won’t pay for them. Now what do you think of that, Hibbins?”
“I think it’s pretty raw,” responded the clerk.
“Weren’t you in the shop when I let Porter have some of those goods?”
“I certainly was,” answered Hibbins. “Of course, I was in the rear, sorting out those new goods that had come in, so I didn’t see just what you let him have; but I certainly know he got some things.”
“Mr. Dickley, now listen to me for a minute,” said Dave in a tone of voice that arrested the man’s attention in spite of his irascibility. “Look at me closely. Didn’t the fellow who got those things from you look somewhat different from me?”
Dave faced the storekeeper with unflinching eyes, and Asa Dickley was compelled to look the youth over carefully. As he did this the positive expression on his face gradually changed to one of doubt.
“Why, I–er–Of course, he looked like you,” he stammered. “Of course you can change your looks a little; but that don’t count with me. Besides, didn’t you give me your name as Dave Porter, and ask me if I didn’t remember you?”
“The fellow who got those goods may have done all that, Mr. Dickley. But that fellow was not I. I may be mistaken, but I think it was a young man who resembles me, and who some time ago made a great deal of trouble for me.”
“Humph! That’s a fishy kind of story, Porter. If there is such a person he must look very much like you.”
“He does. In fact, some people declare they can hardly tell us apart.”
“What’s the name of that fellow?”
“Ward Porton.”
“Does he live around here?”
“I don’t know where he is living just at present. But I saw him day before yesterday in Clayton. I tried to stop him, but he ran away from me.”
The storekeeper gazed at Dave for a moment in silence, and then pursed up his lips and shook his head decidedly.
“That is too much of a fish story for me to swallow,” he said harshly. “You’ll either have to bring that young man here and prove that he got the goods, or else you’ll have to pay for them yourself.”
CHAPTER VI
MORE TROUBLE
Dave and Roger spent the best part of half an hour in Asa Dickley’s store, and during that time our hero and his chum gave the particulars of how they had become acquainted with Ward Porton, and how the young moving-picture actor had tried to pass himself off as the real Dave Porter, and how he had been exposed and had disappeared.
“Well, if what you say is true I’ve been swindled,” declared the storekeeper finally. “I’d like to get my hands on that young man.”
“You wouldn’t like it any better than I would,” returned Dave, grimly. “You see, I don’t know how far this thing extends. Mr. Wecks has been after me to pay for some shoes that I never got.”
“Say, that moving-picture actor must be a lulu!” declared the storekeeper’s clerk, slangily. “If you don’t watch out, Porter, he’ll get you into all kinds of hot water.”
“I think the best you can do, Dave, is to notify the storekeepers you do business with to be on the lookout for Porton,” suggested Roger. “Then, if he shows up again, they can have him held until you arrive.”
“I’ll certainly have to do something,” answered Dave.
“Then I suppose you don’t want to settle that bill?” came from Asa Dickley, wistfully.
“No, sir. And I don’t think you ought to expect it.”
“Well, I don’t know. The fellow who got those goods said he was Dave Porter,” vouchsafed the storekeeper doggedly.
From Asa Dickley’s establishment Dave, accompanied by his chum, drove around to the store kept by Mr. Wecks. He found the curtains still down, but the shoe-dealer had just come in, and was at his desk writing letters.
“And you mean to say you didn’t get those shoes?” questioned Mr. Wecks with interest, after Dave had explained the situation. “That’s mighty curious. I never had a thing like that happen before.” He knew our hero well, and trusted Dave implicitly. “I shouldn’t have sent that letter only I had a chance to sell a pair of shoes that size, and I thought if you had made your selection I could sell the pair you didn’t want to the other fellow.”
Once again the two boys had to tell all about Ward Porton and what that young rascal was supposed to be doing. As they proceeded Mr. Wecks’s face took on a look of added intelligence.
“Exactly! Exactly! That fits in with what I thought when that fellow went off with the shoes,” he declared finally. “I said to myself, ‘Somehow Dave Porter looks different to-day. He must have had a spell of sickness or something.’ That other chap was a bit thinner and paler than you are.”
“He’s a regular cigarette fiend, and that is, I think, what makes him look pale,” put in Roger. And then he added quickly: “Do you remember–was he smoking?”
“Yes, he was. He threw a cigarette stub away while he was trying on the shoes, and then lit another cigarette when he was going out. I thought at the time that he was probably smoking more than was good for him.”
“I don’t smoke at all, and never have done so,” said Dave. He turned to his chum. “I think the fact that the fellow who got the shoes was smoking is additional proof that it was Porton.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea that it was anybody else,” answered the senator’s son.
Mr. Wecks promised to keep on the lookout for
