“Why—never thought of it!” exclaimed Mr. Buckner, with new animation of manner and voice. “The very thing, it exactly fits!”
“What do you mean?” inquired Frank.
“Sit down, and I’ll explain. You took a check yesterday to pay for some salvage at a fire at Riverton.”
“Yes, sir,” nodded Frank.
“I notified my client last night by telegraph of our success. He’s a Lancaster man, in the hardware line. He ran up to Greenville last evening to see me. It seems that Morton, the man burned out at Riverton, was also in the hardware line. Everything he had was burned up in the fire. When they came to clear the wreck, they found all the metal stock he carried massed in among the ashes in the cellar. The insurance company had it put in big packing cases. It was all mixed up, some of the stock damaged entirely. My client, however, decided that it might net him a profit on the two hundred dollars he paid for it.”
“I see,” said Frank.
“What he has engaged me to do, is to go or send to Riverton and get the stuff carted over here. Then he wants the rubbish gone over, and the good stuff selected and sorted out. It seems that Morton had been neglecting his regular hardware business for some time. He invented an apple corer that wouldn’t core very well. He bought a lot of little stuff, such as initial buttons, needles and the like, and was trying to get into the mail order business, when the fire came along.”
“The mail order business?” said Frank in a quick breath.
“Yes. Now he’s going to take his insurance money and buy an interest in some publishing business in the city. Well, you can see that a little time and care may result in picking out quite a lot of really valuable stuff from the mass, brushing it up and all that.”