“In that case we certainly had better look out,” answered Fred. “Why, for all we know, he might try to set fire to the houses or something of the sort.”
“No, I don’t think he’ll try anything like that. He is out for money, and to burn down these houses wouldn’t give him any. Of course, he might threaten to burn the places down, but that wouldn’t get him anything, anyway, because we have the places insured, and it would not be our loss even though it might place us in personal peril and cause us great inconvenience.”
“What do you really think he’ll try to do, Uncle Dick?” asked Andy. And now for once the fun-loving Rover boy was really sober.
“I think he’ll work his scheme in one of two ways,” answered Dick Rover. “He’ll either try to get at me in some business way—by threatening The Rover Company with some tremendous loss unless we come across as he wants me to—or otherwise he’ll work his scheme either through the girls or their mothers or through you boys.”
“Do you think he might try to carry some of us off?” asked Fred bluntly.
“Didn’t it look like it when he tried to get Martha and Mary into the auto?” questioned Sam Rover.
“And what about that invitation my wife got that she paid no attention to?” put in Tom Rover.
“What was that?” queried several of the boys.
“You know your Aunt Nellie is quite interested in basket work. This was an invitation to attend an exhibition of such work to be given by some Indians at a place uptown. Your Aunt Nellie was urged to come by all means, and to bring her sisters-in-law with her, and the letter was signed in the name of one of her friends. She did not go because her foot happened to hurt her. Later, we found that the signature on the invitation was forged, and a detective found out that the exhibition of basket work was a fake. The whole thing was gotten up to get your Aunt Nellie and her sister and Aunt Dora to a rather out-of-the-way place. What might have happened if they had gone there, heaven only knows,” and Tom Rover shook his head ominously.
This revelation was a surprise to the four boys, and they hardly knew what to say concerning it. It looked as if there had been a slick attempt made to get the mother of the twins, and possibly the mothers of the others, into the clutches of Carson Davenport.