I could feel the flash in Aunt Cal’s eyes though I could not see it. “Of course he didn’t. He was the victim of a pack of adventurers! He was gone six years. And when he came back,” her voice broke, “he was like an old man! So—so changed!”
“Oh, Aunt Cal, how terrible!” I cried. “What did it?”
“His health was ruined for one thing—the life he’d led, the climate, the companionships. And what was worse, his moral fibre was gone! He had no desire to work, to settle down to earn an honest living. His head was full of schemes, get-rich-quick schemes. He drifted from one to another. Nothing that he undertook ever amounted to anything.” She broke off suddenly and her voice softened ever so little. “I am telling you all this,” she added, “so that you may understand what the lure of gold can do to a human being.”
We were silent for a long time after she had finished speaking. If the truth be told I was feeling rather small. Also I was experiencing a new understanding of Aunt Cal. For the first time I had had a glimpse of the real person behind the mask of severity she habitually wore. It was Eve who finally ventured to put one more question. “And Carter Craven,” she asked, “when he went away the last time, was it for something like that?”
“I believe so,” Aunt Cal returned shortly. “I was told it was a gold mine, though I was not here at the time.”
“And no one has heard of him since?”
She nodded. “I went into Millport yesterday to see the lawyer who has charge of the estate, to tell him about this man Bangs. I feel that if we could get hold of him, he might be able to tell us something. But now that he is wanted by the police, no doubt he will have left the neighborhood for good.” She sighed.
I sighed too. “I do wish they could find him before Wednesday,” I said. “Then perhaps the police would believe Michael’s story. If they don’t——” I broke off, conscious that Aunt Cal was not listening. She seemed utterly absorbed in her own thoughts.
Didn’t she care, I thought, that the good name of a perfectly innocent boy was about to be dragged in the dust! As the minutes went by and still she said nothing, all my newly aroused sympathy vanished. If she was so indifferent to the troubles of others, she didn’t deserve anybody’s sympathy. I grew so indignant, sitting there in the darkness, that I finally could stand it no longer and said I guessed I’d go to bed.
“All she cares about,” I sputtered five minutes, later as I pulled off my shoes and flung them into the corner, “is that stuffy old house with its messy old garden and its defunct fountain and—and all of its moldly old memories!”