“It was Ralph,” she exclaimed, as she sank down into the nearest chair. “The mystery is solved!”
“Solved?” her sisters repeated inquiringly and all at once. “How? When? Who is the heir?”
Roberta laughed. “Well, here’s where I resign as a detective,” she declared. “I’ve had three cases and although each one has been successfully solved in spite of me, it has not been because of any cleverness on my part.”
“But, Bobs, do tell us what Ralph said. We’re bursting with curiosity.”
“My partner-detective feels as chagrined about it as I do, for the solution of the mystery just turned up; we neither of us ferreted it out as we had hoped that we would.”
“Bobita, you’re just trying to tantalize us,” Gwen declared. “Do tell us from the beginning.”
“Very well then, I will. Ralph said that his dad happened to recall recently something which his father had once told him. You know it was Ralph’s grandfather who was the intimate friend and legal advisor of Mr. Pensinger.
“It seems that a week before his death, Mr. Pensinger had sent some important papers and a letter to the office of Mr. Caldwaller-Cory, the grandfather, you understand. Just as he was about to examine them, he was called away on urgent business and he left the papers on his desk, expecting to return soon. The Cory building was even then in the process of construction, but Ralph’s grandfather had moved in before it was quite completed.
“That day the floor was being put down in the room adjoining the small office. Later, when Mr. Caldwaller-Cory returned, his mind was so filled with the intricacies of the new case which had just been given to him, that he did not even notice that the brown packet containing the Pensinger papers was gone; in fact, he had forgotten that it ever existed; but a week later, when he received word that his friend, Mr. Pensinger, had died suddenly, he recalled the papers and began to search for them, but they were never found.”
“Oh, I know where they were,” Lena May said brightly, “under the floor.”