“Did they swindle you?”
“They did.”
“By selling you some worthless mining stocks?”
“Yes. If you will, I'd like you to tell me all you can about those two men.”
“I will,” answered Joe, and told of the strange meeting at the old lodge and of what had followed. Maurice Vane drew a long breath and shook his head sadly.
“I was certainly a green one, to be taken in so slyly,” said he.
“How did they happen to hear of you?” questioned Joe, curiously.
“I answered an advertisement in the daily paper,” said Maurice Vane. “Then this man, Caven, or whatever his right name may be, came to me and said he had a certain plan for making a good deal of money. All I had to do was to invest a certain amount and inside of a few days I could clear fifteen or twenty thousand dollars.”
“That was surely a nice proposition,” said Joe, with a smile.
“I agreed to go into the scheme if it was all plain sailing and then this Caven gave me some of the details. He said there was a demand for a certain kind of mining shares. He knew an old miner who was sick and who was willing to sell the shares he possessed for a reasonable sum of money. The plan was to buy the shares and then sell them to another party—a broker—at a big advance in price.”