“Mr. Tyler’s money has not made us happy after all, has it, Roy?” he said, after the sad affair had been talked over.
“I was afraid that it wouldn’t, Syd. Still, this might have happened just the same. You have not been well though, old fellow, since that night you came over to Burdock to make the old man’s will.”
“Have you noticed that, Roy?” said Sydney quickly.
“Yes, it seems, as you say, that we must pay up for having the money in some way. But where can poor Rex be? I wonder if he is ashamed or afraid to come home?”
Anxiously the reports from the detectives were awaited. But when they came they were only depressing. Positively no trace of the missing boy could be found.
Advertisements were inserted in the New York and Philadelphia papers, but nothing came of them. The family were by this time well nigh distracted. They had not even the poor satisfaction of mourning the lost as one dead. They could only wait and hope, but as the days passed into a week, this last seemed futile.
The time came for school to open, but Roy had little heart to go alone. Still, he must attend to his education.
The first week of it dragged slowly by. Some of his Marley friends wanted him to come down there and spend his Saturday.
He had not yet decided Friday night whether he wanted to go, when the door bell rang, and a messenger appeared with a telegram for Roy Pell.
It was dated at some town in Jersey of which he had never heard, and was very brief, but the one word signed to it was worth a hundred lines, for that name was “Rex.”