“Well, your luck is still running true to form,” Louise said jokingly, as the girls drove toward Riverview. “Do you have any idea who John Toby may be?”
“Not the slightest,” Penny confessed. “The description would fit Hank Holloway, or for that matter, any one of a dozen men I know.”
The girls arrived in Riverview by mid-afternoon after an uneventful trip. Penny dropped Louise at the Sidell home and then went to the Star office to talk with her father. Mr. Parker was absent from his desk, but his secretary who was typing letters, explained that he would return in a moment.
Penny sat down in her father’s chair to wait. A bulky, unsealed envelope lay on the desk. Peering at it curiously she noted that it bore the marking: “Property Deed: Lots 456, 457, and 458.”
“What’s this?” she asked aloud. “Is Dad buying property?”
“Oh, no,” the secretary replied, glancing up from her typewriter. “That is the deed and abstract for the Orphans’ Camp site.”
“I wonder which property it is?”
“The land Mr. Blake controls, I believe. At least he brought the papers into the office this morning for your father’s inspection. I heard him say that if the forms are satisfactory, the deal will be completed at once.”
Penny unfolded one of the lengthy documents, shaking her head as she scanned the legal terms.
“I don’t see how Dad makes anything of this,” she said. “Such a mess of words and names!”