“It seems that the boy never did amount to a great deal. He must have had bad heredity. Anyway, Miss Swenster took him from an orphan’s home. She gave him every advantage, sending him away to school and later trying to establish him in business.”
“That’s probably where a lot of her money went,” Cara observed sagely.
“Yes, she wasted plenty on him. He never appreciated it. He was always getting into one scrape or another. Then one day he up and forged a check for over a thousand dollars! Uncle George was a director in the First National bank where the matter came up. That’s how he happened to know all about it.”
Cara looked aghast at the news.
“And did they send him to prison?”
“No, Miss Swenster offered to pay the amount of the forged check, and the person whose name had been used, agreed not to prosecute. Her son left town and soon after that Miss Swenster closed up the old mansion.”
“I suppose it broke her heart to have him turn out so badly,” Cara mused. “And when she was having financial troubles of her own it must have been hard for her to raise the money.”
“Yes, it was unfortunate all around,” Madge agreed, getting up from the steps. “I must dash home now or I’ll be late for supper. See you tomorrow.”
The girls did not go to the Swenster mansion the following day or the next. Their evenings were spent cramming for month-end examinations which always were a trial, even to Madge who stood high in her classes.
Then one day, the girls noticed a brief advertisement in the daily paper, announcing that on the tenth of October, the Swenster mansion and all its furniture would be sold at public auction. It reminded them that if they intended to make another search for the missing pearls, they must be about it.