“Fred isn’t so bad after all,” she thought after he had gone. “I’ll give him an office job next week.”
Penny returned to her work. In need of an extra sheet of paper, she tried to open the lower drawer of her desk. It was stuck fast. She tugged at it several times, finally pulling it out entirely. A folded newspaper clipping dropped to the floor.
Wondering what it might be, she picked it up. The torn sheet, yellow with age, bore the picture of a young man. The face was vaguely familiar although the name beneath it read, Matthew Jewel.
“Matthew Jewel,” she whispered. “But it’s Matthew Judson! Judson as a young man. He must have changed his name!”
The two column headline drew her attention.
MATTHEW JEWEL BEGINS TEN YEAR SENTENCE IN NEW YORK PRISON FOR MISAPPROPRIATION OF BANK FUNDS
The clipping, she noted, had been cut from a New York paper and was dated twenty years earlier. It reported Matthew Jewel’s conviction, following an admission that he had stolen two thousand dollars belonging to the Berkley Savings Bank.
Penny studied the picture again. Not the slightest doubt entered her mind that the young man of the story and Matthew Judson were the same individual. Evidently the clipping had been saved by the former publisher, and in some manner had become lodged beneath the drawer.
“I’m sure no one in Riverview ever knew that Judson served a term in prison,” she thought. “He came here years ago with his daughter, and to all appearances had led an upright life.”
After perusing the item again, she returned it to the drawer which she carefully locked. She knew that the information was of utmost importance. Was it not possible that she had stumbled upon a motivation for Judson’s strange behavior of the past year? Could not the data contained in the clipping have provided an unscrupulous person with a basis for blackmail?