“Yes; has her landlord threatened to turn her out unless she can pay the rent, and ought we put up our spare cash to help settle the bill?” demanded Josh.
“Oh! it’s a thousand times more serious than that,” said Rod, which remark, of course, aroused the curiosity of his chums more than ever.
“Get some speed on then, Rod, and give us the gist of the business,” said Hanky Panky appealingly; “of course there’s a heap of trouble in the old city just now, but when a case pokes right out in front of you it’s hard to pass by. If we could help the little French woman and her pretty child, why, we ought to wake up and do something.”
“Wait till you hear how the thing stands before you get so rash,” warned Rod, who knew only too well the hasty ways of his two chums. “This little woman’s name is Jeanne D’Aubrey. Her husband is a French reservist named Andre. He was called to the colors as soon as the war broke out, leaving her here in Antwerp with her little daughter, and a living to make from her few cows.”
“But what was the paper you read, Rod?” asked impatient Josh.
“I’m coming to that,” the other told him; “it is a very important letter she has just received from a law firm in Paris, informing herself and husband that an old uncle, Jasper, has died some time since, leaving his estate to Andre on condition that he sign a certain document within a given time. It now lacks just three weeks of the limit, and unless his signature is properly placed there, and witnessed by three reliable people, the property will go to another nephew, one Jules Baggott by name, who has long hoped to inherit it.”
“Great Scott! that is tough, I should say!” ejaculated Josh.
“And her husband away at the French war front, perhaps shot long before now in the bargain,” muttered Hanky Panky soberly; “because we’ve heard that there’s been bloody fighting all along the line between the French border and in front of Paris, where General Von Kluck’s German army is already pressing.”
“You can’t wonder then that the poor little woman is overcome with the terrible trouble that has fallen on her,” explained Rod. “Once that document is properly signed and she would be fixed for life, no matter what happened to her soldier husband. But she hardly knows what to do. It is utterly out of the question for her to try and find him; and she doesn’t know any person reliable enough in Antwerp to trust them with the precious papers. You see, this other cousin, Jules, is here in town, for she has even had him call upon her lately; and she now believes he knows of his uncle’s will, so that he might try to keep the messenger from ever meeting Andre!”
Rod paused just there. Perhaps he knew his auditors so well that he really anticipated what the effect would be upon both Josh and Hanky Panky. The pair looked at the French woman, who was observing them with such an eager, hungry expression on her face. She wrung her hands piteously just then, as though she saw the one chance to gain a little fortune for herself and child slipping away for lack of a brave champion who would undertake the task of finding her Andre.