Chapter XII. The Particulars of a Swindle - Page 2

days passed and Joe had quite a few parties to take out on the lake. The season was now drawing to a close, and our hero began to wonder what he had best do when boating was over.

"I wonder if I couldn't strike something pretty good in Philadelphia?" he asked himself. The idea of going to one of the big cities appealed to him strongly.

One afternoon, on coming in from a trip across the lake, Joe found Andrew Mallison in conversation with Mr. Maurice Vane, who had arrived at the hotel scarcely an hour before. The city man was evidently both excited and disappointed.

"Here is the boy now," said the hotel proprietor, and called Joe up.

"Well, young man, I guess you have hit the truth," were Maurice Vane's first words.

"About those other fellows?" asked our hero, quickly.

"That's it."

"Did they swindle you?"

"They did."

"By selling you some worthless mining stocks?"

"Yes. If you will, I'd like you to tell me all you can about those two men."

"I will," answered Joe, and told of the strange meeting at the old lodge and of what had followed. Maurice Vane drew a long breath and shook his head sadly.

"I was certainly a green one, to be taken in so slyly," said he.

"How did they happen to hear of you?" questioned Joe, curiously.

"I answered an advertisement in the daily paper," said Maurice Vane. "Then this man, Caven, or whatever his right name may be, came to me and said he had a certain plan for making a good deal of money. All I had to do was to invest a certain amount and inside of a few days I could clear fifteen or twenty thousand dollars."

"That was surely a nice proposition," said Joe, with a smile.

"I agreed to go into the scheme if it was all plain sailing and then this Caven gave me some of the details. He said there was a demand for a certain kind of mining shares. He knew an old miner who was sick and who was willing to sell the shares he possessed for a reasonable sum of money. The plan was to buy the shares and then sell them to another party--a broker--at a big advance in price."

"That was simple enough," put in Andrew Mallison.

"Caven took me to see a man who called himself a broker. He had an elegant office and looked prosperous. He told us he would be glad to buy certain mining shares at a certain figure if he could get them in the near future. He said a client was red-hot after the shares. I questioned him closely and he appeared to be a truthful man. He said some folks wanted to buy out the mine and consolidate it with another mine close by."

"And then you came here and bought the stock of Malone?" queried Joe.

"Yes. Caven made