Читать книгу The Corner House Girls' Odd Find - Hill Grace Brooks - Страница 6

“Why! Did you ever!” gasped Agnes Kenway.

“Thought you said it was a family photograph album!” said Neale O’Neil.

With their heads close together they were looking into the moth-eaten and battered book Agnes had found in the old Corner House garret. On turning the first page a yellowed and time-stained document met their surprised gaze.

There was a picture engraved upon the document, true enough. Such an ornate certificate, or whatever it might be, Agnes or Neale had never even seen before.

“‘The Pittsburg & Washington Railroad Co.,’” read Neale, slowly. “Whew! Calls for a thousand dollars – good at any bank.”

“Sandbank, I guess it means,” giggled Agnes.

But Neale was truly puzzled. “I never saw a bond before, did you, Aggie?”

“A bond! What kind of a bond?”

“Why, the kind this is supposed to be.”

“Why, is it a bond?”

“Goodness! you repeat like a parrot,” snapped Neale.

“And you’re as polite as a – a pirate,” declared Agnes.

“Well, did you ever see anything like this?”

“No. And of course, it isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. You know very well, Neale, that people don’t leave money around – loose – like this!”

“This isn’t money; it only calls for money,” said the boy.

“I guess it never called very loud for it,” giggled Agnes.

“Must be stage money, then,” laughed Neale. “Hi! here’s more of it.”

He had turned a leaf. There was another of the broad, important looking documents pasted in the old book.

“And good for another thousand dollars!” gasped Agnes.

“Phony – phony,” chuckled Neale, meaning that the certificates were counterfeit.

“But just see how good they look,” Agnes said wistfully.

“And dated more than sixty years ago!” cried Neale. “There were green-goods men in those days, eh? Hello! here’s another.”

“Why, we’re millionaires, Neale,” Agnes declared. “Oh! if it were only real we’d have an automobile.”

“This is treasure trove, sure enough,” her boy chum said.

“What’s that?”

“Whatever you find that seems to belong to nobody. I suppose this has been in the garret for ages. Hard for anybody to prove property now.”

“But it’s not real!”

“Yes – I know. But, if it were – ?”

“Oh! if it were!” repeated the girl.

“Wouldn’t that be bully?” agreed the boy. But he was puzzling over the mortgage bonds of a railroad which, if it had ever been built at all, was probably now long since in a receiver’s hands, and the bonds declared valueless.

“And all for a thousand apiece,” Neale muttered, turning the pages of the book and finding more of the documents. “Cracky, Aggie, there’s a slew of them.”

“But shouldn’t they be made out to somebody? Oughtn’t somebody’s name to be on them?” asked Agnes, thoughtfully.

“No, guess not. These must be unregistered bonds. I expect somebody once thought he was awfully rich with all this paper. It totes up quite a fortune, Aggie.”

“Oh, dear!” sighed Agnes. “I guess it’s true, Neale: The more you have the more you want. When we were so poor in Bloomingsburg it seemed as though if we had a dollar over at the end of the month, we were rich. Now that we have plenty – all we really need, I s’pose – I wish we were a little bit richer, so that we could have an auto, Neale.”

“Uh-huh!” said Neale, still feasting his eyes on the engraved bonds. “Cracky, Aggie! there’s fifty of ’em.”

“Goodness! Fifty thousand dollars?”

“All in your eye!” grinned Neale. “What do you suppose they ever pasted them into a scrap-book for?”

“That’s just it!” cried Agnes.

“What’s just it?”

“A scrap-book. I didn’t think of it before. They made this old album into a scrap-book.”

“Who did?” demanded the boy, curiously.

“Somebody. Children, maybe. Maybe Aunt Sarah Maltby might tell us something about it. And it will be nice for Tess and Dot to play with.”

“Huh!” grunted Neale.

“Of course that’s it,” added the girl, with more assurance. “It’s a scrap-book – like a postcard album.”

“Huh!” grunted Neale again, still doubtful.

“When Mrs. MacCall was a little girl, she says it was the fad to save advertising cards. She had a big book full.”

“Well – mebbe that’s it,” Neale said grudgingly. “Let’s see what else there is in the old thing.”

He began to flirt the pages toward the back of the book. “Why!” he exclaimed. “Here’s some real stage money. See here!”

“Oh! oh!”

“Doesn’t it look good?” said Neale, slowly.

“Just as though it had just come from the bank. What is it – Confederate money, Neale? Eva Larry has a big collection of Confederate bills. Her grandfather brought it home after the Civil War.”

“Oh! these aren’t Confederate States bills – they’re United States bills. Don’t you see?” cried Neale.

“Oh, Neale!”

“But you can bet they are counterfeit. Of course they are!”

“Oh, dear!”

“Silly! Good money wouldn’t be allowed to lie in a garret the way this was. Somebody’d have found it long ago. Your Uncle Peter, or Unc’ Rufus – or somebody. What is puzzling me is why it was put in a scrap-book.”

“Oh! they’re only pasted in at the corners. There’s one all loose. For ten dollars, Neale!”

“Well, you go out and try to spend it, Aggie,” chuckled her boy chum. “You’d get arrested and Ruth would have to bail you out.”

“It’s just awful,” Agnes declared, “for folks to make such things to fool other folks.”

“It’s a crime. I don’t know but you can be punished for having the stuff in your possession.”

“Goodness me! Then let’s put it in the stove.”

“Hold on! Let’s count it, first,” proposed Neale, laughing.

Neale was turning the leaves carefully and counting. Past the tens, the pages were filled with twenty dollar bills. Then came several pages of fifties. Then hundred dollar notes. In one case – which brought a cry of amazement to Agnes’ lips – a thousand dollar bill faced them from the middle of a page.

“Oh! goodness to gracious, Neale!” cried the Corner House girl. “What does it mean?”

Neale, with the stub of a pencil, was figuring up the “treasure” on the margin of a page.

“My cracky! look here, Aggie,” he cried, as he set down the last figure of the sum. “That’s what it is!”

The sum was indeed a fortune. The boy and girl looked at each other, all but speechless. If this were only good money!

“And it’s only good for the children to play with,” wailed Agnes.

Neale’s face grew very red and his eyes flashed. He closed the book fiercely. “If I had so much money,” he gasped, “I’d never have to take a cent from Uncle Bill Sorber again as long as I lived, I could pay for my own education – and go to college, too!”

“Oh! Neale! couldn’t you? And if it were mine we’d have an auto,” repeated Agnes, “and a man to run it.”

“Pooh! I could learn to run it for you,” proposed Neale. But it was plain by the look on his face that he was not thinking of automobiles.

“Say! don’t let’s give it to the kids to play with – not yet,” he added.

“Why not?”

“I – I don’t know,” the boy said frankly. “But don’t do it. Let me take the book.”

“Oh, Neale! you wouldn’t try to pass the money?” gasped Agnes.

“Huh! think I’m a chump?” demanded the boy. “I want to study over it. Maybe I’ll show the bonds to somebody. Who knows – they may still be of some small value.”

“We – ell – of course, the money – ”

“That’s phony – sure!” cried Neale, hastily. “But bonds sometimes are worth a little, even when they are as old as these.”

“No-o,” sighed Agnes, shaking her head. “No such good luck.”

“But you don’t mind if I take the book?” Neale urged.

“No. But do take care of it.”

So Neale took the old scrap-book home under his arm, neither he nor Agnes suspecting what trouble and worriment would arise from this simple act.