"Aunt Ray, when I found Jack at the Greenwood Club last Saturday
night, he was frantic. I can not talk until Jack tells me I may,
but--he is absolutely innocent of all this, believe me. I
thought, Trude and I thought, we were helping him, but it was the
wrong way. He came back. Isn't that the act of an innocent
man?"
"Then why did he leave at all?" I asked, unconvinced. "What
innocent man would run away from here at three o'clock in the
morning? Doesn't it look rather as though he thought it
impossible to escape?"
Gertrude rose angrily. "You are not even just!" she flamed.
"You don't know anything about it, and you condemn him!"
"I know that we have all lost a great deal of money," I said. "I
shall believe Mr. Bailey innocent the moment he is shown to be.
You profess to know the truth, but you can not tell me! What am
I to think?"
Halsey leaned over and patted my hand.
"You must take us on faith," he said. "Jack Bailey hasn't a
penny that doesn't belong to him; the guilty man will be known in
a day or so."
"I shall believe that when it is proved," I said grimly. "In the
meantime, I take no one on faith. The Inneses never do."
Gertrude, who had been standing aloof at a window, turned
suddenly. "But when the bonds are offered for sale, Halsey,
won't the thief be detected at once?"
Halsey turned with a superior smile.
"It wouldn't be done that way," he said. "They would be taken
out of the vault by some one who had access to it, and used as
collateral for a loan in another bank.
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