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. It would be possible to realize eighty per cent. of their face value.”
“In cash?”
“In cash.”
“But the man who did it–he would be known?”
“Yes. I tell you both, as sure as I stand here, I believe that Paul Armstrong looted his own bank. I believe he has a million at least, as the result, and that he will never come back. I’m worse than a pauper now. I can’t ask Louise to share nothing a year with me and when I think of this disgrace for her, I’m crazy.”
The most ordinary events of life seemed pregnant with possibilities that day, and when Halsey was called to the telephone, I ceased all pretense at eating. When he came back from the telephone his face showed that something had occurred. He waited, however, until Thomas left the dining-room: then he told us.
“Paul Armstrong is dead,” he announced gravely. “He died this morning in California. Whatever he did, he is beyond the law now.”
Gertrude turned pale.
“And the only man who could have cleared Jack can never do it!” she said despairingly.
“Also,” I replied coldly, “Mr. Armstrong is for ever beyond the power of defending himself. When your Jack comes to me, with some two hundred thousand dollars in his hands, which is about what you have lost, I shall believe him innocent.”
Halsey threw his cigarette away and turned on me.
“There you go!” he exclaimed. “If he was the thief, he could return the money, of course. If he is innocent, he probably hasn’t a tenth of that amount in the world. In his hands! That’s like a woman.”
Gertrude, who had been pale and despairing during the early part of the conversation, had flushed an indignant red. She got up and drew herself to her slender height, looking down at me with the scorn of the young and positive.
“You are the only mother I ever had,” she said tensely. “I have given you all I would have given my mother, had she lived–my love, my trust. And now, when I need you most, you fail me. I tell you, John Bailey is a good man, an honest man. If you say he is not, you–you–”
“Gertrude,” Halsey broke in sharply. She dropped beside the table and, burying her face in her arms broke into a storm of tears.
“I love him–love him,” she sobbed, in a surrender that was totally unlike her. “Oh, I never thought it would be like this. I can’t bear it. I can’t.”
Halsey and I stood helpless before the storm. I would have tried to comfort her, but she had put me away, and there was something aloof in her grief, something new and strange. At last, when her sorrow had subsided to the dry shaking sobs of a tired child, without raising her head she put out one groping hand.
“Aunt Ray!” she whispered. In a moment I was on my knees beside her, her arm around my neck, her cheek against my hair.
“Where am I in this?” Halsey said suddenly and tried to put his arms around us both. It was a welcome distraction, and Gertrude was soon herself again. The little storm had cleared the air. Nevertheless, my opinion remained unchanged. There was much to be cleared up before I would consent to any renewal of my acquaintance with John Bailey. And Halsey and Gertrude knew it, knowing me.