Mrs. Hartel shook her head regretfully. “I’m very sorry it was Cheney.” Allan related the incident of the meeting, the struggle, and the confession.
“I think you acted rightly,” said Mrs. Hartel. “It will be as well to say nothing more about it.”
“Do you really think,” asked Edith, “that he took the plates on his father’s account—because he was afraid the pictures might prove something against his father?”
“I don’t know,” said Allan. “He wouldn’t confess—and I didn’t much care to make him. Anyway, I’m quite sure his father had nothing to do with the fire. Mr. Dobbs doesn’t think it was set afire, and the factory people don’t either.”
“I’m glad,” said Edith. “It seems dreadful to think of—any one deliberately setting fire to a building.”
Dr. Hartel did not reach home until late that night, but Allan waited up for him. He wanted to tell the news himself.
The next morning he hurried over to Owen’s and to Detective Dobbs’s house. Dobbs only remarked, “I thought so.” The detective seemed to take it for granted that Cheney would go unpunished. “But he should be thrashed for it,” he said, and added: “How about Sporty’s picture?”
“I think it is going to be good,” Allan replied. “I’ll fetch you a proof to-day.” He could see that Dobbs was more interested in Sporty’s picture than in anything else, though he seemed to enjoy all of the proofs of the pictures made in New York which Allan had to show him that afternoon.
Meanwhile, Allan had gone to the factory superintendent and delivered the plates to him. The superintendent was delighted.
“I don’t know whether they are going to be of any use to us,” he said, “but I hated to lose them that way, and they may be very important. Matling!” called the superintendent to a man at a desk in the corner of the factory office, “make out a check to young Hartel for fifty dollars, and take it in to Mr. Ames.”