Peabody accepted her description of the coat. He was plainly excited and nervous, and betrayed a curious disposition to conciliate Betty, instantly detected in his change of tone.
"Did you pick up any other papers?" he asked quite politely. "Any folded sheets, I mean, or a long envelope? I thought you might have put them back of the clock or somewhere for safe keeping and forgotten to mention them to me."
Betty looked her astonishment. Automatically her eyes traveled to the clock which was pulled out of its place against the wall. So the man had actually looked there, believing that out of chagrin she might have concealed his papers from him!
"Nothing fell out of your pocket except my letter," she said earnestly and with a quietness that carried conviction. "I saw absolutely nothing else on the floor. If I had picked up other papers, I should have returned them to you, of course."
Mrs. Peabody cleared her throat, usually a sign of coming speech on the rare occasions when she did open her mouth in her husband's presence.
"What you lost, Joseph?" she asked eagerly. "Something missing out o' your pocket?"
"Yes, something out of my pocket!" said her husband savagely. "You wouldn't know if I told you, but it's an unrecorded deed and worth a good deal of money. And I'll bet I know who took it—that measly runaway, Bob Henderson! By gum, he carried the coat up to the house for me from the barn the day before he lit out. That's where it's gone. I see his game! He'll try to get money out of me. But I won't pay him a cent. No sir, I'll go to Washington first and choke the deed out of his dirty pocket."
"Did Bob go to Washington?" quavered Mrs. Peabody, her mind seizing on this concrete fact, the one statement she could understand in her husband's monologue. "How'd you find out, Joseph?"
"Not through Betty," returned Peabody grimly. "She's willing to take the scoundrel's part against honest folks any time. Jim Turner told me. Leastways he told me of some old duffer who runs a crazy shop down there, and he thinks Bob's gone looking him up to find out about his parents. Just let him try blackmailing me, and he'll learn a thing or two."
Betty had kept still as long as she could.