“Ridiculous! Mr. Grimes was away from the city at the time.”
“Then you do remember all about it, sir?” asked Helen, quickly.
“Ahem! That fact had not slipped my mind,” replied her uncle, weakly.
“And then, there was Allen Chesterton, the bookkeeper. Was a search ever made for him?”
“High and low,” returned her uncle, promptly. “But nobody ever heard of him thereafter.”
“And why did the shadow of suspicion not fall upon him as strongly as it did upon my father?” cried the girl, dropping, in her earnestness, her assumed uncouthness of speech.
“Perhaps it did—perhaps it did,” muttered Mr. Starkweather. “Yes, of course it did! They both ran away, you see——”
“Didn’t you advise dad to go away—until the matter could be cleared up?” demanded Helen.
“Why—I—ahem!”
“Both you and Mr. Grimes advised it,” went on the girl, quite firmly. “And father did so because of the effect his arrest might have upon mother in her delicate health. Wasn’t that the way it was?”