“I do not know. Perhaps you can’t. Perhaps Uncle Starkweather cannot, either. But, it seems to me, if anything had been heard from that bookkeeper——”
“Allen Chesterton?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well! I don’t know how you are going to prove it, but I have always believed Allen was guilty,” declared Mr. Grimes, nodding his head vigorously, and still watching her face.
“Oh, have you, Mr. Grimes?” cried the girl, eagerly, clasping her hands. “You have always believed it?”
“Quite so. Evidence was against my old partner—yes. But it wasn’t very direct. And then—what became of Allen? Why did he run away?”
“That is what other people said about father,” said Helen, doubtfully. “It did not make him guilty, but it made him look guilty. The same can be said of the bookkeeper.”
“But how can you go farther than that?” asked Mr. Grimes. “It’s too long ago for the facts to be brought out. We can have our suspicions. We might even publish our suspicions. Let us get something in the papers—I can do it,” and he nodded, decisively, “stating that facts recently brought to light seemed to prove conclusively that Prince Morrell, once accused of embezzlement of the bank accounts of the firm of Grimes & Morrell, was guiltless of that crime. And we will state that the surviving partner of the firm is convinced that the only person guilty of that embezzlement was one Allen Chesterton, who was the firm’s bookkeeper. How about that? Wouldn’t that fill the bill?” asked Mr. Grimes, rubbing his hands together.
“If we had such an article published in the papers and circulated among his old friends, wouldn’t that satisfy you, my dear? Then you would do no more of this foolish probing for facts that cannot possibly be reached—eh? What do you say, Helen Morrell? Isn’t that a famous idea?”
But the girl from Sunset Ranch was, for the moment, speechless. For a second time, it seemed to her, she was being bribed to make no serious investigation of the evidence connected with her father’s old trouble. Both Uncle Starkweather and this old man seemed to desire to head her off!