“Well, we couldn’t find him now. If he kept hidden then, when there was a hue and cry out for him, what chance would there be of finding him after seventeen years? Oh, no! Allen can’t be found. And, even if he could, I doubt but the thing is outlawed. I don’t know that the authorities would take it up. And I am pretty sure the creditors of the old firm would not.”
“That is not what I mean,” said Helen, softly. “But suppose we accuse this bookkeeper—and he is not guilty, either?”
“Well! Is that any great odds? Nobody knows where he is——”
“But suppose he should reappear,” persisted Helen. “Suppose somebody who loved him—a daughter, perhaps, as I am the daughter of Prince Morrell—with just as great a desire to clear her father’s name as I have to clear mine—— Suppose such a person should appear determined to prove Mr. Chesterton not guilty, too?”
“Ha, but we’ve beat ’em to it—don’t you see?” demanded Mr. Grimes, heartlessly.
“Oh, sir! I could not take such an apparent victory at such a cost!” cried Helen, wiping her eyes again. “You say you believe Allen Chesterton was guilty instead of father. But you put forward no evidence—no more than the mere suspicion that cursed poor dad. No, no, sir! To claim new evidence, but to show no new evidence, is not enough. I must find out for sure just who stole that money. That is what dad himself said would be the only way in which his name could be cleared.”
“Nonsense, girl!” ejaculated Fenwick Grimes, scowling again.
“I am sorry to go against both your wishes and Uncle Starkweather’s,” said Helen, slowly. “But I want the truth! I can’t be satisfied with anything but the truth about this whole unfortunate business.
“It made poor dad very unhappy when he was dying. It troubled my poor mother—so he said—all her life out there in Montana. I want to know where the money went—who got it—all about it. Then I can prove to people that it was not my father who committed the crime.”
“This is a very quixotic thing you have undertaken, my girl,” remarked Mr. Grimes, with a sudden change in his manner.