“Character!” ejaculated the girl, wonderingly. “What! What do you mean, Dan; I don’t understand?”
“Five hundred pounds have been removed from the safe!” said Dan, tersely. “The money was put there yesterday. George had the keys in the afternoon. Bullen went away early, I believe. When he went to the safe this morning the money was gone!”
“Gone! But who could have taken it, Dan?”
He explained the circumstances of the robbery.
“Could not the doors have been opened with a skeleton key?” asked Nora.
There was a note of exaggerated anxiousness in the inquiry at which Dan would have smiled under more pleasant circumstances.
“No doubt,” he said, “they could, and were; but the trouble is that the keys are never out of the possession of one or other of them.”
“But I cannot see——” Nora began and stopped, looking closely into her brother’s face.
“No, nor I,” mused Dan. “But one thing is certain: George Chard never had anything to do with it!”