“Not the aunts!” cried Annie Laurie, fiercely.
“Oh, mercy no,” agreed Azalea, “not the aunts.”
“But who else handled the arm?” asked Carin.
Annie Laurie stood thinking. Then a deep flush spread over her face.
“I—I don’t—who else could have?” she stammered. She couldn’t bear to place anyone under suspicion.
But Azalea was more impulsive.
“Why Mr. Disbrow, the undertaker, of course,” she said. “He must have taken it off. He must have—” she stopped and the three stared at each other.
And then Annie Laurie remembered how he had crowded by her in the hall, not speaking, and looking the other way.
CHAPTER IX
THE DISBROWS
The three girls made up their minds to tell no one of their suspicions concerning the disappearance of Simeon Pace’s money. But Azalea could not but talk it over with Pa McBirney, and Thomas McBirney could not resist cogitating about the matter with Haystack Thompson, and he, in turn, was impelled to go with it to his trusted pastor, Absalom Summers. And Absalom whispered it to his Barbara, and Barbara—but perhaps she told no one. In looking the matter over afterward, she was almost sure that she had told no one. At least she hadn’t told of it right out. And Carin spoke of it only to her father; and he mentioned it merely to the banker Heller, and he only spoke of it to his fellow officers in the bank, and they told no one but their intimate friends.