“Wait, Tom. He wrote more. He is willing to send me a check for the seventy-two dollars, if by paying it back into the fund I do not compromise myself.”
“How? What does he mean?”asked Beecham.
“This way, I suppose. If I pay it back I shall be considered by some to have—to speak plainly—to have taken it myself, or to have had some knowledge
of the guilty party, and, consequently, to have connived at it.”
“Does any living soul in his sound senses, you Don Quixote,” exclaimed Beecham, with an earnestness curiously resembling anger, “for an infinitesimal moment imagine you knew anything of it,”
The generous tone of voice, the absolute confidence it displayed, was grateful and soothing to the worried boy. His suspicions of his own cousin, which were not dissipated by that afternoon's encounter, was the difficulty with him now. The letter of his father said: “to have any knowledge of the guilty party.”Of course, conniving was out of the question. But Garrett! What to think of that which he saw on the night of the play! Could he have been mistaken? Oh, if Garrett that afternoon had only openly denied all knowledge of it, how happy Roy would be now! Under his present knowledge, however, he felt he could not accept the money from his father. Under a full conviction of his cousin's guilt he had made that strange promise of silence, and this he was determined to keep, let come what might. Thus his quandary, which arose on his part from a certain sense of honor, for he would not act upon a mere suspicion, and he also earnestly desired to save a relative the shame of being accused.
“No, I really believe,” said Henning, in answer to Beecham's indignant question, “I really believe that even those boys who profess to suspect me do not believe what they say. I do not believe there is a boy in the yard, nor a single member of the faculty, who has the least real suspicion that I know anything about the theft.”
“I guess not,” said Jack, and then added, “well, then, it's settled, isn't it?”
“Unfortunately, no. There is something in this
affair, which, until the robber is caught and the whole question disposed of forever, I can not mention; yet it is important enough for me to be prevented in honor from writing for that money.”