Griffin sat down and motioned for Sidney Prale to do the same. Prale returned the automatic to his pocket, much to the relief of the servant.
Murk, standing outside by the gate, paced back and forth and wondered whether he should attempt to take the house by storm and rescue his employer. The chauffeur, waiting at the corner, wondered whether his fare had slipped down the next street without paying the bill. Murk relieved him on that point and threatened to beat him up because he intimated that Prale might do such a thing.
It was more than two hours later when Prale left the house and went out to the street. He paid the chauffeur and dismissed him, and told Murk to return to the hotel. Then he went back into the house and joined Mr. Griffin again, and after Griffin had telephoned several persons, he ordered his car, got into it with Prale, and started downtown.
An astonished watchman took them up in an elevator in an office building in the financial district, and a little later he took up several other gentlemen.
"Them financiers make me sick!" the watchman told himself. "Why can't they lay their schemes in the daytime?"
It was almost dawn when they left the building and scattered. They had spent hours investigating books and papers. Sidney Prale had even sent a messenger to the hotel with an order to Murk for certain books and papers of his own, and these had been investigated, too.
"And there we are, gentlemen," Prale had said, at the last. "I have shown you, I think, that I did not do this thing. I do not want you to believe me fully until I have proved my innocence by revealing the man who is guilty. I merely ask you to give me a fair chance to prove my case. I have told you my suspicions. Now it is up to me to demonstrate whether they are just or worthless."
Griffin had little to say as they rode back uptown. But when he dropped Prale at the hotel just before daylight, he gripped him by the hand.
"I want to believe you, Sidney!" he said. "I hope that you have told me the truth. If you have, I hope you'll be able to clear yourself. If you only can show me that the boy I was glad to help was not ungrateful, after all——"
"I'll do it, sir!"