"If I'd taken it, wouldn't I have disappeared? Would I have been such a fool as to have stayed here to be caught?"
"If the thief had run away, that would have fastened the guilt on him at once. To remain here, hoping to throw suspicion on Mr. Morton—this was the cleverest course."
"I did not take the money!" David cried desperately. "It's a lie!"
Helen moved to David's side, and gazed straight into Mr. Haddon's accusing face. Indignation was replacing her astoundment; her cheeks were tingeing with red.
"What, would you condemn a man upon mere guess-work!" she cried. "Merely because the money is not there, is that proof that Mr. Aldrich took it? Do you call this justice, Mr. Haddon?"
Mr. Haddon's look did not alter, and he did not reply. The opinion of womankind he had ever considered negligible.
Helen turned to David and gave him her hand. "I believe you."
He thanked her with a look.
"It must have been Mr. Morton," she said.
Her words first thrilled him. Then suddenly they rang out as a knell. If he threw off the guilt, it must fall on Morton; if Morton were publicly guilty, then the hundreds of the Mission—