Dale turned on him. “Of course she does. And I do believe it. Sarah Glenn may have taken her own poetry——”
“When she was too sick to move out of her house?”
“Or Jasper Crosby may have sneaked into the office,” Dale went on, disregarding his question. “Irene says she didn’t take the poems and that ends the matter once and forever. If the rest of you want to go on distrusting her it’s none of my affair but I knew all along that Irene was too fine, too wonderful——”
Irene herself stopped him. Her voice was almost a command. “Leave them alone, Dale. Why shouldn’t they suspect me?”
“Because you didn’t do it.”
Irene was silent. She couldn’t say any more because the last she knew of the poems they were in Judy’s hands. It was after all lights were out and they were in bed that she told her.
“You said never to mind the work; you’d straighten things. And then some one took the poetry out of my hands. Wasn’t it you?”
“It certainly wasn’t,” Judy declared. “I had just opened the door for Dale Meredith but he wasn’t there yet.”
“Did you turn your back? Could anyone else have come in?”
“Why,” Judy exclaimed, “I believe they could have—if they had been very quick.”