“Miss Carey would no more steal a bank-note than you or I would steal one, Shuttleworth.”
“Not she. I told Mrs. Knox so: but she scoffed at me.”
“That Miss Carey is innocent as the day, that she is an upright, gentle, Christian girl, I will stake my life upon,” said Dr. Knox. “How the note can have gone is another matter.”
“Are you at all interested in finding it out?” questioned Mr. Shuttleworth.
“Certainly I am. Every one ought to be, I think.”
The surgeon took his cigar from his mouth. “I’ll tell you my opinion, if you care to know it,” he said. “The note was burnt.”
“Burnt!”
“Well, it is the most likely solution of the matter that I can come to. Either burnt, or else was blown away.”
“But why do you say this?” questioned Dr. Knox.
“It was a particularly windy day. The glass-doors of the room were left open while the house ran about in a fright, attending to the child, young Dick. A flimsy bit of bank-paper, lying on the table, would get blown about like a feather in a gale. Whether it got into the fire, caught by the current of the chimney, or whether it sailed out-of-doors and disappeared in the air, is a question I can’t undertake to solve. Rely upon it, Knox, it was one of the two: and I should bet upon the fire.”