This was another staggerer for Owen. Dallas in need of money! He knew that the girl’s position as stenographer in Mr. Sammis’ real-estate office did not command a very big salary; but she had never once hinted to Owen that she was not earning enough to pay her expenses.
"Poor little girl," he mused tenderly. "She’s evidently been having a hard struggle to get along, and I never guessed it. But, thank goodness, she won’t have to[Pg 50] struggle any longer. There’s nothing to prevent us from getting married now, and she can throw up that job as soon as she’s ready."
He was smiling to himself at the pleasant picture his mind drew of a cozy little flat, with Dallas, trim and dainty, pouring coffee at a breakfast table laid for two, when the strident voice of the boarding-house woman brought him sharply to his senses:
"Why a young woman that’s earning twelve dollars a week—which I understand is her salary, Mr. Sheridan—shouldn’t be able to keep out of debt when her board bill’s only eight, is something that I fail to understand. It isn’t as if she was a fancy dresser. She’s always neat, of course, but she never wears expensive clothes, and I can’t see why she should have to get three weeks behind in her board, when——”
Owen hastily took out his wallet, and withdrew twenty-four dollars.
"When Miss Worthington comes back, you can tell her that her board bill has been paid, without telling her who paid it, Mrs. O’Brien," he said, handing her the money. "And please don’t mention anything to anybody about her having been in arrears."
"I won’t, sir," the landlady assured him. "It ain’t no disgrace, of course, to be hard up; but, at the same time, I know it ain’t a subject that people like to have talked about. I’ll be very careful not to mention it, Mr. Sheridan."
"I sincerely hope that she’ll keep that promise," said Owen to himself, as he left the house. "Until this pink-envelope mystery is cleared up, it would be very awkward to have it become known that Dallas was so financially embarrassed that she couldn’t pay her board bill."
Then he smiled grimly, as it occurred to him that the only person from whom, in Dallas’ behalf, such knowledge should have been kept was himself. Of what use to request the landlady not to mention the matter to anybody, when he, the inspector in charge of the case, was already in possession of the incriminating information? He was the man who must find out what had become of the missing pink envelope. He was the man who must name the guilty person, and eventually make an arrest in the case. And, now that he knew that Dallas Worthington had suddenly vanished, a few minutes after she got possession of the only pink envelope which the letter box contained, what was he going to do about it?
He asked himself this question uneasily as he walked away from the boarding place. He told himself indignantly that it was preposterous to suppose for a minute that Dallas could be guilty of stealing the missing letter; that she could deliberately have deceived Carrier Andrews in order to get possession of the hundred-dollar bill which the pink envelope contained.