“I knew Sim would not care, and he won’t come home before Saturday. I meant to send it back before that time,” Mr. Millweed explained.
“That may be all right; but Sim won’t thank you for taking it, when he learns that she has gone down in two hundred and fifty feet of water. Now, what is to be done?” asked Dory. “Will you go back to Burlington, and face the music?”
“I don’t know what to do,” replied Mr. Millweed, evidently overwhelmed with perplexity.
“I have told you what I would do if I were in your place,” added Dory.
“Then I will go back; but I don’t want to be dragged into Burlington by Tim Lingerwell,” replied Mr. Millweed, as he glanced at the steam-launch.
“All right, if you will only go back. What makes you think Tim Lingerwell took the money?” asked Dory.
“The more I think of it, the more certain I feel that he took the money. Why should he call me from my work to get the cash-book out of the safe for him, when he was within six feet of it? Why should he send me to the safe at all, and leave it unlocked, when he knew there was so much money in it? Why didn’t he search me before Mr. Longbrook went out? He managed it all to suit himself,” replied the passenger with energy.
Dory thought his passenger was right. If the head man in the store believed the substitute clerk had taken the money from the safe, he could not see why he had been permitted to leave the store.
“Did they chase you in the street after you left the store?” asked Dory, who was rather inclined to do a little detective business on his own account,
as he had had a taste of it during the summer.