“You could count on that!” he stated earnestly.
“You bet you could!” Al declared and Curt added a similar assertion.
“If I thought you meant that—if I thought you’d believe me——”
“Really we would!” Al was also touched; Griff, caught and breaking down and seeming to be declaring innocence in some way, was not the furtive, uneasy, shifty-eyed Griff they had known. “Honestly! Try us and see.” He and Curt moved closer. The three stood in a group in front of the huddling youth in the swivel chair.
Griff looked up dolefully.
“It will make me out bad enough,” he stated. “But—not as bad as you’ve been thinking. Oh, I know!” he took on a touch of his old defiance, “I know you’ve tried to connect me with all the wrong things that have been going on here! I know I’ve acted as though I am guilty. I’m not, though—not in the way you think.”
“All right,” Curt admitted. “We’ll listen. We’d rather have you innocent than guilty—of anything!”
“Even if our case—” Al stopped suddenly, but Griff nodded.
“I guess you all think you’re clever,” he said, forgetting his own trouble for a second or two. “You come here to learn all about this mystery of where the missing parts go and who did things to the crates, and why. Don’t you think we have eyes? It’s all over the plant what you are trying to do. Don’t you suppose we all know one of you is a close friend of the other two, and Bob and Al are sons of a detective? What’s the answer?”
“The answer seems to be that you thought we weren’t smart and so you went right ahead.” Curt was a little nettled by Griff’s statement, although common sense told him, now that Griff mentioned the point, that their scheme must be fairly evident to any sensible person.