'They need not worry about a warrant,' Elsie replied. 'Tell your brother, Mr. Dering, that it will be perfectly useless. Meantime—I doubt if it is any good asking you—but—if we want your help, will you give me all the help you can?'
'Assuredly. All the help I can. Why not? I am the principal person concerned.'
'You are, indeed,' said Elsie gravely—'the principal person concerned. Very well, Mr. Dering—now I will tell you more. I know the—the criminal. I can put my hand upon him at any moment. It is one man who has done the whole, beginning with the cheque for which Athelstan was suspected—one man alone.'
'Why, child, what can you know about it? What can you do?'
'You were never in love, Mr. Dering—else you would understand that a girl will do a great deal—oh! a great deal more than you would think—for her lover. It is not much to think for him and to watch for him—and for her brother—the brother who has stripped himself of everything to give his sister!' She was fain to pause, for the tears which rose again and choked her voice.
'But, Elsie—what does this mean? How can you know what no one else has been able to find out?'
'That is my affair, Mr. Dering. Perhaps I dreamed it.'
'Do you mean that you will get back all the papers—all the transfers—the dividends that have been diverted—everything?'
'Everything is safe. Everything shall be restored.—My dear guardian, it is a long and a sad story. I cannot tell you now. Presently, perhaps. Or to-morrow. I do not know how I shall be able to tell you. But for your property, rest easy. Everything will come back to you—everything—except that which cannot be stored in the vaults of the Bank.'
The last words he heard not, or understood not.