"I wonder," she mused, "if what this man Ilingsworth says is true. Is it possible that my father——" she stopped abruptly. "No, no, it can't be true," she went on; "my father wouldn't...." But the face of Giles Ilingsworth rose before her, and she found herself searching his open, honest countenance for some loophole of escape. Now his words rang in her ears, and she felt that they were the words of a man who knew....
"Oh," she cried, "I must find out who is right, and who is wrong! I must know about my father, and what he has done!" Presently, she leaped to her feet, crossed to her dressing-table and picked up the photograph of a man—a young man with a square chin and wonderful eyes—so she thought—that looked her squarely in the face.
"Eliot," she said softly, to the picture, "you're always honest with me, are you not? You're honest with everybody. I wonder if you will find out for me—the truth about my father."
Now she drew the photograph nearer to her, and her eyes grew soft and tender, and, for the time being, she forgot Ilingsworth and his daughter Elinor; forgot the Tri-State Trust Company and its alleged iniquities; forgot even her father, Peter V. Wilkinson.
"Eliot, dear," she whispered, "I wonder what you would think of me, if you knew that I did this?" Whereupon, she pressed her soft, warm, young face against the pictured one. "Maybe you'll never know, though," she went on; "maybe you'll never take the trouble to find out."
Leslie laid down the photograph with a sigh, and, retracing her steps to the window, was just in time to see a big Mastodon bring up at the curb in the street below, from which four men alighted: Peter V. Wilkinson, her father, looking very much exercised and troubled; Flomerfelt, his confidential man; and, lastly, two Pinkerton detectives, recently-acquired guards who were never far away whenever he appeared in the open.
III
"What the deuce is that machine doing in front of my place?" were the words that Peter V. Wilkinson spoke as his eyes lighted upon the dark blue limousine that had been standing for so long a time before his house.
"Whose machine is it?" answered Flomerfelt, who had not yet recognised it. But a moment more he emitted a whistle and whispered softly under his breath: "By George, it's hers!"