Wilkinson looked puzzled.
"Why do we need him?" Wilkinson asked the question in a voice in which excitement still held sway.
"That's what I should like to know!" put in Mrs. Wilkinson, gulping down, not without audible satisfaction, her customary night-cap.
Leslie blushed as she added that the question likewise was of interest to her.
"We're disgraced, that's all there is to it!" snapped the mistress of the house, her night-cap, even at this early stage, lending her asperity. "And I the most of all! I don't see how this Beekman can help us out?"
"I don't myself," admitted her husband. "However, nothing can happen so long as Colonel Morehead sticks to us—nothing."
"I have no intention of deserting you, don't be alarmed," declared Colonel Morehead. "But for all that, I want this man Beekman—I need him." And so saying he lifted from the small table a document consisting of several sheets of carbon-copy.
"Miss Wilkinson," he said gravely, handing it to her. "No—there's nothing in it to startle you, only you should know, I think, we all ought to understand.... If you'll read this, you'll know what happened to your father this afternoon."
Puzzled at first, the girl slowly read the flimsy document as she stood there in the middle of the room.