“I’m quite sure of it,” he asserted. “You are innocent, Miss Cartwright. How am I so sure of it? Because I happen to have the thief already.”
“You have the thief?” Amy cried, startled out of her determination to say nothing.
“Yes,” he told her nonchalantly, “I’ve arrested the man who robbed your sister. Poor devil, he has a wife and children. He swears they’ll starve, and very likely they will, but he’s guilty and to jail he goes.”
“Are you sure he’s guilty?” Amy stammered.
He leaned over his desk and looked at her surprised. “Why, yes,” he said slowly. “Have you any reason to think different?”
“No, no!” she cried, shrinking back.
“But I have,” Ethel said calmly. “I have every reason to believe he is innocent.”
“You have?” Taylor cried, himself perplexed at the turn things were taking.
Amy looked at her sister, wondering what was coming next.
“I know who stole them,” Ethel went on. “It was my maid.”