there was a diatribe on the possibility of such an occurrence; on the
folly of a one-man bank, and of a Board of Directors that met only to
lunch together and to listen to a brief report from the cashier, and on
the poor policy of a government that arranges a three or four-day
examination twice a year. The mystery, it insinuated, had not been
cleared by the arrest of the cashier. Before now minor officials had
been used to cloak the misdeeds of men higher up. Inseparable as the
words "speculation" and "peculation" have grown to be, John Bailey was
not known to be in the stock market. His only words, after his
surrender, had been "Send for Mr. Armstrong at once." The telegraph
message which had finally reached the President of the Traders' Bank,
in an interior town in California, had been responded to by a telegram
from Doctor Walker, the young physician who was traveling with the
Armstrong family, saying that Paul Armstrong was very ill and unable to
travel.

That was how things stood that Tuesday evening. The Traders' Bank had
suspended payment, and John Bailey was under arrest, charged with
wrecking it; Paul Armstrong lay very ill in California, and his only
son had been murdered two days before. I sat dazed and bewildered. The
children's money was gone: that was bad enough, though I had plenty, if
they would let me share. But Gertrude's grief was beyond any power of
mine to comfort; the man she had chosen stood accused of a colossal
embezzlement--and even worse. For in the instant that I sat there I
seemed to see the coils closing around John Bailey as the murderer of
Arnold Armstrong.

Gertrude lifted her head at last and stared across the table at Halsey.

"Why did he do it?" she wailed. "Couldn't you stop him, Halsey? It was
suicidal to go back!"

Halsey was looking steadily through the windows of the breakfast-room,
but it was evident he saw nothing.

"It was the only thing he could do, Trude," he said at last. "Aunt Ray,
when I found Jack at the Greenwood Club last Saturday night, he was
frantic. I can not talk until Jack tells me I may, but--he is
absolutely innocent of all this, believe me. I thought, Trude and I
thought, we were helping him, but it was the wrong way. He came back.
Isn't that the act of an innocent man?"

"Then why did he leave at all?" I asked, unconvinced. "What innocent
man would run away from here at three o'clock in the morning? Doesn't
it look rather as though he th