ought it impossible to escape?"

Gertrude rose angrily. "You are not even just!" she flamed. "You don't
know anything about it, and you condemn him!"

"I know that we have all lost a great deal of money," I said. "I shall
believe Mr. Bailey innocent the moment he is shown to be. You profess
to know the truth, but you can not tell me! What am I to think?"

Halsey leaned over and patted my hand.

"You must take us on faith," he said. "Jack Bailey hasn't a penny that
doesn't belong to him; the guilty man will be known in a day or so."

"I shall believe that when it is proved," I said grimly. "In the
meantime, I take no one on faith. The Inneses never do."

Gertrude, who had been standing aloof at a window, turned suddenly.
"But when the bonds are offered for sale, Halsey, won't the thief be
detected at once?"

Halsey turned with a superior smile.

"It wouldn't be done that way," he said. "They would be taken out of
the vault by some one who had access to it, and used as collateral for
a loan in another bank. It would be possible to realize eighty per
cent. of their face value."

"In cash?"

"In cash."

"But the man who did it--he would be known?"

"Yes. I tell you both, as sure as I stand here, I believe that Paul
Armstrong looted his own bank. I believe he has a million at least, as
the result, and that he will never come back. I'm worse than a pauper
now. I can't ask Louise to share nothing a year with me and when I
think of this disgrace for her, I'm crazy."

The most ordinary events of life seemed pregnant with possibilities
that day, and when Halsey was called to the telephone, I ceased all
pretense at eating. When he came back from the telephone his face
showed that something had occurred. He waited, however, until Thomas
left the dining-room: then he told us.

"Paul Armstrong is dead," he announced gravely. "He died this morning
in California. Whatever he did, he is beyond the law now."

Gertrude turned pale.

"And the only man who could have cleared Jack can never do it!" she
said despairingly.

"Also," I replied coldly, "Mr. Armstrong is for ever beyond the power
of defending himself. When your Jack comes to me, with some two
hundred thousand dollars in his hands, which is about what you have
lost, I shall believe him innocent."

Halsey threw his cigarette away and turned on me.

"There you go!" he exclaimed. "If he was the thief, he could return
the money, of course. If