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 thought 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.”