offer this reward? There ’s no sense in it. He can't have got it.”
A girlish voice answered: “Yes. He did. I know why he ’s doing it, but I can’t explain without being unfair to Dad.”
The woman murmured something reproachfully. The man began to move, heavy-footed, around the room. “Did you tell him where you were?”
“No. I simply told him not to worry about me—that I ’d be all right.”
“Well, if he got the letter, he ’s concealing it from the detectives, is n’t he?”
“I suppose so. Yes.”
The man sat down, with a bump. “I suppose you know what you ’re doing, but I ’ll be hanged if I can see any sense in it. I ’m not thinking of myself, but if you ’re found here—”
“Well,” she said, “I ’ll go somewhere else, then.”
There were confused words of remonstrance, of angrily apologetic explanation and self-de-
