Chapter XIX: An Unexpected Meeting

Convinced now of the girl’s guilt, Owen Sheridan was walking dejectedly out of the room, when suddenly he remembered that he had not carried out his intention of searching for some clew as to Dallas’ whereabouts.

He returned to the waste-paper basket, which was half full of litter, and emptied its contents on the floor. Some fragments of paper with blue printing on them caught his eye. He recognized them as being parts of the top of a telegraph blank.

There was a pad of Postal Telegraph sending blanks on a small writing desk in a corner of the room. It occurred to Owen that Dallas might have written out a message with the intention of sending it over the wire, then changed her mind and torn up what she had written. He began eagerly to pick the rest of the pieces from the heap of rubbish, and soon had the complete telegram.

It consisted of two lines in the girl’s handwriting, which he recognized immediately. The torn-up message was addressed to Chester Worthington, 89 Dulwich Street, Chicago, and read:

“Disregard my letter. Am coming to you immediately. Don’t do
anything rash. Will do my utmost to help you.

“DALLAS.”

“Ah,” exclaimed Sheridan, “I guess this explains where she has gone--and why. That scapegrace brother of hers has got into trouble again, and she has gone out there to help him. And I suppose she used that hundred-dollar bill to pay her fare. Yes, that must be it. She tried to borrow the price of the train ticket from her employer, and when he refused, the poor girl, in her desperation, yielded to the temptation to steal that letter.”

For several minutes he sat staring miserably at the telegram which he had pieced together on the writing desk; then he rose abruptly, and, thrusting the fragments of paper into his pocket, moved toward the door, a look of determination in his eyes.

By the time he reached the street his mind was fully made up as to the course he would pursue. He intended to go back to the chief inspector, and report that he had failed to solve the mystery of the missing pink envelope; and, moreover, he would say nothing about the telegram he had found in Dallas’ room, so that if others were put on the case they would be unable to get on the track of the girl.

The chief would sneer at him, no doubt, for falling down on his very first case; but he wouldn’t mind that as long as Dallas escaped punishment for an offense which he could not believe her guilty of, in spite of the evidence he had obtained.

“And, of course, I’m going to hand in my resignation from the postal service, to take effect at once,” he told himself. “I couldn’t very well continue in the employ of the United States government after helping to defeat the ends of justice.”

“Hello!” exclaimed a cheery voice, as Owen turned the street corner, so wrapped up in his gloomy meditations that he almost collided with the speaker. “And how’s our young post-office inspector to-day? Not on the trail of malefactors already, I’ll wager. From your pre-occupied air and the frown upon your countenance, Owen, it must be a perplexing problem you’re wrestling with.”

Owen looked into the smiling countenance of ex-Judge Sugden Lawrence, the kind friend whose influence had enabled him to land the government job which he now contemplated resigning.

Acting on an impulse, Sheridan decided to take the lawyer into his confidence. He knew that the latter could be trusted not to betray Dallas’ secret.

“It is a perplexing problem I’m wrestling with, judge,” he said; “one of the most unpleasant a fellow was ever up against.”

“Official or personal?” inquired the lawyer.

“Both,” answered Owen grimly. “And that’s where the trouble comes in. It’s the personal element in this case which makes it impossible for me to do my duty.”

The judge frowned, and looked at him disapprovingly. “Impossible to do your duty, Owen? I’m sorry to hear you talk like that. If I thought that you really meant it, I should regret very much that I had assisted you to become a post-office inspector. No personal considerations should ever cause an officer of the law to shirk his duty.”

“That’s all very well to say,” returned the inspector; “but an officer of the law is human, just like everybody else, and it isn’t reasonable to ask him to arrest the girl he loves.”

“What!” exclaimed Judge Lawrence, in astonishment. “Arrest Miss Worthington? What on earth for?”

In a few words Owen sadly explained to him the nature of his first assignment as a post-office inspector. The lawyer listened with growing amazement.

“This is really most extraordinary! I cannot bring myself to believe that that young woman could be a thief. Come on downtown with me to my office, Owen, and let us talk this case over. Perhaps by putting our heads together we shall be able to convince ourselves of your fiancée’s innocence.”

Half an hour later they sat in the lawyer’s private office, and Owen narrated every detail of the case, and displayed the incriminating envelope and the telegram, which he pieced together on Judge Lawrence’s desk.

“It is really very strange,” declared the judge. “Looking at all the evidence from the standpoint of a lawyer, I should have no hesitancy in declaring that the young woman must be guilty. And yet----” He stopped short, and, leaning back in his chair, gazed dreamily toward the ceiling.

“And yet what?” queried Owen eagerly.

“I was just thinking of a scene which took place in this office a few months ago. It was almost the same scene as is being enacted here now; only, in that instance, Miss Worthington sat in the chair which you now occupy, and you were the subject under discussion.”

He smiled whimsically. “And I couldn’t help thinking, my dear Owen, as that scene came back to me, how very much superior the other sex is to ours when it comes to loyalty and faith. I remember that Miss Worthington, that day, refused even to consider the possibility of your being guilty. She declared that no matter what evidence might be brought against you, she would never believe that you were a thief.”

Owen flushed painfully, and a tender look came to his eyes. “Dear little girl,” he murmured; “I’m a brute to doubt her. But the evidence is convincing, judge. You must admit that there is no----”

“The evidence in your case--the circumstantial evidence--appeared to be equally convincing, Owen,” interrupted the judge. “Yet she refused to accept it; and it turned out afterward that her faith was not misplaced.”

Sheridan looked at him eagerly. “Then you really think that there’s a chance of her being innocent?”

“I do. Your own narrow escape ought to have taught you that there is always a chance of circumstantial evidence leading to a wrong conclusion. Now, there is one thing about that telegram which you found in the waste-paper basket which, in my opinion, indicates that Miss Worthington did not steal the pink envelope. Apparently it is a point which has escaped your observation.”

“What do you mean, judge?” inquired Owen breathlessly.

“I refer to the opening words of that message: ‘Disregard my letter,’ she telegraphs to her brother. Now, doesn’t that look as if she may have been telling the truth when she stated to Carrier Andrews that she had dropped into that mail box a letter which she had changed her mind about sending? Doesn’t it look as if the opening words of her telegram have reference to that letter?”

A look of joy came to Owen’s face. “By Jove, yes!” he exclaimed. “I think I see it now, judge. Dallas didn’t mean to steal the Reverend Doctor Moore’s letter. She was after the one which she had dropped in the box--the one to her brother in Chicago. She got the other pink envelope by mistake. Yes, that must be it, of course. She didn’t discover her error until she reached home; then, realizing that it was too late to stop that letter to her brother, she sat down and wrote him that telegram. The whole thing’s as clear as daylight now. I’m mighty glad that I met you to-day, judge.”

Then suddenly all the joy departed from Sheridan’s face. “But no, it couldn’t have been that way, after all,” he went on, with a sigh of disappointment. “That theory won’t go; we’re overlooking two things.”

“What are they?”

“In the first place, she didn’t send that telegram to her brother, after all. If she had I wouldn’t have found it in the basket.”

“Pooh! That argument’s easily met. She may have sent another message. Women generally write a telegram over three or four times before they’re satisfied with the wording of it, you know. Or she may have decided that, as she was going out to Chicago, there was no need of telegraphing. Probably she figured on getting there almost as soon as her letter.”

“Yes,” Owen admitted; “of course, that’s logical enough. But my other argument isn’t so easily disposed of. I’m afraid it knocks out our theory.”

“What is it?”

“If Dallas got the clergyman’s letter by an innocent mistake, what became of her letter--the one she really wanted? There was no other pink envelope in that box. There would have been if she had been telling the truth when she said she mailed it.”

The judge gazed thoughtfully at the ceiling. “Yes, that is a stumper, I must admit. But,” he added, “maybe Miss Worthington could explain that. I feel confident that she could. Why don’t you go to Chicago on the very next train and ask her, Inspector Sheridan? I wouldn’t lose any time in clearing this thing up if I were you.”

“But suppose I ask her, and she admits----”

“Bah!” interrupted the lawyer impatiently; “shame on you for an unworthy lover! I’m willing to wager everything I’ve got that that little girl won’t admit to you that she’s a thief--because she won’t have to.”

His confident air was infectious. “Thank you!” said Owen. “You’re quite right, of course. Dallas couldn’t be a thief! I’m going to take the first train out.”