"It's incredible!" he said, "and yet the circumstances are most suspicious. He gives no real reason for leaving."
"I can," said Nance, resolutely. "He wanted me to marry him, and I wouldn't promise. He asked me Saturday afternoon, after he come out of here. We had a quarrel, and he said he was going away; but I didn't believe it."
"Did he ask you to go away with him? Out of town anywhere?"
"Yes; he said he would go anywhere I said."
A flash of anger burnt out the look of fear that had been lurking in Mr. Clarke's face.
"He's the last man I would have suspected! Of course I knew he had been in a reformatory at one time, but--"
The band that had been tightening around Nance's heart seemed suddenly to burst. She sprang to her feet and stood confronting him with blazing eyes.
"What right have you got to think Dan did it? There were two of them in this room. Why don't you send for Mr. Mac and ask him questions?"
"Well, for one reason he's in New York, and for another, my son doesn't have to resort to such means to get what money he wants."
"Neither does Dan Lewis! He was a street kid; he was had up in court three times before he was fourteen; he was a month at the reformatory; and he's knocked elbows with more crooks than you ever heard of; but you know as well as me that there ain't anybody living more honest than Dan!"
"All he's got to do is to prove it," said Mr. Clarke, grimly.
Nance looked at the relentless face of the man before her and thought of the money at his command to prove whatever he wanted to prove.
"See here, Mr. Clarke!" she said desperately, "you said a while ago that all the facts were against Dan. Will you tell me one thing?"
"Did you give Mr. Mac the money to pay that note last Saturday?"
"The one the Meyers fellow was after him about?"
"Mac asked for no money, and I gave him none. In fact he told me that aside from his debts at the club and at the garage, he owed no bills. So you see your friend Meyers misinformed you."
Here was Nance's chance to escape; she had spoken in Dan's defense; she had told of the Meyers incident. To take one more step would be to convict Mac and compromise herself. For one miserable moment conflicting desires beat in her brain; then she heard herself saying quite calmly: