Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/203

 "What does your father say about it?" he demanded.

There was a momentary look of revolt in the brooding violet-blue eyes.

"That is the hopeless part of it all," she acknowledged. "He is willing that I should go with Morello. Something has made him change. He doesn't seem willing to help me any more!"

"But without you he is helpless?"

"Without me, as things are, he cannot go on with the work he has been doing," she admitted.

"Why?" asked Kestner.

She did not answer him at once. Instead, she rose to her feet, crossed the room to her open travelling-bag, and from its depths took out a parcel wrapped in a strip of green baize. This parcel was small, and oblong in shape, but as she walked back to the chair with it, it impressed Kestner as being of considerable weight.

"Because here," she said, as she sat down and held the baize-covered bundle on her knees, "I have all the plates with which his new counterfeits were to be printed!"