Page:Waylaid by Wireless - Balmer - 1909.djvu/224

Rh "My hurt wrist?" Preston demanded in wonder.

"Yes! But I tell you I didn't need that to make me know!" the girl repeated. "When they put that in as they did, of course it made me still surer that this 'wireless' was all part of the police plot against you. All summer they've been trying to get the real thief, but they couldn't, don't you see? So they have been persecuting you to save their own reputations. Why, don't you remember how they had to wait and wait there before getting an answer? I don't believe that they got an answer at all; but, when they saw they could get nothing from the Bahia, they just pretended they did and described you as you stood before them."

"No, they didn't, Miss Varris," Preston had to correct her, although his heart leaped into his throat at this girl's passionate defence of him. "They described me as I was last night—the clothes and all—not as they saw me then."

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