“Money, of course. We never disagreed over anything else. I gave each of my daughters an adequate allowance—perhaps a very liberal one. Nor did I keep them strictly within it. There were few months in which they didn’t exceed it. Thursday evening they asked for an amount of money even more than usual in excess of what two girls should need. I wouldn’t give it to them, though I finally did give them a somewhat smaller amount. We didn’t exactly quarrel—not in the strict sense of the word—but there was a certain lack of friendliness between us.”
“And it was after this disagreement that they said they were going down to Mrs. Walden’s, in Monterey, for the weekend?”
“Possibly. I’m not sure of that point. I don’t think I heard of it until the next morning, but they may have told my wife before that. I shall ask her if you wish.”
“And you know of no other possible reason for their running away?”
“None. I can’t think that our dispute over money—by no means an unusual one—had anything to do with it.”
“What does their mother think?”
“Their mother is dead,” Banbrock corrected me. “My wife is their stepmother. She is only two years older than Myra, my older daughter. She is as much at sea as I.”
“Did your daughters and their stepmother get along all right together?”
“Yes! Yes! Excellently! If there was a division in the family, I usually found them standing together against me.”
“Your daughters left Friday afternoon?”
“At noon, or a few minutes after. They were going to drive down.”