The Turn of the Tide by Fred M. White — Read

Jack Ellis looked down into the pretty pathetic face of his companion with a sudden feeling of uneasiness. He was half inclined to smile, but the appeal for sympathy in Vera's eyes checked that impulse, and he kissed her instead. She must have been labouring under some delusion--she had been badly frightened, no doubt, and her mind was not yet back to the normal. The idea of Major Langley, that hopeless paralytic invalid, in the rôle of a burglar, was absolutely ludicrous.

For some years now the man had not moved from his chair, and no one knew it better than Ellis, who on several occasions had been a guest in Patricia's cottage. And even if by some wild stretch of possibility he had the physical power, it seemed equally impossible that Langley should creep in the dead of night into his old home on some predatory expedition. He had never even seen the place since that fatal evening in the library when he had collapsed utterly after an interview with Mortimer Croot. But what that interview had been about Ellis had never learnt, for Croot was exceedingly reticent on the point, and had declined to give any information. He had hinted distantly that something had been very wrong in the major's affairs, and that he himself had gone out of his way to silence slanderous tongues. It had been rather cleverly done, and had had precisely the effect that Croot had intended.