Constance Dunlap | Page 4

what I think of you? I think you are a damned coward. There!"
Instead of tears and recriminations, instead of the conventional "How
could you do it?" instead of burning denunciation of him for ruining her
life, he read something else in her face. What was it?
"Coward?" he repeated slowly. "What would you have me do--take you
with me?"
She tossed her head contemptuously.
"Stay and face it?" he hazarded again.
"Is there no other way?" she asked, still leaning forward with her eyes
fixed on his. "Think! Is there no way that you could avoid discovery
just for a time? Carlton, you--we are cornered. Is there no desperate
chance?"
He shook his head sadly.
Her eyes wandered momentarily about the studio, until they rested on
an easel. On it stood a water color on which she had been working,
trying to put into it some of the feeling which she would never have put
into words for him. On the walls of the apartment were pen and ink
sketches, scores of little things which she had done for her own
amusement. She bit her lip as an idea flashed through her mind.
He shook his head again mournfully.

"Somewhere," she said slowly, "I have read that clever forgers use
water colors and pen and ink like regular artists. Think--think! Is there
no way that we--that I could forge a check that would give us breathing
space, perhaps rescue us?"
Carlton leaned over the table toward her, fascinated. He placed both his
hands on hers. They were icy, but she did not withdraw them.
For an instant they looked into each other's eyes, an instant, and then
they understood. They were partners in crime, amateurs perhaps, but
partners as they had been in honesty.
It was a new idea that she had suggested to him. Why should lie not act
on it? Why hesitate? Why stop at it? He was already an embezzler.
Why not add a new crime to the list? As he looked into her eyes he felt
a new strength. Together they could do it. Hers was the brain that had
conceived the way out. She had the will, the compelling power to carry
the thing through. He would throw himself on her intuition, her brain,
her skill, her daring.
On his desk in the corner, where often until far into the night he had
worked on the huge ruled sheets of paper covered with figures of the
firm's accounts, he saw two goose-necked vials, one of lemon- colored
liquid, the other of raspberry color. One was of tartaric acid, the other
of chloride of lime. It was an ordinary ink eradicator. Near the bottles
lay a rod of glass with a curious tip, an ink eraser made of finely spun
glass threads which scraped away the surface of the paper more
delicately than any other tool that had been devised. There were the
materials for his, their rehabilitation if they were placed in his wife's
deft artist fingers. Here was all the chemistry and artistry of forgery at
hand.
"Yes," he answered eagerly, "there is a way, Constance. Together we
can do it."
There was no time for tenderness between them now. It was cold, hard
fact and they understood each other too well to stop for endearments.

Far into the night they sat up and discussed the way in which they
would go about the crime. They practised with erasers and with brush
and water color on the protective coloring tint on some canceled checks
of his own. Carlton must get a check of a firm in town, a check that
bore a genuine signature. In it they would make such trifling changes in
the body as would attract no attention in passing, yet would yield a
substantial sum toward wiping out Carlton's unfortunate deficit.
Late as he had worked the night before, nervous and shaky as he felt
after the sleepless hours of planning their new life, Carlton was the first
at the office in the morning. His hand trembled as he ran through the
huge batch of mail already left at the first delivery. He paused as he
came to one letter with the name "W. J. REYNOLDS CO." on it.
Here was a check in payment of a small bill, he knew. It was from a
firm which habitually kept hundreds of thousands on deposit at the
Gorham Bank. It fitted the case admirably. He slit open the letter. There,
neatly folded, was the check:
No. 15711. Dec. 27, 191--.
THE GORHAM NATIONAL BANK
Pay to the order of....... Green & Co.......
Twenty-five 00/100 ..................Dollars
$25.00/100
W. J. REYNOLDS Co., per CHAS. M. BROWN, Treas.
It flashed over him in a moment what to do. Twenty-five thousand
would just about cover his shortage.