Constance Dunlap | Page 6

insertion after the $25.
Careful not to deviate the fraction of a hair's breadth from the
alignment Carlton took the punch, added three 0's, and a star after the
25, making it $25,000. Finally the whole thing was again ironed to give
it the smoothness of an original. Here at last was the completed work,
the first product of their combined skill in crime:
No. 15711. Dec. 27,191--. THE GORHAM NATIONAL BANK
Pay to the order of... The Carlton Realty Co.
Twenty-five Thousand 00/100.........Dollars $25,000.00/100
W. J. REYNOLDS Co., per CHAS. M. BROWN, Treas.
How completely people may change, even within a few hours, was well
illustrated as they stood side by side and regarded their work with as
much pride as if it had been the result of their honest efforts of years.
They were now pen and brush crooks of the first caliber, had reduced
forgery to a fine art and demonstrated what an amateur might do. For,
although they did not know it, nearly half the fifteen millions or so lost
by forgeries every year was the work of amateurs such as they.
The next problem was presenting the check for collection. Of course
Carlton could not put it through his own bank, unless he wanted to
leave a blazed trail straight to himself. Only a colossal bluff would do,
and in a city where only colossal bluffs succeed it was not so
impossible as might have been first imagined.
Luncheon over, they sauntered casually into a high-class office
building on Broadway where there were offices to rent. The agent was
duly impressed by the couple who talked of their large real estate
dealings. Where he might have been thoroughly suspicious of a man
and might have asked many embarrassing but perfectly proper
questions, he accepted the woman without a murmur. At her suggestion
he even consented to take his new tenants around to the Uptown Bank
and introduce them. They made an excellent impression by a first cash

deposit of the money Carlton had thrown down on the table the night
before. A check for the first month's rent more than mollified the agent
and talk of a big deal that was just being signed up to- day duly
impressed the bank.
The next problem was to get the forged check certified. That, also,
proved a very simple matter. Any one can walk into a bank and get a
check for $25,000 certified, while if he appears, a stranger, before the
window of the paying teller to cash a check for twenty-five dollars he
would almost be thrown out of the bank. Banks will certify at a glance
practically any check that looks right, but they pass on the
responsibility of cashing them. Thus before the close of banking hours
Dunlap was able to deposit in his new bank the check certified by the
Gorham.
Twenty-four hours must elapse before he could draw against the check
which he had deposited. He did not propose to waste that time, so that
the next day found him at Green & Co.'s, feeling much better. Really he
had come prepared now to straighten out the books, knowing that in a
few hours he could make good.
The first hesitation due to the newness of the game had worn off by this
time. Nothing at all of an alarming nature had happened. The new
month had already begun and as most firms have their accounts
balanced only once a month, he had, he reasoned, nearly the entire four
weeks in which to operate.
Conscience was dulled in Constance, also, and she was now busy with
ink eraser, the water colors, and other paraphernalia in a wholesale
raising of checks, mostly for amounts smaller than that in the first
attempt.
"We are taking big chances, anyway," she urged him. "Why quit yet? A
few days more and we may land something worth while."
The next day he excused himself from the office for a while and
presented himself at his new bank with a sheaf of new checks which
she had raised, all certified, and totaling some thousands more.

His own check for twenty-five thousand was now honored. The relief
which he felt was tremendous after the weeks of grueling anxiety. At
once he hurried to a broker's and placed an order for the stocks he had
used on which to borrow. He could now replace everything in the safe,
straighten out the books, could make everything look right to the
systematizer, could blame any apparent irregularity on his old system.
Even ignorance was better than dishonesty.
Constance, meanwhile, had installed herself in the little office they had
hired, as stenographer and secretary. Once having embarked on the
hazardous enterprise she showed no disposition to give it up yet An
office boy was