Constance Dunlap | Page 8

as knitted their very souls in
this crisis. She tried with a devotion that was touching to impart to him
some of her own strength to ward off detection.
It was the afternoon of the second day that a man who gave the name of
Drummond called and presented a card of the Reynolds Company.
"Have you ever been paid a little bill of twenty-five dollars by our
company?" he asked.
Down in his heart Carlton knew that this man was a detective. "I can't
say without looking it up," he replied.
Carlton touched a button and an assistant appeared. Something outside
himself seemed to nerve him up, as he asked: "Look up our account
with Reynolds, and see if we have been paid--what is it?--a bill for
twenty-five dollars. Do you recall it?"
"Yes, I recall it," replied the assistant. "No, Mr. Dunlap, I don't think it
has been paid. It is a small matter, but we sent them a duplicate bill
yesterday. I thought the original must have gone astray."
Carlton cursed him inwardly for sending the bill. But then, he reasoned,

it was only a question of time, after all, when the forgery would be
discovered.
Drummond dropped into a half-confidential, half-quizzing tone. "I
thought not. Somewhere along the line that check has been stolen and
raised to twenty-five thousand dollars," he remarked.
"Is that so?" gasped Carlton, trying hard to show just the right amount
of surprise and not too much. "Is that so?"
"No doubt you have read in the papers of this clever realty company
swindle? Well, it seems to have been part of that."
"I am sure that we shall be glad to do all in our power to cooperate with
Reynolds," put in Dunlap.
"I thought you would," commented Drummond dryly. "I may as well
tell you that I fear some one has been tampering with your mail."
"Tampering with OUR mail?" repeated Dunlap, aghast. "Impossible."
"Nothing is impossible until it is proved so," answered Drummond,
looking him straight in the eyes. Carlton did not flinch. He felt a new
power within himself, gained during the past few days of new
association with Constance. For her he could face anything.
But when Drummond was gone he felt as he had on the night when he
had finally realized that he could never cover up the deficit in his books.
With an almost superhuman effort he gripped himself. Interminably the
hours of the rest of the day dragged on.
That night he sank limp into a chair on his return home. "A man named
Drummond was in the office to-day, my dear," he said. "Some one in
the office sent Reynolds a duplicate bill, and they know about the
check."
"Well?"
"I wonder if they suspect me?"

"If you act like that, they won't suspect. They'll arrest," she commented
sarcastically.
He had braced up again into his new self at her words. But there was
again that sinking sensation in her heart, as she realized that it was,
after all, herself on whom he depended, that it was she who had been
the will, even though he had been the intellect of their enterprise. She
could not overcome the feeling that, if only their positions could be
reversed, the thing might even yet be carried through.
Drummond appeared again at the office the next day. There was no
concealment about him now. He said frankly that he was from the Burr
Detective Agency, whose business it was to guard the banks against
forgeries.
"The pen work, or, as we detectives call it, the penning," he remarked,
"in the case of that check is especially good. It shows rare skill. But the
pitfalls in this forgery game are so many that, in avoiding one, a forger,
ever so clever, falls into another."
Carlton felt the polite third degree, as he proceeded: "Nowadays the
forger has science to contend with, too. The microscope and camera
may come in a little too late to be of practical use in preventing the
forger from getting his money at first, but they come in very neatly
later in catching him. What the naked eye cannot see in this check they
reveal. Besides, a little iodine vapor brings out the original 'Green &
Co.' on it.
"We have found out also that the protective coloring was restored by
water color. That was easy. Where the paper was scratched and the
sizing taken off, it has been painted with a resinous substance to restore
the glaze, to the eye. Well, a little alcohol takes that off, too. Oh, the
amateur forger may be the most dangerous kind, because the
professional regularly follows the same line, leaves tracks, has
associates, but," he concluded impressively, "all are caught sooner or
later--sooner or later."
Dunlap