lowered his
voice, he seemed to be making an appeal to her to go back upon her words,
so distressed was he at the thought that Wallie Hine should be jockeyed
out of so much money at his house.

"Four hundred and eighty pounds," Sylvia repeated.

Garratt Skinner caught at a comforting thought.

"Well, it's only in I.O.U's. That's one thing. I can stop the redemption
of them. You see, he has been robbed--that's the plain English of
it--robbed."

"Mr. Hine was not writing an I.O.U. He was writing a check, and Mr.
Parminter was guiding his hand as he wrote the signature."

Garratt Skinner fell back in his chair. He looked about him with a dazed
air, as though he expected the world falling to pieces around him.

"Why, that's next door to forgery!" he whispered, in a voice of horror.
"Guiding the hand of a man too drunk to write! I knew Archie Parminter
was pretty bad, but I never thought that he would sink to that. I am not
sure that he could not be laid by the heels for forgery." And then he
recovered a little from the shock. "But you can't be sure, Sylvia! This
is guesswork of yours--yes, guesswork."

"It's not," she answered. "I told you that the floor was littered with
slips of the paper on which Mr. Hine had been trying to write."

"Yes."

There came an indefinable change in Garratt Skinner's face. He leaned
forward with his mouth sternly set and his eyes very still. One might
almost have believed that for the first time during that luncheon he was
really anxious, really troubled.

"Well, this morning the carpet had been swept. The litter had gone. But
just underneath the hearth-rug one of those crumpled slips of paper lay
not quite hidden. I picked it up. It was a check."

"Have you got it? Sylvia, have you got it?" and Garratt Skinner's voice
in steady quietude matched his face.

"Yes."

Sylvia opened the little bag which she carried at her wrist and took out
the slip of paper. She unfolded it and spread it on the table before her.
The inside was pink.

"A check for L480 on the London and County Bank, Victoria Street," she
said.

Garrett Skinner looked over the table at the paper. There was Wallie
Hine's wavering, unfinished signature at the bottom right-hand corner.
Parminter had guided his hand as far as the end of the Christian name,
before he tore the check out and threw it away. The amount of the body of
the check had been filled in in Barstow's hand.

"You had better give it to me, Sylvia,"