cried Peabody.

"Well, just come over to the room and I'll show you something worth
while," exclaimed the girl, getting up and paying their bill.

"Now," said she, when they were safely at no West Thirty-eighth Street,
and she had closed the door of the room and drawn Peabody to a desk in
the bay window. "Here's my regular handwriting."

She pulled towards her a pad which lay open upon the desk and wrote in a
fair, round hand:

"Mrs. James D. Singley." (Fig. 4.)

"This," she continued, changing her slant and dashing off a queer
feminine scrawl, "is the signature we fooled the Lincoln National Bank
with--Miss Kauser's, you know. And this," she added a moment later,
adopting a stiff, shaky, hump-backed orthography, "is the signature that
got poor Jim into all this trouble," and she inscribed twice upon the
paper the name "E. Bierstadt." "Poor Jim!" she added to herself.

"By George, Mabel," remarked the detective, "you're a wonder! See if
you can copy _my_ name." And Peabody wrote the assumed name of William
Hickey, first with a stub and then with a fine point, both of which
signatures she copied like a flash, in each case, however, being guilty
of the lapse of spelling the word Willia_m_ "Willia_n_."

The pad now contained more than enough evidence to convict twenty women,
and Peabody, with the remark, "You don't want to leave this kind of
thing lying around, Mabel," pretended to tear the page up, but
substituted a blank sheet in its place and smuggled the precious bit of
paper into his pocket.

"Yes, I'll go into business with you,--sure I will!" said Peabody.

"And we'll get enough money to set Jim free!" exclaimed the girl.

They were now fast friends, and it was agreed that "Hickey" should go
and make himself presentable, after which they would dine at some
restaurant and then sample a convenient mail box. Meantime Peabody
telephoned to Headquarters, and when the two set out for dinner at six
o'clock the supposed "Hickey" was stopped on Broadway by Detective
Sergeant Clark.

"What are you doing here in New York?" demanded Clark. "Didn't I give
you six hours to fly the coop? And who's this woman?"

[Illustration: Fig. 4--The upper signature is an example of Mabel
Parker's regular penmanship; the next two are forgeries from memory; and
the last is a dashing imitation of her companion's handwriting.]

"I was going, Clark, honest I was," whined "Hickey," "and this lady's
all right--she hasn't done a thing