cious thing, a thing which filled Bones's heart with horror and
dismay.

Before Bones could lift the blotting pad, her forefinger had dropped
upon the signature and had been drawn across, leaving nothing more than
an indecipherable smudge.

"My dear old typewriter!" gasped Bones. "My dear old miss! Confound
it all! Hang it all, I say! Dear old thing!"

"You can leave this picture, madam----"

"Miss," murmured Bones from force of habit. Even in his agitation he
could not resist the temptation to interrupt.

"You can leave this picture, Miss Stegg," said the girl coolly. "Mr.
Tibbetts wants to add it to his collection."

Miss Stegg said nothing.

She had risen to her feet, her eyes fixed on the girl's face, and, with
no word of protest or explanation, she turned and walked swiftly from
the office. Hamilton opened the door, noting the temporary suspension
of the undulatory motion.

When she had gone, they looked at one another, or, rather, they looked
at the girl, who, for her part, was examining the photograph. She took
a little knife from the desk before Bones and inserted it into the
thick cardboard mount, and ripped off one of the layers of cardboard.
And so Bones's photograph was exposed, shorn of all mounting. But,
what was more important, beneath his photograph was a cheque on the
Third National Bank, which was a blank cheque and bearing Bones's
undeniable signature in the bottom right-hand corner--the signature was
decipherable through the smudge.

Bones stared.

"Most curious thing I've ever seen in my life, dear old typewriter," he
said. "Why, that's the very banking establishment I patronise."

"I thought it might be," said the girl.

And then it dawned upon Bones, and he gasped.

"Great Moses!" he howled--there is no prettier word for it. "That
naughty, naughty, Miss Thing-a-me-jig was making me sign a blank
cheque! My autograph! My sacred aunt! Autograph on a cheque..."

Bones babbled on as the real villainy of the attempt upon his finances
gradually unfolded before his excited vision.

Explanations were to follow. The girl had seen a paragraph warning
people against giving their autographs, and the police had even
circulated a rough description of two "well-dressed women" who, on one
pretext or another, were securing from the wealthy, but the unwise,
specimens of their signatures.

"My young and artful typewriter," said Bones, speaking with emotion,
"you have probably saved