us
goodies.

"Sh-h," whispered Louise. "There goes the curtain."

Why Martha had selected the hapless vocation of milliner's apprentice,
John could not understand. For it was in Madame's little millinery shop
in New York that Mordaunt Merrilac, gentleman by appearance, and leader
of a desperate band of counterfeiters, met and became infatuated with
the heroine. This he revealed in a soliloquy punctuated by frequent
tugging at his black mustache, and strode majestically to the rear of
the long, gloomy basement in which the first act was laid. There he
joined three overalled mechanics in shirtsleeves, who puttered gingerly
about a table on which were mysterious vats and a brightly glowing
electric crucible.

"Is all in readiness?" growled Mordaunt.

"Aye, master."

"Into the acid vat with the plate, then." He drew out a jewelled watch
and studied the dial with knitted brows. "Ten long minutes before we
know of our success."

A muffled scream, long-drawn and filled with terror, broke in upon the
silence which followed. Louise, Sid, and John leaned anxiously forward
on the very edges of their seats.

"What's that?" gasped the tallest of the workmen.

"'Tis nothing," sneered the villain. "Come, Ralph, draw out the die."

The group gathered anxiously around the bit of metal. Mordaunt
scrutinized it carefully, and strode swiftly over to an opposite corner
of the stage where an ancient letterpress stood. Running an inked roller
over the surface of the etching, he placed it on the bed of the press,
revolved the wheel rapidly in one direction, reversed, and drew forth a
slip of white paper.

"The face of a twenty-dollar bill to perfection," he exclaimed as he
examined the dark oblong at one end. "Men, you may go."

Thus was the intricate process of counterfeiting depicted, and the
audience, as audiences did in Shakespeare's time when a sign represented
a forest or a tree or a mountain, allowed its imagination to make the
thing seem plausible.

Mordaunt raised his voice. "Dolores!" he called, once, twice, thrice.

A tall, lithe creature in dark, clinging robes, with the black hair of
all villains and villainesses, responded.

"Yes, brother?" she whined from the head of the basement stairway.

"Bring me Martha."

The ogre had commanded, therefore the maiden was flung down the steps
before him--slight, dainty, with a wealth of blonde hair, and a pitiful
sob in her voice which drew a lump into John's throat, will