"No, sir. Not me. Or I'd 'ave remembered it."
"Looks as though it had been chucked about, though," observed H.M., regarding him fishily. "Know where this was found, my lad? It was found tucked up in one of them old newspapers you put out in the pantry."
"Go on!" said Bowers, shying with pale incredulity.
"Oh, it's quite true. Hogenauer must 'a' put it there. But that's not the most interestin' thing about this note, my lad. It might deceive you. It might look like the ripe allurin' promise of one hundred jimmy-o'-goblins. But it's not. It's counterfeit."
For a brief space Bowers did not say anything, and then he began to curse. Although he did not speak loudly, it was a pretty obscene business in the two or three seconds before I went over, and lifted him in the air, and made his teeth rattle, and set him down again. Momentarily he seemed to be coming to pieces like the shredding cigar in his hand.
"You," he said to H.M., past my shoulder, "and what call have you got to do that to a fellow, when-and you," he turned a sharp and bitter face on me, "you, going about dressed up as a copper-and-and scaring the bloody-"
"Anything wrong?" said H.M. in an unruffled tone. "You seem sorta upset. What's the matter, cocky?"
Bowers pulled himself together. "'Cos I've been had, that's why," he said, not loudly. "'Cos I've been had, and somebody's going to pay for it if I 'ave to get it out of the old beggar's will. Me working and slaving for 'im, and earning me wages and thinking I'd got a tidy bit put by, and now I find I've been paid in money that's not worth-"
"He didn't pay you with this, did he?"
"No. I told you-"