Mr. Tanfold stopped dead, and his heart missed several beats. A wild instinct urged him to turn and flee, but the strength seemed to have ebbed out of his legs. It would have availed him nothing, anyway; for the courteous clerk had slipped from behind the counter and followed him — and he was a healthy young heavyweight who looked as if he would have been more at home on a football field than behind the grille of a cashier's desk.
"Come in, Tanfold," said the manager sternly.
Mr. Tanfold forced himself to come in. Even then he did not see what could possibly have gone wrong — certainly he was unable to envisage any complication in which the photograph he held would not be a deciding factor.
"Are you the gentleman who just presented this cheque?" asked the manager, holding it up.
Tanfold moistened his lips.
"That's right," he said boldly.
"You were asked to wait," said the manager, "because Mr. Tombs rang us up a short while ago and said that this cheque had been stolen from his book; and he asked us to detain anyone who presented it until he got here."
"That's an absurd mistake," Tanfold retorted loudly. "The cheque's made out to me — Mr. Tombs wrote it out himself only a few minutes ago."
The manager put his finger-tips together.
"I am familiar with Mr. Tombs's handwriting," he said dryly, "and this isn't a bit like it. It looks like a very amateurish forgery to me."