“It was. I mean that I paid a bill at the mill the afternoon of the night the robbery took place. Mr. Judson took my money, together with some other that he had in a box, and locked it all in the safe. It was quite late, and he said that he would not have time to go to the bank.”
“Oh!” cried Ned. “Then some of the money you paid was taken, for it was the very money that Mr. Judson didn’t take to the bank that was stolen.”
“Then there ought to be a clue to the thief,” went on Mrs. Johnson.
“How?” asked Jerry.
“Because with the money I paid was a queer looking bill,” said the woman. “It was from some Massachusetts state bank, instead of a national note, and it had a funny mark on it.”
“Do you remember what that mark was?” asked Ned, while the other boys waited in breathless silence.
“I remember it very well,” said Mrs. Johnson. “There was a monogram of three letters. I recall them very distinctly because they were the initials of my brother’s name. He is dead, so of course he could not have put them on the bill, but some one with the same initials did.”
“And what were the letters?” asked Jerry.
“They were H. R. C.,” was the answer.
The boys, who recalled the initials on the queer bill that Paul Banner had received from Noddy Nixon, were too startled to reply. They did not know what to say.