"That? It is just as they paid me."
A moment of silence, then:
"I'm sorry to tell you, but these two fifty-dollar bills are counterfeits."
There ensued an absolute hush, and before my eyes arose the vision of Sylvia's father paying his supper check with a crisp fifty.
"Counterfeit," the professor mused, putting out a hand for them and moving nearer the light. "Strange! Just today I was speaking of a counterfeiter!" And Tommy, in an awed voice, asked:
"You don't think it's more dreams?"
The officials, I rather suspected, were beginning to look at us askance. Our various attitudes at this discovery were scarcely in accordance with the usually accepted actions of innocent people; on the contrary, with but a grain of imagination, we might be branded as a trio of rascals trying to stall out of a tight place. My apprehension was more confirmed when Hardwick, a shade less cordial, said:
"As a United States official, I should like to hear your views about these."
Now Tommy looked across at me and I saw that he was awake. Monsieur, on the other hand, remained blissfully indifferent that anything might be out of the ordinary—except, of course, being loaded with a hundred dollars of bad money, which does not happen every day.
"My counterfeiter?" he smiled innocently. "Yes, he could have done these. His plates are all but perfect. And these bills—you will admit they almost fooled you!" Whereupon he laughed.