Mr. Von Goss looked at her keenly. She must be the real Linda, he thought, or she certainly wouldn’t talk like this. It never occurred to him that she was acting.
“No—I don’t want to give up now. We’ll go through with your part of the show.... Sprague, get the people on the wire....”
And so, while Linda and Dot were patiently waiting for their telephone call at the hotel, the impostor almost completed her part in the picture, promising to return for only a couple of hours’ work in the morning.
CHAPTER VI
THE FORGED SIGNATURE
“Good morning, Miss Slocum,” said Mr. Sprague, smugly, as Linda and Dot entered the studio at Culver City the following day.
Linda winced at the name, and looked around her, to see whether another girl could be entering at the same time. But there was no one except a strange young man sitting in the corner, who couldn’t possibly be “Miss Slocum.” The secretary was evidently giving her a dig; perhaps he was trying to trap her by calling her by the name which Dot had manufactured on the spur of the moment at Kansas City, and which had been repeated by the newspapers.
“Trying to be funny, Mr. Sprague?” inquired Dot, scathingly.
The stranger in the corner arose from his seat.
“This is Mr. Bertram Chase, of the police,” Sprague announced, calmly. “Miss Slocum and Miss Manton.”
The girls regarded the young man questioningly. He was in plain clothes—not an ordinary policeman.