"Just what they said about my five. Did Pollie tell the police?"
"I suppose she has told them by now. But she gave me the bill and asked me to turn it over to your father."
"Good! Dad happens to be working along those lines just now. Have you got the bill with you now?"
"It's in my purse in the cloakroom. I'll let you have it at lunch hour."
So when school was dismissed at noon Callie gave Frank the counterfeit fifty dollar bill. Frank examined it closely. Like the five dollar bill he and Joe had changed for the plausible stranger the previous day, it was crisp and new. Frank had seen very few fifty dollar bills in his life, either genuine or otherwise, but he realized that this specimen was a very good imitation. The mere fact that such bills are not often seen by the average person no doubt rendered it easier to pass without being readily detected.
"I'll show this to my father," he promised Callie. "I'm afraid it won't do much good. Pollie will have to stand her loss, unless she can trace the woman who passed the bad bill on her, but perhaps this will help dad find the source of all this counterfeit money."
"Goodness knows how many poor people are being victimized just as Pollie was," said the girl. "I hope they catch the people who are at the bottom of it."
When Joe joined Frank on the school steps Frank told him about the incident at the beauty parlor and of how Pollie Shaw had lost fifty dollars in goods and money to the strange woman.
"Of course," said Frank, "she may have been perfectly innocent in passing that fifty dollar bill, and perhaps she didn't realize it was counterfeit, but I'm beginning to think this gang has a number of people traveling around getting rid of the imitation bills."
"Once they get them into circulation they'll go from hand to hand until the banks check them up. Somebody is bound to lose in the end, and usually it's the honest person who finds out that the money is bad and won't pass it any further. The crooked ones will just try to get rid of it as quickly as they can."