"Huh?" grunted Bronson.
"A perfect counterfeit excepting that the wrong fellow signed it," snapped the policeman. "What's the idea, fellow? I take it you don't mind counterfeiting but dislike being jailed for forgery?"
"I don't get it."
"You will," smiled the policeman with great self-satisfaction. "Come along. Counterfeit money is a bad thing to have in your possession."
Bronson cursed himself. He had even more.
Anticipating distastefully his second visit to the police station in as many days, Ed Bronson emerged from the squad car behind the policeman. This was one of the basic differences. This was not by far the same place he had been in before and the seriousness of his position made Ed Bronson smile whimsically.
If not the only one ever to do it, he believed himself at least the first man ever to be jailed in two jails on two worlds—or on one world separated by only time. It was "doing time" with a vengeance!
With the policeman following him, Bronson went into the building, upstairs and into a room filled with scientific equipment. His quick mind decided that, on this world, advances had also been made in criminology. But he was forced to wait and see, for none of the equipment made sense to Bronson. What the police did with it, how it separated criminal from citizen, Bronson had no idea.
"—passed a twenty dollar bill signed by E. Thomas Froman as Secretary of the United States Treasury," said the policeman.
"Clever of you, officer."