“Can’t you prove it was a swindle?”
“It will do me no good. The signature is mine, and I’ve got to stand the loss,” fumed the ex-mayor from New Jersey.
“Can’t you catch Gabe Flecker—if that’s his real name?”
“I wish I could, but he seems to have disappeared.”
“It isn’t likely he’d stay around these parts after such a swindle as that,” continued Frank. “He may be hundreds of miles away by this time.”
“I have notified the police. Perhaps they will catch him for me. I’d give fifty dollars just to lay my hands on the rascal.”
“Why not offer a reward?”
“I’ll do it,” answered Sinclair Basswood, promptly.
He was as good as his word, and early on Monday morning Frank saw a notice in the post office offering a reward of fifty dollars for the capture of “One Gabe Flecker, a fugitive from justice.”
By Monday night the young book agent had moved on to a town I shall call Brentwood. This was quite a trading center, with a population of six hundred souls and a good surrounding territory of farms.