“A check signed by you for the sum of four hundred and fifty thousand dollars, payable to this man, was presented at the bank yesterday, and cashed. Do you know anything about it?”
The miner lifted his head.
“No, no! I made out a check, but it was only forty-five thousand. That was bad enough, but—what day is this?”
“This is Sunday, the twenty-sixth,” Nick answered.
“Then my check cannot have been cashed,” Stone said, with a great sigh of relief. “You must be mistaken, for I distinctly remember that I dated it the twenty-seventh.”
“In that case, Mr. Stone,” said Nick, “you have a chance of getting even with this fellow. I made no mistake in saying that he cashed a check for four hundred and fifty thousand dollars yesterday, but it was dated the twenty-fifth. Circumstances have conspired with his own cunning to save him from the charge of being an accessory to a murder, but he won’t find it so easy to avoid the consequences of this other crime. We can’t accuse him of forgery, because the signature is evidently yours, but we can make out a complete check-raising case against him without the slightest trouble. A peculiar kind of ‘disappearing ink’ was used. I’ve already brought out your original writing in one place, Stone, and I can bring out all of it by the same process. That will doubtless corroborate you as to the amount and date—and Stephen Follansbee will come off his perch.”
The famous specialist gave a peculiar strangled sound in his throat and his hands dropped to his side.
“You’ve won, Carter,” he said, his voice quavering. “I’ll return the money—every cent of it, if you will drop the case—and you will have to do that. The whole thing will come out if you try to press it, and Stone will be branded as a man who was once under treatment for insanity.”
“You’re right, Follansbee, in part,” Nick told him quietly. “I’ve won, and the time has come for you to throw down your arms. Don’t be too sure about the rest, though. I don’t believe my friend Stone here has any desire to let you go free, if he can be shown a way to prevent it. Isn’t that right, Stone?”
“It certainly is,” was the emphatic response. “If it is a possible thing to make this infernal scamp pay for what he has done, I say go ahead, by all means; but I don’t see how——”