She stared back at him, striving to comprehend. “Plank's!” she repeated slowly, “Plank's cheque? What cheque? What do you mean?”
“The one he gave you last night. I've used that. Now you know!”
“The one he—But you couldn't! How could you? It was not filled in.”
“I filled it.”
Her dawning horror was reacting on him, as it always did, like a fierce tonic; and his own courage came back in a sort of sullen desperation.
“You... You are trying to frighten me, Leroy,” she stammered. “You are trying to make me do something—give you what you want—force me to give you what you want! You can't frighten me. The cheque was made out to me—to my order. How could you have used it, if I had not indorsed it?”
“I indorsed it. Do you understand that!” he said savagely.
“No, I don't; because, if you did, it's forgery.”
“I don't give a damn what you think it is!” he broke in fiercely. “All I'm worried over is what Plank will think. I didn't mean to do it; I didn't dream of doing it; but when Burbank cleaned me up I fished about, and that cursed cheque came tumbling out!”
In the rising excitement of self-defence the colour was coming back into his battered face; he sat up straighter in his chair, and, grasping the upholstered arms, leaned forward, speaking more distinctly and with increasing vigour and anger: