"Yes," I agreed, "there always are people foolish enough to change bills without examining them any too closely. But possibly this one is very cleverly faked."
"Fools not to examine them!" echoed Quinn. "That isn't the direction in which the idiocy lies. The fools are the people who think they can counterfeit Uncle Sam's currency and get away with it. Barnum must have been right. There's a sucker born every minute—and those that don't try to beat the ponies or buck the stock market turn to counterfeiting for a living. They get it, too, in Leavenworth or Atlanta or some other place that maintains a federal penitentiary.
"They never seem to learn anything by others' experience, either. You'd think, after the Thurene case, it would be perfectly apparent that no one could beat the counterfeiting game for long."
"The Thurene case? I don't seem to remember that. The name is unusual, but—"
"Yes, and that wasn't the only part of the affair that was out of the ordinary," Quinn cut in. "Spencer Graham also contributed some work that was well off the beaten path—not forgetting the assistance rendered by a certain young woman."
Probably the most remarkable portion of the case [continued Quinn] was the fact that Graham didn't get in on it until Thurene had been arrested. Nevertheless, if it hadn't been for his work in breaking through an ironclad alibi the government might have been left high and dry, with a trunkful of suspicions and mighty little else.
Somewhere around the latter part of August the New York branch of the Secret Service informed Washington that a remarkably clever counterfeit fifty-dollar bill had turned up in Albany—a bill in which the engraving was practically perfect and the only thing missing from the paper was the silk fiber. This, however, was replaced by tiny red and blue lines, drawn in indelible ink. The finished product was so exceptionally good that, if it had not been for the lynxlike eyes of a paying teller—plus the highly developed sense of touch which bank officials accumulate—the note would have been changed without a moment's hesitation.
The man who presented it, who happened to be well known to the bank officials, was informed that the bill was counterfeit and the matter was reported through the usual channels. A few days later another bill, evidently from the same batch, was picked up in Syracuse, and from that time on it rained counterfeits so hard that every teller in the state threw a fit whenever a fifty-dollar bill came in, either for deposit or for change.
Hardly had the flow of upstate counterfeits lessened than the bills began to make their appearance in and around New York, sometimes in banks, but more often in the resorts patronized by bookmakers from Jamaica and the other near-by race tracks.