At that moment Thurene dropped his bomb—or, rather, one of the many which rendered the case far from monotonous.
"If you'll search my room at the Belvedere," he suggested, "you'll find some five thousand dollars more."
"What?" demanded the chief. "Do you admit that you deliberately brought seven thousand five hundred dollars of counterfeit money here and tried to pass it?"
"I admit nothing," corrected the arrested man. "You stated that the fifty-dollar bills which you found upon me when I was searched against my will were false. I'll take your word for that. But if they are counterfeit, I'm merely telling you that there are a hundred more like them in my room at the hotel."
"Of course you're willing to state where they came from?" suggested the chief, who was beginning to sense the fact that something underlay Thurene's apparent sincerity.
"Certainly. I found them."
"Old stuff," sneered one of the operatives standing near by. "Not only an old alibi, but one which you'll have a pretty hard time proving."
"Do you happen to have a copy of yesterday's News handy?" Thurene asked.
When the paper was produced he turned rapidly to the Lost and Found column and pointed to an advertisement which appeared there:
FOUND—An envelope containing a sum of money. Owner may recover same by notifying Robert J. Thurene, Belvedere Hotel, and proving property.