It was the afternoon of the second day that a man who gave the name of Drummond called and presented a card of the Reynolds Company.

“Have you ever been paid a little bill of twenty-five dollars by our company?” he asked.

Down in his heart Carlton knew that this man was a detective.  “I can’t say without looking it up,” he replied.

Carlton touched a button and an assistant appeared.  Something outside himself seemed to nerve him up, as he asked:  “Look up our account with Reynolds, and see if we have been paid—­what is it?—­a bill for twenty-five dollars.  Do you recall it?”

“Yes, I recall it,” replied the assistant.  “No, Mr. Dunlap, I don’t think it has been paid.  It is a small matter, but we sent them a duplicate bill yesterday.  I thought the original must have gone astray.”

Carlton cursed him inwardly for sending the bill.  But then, he reasoned, it was only a question of time, after all, when the forgery would be discovered.

Drummond dropped into a half-confidential, half-quizzing tone.  “I thought not.  Somewhere along the line that check has been stolen and raised to twenty-five thousand dollars,” he remarked.

“Is that so?” gasped Carlton, trying hard to show just the right amount of surprise and not too much.  “Is that so?”

“No doubt you have read in the papers of this clever realty company swindle?  Well, it seems to have been part of that.”

“I am sure that we shall be glad to do all in our power to cooperate with Reynolds,” put in Dunlap.

“I thought you would,” commented Drummond dryly.  “I may as well tell you that I fear some one has been tampering with your mail.”

“Tampering with our mail?” repeated Dunlap, aghast.  “Impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible until it is proved so,” answered Drummond, looking him straight in the eyes.  Carlton did not flinch.  He felt a new power within himself, gained during the past few days of new association with Constance.  For her he could face anything.

But when Drummond was gone he felt as he had on the night when he had finally realized that he could never cover up the deficit in his books.  With an almost superhuman effort he gripped himself.  Interminably the hours of the rest of the day dragged on.

That night he sank limp into a chair on his return home.  “A man named Drummond was in the office to-day, my dear,” he said.  “Some one in the office sent Reynolds a duplicate bill, and they know about the check.”

“Well?”

“I wonder if they suspect me?”

“If you act like that, they won’t suspect.  They’ll arrest,” she commented sarcastically.

He had braced up again into his new self at her words.  But there was again that sinking sensation in her heart, as she realized that it was, after all, herself on whom he depended, that it was she who had been the will, even though he had been the intellect of their enterprise.  She could not overcome the feeling that, if only their positions could be reversed, the thing might even yet be carried through.