How completely people may change, even within a few hours, was well
illustrated as they stood side by side and regarded their work with
as much pride as if it had been the result of their honest efforts
of years. They were now pen and brush crooks of the first caliber,
had reduced forgery to a fine art and demonstrated what an amateur
might do. For, although they did not know it, nearly half the
fifteen millions or so lost by forgeries every year was the work of
amateurs such as they.

The next problem was presenting the check for collection. Of course
Carlton could not put it through his own bank, unless he wanted to
leave a blazed trail straight to himself. Only a colossal bluff
would do, and in a city where only colossal bluffs succeed it was
not so impossible as might have been first imagined.

Luncheon over, they sauntered casually into a high-class office
building on Broadway where there were offices to rent. The agent was
duly impressed by the couple who talked of their large real estate
dealings. Where he might have been thoroughly suspicious of a man
and might have asked many embarrassing but perfectly proper
questions, he accepted the woman without a murmur. At her suggestion
he even consented to take his new tenants around to the Uptown Bank
and introduce them. They made an excellent impression by a first
cash deposit of the money Carlton had thrown down on the table the
night before. A check for the first month's rent more than mollified
the agent and talk of a big deal that was just being signed up to-
day duly impressed the bank.

The next problem was to get the forged check certified. That, also,
proved a very simple matter. Any one can walk into a bank and get a