“What do you mean?” asked Burgess with a scowl. “Wait!” he added as the detective’s meaning dawned upon him. He went back into the cages. The clerk who had brought the new bills from the women’s department found the old ones where they had been tossed aside by the teller. Burgess carried them to Hill without looking at them. He did not believe what he knew the detective suspected, that the girl was bold enough to try to palm off counterfeit money on a bank--on the president of a bank. He was surprised to find that he was really deeply annoyed by the detective’s manner of speaking of Nellie Murdock. He threw the bills down on his desk a little spitefully. “There you are! That girl took those identical bills out of her satchel and gave them to me to change for new ones. She had plenty of time to slip in a bad bill if she wanted to.” Hill turned round to the light, went over the bills quickly and handed them back to the banker with a grin. “Good as wheat! I apologize. And I want you to know that I never said she wasn’t a pretty girl. And the prettiest ones are often the smartest. It does happen that way sometimes.” “You make me tired, Hill. Everybody you see is crooked. With a man like you there’s no such thing as presumption of innocence. ’Way down inside of you you probably think I’m a bit off color too.” “Oh, I wouldn’t say just that!” said the detective, laughing and taking the cigar Burgess offered him from a box he produced from his desk. “I must be running along. You don’t seem quite as cheerful as usual this morning. I’ll come back tomorrow and see if I can’t bring in a new story.” Burgess disposed of several people who were waiting to see him, and then took from his drawer the letter he had been reading when the detective interrupted him. It was from Ralph Gordon, a Chicago lawyer, who was widely known as an authority on penology. Burgess had several times contributed to the funds of a society of which Gordon was president, whose function it was to meet criminals on their discharge from prison and give them a helping hand upward. The banker had been somewhat irritated today by Hill’s manner of speaking of the criminals against whom he was pitted; and doubtless Hill’s attitude toward the young woman he had pointed out as the daughter of a crook added to the sympathetic fading with which Burgess took up his friend’s letter for another reading. The letter ran: