One morning, tired of learning the “Witch of Islam” by heart, I leaned over the bed, and something in the waste-paper basket close beside it caught my eye; a scrap of coloured paper--several scraps--pink. Looking nearer, I saw it was a torn-up cheque. Without any particular interest at first I stared at the unfamiliar thing, wondering vaguely how it came to be there. Only after this casual inspection did it occur to me as being rather odd. A cheque! What was it? Whose was it? How did it come to be there, torn up in _my_ waste-paper basket? It was a long time since I had seen such a thing as a cheque; and idly, with no more curiosity than this, I lay gazing at the scraps of coloured paper. The basket lay within easy reach; I stretched out an arm and picked it up; I emptied the contents on the white counterpane; I sorted out the coloured scraps from among the general litter. The scraps were small, and the puzzle amused me. It was a long business. Bit by bit the cheque took shape. The word “Toronto” was the first detail that caught my attention closer. Presently, fitting three tiny scraps together, I saw to my surprise a name in full--Arthur Glyn Boyde. Another little group made “Kay.” A third read “Seventy Five Dollars.” My interest increased with every moment, till at last the complete cheque lay pieced together before my eyes. It was drawn by Kay on my old Toronto bank for the sum mentioned, and it was payable to Boyde. The date was--three days before. I lay and stared at it in blank bewilderment. Fitting the scraps together on the counterpane was nothing compared to my difficulty in fitting the pieces together in my mind. I could make neither head nor tail of it. Kay had, indeed, been acting in Toronto on the date given, but--a bank account...! And why was the cheque torn up? It must have been delivered with a letter--yesterday. Boyde had not mentioned it. I felt as confused as though it were a problem in arithmetic; but a problem in arithmetic would not have stirred the feeling of pain and dread that rose in me. Something I had long feared and hated, had deliberately hidden from myself, had cloaked and draped so that I need not recognize it, now at last stared me in the face. The chief item in the puzzle, however, remained. That it was not Kay’s real signature, I saw plainly, it was a reasonably good copy; but why was the cheque torn up? It had been taken from my old book in the packing-case downstairs, of course; but why was it destroyed? A forgery! The word terrified me. It was while trying to find the meaning that my fingers played with the rest of the littered paper ... and presently pieced together a letter in the same writing as the signature; a letter, written from Toronto, with Islington Jersey Dairy as address, and bearing the same date as the cheque--a letter from Kay to Boyde. It had been also torn into little bits.