the stout bank examiner, when they met in the West Virginia town. "Poor but honest and not trying to borrow money. I am on my way to the city of opportunity looking for a job."

"You have come away that you might go back, as I understand it," said Allen. "Couldn't you change your peacock raiment for a hand-me-down without coming to Wheeling?"

"Yes, but I couldn't see you, Cherub," said Gard, "and you are to make all things possible for me. You are to convert me from a dweller in gilded palaces to a bank bookkeeper out of work, but with credentials.

"There is in Wheeling a bank cashier of your acquaintance," explained the special agent, "who used to work beside a bookkeeper whose friendship I want to cultivate. You introduce me to the cashier, he finds out what a really good fellow I am, we become friends. He gives me a letter of introduction to the man I want to meet. I return to the city and thrust myself properly into the affairs of one Sloan, bookkeeper for the Second National. The next time the corpulent examiner comes around he gets the surprise of his life. Do you follow me?"

Billy Gard had reached the conclusion that, if there was anything wrong with Bayard Alexander's bank the examiner was being deceived and that, therefore, there must be a juggling of accounts. Bookkeeper Charley Sloan of the individual ledgers occupied the post most likely to be used for deception, and so the special agent was taking a lot of trouble to make the right opportunity for getting friendly with Charley. That mild little man was therefore favorably impressed when he was handed a letter from his former associate who had gone to Wheeling and become a cashier. The two visited so agreeably together that a friendship developed and Gard came to live at the bookkeeper's boarding house. The two accountants grew to spend many evenings together and naturally talked shop.

"I had a friend," said Gard one evening, "who worked in a bank in New Orleans. Next to him was a bookkeeper who went wrong. He was induced to do this by a depositor who had a scheme for making them both rich. All the depositor needed was a little money. So he proposed that he draw checks against the bank and that the bookkeeper charge them temporarily to other accounts. The depositor would cash the checks at other banks and, when they came in, the teller would merely turn them over to the bookkeeper, probably asking if there was money to meet them. In this way a depositor who never had a thousand dollars in the bank eventually checked out $50,000."

"There was a teller," Sloan volunteered, "who worked in a bank here who entered the deposits in the books of the people making them and put the money in his pocket. There was no record of it except in the pass books. He got nearly all the money that came in for two months before he was found out."

"There are a lot of ways in which a bookkeeper may hide the facts with relation to a bank," continued the special agent. "It is pretty safe to charge anything to the inactive account of an estate or an endowed institution. These are not often looked into. The accounts balance for the examiner. I'll bet there isn't one bank in a dozen that doesn't fool the examiner."

"It's the easiest thing in the world," volunteered Sloan, "to take the necessary number of leaves out of the loose-leaf ledger to counterbalance it if the cash is short, and hide the leaves until the examiner is gone."

"Did you ever know that to be done?" abruptly asked the special agent.

The bookkeeper colored to his temples and was noticeably confused at the question. Then he said he had heard of its being done. The sleuth would have sworn he had led the bookkeeper into a confession.

Nothing was more natural than that these two bank bookkeepers should recur occasionally to the possibility of so arranging accounts that were in questionable condition that they would be passed by the examiner. Gard would lead to this in such a way that the bookkeeper would seem to have begun these discussions. Then he would talk freely. He would tell so many stories that the timid Sloan would want to relate a few in furnishing his part of the entertainment. But Gard knew that the bookkeeper was a man without imagination and that he could relate only what had happened in his experience. So he was all ears when Sloan one night gave his opinions on the subject of kiting.

"Of course," he said, "all banks have depositors who kite their checks and thereby get hold of money which they may use for a week before they have to make good. A depositor may turn in a check for a thousand dollars, drawn on a New York bank where he has no money. At the same time he sends the New York bank a check for the same amount, drawn on you. This causes the New York bank to honor the check drawn against it. The check drawn on you has to find its way through the clearing house and it will be a week before it gets back. In the meantime the depositor has had the use of a thousand dollars.

"But when it comes to real kiting," continued the bookkeeper, "it is the banks themselves that do it. If a bank has a sudden call for $100,000 and hasn't the money, all it has to do is to send a messenger with a check to a friendly bank around the corner. The messenger gets the whole amount in cash. It appears as an asset of the bank. It will be two or three days before the check will come back through the clearing house and appear as a liability, or the friendly bank may hold it up even longer. The banks may be swapping this sort of favors. The bank examiner does not know of the outstanding check. He is out of town before it appears."

Special Agent Billy Gard was again practically certain that he had here been told a chapter out of the experience of the Second National. He began to see his way clear to a denouement.

That same night events were transpiring of which he was to know a week later but which as yet were held in confidence among the directors of the Second National. They took place at a meeting of these same directors called by a minority which was dissatisfied with certain features of its management. Director Hinton, a sprightly and quick-tempered little man, was the leader of the revolt. Senator Bothdoldt was present as a supporter of the management of the bank as represented by the suave, forceful cashier, Bayard Alexander, whose hand sometimes shook at breakfast.

"I want to protest," Hinton began by launching directly into the heart of the matter in hand, "against this new loan to the McGrath Construction Company. It has been three years now that we have been pouring out our money to these people. We have $400,000 of their paper and I want to be shown that we can realize on it. It is time to call a halt."

"And there are the notes of the Oldman Mercantile Company," somewhat heatedly argued a second disaffected director. "I have been reliably informed within the last two days that they are in danger of going to the wall."

"And we, as directors, are responsible for the bank," said Mr. Isaacs, who was conservative.

"I for one," said Mr. Hinton, "have reached the point where I insist on a new management. I would like to know the sentiment of the board upon this question."

But the cashier asked for a word of explanation. Broad-shouldered and upstanding he rose among these heavy, sleek, bald-headed business men. His high and intellectual brow and clear-cut features gave him a distinction that always made an impression. But the firm mouth and the damp curls were those of a man of physical force and determination. His voice was alluring and convincing as he made his plea and there was now