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Page 4
Instead of tears and recriminations, instead of the conventional
"How could you do it?" instead of burning denunciation of him for
ruining her life, he read something else in her face. What was it?
"Coward?" he repeated slowly. "What would you have me do--take you
with me?"
She tossed her head contemptuously.
"Stay and face it?" he hazarded again.
"Is there no other way?" she asked, still leaning forward with her
eyes fixed on his. "Think! Is there no way that you could avoid
discovery just for a time? Carlton, you--we are cornered. Is there
no desperate chance?"
He shook his head sadly.
Her eyes wandered momentarily about the studio, until they rested on
an easel. On it stood a water color on which she had been working,
trying to put into it some of the feeling which she would never have
put into words for him. On the walls of the apartment were pen and
ink sketches, scores of little things which she had done for her own
amusement. She bit her lip as an idea flashed through her mind.
He shook his head again mournfully.
"Somewhere," she said slowly, "I have read that clever forgers use
water colors and pen and ink like regular artists. Think--think! Is
there no way that we--that I could forge a check that would give us
breathing space, perhaps rescue us?"
Carlton leaned over the table toward her, fascinated. He placed both
his hands on hers. They were icy, but she did not withdraw them.
For an instant they looked into each other's eyes, an instant, and
then they understood. They were partners in crime, amateurs perhaps,
but partners as they had been in honesty.
It was a new idea that she had suggested to him. Why should he not
act on it? Why hesitate? Why stop at it? He was already an
embezzler. Why not add a new crime to the list? As he looked into
her eyes he felt a new strength. Together they could do it. Hers was
the brain that had conceived the way out. She had the will, the
compelling power to carry the thing through. He would throw himself
on her intuition, her brain, her skill, her daring.
On his desk in the corner, where often until far into the night he
had worked on the huge ruled sheets of paper covered with figures of
the firm's accounts, he saw two goose-necked vials, one of lemon-
colored liquid, the other of raspberry color. One was of tartaric
acid, the other of chloride of lime. It was an ordinary ink
eradicator. Near the bottles lay a rod of glass with a curious tip,
an ink eraser made of finely spun glass threads which scraped away
the surface of the paper more delicately than any other tool that
had been devised. There were the materials for his, their
rehabilitation if they were placed in his wife's deft artist
fingers. Here was all the chemistry and artistry of forgery at hand.
"Yes," he answered eagerly, "there is a way, Constance. Together we
can do it."
There was no time for tenderness between them now. It was cold, hard
fact and they understood each other too well to stop for
endearments.
Far into the night they sat up and discussed the way in which they
would go about the crime. They practised with erasers and with brush
and water color on the protective coloring tint on some canceled
checks of his own. Carlton must get a check of a firm in town, a
check that bore a genuine signature. In it they would make such
trifling changes in the body as would attract no attention in
passing, yet would yield a substantial sum toward wiping out
Carlton's unfortunate deficit.
Late as he had worked the night before, nervous and shaky as he felt
after the sleepless hours of planning their new life, Carlton was
the first at the office in the morning. His hand trembled as he ran
through the huge batch of mail already left at the first delivery.
He paused as he came to one letter with the name "W. J. REYNOLDS
CO." on it.
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