Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/18

 as a con-woman. We know she worked with a wire-tapper named Davis, and later decided to leave America for a year or two. That was after a badger-game rake-off over there. We first tailed her in Amsterdam on some diamond smuggling work. Later, we found her on her way to Paris with this woman called Maura Lambert."

"So her name's Maura!" languidly commented Kestner, as he threw away his cigar. "But I think you're wrong about the old gentleman. That man is not a lunatic."

"Oh, he's shrewd and keen enough," admitted Wilsnach. "But he has that one obsession of his."

"Which one?"

"That nut idea that he can stampede all modern commerce off the range, that one woman's hand, properly trained, can crowbar over the whole modern world of business. His claim, I suppose, is that all our money-machinery, all our business, our banks and credit systems and negotiable security methods, actually depend on one thing. And that thing is the integrity of paper. The modern business man has got to know that his documents are genuine, that his bank-notes are bona-fide, that his drafts are authentic, that his currency certificates are unquestioned."

"Naturally!"

"Lambert's got the idea that he can undermine the whole structure of modern commercial life by striking at that one thing, by making men feel that its paper, its bank-notes and bonds and certificates are no longer to be depended upon. He imagines he is going to make banks crumble and governments totter by simply