Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/240

 narrow steps into the next room, he drew out those yellowbacks for a second inspection.

"I thought you paid in gold," he suddenly demurred.

"That's as good as gold, ain't it?"

Kestner, at the moment, did not answer, for he was staring down at the two ten-dollar notes, re-inspecting them with the trained eye of the expert.

"Ain't that as good as gold?" demanded the other man.

"Sure," was Kestner's easy answer, for the first glance had warned him that those two yellowbacks were counterfeits. And the second glance had convinced him of the fact that they had been printed from Lambert plates, with Lambert inks, and on Lambert paper.

Kestner found himself in a basement-room which, bore evidence of at one time being used as a plumber's shop. In the front corner stood an overturned enamel bath-tub and a couple of hand-bowls of the same material. Behind these lay a pile of gas-piping, and in the heavily grated window below the street-level Kestner could make out a dusty array of pipe-wrenches and faucets, a gasoline pump torch, and a broken heat-coil. Next to this window was a grated door which opened on a steep flight of steps leading to the sidewalk level. In the middle of the room stood a huge flat-topped desk on which was a telephone transmitter, a city directory, and a green-shaded electric-light.

But it was none of these things that held Kestner's attention. His quick glance had already taken in the