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Rh head, and when I came into my own money bleed me of every cent! I didn't grasp all that at first; it came to me gradually later. He said he had not cashed the check himself, but had given it to someone else; and that it had gone through the bank all right, and there must have been some mistake about its not having been returned with the others. I would have believed him; but just then he sprung his real game on me.

"He had paid my debts for me, accepted my notes, and held them when they were long overdue without making any trouble for me, and now in common decency I must help him out; that was the way he put it, but I was on in a minute and saw the trap I had walked into.

"He was in immediate need of five thousand more, must have it by the sixth of the month, and I must get it for him as I had the ten thousand. My mother was gone; but Dad would honor her check if I made it out carefully enough to pass muster. I could endorse it over, not to Drew, but to a friend of his who runs a private card-club, and who would stand in with us to the extent of presenting it to Titheredge for payment, and would then turn the money over to Drew for a liberal commission. This man was not to know that the check was a forgery, of course. He was to be told that I owed the money to Drew and that my mother had agreed to lend me the required sum until I came of age; that I did not want my family to know I had borrowed any more money from Drew; so he was to say that it was a gambling debt which I owed to him, and to threaten exposure if it were not paid.

"This was the brilliant plan which Farley Drew had concocted for his first levy of blackmail upon me, Sergeant;