Page:Under three flags; a story of mystery (IA underthreeflagss00tayliala).pdf/303

 "The third? Oh, yes; the third was a young man named Ernest Stanley. He was the only stranger in Raymond, so far as known, on the day of the tragedy. This young man had been liberated from state prison on Memorial day, after serving two years of a three years' sentence for forgery."

"Then there was fairly good reason for suspecting him?" comments Van Zandt, with an enigmatic smile. "Give a dog a bad name, you know. But tell me about the fellow. I confess I am rather interested in him. Was his forgery a very serious affair?"

"A matter of $1,000. Mine was the name he forged."

"Indeed. How did you trace it?"

"That was a peculiar feature of the case. Stanley presented the check at the bank of which I was president."

"Rather a blundering piece of business, should you not say? But may he not have been innocent?"

"The forgery was proved."

"Ah! Stanley admitted it?"

"No; he told a fanciful story of the check having been given to him in New York, in payment of a gambling debt."

"Nothing impossible in that story, Mr. Felton. I will tell you why. A night or two before we left New York I was seated in Madison Square garden, listening to a concert, when a party of sporting men sat down at the next table, and one of them entertained his companions by relating a reminiscence of a game of draw poker in which he had played a part two or three years before. I will not repeat the story, but perhaps you will understand the point I am trying to make. Four men were playing and during the course of one hand the betting had narrowed to two of them. A held what he believed to be a well-nigh invincible hand. Flushed with confidence, and irritated by his opponent's insinuation that he had no more money to wager, A took a check-book from his pocket, wrote a check for $1,000 or some such sum, and tossed it upon the table. The bet was covered, the hands shown down, and A lost. Now," finishes Van