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KEEBAN

small gloved hand across the counter for the bank note which he held.

A new twenty, I noticed it was, and then I looked again at her. Without any doubt, I knew her voice; I was absolutely certain I'd talked to her; but her face was a complete surprise to me. A pleasant surprise, right enough; she was rather a little thing, slender but with rounded neck and arms, in actually beautiful proportions; about twenty-two in age, I guessed, She had nice, clear white-and-pink skin; good, bold little mouth and a sort of I-dare-you-chin. Her nose turned up the barest trifle, darned attractively, and though I couldn't from the side get a view of her eyes, it was pretty plain they weren't easy ones to meet. Anyway, that clerk wobbled before her as he apologized that the government that week had just warned the banks and all big business houses in Chicago that new and unusually dangerous counterfeits of twenty-dollar Federal Reserve Notes were in circulation.

"Dangerous?" said my friend. "You mean the ink's poisonous or something like that?" She seemed glad she had her gloves on.

The clerk laughed, "Oh, it's quite safe that way, Miss Wellington. They mean, it's an un-