sum mentioned, and it was payable to Boyde. The date was--three days before.
I lay and stared at it in blank bewilderment. Fitting the scraps together on the counterpane was nothing compared to my difficulty in fitting the pieces together in my mind. I could make neither head nor tail of it. Kay had, indeed, been acting in Toronto on the date given, but--a bank account...! And why was the cheque torn up? It must have been delivered with a letter--yesterday. Boyde had not mentioned it. I felt as confused as though it were a problem in arithmetic; but a problem in arithmetic would not have stirred the feeling of pain and dread that rose in me. Something I had long feared and hated, had deliberately hidden from myself, had cloaked and draped so that I need not recognize it, now at last stared me in the face.
The chief item in the puzzle, however, remained. That it was not Kay's real signature, I saw plainly, it was a reasonably good copy; but why was the cheque torn up? It had been taken from my old book in the packing-case downstairs, of course; but why was it destroyed? A forgery! The word terrified me.
It was while trying to find the meaning that my fingers played with the rest of the littered paper ... and presently pieced together a letter in the same writing as the signature; a letter, written from Toronto, with Islington Jersey Dairy as address, and bearing the same date as the cheque--a letter from Kay to Boyde. It had been also torn into little bits.
"Dear B.," it ran, "I am awfully sorry to hear poor Blackwood is so ill still, and that he has no money. I enclose my cheque for $75 to help him out, but, for God's sake, see that he doesn't waste it in dissipation, as he did the last I sent. I know I can trust you in this".... A page and a half of news followed. A postscript came at the end: "Better not let him know how much I've sent. I'll send another cheque later if you let me know it's really needed."
With these two documents spread on the counterpane
