doubt the state will be flooded with them. It’s an easy game. You know how they work it: Circus employee has a bond he has been saving, money all gone, must sell at a sacrifice. Greedy rubes snatch them up. And the worst of it is, they are so perfect that only in cases where two of the same number chance to come together will they be detected. With the vast number of genuine bonds in the country, this is likely never to happen. So there you are. Why, I doubt if even the Treasury Department itself could detect them. And this Black McCree is at the bottom of it all.”

“How do you know that?” Johnny bent forward eagerly.

Pant smiled. “He has a foolish habit of scrawling his name about. He made the mistake of scribbling it on one of the bonds which later came into my hands. He’s known to the police the country over, not so much as counterfeiter, however, as a ‘Red’—a dynamiter of the worst type. He has more than once left his scribbled name above a ghastly piece of work. That is all they know of him. He has never been identified. Just why he has decided to take up the life of a sane crook and enter the forging game, I can’t tell unless—by George! I believe I have it! Yes, sir! It’s a financial plot!”

“How’s that?” Johnny asked.

“Can’t you see? Our country is deeply in debt. Every town and city is flooded with national credit slips in the form of Liberty Bonds. A nation’s credit is its life. Now, if some slick fellow can fill the safety boxes of the land with bogus bonds, what is to become of the country’s credit? In time government bonds cannot be sold at any price, for the would-be purchaser cannot tell whether he is buying a genuine bond or a counterfeit.”

“I see,” breathed Johnny.

“And yet,” mused Pant, “it may not be a plot, after all. Perhaps this Black McCree thinks he has discovered a way to get rich quick, and has dropped his radical notions. They mostly drop them when they fall heir to a piece of money. But, anyway,” he straightened up with a jerk, “we’ve got to get him.”

“What’s he like?” asked Johnny.

“That’s what no one knows. He’s never been seen. He may be large or small. He may be, for instance, a certain husky conman with a ragged ear.”

“The very chap,” exclaimed Johnny. “He’s a crook, all right. I caught him in a crooked deal the other day. We had a little boxing match.”

“You can’t be sure he’s the 

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