ransferred back to the head office."

The words were hardly out of his mouth when a bell rang violently. The
front doors of the bank had been closed with the departure of the
commissioner, and one of the junior clerks, balancing up his day book,
dropped his pen, and, at a sign from his chief, walking to the door,
pulled back the bolts and admitted--John Minute.

Frank stared at him in astonishment.

"Hello, uncle," he said. "I wish you had come a few minutes before. I
thought you were in Paris."

"The wire calling me to Paris was a fake," growled John Minute. "I wired
for confirmation, and discovered my Paris people had not sent me any
message. I only got the wire just before the train started. I have been
spending all the afternoon getting on to the phone to Paris to untangle
the muddle. Why did you wish I was here five minutes before?"

"Because," said Frank, "we have just paid out fifty-five thousand pounds
to your friend, Mr. Holland."

"My friend?" John Minute stared from the manager to Frank and from Frank
to the manager, who suddenly experienced a sinking feeling which
accompanies disaster.

"What do you mean by 'my friend'?" asked John Minute. "I have never
heard of the man before."

"Didn't you give Mr. Holland checks amounting to fifty-five thousand
pounds this morning?" gasped the manager, turning suddenly pale.

"Certainly not!" roared John Minute. "Why the devil should I give him
checks? I have never heard of the man."

The manager grasped the counter for support.

He explained the situation in a few halting words, and led the way to
his office, Frank accompanying him.

John Minute examined the checks.

"That is my writing," he said. "I could swear to it myself, and yet I
never wrote those checks or signed them. Did you note the
commissionaire's number?"

"As it happens I jotted it down," said Frank.

By this time the manager was on the phone to the police. At seven
o'clock that night the commissionaire was discovered. He had been
employed, he said, by a Mr. Holland, whom he described as a slimmish
man, clean shaven, and by no means answering to the description which
Frank had given.

"I have lived for a long time in Australia," said the commissionaire,
"and he spoke like an Australian. In fact, when I mentioned certain
places I had been to he told me he knew them."

The police further discovered that the Knightsbridge flat had been
taken, furnished, three months before by Mr. Rex Holl