XVI "It was not paper I meant to have" 121

XVII "Now for my part of the bargain" 129

XVIII "What have you done among you" 139

XIX "So that was your motive" 147

XX "A jewel of far greater value" 155

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

OPPOSITE PAGE

"Now state your problem" Frontis

"He transferred his attention to the door" 38

"Grace, you have misunderstood me" 48

"An old man was looking up at the face of a young girl" 80

"She was ignorant of his presence" 100

"The door opened and Philip Andrews came in" 144

"'R. S. T.,' read the official" 152

"He was even present at the wedding" 158

THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS

CHAPTER I

"_Do you know what would happen to him?_"

"Now state your problem."

The man who was thus addressed shifted uneasily on the long bench which
he and his companion bestrode. He was facing the speaker, and though
very little light sifted through the cobweb-covered window high over
their heads, he realized that what there was fell on his features, and
he was not sure of his features, or of what effect their expression
might have on the other man.

"Are you sure we are quite alone in this big, desolate place?" he
asked.

It seemed a needless question. Though it was broad daylight outside and
they were in the very heart of the most populated district of lower New
York, they could not have been more isolated had the surrounding walls
been those of some old ruin in the heart of an untraversed desert.

A short description of the place will explain this. They were in the
forsaken old church not far from Avenue A----, a building long given
over to desolation, and empty of everything but debris and one or two
broken stalls, which for some inscrutable reason--possibly from some
latent instinct of inherited reverence--had not yet been converted into
junk and sold to the old clothes men by the rapacious denizens of the
surrounding tenements.

Perhaps you remember this building; perhaps some echo of the bygone and
romantic has come to you as you passed its decaying walls once dedicated
to wo