THE FORGED SIGNATURE
“Good morning, Miss Slocum,” said Mr. Sprague, smugly, as Linda and Dot
entered the studio at Culver City the following day.
Linda winced at the name, and looked around her, to see whether another
girl could be entering at the same time. But there was no one except a
strange young man sitting in the corner, who couldn’t possibly be “Miss
Slocum.” The secretary was evidently giving her a dig; perhaps he was
trying to trap her by calling her by the name which Dot had manufactured
on the spur of the moment at Kansas City, and which had been repeated by
the newspapers.
“Trying to be funny, Mr. Sprague?” inquired Dot, scathingly.
The stranger in the corner arose from his seat.
“This is Mr. Bertram Chase, of the police,” Sprague announced, calmly.
“Miss Slocum and Miss Manton.”
The girls regarded the young man questioningly. He was in plain
clothes—not an ordinary policeman.
“A detective,” explained Sprague, simply.
Dot became impatient; she wanted to get to the point of their visit.
“We should like to meet the aviatrix who calls herself Linda Carlton,”
she announced, in a business-like tone. “Has she come in yet?”
“She is on the set now,” replied Sprague. “Going through her stunts. She
has only a small part in the picture, so it can all be done at once.”
“Will you kindly take us out where she is?” asked Linda.
“In a minute, sister,” returned the man, condescendingly. “But we have
some business with you first.”
Linda’s expression became freezing. She could not bear this insolent
young man. He smiled in an irritating manner.
“We have examined your licenses, Miss Slocum,” he said. “And we believe
the signatures have been forged. The real Miss Carlton brought hers
today, and we compared the two. There is no doubt that hers is genuine.”
“What?” demanded Linda, in horror.
“Let us see them!” demanded Dot, entirely unconvinced.
Mr. Sprague nodded.
“Our friend, Mr. Chase, has them now. He will let you look at them.”
The young man, who could not have been a day over twenty-five, looked
extremely embarrassed. Not like a hard-boiled detective at all, Linda
thought. Indeed, he flashed her a look of sympathy, as if he did not
share in Sprague’s accusation. Still, it was his business, and he had to
go through with it.
He fumbled in his pockets and produced two cards, identical at a glance.
The same numbers, the same printing—and what looked like the same
signatures.
“Don’t let them out of your hands, Chase,” warned Sprague, evidently
determined to be as nasty as possible.
“You see, ladies,” Chase said, almost apologetically. “This signature is
forged.” He held up one of the cards. “Look at the capital ‘L’. It
hasn’t been copied quite right.”
“Of course it hasn’t!” cried Dot. “But the other one is yours, Linda.”
“Yes,” agreed Linda, trembling in spite of her innocence, “I remember
that mud-spot on mine. I got it on that treasure-hunt that Mr. Clavering
planned, from Green Falls last summer.”
“Odd,” remarked Sprague, sarcastically. “That is the very mud-spot the
real Miss Carlton identified her card by!”
“What do you propose to do?” demanded Dot, now thoroughly exasperated.
“Hold Miss Slocum under bail,” replied Sprague. “For forgery.”
Dot burst into a peal of laughter.
“It’s too absurd!” she exclaimed.
The young detective looked exceedingly uncomfortable.
“Shall we go out on the lot?” he suggested. “And see the stunts?”
“O. K. by me,” agreed Sprague.
“Are we to wear hand-cuffs?” inquired Dot, flippantly.
Sprague gave her a withering look.
“You are not being held at all, Miss Manton,” he said. “We’re not
concerned under what names you care to travel.”
The young detective fell back and walked across the lots with the girls.
“I believe you are innocent, Miss—Carlton,” he said, his brown eyes
already showing devotion to Linda. “Of course I have to take your money
for bail, but I’m sure it will be all cleared up soon. I think that the
other girl is the impostor.”
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Chase!” cried Linda, the tears dangerously near to
her eyes at this expression of sympathy.
The group reached the lot, where the picture was being rehearsed. It
looked so interesting, so thrilling,—had it been under any other
circumstances, the girls would have only been too delighted at the
opportunity. But now they could think only of the horrible fix they were
in, with not a friend in this strange city to vindicate them.
Mr. Von Goss, who was buzzing busily about the lot, paid no attention at
all to Dot and Linda—not even a formal nod of greeting as he passed them
by. He had evidently decided that they were impostors, who had cleverly
deceived him, thereby securing for themselves an evening’s unusual
entertainment at his expense. Therefore, he preferred not to recognize
them at all. The deliberate cut hurt Linda, for she had liked and
admired the older man, and had found him exceedingly interesting.
The moving-picture aviatrix, however, was going through all sorts of
stunts in a silver Moth, which had been brightly painted and decorated.
Linda stood still, gazing at her enviously. Not that she wanted to be in
the picture, but she would always rather be in the air than on the
ground. And it looked now as if she were to be chained to the earth for
several days to come, unless she or Dot could think of a way out of
their difficulties.
“The girl’s too low!” cried Chase suddenly, in horror.
Linda watched her; she certainly was dangerously near to the ground. The
roar of her motor was deafening. But, by a stroke of luck, she regained
control, and abruptly pointed her plane upward, climbing without
disaster.
“She’s good,” admitted Linda, in all fairness.
“Not so good as she looks,” remarked Chase. “I happen to know that plane
and it will take a lot of punishment. But she’ll do that little stunt
once too often.”
“You’re a flier too, Mr. Chase?” inquired Linda.
“Yes,” he replied. “I’m a secret-service man, on the air force of the
police.”
He looked right into Linda’s eyes, as if to tell her that his love of
flying was another bond of sympathy between them.
“How did you happen to be called in—on an unimportant case like ours?”
“I’m here on something else. Connected with another case. And I know Mr.
Von Goss personally, so he asked me to help him out.”
“I see.... I suppose I shouldn’t ask you for advice, Mr. Chase—but—I
feel as if you would help me, if possible. What would you do if you were
in my place?”
“Wire to somebody well known in aviation circles, who can come and
identify you as _the girl who flew the Atlantic alone_. Because that is
the important thing. That’s why Von Goss is paying the aviatrix thirty
thousand dollars for a small part in one picture. Just because of that
one fact!”
“Then friends wouldn’t help—in establishing my identity?”
“No. They ought to be people in aviation.”
Dot interrupted this conversation, by suddenly grasping Linda’s arm.
“Look at Sprague!” she cried. “Look at the way he’s waving that hat of
his to his girl-friend! Now what do you suppose the idea of that is?”
At the mention of his own name, the secretary turned to the girls.
“Miss Carlton is supposed to fly away—be lost to sight now,” he informed
them, calmly. “It isn’t likely she’ll come back and land here, for that
finishes her part.”
“You mean we’re not to see her?” demanded Dot. “That looks suspicious to
me!”
“Oh, yeah?” returned Sprague. “Well, don’t flatter yourselves that Miss
Linda Carlton has time to waste on a couple of upstarts from
Toonerville, or wherever it was you came from. She’s a busy girl!”
Linda sighed deeply as she watched the plane disappear entirely from
view. There was nothing to do now; Sprague and Von Goss were both
against her. She might as well go back to the hotel.
“Come to the hotel this afternoon for that check for bail,” she said to
Chase. “I’ll have it ready.”
Then, with a nod of farewell, she and Dot left the lot and went into a
restaurant at Culver City for their lunch. But this time they were not
interested in seeing the stars. Their own problems were too pressing.
“If I could only get in touch with Daddy,” said Linda, as she nibbled at
her salad. “But I don’t know where he is, and I should hate to alarm
Aunt Emily by telling her that I am being held under bail. No ... I
guess the best idea is to wire Mr. Eckert.”
“That’s the stuff!” approved Dot. “Why not go over to that telephone and
do it now, while I order something for dessert?”
Linda took the suggestion, and fifteen minutes later the girls started
back for their hotel in Los Angeles. They felt like prisoners, unable to
come and go at will. As a matter of fact, Dot was still as free as air,
but she had no thought of deserting Linda.
They bought the afternoon paper on their way back to the hotel, and when
they reached their room, Dot spread it out on her bed to read. But the
first item that met her eye made her stare in horror. It was Linda’s
picture, right on the front page, with the caption “Miss Sallie Slocum,
impersonating Linda Carlton,” and underneath it, the whole dishonest
story.
She read it in rising anger, determined to destroy it before Linda
should see it. But her companion, noticing the look on her chum’s face,
crossed the room and saw it for herself.
“Not a soul will believe it is really I!” she exclaimed. “Because it
doesn’t look a whole lot like me.”
“No, it certainly doesn’t. It must be that same picture the reporter
took of us both at the airport, the day we landed here in Los Angeles.
Only I’m cut off. I’m not news any more.”
“No, you’re free, Dot.”
“Yet it’s all my fault!” She wound her arms around Linda. “Darling, I
just can’t tell you how sorry I am for that silly prank!”
Linda patted her hand.
“Don’t think of it as your fault, Dot. That name business is only a
side-issue. That girl would have gotten away with it, no matter what we
did. She’d have thought up something else if she hadn’t had that to play
on.”
“But I played right into her hands.”
“Perhaps. Only, any girl who would go to all this trouble to invent such
a dishonest scheme would have succeeded somehow. Why, the licenses were
really the most important thing. But how she ever managed to get them
exchanged without that smart Sprague noticing, is more than I can
account for.”
“Well, you must remember he wasn’t prejudiced against her as he was
against you. He trusted her, so he probably wasn’t watching her
closely.”
“I detest that man,” said Linda.
“So do I,” agreed Dot.
“Well, this isn’t getting us anywhere,” remarked Linda, with a yawn. “I
think a nap would do us good.”
So, wisely acting upon the suggestion, the girls slept until Mr. Chase
called at five o’clock for Linda’s check for one thousand dollars for
bail.
“Which I hate to have to take,” he said, apologetically. “But I expect
to give it back to you soon!”