A HOT SCENTIt was just a year since the revelation of this gigantic fraud had amazed the world. One fateful morning the directors of the Bank of San Félipe had received messages from no less than three branch managers that notes which had come in over their counters were duplicates of numbers already in their possession; and on the following days similar messages came thick and fast from all over the country. Counterfeiting on a large scale was evidently in progress; but it was counterfeiting of an exceptionally clever kind: for when the directors had passed the notes from one to another in mingled consternation and admiration, they found presently that they could not tell the spurious from the genuine. Neither could the expert who was at once summoned to decide, nor the other experts whom
