Nancy, under ordinary circumstances, could not have told the counterfeit money from the real thing-with the picture of Jackson on the face, and the White House on the back. But now that she had been alerted to examine the bills carefully, she noted that the color and texture of the paper appeared to be at fault. When Nancy felt sure that she was not being observed, she stealthily picked up one of the bills and tucked it inside her robe as evidence.

We made a pretty fair week's profit," Maurice Hale said gruffly as he stacked the bills into several large piles. You distributors and passers keep up like this for another month and I'd say we'll all be on Easy Street."

"The racket won't last another month," Al Snead growled. "I tell you, the federal agents are getting wise that the phony stuff's being passed around here."

"Bah!" Hale replied contemptuously. "Let them be suspicious! They wouldn't think of this out-of-the-way place as our headquarters in a thousand years!"

Nancy could not help but smile at his words. "That's what he thinks!"

The next voice that spoke startled Nancy. She recognized it instantly as belonging to Mr. Kent -the would-be buyer of Red Gate Farm!

"Yeah, maybe not," he was saying. "Still, it's too bad the old lady wouldn't sell her place. Then we'd really have a setup!"

It flashed through Nancy's mind that her hunch had been right about Mr. Kent being involved with the hillside cult. No wonder they wanted to obtain Red Gate Farm; it would have been a better headquarters for the gang than the cave.

The girl detective strained her ears as the conversation continued. A woman next to Kent said scornfully, "I only hope your bright idea about that fake letter we took to the Drew girl, and cutting the farm telephone wires, doesn't backfire."

So, Nancy told herself, it was Kent, and the woman who had just spoken, who were the ones responsible for that part of the mystery. Mr. Kent also was undoubtedly the driver of the car which had slowed down one evening near the farmhouse.