Something about the feel of it aroused his suspicions.

He called Elmer, and when that exponent of reform entered the cabin, asked him bluntly: "Did you ever have anything to do with bad money ?" Elmer intimated that he might know it if he saw it.
"Then look at that, please." Elmer took the torn bill, produced a penknife, slit the yellow paper, and cut out of it one of the small hair-like fibers with which the texture of such notes is sprinkled.

After wetting this fiber and mangling it with his penknife he gave his judgment briefly.
"Queer," he said.
"But what does that explain ?" asked Lady Agatha.

"Perhaps the Earl of Claiborne came to this country and took to making counterfeit money in the hold of the Jasper B., into and out of which he stole like a ghost?
Finally he got tired of it and blew himself up with a bomb out there, leaving his ring with a piece of money intact?
Is that the explanation we get out of our facts?
Because, you know," she added, as Cleggett did not smile, "all that is absurd!" "Yes," said Cleggett, still refusing to be amused, "but out of all this jumble of mystery, just one certain thing appears." "And that is ?" "That our destinies are somehow linked!" "Our destinies?
Linked ?" She gave him a swift look, and as suddenly dropped her eyes again.
Cleggett could not tell whether she was offended or not by his expression of the idea.
"The same people," said Cleggett, after a brief pause, "who are so persistently hostile to me are also in some manner connected with your own misfortunes.

Their possession of this ring shows that." "Yes," she said, following his thought, "that is true--whoever set off that bomb was also wearing this ring, or was very near the person who was wearing it.