Thomas Maple lives on Crystal Palace Road with his niece Verity. He works for a firm of bank note engravers. However, the dollar bills he shows Wentworth Gold are forgeries – perfect except for the missing Treasury sign. When Verity meets her new employer she develops serious misgivings, and arriving back home she can hear a menacing voice. „"A Debt Discharged"" is a novel about forged dollar bills and a young girl's investigations into her suspicious new employer. These were largely adventure narratives with elements of crime or mystery, and usually combined a bombastic sensationalism with hammy violence.