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 girls 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.