The Sleuth of St. James Street [46]
is your past, Mr. Gosford. Now let me tell your future. I see you in joy at the recovered will. I see you pleased at your foresight in getting a direct bequest, and at the care you urged on Marshall to leave no evidence of his plan, lest the authorities discover it. For I see, Mr. Gosford, that it was your intention all along to keep this sum of money for your own use and pleasure. But alas, Mr. Gosford, it was not to be! I see you writing this release; and Mr. Gosford" - my father's voice went up full and strong, - "I see you writing it in terror-sweat on your face! " "The Devil take your nonsense!" cried the Englishman. My father stood up with a twisted, ironical smile. "If you doubt my skill, Mr. Gosford, as a fortune, or rather a misfortune-teller I will ask Mr. Lewis and Herman Gaeki to tell me what they see." The two men crossed the room and stooped over the paper, while my father held the crystal. The manner and the bearing of the men changed. They grew on the instant tense and fired with interest. "I see it!" said the old doctor, with a queer foreign expletive. "And I," cried Lewis, "see something more than Peadleton's vision. I see the penitentiary in the distance." The Englishman sprang up with an oath and leaned across the table. Then he saw the thing. "My father's hand held the crystal above the (figures of the bequest written in the body of the will. The focused lens of glass magnified to a great diameter, and under the vast enlargement a thing that would escape the eye stood out. The top curl of a figure 3 had been erased, and the bar of a 5 added. One could see the broken fibers of the paper on the outline of the curl, and the bar of the five lay across the top of the three and the top of the o behind it like a black lath tacked across two uprights. The figure 3 had been changed to 5 so cunningly is to deceive the eye, but not to deceive the vast magnification of the crystal. The thing stood out big and crude like a carpenter's patch. Gosford's face became expressionless like wood, his body rigid; then he stood up and faced the three men across the table. "Quite so!" he said in his vacuous English voice. "Marshall wrote a 3 by inadvertence and changed it. He borrowed my penknife to erase the figure." My father and Lewis gaped like men who see a penned-in beast slip out through an unimagined passage. There was silence. Then suddenly, in the strained stillness of the room, old Doctor Gaeki laughed. Gosford lifted his long pink face, with its cropped beard bringing out the ugly mouth. "Why do you laugh, my good man?" he said. "I laugh," replied Gaeki, "because a figure 5 can have so many colors." And now my father and Lewis were no less astonished than Mr. Gosford. "Colors!" they said, for the changed figure in the will was black. "Why, yes," replied the old man, "it is very pretty." He reached across the table and drew over Mr. Gosford's memorandum beside the will. "You are progressive, sir," he went on; "you write in iron-nutgall ink, just made, commercially, in this year of fifty-six by Mr. Stephens. But we write here as Marshall wrote in 'fifty-four, with logwood." He turned and fumbled in his little case of bottles. "I carry a bit of acid for my people's indigestions. It has other uses." He whipped out the stopper of his vial and dabbed Gosford's notes and Marshall's signature. "See!" he cried. "Your writing is blue, Mr. Gosford, and Marshall's red!" With an oath the trapped man struck at Gaeki's hand. The vial fell and cracked on the table. The hydrochloric acid spread out over Marshall's will. And under the chemical reagent the figure in the bequest of fifty thousand dollars changed beautifully; the bar of the 5 turned blue, and the remainder of it a deep purple-red like the body of the will. "Gaeki," cried my father, "you have trapped a rogue!" "And I have lost a measure of good acid," replied the old man. And he began to gather up the bits of his broken bottle from the table.
VIII. The Hole in the Mahogany Panel
Sir Henry paused a moment, his finger between the pages of
VIII. The Hole in the Mahogany Panel
Sir Henry paused a moment, his finger between the pages of