He spread out both sets of documents on his desk and studied them intently.
"Both," he observed after an interval, "are in my opinion actually signed by Braden and French—one as grantor and the other as witness. I know their signatures very well. The notarial certificate of execution is not material, because it is separate, and could easily have been detached from the originals and attached to the others."
"Your theory is that the deeds delivered by French to your wife were prepared recently. Let us see if we can find anything in the deeds themselves to corroborate that. They are on identical legal forms, and seem to have been written on the same machine, for the same letters show poor alignment, and the face of one, the small 'c' appears to have been injured. Let me see: I have some old letters of Braden's."
Rising he took down an old letter file and searched through it, finally removing a letter.
"This, like these deeds, is dated some seven years ago, and was written in Braden's office. It exhibits the same peculiarities of type."
"Well, wouldn't that show that both deeds were drawn seven years ago?" Angus deduced in disappointment, for so far the judge's words were not encouraging.
"Not as bad as that. It would show merely that both were prepared on a machine owned by Braden seven years ago. Here are other letters from him, written on another and presumably more modern machine. He may have the old one yet. It merely points to careful preparation—painstaking forgery. But Turkey, here, cannot testify positively that Braden was carrying a machine in the case that night, nor did he see him write anything on a machine. He cannot identify the machine that he did see."
"No," Turkey admitted.
"So that even if we found the old machine in Braden's possession, it would prove nothing," the judge went on. "Nor can you positively identify the documents you saw Braden abstract from French's safe?"
"No."