“Now, John!” exclaimed Ralph, laughing, “do you think I would lend myself to any of his nonsense?”
He turned around while the timekeeper was chuckling and saw Mr. Barton Hopkins standing behind them in the doorway of the little office. The supervisor stared at the young train dispatcher with a very grim visage indeed. Without doubt he had heard enough to understand the meaning of Ralph’s reply to the timekeeper.
When the supervisor had turned on his heel and disappeared, Ralph said to the timekeeper, with no shadow of change in his voice:
“Well? How about it?”
The man fumbled the leaves of a ledger and finally compared the writing on the sheet of paper with something in the ledger. He beckoned Ralph closer.
“Look there, now, Mr. Fairbanks. D’you see where he has signed for his check last week? And I could show you a hundred other signatures. There’s the P in Peters and the same letter in Perrin. They’re like two peas in a pod, ain’t they, now?”
“I believe you!”
“The little r’s in Perrin are like the little r in Bertholdt and in Peters. D’you see?”
“I see.”
“That’s your answer. Jim Perrin wrote them four names with his own fist. I’d swear to it.”