The customer looked through his accounts and found no trace of it or the amount for which it was given.
At last, on examining the number of the cheque, he was convinced that the signature could not be his, because he had never had a cheque-book with that number in it. At the same time, his astonishment was great that the clerk should know his handwriting better than he knew it himself.
"I will tell you," said the clerk, "how I discovered the forgery. A boy presented this cheque, purporting to have been signed by you. I cashed it. He came again with another. I cashed that. A little while afterwards he came again. My suspicions were then aroused, not by anything in the signature or the cheque, but by the circumstance of the frequency of his coming. When he came the third time, however, I suspended payment until I saw you, because the line under your signature with which you always finish was not at the same angle; it went a trifle nearer the letters, and I at once concluded it was a FORGERY." And so it turned out to be.
"That boy," said Toole, "deserves to be taken up by some one, for he has great talent."
"And in speaking of this matter," said Sir Henry, "I may tell you that bankers' clerks are the very best that ever could be invented as tests for handwriting. Their intelligence and accuracy are perfectly astonishing. They hardly ever make a mistake, and are seldom deceived. The experts in handwriting are clever enough, and mean to be true; but every expert in a case, be he doctor, caligrapher, or phrenologist, has some unknown quantity of bias, and must almost of necessity, if he is on the one side or the other, exercise it, however unintentional it may be. The banker speaks without this influence, and therefore, if not more likely to be correct, is more reasonably supposed to be so.
"Do you remember, Sir Henry," asked Toole, "what the clever rogue Orton wrote in his pocket-book? 'Some has money no brains; some has brains no money; them as has money no brains was made for them as has brains no money.'"
"Just like Roger," said Sir Henry. This was a catch-phrase in society at the time of the trial.
Some one recited from a number of Hood's Comic Annual the following poem by Tom Hood:—
A BIRD OF ANOTHER FEATHER.[A]
[Footnote A: These lines appeared about 1874, and I have to make acknowledgments to those whom I have been unable to ask for permission to reproduce, and trust they will accept both my apologies and thanks.]