Her reply astonished him greatly. “I believe he did write them,” she said. “They might be forgeries very skillfully done, but I think not. I am almost positive that they are in his own handwriting.”
Hawley stared at her in bewilderment. “But I don’t quite understand, señora. You can’t mean that they’ve actually permitted him to communicate with you?”
“Not permitted—forced him to do so!” rejoined the woman, her dark eyes flashing. “If those notes are genuine, they must have been written under compulsion.”
“Might I inquire what they said?” the Camera Chap said eagerly.
The señora sighed. “The first one said merely that he was alive and well, and that I must not worry. The others—there have been at least a dozen of them, so far—were to the same effect, but some of them contained the additional assurance that he was very comfortable, and would send for me as soon as he considered it safe to do so.”
The Camera Chap frowned. “How did these notes come to you, señora?”
“Through the mails.”
“To your Washington address?”
“Yes. They were postmarked Paris, France. That was the whole object of the diabolical subterfuge—to make me believe that my husband was over there, at liberty, living on the proceeds of his crime.”
Doctor Bonsal nodded gravely. “Of course, that was the motive of those notes,” he said, “and the señora was clever enough to pretend to be completely deceived by them.”