“And I will do so. That will has been tampered with, and you know it!”
“Tampered with?”
“Don’t repeat my words like a parrot! Yes, tampered with. The original, written in Mr. Stannard’s own hand, has been added to by some one else.”
“What makes you think so?”
“I don’t think so, I know so. Now, why haven’t you made it known? You must have seen it?”
“Where is the fancied alteration?”
Courtenay looked at the stern face of the lawyer, and wondered if he could be dishonest or if he had been blind. He laid his finger on one clause, the one stating Natalie Vernon’s bequest, and said, “There, that is the place. That was written seven thousand dollars, it has been changed to read seventy thousand dollars.”
Lawyer Stiles peered at the words through his rubber-rimmed glasses. “It is in letters and figures both,” he demurred, “it would be difficult——”
“I know it is. And it was not very difficult to add ty to the written seven, and there chanced to be room for an extra cipher after the original naughts, thus giving the inheritor ten times as much as was intended by the testator.”
“Well?”