“No, I won’t! I deny your right to ask it!”
“But a refusal is a tacit admission——”
“No admission at all! I refuse to do a silly thing like that! The signature does resemble mine—but it can’t be mine, for I didn’t write it.”
“Have you any of Mr Barry’s signatures in your possession?” Prescott asked of Phyllis.
“No,” she said, promptly, and though Prescott doubted her word, he didn’t say so.
“How silly!” Louis exclaimed. “It’s dead easy to get a signature of yours, Phil, why not write one now, and have it over with. Of course the thing is a forgery!”
Apparently seeing the sense of this, Barry went to the desk and dashed off his name on a sheet of paper.
“There!” he cried, angrily, as he flung it at Prescott.
The detective examined the two, and gave a short whistle.
“Well,” he declared, “if I knew of anybody who could forge as well as that—I’d get him behind bars as quick as possible! Why, man, the signatures are identical! As to the typing, that is as personal as penmanship. Have you a typewriter?”