He touched his cap, and promising to profit by my advice, slipped the letter in with what I supposed were others bearing the same address; so wishing him good-day I entered a stationer’s shop and purchased a couple of envelopes and two sheets of paper. Each sheet of paper I folded and put into an envelope, which I then addressed in pencil to myself, at the post-office, Stanby. Then, after posting them, I made my way to the station and took a ticket to Stanby.
As I had to wait some time for a train, besides changing twice at junctions, it was late when I reached that town, and I had some difficulty in finding Professor Lawrance’s hair-cutting establishment, which was in a side street, and was already closed for the night. On the other side of the way, and only a few doors down, was a not very clean-looking temperance hotel and coffee palace, and here I secured a bedroom and sitting-room, from the latter of which, as it faced the street, I should be able to keep an eye upon every one who entered or left Professor Lawrance’s establishment.
I then went to bed, but was up early next morning and called at the post-office, where the two envelopes which I had posted on the preceding day at Cotley were awaiting me. These I took with me to my room at the hotel, and having bought a piece of india-rubber on the way I rubbed out the pencilled name and address, after which I re-addressed the envelope in ink to Mr. Henry Jeanes, at Professor Lawrance’s Hair-cutting Rooms, Stanby, imitating as closely I could the handwriting of the barber at Cotley, of whose calligraphy I had secured a specimen.
Most of my readers will already have guessed why I troubled to post these pencil-addressed letters to myself at Cotley, and then, after rubbing out the direction, re-addressed them in ink to Jeanes, at Professor Lawrance’s establishment at Stanby, but as some may fail to do so, I had better perhaps explain myself.
If a letter for Jeanes should be forwarded on to Professor Lawrance’s rooms from Cotley, that letter it would be my business, by hook or by crook, to abstract. But to do this without attracting suspicion, it would be necessary to have a dummy letter with which to replace it, and the dummy would have to bear the Cotley postmark, and be directed in a hand as much resembling the handwriting on the original letter as possible. How to arrange all this had puzzled me at first, for though I did not anticipate any difficulty in hitting upon a pretext by which to obtain a specimen of the Cotley barber’s handwriting, or in imitating that handwriting when obtained, I could not see how to get over the difficulty of the postmark. A postmark is not an easy thing to forge without specially prepared tools, and until the idea occurred to me of posting at Cotley a letter addressed in pencil to myself at Stanby, and then rubbing out the address and re-addressing it to Jeanes, I was rather at a loss to know how to effect my purpose. However, the difficulty was now satisfactorily surmounted, and armed with my dummy letters I set out to make the acquaintance of Professor Lawrance.
He was an extremely unprepossessing, not to say villainous-looking man, and regarded me with what I could not help thinking was a suspicious eye when I entered. I submitted to be shaved and shampooed, both of which operations he performed badly, though he regaled me meanwhile with his views in regard to the winner of the Derby, and also of a prize-fight which was coming off that day.
“By-the-bye,” I said, as I was drawing on my gloves, “can one have letters addressed here?”
“No,” he replied shortly, “yer can’t. It don’t pay—on the usual terms.”
“I know that,” I said, “or I shouldn’t have asked you. But I’m willing to pay special terms.”
“Is it ’orses?” he inquired gruffly.