He was addressing Morris's back; the lawyer had turned to the table behind him and was examining the papers there with great deliberation. Not a sound in the room; all eyes on Fosdick, who was quietly waiting. "Ah!" exclaimed Morris, wheeling suddenly like a duelist at the end of the ten paces.
Fosdick startled at the explosive note in his servant's voice, then instantly recovered himself.
"This letter—is it in your handwriting?" Fosdick took the extended paper, put on his nose-glasses, and calmly fixed his eyes upon it. His hand began to shake, over his face a dreadful, unsteady pallor, as if the flame of life, sick and dying, were flaring and sinking in the last flickerings before the final going-out.
"Is it your writing?" repeated Morris, his voice like the bay of the hound before the cornered fox.
Fosdick's hand dropped to his lap. His eyes sought Morris's face and from them blazed such a blast of fury that Morris drew back a step.
Morris was daunted only for a second. He said evenly, "It is your handwriting, is it not?"
Fosdick looked round—-at Westervelt, whose wrinkled hand had paused on his beard midway between its yellowed end and his shrunken, waxen face; at Armstrong, stolid, statuelike; at the reporters, with pencils suspended and eyes glistening. He drew a long breath and straightened himself again. "It is," he said.
Morris extended his hand for the letter. "Thank you," he said with grave courtesy, as Fosdick gave it to him. "I will read—'Dear Bill—Tell A to draw three times this week—the usual amounts and give them to S.' Bill—that is Mr. Westervelt, is it not? And does not A stand for Armstrong? And is not S, Sigourney, at that time the O.A.D.'s representative in legislative and general political matters?"
"Obviously," said Fosdick, promptly and easily. "I see my memory has played me a disgraceful trick. I am getting old." He smiled benevolently at Morris, then toward Westervelt. "I, too, am losing my faculties." Then, looking at Armstrong, and not changing from kindly smile and tone, "But my teeth are still good."
"You now remember these transactions?"