“Ah! I beg your pardon, M. Champcey; I have myself seen your letter.”
But already a sudden inspiration had, like a flash of lightning, cleared up the mystery in Daniel’s mind.
“Ah! I wish I could see it too! Captain, I beseech you show me that letter!”
The old officer began almost to think that Champcey was really not in his right mind. He answered,—
“I do not have it; but it is among your papers in the bureau for Personal Affairs.”
In a minute Daniel was in the office where those papers were kept, and obtained, not without much trouble, and under certain conditions only, leave to look at his papers. He opened the parcel with feverish haste; and the very first paper that fell in his hands was a letter, dated the day before, in which he urgently requested the minister to grant him the special favor of being sent out with the expedition to Cochin China on board the frigate “Conquest.”
Daniel was, of course, perfectly sure that he had written no such letter.
But the handwriting was so precisely like his own, letter for letter, and even his signature was so admirably imitated, that he felt for a moment utterly bewildered, mistrusting, for a second, his own eyes, his own reason. The whole was done so exceedingly well, that if the matter had been one of ordinary importance, and the date of the letter had gone back to a fortnight or so ago, he would certainly have suspected his memory rather than the letter before him.
Overcome by the atrocity of such a trick, he exclaimed,—
“It is almost incredible!”