“I didn’t ask you whether it looked like it—I asked you if it was your writing.”
“I really couldn’t tell you that. Handwriting can be perfectly imitated, can’t it?”
“Are you cross-examining me or am I cross-examining you?”
Miss Page permitted herself a small, fugitive smile. “I believe that you are supposed to be cross-examining me.”
“Then be good enough to answer my question. To the best of your belief, is this your writing?”
“It is either my writing or a very good imitation of it.”
The outraged Mr. Lambert snatched the innocuous bit of paper from under his composed victim’s nose and proffered it to the clerk of the court as though it were something unclean. “I offer this letter in evidence.”
“Just one moment,” said the prosecutor gently. “I don’t want to waste the Court’s time with a lot of useless objections, but it seems to me that this letter has not yet been identified by Miss Page, and as you are evidently unwilling to let her read it, for some occult reason that I don’t presume to understand, I must object to its being offered in evidence.”
“What does this letter purport to be, Mr. Lambert?” inquired the judge amiably.
Mr. Lambert turned his flaming countenance on the Court. “It purports to be exactly what it is, Your Honour—a letter from Miss Page to her former employer, Mrs. Ives. And I am simply amazed at this hocus-pocus about her not being able to identify her own writing being tolerated for a minute. I——”