“When you do so, you’ll find a difference.”
“Ah!” said Laxton. “Then whose hand is this?”
“Cyril Jernyngham’s. It was written in my presence, and what’s more important, in the presence of another man. Now will you tell me what the fellow who made the deal with you was like?”
Laxton did so, and Prescott thought the description indicated Wandle, though he was not the only man in the neighborhood of Sebastian to whom it might apply.
“Did you notice how he was dressed?” he asked.
“He had on a suit of new brown clothes.”
Prescott sat still, his brows knitted, his right hand clenched. The reason why the clothes had been hidden near his house was obvious, but there was something else: a blurred memory that was growing into shape. Ever since he had heard about them from Muriel, he had been trying to think where he had seen the clothes, and at last he seemed to hold a clue. In another few moments it led him to the truth; everything was clear. He had once met Wandle driving toward the settlement wearing such a suit, and by good fortune he had shortly afterward been overtaken by a farmer who must have seen the man. In his excitement he struck the table.
“Now I know!” he cried. “The man who forged Jernyngham’s name hid his clothes near my house to fix the thing on me. I owe you a good deal for your help in a puzzling matter.”
The agent was sympathetic, and after Prescott had given him an outline of his connection with the case, they sat talking over its details. Laxton had a keen intelligence and his comments on several points were valuable. When Prescott went to sleep it was with a weight off his mind; but his mood changed the next day and he traveled back to Sebastian in a very grim humor.
Open and just as he was in all his dealings, Wandle’s treachery infuriated him. There would, he felt, have been more extenuation for the trick had the man killed Jernyngham, but that he should conspire to throw the blackest suspicion on a neighbor in order to enjoy the proceeds of a petty theft was abominable. He must be made to suffer for it. However, Prescott did not mean to trouble the police. He had had enough of their cautious methods. He determined to secure a proof of Wandle’s guilt, unassisted, without further loss of time, and to do this he must obtain a specimen of the man’s writing to compare with that on the land sale documents. There was, he thought, a way of getting it.