He threw the mortgage on the table, and stood with an air, if not of indifference, of one who has no personal concern in the matter on hand, while Mr. Erin compared the two signatures with minuteness. Presently he beckoned to his son in an agitated manner: ‘Your eyes are better than mine,’ he said: ‘what do you make of this?’
William Henry just glanced at the two documents in a perfunctory manner, as though he had been asked to witness some signature of a client of his employer, and quietly answered: ‘They are very dissimilar; whichever is the wrong one, it can hardly be called an imitation, for it has not a letter in common with the other.’
‘There is no question, young man, as to which is the wrong one,’ remarked Mr. Wallis, severely; ‘and as to imitation, it is clear enough that such a deception, however clumsily, has been seriously attempted. The only doubt we have to clear up is, “Who is the forger?”’ Mr. Wallis’s glance flashed for an instant upon Frank Dennis. He was standing apart, with his hand over the lower part of his features, and his eyes fixed on the ground. He looked like one upon whom a blow, long expected, has at last fallen.
It was strange, thought Mr. Wallis, that Talbot, who had seemed so convinced of the younger Erin’s guilt, had had not a word to say about this other fellow. His own impression—one of those sudden convictions to which men of his stamp are especially liable, but which they would be the last to call inspirations—was that the affair was a conspiracy, in which these two young men were alone concerned, and that its moving spirit was Dennis. Suddenly the silence was broken by Margaret’s clear tones:—
‘Mr. Wallis himself has not examined the deeds,’ she said.
‘There is no need, young lady, since your uncle and cousin have already admitted the discrepancy,’ returned the visitor. ‘I am only following the example of that gentleman yonder’—here he indicated Frank Dennis with his forefinger—‘in taking the matter for granted.’
Frank removed his hand from his mouth, showing a face ghastly pale, and quietly answered, ‘I am no judge of these things; but if I had made such a charge as you have done, sir, I think, as Miss Slade suggests, that I should give myself the trouble of seeing with my own eyes whether it was substantiated.’
‘Nay,’ said Margaret, quickly, ‘I spoke not of any charge. If I thought that Mr. Wallis was making any personal accusation, I should not have addressed him at all.’
‘But really, young lady,’ protested Mr. Wallis, ‘there must be something wrong somewhere, you know.’