"Don't you see which is the genuine one?" asked Alden.
Durgan did not see until it was pointed out to him that the letter which contained the erasure differed from the rest in displaying some peculiarities of crude handwriting which were more or less successfully copied, but exaggerated, in the others which bore his supposed signature.
"Do you agree with me that my wife's are genuine?" asked Durgan haughtily.
"I have no reason to suppose otherwise. They are all in the same hand, but I think——"
"Go on," said Durgan.
"I think they were not written at the dates given, but were composed to make up this series."
"Do you suppose, then, that my wife is the author of these Beardsley forgeries?"
"I cannot tell. If they were written in Beardsley's interest, why did he not write them himself? But if not in his interest, whoever forged them must have done it at her bidding."
As Durgan kept silence, Alden spoke again. "I ought to explain to you, perhaps with an apology, why I suggested that the person referred to in the erased line may have been Mrs. Durgan. By mere accident I heard, a year after the trial, a piece of gossip which first made me pitch on that one letter as probably genuine. I am loth to mention it to you, for it appeared to be trivial talk about a mere mistake. A man who had belonged to that somewhat secret circle of Beardsley's was telling me that Beardsley knew nothing of society, and was, like all lower-class men, at first quite unaccustomed to the idea of mere friendship between men and women, and, as an illustration of this, he went on to say what I am referring to. Mrs. Durgan and Claxton seemed to have discovered some spiritual affinity. The spirits, I understood, sometimes spoke through Mrs. Durgan and sent messages to him——"
"She said they did?"