"But why should you be in doubt about this?" he inquired wonderingly. "What can induce you to connect me with the letter?"
Mrs. Gass took her portly person across the room to a desk; unlocked it, and brought forth a folded piece of paper. She handed it to Dr. Rane.
It was not a letter; it could not be the copy of one: but it did appear to be the rough sketch of the anonymous missive that had reached Mr. North. Some of the sentences were written two or three times over; in a close hand, in a scrawling hand, in a reversed hand, as if the writer were practising different styles; in others the construction was altered, words were erased, others substituted. Oliver Rane gazed upon it as one in complete bewilderment.
"What is this, Mrs. Gass?"
"Is it not the skeleton of the letter?"
"No, certainly not. And yet----" Dr. Rane broke off and ran his eye over the lines again and again. "There is a similarity in some of the phrases," he suddenly said.
"Some of the phrases is identical," returned Mrs. Gass. "When Mr. Richard North was here yesterday, I got him to repeat over to me the words of the letter; word for word, so far as he remembered 'em, and I know 'em for these words. Whoever writ that letter to Mr. North, doctor, first of all tried his sentences and his hand, on this paper, practising how he could best do it."
"How did you come by this?"
"You left it here the night before last."
"I left it here!" repeated Dr. Rane, looking as if he mentally questioned whether Mrs. Gass was in her right senses.