Mr. Cramp was sitting in his office when a woman, muffled in a cloak, and veiled, entered and seated herself without speaking. After a moment she unclasped her cloak, loosened the wrapping from her throat, threw back her veil, and asked for a glass of water.
"Bless me, Miss Bond, is it you? I am sure I am much honoured—very much!"
"No honour, sir," she replied, "but necessity. I have been to Doctors Commons; have seen the will—it is my father's writing!"
"You confess this to me?" said Mr. Cramp, drawing back on his chair, and almost gasping for breath.
"I do," she answered; "I proclaim it; it is my father's copy of the original will. But how the copy could have been substituted for the real will, I can only conjecture."
"Surmise is something," replied the lawyer, a little relieved; "conjecture sometimes leads to proof."
"My father and uncle lived together when the will came into their possession. They were in partnership as farmers. My father's habits were precise: he always copied every writing, and endorsed his copies with a large C; the very C is marked upon the will I have just seen at Doctors Commons."
"That is singular," remarked Cramp; "but it does not show us the way out of the difficulty; on the contrary, that increases. Somebody—I don't for an instant suppose Mr. Jacob Bond—in proving the will must have sworn that, to the best of their knowledge and belief, those were the real, which are only copies of the signatures."
"True—and such a mistake was extremely characteristic of my uncle, who performed many strange acts before he was known to be insane. This was doubtless one of them."
"But where is the original?" inquired the man of business.