“I have here the captain’s written orders from your firm, signed by yourself.” And I produced the letter.
He glanced it through eagerly, and then carefully scrutinised the signature.
“This renders the affair far more mysterious,” he exclaimed with increased interest. “The letter-paper is certainly ours, but the whole thing is a forgery.”
“It is not your signature?”
“No, certainly not—only a clumsy imitation;” and taking up a pen, he wrote his signature and handed them both to me for comparison. At once I saw that several of the peculiarities of his handwriting were absent from Banfield’s orders.
“The type-writing is done by a different machine to ours. We use Bar-Locks, while this has probably been written by a Remington,” he went on. “Besides, look at the edge of the paper, and you’ll see that it is badly cut. It is, without doubt, a sheet out of several reams, that were delivered by the stationers some months ago, and were rejected by me because of the careless manner in which the edges had been cut.”
Then he touched his bell and the chief clerk appeared. To him he showed the letter, and without a moment’s hesitation he declared it to be a forgery.
Without going into details of the events of that memorable night, I described how I had recovered consciousness to find myself at sea, and the strict obedience, of the captain to the orders he had received.
“Well, all I can conjecture is,” declared the manager, much puzzled, “that you have fallen the victim of some clever conspiracy. The details show that there was some strong motive for your abduction, and that the conspirators well knew that Banfield remained at home until almost the last moment before sailing. They were, therefore, enabled to put you on board during his absence. The forged orders, too, were brief and well to the point—in fact, worded just as they might be if sent from this house. No; depend upon it there has been some very ingenious plotting somewhere.”
I remained with him a short time longer, then, realising the uselessness of occupying his time, I withdrew, and in further prosecution of my inquiries drove to Doctors’ Commons.