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Page 75
"And now I made a very careful examination of the
corner of paper which the Inspector had submitted to
us. It was at once clear to me that it formed part of
a very remarkable document. Here it is. Do you not
now observe something very suggestive about it?"
"It has a very irregular look," said the Colonel.
"My dear sir," cried Holmes, "there cannot be the
least doubt in the world that it has been written by
two persons doing alternate words. When I draw your
attention to the strong t's of 'at' and 'to', and ask
you to compare them with the weak ones of 'quarter'
and 'twelve,' you will instantly recognize the fact.
A very brief analysis of these four words would enable
you to say with the utmost confidence that the 'learn'
and the 'maybe' are written in the stronger hand, and
the 'what' in the weaker."
"By Jove, it's as clear as day!" cried the Colonel.
"Why on earth should two men write a letter in such a
fashion?"
"Obviously the business was a bad one, and one of the
men who distrusted the other was determined that,
whatever was done, each should have an equal hand in
it. Now, of the two men, it is clear that the one who
wrote the 'at' and 'to' was the ringleader."
"How do you get at that?"
"We might deduce it from the mere character of the one
hand as compared with the other. But we have more
assured reasons than that for supposing it. If you
examine this scrap with attention you will come to the
conclusion that the man with the stronger hand wrote
all his words first, leaving blanks for the other to
fill up. These blanks were not always sufficient, and
you can see that the second man had a squeeze to fit
his 'quarter' in between the 'at' and the 'to,'
showing that the latter were already written. The man
who wrote all his words first is undoubtedly the man
who planned the affair."
"Excellent!" cried Mr. Acton.
"But very superficial," said Holmes. "We come now,
however, to a point which is of importance. You may
not be aware that the deduction of a man's age from
his writing is one which has brought to considerable
accuracy by experts. In normal cases one can place a
man in his true decade with tolerable confidence. I
say normal cases, because ill-health and physical
weakness reproduce the signs of old age, even when the
invalid is a youth. In this case, looking at the
bold, strong hand of the one, and the rather
broken-backed appearance of the other, which still
retains its legibility although the t's have begun to
lose their crossing, we can say that the one was a
young man and the other was advanced in years without
being positively decrepit."
"Excellent!" cried Mr. Acton again.
"There is a further point, however, which is subtler
and of greater interest. There is something in common
between these hands. They belong to men who are
blood-relatives. It may be most obvious to you in the
Greek e's, but to me there are many small points which
indicate the same thing. I have no doubt at all that
a family mannerism can be traced in these two
specimens of writing. I am only, of course, giving
you the leading results now of my examination of the
paper. There were twenty-three other deductions which
would be of more interest to experts than to you.
They all tend to deepen the impression upon my mind
that the Cunninghams, father and son, had written this
letter.
"Having got so far, my next step was, of course, to
examine into the details of the crime, and to see how
far they would help us. I went up to the house with
the Inspector, and saw all that was to be seen. The
wound upon the dead man was, as I was able to
determine with absolute confidence, fired from a
revolver at the distance of something over four yards.
There was no powder-blackening on the clothes.
Evidently, therefore, Alec Cunningham had lied when
he said that the two men were struggling when the shot
was fired. Again, both father and son agreed as to
the place where the man escaped into the road. At
that point, however, as it happens, there is a
broadish ditch, moist at the bottom. As there were no
indications of bootmarks about this ditch, I was
absolutely sure not only that the Cunninghams had
again lied, but that there had never been any unknown
man upon the scene at all.
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