"No, the rogue who typed this will was too cunning for that. He didn't allow himself to be foiled by such a scholar's mate. It is written with a Spread Eagle, the same sort of machine precisely as my own. I know the type perfectly. But----" I hesitated. "But what?" "Well, it is difficult to explain. There is character in typewriting, just as there is in handwriting, only, of course, not quite so much of it. Every operator is liable to his own peculiar tricks and blunders. If I had some of my own typewritten manuscript here to show you, I could soon make that evident." "I can easily believe it. Individuality runs through all we do, however seemingly mechanical. But are the points of a sort that you could make clear in court to the satisfaction of a jury?" "I think so. Look here, for example. Certain letters get habitually mixed up in typewriting; _c_ and _v_ stand next one another on the keyboard of the machine, and the person who typed this draft sometimes strikes a _c_ instead of a _v_, or _vice versâ_. I never do that. The letters I tend to confuse are _s_ and _w_, or else _e_ and _r_, which also come very near one another in the arbitrary arrangement. Besides, when I type-wrote the original of this will, I made no errors at all; I took such very great pains about it." "And this person did make errors?" "Yes; struck the wrong letter first, and then corrected it often by striking another rather hard on top of it. See, this was a _v_ to begin with, and he turned it into a _c_. Besides, the hand that wrote this will is heavier than mine: it comes down _thump, thump, thump_, while mine glides lightly. And the hyphens are used with a space between them, and the character of the punctuation is not exactly as I make it." "Still," Mr. Hayes objected, "we have nothing but your word. I'm afraid, in such a case, we could never induce a jury to accept your unsupported evidence." "I don't want them to accept it," I answered. "I am looking this up for my own satisfaction. I want to know, first, who wrote this will. And of one thing I am quite clear: it is _not_ the document I drew up for Mr. Ashurst. Just look at that _x_. The _x_ alone is conclusive. My typewriter had the upper right-hand stroke of the small _x_ badly formed, or broken, while this one is perfect. I remember it well, because I used always to improve all my lower-case _x_'s with a pen when I re-read and corrected. I see their dodge clearly now. It is a most diabolical conspiracy. Instead of forging a will in Lord Southminster's favour, they have substituted a forgery for the real will, and then managed to make my poor Harold prove it." "In that case, no doubt, they have destroyed the real one, the original," Mr. Hayes put in.