“What was a joke, Patrick?” Holmes asked quietly, and I held my breath. The use of the boy’s Christian name made the question somewhat more sinister because it closed his retreat into a shell of apathy.
“Writing names was a joke, Mr Holmes. I don’t remember when we first did it. I sat next to Porson in class. We sat together in the evening too, when we did whatever prep the masters set. If we finished our prep before the bell went we used to mess around, writing, playing battleships on paper, all sorts of things. Porson sometimes wrote my name in my writing and I wrote his. Lots of fellows did things like that. It was a game. It wasn’t forgery or theft any more than it’s murder when you point your finger and say ‘Bang, you’re dead.’ It was just fooling about.”
“Very good,” said Holmes approvingly. “And how successful were these imitation signatures?”
“I don’t know, sir. How can you tell? They looked a bit the same.”
“Believe me, I can tell. How many other people knew that you were doing this?”
“Anyone could watch us, if they wanted to. They must have seen but they wouldn’t think anything. Lots of fellows played games like that.”
“Did they? And how many other fellows’ signatures did you copy?”
The young face clouded with uncertainty.
“I don’t remember that I did. Perhaps I did. But no one else that I can remember. I played this game with Porson because we sat next to one another. I could see his name written on his prep book and he could see mine.”
“And Porson has always been in the same class with you? He is an Engineer Cadet like you?”
“We’re all engineers in our class. That’s why we sit together in school prep. Lower Middle Engineers. We’re above the junior engineers but below the Upper Middle and the seniors.”
“Have you got a copy of your imitation of Porson’s signature that you can show me?”
He shook his head.
“We never kept them, sir. They were thrown away. It was just a game.”
“Could you do one now?”
“Not without one to copy from. Nobody could.”
“It is said that you wrote a signature at the post office as you had copied Porson’s for a game. Did you?”
“No! I couldn’t do it! I was never at the post office on that afternoon!”
It was a wail of protest and despair, uttered so often in the past ten days. No hawk-nosed cross-examiner in wig and gown could resemble a bird of prey more suggestively than Holmes just then. But Riley had returned the answer of an innocent defendant.
“Very well. Now then, you must help me. Could you, for example, copy your own signature?”
The boy sat back and shook his head slowly, not in refusal but exasperation.
“Any fellow could copy his own!”
“I think you misunderstand me. I do not want you to repeat your signature but to copy it exactly. As a criminal expert it is my business to know about such things. I may tell you that even in the most innocent way, no signature is precisely the same on two successive occasions. And besides, you will please write the first one with your eyes closed. I am offering you a chance to prove your innocence, but you must do this much for me. Write it as you would normally write your signature and do not worry what it will look like.”
The boy nodded. Holmes produced a fountain-pen and a sheet of paper from his pocket, handing them to him.
“You had better put your glasses on,” he said casually. “You will certainly need them for the copying.”
The boy looked as if he was about to ask Holmes how he knew about the glasses, but my friend anticipated him.
“There is a slight mark either side of your nose, evident to a student of physiognomy. That is unusual in one of your age. It is plain that you spend a commendable amount of time in reading and study. You do not wear glasses otherwise, but I believe you should. There is a sluggishness of movement on one side which suggests that you suffer from what is called a lazy eye.”
Riley was visibly disconcerted by this impromptu oculist’s diagnosis.
“Have no fear,” said Holmes cheerily. “It is my business to notice such things. I believe, however, it may be of importance in your case.”
The lad’s inability to copy a signature without his glasses might be of importance to our inquiry, but for the life of me I could not see how.
Riley laid the paper on the table and closed his eyes. He took the pen and wrote a little uncertainly but quite fluently. It was not a bad effort, though the inconsistencies were clear. Let me just say that his name written with his eyes closed looked to me something like “Put riccc Rileg.”
“Excellent,” said Holmes encouragingly. “Now, imitate that, if you please, as closely as you can. Do not correct it to your normal signature. Imitate it as if it was another person’s signature on a postal order.”
The boy began. He drew quite accurately the down stroke of the “P” and the loop. Lifting the pen he then began the “u.” He paused and lifted it again where it dropped down to join the “t.” At the end of his first name, he paused to check his progress, though without lifting the pen. The copy of his surname appeared in a more rounded script than the original and only the last three letters were joined.
Holmes unfolded his magnifying glass and there was silence for a long two minutes, an eternity as it must have seemed to the poor boy, before my friend looked up.
“Capital!” he said enthusiastically, “If it will bring you any consolation, Patrick Riley, you would make a very poor forger.”
The relief on the poor young fellow’s face was almost inexpressible.
“Unfortunately,” Holmes added, “whoever signed the postal order—which I have seen, of course—was probably also a poor copyist. But we have made a good beginning. Very well. Whoever endorsed that order produced a so-called feathering effect of the pen, as most of us do when we write something familiar like our names. That is to say, the pen is moving almost before it touches the paper. I observe that you started with the nib already on the paper, as a copyist might.”
He held up the page at a slant to the light from the window.
“Twice at least in the copy you have lifted the nib clear of the paper, though you did not do so in the original. Through my glass, though not with the naked eye, it is also possible to see three places at which you have rested the nib on your work while checking your progress. This lack of flow appears only in the crudest freehand forgeries. The signature on the counterfoil of the postal order was skilled enough to avoid anything of that kind. It was not crude copying. This is copied. That was traced—or possibly written on an indentation.”
“But can you prove it, Mr Holmes?” The earnestness in the young face was painful to behold. “Can you show them I never did it?”
“My dear young fellow, a negative is hard to prove. I cannot demonstrate to the world that you never traced it. But I do say that on the basis of this experiment there is no evidence that you could have produced the forgery on that postal order—which is a good long way towards the same thing.”
During this exchange, I had got up and walked slowly across to the window. It looked out over the downland towards the channel. A late afternoon sun cast a burnish upon the lavender blue of the Western Approaches.
“Now,” said Holmes, “please tell me exactly how you first heard about the theft.”
Riley’s answer was commendably simple.
“Porson came up to me about half-past five on that Saturday afternoon. He said, ‘I say, isn’t it rotten? Someone’s stolen my money from my locker.’ It wasn’t real money, of course, just the order. They don’t let us keep money in our lockers.”