things in his handwriting? If you were even a fair hand with a pen, you could have fooled his wife. She thought her husband had had four tough years and had become a hophead. That would account for irregularities in his writing. And I don’t imagine you ever got very familiar in your letters—not enough so to risk any missteps. As for the lawyer—his making you identify yourself was only a matter of form. It never occurred to him that you weren’t Ashcraft. Identification is easy, anyway. Give me a week and I’ll prove that I’m the Sultan of Turkey.”
He shook his head sadly.
“That comes from riding around in the sun.”
I went on.
“At first your game was to bleed Mrs. Ashcraft for an allowance—to take the cure. But after she closed out her affairs in England and came here, you decided to wipe her out and take everything. You knew she was an orphan and had no close relatives to come butting in. You knew it wasn’t likely that there were many people in America who could say you were not Ashcraft. Now if you want to you can do your stalling for just as long as it takes us to send a photograph of you to England—to be shown to the people that knew him there. But you understand that you will do your stalling in the can, so I don’t see what it will get you.”
“Where do you think Ashcraft would be while I was spending his money?”
There were only two possible guesses. I took the more reasonable one.
“Dead.”
I imagined his mouth tightened a little, so I took another shot, and added:
“Up north.”