“No question about it being a forgery,” that gentleman told him. “You’ve seen that for yourself. But to suppose that from a mere examination of the writing one can pin it down to a particular person is asking too much. This sort of thing is not an exact science. But I can tell you this. The person who wrote these letters used the same kind of ink as the person who wrote the forged cheque. That ink is chemically different from that used in the genuine cheques. It is a fountain pen ink and I should say that it was used on a broad nib.”

Which view, taken in conjunction with other matters, carried conviction to Labar, although he knew that he could not formulate a case that would be satisfactory in a court of law. By and by, no doubt, some of the other notes for which the cheque had been changed would come back to the Bank of England, and the chances were that it would be possible to trace them back through the various hands in which they had been. That, however, was likely to be a matter of weeks.