letter which provided the opportunity was actually written at Mr. Judge’s suggestion, and passed once through Mr. Judge’s fingers, besides spending several days in Mr. Clark’s coat pocket!
The guilelessness with which Mr. Abner De—I mean Mr. Abbot Clark—adds, among the rest of the plaintive verbiage of his statement, that “on my word of honour Brother Judge said nothing to me about any missive,” completes the charm of this document. Ah! it would be a poor world for the William Q. Judges if it did not contain a good percentage of Abbot Clarks. Whom does Mr. Judge Accuse? But now arises another point. Mr. Judge does not number this missive among the “several genuine” ones. It was not the Mahatma’s; it was not fabricated by Mr. Judge; therefore it must have been fabricated by somebody else. “You can make what inference you like,” Mr. Judge liberally remarks; but the only inferences possible from what he says are that the guilty person is Colonel Olcott or Colonel Olcott’s manager at the Theosophist office. (The latter, by name T. Vijiaraghava Charlu, was the person who received and forwarded the letter and enclosure to Colonel Olcott. Mr. Judge and his satellite appear to wish to confuse this person with another Charlu, Theosophical treasurer, who committed suicide after peculation.)
Now, as I have made sufficiently clear, I hold no sort of brief for any Theosophist, and especially none for any Theosophical official. In the past, Mr. Judge has had no monopoly of the missive-manufacturing industry; and if he can prove that there are colleagues in the business even now, I shall be glad to consider the evidence. But, in this particular case, just look at the probabilities.
First, there is the handwriting, which is apparently exactly the same in this missive as in others of the series with which, admittedly, these other gentlemen had nothing, and Mr. Judge had everything, to do.
Then there are the contents. These also fit admirably into the chain. The Master is made to declare that “Judge is not the forger”—a point of which Mr. Judge was trying hard to convince the Colonel; also, to provide explanations of various suspicious circumstances in other missives which tended to show that Judge was “the forger”;
