tion of what might have turned out to be a most dastardly fraud. Six weeks after the events above re corded, I received a call from a solicitor named Lawson, a man of the first standing in the city of London, who produced the will, and asked me if my signature attached to it as one attesting witness, and the signa ture of George Carter as the other witness, were genuine. Of course I at once replied in the affirmative. He then told me that he had acted -for some years as Colonel Angus' legal adviser; that some strange mistake, if not worse, must have occurred, as Colonel Angus declared that he had never seen me in his life, still less had he ever given me any instructions for any will; moreover, he was absent from London at the date of the document, and he thought I ought to take the earliest possible opportunity of explain ing the part I had taken in the transaction. After pausing for a moment to consider my position in all its bearings, I summoned Carter into the room, and in Mr. Lawson's presence told him to go with Mr. Lawson into the waiting-room, and in his presence, but without speaking to him, to put down in writing everything he could recollect bearing upon the matter, without hesitation or reserve, to sign the statement, and put it into a sealed envelope. I left them alone for the purpose, and in my own room I drew up and signed my own statement, placing it also in a sealed cover. I had asked Mr. Lawson to send a special mes sage asking Colonel Angus and his son (whom I looked upon as implicated in the matter) to meet us at Mr. Lawson's an hour or so later on; and I stipulated that the two statements should not be opened or read or compared except in Colonel Angus' pres ence. I had my reasons for all this. My suggestions were acted on. Mr. Lawson and I went over to his office, where we met Colonel Angus and his son. As a prelimi nary I asked Mr. Lawson to identify Colonel Angus, which he did, also to identify the
son, as Colonel Angus' only son; this also was done by both Colonel Angus and Mr. Lawson. I then said: "My course is now clear; I never saw either Colonel Angus or his son before; I owe no duty of profes sional confidence to any one;" and I asked Mr. Lawson to break the seals of both en velopes, and read and compare the two statements, whilst I retired from the room. In the meantime Carter rejoined us, and he, too, stated that he had never seen either Colonel Angus or his son before, and this was added to his signed statement. It ap peared that our two statements (as might have been expected) were completely iden tical; and with this valuable signed evi dence in his hands, I felt I had done all I could for Mr. Lawson's purposes, whatever they might be, and that my own character, also, was cleared. The rest I must leave to Mr. Lawson. He might advise Colonel Angus to carry the matter further, or to say nothing more about it; that was within his province, not mine, and there I left it. If the suspicion of all parties was directed against the same person as the probable au thor of the conspiracy, we kept our thoughts to ourselves, by a sort of tacit under standing. I may mention, however, that before I left his office, Mr. Lawson told me, in answer to a question of mine, that the forged will had been sent to Colonel Angus' bankers the day after it was signed, with a letter asking the bankers to place it in Colonel Angus' tin box of securities, the signature to the letter being also a very skillful forgery of Colonel Angus' handwriting. Two years afterwards, before leaving Lon don to settle down in Georgetown, I called on Mr. Lawson on a matter of business per sonal to myself; and he then gave me the clue to the whole story, which probably my readers have already unravelled. The prime mover in the conspiracy was Alexander Caryl. His death unlocked Mr. Lawson's lips. He was no landscape painter, but a
