Jones's
advice, and Patrick therefore caused the valet to prepare twenty-five or
thirty forged letters addressed to him and purporting to come from Rice.
These referred to current business matters and conveyed the impression
that it was Rice's custom to seek the lawyer's advice. One instructed
Patrick as to the terms of the will of 1900. Carbon copies were made for
filing in Rice's letter book after his death.

To make assurance doubly sure and to secure immediate possession of
Rice's securities a general assignment to Patrick of all Rice's estate
was forged, and an order giving him access to and possession of the
securities on deposit in Rice's safety vault.

But Patrick did not stop here. He procured from Jones three checks
signed by Mr. Rice in the regular course of business, one payable to
Jones for his July salary and the other two for the July and August
salary of an employee of Rice's in Texas named Cohn. These three checks
Patrick kept as models, forwarding to Cohn two forged checks filled out
by Jones upon which Rice's signature had been traced, and returning to
Jones a substitute check with Rice's signature traced upon it. All three
checks passed through the banks unsuspected. Traced signatures were also
substituted for genuine ones upon letters dictated by Rice to his Texas
correspondents. Thus Patrick secured the circulation of five copies of
Rice's signature which, if occasion demanded, he could produce as
standards of comparison to correspond with his other forgeries. The
principal preparations were complete. But title under the will might
long be delayed and perhaps even eventually fail. Patrick was poor and
in no condition to conduct adequately a serious litigation. The moment
Mr. Rice died a large amount of cash would be necessary. For the
procurement of this Patrick and Jones looked to the current balance of
Rice's bank account, which amounted to some two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars on deposit at Swenson's private bank and at the Fifth
Avenue Trust Company. With this they felt reasonably secure of success.
For even if the will should be set aside as fraudulent they had a second
line of defense in the general assignment of the estate and the orders
to Rice's two million five hundred thousand dollars of securities.

While the evidence affords a motive for Patrick to desire the death of
Mr. Rice, it does not of itself, up to this point, indicate the
slightest intention on the part of Patrick to d