e more with the game.

"It's looking pretty ugly for Blade," remarked Freynes, recognising
by the substitution of the briar for the meerschaum that Malcolm
Sage was ready for conversation.

"Tell me."

"It's those damned handwriting experts," growled Freynes. "They're
the greatest anomaly of our legal system. The judge always warns the
jury of the danger of accepting their evidence; yet each side
continues to produce them. It's an insult to intelligence and
justice."

"To hang a man because his 's' resembles that of an implicating
document," remarked Malcolm Sage, as he placed a red queen on a
black knave, "is about as sensible as to imprison him because he has
the same accent as a foot-pad."

"Then there's Blade's astonishing apathy," continued Freynes. "He
seems quite indifferent to the gravity of his position. Refuses to
say a word. Anyone might think he knew the real culprit and was
trying to shield him," and he sucked moodily at his pipe.

"The handwriting expert," continued Malcolm Sage imperturbably, "is
too concerned with the crossing of a 't,' the dotting of an 'i,' or
the tail of a 'g,' to give time and thought to the way in which the
writer uses, for instance, the compound tenses of verbs. Blade was
no more capable of writing those letters than our friend Murdy is of
transliterating the Rosetta Stone."

"Yes; but can we prove it?" asked Freynes gloomily, as with the
blade of a penknife he loosened the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe.
"Can we prove it?" he repeated and, snapping the knife to, he
replaced it in his pocket.

"Blade's sermons," Malcolm Sage continued, "and such letters of his
as you have been able to collect, show that he adopted a very
definite and precise system of punctuation. He frequently uses the
colon and the semicolon, and always in the right place. In a
parenthetical clause preceded by the conjunction 'and,' he uses a
_comma_ after the 'and,' not before it as most people do. Before
such words as 'yet' and 'but,' he without exception uses a semicolon.
The word 'only,' he always puts in its correct place. In short, he
is so academic as to savour somewhat of the pomposity of the
eighteenth century."

"Go on," said Freynes, as Malcolm Sage paused, as if to give the
other a chance of questioning his reasoning.

"Turning to the anonymous letters," continued Malcolm Sage, "it must
be admitted that the handwriting is very similar; but there all
likeness to Blade's sermons and corr