Page:Arthur B Reeve - The Dream Doctor.djvu/384

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The Dream Doctor

all, be finger-prints. I tried it. I found out through this little tube, the detectascope, that one really entered the room, after that, and tried to wipe off any supposed finger-prints that might still remain. That settled it. The second will was a forgery, and the person who entered that room so stealthily this afternoon knows that it is a forgery."

As Kennedy slapped down on the table the film from his camera, which had been concealed, Mrs. Godwin turned her now large and unnaturally bright eyes and met those of the other woman in the room.

"Oh—oh—heaven help us—me, I mean!" cried Miriam, unable to bear the strain of the turn of events longer. "I knew there would be retribution—I knew—I knew—"

Mrs. Godwin was on her feet in a moment.

"Once my intuition was not wrong though all science and law was against me," she pleaded with Kennedy. There was a gentleness in her tone that fell like a soft rain on the surging passions of those who had wronged her so shamefully. "Professor Kennedy, Miriam could not have forged—"

Kennedy smiled. "Science was not against you, Mrs. Godwin. Ignorance was against you. And your intuition does not go contrary to science this time, either."

It was a splendid exhibition of fine feeling which Kennedy waited to have impressed on the Elmores, as though burning it into their minds.

"Miriam Elmore knew that her brothers had forged a will and hidden it. To expose them was to convict them of a crime. She kept their secret, which