Boyd brought the dispatch case from a table near the door. Lewis took out a packet of letters, and reading each one through carefully, often several times, passed them across to Boyd, who in turn went carefully through them. Beyond seeing that they were typewritten on ordinary octavo paper, I took no part in the proceeding, until Boyd handed one — carefully chosen, I felt — to me.
“Let’s have your opinion, Braithwaite,” he remarked; too casually to pretend even remotely that he thought my opinion of any value.
“You can see,” he went on calmly, “that these were written by a person not very familiar with the typewriter. Notice the rather erratic spacing, and the heavy letters and punctuation. The ribbon is new and so is the machine. It’s a Corona, I should judge; the portable type.”
“He g
