"Naturally this meeting exercised my mind a good deal, and when I
thought of the two men whom I had seen in the town, I could hardly
believe that their likeness to my quondam friends was a mere
coincidence. And yet when I had met Leach and Jezzard by the river, I
had found them little altered, and had particularly noticed that
Jezzard had no mole on his face, and that Leach was clean-shaven as of
old.
"But a day or two later all my doubts were resolved by a paragraph in
the local paper. It appeared that on the day of my visit to Eastwich a
number of forged cheques had been cashed at the three banks. They had
been presented by three well-dressed, horsy-looking men who looked like
well-to-do farmers. One of them had a mole on the left cheek, another
was distinguished by a waxed moustache and a single eyeglass, while the
description of the third I did not recognize. None of the cheques had
been drawn for large amounts, though the total sum obtained by the
forgers was nearly four hundred pounds; but the most interesting point
was that the cheque-forms had been manufactured by photographic process,
and the water-mark skilfully, though not quite perfectly, imitated.
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