Every evening, Wilmington daily commercial., 1918-07-13
DISPOSAL OF FORTUNE
HINGES ON LETTER 7.
Clue Which is Sought to Prove
$2,000,000 Will
Forgery.

Chicago, July 12-The crossbar Of
the typewriter letter ct is holding il
the balance the fate of the So .OOO. .OO(
estate of the late James c. King. fol
the alleged murder of whose widow Gas
ton b. Means was recently tried and
acquitted in the North Carolina Courts
When the question of whether Mrs. Ad-
olson :. Melvin, sister of Mrs. Hing,
or an old peoples home, founded by the
late millionaire in Chicago. is entitled to
the estate is finally adiudicated this
same crossbar of the typewritten letter
Ct will be the principal factor in the
decision.
J. Frank Allard, of the Underwood
Typewriter Company, in New York,
today took the stand before Probate
Judge Herner where Mrs. Melvin is
seeking to have an alleged second will
of the lumber millionaire probated. The
first will provided that the Kings old
mems home in Chicago receive the 81
100000. The second will provided that
Mrs. James G. Hing, the widow, receive
this amount.
The second will was discovered" by
Means. Under Mrs Kings will Mrs.
Melvin, her sister. fell heir TO the King
estate and all the litigation connected
with it. So much for the general outline
of the plot.
EXPERT is BArFLED.
Now comes the matter OF the CroSsbar
on the typewriter letter IT Mr.. Al
lard identified himself on the witness
stand aS 4 typewrltlng expert and then
related that he knew everything inside
and out about an Underwood typewriter
Typewriter firms in general had a habit
of changing the face of the typewriting
type he said In 1912 the Underwood
Company changed its type in such
manner that any expert could tell by
looking at a document written by an
Underwood typewriter whether that doc
ument had been written on machine
turned out before or after 1912 What
the Underwood Company did was shorten
the croSsbar Of the small IT on the
[ Underwood machine extended out over
the lower pool
the lower loop Of the letter After 1912
the croSsbar ended inside the lower loop
OF the letter
Mr. Alard was then shown the al
legged second will of the late James c.
Hing, a document drawn up by the
lumber millionaire during his lifetime.
Mr.. Allard said he had examined the
document. He said that it had been
written by an Underwood typewriter.
He said he was able to determine this
because OF the shapes of the letters &C.
&c. the lower part Of the small ''Y''
snd various other Indications.
Mr.. Allard, however, stopped there
and shook his head
This document. he said. has been
pen"ilcd over very carefully. exceedingly
carefully The letters by which could
tell just what serial make Of the Under
wood machine wrote the document have
been carefully traced over with pencil.
MARKS BAR IDENTIFICATION.
81 can always determine what serial
of the Underwood Is involved by the
fact that each serial make has a few
damaged letters All the damaged letters
or those which might be damaged have
been written over with pencil and as for
the crossbar OF the mall letter t
Mr. Allard sighed-''the crossbar has
received particular attention. In spots
this crossbar has been heightened by
pencil wa beyond its length even before
the year 1912.
Every time the crossbar OF the small
letter # occurs it has received the
special treatment of the pencil Thus
/ an unable because Of expert use Of
the pencil. - tell whether this document
was written before or after 1912
Mr. Allard was then asked whether
he believed some cunning hand had gone
over the disputed viii and protected it
against any such Identification as the
one they were irving To make He re-
piled it was obvious that someone shrewd-
X familiar with every phase Of typewriting
Identification had performed good Job
in concealing nearly everything about the
document other than Il was the product
OF an underwood typewriter