Wednesday, June 15, 2022

The Old Man's Signature


 

His eyes had observed the old man daily for the last ten days. It had been the same time every day. Tailing him right from his house at the corner of the street, Alex had his sight on the rich Parsi man’s money. The Idea had been simple.  Alex had already succeeded in robbing the old man of two cheque leaflets from the entire set of his cheque book. It had been quite an act for Alex to rob off the cheque book leaflets.

The old man, Mr Dorabji was the owner of an old but famous eatery located at the corner of college street lane at Kolkata. Though Dorabji was nearing his seventies, but his sharpness and attentiveness was at the same level of any young man. But it had been one of those occasional days when he had been absent minded and had left his cheque book inside an unlocked table drawer. It was routine for Dorabji to leave the eatery around ten thirty in the night and post that in the next one hour the staff would clean and wash the floor and close the doors. Alex had taken advantage of this and entered the eatery on a rainy night when there were hardly any staff. With the help of an insider, Alex walked near to the table where Dorabji generally sat. He had checked all the drawers for any cash of leftover money but he got hold of a cheque book. He had been confused to the use of the cheque book. That was when his friend in crime, Martin, who worked in the Restaurant gave him an idea. They tore the last two blank cheque leaflets so that Dorabji wouldn’t know that some blank cheques have been stolen off.  Alex had left that night. But since then, three weeks had passed and they still couldn’t figure out the way to forge the old man’s signature on the cheque. The plan had to be stopped as the most important act of copying the signature of the old man was yet to be implemented.

Martin had recollected that the Mr Dorabji often issued cheques to his vendors on every Friday during tea time meetings, This, he assumed to be the only time when they could see the signature. The plan was simple. Alex had arranged for a small plate which had a mirror image on its backside. It was planned that Martin would simply stand near the old  man at the time of signing the cheques and hold the plate in such manner that the mirror would face the cheque for Alex to observe the signature through the mirror. As there were no sun rays entering the restaurant, there would be no reflection of any light. No one would have any doubt on the entire act. The seating arrangement of the tables were such that it made possible to view the signatures very easily through the mirror. Alex had to be vigilant enough and sharp to observe the signature for a consecutive of four to five days.

On the first day of the act, as planned, while Mr Dorabji signed the cheques, Martin stood near to him with the plate’s backside that had a mirror facing the table on which the cheques were been signed. From the nearby table, Alex observed the enlarged signature on the mirror and took an image on his smartphone. He immediately looked at the image and it was reasonable enough to copy. The same act was repeated for the next three weeks on every Friday when Mr Dorabji sat down to issue cheques.

 Everything planned was performed successfully and Alex was successful in copying the signature of the old man. He used the two cheques which he had robbed of the old man to forge the signature on them, carefully and with in-depth concentration. The signature was a simple aggregation of the name of the old man " Dorabji" which he had studied through the image of the mirror glass attached. On the first Monday of the next week, he walked to the nearby bank like a king and deposited the bearer cheque with his name as the payee to the bank which the Mr Dorabji frequented.

On looking at the two cheques, the cashier looked up at Alex and smiled. Alex smiled back. He inspected the cheque more closely and looked into the screen of his computer.

“Why is Mr Dorabji sir’s signature on the cheque appearing as a reverse of what is stored in the bank’s records?”  Asked the cashier in a confused tone looking at the computer screen.

The smile on Alex’s face disappeared and at that very moment he realized the goof up.

Texts always appear in reverse mode in a mirror glass.

The actual signature was not the name " Dorabji", it was the reverse of the word " Dorabji.

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