conceited accent on the word, "am a document examiner." When Diana
named her source of information and held up the book of a prominent
document examiner, his reply was, "That person must come from a
different viewpoint that I do."

"It appears that what you refer to as graphologists, in your
profession, are much more thorough in their analysis of handwriting and
printing than you are. The author of this book makes a point of
insisting on original, authenticated standards and doing several
different types of measurements. The idea being that when they decide
a document's author, it is based on several different tests.

"You did only a letter by letter comparison then. Every letter?"

"A majority of them."

It turned out not to be the case. Diana brought up letter after letter
that the analyst had not found a match to. "S" was one of them.
Looking hastily through the so-called standards, Avery finally found
one, but it was a printed capital "S" which he was saying was a match
for a small case scripted "s" found at the end of a word. For all that
time and trouble, he discovered it in a signature purported to have
been written by Diana twenty years ago! This document also contained
the writing of more than one person, and the signature itself was
written by Diana's daughter.

Other discrepancies were brought out. T's that were not crossed, small
i's with a backward slant, the written letter R which looked like a U.
These and other examples of letters found in the 'suspicious' SmurFFs,
were not found to be represented in twenty years worth of material
allegedly copied from the files.

"It doesn't matter," Avery asserted. "I mean it is entirely possible
that the writer could have made an R like that even though I can't show
you an example."

"You were given samples of what you were told was my handwriting that
covered twenty to thirty years?"

"Yes."

"Is it not true that a person's handwriting may change due to injury or
disease such as osteoporosis, rheumatism or arthritis?"

"I would agree that a person's handwriting can change over the years."

"Do you know of any statistical studies pertaining to the accuracy of
handwriting analysis?"

"Accuracy?"

"Yes. Is it 50%, 75% or 100% accurate? Do you know of any studies
made?"

"It is 100% accurate. It is allowed in the courts."

"Wait a minute. Are you saying the courts have made a study?"

"I don't know if such a study has been made. But the