He had the story cold. I burnt the edges of the parchment so that the lowest name, that of George Walton, was slightly singed.

“It will make it more realistic,” I explained. “Of course, a signature, without a letter above it, loses value, but here we have three signatures, all signers.

My uncle Otto was thoughtful. “And if they compare the signatures with those on the Declaration and notice it is all even microscopically the same, won’t they fraud suspect?”

Certainly. But what can they do? The parchment is authentic. The ink is authentic. The signatures are authentic. They’ll have to concede that. No matter how they suspect something queer, they can’t prove anything. Can they conceive of reaching through time for it? In fact, I hope they do try to make a fuss about it. The publicity will boost the price.”

The last phrase made my uncle Otto laugh.

The next day he took the train to Washington with visions of flutes in his head. Long flutes, short flutes, bass flutes, flute tremolos, massive flutes, micro flutes, flutes for the individual and flutes for the orchestra. A world of flutes for mind-drawn music.

“Remember,” his last words were, “the machine I have no money to rebuild. This must work.”

And I said, “Uncle Otto, it can’t miss.”

Ha!

He was back in a week. I had made long-distance calls each day and each day he told me they were investigating.

Investigating.

Well, wouldn’t you investigate? But what good would it do them?

I was at the station waiting for him. He was expressionless. I didn’t dare ask anything in public. I wanted to say, “Well, yes or no?” but I thought, let him speak.

I took him to my office. I offered him a cigar and a drink. I hid my hands under the desk but that only made the desk shake too, so I put them in my pocket and shook all over.

He said, “They investigated.”