Normally all the monks in the monastery broke up into small groups after their evening meal and either sat around talking about the latest events, or reading, or taking up one of their many hobbies. Since Frau Dabrowska had assumed the duties of cook and hospitalier their meals had been much better received and there had been a greater tendency to stay in the refectory after eating and to sample the various cakes and pastries that occasionally appeared. That night, however, there were no 'extras' brought to the table after the bread had been cleared away, and the three companions rushed down to the washroom behind the main monastery building to see what had happened.

"Look, look!" Brother Joseph exclaimed, pointing excitedly at the squares of cotton blowing in the last of the evening's cooling wind. What they saw was certainly exciting and the best result so far. Several of the cloth samples were red, and a couple of them were just about the color of red that had been requested.

"Another day and we should have this technique perfected," Mendel said, rubbing his hands as if trying to eliminate the splashes of color that now disfigured their surface. Try as hard as they could, none of the researchers had been able to keep the dyes off their clothes or their skin and all were now various shades of blues, yellows and reds.

"This one looks the best," Brother Matthew said, pulling the squares off the drying line and taking them indoors again to view under better light. He was correct and they all agreed that one square was almost perfect. Mendel consulted the pile of papers on the table and cross checked the number on the cotton sample with the various formulae he had written down. "Yes," he said, "I think we have it!".

"This calls for a tot of Brother Victor's special brandy," Klacel said with a laugh and they all took their seats around the table and waited for Brother Matthew to raid the monastery's stock of spirits. "I'm glad you have succeeded, Gregor. One final triumph, eh? It is a pity this will be the last one I will ever see you make".

There had been considerable despondency among their group when Brother Gregory brought home the news collected by Grete's father. "That's the end of me," Brother Matthew had said with some passion. "I should start packing right away. It is a pity you are not the Abbot, Mendel, then I could leave with my head held high, but as it is I'll have to slink away like a hunted animal and hope they don't catch me before I try to get across the border".

"What exactly did Herr Theimer tell you?" Brother Joseph asked Mendel once again, and waited while he sipped his brandy and tried to recall the pharmacist's words.

"He seemed to think a letter was important, but could not say what letter, or why it was having the desired effect," Brother Gregory said.

"Hummm," Brother Joseph mused, getting up out of his chair and walking over to the desk where Mendel recorded the results of their labors. "Could this be the letter?" He held out the document that the Prior had read to them all and which had influenced so many of their colleagues during the last vote.

"Well, it could be," Brother Gregory admitted, taking hold of the letter, "but I fail to see how anyone could have known about it before the Prior found it in Abbot Napp's desk, or what their interest could have been".

It was then that Grete felt a shudder run down her spine and a cold hand clutch around her heart. "What if the letter is not real," she said softly. "From what you have told me, Brother Gregory, here, was almost certain to win the election and become the next Abbot, until that letter was discovered after the first vote. That letter has had a considerable impact. Don't you find it in the least suspicious that it only turned up when it was needed the most?"

Brother Matthew was the first of them to recover from the shock. "Yes," he exclaimed, grabbing the letter, "that's true". He looked closely at the piece of paper and carried it closer to one of the lamps. "Could this letter be a forgery? How would we know?"

When they had all stopped talking at once, Brother Gregory held up his hand. "Wait, wait," he pleaded, "what are we talking about. Are you saying that Abbot Napp may not have written this letter and therefore not have endorsed Brother Timothy as the next Abbot?"

"That is exactly what I am saying," Frau Dabrowska said again, with a lot more conviction this time. "I don't trust that Brother Timothy, this is certainly what he would do if he had to, in order to get elected".

"But how? Why? He does not have the skills to do something like this".

Brother Joseph was now looking very carefully at the disputed letter using a magnifying glass. "I've read hundreds of Abbot Napp's messages and letters over the years," he said, "and I'm sorry to say that this one looks very real to me. I would like it to be a forgery, but if you ask me my professional opinion, it looks genuine. Sorry".

In turn, all three monks looked at the letter closely. They read and re-read the text and scrutinized the penmanship word by word. Reluctantly they all came to the same opinion - it looked completely genuine. It sounded like the Abbot, and it was almost certainly his handwriting.

"Sorry, Grete," Brother Joseph said, handing the letter back to her. "It was a good idea, but no one here in the monastery would doubt for a moment that Abbot Napp wrote this thing. He must have been mad when he did so, but it would take a lot of convincing to persuade any of our friends he did not mean it. It looks like Brother Timothy has won this one, and 'Francis' here will have to leave us all too soon".

The use of his original first name brought a grim smile to Klacel's face, but it also brought a tiny tear to Grete's eye. The silvery drop of liquid started in the fold of skin by the tear duct, ran down her soft cheek, paused for a fraction of a second at the corner of her mouth and then let go. It fell a short distance and splashed onto the words that appeared to be condemning Brother Matthew to unfriendly exile. There it hit one of the inked words and was instantly absorbed by the fine quality rag paper.

As she stared at the document, Grete Dabrowska saw something that amazed her. Pulled by the capillary action of the paper fibers, the drop of water spread itself out in a widening circle. The edge of the water drop expanded outwards, and as it did so the ink it touched smeared and spread out as well. However, the dark ink did not travel uniformly, instead it began to separate out and before her eyes, Grete watched the dark ink become two, then three, then four different colors!

"Look at this," she could not help saying, and they all looked at the spreading tiny circles of color.

"Very pretty," Klacel said and slumped away back to his chair. "But dissolving Napp's words in your tears won't help me now. You should have washed them away a long time ago".

"I never knew that black ink had all those different colors in it," Brother Joseph admitted, but he also considered the incident too trivial a concern at this important moment.

It was the two scientists in the room that saw the significance, and for the first time in many weeks Brother Gregory was able to look Grete Dabrowska directly in the eyes. "Yes," he said slowly, "yes - this is very interesting. It appears that the spreading water is pulling the components in the ink into their separate colors so we can see them. Each colored pigment is traveling a different distance along the surface of the paper like runners who all start a race together but finish at different times".

"Colors in writing," grunted Brother Matthew, unhappy that he was no longer the focus of their concern.

"A good name," Mendel said with growing excitement, "let's call it that - 'color-writing', which in Greek would be 'chromato-graphy'. I wonder if this is a new technique for separating components in any mixture of colors? Should we try?"

So they did. Without the help of Brother Matthew, they started cutting up pieces of paper placing tiny drops of dye at one end, and then dipping the paper strips into a tiny puddle of water on the table top. The water was immediately drawn up the paper, sucked against gravity by the surface tension of the water on the rag fibers in the paper.

In each case, as the water passed through the dot of dye, it dissolved the color and pulled it along with the advancing edge. But in those solutions where there was more than one colored pigment, each color traveled at a different rate, so, by the time the water had reached the top of the paper strip, it had left behind it several bands of separated color.

It quickly became clear that this new method, which they were all calling 'chromatography', enabled them to isolate impurities in the alizarin dye mixtures they had been testing, and made it possible to find the combination that worked the best.

While Klacel sulked, Brother Gregory and Frau Dabrowska tested all of their samples and in an hour had found the purest dye preparation. As they did this, Brother Joseph sat at Mendel's desk and played with the various bottles of ink he found there. Just as they had done before, he dotted a spot of each ink onto the paper strips and then dipped them in water.

"Look at this," he said at last. "Each type of ink is different. These cheap ones only have one or two colors in them, but this expensive one seems to have four or five. Where did you get this Mendel?"

With a guilty start Brother Gregory came to the desk and saw what Brother Joseph was doing. He admired the patterns of color in the separated inks and confirmed that each ink appeared to be giving a different, and characteristic, set of bands. "Er, this one you mean?" he said, pointing to one of the more elaborate results, "er ... I think I got that from Abbot Napp. It is the ink his sister used to send him". He could not help feeling guilty as it was a running joke in the monastery that Mendel shamelessly took paper and ink from his Abbot to record his scientific results.

By chance he put the paper strip down beside the letter they all thought had been written by the Abbot using the same ink. "Look," he said suddenly, "it is not the same!"

It took a few moments for them all to look at, and compare, the colors in the ink used in the letter and the ink Mendel knew belonged to the Abbot. "Let's do this properly," he said when they could not all agree. Taking some care, he cut a strip of paper from the controversial letter so that it had part of a word, and the ink, at one end. He then dipped this end in the water as before and they all watched as the water moved up and along the paper, pulling the components of the ink apart.

A few minutes later the results were clear and unmistakable; the ink used on the letter was not the same as the ink normally used by Abbot Napp. "Did you ever know him use different inks?" Grete asked.

"I suppose he might have done," the monks admitted, "but not for a letter of this importance," they all confirmed.

"So," Frau Dabrowska said, letting out a deep breath, "if this result is true, Abbot Napp did not write the letter telling you all to vote for Brother Timothy. It is a forgery, and we can prove it!"