Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 03.pdf/216

 An Unseen Witness.

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AN UNSEEN WITNESS. By George B. Dexter. SEVERAL years ago, as I was sitting in my office in Boston, I received a tele gram from a friend of my father's in New York asking me to go to the city of C late that afternoon, and witness the signa tures of some papers which were to be passed the following day. As he was in terested in the transfer of some property to which these papers referred and did not know any one in C, he wished to have some friend witness the signatures in. case of a law-suit in the future. I took the five o'clock train, and reached C at half-past nine. On going to the hotel and asking for a room, I was informed that a convention was being held there and they could not give me a regular bedroom, but would give me half of a reception-room which was di vided by a thin spruce sheathing completely closing the archway in the middle, making two very comfortable rooms. As I was very weary, I at once retired to the room, and within twenty minutes was in a cot-bed which stood close to the partition before referred to. Presently the door from the hall opening into the other room was opened. Two men entered and lighted the gas, which threw a ray of mellow light through the partition; they then began a conversation, which was carried on in a loud tone, by which I was much disturbed. I turned sev eral times, trying not to listen to what was being said; but presently the subject of their discussion attracted my attention. I sat up in my bed and listened. From what was said, I learned that the older of the two men was an apothecary from Rock port, a town some fourteen miles distant from C , and the other was a younger man who had evidently been his clerk up to July, it then being the month of December. "Jim " Tay lor, the apothecary, laid bare this story : — The son of old Deacon Sanborn had been I

killed two years before; he had been the grocer of the town, having his store in the same building with Taylor's apothecary shop. The old deacon, wishing to close out the business after his son's death, offered it to Taylor, and he bought it at $2,000, paying him $800 cash, and giving him a note for £1,200. " Now," said Taylor to his compan ion, "you know that note was due the 4th of last March, and you remember the deacon coming in that morning to get his money, and you know that I put him off, as I had n't the money to pay him. After you had left me I heard through the school children who went to his daughter's school, that the note had been lost sometime about the first of July; and when they came to me to inquire about it I thought I 'd play a high card, and I told them that the old man must have been elemented, for I paid him the note the 4th of March. Then I made up my mind that I 'd sell out my business, both the apothecary and grocery stores (for I was running both), and clear out to Colorado. The old deacon got on to it in some way, and I 'll be hanged if he did n't serve the papers on me and hold me for that note; that 's why I telegraphed to you at Bath to come here to-day. You see the case is coming off to-morrow in court here, and the people have all closed their shops in Rockport to come down to hear the trial. Now, the deacon has n't got a blamed witness, and I 've got you." "Well, what if you have? You didn't pay the money, and what are you going to try to prove?" "Prove! I 'm going to say that I paid him that money on March 4, and I want you to testify that you saw me do it. You 're not getting much salary down there in Bath, and if you will do it I 'll pay you fifty dollars when the court is over to-morrow, and no