Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/278

 *tented itself with shouting "I told you so," with a great deal of strenuousness.

What was not known, save to Judge Parlin and, probably, some of the office force, was the extreme discrimination shown by the fire in destroying the very books on which proof of the forgeries depended. Certain remarks incautiously dropped by Judge Parlin let out facts from which the scandal took shape, with charges freely made by political opponents of the Matthewsons, which could now be proved only by papers in Judge Parlin's hands, since the destruction of the original books. This was the Range 16 Scandal in its original form.

Up to this time, Judge Parlin had not even taken his wife into his confidence, but as the matter took more and more of public form, he deemed it necessary that she should know, especially as he had begun to suspect that the men who were against him would hesitate at nothing—not even murder, to conceal the truth. It was an incautious hint dropped by him to this effect that first alarmed her, and this alarm was speedily increased to terror by threats that were conveyed to the judge from time to time,