ARTHUR.T Stories ----A Finder of Missing Heirs ----VIII---Page 43

In the month of December, 1905, over seventeen years after the sinking
of the _Geiser_, a lawyer named H. Huffman Browne, offered to sell "at a

bargain" to a young architect named Benjamin Levitan two house lots

adjacent to the southwest corner of One Hundred and Seventy-fourth

Street and Monroe Avenue, New York City. It so happened that Browne had,
not long before, induced Levitan to go into another real-estate deal, in
which the architect's suspicions had been aroused by finding that the
property alleged by the lawyer to be "improved" was, in fact, unbuilt
upon. He had lost no money in the original transaction, but he
determined that no such mistake should occur a second time, and he
accordingly visited the property, and also had a search made of the
title, which revealed the fact that Browne was not the record owner, as
he had stated, but that, on the contrary, the land stood in the name of
"William R. Hubert."

It should be borne in mind that both the parties to this proposed

transaction were men well known in their own professions. Browne,

particularly, was a real-estate lawyer of some distinction, and an

editor of what were known as the old "New York Civil Procedure Reports."
He was a middle-aged man, careful in his dress, particular in his
speech, modest and quiet in his demeanor, by reputation a gentleman and
a scholar, and had practised at the New York bar some twenty-five years.

But Levitan, who had seen many wolves in sheep's clothing, and had

something of the Sherlock Holmes in his composition, determined to seek
the advice of the District Attorney, and having done so, received
instructions to go ahead and consummate the purchase of the property.
He, therefore, informed Browne that he had learned that the latter was
not the owner of record, to which Browne replied that that was true, but
that the property really did belong to him in fact, being recorded in
Hubert's name merely as a matter of convenience (because Hubert was
unmarried), and that, moreover, he, Browne, had an unrecorded deed from
Hubert to himself, which he would produce, or would introduce Hubert to
Levitan and let him execute a deed direct. Levitan assented to the
latter proposition, and the fourteenth of December, 1905, was fixed as
the date for the delivery of the deeds and the payment for the property.

At two o'clock in the afternoon of that day Browne appeared at Levitan's
office (where a detective was already in attendance) and stated that he
had been unable to procure Mr. Hubert's personal presence, but had
received from him deeds, duly executed, to the property. These he
offered to Levitan. At this moment the detective stepped forward, took
possession of the papers, and invited the lawyer to accompany him to the
District Attorney's office. To this Browne offered no opposition, and
the party adjourned to the Criminal Courts Building, where Mr. John W.
Hart, an Assistant District Attorney, accused him of having obtained
money from Levitan by means of false pretences as to the ownership of
the property, and requested from him an explanation. Browne replied
without hesitation that he could not understand why this charge should
be made against him; that he had, in fact, received the deeds from Mr.

Hubert only a short time before he had delivered them to Levitan; that Mr. Hubert was in New York; that he was the owner of the property, and that no fraud of any sort had been attempted or intended.

Mr. Hart now examined the supposed deeds and found that the signatures
to them, as well as the signatures to a certain affidavit of title,
which set forth that William R. Hubert was a person of substance, had
all been executed before a notary, Ella F. Braman, on that very day. He
therefore sent at once for Mrs. Braman who, upon her arrival,
immediately and without hesitation, positively identified the defendant,

H. Huffman Browne, as the person who had executed the papers before her an hour or so before. The case on its face seemed clear enough. Browne had apparently deliberately forged William R. Hubert's name, and it did
not even seem necessary that Mr. Hubert should be summoned as a witness, since the property was recorded in his name, and Browne himself had
stated that Hubert was then actually in New York.

But Browne indignantly protested his innocence. It was clear, he

insisted, that Mrs. Braman was mistaken, for why, in the name of

common-sense, should he, a lawyer of standing, desire to forge Hubert's
name, particularly when he himself held an unrecorded deed of the same
property, and could have executed a good conveyance to Levitan had the
latter so desired. Such a performance would have been utterly without an
object. But the lawyer was nervous, and his description of Hubert as "a
wealthy mine owner from the West, who owned a great deal of property in
New York, and had an office in the Flatiron Building," did not ring

convincingly in Mr. Hart's ears. The Assistant District Attorney called
up the janitor of the building in question on the telephone. But no such
person had an office there. Browne, much flustered, said the janitor was
either a fool or a liar. He had been at Hubert's office that very
morning. He offered to go and find him in twenty minutes. But Mr. Hart
thought that the lawyer had better make his explanation before a
magistrate, and caused his arrest and commitment on a charge of forgery.
Little did he suspect what an ingenious fraud was about to be unearthed.

The days went by and Browne stayed in the Tombs, unable to raise the
heavy bail demanded, but no Hubert appeared. Meantime the writer, to
whom the case had been sent for trial, ordered a complete search of the
title to the property, and in a week or so became possessed, to his
amazement, of a most extraordinary and complicated collection of facts.

He discovered that the lot of land offered by Browne to Levitan, and

standing in Hubert's name, was originally part of the property owned by

Ebbe Petersen, the unfortunate Swede who, with his family, had perished in the _Geiser_ off Cape Sable in 1888.

The title search showed that practically all of the Petersen property

had been conveyed by Mary A. Petersen to a person named Ignatius F. X.

O'Rourke, by a deed, which purported to have been executed on June 27,
1888, about two weeks before the Petersens sailed for Copenhagen, and
which was signed with Mrs. Petersen's mark, but that this deed had not
been recorded until July 3, 1899, _eleven years_ after the loss of the
_Geiser_.