ARTHUR.T Stories ----A Finder of Missing Heirs ----VIII---Page 46

[Illustration: With the exception of the upper left hand signature and the four immediately below it of H. Huffman Browne, these are all the signatures of imaginary persons invented by Browne to further his
schemes. The upper right-hand slip shows the signatures to the Wilson bond, among which appears that of W.R. Hubert.]

Browne gave his testimony in the same dry, polite and careful manner in

which he had always been accustomed to discuss his cases and deliver his
arguments. It seemed wholly impossible to believe that this
respectable-looking person could be a dangerous character, yet the
nature of his offence and the consequences of it were apparent when the
State called to the stand an old broom-maker, who had bought from Browne
one of the lots belonging to the Petersen estate. Holding up three
stumps where fingers should have been, he cried out, choking with tears:

"My vriends, for vifteen years I vorked at making brooms--me und my
vife--from fife in the morning until six at night, und I loose mine
fingern trying to save enough money to puy a house that we could call
our own. Then when we saved eight hundred dollars this man come to us
und sold us a lot. We were very happy. Yesterday anoder man served me
mit a paper that we must leave our house, because we did not own the
land! We must go away! Where? We haf no place to go. Our home is being
taken from us, und that man [pointing his stumps at Browne]--that man
has stolen it from us!"

He stopped, unable to speak. The defendant's lawyer properly objected, but, with this piece of testimony ringing in their ears, it is hardly
surprising that the jury took but five minutes to convict Browne of
forgery in the first degree.

A few days later the judge sentenced him to twenty years in State's
prison.

Then other people began to wake up. The Attorney-General guessed that

the Petersen property had all escheated to the State, the Swedish

Government sent a deputy to make inquiries, the Norwegian Government was sure that he was a Norwegian, and the Danish that he was a Dane. No one knows yet who is the real owner, and there are half a dozen heirs
squatting on every corner of it. Things are much worse than before
Browne tried to sell the ill-fated lot to Levitan, but a great many
people who were careless before are careful now.

It soon developed, however, that lawyer Browne's industry and ingenuity

had not been confined to the exploitation of the estate of Ebbe

Petersen. Before the trial was well under way the City Chamberlain of
New York notified the District Attorney that a peculiar incident had
occurred at his office, in which not only the defendant figured, but
William R. Hubert, his familiar, as well. In the year 1904 a judgment
had been entered in the Supreme Court, which adjudged that a certain
George Wilson was entitled to a one-sixth interest in the estate of
Jane Elizabeth Barker, recently deceased. George Wilson had last been
heard of, twenty years before, as a farmhand, in Illinois, and his
whereabouts were at this time unknown. Suddenly, however, he had
appeared. That is to say, H. Huffman Browne had appeared as his
attorney, and demanded his share of the property which had been
deposited to his credit with the City Chamberlain and amounted to
seventy-five hundred dollars. The lawyer had presented a petition signed
apparently by Wilson and a bond also subscribed by him, to which had
been appended the names of certain sureties. One of these was a William

R. Hubert--the same William R. Hubert who had mysteriously disappeared
when his presence was so vital to the happiness and liberty of his
creator. But the City Chamberlain had not been on his guard, and had
paid over the seventy-five hundred dollars to Browne without ever having
seen the claimant or suspecting for an instant that all was not right.

It was further discovered at the same time that Browne had made several other attempts to secure legacies remaining uncalled for in the city's
treasury. In how many cases he had been successful will probably never be known, but it is unlikely that his criminal career dated only from
the filing of the forged Petersen deed in 1896.

Browne made an heroic and picturesque fight to secure a reversal of his
conviction through all the State courts, and his briefs and arguments
are monuments to his ingenuity and knowledge of the law. He alleged that
his conviction was entirely due to a misguided enthusiasm on the part of
the prosecutor, the present writer, whom he characterized as a
"novelist" and dreamer. The whole case, he alleged, was constructed out
of the latter's fanciful imagination, a cobweb of suspicion, accusation
and falsehood. Some day his friend Hubert would come out of the West,
into which he had so unfortunately disappeared, and release an innocent
man, sentenced, practically to death, because the case had fallen into
the hands of one whose sense of the dramatic was greater than his logic.

Perchance he will. Mayhap, when H. Huffman Browne is the oldest inmate
of Sing Sing, or even sooner, some gray-haired figure will appear at the
State Capitol, and knock tremblingly at the door of the Executive,
asking for a pardon or a rehearing of the case, and claiming to be the
only original, genuine William R. Hubert--such a denouement would not be
beyond the realms of possibility, but more likely the request will come
in the form of a petition, duly attested and authenticated before some
notary in the West, protesting against Browne's conviction and

incarceration, and bearing the flowing signature of William R.

Hubert--the same signature that appears on Browne's deeds to

Levitan--the same that is affixed to the bond of George Wilson, the
vanished farmhand, claimant to the estate of Jane Elizabeth Barker.