ARTHUR.T Stories ------500 Million Dollars --II---Page 12

These heirs to hundreds of millions of dollars were conducted by the

"Marquis de la d'Essa and Count de Tinoco" to the Battery, where he

gallantly seated them in an electric surface car, and proceeded to show

them the inheritance. He pointed out successively Number 100 Broadway,
the "Flatiron" Building, the Fifth Avenue Hotel and the Holland House,
the Waldorf-Astoria, the Vanderbilt mansion at Fifty-seventh Street and
Fifth Avenue, the Hotel Savoy and the Hotel Netherland, incidentally
taking a cross-town trip to the ferry station at East Twenty-third
Street, and to Bellevue Hospital. A public omnibus conveyed them around
Central Park--also their own. And, in spite of the cold weather, the
General insisted on showing them the "Tessier mansion and estate at Fort
George"--visible from the Washington Bridge--"a beautiful property in
the centre of a wood." Returning, he took them to the Museum of Natural
History and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contained
"Tessier's collections."

Having thus given them a bird's-eye view of the promised land, the

General escorted them to his apartments and allowed them to see the Ark
of the Covenant in the shape of a somewhat dilapidated leather trunk,
which contained a paper alleged to be the will of Jean Tessier, made in
Bellevue Hospital (one of his possessions), and unlawfully seized by the
Lespinasse family. It was only, Moreno alleged, through the powerful
influence of the Jesuits that he had been able to secure and keep a copy
of this will.

Although the Marquis de la d'Essa must have known that his days were

numbered, he was as gay and as entertaining as ever. Then, suddenly, the
scales began to fall from Madame Reddon's eyes. The promised meeting
with Marie Louise Lespinasse and her mysterious representative, "Mr.
Benedict-Smith," was constantly adjourned; the "police agents," whom it
had been so necessary to entertain and invite to saloons and cafes, were
strangely absent, and so were the counsellors, Jesuit Fathers, bankers,
and others who had crowded the General's antechambers. A slatternly
Hibernian woman appeared, claiming the hero as her husband; his landlady
caused him to be evicted from her premises; and his trunk containing the
famous "_dossier_" was thrown into the street, where it lay until the
General himself, placing it upon his princely shoulders, bore it to a
fifteen-cent lodging-house.

"And now, M'sieu'," said little Madame Reddon, raising her hands and

clasping them entreatingly before her, "we have come to seek vengeance upon this _miserable_! This _villain m'sieu_! He has taken our money and made fools of us. Surely you will give us justice!"

"Yes," echoed Lapierre stubbornly, "and the money was my own money, which I had made from the products of my farming."

A month later Don Pedro Suarez de Moreno, Count de Tinoco, Marquis de la
d'Essa, and Brigadier-General of the Royal Armies of the Philippines and

of Spain, sat at the bar of the General Sessions, twirling his mustache

and uttering loud snorts of contempt while Lapierre and Madame Reddon told their story to an almost incredulous yet sympathetic jury.

But the real trial began only when he arose to take the witness chair in

his own behalf. Apparently racked with pain, and laboring under the most
frightful physical infirmities, the General, through an interpreter,
introduced himself to the jury by all his titles, asserting that he had
inherited his patents of nobility from the "Prince of Arras," from whom
he was descended, and that he was in very truth "General-in-Chief of the
Armies of the King of Spain, General Secretary of War, and Custodian of
the Royal Seal." He admitted telling the Lapierres that they were the
heirs of five hundred million dollars, but he had himself honestly
believed it. When he and the rest of them had discovered their common
error they had turned upon him and were now hounding him out of revenge.
The courtly General was as _distingue_ as ever as he addressed the
hard-headed jury of tradesmen before him. As what _canaille_ he must
have regarded them! What a position for the "Count de Tinoco"!

Then two officers entered the courtroom bearing the famous trunk of the General between them. The top tray proved to contain thousands of
railroad tickets. The prosecutor requested the defendant to explain
their possession.

"Ah!" exclaimed Moreno, twirling his mustaches, "when I was General under my King Don Carlos, in the Seven Years' War of '75 and also in Catalonia in '80, I issued these tickets to wounded soldiers for their return home. At the boundaries the Spanish tickets were exchanged for French tickets." He looked as if he really meant it.

Then the prosecutor called his attention to the fact that most of them

bore the date of 1891 and were printed in French--not in Spanish. The

prisoner seemed greatly surprised and muttered under his breath vaguely about "plots" and "conspiracies." Then he suddenly remembered that the tickets were a "collection," made by his little son.

Beneath the tickets were found sheaves of blank orders of nobility and

blank commissions in the army of Spain, bearing what appeared to be the royal seal. These the General asserted that he had the right to confer,
by proxy, for his "King Don Carlos." Hundreds of other documents bearing various arms and crests lay interspersed among them. The prisoner drew himself up magnificently.

"I was the General Secretary of War of my King," said he. "When I had to give orders to the generals under me, of whom I was the chief, I had the right to put thereon the royal imprint of Don Carlos. I was given all
the papers incident to the granting of orders and grades in the army,
and I had the seal of the King--the seal of the Royal King."