The various post-obits were presented and placed before him. He instantly pronounced the two for five thousand pounds each to be forgeries, and the crime was easily laid at the door of the Queen's Counsel. The heir indignantly refused to condone the offense, and, revealing the fatal secret to a few, within a month it was known in every clubroom in London. From there it got into the newspapers, and they, under a thinly disguised alias of a "distinguished member of the Bar," gave more or less accurate details of the damning truth. His former client eventually said he would not prosecute the forgery if the criminal left England; if not, he would immediately go before the Grand Jury, procure an indictment, and have this man, who had moved a prince among men, arraigned in the dock at the Old Bailey, there to plead and stand trial like any common criminal.
And he fled. Of course, like all fugitives from justice throughout the Old World, he looked to America for a city of refuge, and here he came. Not to keep my readers too long from the main narrative, it will suffice to say that soon after his arrival he applied for admission to the Bar of New York, but first he won to his cause the high-souled Richard O'Gorman, then a leader of his profession.
It was for Edwin James a lucky stroke, for at this time O'Gorman was in full possession of his magnificent powers. Few could resist his magic. His great heart was stirred, and he took up the cause of his friend as if he had been his brother. The English lawyer's reputation was known to every member of the Bar of New York, and there had been and still was a bitter opposition to his admission; but when it became known that their eloquent leader was his champion, many began to feel that after all "the poor fellow ought to be given another chance," and when at the next meeting of the Bar Association O'Gorman in a set oration brought all his splendid eloquence into play the cause was won.
Great-hearted O'Gorman had helped this lame dog over the stile, but the dog's heart was not in the right place, and, as my reader will see in the sequel, he soon went lame again. * * *
In the rear room of a somewhat luxurious range of offices in a building on Broadway, facing the City Hall, four men were engaged in discussing what was evidently an exciting topic. The door of the main office bore the sign "Edwin James, Counselor-at-Law and Register in Bankruptcy." He was one of the four. He had failed lamentably in his efforts to secure a practice. The effects of O'Gorman's eloquence had in the gray light of commonplace day faded away, the more so when the ideal his magic had created in the minds of men was in hourly contrast with the man himself and his history. His professional brethren looked upon him with suspicion, and there was a general impression abroad that his escapades were not over yet.
He had launched out in his office and home somewhat extravagantly, and now, once again pressed by clamorous creditors, he had once more drifted upon the borderlands of crime, and was here with his companions planning a criminal transaction in order to pay his more pressing debts.
One of these four was Brea, who, with a keen eye to business, had married the discarded daughter of a wealthy but not over-respectable New York family, and he had, unsuspected, pulled the wires so that James had been employed as the family lawyer, and in that capacity had drawn the will of the mother. She was an imperious, hot-tempered body, one who, when aroused, was accustomed to use language more vigorous than polite, and who not infrequently went to fisticuffs with her daughters. The husband and father, the creator of the fortune, was dead and the vast family property, in securities, stocks and lands, was vested absolutely in the mother. In the old lady's will Brea's wife, the second daughter of the house (there were no sons), was down in the very first paragraph for the magnificent sum of "one dollar lawful currency," and her name nowhere else appeared in the lengthy document. The old lady was such a termagant and so implacable in her hatreds that it was a moral certainty she would never relent and change her purpose toward her daughter. But James had also drawn up a second will of his own and Brea's concoction, and a precious piece of villainy it was, in which the wife was down for legacies amounting; to $750,000. The genuine will James kept in his own possession, ready to destroy the very moment word came that the old lady was an immortal, while the spurious will was kept in the vaults of the Safety Deposit Company, there to remain until the death of the testatrix, when, of course, it would in due time be produced.
BANK OF ENGLAND PARLOR.