J. Peters was extremely well read, seemed to have traveled everywhere, and knew men intimately whose names in the financial world were all majestic. I thought J. Peters a whale of a chap and tried in every possible way to imitate him, even to copying so far as I was able his slow drawling way of speaking.
My father couldn't see J. Peters with a spy glass, but neither could he prove anything to his discredit, and as I was then at the beautiful age of eighteen when one knows so much more than he ever does again, my father's warnings flowed out of my ears like water from a sieve.
One day, six months after J. Peters had arrived in Epping, he proposed that I accompany him on a week end trip to Boston which I was crazy to do, but had to refuse on account of my finances being at low tide.
J. Peters wouldn't take no for an answer, however, and finally persuaded me to go as his guest.
We were to take the noon train on a Friday; but when Thursday night came he called to me from the piazza of the Mansion House as I was on my way home from work, and told me that something had come up which would prevent his going until Saturday.
He pushed a roll of bills into my hands telling me to go as we had planned, engage rooms at the American House, buy theatre tickets for Saturday evening, and wait for him as he would follow on the Saturday noon train.
His story sounded plausible enough so I followed his directions, and had a gorgeous time until six o'clock Saturday evening came and with it no J. Peters. I waited for him in the lobby of the hotel until midnight, and then went to bed feeling he must have missed his train but would show up the next day.
He didn't though, and I spent Sunday roaming around the city seeing the sights, returning to the hotel for supper. Just as I was pushing my way through the front door someone grabbed me, then I felt something cold and steely clasped around my wrists, and looking up saw Hen Winters, the sheriff of Epping County, scowling down at me.
When I recovered enough from my fright to understand what it all meant, I learned that I was wanted for stealing $20,000 in Cash from the Epping National Bank, and that explanations were out of order.
The bank had been robbed. J. Peters and I were missing, and the mere fact that all the money Hen found in my pockets after a painstaking search amounted to $9.75 didn't get me anywhere, for my intimacy with J. Peters was known to everyone in town.