Under Orders: The story of a young reporter

by Kirk Munroe

“When Mr. Manning came down I gave him the bit of a pass I had written for him. Then he hurried away. An hour or so after that, as I was going home, I saw Mr. Watkins stop at the post-office door as if he were mailing a letter.”

All this had been listened to with breathless interest, and when Allen ceased speaking a sound like a great sigh of relief rose from the spectators. They all knew Jacob Allen to be a man of such sterling honesty that “as honest as Jake Allen” had become a saying in the town. He had never been known to tell a lie, and it was not likely that he was telling one now.

Allen’s cross-examination was long and severe, but it failed to alter his statements by a single word.

Captain Ellis himself took the stand for the purpose of testifying to the sending back of the safe-key by Myles the moment he heard of the superintendent’s return.

Finally a hotel bell-boy testified that, late on the night of Mr. Manning’s arrival at the house, Mr. Watkins had sent him to the telegraph office with a short dispatch.

A copy of the message sent to the Phonograph accusing Myles of intoxication was read by Captain Ellis, and the operator testified to having sent it late that night and that it was in Watkins’ handwriting.

With this the examination of witnesses came to an end, and the counsel for the company rose to make his closing argument. He dwelt at length on Myles’ behavior when he first came to the town, claiming that it alone was sufficient to prove him capable of other acts of folly and even crime. He also attacked the character of the chief witness for the defence, Jacob Allen, and said that his late actions now rendered him unworthy of belief even under oath. He trusted that in weighing the value of the testimony given by Mr. Watkins and the person accused of this great crime the jury would consider their respective positions in life. The one, he said, was a gentleman filling a most important position, in which he enjoyed the fullest confidence of his superiors, while the other was but a reporter, whose business was the fabrication of interesting stories. After talking for nearly an hour in this style, and arousing the violent wrath of Billings, the prosecuting lawyer concluded with an expression of confidence that the jury would find a verdict for the plaintiff, and sat down.

Now came the turn of Captain Ellis. In a manly, straightforward address that lasted half an hour he gave the history of the case, and showed how, by a perfectly natural course of events, an innocent and unsuspecting person had become involved in a tangled web of circumstantial evidence that caused him to be accused of a crime. He pointed out clearly that a desire for revenge and an urgent need of money, together with an offered opportunity for taking it, might readily have led Ben Watkins to rob the safe and then seek to fasten the crime upon another. He told the story of Myles’ splendid act in saving from disaster the train with the 50th Regiment on board, and asked the jury if they thought it possible for a person who would commit the one act, to be capable of performing the other. He referred to the remarkable character for honesty and truthfulness that Jacob Allen had borne for years. He answered his opponent’s slur upon reporters by speaking of them as gentlemen whose position was as honorable and important as that of any class of men in the world, and he finally ended by saying that he was willing to rest his case with the jury upon the merits of its evidence alone.