Of course, that is reasonable. I might go the bank and draw five thousand dollars, and then I might stop in the Treasury Department, but that is no evidence that I am bribing the Secretary of the Treasury. I might step over to see the President; that would be no reason to believe that I bribed the Executive.
Of course that is not conclusive. It is only a little straw in this case, as showing a transaction of that kind involved in connection with all the evidence you have in this case—A little straw evidence of Mr. Brady's acts, and particularly as at the time when that occurs evidence in connection with the large increases which Mr. Brady was then ordering; evidence in connection with the books, and the evidence they bear; evidence in connection with the declarations of Brady to Walsh—evidence all consistent.
And then he adds this piece of gratuitous information:
Mr. Dorsey was not taking seven thousand five hundred dollars in bills to the West.
How does he know? How did he find that out? And has it come to, this? Has all the testimony upon that point—has the confession of Rerdell to MacVeagh and James shrunk to this little measure—that it is "only a straw"? Has it shrunk to this measure that Mr. Bliss admits that the whole thing might have been exactly as Rerdell swears, and yet have been perfectly innocent? Has it shrunk to this little measure? The Government would not tell us—I presume the Government will not tell us, what check it was, the proceeds of which were taken by Mr. Dorsey to Mr. Brady. Neither will they say whether that sum was made up in one check or by adding together a number of checks; and, if so, what number?
At page 295 Mr. Bliss told you, in his opening speech, that Rerdell had on one occasion gone with Mr. Stephen W. Dorsey to the bank, and that seven thousand dollars had been drawn; that he had gone with Dorsey to the door of the Post-Office Department, or to Brady's room, at the time—he would not undertake to say which—Mr. Dorsey stating to him that he intended to pay that money to Mr. Brady, and that he (Mr. Dorsey) then went in. But when they come to put this man on the stand he will not swear that Dorsey ever told him that he intended to pay the money to Brady. Probably that part of the statement, that Dorsey told him that he was going to pay that money to Brady, can be found in the affidavit made before Mr. Woodward, in September, and repeated in the affidavit made at Hartford in November. But it is not in evidence here.
Now, we brought all the checks that we had given on Middleton's bank, with the exception of two, I believe, that amounted to some hundred and odd dollars. We gave the Government counsel notice that there were two others.
Among those checks was this one for seven thousand five hundred dollars. There were many others. I asked the gentlemen to pick out their check; they would not do it. I asked the gentlemen to pick out the checks; they did not do it. And now if we had failed to produce checks that were important in this case, the Government could have produced the books and clerks of Middleton & Company, and shown exactly the checks we drew upon that bank that month. They did not do it. As a matter of fact, I offered all the checks on all the banks I could think of that we had any business with in any way, except one, and that turned out to be the German-American Savings Bank, and it turned out that that went into bankruptcy eight months before this business; so there is no trouble about that. Why did they not pick out the checks upon which they claimed that the money was drawn that was paid to Brady?
Mr. Rerdell, on page 2254, in speaking of the money, swore that money was charged to Brady on the stub. He says that Dorsey told him, "You will find the amount on the stub of the check-book." The jury will notice that he speaks of the "amount," the "stub," and the "book," all in the singular. That was followed, I believe, by about six pages of discussion, and everybody who took part in that discussion, the Court included, spoke of the sum of money as an "amount," upon a "stub," in a "checkbook."
I call attention to 2254-'55-'56-'57-'58-'59. On all those pages it is spoken of as a stub of a check-book, or amount on a stub in a check-book. After the discussion was closed, then the witness began to talk about "books," "checks," "stubs," and "amounts." Why did he do that?