He charged me with holding interviews with Mr. James, the Postmaster-General, and the Attorney-General, and asked me what I meant by it. I told him my action was in his behalf; that I had been keeping up with the newspapers, and knowing the facts in regard to this mail business, what I had done was done in his behalf.
That is, he did not deny that he had these conversations, did not deny the report, did not deny that he had met the Attorney-General and the Postmaster-General, but said:
My action was in your behalf.
And then, according to Rerdell, after that Dorsey wrote him a letter, in which he said, "I do not believe the report," although Rerdell had made the report to him himself. May be that is the reason he did not believe it.
Now, let me read to you the conversation on his return from New York and see how it agrees with the letter. It is on page 2288:
Mr. Dorsey immediately brought up the conversation that we had had over in New York, and what I had done by going to Mr. Mac-Veagh, and asked me if I intended to ruin him. I said no, I did not; it was not my intention to ruin him; it was my intention to help him out of what I thought to be a bad difficulty.
Q. What did he say?—A. He then asked me if I had done anything further since I had left him.
Yet in the letter that he wrote him from the Albermarle Hotel he said that he did not believe the report and did not believe that he had done anything against him. The first thing he asked him when he got here was, "Have you done anything further against me?"
I said no, I had not; I had not been near Mr. MacVeagh. He then says, "Well, how shall we get out of this?" I says. "Mr. Dorsey, I will do anything that I can except to commit perjury."
A very natural remark for Mr. Rerdell to make. He would do anything but that. That testimony shows that Dorsey never wrote the letter which Rerdell says he did write from New York. That testimony shows that they did not have the conversation in New York that Rerdell says they had. That testimony shows that they did have exactly the conversation which Mr. Dorsey swears they had.