Tessier and Cheever visited McNiven in his office and served him with this answer. The two lawyers then dictated an agreement to a reference, Tessier adding a statement that he considered his client equipped with a good defense and that he intended to oppose the suit in good faith.
Their clerks took this to the County Court House in City Hall Square and filed it with the clerk of the Supreme Court, Special Term, Part II.
Justice Cardwell, before leaving his chambers, read the papers and issued an order naming as referee the lawyer Henry Firth.
Here for a moment the veil of secrecy was rent, for this order could not be suppressed. It was published in The Law Journal the next morning, and the eager reporters reading therein that Mrs. Peter Cheever was suing her husband for a divorce on statutory grounds, dashed to the records and learned that she accused him of undue intimacy with an unknown woman going by the name of Sarah Tishler.
By selecting an obscure town this publicity might have been deferred, but it would have meant delay in the case as well.
A flock of reporters sped like hawks for Charity's home, where they were denied admittance; for Cheever's office, where they were told that he was out of town; and even for Zada L'Etoile's apartment, where they were informed that she had left the State, as indeed she had. Sarah Tishler had a right, being named as co-respondent, to enter the case and defend her name, but she waived the privilege.
The evening papers made what they could of the sensation, but nobody mentioned Zada, for nobody knew that fate had tried to conceal her by naming her Tishler, and nobody quite dared to mention her without legal sanction.
On the next day Lawyer Firth held court in his office. Reporters were excluded, and the lawyers and detectives and Cheever and Charity, who had to be present, declined to answer any of the questions rained upon them in the corridors and the elevators.
Mr. Firth was empowered to swear in witnesses and take testimony. The evidence of the detectives, corroborated by the evidence of a hall-boy and a janitor and by proof of the installation of the dictagraph, seemed conclusive to Mr. Firth.
Cheever denied that he had committed the alleged adultery and gave proof that his income was not as stated. Attorney Tessier evaded the evidence of adultery, but fought hard against the evidence of prosperity. Referee Firth made his report finding the defendant guilty of the statutory offense, and ordered a decree of divorce, with a diminished alimony. He appended a transcript of the evidence and filed it with the Clerk of the County of New York. The statutory fee for a referee was ten dollars a day, but the lawyers had quietly agreed on the payment of a thousand dollars for expediting the case. With this recompense Mr. Firth ended his duties in the matter.