CHAPTER XXVIII

ON TRIAL

IF THE arrest and bailing of J. Percival Dunbar was accomplished without publicity the news was not long concealed from the public.

The press of the following afternoon told the story under the broadside and skyscraper heads. The charge of forgery was distinctly stated, its character, as alleged to have been committed by Percy, was explained and fanciful stories added. It was intimated that while the District Attorney had elected to stand on a single act which he could easily prove, there had been behind it a widely extended system of borrowing on forged certificates. There were, indeed, insinuations that but for this sort of wholesale forgery the gigantic stock operation of which J. Percival Dunbar had been the mainspring and which had worked such disaster to great and reputable interests (i. e., Henry Morton) and such ruin to smaller ones (i. e., the general public)

could not have been carried to its successful end.

The floodgate of the denunciation which had lessened in sheer weariness of blow-dealing was opened anew. The vituperative stream rushed out upon and engulfed the hapless Percy. The farther the news extended from its source the more virulent was the attack. There was not a place or a crossroads in the country where a newspaper was published that J. Percival Dunbar, the conscienceless financier, was not held up to public execration.

He became widely famous in a night. He stopped reading the newspapers and devoted himself to Shakespeare and his almost forgotten law books.

Joe Hackett read the story in the afternoon papers of the following day in Buffalo. He at once telegraphed to Percy, offering his aid in any way in which he could be used and expressed his desire to return on the next train. But Percy replied:

"Continue your trip. Nothing now to be done. The gale must blow itself out."

Frank in his anger would have fought the whole world could he have known where to strike the first blow, but was impotent. Mrs. Elbert prayed that Percy might be delivered from his enemies. So did Miss Purcell and

his own invalid mother in the loneliness of her chamber. And Nan, in her happy honeymoon in the West, never closed her eyes to sleep without offering a supplication that the danger threatening their good friend might be averted. There were others, for Mrs. Pollock gathered her children daily at the family altar in the same offering. Even Kitty Van Zandt told Frank, who was now most attentive to her, that she prayed nightly for Percy. Mark Pollock wrung Percy's soul by offering his fortune as the only thing he could see he could do. Doyle Mason was very busy, with set jaws, often mumuring to himself that he would see whether it was real or make-belief power he had. And Mabel wept.

So he was not without friends. But the roll is called.

Poor Mabel! She had found in the new situation the limitations of her usefulness to Percy. So long as it was a financial question she was resourceful, for she had been trained in such matters, but in this question of the law she was without ideas. She and Percy were not married on the next morning, for he would not consent. The tables had been turned. It was Percy who was now holding back and Mabel who was insistent. The time was not now, he urged, however much he desired the

result, but when he was free from the complication he was in.

He did not tell her that he feared the worst, that he did not want to affix a life stigma upon her. He knew his unpopularity. He felt that all the arts of counsel could not get less than a jury representing public sentiment. And that sentiment held him in utter detestation. He reasoned that no matter what defense his counsel might make or how weak might be the case made against him, were the question of his guilt or innocence to be submitted to the jury its verdict would be against him. He had come to look on the public as ravenous wolves thirsting for his blood that would not be deprived of their prey. At that very time a hue and cry was raised because he was out on bail, and it was hinted that there was one law for the rich and another for the poor.

He had told his story to his counsel as he wanted it told. They had said conviction was impossible. But he had been insistent that every energy must be bent to preventing the case getting to the jury.

In the beginning his counsel had feared the pushing to an early trial while public sentiment was yet aroused against him and were surprised that the District Attorney showed an indisposition to bring it on. Doyle Mason succeeded in discovering that the public

prosecutor was embarrassed in the absence of Smith Edgar. His testimony was expected to be the most important link in the chain of evidence. The country was being scoured for the transfer clerk who had so mysteriously disappeared, and Mason learned that Henry Morton was supplying the funds for the search for him. He learned also that the broker who had accepted the certificates Percy had hypothecated had by some means discovered at the time that Percy had on deposit at the Amity Trust Company but 21,000 shares, had become suspicious and, having relations with Morton, had informed him, with the result that the two certificates hypothecated had been photographed, which photographs were in the possession of the District Attorney. All of this was given to Percy.

Then the counsel for the defense began to urge for trial and got their urgency in the papers. One day there was an explosion. The District Attorney, goaded by the attacks on him, disclosed the fact that the missing witness, Smith Edgar, the transfer clerk of the Amity Trust Company, was the man Mallow, who at a critical point in the history of the Universal Supplies Company stock speculation had been discovered flagrante delictu in mutilating the books of the Universal; that he had been indicted; that the indictment had