“Then I heard Mr. Watkins agree to do as Mr. Manning said, and with that I heard them both get up from the floor. They lighted a lamp, and I saw that the books and papers from the safe were scattered all around. Mr. Watkins picked them up, put them back in the safe, locked it, and handed the key to Mr. Manning. Then Mr. Manning started to leave the office, and I slipped out ahead of him so quietly that neither of them suspected I had been there.
“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.