career dated only from
the filing of the forged Petersen deed in 1896.

Browne made an heroic and picturesque fight to secure a reversal of his
conviction through all the State courts, and his briefs and arguments
are monuments to his ingenuity and knowledge of the law. He alleged that
his conviction was entirely due to a misguided enthusiasm on the part of
the prosecutor, the present writer, whom he characterized as a
"novelist" and dreamer. The whole case, he alleged, was constructed out
of the latter's fanciful imagination, a cobweb of suspicion, accusation
and falsehood. Some day his friend Hubert would come out of the West,
into which he had so unfortunately disappeared, and release an innocent
man, sentenced, practically to death, because the case had fallen into
the hands of one whose sense of the dramatic was greater than his logic.

Perchance he will. Mayhap, when H. Huffman Browne is the oldest inmate
of Sing Sing, or even sooner, some gray-haired figure will appear at the
State Capitol, and knock tremblingly at the door of the Executive,
asking for a pardon or a rehearing of the case, and claiming to be the
only original, genuine William R. Hubert--such a denouement would not be
beyond the realms of possibility, but more likely the request will come
in the form of a petition, duly attested and authenticated before some
notary in the West, protesting against Browne's conviction and
incarceration, and bearing the flowing signature of William R.
Hubert--the same signature that appears on Browne's deeds to
Levitan--the same that is affixed to the bond of George Wilson, the
vanished farmhand, claimant to the estate of Jane Elizabeth Barker.

IX.

A Murder Conspiracy[4]

William M. Rice, eighty-four years of age, died at the Berkshire
Apartments at 500 Madison Avenue, New York City, at about half after
seven o'clock on the evening of Sunday, September 23, 1900. He had been
ill for some time, but it was expected that he would recover. On or
about the moment of his death, two elderly ladies, friends of the old
gentleman, had called at the house with cakes and wine, to see him. The
elevator man rang the bell of Mr. Rice's apartment again and again, but
could elicit no response, and the ladies, much disappointed, went away.
While the bell was ringing Charles F. Jones, the confidential valet of
the aged man, was waiting, he says, in an adjoining room until a cone
saturated with chloroform, which he had pla