He had been at Hubert's office that very
morning. He offered to go and find him in twenty minutes. But Mr. Hart
thought that the lawyer had better make his explanation before a
magistrate, and caused his arrest and commitment on a charge of forgery.
Little did he suspect what an ingenious fraud was about to be unearthed.
The days went by and Browne stayed in the Tombs, unable to raise the
heavy bail demanded, but no Hubert appeared. Meantime the writer, to
whom the case had been sent for trial, ordered a complete search of the
title to the property, and in a week or so became possessed, to his
amazement, of a most extraordinary and complicated collection of facts.
He discovered that the lot of land offered by Browne to Levitan, and
standing in Hubert's name, was originally part of the property owned by
Ebbe Petersen, the unfortunate Swede who, with his family, had perished
in the _Geiser_ off Cape Sable in 1888.
The title search showed that practically all of the Petersen property
had been conveyed by Mary A. Petersen to a person named Ignatius F. X.
O'Rourke, by a deed, which purported to have been executed on June 27,
1888, about two weeks before the Petersens sailed for Copenhagen, and
which was signed with Mrs.
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