involuntary witness, and that his testimony was being forced out of him—he was willing to go on the witness stand and tell the whole truth. This was agreed to, whereupon Johnston, Hays and Meserve incorporated Fleischmann's statement in an affidavit which they signed and filed with the Department of Justice at Washington. D. C.
At this stage of proceedings Fleischniann suddenly disappeared. and the amount of his alleged defalcation was currently reported to be in the neighborhood of $90,000, but in a letter written to Meserve from Peru subsequent to his flight, Feischmann made a clean breast of everything pertaining to this phase of the situation. He declared that he was given $500,000 in bills of the denomination of $1000 each, and fled first to the City of Mexico, where he was joined by a trusted friend, at that time a resident of Los Angeles.
It was arranged between them that Fleischmann should take $10,000 of this money, leaving the balance in his friend's keeping, with the understanding that the latter should join Fleischmann in Peru and deliver the $490,000 to him there; but it developed that this presumed friend (whose name Fleischmann revealed to Meserve, but whose identity neither Ward nor Johnston would disclose to me at the present time) played Fleischmann false, and as soon as the absconding cashier had left Mexico, returned to the United States, where it was reckoned that Fleischmann would not dare to follow, and is now living in luxury on the ill-gotten gains. Meserve has ever since maintained a correspondence with Fleischmann, and no longer than last Saturday (May 21, 1904), received a letter from the fugitive, in which he deplored the conditions, and expressed considerable chagrin concerning fate and human treachery, at the same time expressing a wish to return and face the music, and declaring that the bank officials would not dare to molest him.
Meserve is convinced that it is his absorbing desire now to sneak into Chicago and kill the individual that robbed him, and then expose the scheme of official graft and corruption in its entirety, while Ward and Johnston are satisfied that if Fleischmann did not mean Commissioner of the General Land Office Binger Hermann when he made reference to "another Federal official," that Hermann was bribed by Edmund Burke, a sort of Poo Bah of the oil men while the fight with the Scrippers was on in Washington, and that at all events the bank records should exhibit everything in connection with the transaction, as the money to pay Hermann must have come through that source, Canfield being one of its principal patrons.
This man Burke, who is a sort of speculator and member of the local bar, with offices in the Byrne building, Los Angeles, is alleged to have become quite confidential with Johnston rather suddenly, and upon the occasion of a recent trip up from Long Beach, admitted to Johnston, in the presence of the latter's wife, that he had been paid a salary of $5,000 a year and expenses to go to Washington and lobby in the interests of the oil men, but that his job was finished with them, and that now he was willing to engage with the Scrippers upon the same terms.
Johnston said that Burke was much in evidence around Commissioner Hermann while in Washington, as was also a man named A. P. Maginniss, the Santa Fe Railway Company's right-of-way man, who had likewise been employed by Edward L. Doheney up to the time the latter disposed of his oil interests to the Santa Fe. Maginnis made his headquarters in the law office of Britton & Gray while the fight was in progress before the Land Department.
Col. J. B. Lankershin, a wealthy and reputable citizen of Los Angeles, was a heavy stockholder in the Farmers' & Merchants' Bank, and when the flight of Fleischmann was first announced, without invitation attended an executive session of the directorate of that institution, and demanded from President I. W. Hellman the privilege of inspecting the books of the concern.
This request Hellman declined to grant, and a heated controversy on the subject arose between the two in the presence of all the other directors, culminating in Lankershin pointing to Attorney J. A. Graves, who was also vice-president of the bank, and saying:
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