"I will leave it to your own lawyer if I have not got the legal right to do so." Hellman appealed to Graves for his opinion, and the attorney coincided with Lankershin, who immediately left the bank and returned to his office, with the avowed intention of at once setting an investigation on foot. He had no sooner reached his office, however, when Hellman called him up over the telephone, and asked him how much he would take for his stock.
Lankershin at first declined to sell, but upon being implored to do so, finally named a price which he afterwards declared to a friend "would raise you out of your boots if you knew what it was."
Within ten minutes thereafter, he was notified to call at the bank, and received a check for the full amount asked.
Last Thursday night, J. A. Graves responded to the toast, "Morality of Banking," at a public banquet in Los Angeles.
A. J. Crookshank, Register of the United States Land Office at Los Angeles, who met Hermann at the Union depot there, is authority for the statement that the Land Commissioner was then in the private car of E. L. Doheney, Charles A. Canfield and A. B. Butler, and that they so accompanied him on his trip to the Kern county oil fields.
In order to satisfy any possible public curiosity as to Fleischmann's reasons for being on confidential terms with the attorneys for the Scrippers, I shall take occasion to state that he was interested with them in forest reserve selections conflicting with oil locations in Kern county, and naturally had a motive in rendering all the aid he could to their cause, although neither the bank officials nor the oilmen, so far as I am able to ascertain, were aware of this fact at the time.
His close relationship to the Farmers' & Merchants' Bank as its trusted cashier, together with his ties of kinship to L W. Hellman, its president, probably threw them off their guard, and the presumption is that he used his knowledge of the transaction recited in my report not only as a measure of expediency in looting the bank, but as a leverage to shield himself from subsequent prosecution. At all events, although a great hue and cry was apparently made by the bank officials concerning his embezzlement of their funds, no earnest effort was made to apprehend him, and if any warrant for his arrest was ever sworn out, I was unable to find any record of it at the time of making my investigation for the Government at Los Angeles.
Fleischmann was the favorite nephew of Banker Hellman—had been reared in the latter's family, so it was said, as a petted child of fortune ever since the death of his parents, so that when it became known that he had absconded, various ruses were adopted to hush the matter up. It was given out that he had taken merely a paltry $91,000, and that he had left behind him sufficient property to cover the extent of his stealings. This report was obviously circulated for the purpose of allaying the minds of the stockholders, because, had it become generally known that Fleischmann's flight involved a loss to the bank of half a million dollars, it would have had the effect of producing such a run on the institution that no prophet could have foretold the outcome.
It may be asked why the Government did not investigate the details of the defalcation at the time of its occurrence. The answer is embodied in the fact that during this period the concern was not a National bank, hence the Federal authorities had no more right to question its conduct in that respect than it would in prying into the private affairs of an individual. It was incorporated under State laws, and was under the jurisdiction of the California Bank Commissioners, although I believe it has since acquired a National charter.
I have never been advised as to the situation respecting Fleischmann's present whereabouts, but at the time I made my investigations, the attorneys for the Scrippers were endeavoring to induce him to return and place the Federal authorities in full possession of the facts, and if promised immunity by the civil authorities, there is hardly any reasonable doubt that he would come back and endeavor to make good upon his serious charges.
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