"There are things even stranger than that," he said. "I can
introduce you to a man who's in this room now, who was fighting the
Ship-building swindle, and he got hold of a lot of important
papers, and he took them to his office, and sat by while his clerks
made thirty-two copies of them. And he put the originals and
thirty-one of the copies in thirty-two different safe-deposit vaults
in the city, and took the other copy to his home in a valise. And
that night burglars broke in, and the valise was missing. The next
day he wrote to the people he was fighting, 'I was going to send you
a copy of the papers which have come into my possession, but as you
already have a copy, I will simply proceed to outline my
proposition.' And that was all. They settled for a million or two."

The Major paused a moment and looked across the dining-room. "There
goes Dick Sanderson," he said, pointing to a dapper young man with a
handsome, smooth-shaven face. "He represents the New Jersey Southern
Railroad. And one day another lawyer who met him at dinner remarked,
'I am going to bring a stockholders' suit against your road
to-morrow.' He went on to outline the case, which was a big one.
Sanderson said nothing, but he went out and telephoned to their
agent in Trenton, and the next morning a bill went through both
houses of the Legislature providing a statute of limitations that
outlawed the case. The man who was the victim of that trick is now
the Governor of New York State, and if you ever meet him, you can
ask him about it."

There was a pause for a while; then suddenly the Major remarked,
"Oh, by the way, this beautiful widow you have brought up from
Mississippi--Mrs. Taylor--is that the name?"