The Forged Note: A Romance of the Darker RacesMicheaux, Oscar
General
The Forged Note: A Romance of the Darker Races
Micheaux, Oscar
African Americans -- Fiction
Sentencing a man to be hanged, and hanging him, however, are two very
different things. Yet the court persisted. It was determined to carry
out the decision of the jury of "twelve good men and true,"[A] this Jew,
scion of Jacob, of Israel, of Solomon, and Job, and others, had money at
his back, plenty of it, as we shall see presently; and they were
spending it lavishly, to save his neck, which was long. Perhaps that
explains what came to pass later.
[A] Author's Note: The usual term applied to juries is, "Twelve good
men and true."
The counsel for the defense hired a detective, _A Great Detective_. The
greatest detective in all the world. No one can deny this, since he said
so himself, at least this is how he was quoted by a paper, which, for
the purpose of this story, we shall call the "Big Noise." It was a
"noise," too. But, to get back to the detective, _The Great Detective_.
The leading papers corroborated the fact that he was the greatest in the
world, and so he shall be, in this story, as well. We are compelled to
quote the "Big Noise" again. It claimed, very urgently, that these
papers were paid to corroborate the detective. So be it.
The leading dailies and the greatest detective in the world got
together, with a view to obtaining a new trial for the Jew, after which
they hoped, of course, in some subtle manner, to extricate him from his
very embarrassing predicament.
The detective did the posing, and he was _some_ poser, and the papers
did the rest. The most obstinate proposition which they were up against,
was that the people believed the Jew to be guilty, but naturally read
the papers.
Now The Great Detective's picture had been seen by almost everybody who
read, or ever had read anything, so we must appreciate that he was a
familiar figure. But, in addition to what had occurred in regard to the
detective, more came to pass. Pages of the Sunday edition were devoted
to his cut, and other pages to his ability as a mystery solver. From the
way the papers wrote of him and reproduced his pose, he made Sherlock
Holmes, Raffles, Arsene Lupin, and even Nick Carter, look like thirty
cents with the three invisible.
He began, in opening the case, a series of angles. At first, of course,
he viewed it from an Attalia angle. Forthwith, after this, he went to
Chicago and viewed it from a windy angle. From St. Louis, he viewed it
from a "show me" angle; and while he was out that way, he chased across
to Kansas City, and saw it from that angle. And 'ere anyone was aware of
it, he had crossed the prairies to Denver, and viewed it from a mountain
angle. Behold then, upon picking up the morning paper, where the great
detective has reached New York, and was viewing the case from that
angle; but space will not permit of recording further these many angles
indulged in by _the greatest detective in the world_, for the defendant
in the case of the state versus the Jew.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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