Flechter’s store is two flights up and looks out into Union Square.  Before the window hangs a large gilded fiddle and the walls are decorated with pictures of famous musicians.  In the rear is a safe where the more valuable instruments are kept; in the front sits Flechter himself, a stoutish man of middle height, with white hair and mustache.  But on June 23, 1895, Flechter was out when Durden and Baird called, and only his clerk and office-boy were on hand.  Durden wished, he said, to see the genuine Strad. about which Mr. Flechter had written him.  The boy went to the safe and brought back a violin in a red silk bag.  Inside was inscribed: 

“Antonius Stradivarius Cremonis fecit Anno Domini 1725.”

The figures 17 were printed and the 25 written in ink.  Durden examined it for some fifteen minutes and noted certain markings upon it.

On June 26th they called again, found Flechter in and asked to see the violin.  This time the dealer look it himself from the safe, and, at their request, carried it to 22 Gramercy Park, where Durden said he desired some experts to pass upon its genuineness.  On the way over Flechter guaranteed it to be a genuine Strad., and said it belonged to a retired merchant named Rossman, who would expect to get four thousand dollars for it.  He himself would want five hundred dollars, and Durden should have five hundred dollars, so that they must not take less than five thousand dollars.

Once at Allen’s boarding-house Flechter played upon the violin for Durden and the supposed Southan, and then the former asked to be allowed to take the instrument to a rear room and show it to a friend.  Here Mrs. Bott, positively identified the violin as that of her husband, clasping it to her bosom like a long-lost child.  This was enough for Durden, who gave the instrument back to Flechter and caused his arrest as he was passing out of the front gate.  The insulted dealer stormed and raged, but the Car of Juggernaut had started upon its course, and that night Flechter was lodged in the city prison.  Next morning he was brought before Magistrate Flammer in the Jefferson Market Police Court and the violin was taken out of its case, which the police had sealed.  At this, the first hearing in this extraordinary case, Mrs. Bott, of course, identified the violin positively as “The Duke of Cambridge,” and several other persons testified that, in substance, it was Bott’s celebrated violin.  But for the defendant a number of violin makers swore that it was not the Bott violin at all, and more—­that it was not even a Stradivarius.  One of them, John J. Eller, to whom it will be necessary to revert later, made oath that the violin was his, stolen from him and brought to Flechter by the thief.  On this testimony the magistrate naturally decided that the identity of the instrument had not been established and ordered that Flechter be discharged and the violin returned to him.

Ordinarily that would have been the end of the case, but Allen had his own private views as to the guilt of the dealer and on August 28th the Grand Jury filed an indictment against Flechter accusing him of feloniously receiving stolen property—­the violin—­knowing it to have been stolen.  Great was Flechter’s anger and chagrin, but he promptly gave bail and employed the ablest counsel he could afford.