But Mrs. Bott was a woman who appealed strongly to a jury’s sympathies, and she was clear that Flechter had said that he had written the notice.  Moreover, she recalled that the date had first been written May and that Flechter had erased it and inserted March in its place.  A microscopic examination revealed the fact that such an erasure had been made.  When the smoke cleared the credibility of the defense appeared badly damaged.  But the precise point was of little importance, after all.  The great question was:  the identity of ‘CAVE DWELLER.’  On this point a number of witnesses testified from a general knowledge of Flechter’s handwriting that the “Cave Dweller” letter was his, and three well-known handwriting “experts” (Dr. Persifor Frazer, Mr. Daniel T. Ames and Mr. David Carvalho) swore that, in their opinion, the same hand had written it that had penned the notice.

It is not unlikely that Flechter’s fear of a conviction led him to invite testimony in his behalf which would not bear the test of careful scrutiny.  Many an innocent man has paid the penalty for uncommitted crime because he has sought to bolster up his defense with doubtful evidence without the incubus of which he would have been acquitted.

Naturally the chief point against Flechter, if it could be established, was his actual possession of the Bott Stradivarius when he was arrested.  Upon this proposition Mrs. Bott was absolutely positive beyond the possibility of error.  So were eight other witnesses for the prosecution.  Then the defense produced a violin alleged to be the same one exhibited in the police court and brought by Flechter to Durden’s house, and asked Mrs. Bott and her witnesses what they thought of it.  Mrs. Bott could not identify it, but she swore no less positively that it was an entirely different violin from the one which she had seen before the magistrate.  Then Osborne hurled his bomb over his enemy’s parapet and cried loudly that a monstrous wicked fraud had been perpetrated to thwart Justice—­that the defense had “faked” another violin and were now trying to foist the bogus thing in evidence to deceive the Court. Ten witnesses for the prosecution now swore that the violin so produced was not the one which Flechter had tried to sell Durden.  Of course it would have been comparatively easy to “fake” a violin, just as Osborne claimed, and the case sheds some light upon the possibilities of the “old violin” industry.

The star witness for the prosecution to prove that the instrument produced in the police court was the Bott violin was August M. Gemunder, and his testimony upon the trial before Recorder Goff is worthy of careful examination, since the jury considered it of great importance in reaching a verdict, even requesting that it should be re-read to them some hours after retiring to deliberate.  Gemunder testified, in substance, that he belonged to a family which had been making