The Mount Holly news. [volume] (Mount Holly, Burlington Co., N.J.) 1891-1942, 1901-04-09
CHANGED OYERCOATS
TRIVIAL INCIDENT THAT BROUGHT
ABOUT SERIOUS RESULTS.

A Narrative Which Goes to Show
What Tremendous Influences In
significant Happenings May Exert
over the Affairs of Life.
An accidental exchange Of overcoats
at a local restaurant one evening re-
Gently recalled q queer story to an old
lawyer who was dining at the 9th
er side of the room. "One evening in
the early seventies" he said, "a garcon
hurrying through a crowded cafe not
very far from here knocked down two hats
that had been hanging above a couple of
overcoats on a wall rack. He picked
them up and restored them to the pegs
and by that simple act condemned q very
estimable gentleman to four years of
acute mental torment and started anoth-
er individual, considerably less estimable,
on road that led eventually to sui
cide's grave. The funny part about it
was that the garcon didn't know either
man from Adams house cat. If he had
been told later on of the trouble he caus-
ed, he would probably have had stroke
Of apoplexy. l remember being told that
he was rather fat.
''I am something Of student of causa-
tion," continued the old lawyer, land l
have frequently amused myself by trac-
ing out the extraordinary consequences
of some apparently trivial incident. 1t is
nearly always the shifting of a pebble
that brings down the avalanches of social
life, and In this case-but l will briefly
sketch the facts, and you may draw your
own conclusions.
''The fat garcon, as a matter of course,
hung the hats over the wrong garments,
and q few minutes afterward young
fellow who had just finished his dinner
got up and walked off with another mans
overcoat. By an odd coincidence it was
30 much like his own that he wore it for
a week without discovering the change.
Then one day he felt in the inside pocket
and pulled out several letters that were
strange to him. l think 1 could repeat
their contents even now from memory,
but there are professional reasons why l
cannot be very explicit. Suffice it to say
that they put him in possession Of certain
facts, partly of commercial and partly
of a personal nature, that spelled abso-
lutte ruin for the man whom they con-
cerned.
"As have already limited, the young
person who stumbled into this informa-
ton was not very estimable character,
but he had plenty of nerve and shrewd-
ness, and he began at once to plan how
he could turn his discovery into cash.
Meanwhile the other fellow, who was a
quiet, middle aged business man, had
failed to observe that he was wearing
somebody else's coat. l may say right
here that he never found it out and died
In ignorance of a fact that might have
saved him an infinite deal of worry.
''The young man with the incriminat-
ing letter was afraid to act personally,
because he was in rather ticklish posi-
tion himself, owing to numerous shady
transactions in the past, and his victim
might easily have turned the tables upon
him. So he made tool of miserable
old drunkard, who had once been law
yer, and they proceeded to put on the
screws. The business man had missed
the letters, of course but he hadn't the
faintest idea of how he had lost them
and imagined that they had been stolen
out IF his coat at his Office, and that
, theory, by the way, resulted in the abrupt
discharge of several entirely innocent
and unsuspecting employees.
"When the ex-shyster approached him,
he promptly few into a panic and paid
the first installment of blackmail almost
without protest. What followed was
somewhat commonplace" said the old
lawyer musingly, "and | will merely
skeletonize it. In year or SO the ex-
shyster succumbed to prosperity, COM
plicated with jimjams, and the man with
the letters had to get a new catspaw. He
picked up a queer looking character who
had been a sort of horse doctor and all
around fakir. This fellow knew nothing
of the facts, but merely acted as a go be-
tween and used to appear at intervals
with a card on which a certain amount
would be scrawled in pencil.
"It seems incredible, but this went on
for three solid years. Then one day the
victim got desperate and did what he
should have done at first. He came over
to my Office and made a clean breast of
the whole affair. / took the bull by the
horns To begin with, l quietly got out
a warrant for the fake veterinary, and
when he appeared l gave him 80 seconds
to furnish the name of his principal. That
secured, l swore out a second warrant
and went after the young man myself.
"'I want those documents l said, and
also your signature to this confession
He clustered good DEAL but my bluff
was the stronger, and inside of 10 min
utes / had what l came after. He told
me he had found the letters on the floor
of the postoffice, and l let it go at that.
But / warned him that any future at
tempts at extortion would result in his
instant arrest.
"There the story proper ends, but there
Is one thing to add-namely, how
found out the truth about the overcoats.
1t was very simple. My matchmaking
gentleman had become .good deal of
wreck during his years of successful oper-
alton, and not long after / put a period
to his little game his former victim died.
That destroyed any lingering hopes he
may have had of renewing the squeeze,
and he came to my Office one day and Of
fered to tell me exactly how he secured
the letters If would give him enough
money to go to Chicago. For the sake Of
clearing the matter up | accepted the
proposition, and he related the incident
of the cafe. 1t is undoubtedly true. He
drifted north with the money gave him,
got on tremendous spree and killed him
self BY jumping out Of window"