No sooner had Rittenhouse inspected the contract than he assured Mr. Heney that the typewriting was certainly not four years old; that it had evidently been done recently, and that the signatures of Mitchell and Tanner thereto in ink were still pale, instead of being jet black, as they would have been had they attained any degree of age. Rittenhouse then read over the contract very carefully, and in doing so came across two mis-spelled words—"salery" and "constituant," to which he called Mr. Heney's attention.
The latter seemed somewhat gratified by this discovery, but said nothing about it at the time, nor did Rittenhouse mention the subject again until later on. Rittenhouse had also directed attention to the fact that all the correspondence passing between the firm of Mitchell & Tanner and the General Land Office during 1901, 1902 and 1903—the period covering the transactions between Mitchell and Kribs—then in possession of the Government, was written with either a light blue or purple ribbon, while the contract submitted to the Grand Jury by Judge Tanner had been written in black. He likewise directed Heney's attention to the water mark in the paper on which the contract was written, indicating that it was Page 213
