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and Development Company and not with. Mr. Noice as an individual. He would he willing, however, to deal with Mr. Noice as an agent of the company if he were assured that he really was its agent. Since the matter was pressing and everything had been friendly and without suspicion so far, Mr. Pickering thought he could make things clear settle everything thing by a long distance telephone conversation with Toronto.

That conversation has since been much threshed over by lawyers. The facts are in general admitted on ail sides. Mr. Pickering talked with Mr. John B. Bone of the Toronto Star, asking him to find out from Mr. Taylor whether Mr. Noice had authority to receive the original three thousand dollars on behalf of our company and whether he had authority to negotiate the sale of the further story based upon the diary of Lorne Knight and upon the other papers recovered. Mr. Bone talked with Mr. Taylor. In saying yes to the first query Mr. Taylor meant to say that Mr. Noice was entitled to receive the three thousand dollars for the company. Of course, he had in his mind that Mr. Noice would transmit that money promptly to the company. However, it is admitted by all parties that this point was clear and that Mr. Taylor did authorize Mr. Pickering to pay three thousand dollars to Mr. Noice. But with regard to the second half of the question, there was a misunderstanding. When Mr. Bone transmitted Mr. Pickering’s inquiry as to whether Mr. Noice had the right to negotiate, what Mr. Pickering and Mr. Bone meant was whether Noice had a right to negotiate and to close the sale. When Mr. Taylor replied that Mr. Noice had a right to negotiate on our behalf, he meant that he had the right to make inquiries as to prices and conditions for purposes of informing us later, whereupon oe would make the decision. In accordance with his understanding of this telephone

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conversation Mr. Pickering paid over to Mr. Noice as agent of our company three thousand dollars and agreed to pay him fifteen hundred dollars more for world rights to a further story based upon Knight's diary, Ada Blackjack's diary and the photographs.

Up in Toronto Mr. Taylor knew that Mr. Noice had now received the money and assumed he would promptly soon transmit it to the company's office. He also assumed that he was carrying on negotiations with the North American Newspsper Alliance,with the co-operation of Miss Marbury, and that the company would soon learn what the offer was. When no money or information came from New York, Mr. Taylor wrote to Mr. Noice reminding him that the money was urgently needed. To this Mr. Taylor received a reply to the effect that Mr. Noice was astonished that Mr. Taylor should think that there was any money coming to the company. The original cable had been Mr. Noice's own and he, therefore, was the only one who had a standing in the case. The money ought to be and was his, he had it and would keep it. This was Mr. Taylor's first intimation that we could not rely upon Mr. Noice and was a great shock to him, for up to that this moment everything had been conducted on a friendly, personal basis with a minimum of written documents or formal agreements - a gentlemen's arrangement where good faith and sympathy were taken for granted on all sides. Even now it did not occur to Mr. Taylor that Mr. Noice had any thought of making a further sale to the North American Newspaper Alliance or of doing anything except co-operate with Miss Marbury for arranging the terms and getting everything in such shape that I could render a decision. upon the arrangements immediately upon landing. However they were sufficiently disturbed so that so they decided not to trust to letters or long distance telephones, and Mr. Taylor and Mr. Anderson, therefore, came to New York to discuss everything with Mr. Pickering and to see me immediately on landing.

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When Mr. Taylor saw Mr. Pickerin, he found that all arrangements had gone far. On understanding by telephone from Toronto that Mr. Noice was entitled to make a sale, Mr. Pickering had purchased world rights to the story based on the diaries, for fifteen hundred. dollars. Financially this was a bad bargain for us, even if we got the money, for world rights (which naturally included British rights) were being sold at the very price I had already received for British rights alone. The worst feature, Legally the situation was bad, for Mr. Pickering was that he had immediately resold British rights in England. Our company was, therefore, in a hopeless position. Acting as president of one company, I had sold the ex clusive rights of the narrative to the Amalgamated Press; but acting as the company’s agent (as Mr. Pickering understood it) Mr. Noice had sold him British rights and he had resold them to the Daily News and the Manchester Guardian. Besides the appearance of bad faith, we might therefore here damage suits on our hands.

But the feature that worried me most was that part of the proposed narrative had already been written and had been sent out to the subscribing newspapers in various parts of the world. I feared the publication of, it, which it was now too late to stop, would spread misapprehensions that which it would be almost impossible to correct later. Not being as familiar with polar conditions as I am, Mr. Taylor had not realized till I pointed them out the wrong implications in Mr. Noice’s original cables and, until now, he had not suspected that the story being formulated and sold by Mr. Noice would be in any way misleading. It seemed to him for the present only an issue of money. Noice had pocketed three thousand dollars with which we had intended to pay part of the expense of the Wrangell Island supply ship, and he was trying to get for himself a further fifteen hundred which in our view belonged either to the company or to the relatives of the dead. Mr. Pickering agreed immediately to withhold further payments from Mr. Noice, but insisted on going ahead with the publication of the story, taking the position that he an innocent purchaser who had dealt in good faith with an authorized agent of our company.

This was the substance of the story which Taylor and

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Anderson told me ./hen I came ashore from the Leviathan on October 15th. Some hours later, Mr. Noice came to see me at a room uptown. It was a long discussion but it can he summarized briefly. I asked Mr. Noice for a statement and questioned him only enough to induce him to continue the statement until it was reasonably complete. On his way towards Wrangell he had taken a passenger steamer in Seattle with his shoulder in considerable pain, for he was still wearing a cast. He did not remember ever having expressed any eagerness to go to Wrangell Island and felt that he had been doing me a great favor in going at all. When he got to Nome he found the Americans there unfriendly to me because they thought I was trying to get an American island (Wrangell) away from the Americans and secure it for the British. He had tried to explain there that my idea had been to continue British possession to forestall Japanese occupation or Russian, and with no thought that the United States wanted the island. The people at Nome had taken little stock in this explanation and had continued unfriendly. He had felt that the lives of the men in Wrangell Island were in danger and thought he had been justified therefore, in letting it be quietly known that he was spending British Government money and could well afford to pay liberally for anything he got.that no one would mind if the tradesmen charged a little more than ordinary. This was necessary in order that he be able to outfit at all, and justified because the lives on Wrangell Island were in danger. He also said that he had believed that it was British Government money he was spending. (I had sent him no information as to where the money came from and, as I now understand his mental processes, I can see that government subvention would seem likely to him.)

I gathered both from Mr. Noice himself at this interview and from other evidence later that, with the exception of spending money a little too freely, he handled in an efficient and commendable

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way the outfitting of the Donaldson and the voyage from Alaska to Wrange11 Isiand.

Mr. Noice told me that on his way back from Wrangell he had read over all the papers he had recovered and that he had questione d Ada Blackjack carefully to bring out obscure details. His view was that the documents and her information showed extreme incompetence and lack of judgment on the part of the entire party on the island. He thought that I was almost equally culpable bad in not having been able to foresee that these men would be incompetent. When I reminded him that through long association in the North with Knight I had never found him incompetent and that both through personal knowledge and the report of his shipmates of the Karluk I know Maurer to be an exceptionally good man, his rebuttal was to the effect that whoever thought well of them before must have been mistaken, as was easily seen by their mismanagement on Wrangell Island. This argument from Mr. Noice did not convince me but I passed on to other things because I had not yet seen the documents and I thought it unprofitable to have a long discussion at that time. Mr. Noice’s next point was that in view of the incompetence which he alleged, the outfit with which the party landed I had supplied the men had been inadequate. He thought that with either himself in command or with me in command the outfit would have been ample, so that this point resolved itself again into the mere contention that the Wrangell Island party had been lacking in judgment or skill. When I reminded him that he and Knight had been shipmates on my expedition and that a vote of their comrades would certainly rank Knight’s ability the higher of the two, he met the issue only by doubting that such would be the result of a vote.

In portions of this interview Mr. Noice seemed to be in a mood of exaltation. He asserted firmly and repeatedly that neither