Auction # 2027 ARGENTINA: Special July auction

TRAGIC NEWS: Cover (with original letter included) sent collect ("a pagar en destino") from BAHIA BLANCA to San Juan on 11/JUN/1911, with several dues marks 10c., and datestamps of Córdoba and San Juan, rare! The long letter tells about the difficulties of a man who sold his business and departed with the cash money in search of a friend whom he thought lived in Bahia Blanca, but once there he learned that his friend had moved to San Juan, so he decided to go there, but the night before leaving he hid the money in a secret compartment of his suitcase in the hotel and went to a brothel, where after a fight he killed a man in self-defense, the police arrested him and charged him with murder and took him to the local jail. He was told he had to pay $5,000 for the legal expenses, but he did not tell them about the hidden money. So at the moment of writing this letter to a friend asking for his help to recover the case with the money ($17,000) in the hotel he had nothing, and sent the letter collect, asking his friend to visit him, recover the money, hand him part of the cash to pay his lawyer and to keep the rest until he was released from prison. A great story told in a letter kept for more than 100 years!!