stefansson-wrangel-09-14-109-001

November 27, 1923.

Dear Mr. Knight:

I have just come home from another trip and have
received your letter of November 20th with its enclosed copy of a letter
you had thought of sending to Mr. Noice. I suppose that your wife and
son were right on the whole in advising you not to send it to him. As
you know, I more than sympathize with your feelings and am glad you sent
the copy to me.

One of the most baffling things in our dealings with
Noice is that he does not seem to have any notion of how indefensible
his actions are from both a legal and a moral point of view. I do not
have much information about him, for he refuses to see anyone whom he
supposes friendly to me. Two or three people I know have seen him, how-
ever, and they seem to think that his head has been turned to the extent
that it amounts almost to insanity. He has what is known as "delusions
of grandeur."

Just before writing this I have called up my lawyers
to find out if there had been any developments during my absence. They
say that everything has been held up by the absence for something like
ten days of Noice's attorneys. They are hoping that we can come to some
settlement immediately. The thing that worries us is that an "innocent
purchaser" intervenes between us and Noice and we cannot go after Noice
for the present without involving these people whose dealings with us
have been both honorable and on the whole considerate.

The essence of the trouble is that we trusted Noice
so perfectly that we kept no check on him and had no suspicion of what he
was doing or intending to do until everything had already been done.

I shall be personally grateful to you for anything you
can write to the Crawfords that will help to ease their minds. It is
also a kindness which I am sure you will want to do for their own sake.
I have indirect information from Toronto that Mrs. Crawford is so much
worried that her sanity is considered to be in danger. With her the
Central trouble is that she believes the parts of Noice's comments to the
effect that Lorne and Fred Maurer were "young and inexperienced" and not
intellectually equipped for the work I entrusted them with. The last is
a point that you cannot argue with her as well as I, but it puzzles me to
meet it for she is already in a very antagonistic attitude. I have
thought of the possibility of bringing up from Florida Karsten Anderson,
who was a traveling companion both of Noice and your son and who could
perhaps explain to the Crawfords more convincingly than I the good opinion