Chapter VIII: The Detective Machine

I

O fates that hold us at your choice,
How strange a web ye spin!

Thus the poet; and never more aptly than of that web which the fates wove about the lives of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Their two friends Cornelia and Betty were to spend the better part of seven years trying to disentangle this web; laying bare a story which for mystery and melodrama has few equals. The narrative goes back to the previous Christmas, two days prior to Cornelia’s last visit to Plymouth.

At six o’clock on the morning of December 24, 1919, Bartolomeo Vanzetti had been asleep, when one of his customers, Balboni, coming home from night-work, stopped by to get his Christmas eels. Mrs. Fortini, Bart’s landlady, woke him up, and he sold the eels to Balboni, and then dressed, and swallowed his bread soaked in coffee, and got out his little hand-cart and his scales and his basket and his packages of live eels, all weighed and wrapped the day before. He had more than forty orders to fill, because he was selling Christmas eels for thirty-five cents a pound, whereas in Boston the Italians were paying as high as a dollar and a quarter. He delivered several packages before daylight; Mrs. Augusta Niccoli was still in bed, and called to him to put the package on the kitchen table; she would pay later.

Soon after seven o’clock came Beltrando Brini, having gobbled his breakfast, excited because he was to have the baker’s horse to drive. He met Bart on the street, expecting to go with him to the baker’s; but Bart insisted that the ground was wet, and Trando must run back home and get his rubbers. It took the boy fifteen or twenty minutes to find them in the attic; meantime Bart met the elder Brini, coming home from night-work; and then went to Bastoni, the baker, and was told that the latter could not spare the horse and wagon--a development which caused much grief to the twelve-year-old Trando. This was at seven-forty-five, as the baker remembered, because at the moment Bart entered his home the whistle of the cordage company blew, and no one who has guided his life by that whistle ever thereafter fails to hear and heed it. “The whistle is our bread and butter,” said Bastoni.

It was during those same fateful minutes between seven-thirty and seven-forty-five that there occurred what is known to history as “the Bridgewater crime.” In the town of Bridgewater, some twenty-two miles from Plymouth, a truck belonging to a shoe-company came rolling down Broad Street. It contained the payroll for the week, and was driven by a chauffeur and guarded by two other men. As it neared the corner of Hale Street, there was an automobile standing, and two bandits sprang out and opened fire. The guards returned the fire, and there was a battle for a minute or two; until a street-car came down the slight grade--the motorman having run back into the car to hide from the bullets. The street-car came between the bandits and the truck, and frightened the bandits so that they ran, and leaped into their auto, and sped away. No one was hurt, so the “Bridgewater crime” was classified as “attempted robbery.”

The shoe-company employed the Pinkerton agency, and within a few hours the Pinkerton men were on the spot, interviewing every one who had witnessed the attempt. Their reports were known to the prosecution, but not to the defense in the case until six or seven years later. The reports proved that the witnesses of the crime could not agree upon essentials, not even as to the make of the bandit-car. As for description of the bandits, there was a wide range of choice, and the statements of all four leading witnesses varied greatly from what they were later to testify on the witness-stand concerning the crime.

Being balked of clues, and at the same time hounded by clamor and tempted by rewards, the authorities resorted to that method which is the mainstay of American police procedure--the “stool pigeon.” Underworld characters are paid to bring the gossip of their cafés and hang-outs. So-and-so has got a new car; So-and-so-other has given a diamond ring to his girl; So-and-so-else was heard to say that he did such-and-such a job. It is manifest that such clues are open to suspicion; jealousy and revenge play a large part in them; yet, reënforced by the “third degree,” they form the method by which a good part of the population of capitalist prisons is recruited.

The “stools” were active in this Bridgewater crime; and what they brought affords a problem for students of the occult and the mystical. Let historians investigate and psychologists weigh and philosophers speculate and make what they can of the fact: the Sacco-Vanzetti case, which echoed like a series of detonations around the world, which was destined to cause windows to be smashed in American legations in Buenos Ayres and Geneva, and taxi-cab drivers to throw their fares into the faces of American ladies in Paris--this cause célèbre had its origin in a “detective machine” invented by an underworld character, and looked into by an unnamed Italian woman in East Boston.

To the Pinkerton agents came a “stool” with the rumor that a certain A. C. Barr could tell about the Bridgewater crime. So there was a hunt for A. C. Barr--height five-feet-ten, weight 175 pounds, age forty, eyes dark, hair black, and so on. When found, the person proved to be an Italian--Angelo Christoforo Barragini, or words to that effect. He was questioned, and said, yes, he did know about the crime. How had he learned it? He had invented a “detective machine,” with which you could solve crime mysteries. It consisted of a crystal globe into which you looked, and you there saw the crimes happening. A woman in East Boston had used it and had seen the Bridgewater hold-up, committed by Italians who lived in a little house on the outskirts of a town; there were four or five of them, and they were dark, and had a car which they kept in a shed in back of the house.

Now, detectives are paid by the day while they are working, and this has a tendency to stretch out their assignments. They followed up this “detective machine” clue, taking into their confidence Mike Stewart, the worried chief of police who kept the town of Bridgewater in order between bandit-raids. Mike, a burly “small-town cop,” red-faced, heavy-lidded, good-natured but not abnormally brilliant, took the detectives in his car, and they drove about inspecting little houses inhabited by Italians on the outskirts of towns. They found several, and were suspicious of one, and caused alarm to the occupants; but they found nothing definite. The Pinkerton reports were turned in, and the Bridgewater crime was listed among the unsolved mysteries in Massachusetts police history. The “detective machine” was stowed away in the subconsciousness of Mike Stewart, ready to pop up again sometime--according to the laws of the subconsciousness, understood in all psychological laboratories.

II

Three months later, on April fifteenth, came another sensation, known to history as “the South Braintree crime.” In another “shoe-town,” at three o’clock in the afternoon, the paymaster of the Slater and Morrill company took the pay-money, about $16,000 in two steel boxes, and accompanied by a guard, started to carry it from the office to the factory, a distance of a couple of blocks. They were passing another factory, the Rice and Hutchins, when two foreign-looking men who had been lounging by the railing suddenly drew guns and opened fire point-blank. They put four bullets into one victim, killing him at once, and so wounded the other that he died the next day. They picked up the boxes of money, and at the same instant an automobile came rushing up the street and slowed, and the two bandits sprang in and were driven away at high speed, shooting at the bystanders as they went.

This very brutal and successful crime caused great excitement in the factory towns which lie to the south of Boston. So many raids had occurred during the past year, no town knew when its turn might come. Rewards were offered, and again the Pinkerton detectives came and made their investigations and turned in reports. Just as in the Bridgewater case, the numerous witnesses disagreed about essential details of what they had seen. They could not describe the car. One said Hudson, others said Buick; one said green, another said dark blue, others said black; one said shiny, another said spattered with mud. Many witnesses made statements quite different from what they afterwards made on the stand. So here was another unsolved crime--and a great clamor of the public, demanding to know what police were for. There was no clue--save only a memory lurking in the subconsciousness of Mike Stewart, waiting for a chance to pop up!

It so happened that the day after the South Braintree crime, while all the countryside was ringing with the horror of it, there came to see Mike Stewart a Federal immigration officer, looking for an Italian anarchist by the name of Coacci, a shoe-worker sentenced to deportation and out on bail; his time was up, but he had failed to appear, and the officer had come to arrest him, and according to the custom he asked for Mike’s help. So Mike sent a man with him to the Coacci home, which happened to be a little house on the outskirts of a near-by village.

They found the shoe-worker with an oval-shaped tin suitcase strapped and ready, the inevitable green umbrella on top. Also there was another Italian, a boarder by the name of Boda. Coacci had pleaded for delay because his wife was sick; but here was his wife, she wasn’t sick, and Coacci admitted that that had been a pretext, he had wanted a few more days to settle his affairs. Now he was ready to go. It was late at night, and the immigration officer said to wait till to-morrow; but Coacci said no, he would go now and get it over with. Some one was taking his wife to stay with relatives, and he was all packed up, and would like to get the next day’s steamer from New York.

They went, and Mike Stewart heard about it, and sat in his office and thought it over. It was midnight, a time for ghosts and goblins. Strange that a man should insist upon being taken away from a country so great and so rich as America! This fellow Coacci was a Red, and the weekly paper in Bridgewater was running a series of articles, prepared by the Department of Justice, telling the small-town population of America the crimes which the Reds were committing all over the world. Mike pondered; and suddenly there occurred a phenomenon understood in all psychological laboratories--there popped into his memory the woman in East Boston who had looked into the “detective machine”! Here was a little house on the outskirts of a town, occupied by Italians! In a flash the whole story came to Mike: Coacci had been in on the South Braintree crime, and the reason he was so anxious to get away was that he had the sixteen thousand dollars!

With another officer Mike went to the Coacci house, and there was Boda, five feet-two inches high, swarthy, with a little black mustache, soft-spoken, polite, chatty; a macaroni salesman, he told Mike; and his car was an Overland, a small car, just now laid up for repairs. Yes, he had a gun, and he let Mike examine it--a .32 Colt. There were no signs of crime, so Mike went off and pondered some more, and then telephoned to New York and learned that Coacci had sailed for Italy. They found a trunk which he had left, and they broke it open, but found no payroll money, only a few pieces of shoe-leather, which some shoe-workers consider they have a right to “swipe” from the company when they get a chance.

Mike decided to arrest Boda, so he went to the house, but now it was empty. Boda had disappeared, and the police found that suspicious. But his little Overland car was in Johnson’s garage in West Bridgewater, and Johnson was told to detain whoever came for the car, and thus have a chance at the rewards.

So the trap was set; and two weeks later came an Italian by the name of Orciani, driving a motor-cycle with a side-car containing Boda. At the same time by street-car came two other Italians, Sacco and Vanzetti. All four were anarchists, members of the Galleani group; they had made this rendezvous at Johnson’s garage, for a purpose which was to be a subject of controversy for the next seven years.

They went to Johnson’s house, and found that the car was repaired, but had no license plates for the present year, so Johnson advised them not to drive it; he kept them talking, while his wife ran to a neighbor’s and telephoned to the police. But the four men became suspicious and went away. Bart and Nick took the trolley to Brockton, and while they were on the outskirts of the town a police officer entered the car and drew a gun and ordered them, “Hands up!” Then was the time for them to make use of the weapons they carried; for Bart to put into effect his threat of not being taken alive. But alas, it was as Alfonsina Brini had predicted, he didn’t know anything about using a gun. Pretty soon came a second officer, and the prisoners were taken to the police station and locked in cells.

For years Bart had studied the life and death of “Comradda Gesu,” and “made tears” for him. And now came a strange coincidence. The first action of one of the policemen, upon having got this criminal safe behind bars, was to come to the door of the cell and call him. Bart came, meekly, and looked through the bars, whereupon the other spat full in his face.

The reason for this action was that among the documents found on Bart was a letter from an anarchist friend, referring to the evil actions of a certain priest, whom the writer called “a pig.” The policeman had spat in defense of his religion, and turned away, fully satisfied in his Catholic soul. His priests had not taught him to read the life and death of Jesus; they had taught him that Jesus was a God, and if you had asserted that Jesus was a working-class agitator, he would have wanted to spit in your face also. But Vanzetti knew what had happened to “Comradda Gesu” on the cross, and he wiped his face clean, and sat upon the cot in his cell, with cold chills running up and down his spine.

III

Sitting in their separate dungeons that first dreadful night, a common thought was in the minds of both Sacco and Vanzetti. Less than three days had elapsed since their comrade, Salsedo, had thrown himself, or had been thrown, to his death. Were they going to share his fate? One duty was obvious--to avoid saying anything that would involve other comrades. So when they were cross-questioned, they denied that they knew Boda, denied that they knew Orciani, and told lies as to where they had been and what they had been doing. These lies were easily exposed, and constituted the famous “consciousness of guilt,” upon which the prosecution was to insist for seven years.

In spite of all fears, Vanzetti had refused to give up his appeal to the workers. “Anarchista musta make propaganda!” He had planned a meeting for the ninth of May, four days off, in Brockton, and had drafted a circular, which Nick had in his pocket. So the police had something else to study and discuss: a series of questions, crude, yet with a primitive eloquence that disturbed even the dullest mind. “You have fought all the wars. You have worked for all the capitalists. You have wandered over all the countries. Have you harvested the fruits of your labors, the price of your victories? Does the past comfort you? Does the present smile on you? Does the future promise you anything? Have you found a piece of land where you can live like a human being and die like a human being? On these questions, on this argument and on this theme, the struggle for existence, Bartolomeo Vanzetti will speak.”

It is an old idea, and has been haunting the minds of dreamers for thousands of years; you may find it voiced by the prophet Isaiah twenty-five hundred years ago. “And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another reap.” It is interesting as a symptom of the mental state of the time, that shortly before the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti, a Christian clergyman in the city of Winnipeg, Canada, had been indicted for the crime of quoting these ancient Hebrew words!

Among the questions asked of Bart and Nick was: “Are you an anarchist? Are you a communist? Do you believe in the overthrow of the United States government by violence?” These were the conventional deportation questions, and were reassuring to the prisoners in fear of torture. Bart answered them gently and tactfully. “I like things a little different,” said he. When a friend came to see him next day, he smiled and said, “Well, I get free trip to Italy!” So it was that Cornelia and Betty, enjoying their second week of vacation, received a letter from Fay--fifteen years old now, and quite a cultured young lady:

“DEAR NONNA:

“I write to tell you the sad news that Bart and Nick Sacco are in
the police station at Brockton. Bart asked to tell you he is not
treated bad, except for being spit on once. The lawyer says he will
be surely deported, because the police got a circular which he
wrote about a meeting to protest about the killing of Salsedo. Bart
says tell you he is happy because he will come to see you soon, and
please stay on the Italian lake and do not worry, because you have
worked too hard and should have a rest. As Nick was going anyhow
it will save him the fare so it is all right. I write in a hurry
not knowing when there goes a steamer, and Bart is afraid you might
read it in the paper and be worried.”

That was all for a week; then another letter:

“I am sorry to have to say that the arrest of Bart and Nick is
worse than what I wrote you. The police pretend to think that they
drove an automobile and shot two men and stole a payroll in South
Braintree last month. It is so silly that we cannot believe it yet,
and Bart himself does not believe it, he says it is just to get
something on him to deport. The comrades here have all paid money
and engaged a lawyer to get him off. Bart insists that I must tell
you there is nothing to worry for, as he was in Plymouth all that
day and talked with many people, like Mr. Corl who was fixing a
boat. And of course when they know about Bart they will not think
he could be a bandit. It will make you laugh to hear the police are
quite sure that Bart was the driver of the bandit-car, as you know
that he never had anything to do with a machine, and papa says he
is so clumsy he cannot drive a wheelbarrow. The comrades have found
a rich storekeeper who will put up bail, so we hope to have Bart
with us again soon. Please write him a nice letter in our care and
tell him you are not worrying, because it is something he talks
about each time we see him, that your vacation must not be spoiled
for him. You know how like him that is, thinking about everybody
else but his own trouble.”

IV

From Italian lakes the land goes back by stages, rising higher and higher into the sky, and each stage has been taken in charge by generations of strong arms and backs, and made into orchards and gardens. Every smallest corner of soil has been terraced and buttressed with walls, and dug and planted with a row of olive trees--or a row of onions--up to where the bare rocks stick out and the white clouds gather. Here and there in sheltered places are cabins built of stone, and in them women breed prolifically, and send their progeny to Massachusetts to be known as “wops.”

The lakes are blue, and the sky almost as deep a blue; by the middle of May it is summer, and all the land is bursting with vegetation of a thousand shades of green and olive-gray. The air is balmy, and ladies from Europe and America put on gay dresses and wander about in the gardens of villas and hotels, or drift on the water in little boats, holding bright parasols overhead to protect their creamy complexions. Everything is peaceful, and it is possible to float and sing “Kennst du das Land?”--and have no idea that the peasants on the hillsides are seething with hatred of their landlords, and forming coöperatives and revolutionary societies, preparing to dump off their backs the age-old burden of parasitism.

Here in a little inn by the water-side Cornelia found her granddaughter Betty Alvin, carefully chaperoned by Joe Randall, American socialist journalist aged twenty-eight, and Pierre Leon, French communist editor aged forty-four. In the days before the war if a young lady from the Back Bay had traveled about Europe with two gentlemen, she would have caused herself to be ostracized for life; and maybe it was still so, Betty wasn’t sure--but she was sure that she didn’t want to know any one who didn’t want to know her. These two men between them had much important information, so she had begged them to come to this Italian lake while she waited for Grannie.

Pierre Leon was stocky and broad-shouldered, with a rosy face and black mustache twisted to points. He had lived for years in London teaching French, and in Berlin teaching English; he knew enough Italian to attend labor meetings, and now was studying Russian because revolutionary events demanded it. He had been an anarchist, then an anarcho-syndicalist, for a long time a left wing socialist, and now was a communist suspected of a right wing deviation. He had read most books that had ever been published on these subjects, and most good literature besides; he could talk brilliantly about anything, and liked nothing so much as having some one to argue with until three in the morning. He was supposed to be resting for his health, but it was difficult for Cornelia to see where either health or rest came in, for he lit one cigarette from another, and would work all morning writing an article, study labor and radical papers all afternoon, and argue all night about what he had read.

His qualifications as chaperon for an American young lady were peculiar. He took toward all women the attitude of the continental male, and this had caused in the American young lady a vigorous reaction, which in return had caused in the continental male an amused curiosity. Said Betty, “He thinks the purpose of woman is to submit herself, and that every woman will, if the man is fascinating enough. But I have made him understand that I’m a queer little New England old maid, so now he’s a good sport and studies me.” Betty added that Grannie was not to dislike Pierre on that account, because it was his environment, all European men were that way, especially since the war--the only difference was that the radical men could let you alone, because they had other things to think about, whereas the leisure-class men had nothing to do but chase women.

Joe Randall came from Virginia, and had wavy brown hair and a charming slow drawl. Cornelia had met him in Russia, so she knew his story; he had come as a young college graduate to an attaché’s position in our legation at St. Petersburg, and had seen the war, the revolution, and the diplomatic intrigues. This had made him into a radical, he had kicked over the traces, and now was a free-lance journalist, writing mostly for papers which could not pay him anything. But he had a small income, and was expecting to shake the world with a book about the “White Terror,” on which he worked diligently every morning, and talked all the rest of the day if any one would listen.

It was evident that Joe’s eyes followed Betty wherever they could, and Cornelia, being still an old-fashioned grandmother, wanted to know about it. “He is a dear,” said Betty, “and I have to admit that he makes me shiver now and then. But I’m not sure we shall hit it off. I’m trying to make sure.”

“What is the problem?”

“Well, several. In the first place, I’ll have to propose, because Joe is poor, and he thinks I am going to be rich. I’ll have to explain that I’ll escape being rich if I marry a Red. Also, there’s his wife.”

“Wife?” echoed Cornelia--but managing to keep too much surprise out of her voice.

“Didn’t you know he had one? She went back to New York several years ago. She doesn’t love him.”

“Are you sure?”

“Joe is. It seems that she’s reactionary, and you know enough to realize that no man and woman can be happy when they hold opposite opinions on the class struggle. That’s what I am concerned about--I think I’m turning into a communist, and Joe still ties himself to the old social-democracy that was killed in the war and doesn’t know it.”

“I see,” said Cornelia. Her heart warmed to Joe, because she did not want Betty to go with the fighting crowd. But she must not say so!

“You know,” said the girl, “I think it’s a form of our Anglo-Saxon egotism, we think we can change our social system by a method different from all the rest of mankind. We have such a marvelous constitution, and such a wise electorate, we can do it step by step--and all the while the truth is we don’t intend to change a thing, but to smash anybody that dares a move. No rough stuff--except what the possessing class needs in its business. Pierre quotes Lenin’s definition of the state: ‘a monopoly of violence.’ Don’t you see it, Grannie?”

“I am still one of the sentimentalists, Betty dear.”

“Yes, I know, and you’ll back up Joe in all our wrangles, no doubt. Well, he needs you, for he’s got all current history against him--to say nothing of the ruling class of the world!”

V

To this quartette of assorted thinkers came the news about Sacco and Vanzetti. When the first letter was read, Cornelia said it would be pleasant to have Bart here. But Joe Randall smiled dryly and told her not to count too much upon it; for capitalist policemen were not so eager to provide their victims with vacations on Italian lakes. When the second letter came, he said, “I told you so.”

“But it’s too absurd!” cried Cornelia. “They are innocent!”

“They have to prove it,” said Joe.

And Pierre Leon eyed the old lady with a quizzical expression. “Don’t forget, comrade,” said he, “it sometimes happens that anarchists are guilty.” Then, seeing Cornelia’s startled look, he added, “I was an anarchist myself for years; and I assure you I wasn’t always innocent!”

Said Betty, “You mustn’t say that to Grannie. She is soft-boiled.”

Pierre was interested in American slang, which he said was a new contribution to the world’s poetry. He asked about this phrase, and then went on: “People that are soft-boiled had better not go wandering about in the radical movement, because they may get their shells broken.” He went on to say that about anarchists you could never make a general statement, each one was a law to himself. You had to know him before you could say what he would do--and even then you didn’t always know.

“Well, we know Bart,” insisted Cornelia; “and we know he is no bandit.”

“And the other one?”

“I don’t know him so well, I only met him two or three times. But he’s a gentle, soft-spoken young fellow--”

“Which means absolutely nothing,” said Pierre. “Even your American two-gun-men have been that; I think it’s a tradition, out on the western plains, that your deadliest sheriffs have been mild-mannered men. The first thing you have to know about an anarchist is what leaders he follows.”

“Bart and Nick belong to the Galleani group.”

“But Galleani is a militante. If you don’t believe that, go down to Milano, or wherever he’s living now, and hear him. Who gave you the idea he is a pacifist?”

“I didn’t have that idea. Bart told me he was a militant--”

“But then, when an anarchist tells you he’s a militant, why don’t you believe him?” Pierre’s face indicated that this was one more droll aspect of American ladies. “Understand me, Comrade Thornwell, it is good of rich and cultured ladies to take an interest in the exploited workers; but you suffer always from the fact that you can’t possibly realize how they actually feel.”

“Don’t forget, Comrade Leon, I worked for a year and a half in a cordage plant, and lived on the wages.”

“I know, Betty told us; and I never heard anything like it. But all the same, if you will pardon me, it wasn’t practically real, because if you had been ill or out of a job, you’d have gone back to your family; it wasn’t psychologically real, because you always knew you could, and you had the moral support of knowing you were a lady. No worker has that; so don’t be shocked if you should some day learn that some workers commit what the bourgeoisie calls crimes in the struggle against their exploiters.”

There was a pause, while Cornelia digested these uncomfortable words. At last she said, “Crimes such as banditry, Comrade Leon?”

“Well, that’s a question that calls for definitions. If you mean by banditry, robbing for private advantage, the answer is no. If you mean robbing for the cause, the answer is, there have been such anarchists: not many, but a few. Take Ravachol; he robbed the rich and gave the money to the poor, and boasted of it.”

“What do other anarchists say of that?”

“I have heard a thousand arguments about it. It’s a practical question, whether such a course helps the cause; some say yes, some say no. A few anarchists repudiated Ravachol, others endorsed him--Elisée Reclus among the latter, and he is a god of the movement, a great scientist and a great soul. You see, Comrade, it is difficult for any anarchist to repudiate another who has acted from good motives. There are two things a real anarchist will never do; one is to betray a comrade, and the other is to profit at the expense of the cause. So long as he is loyal, and risks his own life for the cause, nothing he does can be repudiated; that lies in the nature of the doctrine, because he is a law to himself, and has a right to be that, and other anarchists proclaim that right. How can they control him? How can they refuse to stand by him?”

“That ought to frighten me,” said Cornelia, “but we New Englanders were raised on that creed--we called it Transcendentalism.”

“I know,” said Pierre. “There are few anarchist book shops without copies of Thoreau’s ‘Duty of Civil Disobedience.’”

“But we managed to keep the doctrine from involving the right to kill other people.” Thus Cornelia, sure of her Boston.

“Did you really?” asked Pierre. “Stop and think now!” There was something in his tone that told Cornelia he was going to have fun with her. The twinkle was also in Betty’s eye and in Joe’s, so she knew they were in the secret. “Think hard!” said the Frenchman, and when she gave it up, he said, “Did you ever hear of a practicing anarchist by the name of John Brown?”

“Well,” said Cornelia, hesitating; “I suppose he did kill people--”

“Yes, do suppose it! It so happens we have been reading a life of him--and while you are talking about bandit-raids, consider the one at Harper’s Ferry. It was a surprise attack, you remember; it was going to give the slaves a chance to rise and get hold of an arsenal with some guns; and to that great end, four white men, quite innocent, harmless fellows, not even slave-holders, were shot dead in the streets of a country town. And remember, they took him and hanged him as a common felon, and were certain that history would agree with them. But up in Boston your Wendell Phillips proclaimed in a public meeting, ‘He has abolished slavery in Virginia!’ And some anarchist poet wrote four lines--Comrade Betty, can you say those lines that you like so much?”

And Betty, who had been smiling, became suddenly serious, and recited:

_Not any spot six feet by two
Will hold a man like thee!
John Brown will tramp the shaking earth
From Blue Ridge to the sea._

VI

Needless to say, there were many questions Cornelia wanted to ask of Pierre Leon. She realized that the time for dodging was past, it was up to her to get clear in her own thinking. She admitted to these three friends what before she had feared to admit even to herself: the doubts as to whether it could be true, as the government and the newspapers took for granted, that some of the Italian anarchists had been doing that wholesale bombing.

Said Pierre, “Set this down for certain at the outset--all militant anarchists believe in bombs. Not all make them--any more than all Christians sell their goods and give to the poor. It is too uncomfortable and dangerous. But the faith calls for it, ‘anarchist christenings,’ is the phrase--and when some young enthusiast comes along and wants to practice, the preachers can’t very well say no. And when the boys get into trouble, then of course the movement has to rally and defend them.”

“And that, of course, includes telling the world they are innocent?” It was Joe, with a touch of socialist sarcasm.

“Naturally. It goes without saying that anybody who will fight will try to deceive the enemy. What you have to get clear is the central doctrine of anarchism, that property used for exploitation is theft. That makes capitalist society a gigantic bandit-raid, a wholesale killing; any killing you have to do to abolish it, or to cripple it, always is a small matter in comparison. Twenty years ago, when I used to argue questions like this, they were more or less academic; our generation had never known war. But now take what has happened, and you realize that to the working-class theorist, human life has ceased to have any value, compared with the bringing on of the revolution. We know that capitalism means one more world slaughter after another; it means that inevitably, you might say by definition. Every capitalist society has to compete for markets and raw materials, or else cease to be a capitalist society. It intends to take our lives by the tens of millions; and are we denied the right to save ourselves--because, forsooth, the effort means killing a few capitalists and kings and judges and police spies and what not? You can see that, to an anarchist, such an idea is childish.”

“Or to a communist,” added Joe Randall, the socialist.

Said the other, “Between the anarchist and the communist it is a question of technique. I once heard an American labor leader put it effectively: ‘Never use violence--until you have enough of it!’ That will serve for the communist formula--and I leave it for Joe to explain the polite social-democratic program of killing a tiger half an inch at a time.”

So they wrangled for a while, saying sharp and bitter things with perfect good humor. Pierre declared that some day he would have the job of putting Joe into jail--and maybe Cornelia, too, because she believed in free speech for capitalists, and might insist upon practicing her theory. Maybe Betty would be putting her own Grannie into jail--stranger things had happened in revolutions. To which Joe replied that it was people of Pierre’s way of talking that made a peaceable solution so difficult; they brought on reaction, and set the workers back for decades. So for a while Sacco and Vanzetti were left in the Brockton police-station, forgotten.

Until Betty said, “You are getting poor Grannie so balled up with your theories and your shocking facts that she’ll lose heart and be scared out of the movement.”

“For God’s sake,” exclaimed Pierre, “don’t let me do that! In the first place, I don’t know a thing about your Bart and Nick, they may be two harmless dreamers. And anyhow, innocent or guilty, no working-class rebel ever did a tenth part of the harm to society that society has done to him. No one of them ever carries a tenth part of the guilt that is borne by the judges and officials who prosecute him. Think of the guilt of those who caused the war, in order to extend their markets or to save their investments!”

That was coming close to home for Cornelia and Betty. Said the former, thinking of her three perfectly self-satisfied sons-in-law, “Can there be guilt when there is no consciousness of guilt?”

Pierre answered, “That is the sort of question the Puritan conscience likes to wrestle with. But let us set aside theories, and consider the practical problem of labor defense. Whether an accused worker is guilty or whether he is innocent is a matter you can almost never guess in advance. If he’s guilty, he won’t tell you, and it would be wretched taste for you to ask. On the other hand, maybe the police have got the wrong fellow; often enough they know it, and don’t care, because they figure he’s done something equally bad, and anyhow he’s the sort that is safer in jail. Then again, maybe it’s a provocateur’s job--something the bosses have planted, in order to have a pretext for raiding offices and smashing presses and throwing leaders into jail. Either way, you can’t know until you get in up to your ears. You may find you’ve got a chance to expose the police and win public sympathy--or you may have something that will discredit the movement and turn the public against you for years.”

“A complicated matter, being a revolutionist!” remarked Cornelia.

And Pierre replied, “You bet your shoes it is--to quote your American slang.”

VII

On the morning after the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti came Mike Stewart, bringing his “hunch,” which was destined to control their lives and deaths forever after. Mike himself called it by the more dignified name of a “theory”; he told it to the district attorney, who liked it so well that he rented Mike from the town of Bridgewater, and for a year thereafter the policeman had nothing to do but search out facts to fit his “theory.”

A part of it was that the same bandits who had committed the South Braintree hold-up in April had committed the Bridgewater attempt of the previous December--the one which had been seen in the “detective machine.” The police proceeded to collect some fifty persons who had witnessed one or the other of these crimes. Orciani was arrested at his factory, so there were three bandits to be identified. The usual procedure is to mix up the suspects with a number of other men and see if the witnesses can pick the guilty ones. But in the dingy old police-station of Brockton the three suspects were put in a room, and the witnesses were brought in and told that these were the bandits, and could they recognize them? Sacco and Vanzetti were sleepless, unshaved, unwashed, uncombed--a condition in which a leader of fashion looks like a bandit. But even so, the witnesses were uncertain, some said they might be the right men, others said they were surely not.

Several witnesses had seen the bandits in special circumstances, for example with a cap on; so Sacco was ordered to put on a cap, and did so. Another had seen the bandit crouched down; Sacco was ordered to crouch, and the witness thought he looked more like a bandit that way. Another had seen the bandit pointing a gun; Sacco was ordered to act as if he were pointing a gun, and the witness was quite sure that made him look more like a bandit. Witnesses who were obdurate, and wouldn’t stop saying they were the wrong men, were dropped by the prosecution, and it was up to the defense to find them if they could. In a great many cases they did so--but too late.

The police had found a Buick car abandoned in some woods, two miles from Coacci’s home, and it was part of the “theory” that this had been used in the two crimes. This “bandit-car” was now brought to the police-station, and Sacco and Orciani were loaded into it, and with a detail of the state police, heavily armed, were taken for a tour of the shoe-towns. Word went in advance, “The bandits are coming,” and huge crowds gathered. At the time of the South Braintree crime several workers had run to the windows of the shoe-factory and seen the bandit-car driving away. Now the scene was reënacted, with these persons looking from the windows to judge if Sacco and Orciani looked like the men they had seen. The crowds, meantime, did not wait for a decision; they knew these were the bandits, and tried to beat them, and did spit in their faces. It was a grand public circus, and by means of it the police persuaded three shoe-workers to recognize the bandits, and to stay persuaded until the preliminary hearing a week or two later, when they changed their minds and said they couldn’t be sure. When the trial came, a year later, they had changed again, and took the stand and identified Sacco and Vanzetti as the bandits, and made three of the five witnesses upon whom the august Commonwealth of Massachusetts relied to the death.

On the day after the arrest of Sacco and Vanzetti the three prisoners were arraigned before a magistrate. Orciani was charged with operating a motor-cycle without a tail-light--although his motor-cycle had had a tail-light and it had been lighted; Sacco and Vanzetti were charged with carrying revolvers without a license. Bail was denied, on the pretext of a wartime law. The three victims were taken back to jail, and the task of fitting the facts to the “theory” was continued.

A week later there was a hearing upon the charge of murder; and here an unexpected thing happened--the number of bandits was reduced to two. The district attorney stated that the identification of Orciani was not sufficient. That seemed strange, because more persons had been willing to think that Orciani looked like the bandit than had been willing to think it about either Sacco or Vanzetti. What had happened was that Orciani had been able to produce an American alibi. Not merely had he punched his time-clock in the factory that morning, but he could produce his boss and several other “white men” to swear that he had been at his machine all day. It was only three weeks back, and he hadn’t missed a day.

Also it developed that Sacco was to be let off from the Bridgewater charge--because he, too, had an American alibi. But on the day of the South Braintree affair, according to his own story, he had gone up to Boston to get his passports; he had lunched at a café with friends, and had gone to the consulate, where they remembered him for the comical reason that he had been told to provide a photograph for his passport, and had brought one of great size. A clerk remembered it; but then, he was an Italian, and Italian alibis do not “go” in Yankee police-courts.

As for poor Bart, alas, he had nothing but Italian alibis for both dates. On the day before Christmas he had sold eels to fifty housewives, and during the South Braintree crime he had been digging clams and bait. But such things do not count against a policeman’s “hunch,” so Bart was charged with both crimes; the prosecution was going to prove that he was the bandit who had stood on Broad Street, in Bridgewater, firing a shotgun at the pay-truck, and also that he was the driver of the murder-car at South Braintree--he who had never touched a steering-wheel in his poor proletarian life! The moral of these developments was clear to sarcastic young radicals such as Betty Alvin--that good little wops had better stay close to the boss, and punch a time-clock four times a day. Instead of going home at night, they would be safer kept in pens.

VIII

A lawyer had been engaged to defend Sacco and Vanzetti at these preliminary hearings, an Irish gentleman by the name of John Vahey. Some lawyers with criminal practice employ what are known as “runners” to bring them business; and whether Mr. Vahey knew it or not, it was an Italian generally known as a “runner” who persuaded the friends of Vanzetti to employ Mr. Vahey. The lawyer himself was no “runner,” but a stout gentleman who did not hurry about to find witnesses for his client; he was content to let the Brinis fetch the wops to his office. He was active in the politics of Plymouth County, and intimate with those who controlled its affairs, including the district attorney, Fred Katzmann; he was an “associate judge,” and went into an arrangement to share business with Katzmann. It has been said in Vahey’s defense that Vanzetti was probably the first innocent man he had ever had as a client. Very possibly Vanzetti was wrong in his fixed idea that his lawyers had “thrown him down.” He was a hard client to defend, because he persisted stubbornly in denying that he had been to Johnson’s garage with Boda the night of his arrest; he would not permit any capitalist lawyer to persuade him to say a word that might involve another comrade.

The friends of Sacco in Boston had also engaged a lawyer to defend him. Before a month had passed there were three lawyers in the case, and one of them was young and confiding, and told how he had heard one associate say to the other, “See if you can get Sacco to tell where he buried the money, and we’ll divide it.” A part of the “theory” became that Sacco had buried the treasure in the garden of his home, which belonged to Mr. Kelley, his boss; and in each of the next seven springtimes, when Mr. Kelley’s father got ready to plant potatoes, a thrill would go through the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Sacco’s boss was digging for the treasure! It was hard on poor Nick, because it implied that Mr. Kelley thought he was guilty, whereas Mr. Kelley had trusted Nick as night-watchman.

Cornelia and Betty sent money to help interest these legal gentlemen. Cornelia and Betty meant to stay in one place all summer, so they would not need Betty’s full allowance. They rowed on the lake, and climbed the mountain paths, and listened to all-day and all-night arguments on the theories of anarchism, syndicalism, communism and socialism, with the history of these movements in a dozen countries for three-quarters of a century. There came another letter from Plymouth, telling of developments, with a message from Bart insisting that Nonna was not to worry, and not to cut short her rest.

The idea of accusing Bart of the Bridgewater crime seemed to Cornelia such madness, she could not take it seriously. It was a case of mistaken identity, which would be cleared up when it was investigated. “They can’t make such a charge against a man who has lived in a town for eight years; and when he went about that whole day, peddling eels to all North Plymouth! If it had been any day but the day before Christmas, one might say there was a chance of getting the dates mixed; but everybody knows that Italians eat eels on Christmas, and Bart can prove that he had a barrel of them. It seems as if somebody has gone crazy.”

“The bourgeoisie always goes crazy when its property-rights are threatened,” said Pierre Leon.

“But I was there the day after Christmas,” persisted Cornelia, “and they told me all about what they had done--Bart and Trando, and the barrel of eels, and the baker’s horse, and how Trando would never believe Bart’s promises again. Surely I could testify to that conversation!”

“They might call it hearsay,” said Joe Randall. “And anyhow, the jury would say it was a put up job--to fool you and prepare an alibi. The Italians are cunning, you know!”

They comforted themselves with the thought of the law’s delay. Criminal cases took a long time to get on the calendar in Massachusetts; and meantime, since bail was refused, there was nothing Cornelia and Betty could do. But the law is like a sleeping tiger, capable of swift and deadly leaps when it is roused. The second week in June there came a cablegram; the situation was very bad, and Bart was to be tried for the Bridgewater crime in less than two weeks. There was just time for Cornelia and Betty to get a steamer; so the little radical party broke up at an hour’s notice. Pierre Leon would go back to his desk, and Joe Randall decided that he knew enough about the White Terror in Europe, and his book ought to have a chapter on Massachusetts!

IX

Their steamer came in to New York one afternoon, and there on the pier, waving handkerchiefs, were Deborah and Priscilla. Betty’s sister was engaged to be married to a young mountain of copper; an enormously important alliance, which had already supplied a column of genealogy to the _Transcript_. The ladies were going to plunder the Fifth Avenue shops of their treasures; also the father, Rupert Alvin, was in town, on business connected with Jerry Walker’s felt-plants, now in his care. They were going to a musical comedy that evening, and had planned diversions for several days. Betty had been away a whole year, and any normal rich girl would have brought home several trunk-loads of presents for relatives and friends. But here was this madcap pair, returning precipitately, with no purchases whatever--and very mysterious about it, obliged to decline diversions, and take the night train for Boston. After much nagging, Deborah got it out of them--they were hurrying to attend the trial of an Italian anarchist bandit! And they did actually go--Betty in spite of mother, father, and sister, Cornelia in spite of daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter.

Bart was in the County Farm Jail at Plymouth, and during the afternoon was brought from his cell into the reception room. He had on a coarse gray shirt and trousers, badly shrunken; his outdoor color was gone, he was haggard and thin, and his walrus mustache drooped mournfully. But, oh, so glad he was to see them! His face lighted up, and he came, half running, holding out his hands; the messages of his soul leaped to them, love and pity and heart-breaking grief. Poor old Bart--the greatest lover of freedom Cornelia had ever known--shut up behind steel bars! Tears started into the eyes of both the women, and the prisoner’s voice broke as he tried to speak. “Oh, Nonna, I so sorry for spoiling your holiday! Oh, Betty, I so sorry for bringing you to sooch place!”

“It’s all right, Bart, we had a good holiday, and now we’re here, and we’re going to get you out in short order.” It was Betty speaking, brave little soul--no melancholy while she was in charge! “Cheer up, old pal, it’s going to be easy. This is Comrade Joe Randall, who has followed me all the way from Italy because he thinks I am going to be silly enough to marry him.”

Bart turned quickly to the good-looking young fellow. “I glad for meeting you, Comrade Jorandall. If Comrade Betty marry you be very lucky feller.”

“Oh, I’m not sure yet,” said Betty. “I’ve got to make a real Red out of him. Now he’s nothing but a pale pink, one of those riformistas that we don’t trust. But he’s going to help get you off, and that will educate him.”

Their feeble effort at jollity came to a speedy end, and they talked about the trial, only two days away. “My enemy have got me,” said Bart; and they knew without asking who this enemy was, the profit system, embodied in Plymouth by the great cordage company from which Bart had helped to extort two hundred thousand dollars every year, in the form of higher wages to its workers. “I think the go-vérnment not let me ever get away,” said Bart, and Betty’s cheerfulness could make no impression on this firm distrust.

“You see what they do,” he said. “They cannot prove Nick and me at South Braintree, have not got evidence for sending two men to electric chair. So they think, first we take Vanzett’, we fixit him for Bridgewater job, we make him convicted. So when it come trial for South Braintree job, jury will say, one of them fellers is bandit, he is convicted, it is not so hard for believing they both should die.”

“But Bart, it’s crazy to try to prove that you were in Bridgewater that morning!” It was Cornelia speaking.

“They have got it fixit, Nonna, they prove what they want. I tell all friend not fool self. They have got everything, they are friends with our lawyers.”

“Oh, Bart!”

“I sure of it. Come big feller, lazy, smoke big cigar--is what for Italian worker pay money, buy him big cigar. He is funny man, he make joke, he whistle. I say, ‘I am innochent.’ He make funny face, he say, ‘Very bad, they put you wit’ Sacc’!’ He stick up finger in air, he make it go round, so”--Bart made a spiral motion, his index finger going up. “He say, ‘Pfist!’ Is hardest work he ever do for poor wop.”

“I thought they had an investigator getting witnesses!”

“Have got Italian feller--he is spy for go-vérnment. He get all comrades put up money, buy him automobile, so he can go look for witness. But it pass many days, he not bring witness. Is plenty witness in Plymoot’, but it must Brinis find them. Is maybe witness in Bridgewater, could find people say I not look like bandit, but cannot get them.”

“Bart,” said Betty, “we are not spies for the government, and we’re going to rent a car right away, and take the Brinis this evening and see if we can find some witnesses in Bridgewater. Cheer up now, we’re really going to help you. Joe here is an expert investigator; he is writing a book on the White Terror in Europe.”

“Is same terror here, Comrade Joe, is plenty people could tell I am innochent, but will not dare speaking. Is polissman saw me on street, talk wit’ me in morning, ask for price of eel, but will not tell. Is express office man, he knows I got barrel of eel, but he will not let us look for paper--what you call it, receipt. Is superintendent of cordage plant, you know him. He know I was in Plymoot’ that day--but see if he come for witness! You saw him, Nonna, always, ever since strike, four year, he walk across street when I come, is not willing for meet me. Is may be hate, may be fear--but see if he help me getting out from jail! No, it is price I pay for eight year I try to educate worker. What is it they have said about Gesu, Nonna?”

“‘He stirreth up the people.’”

“Joosta so! And I am joosta same age, Nonna, I am thirty-two, like it was Comrade Gesu when his enemy put him in jail! I have readed about him--it is book what they give for wop to read in jail, because all church people have not know how bad rivoluzionario was Gesu!”

This was one of the themes Bart liked to talk about; he forgot his own desperate peril for a few minutes. When the three visitors went out, Joe Randall said, “This much is certain whatever happens, the police have given us a good martyr!”

X

The little party set out in a car that evening, and going from house to house at the scene of the Bridgewater hold-up, they found two Italians who had witnessed the crime, and had told the police that the bandit who stood on the street and fired a shotgun was a short man with a closely cropped mustache. These witnesses had been rejected by the police, as not fitting the “theory,” and they were willing to appear for the defense. There were other witnesses who might have been found, if there had been more time, and if the seekers had realized the urgency. But Cornelia was hugging her notion that the case of the prosecution was bound to break down in court; and what human mind could have conceived that ghastly eccentricity of the laws of Massachusetts, which amounted in effect to this: that whatever evidence was presented to the jury at this coming trial would count, while everything that was found out later might as well have been left in the darkness of oblivion? To quote the words of the Supreme Judicial Court of the august Commonwealth, handed down in the Sacco-Vanzetti case: “It is not imperative that a new trial be granted, even though the evidence is newly discovered, and if presented to a jury would justify a different verdict.” Such is the law of the Brahmins and Blue-bloods, which altereth not!

_O fates that hold us at your choice
How strange a web ye spin!_

How strange the plight in which you have placed us--that we walk backward into our lives, with eyes that see the past, but are blind to the future! With ears that hear the past, but are deaf to the future! Betty rented a car, and Joe drove her and Cornelia and Vincenzo and Alfonsina to Bridgewater, and along with that little party went a vast throng, made up of twenty-six hundred and nine days, each one with a separate burden of griefs and regrets. Days, black-clad and somber, waving black veils unseen! Days wailing and moaning, shouting alarms unheard! Cornelia and Betty and Joe and Vincenzo and Alfonsina got out of the car, and separated and walked up and down streets, and rang door-bells and went into houses asking questions of strangers; and into every house with them went ten million mourners, ten million protestants marching, singing, carrying banners in a hundred foreign tongues. Mobs roared their fury, shrieked their imprecations; bombs exploded, sheets of plate glass were shattered; cavalry charged, clubs fell on human heads, sabers clove human flesh, men fell and bled and died--and of all that tumult not one sound reached the deaf ears, not one glimpse penetrated the blind eyes!

Voices, ghostly voices calling, up and down the streets of the little town of Bridgewater, all through that warm spring night! Run, Betty, run, on your swift young limbs that have been trained by climbing mountains! Run, and rest not, until you find those other witnesses who will testify that the bandit had a closely cropped mustache! Run, Cornelia--one last effort of those old legs, shrunken and withered so that you do not like to see them--find some one who can bring you to those Pinkerton men who interviewed the witnesses of the prosecution, and heard them say they could not identify the bandits! Joe Randall, driver of the car, don’t go back to Plymouth to-night! Turn your headlights to Boston, an hour or two away, and use your newspaper introductions to find the reporter who was first upon the scene, and will testify to what all the witnesses said! Cornelia, put your family influence to work, get the shoe-company and the insurance company to give up those Pinkerton reports--now while they will count, and not later, when they will be thrust into a pigeon-hole and forgotten by a governor’s secretary, who is paid a double salary to see that the great man’s mind is not burdened with details!

Look, Cornelia! Look, Betty and Joe, look at that man, waiting in the future; a man with a smile made of marble, with eyes like two agates, cold, expressionless, a supersalesman of automobiles who will play the part of final jury, and will politely accept your evidence, and remain of his own opinion! Joe Randall, “expert investigator,” now is your hour! Drive to Atlantic Avenue, where the wholesale fish-dealers have their stores, and find that Italian who shipped the barrel of eels! Pull off your coat and climb into the attic and search the boxes of records--it will not be so hard now as seven years later, for there are not so many records, and the dust is not so thick! When you find the book of express receipts, showing the barrel of eels consigned to “B. Vanzetti, Plymouth,” six days before Christmas, 1919, it will count with the jury--instead of being set aside, unseen by the agate eyes!

XI

The little party turned their car home that night, well content with what they had achieved. Next morning they sat down to a conference with eminent legal authority, and Cornelia offered her testimony, and learned that it was not available, because most of it was hearsay, and anyhow, she had better not take the stand, because she would be questioned concerning Vanzetti’s beliefs, and it was not desirable to have the jury know that he was an anarchist. Of course everybody in Plymouth knew it perfectly well, but if it was not introduced in the evidence, the jury would be ordered to disregard it, and would do so--that being the merry fiction of the merry legal game. Could Cornelia testify that Vanzetti was a pacifist, and repudiated violence? Could she testify that he did not believe in the overthrow of the United States government by force? No, she could not testify that, and therefore nothing she could say about Vanzetti’s character would count with the jurors. How could they fail to be suspicious of an American woman who confessed to intimate friendship with a dangerous Italian Red?

Furthermore, there was a question whether Vanzetti should be a witness himself. He could not deny his anarchistic opinions, which would so antagonize the jurors that they would find him guilty of anything, regardless of evidence. It was a delicate matter, because Vanzetti was a draft-evader, and the jury would consist of men who had gone to the war, or had sent their sons. Also he was an infidel, and the jury would consist of devout church-goers. There was that letter found on Vanzetti, denouncing a certain Catholic priest as a “pig.” The jurymen in Plymouth County were not apt to be Catholics themselves, but they would think that Italians ought to be Catholics, and it would be better to appeal to the district attorney’s sense of fair play not to introduce that letter.

Vanzetti was stubborn, and clamorous to be heard in his own defense; but then, he would not stop denying that he had met Boda at the Johnson place the night of the arrest; and how could he expect to get away with that, in face of the testimony the prosecution could offer, if the issue were raised? No, Vanzetti must be made to realize that under the law he was not required to testify, and no conclusion unfavorable to him could be drawn from his failure to testify.

Again the future rose up and shouted! Ten million hands were waved unseen, ten million warnings were voiced unheard! The fates that held Cornelia and Betty at their choice granted no forewarning of the man with the marble smile and the agate eyes, the supersalesman of automobiles who seven years later was to be the final jury in the case. Not once did they hear him repeat his formula, which was to make him seem like a gramophone through the weary months of the future; the formula which would balk the friends of love and justice who traveled from all over the world to appeal to him; the formula which took the place of all evidence and all thought--“Why did not Vanzetti take the stand in his own behalf?”