Chapter XIV: Judge Fury (2)

Frank P. Sibley was a star reporter of the Boston _Globe_, covering this trial in a special effort to be fair. The _Globe_ aims to be what is known as a “family newspaper,” and has become one of the wealthiest in America upon a policy of publishing the name of everybody in Eastern Massachusetts not less than twice every year. It gives pages of local gossip from every town and village: “For the Friday evening meeting of the Ladies’ Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church a delicious walnut cake was provided by Mrs. Amanda Lubb, who is visiting her niece, Mrs. Peter Bobbs of Scrugham Corners,” and so on. Sibley, who contributed to a column of sentimental comment signed “Uncle Dudley,” was an old-fashioned Bostonian, having notions of honor and dignity now going out of fashion. He was covering this murder trial as a high civic duty, signing his daily articles, and taking them very seriously.

And here he saw the judge on the bench, forcing himself upon newspapermen, insisting upon talking about the case with them, such an impropriety as had never been heard of. Judge Thayer joining reporters walking back to the court-house from lunch, asking them what they thought of his conduct of the case; telling them of other murder trials he had conducted, and of compliments he had received from justices of the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth for his skillful handling and exact rulings! Sibley could not tell such things in his paper, for that was not what several hundred thousand families of Eastern Massachusetts wanted to read with their morning cod-fish balls. But he thought it his duty to write a letter to the attorney-general of the Commonwealth--to which that blue-blood gentleman thought it his duty to make no reply!

Did a rumor come to Judge Thayer? Or was there something in the attitude of the newspapermen which conveyed, even to his obtuse mind, that he was not “making a hit”? Anyhow, he was anxious; and now in that private dining-room of the Dedham Inn where the reporters lunched and discussed their stories, comparing notes so as to protect one another from error, they were surprised to have the judge come up to them without warning and announce: “I think I am entitled to have a statement published in the Boston papers that this trial is being conducted in a fair and impartial manner.”

Naturally, the group of men at the table were taken aback. Even a newspaper reporter must respect somebody, and who should it be if not the learned judge of the Superior Court, presiding at a trial which involved the attendance of some two hundred persons, and was costing the county of Norfolk some two thousand dollars per day?

Thayer turned to the star reporter of the _Globe_. “Sibley, you’re the oldest. What do you think? Is this trial being fairly and impartially conducted?” And Sibley had to think in a hurry. “Your Honor, I have never seen anything like it.” His Honor stood and pondered that compliment. Some little bird must have whispered to him that it would be better to take it at face value; he turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

And now came the cross-questioning of Sacco, with the judge on the bench delivering his elaborate sneer at the defense: “Are you going to claim that your client, in collecting this literature, was acting in the interest of the United States?” The question revealed such an obvious effort to distort Sacco’s meaning, and expose him to the prejudice and hatred of the jury, that Sibley quoted the sentence in his story; with the result that during the recess he found himself summoned into the judge’s chambers. His Honor took him to task for having quoted such a sentence; no such question had been asked, and the judge had verified it by getting the transcript of his remarks. He presented to Sibley a typewritten record, upon which the question did not appear.

Sibley, of course, was embarrassed, and said that he had written the sentence down as he heard it; he could only assume that his hearing had played him false. He was about to ask if the judge wished him to publish a retraction, when the bailiff entered, announcing that the jury had arrived. The judge entered court, and so did Sibley. Next day, when the actual record of the case was available, the reporter consulted it, and found that it showed Judge Thayer’s question, in the exact words quoted in the _Globe_! Five times the old man had asked that question explicitly, and several times more by implication; but now he had got frightened, and in an effort to cheat the public and hide the truth, he had gone to the extreme of preparing a doctored version of the record, and trying to palm it off on a reporter!

XI

The funds of the defense had run out. A collection was taken among the sympathizers at the trial, and six hundred dollars raised; but that was not enough. Cornelia wrote letters and sent telegrams; then, in one of those moods of mischief which had always been incomprehensible to the Thornwells, she called up her daughter, Deborah, at the North Shore place. “Deborah, there is some trouble, very serious--something I must see you about at once. No, I can’t talk about it over the telephone, you must come here to Dedham.” She used, as nearly as she could remember, the words by which Deborah had summoned her to Boston. The daughter, of course, thought instantly of Betty and Joe, having always this scandal hanging over her head.

It was a drive of two or three hours, and she arrived about lunch-time. Her mother was waiting at the Dedham Inn, and there was Betty, looking very lovely, though pale and tired--no visible trace of a scandal. But there was a trace of tears in the child’s eyes--one does not so easily sever family ties--even during the class struggle! “What is it?” asked Deborah, of her mother.

Cornelia replied that they couldn’t talk about it here. “Wait until the afternoon session is over.”

“You mean of the court?”

“Yes, my child, I cannot miss this afternoon, there is to be some important testimony. You come with me.”

“To a murder-trial, Mother!”

“Surely, if I can stand a murder-trial, my daughter can!”

Mrs. Rupert Alvin had never done such a thing in her life. She regarded courts as vulgar places, and attending them as evidence of sensation-seeking. She might get her name into the papers; she looked around for reporters, in the same spirit as her ancestors in this neighborhood had looked for wild Indians with tomahawks. She met some of the ladies, old and young, who were aiding the defense, and managed to find something wrong, either socially or sartorially, with every one of them--though she kept her thoughts to herself. “Mother, is there anything wrong about Betty?” she whispered. Cornelia said no, it wasn’t that.

They sat in the court-room: Deborah straight as a ramrod, motionless for three hours. Her manner said, Do not assume that I have any interest in this, or that I give it my sanction. She heard Guadagni, journalist and lecturer, telling the story of his lunch with Sacco in Boston on the day of the South Braintree crime. The murders had been committed at a little after three; and from one to two, or later, Guadagni had been chatting with Sacco, discussing the banquet being given by a group of Italians, in honor of the editor of the Boston _Transcript_, who had been decorated by the King of Italy in recognition of his services in getting America into the war. The affair took place that same day--which was how Guadagni fixed the date; Fred Katzmann strove in vain to make him admit that it might have been some other day.

“You know, Mother,” said Deborah, when it was over, “those Italians don’t think anything at all of telling lies to help one another out of trouble.”

“Yes, my dear, I know,” said Cornelia. “It’s just like the men of our own family, sitting up nights fixing their stories for the Jerry Walker case.”

And when they were outside again, apart from the crowd, and the danger of reporters, “Well, what do you think of our boys, Deborah?”

“You mean those two prisoners? Mother, I don’t see how you can force yourself to tolerate such people! Dark, sinister-looking--”

“Most Italians are dark; but that doesn’t make them murderers.”

Deborah shuddered. “I feel the hate in them--something frightful! Those set, intent faces--”

“My child, they are intent upon the question of whether they are going to the electric chair. It seems really important to them.”

XII

They went to Cornelia’s room in the hotel, and she lay down to rest. Deborah sat up straight. “Now, Mother, what is it?”

So Cornelia told her: “My dear, I have to pain you, I must sell my jewels.”

“Mother! What do you mean?”

“The defense has run out of funds, and I am not going to let those boys lose the chance for their lives. I must have some cash, and there is nothing I can think of but to sell my jewels.”

“But Mother, how dreadful!” Deborah was shocked into incoherence. The family heirlooms--they were priceless--treasures with spiritual associations--surely the children had some rights!

“You miss the point, my child,” interrupted Cornelia. “I want to sell them to _you_.”

Deborah said, “Oh!” She looked at her mother--no trace of a smile on the little round face, no twinkle in the soft brown eyes! Deborah said, “Oh!” again, and began to realize that this was another manifestation of that sense of humor which her father had found so untimely. A bit of maternal whimsy had brought a big limousine rolling its stately way from the North Shore to Dedham!

Cornelia proceeded with entire gravity. “Of course I know that some day you will have these jewels, you and Clara and Alice. But meantime, I have to have money for this case. You know Queen Isabella sold her jewels to finance Christopher Columbus--at least, the legend says so. I want to sell mine in a still worthier cause, and I offer you a third share.”

“How much money do you have to have, Mother?”

“Five thousand dollars. I have no idea what those jewels are worth--it must be thirty or forty thousand--”

“We are not going to give up our family jewels, Mother, you know that, so don’t be foolish. If the money was for you, none of us would hesitate a moment; but it seems so dreadful to us to have you throwing everything away on these anarchists--men who hate our country--”

“Now, my daughter, let us not go into that. I am making you a strictly business proposition. I offer to sell you one-third of my jewels for five thousand dollars. I will give you a formal receipt, and go to the bank and get them the first day I am in town.”

“You know I don’t care about that, Mother.” Deborah sat, gazing in front of her for a minute. It was clear that she was in a trap, no way out. So with no more ado she went to her handbag, took out her checkbook and fountain-pen, sat at the desk, and created five thousand dollars.

She possessed the power to do that magical thing; she did it frequently--at the board-meetings of orphan-asylums, in homes for the halt and the deaf and the blind, in vestry-rooms and parish-houses of Episcopal churches. The fact that she had such power, and was willing to exercise it, caused a kind of halo of glory to exist about her; it affected the souls of charity workers and superintendents of institutions, of curates and clergymen, so that a trembling seized them when the great Mrs. Alvin swept into the room, their knees went weak under them and almost gave way. Deborah knew of this, and while she pretended to be unaware of it, the pretense was highly artificial; in reality this sense of power was what she lived for and by, and she watched the persons with whom she dealt, and expected them to pay her exactly the right tribute of deference and excitement, and if any one of them failed, then Deborah was incensed against that person--though she always found some other reason for it, the person was too talkative, self-assertive, overdressed or underdressed, anything that wasn’t “Boston.”

Betty, shrewd little minx, had learned to analyze these manifestations: a fascinating study in psychology, a mingling of worldly glory with Christian humility, a checker-board pattern, black and white, in a woman’s soul. To be proud of your money and what you did with your money was the very acme of vulgarity, it was the thing which marked you as the wife of a “lumberman,” or a “Pittsburgh millionaire.” So you were never proud of your money, you were proud of your lack of pride, of the distance which an assured breeding put between you and your money. You associated yourself with the poor and lowly, because that was your Christian duty; and if the poor and lowly looked up to you, it was because of your Christian virtue, and not because you had the power to turn them out to starve and freeze. If they were really refined and worthy poor, they understood this, and so everything was upon a high plane; it was God who had appointed all things, and assigned to each his station and form of conduct, and each did what God wished, and felt the emotions which God inspired. Such was the collective soul of Trinity Church in the City of Boston.

XIII

Other witnesses testified to the alibi of Sacco, supporting Guadagni. Dentamore, a bank department manager, had joined them in Boni’s restaurant, and taken part in the talk about the banquet which the Italians were giving to the editor of the Boston _Transcript_. A Boston grocer testified that Sacco had paid him a bill on that day; he had his notebook, with the payment entered. Also there was a deposition of a clerk in the consulate, now in Italy, telling how Sacco had applied for a passport on that day; Eugene Lyons had gone to Italy to get that evidence.

There was more alibi testimony for Vanzetti. His friend Alfonsina Brini took the stand and told how he had sold her fish that morning, and brought Rosen to sell her cloth that afternoon. The district attorney was so angry in his cross-questioning that he made her cry; it seemed to him unpardonable that she should have made an alibi for Bart on two separate days, for two separate crimes; he would not realize that Bart had been practically a member of the Brini family, ever since his coming to Plymouth nine years back, and that all the Brinis saw him every day. The district attorney made Mrs. Brini stand up while he read into the record a stipulation to the effect that she had testified to an alibi for Vanzetti on another occasion. The jury was not supposed to know anything about the Plymouth trial and conviction, but of course they did know all about it, and smiled to one another while this statement was read. The lawyer fellows were trying to tie red tape over their eyes, but they would not be blinded!

Another legal hocus-pocus: in order to avoid having the Plymouth conviction brought into evidence, the defense had had to agree not to introduce character witnesses for either defendant. Now the prosecution came forward with a demand that the jury be instructed to disregard all evidence as to the good character of either defendant. So Cornelia Thornwell heard one of those voices which had cried to her in vain in Plymouth county-jail: not the voice of a ghost, but of the far-seeing Vanzetti! The very trick he had explained to her--his enemies had made a convict of him, and now were using his conviction to cast a cloud over both him and Nick, to send them to their deaths. Mr. Katzmann put on his sternest manner and read to the jury the stipulation:

“The Commonwealth assents to the request of both the defendants
that all evidence heretofore offered in the course of this trial to
the effect that one or both of said defendants bore the reputation
of being peaceful and law-abiding citizens, be stricken from the
record of this trial, and that such evidence heretofore offered be
entirely disregarded by the jury so that the result of striking
same from the record there is no evidence before the jury that
either or both of said defendants bore the reputation of being a
peaceful and law-abiding citizen.”

All in vain the years that Nicola Sacco had worked for the Three-K Shoe Company, earning from forty to sixty dollars a week as expert edge-trimmer, with extra pay as night-watchman for long periods! All in vain those annual gardens full of ripe red tomatoes, and the surplus given to Mr. Kelley, the boss! All in vain the ten dollars a week Rosina had put by, till they had fifteen hundred in the savings-bank, with the record of deposits to show that it had been got by labor, not by holdups! All in vain the hard toil which Bartolomeo Vanzetti had performed for the owning class of New England, in stone-quarries and brickyards, on railroads and reservoirs! In vain his years as fish-peddler, the friendship of hundreds of Italian housewives, of little Italian children, so that when they heard of his dreadful fate, they wept and wrung their hands, and would never cease to talk about him all the days of their lives! In vain his plea, “Save Nick, he got the wife and kids!” Again the lawyers made their demands for separate trials, but Judge Thayer stood firm to save the funds of Norfolk County. Ten thousand dollars a week for seven weeks was all two wops were worth!

XIV

A bell rang in the soul of Cornelia Thornwell: last call for witnesses! She knew what was coming, and was not surprised when Lee Swenson asked her to have lunch with him; nor when he got a table apart from others, and looked about to make sure there was no listener. “Well, Nonna, what do you think of our chances?”

“I don’t know what to think, Lee. I have no experience. You must tell me.”

“Well, I think that speech of Sacco’s finished us.”

“Oh, Lee!” Something went weak inside Cornelia, and she lost interest in lunch. She sat, staring before her, while the lawyer went on, lowering his voice.

“One last chance, Nonna. Do you really want to save those boys? In two hours I can fix you a story; you go on the stand and tell it, and it’ll cinch the case. You can’t imagine how easy it will be--Katzmann won’t dare be rough with you--if he did, I could rip him to pieces with this jury. They’ll have no time to investigate; they can’t take more than a day with their rebuttal witnesses, and that is the end--the case is closed, and anything that comes out afterwards is a joke.”

“Lee--don’t ask me! Don’t ask me!” That was all she could say; he saw the pain in her face, and dropped it. “All right, I won’t worry you.”

But she could not drop it; she had to argue with him about the case. “Lee, how can they convict men on such evidence? I have kept a record: thirty-one witnesses have said Vanzetti was not the man; twelve others, put on by the prosecution, ought to have known him for the bandit if he really was, and they didn’t.” She went on, clamoring her protest. Not one of the witnesses who identified Bart or Nick had ever known them before, or claimed to have seen them before; in every case it was a question of remembering strangers; and to American eyes half the Italians in the world looked like Sacco!

“Yes, Nonna,” said Lee, patiently.

“And the least time afterwards was three weeks--everybody had three weeks to forget what the bandits looked like! Some, like Goodridge and Pelzer, had nearly a year!”

“It’s the jury you have to convince, Nonna--not me!”

“But you must make that clear to them, Lee!”

“I’ll do so, never fear. But I can’t deny that they are anarchists; I can’t deny that our principal witnesses are Italians. Those are the fatal facts.”

They sat, with the food on their plates growing cold; something that had happened to them many times. Life or death was in the balance. Should Lee Swenson, in his speech to the jury, stress the lack of evidence against Vanzetti? If he did so, he might get Vanzetti off. But if Lee knew anything about this Yankee jury, they would “soak” Nick all the harder; and Bart had positively forbidden it to be done. Once again he commanded, “Save Nick, he got the wife and kids!”

They groped in the dark, and beat bare hands against stone walls; they heard in imagination those warning voices which were to haunt the rest of their lives. If only they had known this, if only they had done that! They went back to the courtroom, and the case for the defense was closed. And next day the prosecution put on its rebuttal witnesses--one of them Henry Hellyer, the Pinkerton operative “H. H.”! He came to discredit one of the defense witnesses, and the bland Katzmann questioned him, serenely sure about those secrets, locked in his head, which would have blown the case of the prosecution higher than a kite. Actually, Hellyer had in his hand the reports he had turned in on his investigations; when he was uncertain, he said, “I can find out”--and he examined his notes, right there before everybody. And the defense had no idea what was in the notes, no suspicion of the chance they were losing! The bland Katzmann turned the witness over to Mr. McAnarney, and that gentleman said, “No questions, if your honor please.” The voices of all the future, shouting into the ears of the defense, were heard by no one. Not a single “hunch,” not a dream, not a spirit-voice or a telepathic message!

XV

Next morning Lee Swenson and Fred Moore pleaded the case of the defense, and then the bland prosecutor rose to close the arguments. He had four hours in which to apply those arts he had learned during eleven years’ service to the Commonwealth; four hours in which the minds of these twelve good Yankees and true belonged to him, to mold and shape as he would.

For seven weeks they had listened to testimony, most of it dull and soporific, obscurely related to the main issue. Lawyers had wrangled, using long technical terms beyond the grasp of uneducated men. The total amount of testimony was thirty-five hundred typewritten pages, more than a million words. To study them, and analyze their meaning and relationships, to digest them and evaluate them, would occupy a brilliant legal mind several months; and here were two real estate men, two machinists, a grocer, a mason, a stock-keeper, a clothing salesman, a mill-operative, a shoemaker, a last-maker and a farmer. They could not assimilate the evidence, and they would not have either time or opportunity to try. They must make some sort of guess; and one who understood their prejudices could determine what that guess would be.

The wops and most of their lawyers were “furriners”; but the genial and friendly prosecutor was their county official, whom they had elected. For purposes of this trial he called himself “the Commonwealth,” and in that guise he could say pompous and magnificent things without sounding foolish. He was honest, and he was conscientious--he told them so himself, in grave and weighty words:

“Gentlemen, there is some responsibility upon the Commonwealth. There is some responsibility upon a prosecutor who produces witnesses whose evidence tends to prove murder. He may think well. He should think long, and he should always have his intelligence and his conscience with him before he puts the stamp of approval of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts upon him as a credible witness before he takes the stand seeking to prove the guilt of men and if proven will result in their death.”

From the point of view of prosody that statement could have been improved: but the jurors knew what it meant. This was Fred Katzmann, the prominent and successful, and he would tell them what to think. For example, about Lola Andrews--a distracted, hysterical female, who had stultified herself several times in Mr. Katzmann’s presence. Now he told the jury what to think about her: “I have been in this office, gentlemen, for now more than eleven years. I cannot recall in that too long service for the Commonwealth that ever before I have laid eye or given ear to so convincing a witness as Lola Andrews.” Concerning Pelzer he told them that the witness had twice falsified, but was “big and manly enough now to tell you of his prior falsehoods and his reasons for them.” (The reasons were cowardice.) Concerning Levangie, who had identified Vanzetti as driver of the bandit car, he asked the jury to believe that Levangie had seen Vanzetti in the car, but thought he had seen him driving when he wasn’t!

And then the amazing incident of the cap. There were two caps in evidence--one which had been picked up at the scene of the crime, and the other which had belonged to Sacco, and which the police had taken from his home, after he had been arrested. This latter cap Nick had not seen for fourteen months. While he was on the stand it was suddenly held up, and he was asked if it was his.

Of course the poor fellow did not know what to think; the prosecutor might be playing some trick upon him, getting him to recognize a cap which was not his cap, and then accusing him of lying. All he could say was, “It looks like my cap,” and again, “I think it is my cap, yes.” Badgered about it, and told to put it on, he finally was brought to say, “I don’t know. That cap looks too dirty to me.... It look like, but it is probably dirt--probably dirty after”--meaning that it was dirty after the police had kept it for a year and shown it about.

That was what Nick said; and now behold the outraged Mr. Katzmann, storming before the jury: “But that is not all, gentlemen. He has falsified to you before your very faces ... he would not admit, gentlemen, that the cap was his!” Fred Moore interrupted, on behalf of the defense, declaring that this was not a fair account of what was in the record. But Judge Thayer failed to make the facts clear to the jury, and Katzmann went right ahead: “Why, gentlemen, deny the ownership of that cap?”

And then the Proctor incident; a long, detailed argument to the jury, to the effect that two experts had testified that the “mortal bullet,” taken from the body of Berardelli, had come from Sacco’s revolver. Said Katzmann: “You might disregard all the identification testimony, and base your verdict on the testimony of these experts.” And all the time Katzmann knowing that he had framed a trick question, to which Captain Proctor could answer yes, and fool the jury as to what he really believed. Two years later, when Proctor made affidavit to this trick, both Katzmann and his assistant, Williams, made answering affidavits--and they were trick answers, seeming to deny Proctor’s statements, but in reality not denying the essential one!

From half past two in the afternoon until seven in the evening a court-room packed solid with human beings listened to the district attorney deal with witness after witness in that spirit. The Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has never specifically declared that a prosecuting attorney must be fair; and Katzmann’s successor, five years later, would be cynically flippant on the subject. When it was pointed out how Katzmann had concealed the witnesses Kelly and Kennedy from the defense, because they said that Vanzetti was not in the bandit car, Katzmann’s successor would argue before Judge Thayer, as one lawyer to another lawyer: “I wonder if Mr. Thompson has not an exaggerated and too ethical notion of the functions of a district attorney.”

But nothing like that now! To this jury Mr. Katzmann was the lover of truth, the noble-minded, upright friend of justice. Also he was the patriot; when he came to the end of a four-and-a-half-hour tirade, exhausted, dripping with perspiration in the heat of a crowded court-room, he remembered that the prisoners were wops, while the jurymen were Yankees. His final words were a call to local solidarity:

“Gentlemen of the jury, do your duty. Do it like men. _Stand together, you men of Norfolk!_”

XVI

Next day was Bastille Day in France, and a new Bastille was built in America. “Web” Thayer mounted his throne and delivered his charge to the jury. The throne was banked round with flowers, gifts from admirers of law and order; and “Web’s” discourse began in a lofty and emotional strain, as if affected by the intoxicating perfumes. “The Commonwealth of Massachusetts called upon you to render a most important service. Although you knew that such service would be arduous, painful and tiresome, yet you, like the true soldier, responded to that call in the spirit of supreme American loyalty. There is no better word in the English language than ‘loyalty’.” Thus again he related the trial with the dead bodies brought back from France, and the patriotic exercises going on all over the country. In the copy he gave out to the newspapers he added the sentence: “Keep courage, gentlemen, in your deliberations, such as was typified by the American soldier boy as he fought and gave up his life upon the battlefields of France.”

The judge was supposed to be guiding the jury through the mazes of technicalities, explaining the law, what they were to decide and what not. He took two hours for his oration, and used more than half of it in legal generalities and moral exhortations. He talked about God and country, state and fellowmen, and the highest and noblest type of true American citizenship “than which there is no grander in the entire world.” He talked about the pure waters of the government, “the grandest and noblest in the civilized world,” and he talked about “the day that little band of Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.” He used up so much time in that way that when he came to the mass of identification testimony, he could deal with it only briefly and in abstract terms. To the alibi testimony of the two defendants he gave only a couple of paragraphs, and without mentioning any witness specifically.

But he found time for an elaborate discussion of “motive” in connection with crime. In great detail and at great length he explained that the motive in the South Braintree crime was robbery--something never disputed by the defense, and therefore needless to mention. The question was, not if the South Braintree murderers had committed murder, but whether Sacco and Vanzetti had been at South Braintree. When the judge proceeded to deal with the wrong issue, it was plain enough that he was throwing dust into the jury’s eyes.

And then the “consciousness of guilt,” upon which Thayer was to hammer during the next six years of the case! He had deliberately obscured this issue, by blocking the testimony about Salsedo and Elia; and now he proceeded to give more than one-fifth of his time to explaining to the jury what might have been in the minds of two men who lied to the police when they were arrested. The judge who had not mentioned a single alibi witness now found time to deal, point by point, and in great detail, with the testimony of the arresting police officers, and of Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, to whose place Boda and Orciani, Sacco and Vanzetti, had come on the night of the arrest. His charge called up the most dark and sinister images. “If a person is willing to use a deadly weapon such as a revolver upon an arresting officer in order to gain his liberty, what would you naturally expect would be the quality of the crime of which such person would be consciously guilty?”

And then the testimony about the bullet. Did the judge know about the catch in Captain Proctor’s testimony? Solemnly and definitely he told the jury that the captain of the State Police had testified: “It was his (Sacco’s) pistol that fired the bullet that caused the death of Berardelli.” Two years later Web Thayer would be twisting and turning and wriggling like one of Vanzetti’s Christmas eels, to make people think he was denying that he had said that to the jury; but there were his words, and they were false, and they sealed the fate of the two anarchist wops. Had not the great Mr. Katzmann told them, only the afternoon before: “You might disregard all the identification testimony, and base your verdict on the testimony of these experts.” To exhausted and bewildered jurymen, looking for a life-line, this was something to hang onto; and they grabbed it. Headed by their flag-saluting foreman, who had said, “Damn them, they ought to hang anyhow!” the twelve good Yankees and true retired to the jury room to deliberate.

XVII

A hot summer afternoon; the jury locked in its room upstairs in the court-house; the prisoners back in their cells in the jail; the judge in his chambers; the lawyers, the court officials, the reporters sitting about the grounds, under the heavy shade trees--the two sides, prosecution and defense, keeping rigidly apart, a miniature war.

Cornelia went to her room in the hotel. She could not sit up; but then she could not lie down; she would get up and pace about, doing odd things, aimlessly. Impossible to read, impossible to think consecutively; if any one spoke, you started; if the telephone rang, you went faint. No one had eaten; the very thought of food made your stomach uneasy. Betty would sit by the bedside and try to comfort her grandmother; she would start to talk about something, and then realize that she was not being heard; they would look, and discover fear in the other’s eyes.

How long did juries usually take? Anywhere from an hour to two or three days, said those who had experience. The longer they took, the better, from the point of view of the defendants; so you must not be impatient! But there ought to be some way provided by which the mind could be put to sleep through such an ordeal. But then, no one could say for how long the sleep should be!

“Betty, don’t you suppose we ought to see Bart?”

“Nonsense, Grannie dear,” said the girl. “You wouldn’t know what to say to him, any more than you know what to say to me. Let me teach you the Russian alphabet.”

At six o’clock they went out, and strolled toward the court-house. The jury room was dark--Judge Thayer had ordered the twelve taken to supper. Swenson and Moore were sitting on the grass--in their shirt sleeves, something shocking to the proprieties of this staid New England town. Workingmen might do such a thing, but never gentlemen--unless they came from the wild and woolly west; it was almost enough to convict their clients. They put on their coats and stood up when they saw the ladies coming; they discussed the rumors, which had begun to fly--how the jury looked, what a court officer had been heard to whisper. Lee held Cornelia’s arm. “Keep a stiff upper lip, Nonna! There are many legal tricks--this isn’t the end!” “Oh, Lee! then you think--” “I don’t think--I wait! But prepare for anything.”

The jury was back again from supper. The lights were shining in the upstairs room, the shades down. Now and then a shadow moved across. Irresistibly your fancy was drawn to that room; impossible to be in any other place, to think of any other thing. The twelve good Yankees and true would be arguing; now and then they would take a ballot; they would question the ones who disagreed, find out what was troubling them, argue again, cite this detail and that, seeking to change the doubters--but which way? Surely in all that group there must be some who could think--some who could realize the hazardous nature of the evidence--the almost complete lack of proof concerning Bart! But no, Mr. Katzmann had told them that the reason the defense had concentrated its arguments on Sacco was because they considered the case of Vanzetti hopeless! He had said--

“What were you saying, Lee?” The lawyer had made a remark about the swallows; they didn’t have that kind in the west. Yes, he was trying to help her, to distract her mind! It was kind of him; he was one of the kindest of men. She said: “Do they fly all night, Lee? Or does the judge order them to bed?” And she did not know that he smiled.

XVIII

It was five minutes to eight o’clock. Suddenly one of the little groups in front of the court-house began to melt and flow into the building. One, and then another. People were going inside! Then loungers about the square began to notice it, people in the corner drug-store; like magic the word spread--the jury was ready! One of the guards condescended to tell the lawyers--the sheriff had telephoned to bring the prisoners over. It took about ten minutes to fetch them; and in that time the court-room was crowded, and half the town of Dedham thronged outside. The doors were locked, the armed policemen guarding them.

The prisoners in their cage; Vanzetti tense, anxious, his brows knitted; Sacco pale, almost green. A deep silence; then came the jury filing in. One glance was enough; every man had his eyes fixed on the floor. Lee Swenson made a gesture of despair. Cornelia saw it; and caught Betty by the arm.

The jury was polled; they answered faintly to their names. Said the judge to the clerk, “You will please take the verdict.” Said the clerk, “Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed upon a verdict?” Said the foreman, “We have.”

The jurors rose; the prisoners rose; they stood facing one another. “Nicola Sacco!” said the clerk, “hold up your right hand. What say you, Mr. Foreman, is the prisoner at the bar guilty or not guilty?”

“Guilty,” said the flag-saluting foreman. “Damn them, they ought to hang anyhow,” added a voice from within him; but the clerk did not hear that.

“Of murder?” said the clerk.

“Yes.”

“Murder in the first degree?”

“Yes.”

“On two indictments?”

“Yes.”

There was a pause.

“Bartolomeo Vanzetti, hold up your right hand. What say you, Mr. Foreman, is the prisoner at the bar guilty or not guilty?”

“Guilty.”

“Of murder?”

“Yes.”

“Murder in the first degree?”

“Yes.”

“On two indictments?”

“Yes.”

A look of incredulity was on the face of Vanzetti. He could not realize that this had happened to him. He stood with his hand still in the air, like a statue. The dead, expressionless face of the old judge was gray. “Gentlemen of the jury, as I did this morning, I again offer you thanks for the services you have rendered. You may now go to your homes, from which you have been absent for nearly seven weeks. We will now adjourn.”

The bailiff began his familiar formula: “Hear ye! Hear ye!” But now Sacco realized what had been done to him; he shouted above the bailiff: “Sono innocente!” And then to the jurors, who were filing from the court-room, “Two innocent men! You kill two innocent men!”

Mrs. Sacco had been close behind the cage. At her husband’s cry she leaped to her feet and rushed to him, and flung her arms about his neck. “You bet your life!” she cried--the only way she knew of being emphatic in this strange tongue. “Oh, Nick! They kill my man!” Her shrieks rang through the room--a terrible moment; women began to weep.

Sacco stood, caressing his wife, trying to comfort her; Vanzetti still like a statue--not a sound from him. But Rosina’s shrieks rose louder and louder; she fought away the lawyers who tried to disengage her hands; she was a wild thing, possessed of more than human strength; she thought they were going to take Nick away and electrocute him that night, and the lawyers tried to explain to her the refinements of American law--the appeals and technicalities, the infinitudes of red tape, the millions of words to be printed and the hundreds of thousands of dollars to be spent. But she only shrieked the louder, “They kill my man! I got two children--what I do?”

Until at last the stern policemen pulled her hands away, and forced her back, and formed a ring with Rosina outside. Quickly they locked the handcuffs upon the prisoners--an old story to the police, American efficiency. Snappy orders, “All ready! March!” Through the door they went, guards outside closing about them, twenty-five men in a solid bunch, guns ready. “Stand back! Out of the way there! Forward, march!” The sheriff’s men flung a line across the street, holding the curious onlookers, while down the street into the twilight went prisoners and escort, tramp, tramp, tramp! Anarchists, who do not believe in organization, learn a lesson from the grimly efficient Commonwealth!