Chapter XIV: Part VII (3)

“What makes you certain that it was not the accused?”

“For one thing, he warn’t built no ways like him—he was heavy-set an’ solid. This man” (pointing at Dreek) “ain’t that way.”

“You say his different size and build, _for one thing_. Was there something else that made you still more positive that this was not the man?”

“Yes sir.”

“Kindly describe it.”

“I was just turnin’ away from the winder to get to the other one an’ warn Mr. Haworth, when I seen this man you’re tryin’——”

“James Dreek?” interjected Mr. Forbes, to prevent any mistake as to the person she meant.

“Yes sir, James Dreek—I seen him come hurryin’ along the walk carryin’ a ladder.”

“Which way was he going?”

“Toward the front o’ the house.”

“What did you do then?”

“I kep’ on as fast as I could to the other winder—the one near where Mr. Haworth was—so’s I could call out an’ warn him. As soon as I got there I begun screamin’ out his name an’ beatin’ on the winder glass, but I hadn’t no more’n started doin’ that when there was a terrible loud crash of a gun goin’ off, an’ right after it another, an’ Mr. Haworth turnin’ round an’ tryin’ to ketch a holt o’ the table; but he couldn’t do it, an’ there he was sinkin’ down on the floor—sinkin’ down there right before my eyes!”

It was some time before the old woman could go on, but the Court waited. Finally Mr. Forbes, seeing that she was getting control of herself, went on with the examination.

“Tell us what you did then, Mrs. Temple.”

“I—I kinder sunk down there under the winder—as if all my stren’th was took away. But in a minute I was able to git up again, an’ the first thing I see was this Dreek man on the path there where I’d seen ’im afore.”

“What was he doing?”

“He’d stopped where he was an’ let the ladder fall on the ground. But just as I looked at him he picked it up again an’ set off runnin’.”

“In which direction did he run?”

“The same as ’e was goin’ afore—toward the front o’ the house.”

“And what did you then do, Mrs. Temple?”

“I run as fast as I could toward the back—the kitchen.”

“What was your idea in going there again?”

“Why I—I wanted to get to ’im as quick as I could.”

“To Mr. Haworth?”

The old woman nodded, unable, for a moment, to speak.

“What made you think you could get in? You’d tried it a few moments before, hadn’t you?”

“Yes sir, but this Dreek man had come out sense then, an’ I didn’t think he was liable to ’uv locked the door, carryin’ the ladder like he was.”

“_Had_ he locked the door?”

“No sir, he hadn’t.”

“Which door was it?”

“The basement.”

“So you got in?”

“Yes sir.”

Mr. Forbes indicated that he was through with the witness, and the district attorney took her, his manner conveying the impression that he considered her testimony as almost too flimsy to waste time over. He soon learned, however, that it wasn’t such an easy matter to punch holes in it. As a sample, without going into it as a whole:—

“I believe you made the statement, Mrs. Temple, as other witnesses have done, that the night when all this occurred was a dark one. Did you so testify?”

“Yes sir.”

“Was there a moon?”

“I didn’t see none.”

“But you admit the night was unusually dark?”

“It was dark—I ain’t got no idea how unusual it was.”

“Very well—that’s all I want to know—it was dark. Now Mrs. Temple, on this very dark night—the blackness being almost impenetrable, as has been shown by the testimony of others, although you yourself, for some reason, don’t seem inclined to admit it—in this dense and inky blackness you claim to have recognized the accused going by on a path at some distance from you. How do you explain that?”

“I s’pose you warn’t int’rested when I was speakin’ about them roller shades to the two side winders not reachin’ down to the bottom so’st it left a crack where the light could git through.”

“You mean to say enough light could pass through a little slit like that to enable you to recognize a person on a pitch-dark night twenty feet away?”

“Yes sir.”

“Do you expect me to believe that?”

“No sir.”

“Oh! You _don’t_ expect me to believe it!”

“I ain’t botherin’ one way or the other about what you believe. I’ve got enough to think of besides that!”

“Well then, let’s get a little light on what _you_ believe, Mrs. Temple! We have information that you attended a séance last night, a private séance given by a medium named Henrietta E. Belden, and that you are here giving evidence in this court because disembodied spirits—in other words people who have passed away—requested you to do so. Do you deny that this is the fact?”

“No sir, I don’t deny it.”

“Then am I to understand that you are a believer in the supernatural—that spirits are about us, speaking to us through mediums, and that these dead people can be relied on to give assistance and advice in a case like this? Do you believe that, madam?”

“Well I ain’t certain sure of it, but I’m tendin’ that way, seein’ how much more the dead ones seem to know about this case than you folks that’s still walkin’ around.”

A roar of laughter swept over the crowded room, broken by the court crier’s loud rapping for silence. It might have been observed that the Court itself bowed its head over as if making notes, so that its face was hidden for a moment.

And so it went on, every effort to undermine Mrs. Temple’s credibility as a witness serving the more firmly to establish it. She could not be confused nor rushed nor intimidated, though all three of these methods were attempted. Over and above this it was very soon discovered that she had no idea of going further with her testimony than giving what related to the innocence of James Dreek. As to that, however, her evidence was clear, straightforward, and unshakable.

The confession signed by Dreek when he was out of his mind from the torture of sleeplessness and constant bullying had been riddled by the Defense, and cut no figure at all, so that when the case went to the Jury a verdict of “Not guilty” was returned within fifteen minutes and Jamie Dreek caught the next train home to his old mother, whose devastating anxiety about him had brought her to within a stone’s throw of the grave.

* * * * *

You mustn’t get the idea that the Dreek trial came to an end in the brief time my way of telling about it would seem to indicate. I said just now, that _when_ the case went to the Jury there was a verdict in fifteen minutes; but that _when_ took quite some days. In fact there was a most peculiar delay directly following Mrs. Temple’s testimony.

You’d naturally think that when the entire bottom had dropped out of the thing they’d have got the Jury out on it as quick as they could. But they didn’t, for the State was holding it up in every possible way—recalling witnesses without reason—wrangling over this and that, and playing for time whenever a chance came up. The Defense was brief enough, and the Judge occupied only a few minutes in charging, but the prosecution managed to string it along for four days, and of course the wise ones began to make remarks about the District Attorney having something up his sleeve. The singular part of it is that for once “the wise ones” were right.

On the fifth morning following Mrs. Temple’s appearance on the witness stand, the not guilty verdict was brought in, and that same afternoon Hugo Pentecost was arrested for the murder.

It came to pass at headquarters. Pentecost had been sent for by Chief Inspector McCurran to give further information, and had been answering such questions as he could—which is to say, as he could with safety. There were others in the room—a couple of detectives (plain-clothes men), two or three policemen in uniform, and a stenographer (plain-clothes).

“By the way,” the Inspector asked, carelessly, after a number of commonplace questions had been answered, “did you ever happen to wear a pair of boots that were very much too large for you?”

“Why yes,” (after just enough surprise to go with so odd a question); “I suppose I have—at one time or another.”

“Ah—you have!... But your recollection doesn’t extend, I presume, to your having worn such boots recently?”

“Pardon me,” Pentecost returned, “but is this flattering curiosity as to my wearing apparel merely personal, or are you still seeking information in the case of Haworth?”

The Inspector’s eyes glittered into Pentecost’s for a second or two. When he spoke it was pointedly and with deliberation. “I’m still seeking information in the case of Haworth.”

“That being so,” Pentecost responded in a soft, pleasant voice, “you’ll excuse me for going no further in the direction indicated.”

The Inspector drew his mouth into a mechanical grin.

“I’m inclined to think, Pentecost, that you’ll find yourself going some distance further in that direction.”

“It’s inspiring to meet a real optimist, Mr. McCurran—there are so few.”

“Where were you between ten and eleven on the night Charles Haworth was shot to death?”

Mr. Pentecost appeared to be quite unaware that a question had been asked.

“We’ve got to hold you Pentecost.” The Inspector made a slight motion, and one of the patrolmen stepped forward and stood at Pentecost’s side.

“Want anything from the hotel—toilet articles—clothing—that sort of thing?”

“Many thanks—they’re outside in a grip.”

“Ah!” the Inspector said, after an instant’s pause of surprise. “You looked for it, did you?”

“Great God!—what _would_ I look for with a couple of your teasers running circles around me since the day I first came in here!”

“Noticed it, did you?”

The Inspector pulled his lips back into what you might take for a grin. “But don’t go trying to pass that across,” he added, “as the reason you brought your grip. There’s a better one than that.”

“Sure there is,” said Pentecost.

“You know damned well the game’s up and we’ve got it on you.”

“I know damned well you _think_ you have.”

“Ah! And would you care to tell the reason I think so?”

“Why certainly ... Pittsburgh.”

There was what you might call an instantaneous pause. The mention of the name of the smoke-draped city apparently struck fire somewhere inside of Mr. McCurran.

“What do _you_ know about Pittsburgh?” he demanded in a lowered voice with anger not entirely excluded from it.

“Sorry to upset you,” murmured Pentecost.

“What do _you_ know about Pittsburgh?” the Inspector repeated.

“Much the same as you,” answered Pentecost.

“Where were you between ten and eleven on the night that Charles Michael Haworth was shot?”

There was no answer, and almost at once the Inspector went on, his voice more menacing: “If you’re not the guilty man, tell me your reason for trying to put over that fake alibi on us—yes, an’ a damned foolish fake at that, when we had you cold in Roxbury the same night?... So? Nothing to say about _that_, eh?”

There was a moment of silence, during which the Inspector managed to subdue any evidences of the fury which the name of the western Pennsylvania city had aroused. Soon he resumed in a voice cold and hard: “We find it to be a rule that a man who is unjustly charged with crime is more than anxious to answer questions and explain his true position. I observe that you have no such desire.”

“Accept my congratulations, Inspector, on having at last discovered the missing exception to your rule.”

“Then you have no explanation to make of that manufactured alibi?”

“None—until the necessity arises.”

“Am I to understand that it hasn’t yet arisen?”

“Such an understanding would be according to fact.”

“In that case we may be able to assist it to do so.” And the Inspector rose and walked away to another part of the room, motioning, as he did so, to have Pentecost taken away.

The patrolman got the usual safety grip on Pentecost’s twisted coat sleeves near the wrists, and took him out at a side door, one of the plain-clothes men slipping out after him, and shortly thereafter he was safely within the portals of the Charles Street jail.

* * * * *

Inspector McCurran stood at a window revolving a few things in his mind—and their revolution failed to please him. This was not from any doubt of their case against Pentecost, for anyone could see they had the murder buckled to him in every conceivable way—including one that hadn’t been put down by the Inspector as conceivable up to this time. But back of the whole thing was some cursed mystery—every now and then they turned up evidence of it. Could there be, after all, anything in the spirit business? Seemed absurd, but, by God! they had some pretty good names to it!—Not in this country—but look at those big ducks in England who were pushing the game!

And there was the man himself—Pentecost—something about him that made one feel a shiver of apprehension. You’d put him down as slippery in some peculiar, slimy sort of way, that would make any grip you could get on him not worth a tinker’s dam.

The Inspector’s mind came round to Pentecost’s careless reference to the city of Pittsburgh. It had nearly lost him his self-control—an unusual happening with Matt McCurran. For this simple geographical allusion meant that the knowledge of certain spiritistic phenomena which had occurred in that town a few nights before, and which the authorities supposed to be successfully suppressed, was now—or soon would be—public property. If this man Pentecost had knowledge of these occurrences, others had as well, and without doubt the papers would get hold of it and there’d be the very devil to pay.

And you may as well know at once that the papers of the following day _did_ get hold of it, and there _was_ the devil to pay—and he was paid, too! Throughout the length, breadth, and thickness of the country, and including as well our friend and near relation across the St. Lawrence, the press dispatches did the Boston Police Department proud in one place, and then, without knowing it, jabbed a knife through it in another.

In every paper the first thing striking the reader’s eye was a sensational write-up of the arrest of Hugo Pentecost as the murderer, in the strange and mysterious Haworth case, and the astonishing detective work accomplished by the Police Department in tracing the (alleged) guilty man by a pair of old boots left in a cabin of a Metropolitan Line steamer, and in puncturing one of the most ingenious fake alibis on record. The dispatches went on to say that Mr. Henry Harker and his son Alfred, of the firm of Harker & Pentecost, had both waived extradition and were on their way to Boston with detectives, and upon arrival would be held as accomplices. The stenographer of the firm, Miss Dugas, who was wanted as a witness, and who might also be implicated in the crime, was voluntarily accompanying the Harkers.

The foregoing, written up fully and triumphantly, was agreeable reading for those connected with the Department; but in the same editions, and nearly always in an adjoining column, was an A. P. dispatch from Pittsburgh which simply tore the insides out of the first one.

It was headed, in every case, with these disastrous lines—or something similar—and in type that came out and smashed a reader right between the eyes:—

SPIRITS SPEAK AGAIN IN HAWORTH CASE

ADVISE MICROSCOPE IN PENTECOST ALIBI

ASTOUNDING CLUES GIVEN

OPERATOR’S LICENSE 2026

BOOTS LEFT ON “NORTH LAND”

Then it got down to plain reading matter, and described a message that had come through at a séance held in Allegheny—now a section of Pittsburgh and popularly referred to as the North Side—five days before, and instantly telephoned to the Boston chief of police, but which, for reasons stated below, had only now been given to the press. The spirit who got “control” of the medium conducting this séance declined to give his name—in fact allowed that he had too many, his life while on earth having been not precisely what it should have been. He merely saw a chance to get even with a cocky screw who’d once—before he (the spirit speaking) had crossed to the higher realms—put the low-down play on him good and plenty; and the only thing he asked was that some one present at the sitting would send word to the Boston police to go after a big pair of boots that was left in a cabin of the steamer _North Land_ on arrival in New York the next morning after the murder; also he’d suggest that they put a microscope on a few other little items of that beautiful alibi. For instance, it wouldn’t do a damn bit of harm to dig up Operator’s License 2026. “Tell the bulls,” he gave out in conclusion, “to take it from me they’ll pull something out of the fire if they go after it!” And with that he was gone.

The A. P. dispatch on this Pittsburgh occurrence closed with a paragraph in brackets explaining the five days’ delay in getting the news. It stated that the spirit message had been telephoned to the Boston police even while the séance was still in progress with the medium under other controls. The Boston Department, for diplomatic reasons, had withheld the news of this message from the Pemberton Street reporters and had also asked the Pittsburgh police to hush the matter up until the clues (if there was anything to it) could be worked out and a clean-up of the guilty parties made before they got warning. Pittsburgh headquarters found that only eleven persons had been present at the séance, and got them all, together with the medium and her assistant or director, before they left the place. These people, appreciating the importance of keeping it quiet in order to bring the criminals to justice, agreed to say nothing of the affair, and for five days no leakage occurred. Then from somewhere (it could not be traced to any of those concerned in the séance) a full account of the whole proceeding had suddenly reached the Associated Press, and of course could no longer be withheld from the public.

“The account of this amazing occurrence in Pittsburgh,” as one of the Boston papers put it in a bracketed “Ed.” note following the A. P. dispatch, “which is quite in keeping with former developments in the Haworth case, can now be published without disturbing the activities of the police, the ‘clean-up’ referred to having been successfully accomplished, as may be noted elsewhere in this issue.”

This Allegheny episode might not have been so bad served up by itself, but coming immediately under or on parallels with the triumphant write-up of the Department’s detective work, showed that the whole thing was done on a tip from the spirit world. You mustn’t understand me as saying—or even intimating—that there wasn’t any good work done by the police detectives. The trouble was that when they got anywhere they were stood on their heads and everything they’d worked up dumped into the discard by one of those ghostly manifestations or whatever they might be.

Anyway, it isn’t an account of marvelous detective work I’m trying to give you, but something which, as I look at it, is vastly more unusual. The papers will give you stuff about “sleuths”—as they call ’em—every day in the week, including Sundays; and if you want to go into the field of fiction you’ll find there’s one born there every minute. But so far as my experience goes, this was the first time people in the next world ever took a hand in the game.

* * * * *

The public interest in the Pentecost trial came near to being the record for this class of diversion. You’d have thought the feeling against him would have been so bitter that they’d have had to fight off the lynchers. But it’s just as well to go easy on predicting how the public is going to behave. Something about the man—it wasn’t beauty or youth or romance—more like hypnotism, perhaps—in conjunction with his ingenious methods of work so far as they had been made known, and also his silence under fire (My God! how the public adores a man who keeps his mouth shut!) got the people with him, notwithstanding the brutal murder that they could now so plainly see was his doing. Much of the sympathy may have resulted from the hopelessness of his case, for they certainly had it all over him. He hadn’t said a word since his arrest, excepting to state mildly—and even then, only when he was asked about it—that he wasn’t guilty. And he sat in the cage quiet and unassuming, never once dropping to the “cheerful act” nor the “bravado act” nor any act whatever, but only sitting there quietly and hearing witness after witness testify to things that were like so many nails in his coffin.

He saw his marvelously laid-out defensive system crumble and melt away before his eyes; his carefully constructed alibi split into a thousand pieces.

They had the chauffeur (Operator’s License 2026) who took him—dripping with water—at about nine o’clock on the night of the murder, from a place near the Soldier’s Monument just north of the Bourne Highway Bridge over the Cape Cod Canal, and who left him, shortly before half-past ten, at the corner of Centre and Greenough Streets, Jamaica Plain. Even the fact of his having walked in a direction away from Torrington Road when he left the car told against him. Of course he did—that’s precisely what a man with criminal intent would do.

The Captain, Purser, and other officers of the _North Land_ were called and testified against him—at least negatively—although they had, up to this time, been the most important bulwarks of the alibi;—Captain Snow now recalling the fact that he hadn’t seen the face of the man on the forward deck whom he took to be Mr. Pentecost, after his ship passed out of the canal, but only his back; and the other officers realizing, when they came to think of it, that they hadn’t seen him on board after the steamer emerged into Buzzards Bay—that is, until he was disembarking at New York the following morning.

The conductor of the midnight express to New York, and the head end trainman who’d had such difficulty in arousing him from apparent sleep in the morning and getting him off at the Grand Central, were put on the stand and told of his being on their train the night of the murder; men from the New York Central’s railroad pier next south of the _North Land’s_ berth, testified to having seen the rowboat come up under the steamer’s stern as she docked in New York the morning after the shooting, and put a man aboard her by a rope ladder; a man and his wife from Buzzards Bay village, who’d been waiting on the highway bridge over the canal for the “draw” to close at the time the _North Land_ passed through, on the night of the crime, testified to seeing a man in the semidarkness come up from the low flats at the west of the bridge approach, and climb into a car near the Soldier’s Monument, though they couldn’t swear, owing to the darkness, to its being the accused; these things, and scores of others not less important, put Pentecost in the position of having faked an alibi by boarding the steamer in Boston, going overboard from her during her passage through the canal, returning thence to Roxbury by hired automobile, proceeding to the rear of the Cripps mansion a few minutes before the shots were fired, and within half an hour after the murder, staggering, disguised as a drunken laborer, into the North Station, and there taking the 11:50 express for New York, finally getting aboard the steamer again from a rowboat the moment she tied up to her dock.

Although no witness to his actually entering the house or to his being in it at the time the deed was done, could be found, there was surely sufficient evidence to convict him without it. At the same time the District Attorney would have given a great deal to be able to cover those points.

Pentecost’s senior counsel, Harvey Brookfield, had little to offer in rebuttal, but he was a crack shot when the witnesses were turned over to him, and many of them were raked raw by the cross fire. His request that the head end trainman explain his remembering, for such a long time, what kind of boots a stranger on his train had worn, brought the reply: “Because every time I went through the car I had to shove ’em off the seat in front of him—they was muddy an’ I didn’t want him fouling up the seat.”

“Very thoughtful of you, too! But you testified a few minutes ago, that this man whose boots you noticed, was seated at the extreme forward end of the car. Didn’t you say that?”

“Why, I said—I—I——”

“Certainly you did! I can have the stenographer read it to you if you’ve forgotten.—Now I ask you to explain to the Court and the Jury how this man—if he was, as you stated that he was, sitting at the extreme forward end of the car, could put his feet on the seat in front of him? How could there _be_ a seat in front of him if he was in the very first seat? Now just tell us that—in your own language.”

“Well, he—he was up there at that end—it might ’a’ been one seat more or less from the end—I didn’t notice. He was——”

“_Ah_—you didn’t notice!” broke in Brookfield, springing on him like a cat. “That explains it! You didn’t notice! You told us that he was at the extreme end, but you didn’t notice. Now you tell us about his boots—perhaps you didn’t notice in that case, either! A man’s life may depend on it—but you didn’t notice! You’ve rendered your testimony before this court ridiculous by making a man put his feet on a seat that wasn’t there!” And so on. But while this sort of thing might tear a witness to pieces, it couldn’t, to any extent, weaken the prosecution’s case.

In discussing the situation with Mr. Pentecost at the Charles Street jail after one of the worst days in court, Mr. Brookfield declared that there was nothing for it but to fall back on insanity as a plea. But Pentecost wouldn’t hear of it.

“What’s the idea, then? I don’t need to tell you they’re piling it up on us pretty thick.”

“They haven’t got me in the house yet. Keep jabbing on that till you draw blood.”

“It won’t acquit you!”

“No matter—go to it.”

And Brookfield went to it.

It may surprise you to hear of an Attorney taking orders as to the conduct of a case from his client—especially when said client was so evidently a criminal of the most desperate character. But the explanation is simple in the extreme. Pentecost owned Brookfield through having bought and paid for him, and was virtually conducting the case himself.

* * * * *

While the Pentecost trial, owing to its extraordinary developments, had held the interest of the country at large and kept the eastern section of Massachusetts in something like a ferment of astonishment and curiosity, it was toward the latter part of it that things really began to happen.

When the testimony was all in and Mr. Brookfield was about to go on with his summing up, a message was brought into the court room and handed to the District Attorney. After a glance at it he was instantly on his feet, asking to be allowed to bring in another witness whose presence in court had hitherto been impossible, and whose testimony was of the utmost importance in its bearing on the case.

Brookfield, of course, objected, but was overruled, and an old woman, bent and rheumatic, was brought into the court room and assisted between the rows of spectators, past the jurors, and into the witness box. As she turned and faced the onlookers, and it was seen that Mrs. Temple had consented to take the stand for the prosecution, a composite sound of gasps, subdued exclamations, and quick whisperings issued from the audience. Many had seen her when she testified in the trial of James Dreek, and there was hardly one who hadn’t read in the newspapers that the old woman knew everything about the murder—had, indeed, actually witnessed it—yet couldn’t be persuaded to say a word excepting to testify to as much as would clear the young butler of guilt. That was for the Defense in the case of James Dreek—now the Prosecution in the case of Pentecost, had her!

After the first surprise, all eyes shifted across to the prisoner’s cage to see what effect this fearful menace—for that’s what it was—had on Hugo Pentecost. But so far as could be seen it hadn’t any. The man was sitting precisely as before, expressionless, waiting.

While Mrs. Temple was being sworn and the formal questioning gone through, a Court Messenger entered, and threading his way between the tables, handed a written communication to Chief Inspector McCurran, who was seated at the Attorneys’ table, and who arose at once and left the court room, followed by the messenger. Few noticed this, for the attention of the spectators appeared to be divided between the old woman on the witness stand and the accused in the prisoners’ cage, whose death sentence—or what amounted to that—the former was surely about to pronounce.

When the preliminaries were finished, District Attorney McVeigh in—for him—an incredibly soft voice and gentle manner, led the old woman to describe Mr. Pentecost’s behavior while on his several visits to the Cripps mansion before the commission of the crime,—her suspicions regarding his intentions; the attempts she made to warn Mr. Haworth of the danger of dealing with such a man; and following that, her exclusion from the house—and thereafter her efforts to keep watch from the outside. From this she was tactfully brought to the events of that last evening,—the closing of the blinds to the front window; the coming home of Mr. Haworth followed by Augustus Findlay; her attempts to see in at the side windows but the darkness within preventing; her unsuccessful efforts to enter the house at the rear, and then the sudden brilliant light in the room so that she was able to look in through the narrow slits below the roller shades; her seeing Mr. Haworth reading at the table and then filling and lighting his pipe; her hurrying to the other window and seeing a man at the back of the room whose face was covered (except for the eyes) with a cloth or bandage and whose clothing was wet and draggled, pointing some dark object at Mr. Haworth from behind; her turning to run back to the window which was nearer to Mr. Haworth so that she could warn him, and as she did so seeing James Dreek going along the path with a ladder; her attempt to call out to Mr. Haworth; then the shots and his collapse to the floor, and she herself so overcome that she sank down beside the window; her recovering and trying again to get into the house at the rear, and finally succeeding in doing so.

“How did you get in, Mrs. Temple?” the District Attorney asked.

“Through the basement door.”

“But wasn’t that door locked when you tried it before?”

“Yes—but it warn’t locked this time.”

“How long do you suppose this was after you heard the shots and saw Mr. Haworth sink to the floor?”

“It must a’ been some few minutes, fur I wasn’t able to git up very quick from where I’d sunk down.”

“And when you got into the house what did you do?”

“I hurried to him as quick as I could.”

“Do you mean Mr. Haworth?”

There was a pause before she spoke. “Yes,” she said in a lower voice, with eyes seeking the floor. “You might ’a’ known that, I should think.”

“I did know it Mrs. Temple, but it’s important to have others know it too. Now tell me this—if you can: did it take you long to get to him—after you succeeded in entering the house I mean? The time is important. Very likely you were detained by the house being dark?”

“No, I was used to it.”

“It was very dark, was it?”

“There warn’t no light at all—somebody must ’a’ shut it off while I was hurryin’ back to get in. But I got to the stairs easy enough and up into the kitchen; an’ then groped along through the butler’s pantry an’ opened the door of the front room where—where he was.”

“I see. And when you opened that door, Mrs. Temple, could you see anything in the room?”

“Yes, I could.”

“But I understood you to say that the house was entirely dark?”

“It was. But when I pushed open the swingin’ door o’ that room there was a faint light shinin’ on Mr. Haworth’s face as he lay there on the floor, an’ I could see from its not stayin’ still that somebody must be holdin’ it. Then I could make out the figger of a man—the one that had the light in his hand—an’ he was bendin’ over lookin’ at the body, an’ he hadn’t taken no notice o’ my comin’ in. At first I didn’t know anything at all, but the minute I come to my senses I started to run an’ git a holt of him; but just then the light he had in his hand must ’a’ slipped some way so’st the beam of it struck right across his face, an’ he didn’t have no cloth tied around it that time, so I could see who it was.”

The quiet in the room was intense. Every person there might have been a wax figure.

“Mrs. Temple, who was that man?”

“It was him there—the one you’re tryin’.”

“Can you give the Court his name?”

“The one he went by was Pentecost.”

“Was there light enough to see him distinctly?”

“There was plenty for me.”

“Did you have any other means of identification?”

“What sir?”

“Was there anything else you’d know him by—hair, clothes, shoes, hands, teeth—anything at all?”

“Oh!—Well, you see the second after the light struck across his face it went out an’ I couldn’t see nothin’ at all. But I heered his voice plain enough if that’s any good to ye.”

“It certainly is, Mrs. Temple. What was he saying?”

“He was shoutin’ out not to touch anythin’—that everythin’ had got to be left like it was in the name o’ the law, or somethin’ like that.”

“And the voice you heard shouting those things—did you recognize it?”

“Yes sir.”

“Whose voice was it?”

“His—that man there.” (With a motion toward Pentecost.)

“Do you mean the accused—in the prisoners’ cage?”

“That’s who I mean.”

“Had you heard his voice before?”

“Yes—I had.”

“When?”

“He’d spoke to me a number o’ times, an’ then I heered him a-talkin’ to Mr. Haworth quite frequent.”

“What did you do then, Mrs. Temple?”

“I run toward where I’d seen him an’ felt all around there—but he’d gone. An’ then—I—I don’t know.... I must ’a’ sunk down there where—where he was.”

“You mean Mr. Haworth?”

She nodded her head a little, as it slowly bowed down, hiding her face from view.

Mr. McVeigh waited a moment so that the Jury might get the full effect of the old woman’s grief, and then indicated to Mr. Brookfield that he could take the witness.

But it so happened that Mr. Brookfield had caught a signal from Pentecost, as previously arranged.

“I don’t care to examine, Your Honor,” he said.

* * * * *

Shortly after this, Mr. Brookfield was seen to be addressing the Court, but in so low a tone that few were able to hear him. For this reason a sensation was created when the prison guards took Pentecost from the cage and conducted him to the witness stand.

After the preliminaries there was a pause—whether intentionally so or not, a most dramatic one. Brookfield on his feet ready to question, yet stopping silent before the accused. Pentecost standing motionless as marble in the witness box—the court officer at his side. Reporters at the press table, pencils poised, eyes fixed on Pentecost’s face, ready to catch and record his slightest change of expression. Every man on the Jury regarding him with strained attention. The Judge himself unusually interested. Stillness of death in the court room.

Brookfield began in a low voice, speaking slowly and distinctly.

“Mr. Pentecost, you have heard the testimony given before this Court by Mrs. Amelia Temple?”

“Yes.”

“Have you anything to say regarding it?”

“Yes.” (A pause.) “It’s the truth.”

“All of it?”

“All that concerns me.”

“What can you say as to the rest of the testimony submitted before this Court?”

“The same.”

“By that do you mean that all of it is true as to fact?”

“I do.”

“Now as to this testimony that has been given here, and which you have stated is the truth—can you say that the inferences which would naturally be drawn from it are the correct ones?”

“I cannot.”

“Why?”

“Because they make it appear that I have committed a murder.”

“How does it happen, if they are statements of fact, that they are misleading as to such a conclusion?”

“They describe only a part of my movements and behavior, omitting what would lead to the correct conclusion.”

“Do you claim that these omissions were purposely made?”

Mr. Pentecost shook his head slightly.

“The witnesses,” he said in a low voice, “were doubtless unaware of them.”

“Will you—if it pleases the Court—make a brief statement outlining these omitted facts.”

Mr. Pentecost waited a moment, and then, as the Court made no objection thereto, began to speak in a subdued voice, faintly suggestive of hopelessness.

“I have no witnesses,” he said, “except those who have testified against me. But there are circumstances bearing on my actions which none of these witnesses could have known; and while their consideration by this Court is most vital to me, I have only my unsupported word to offer, and feel that such consideration will almost certainly be denied me. So I will refer to these things as briefly as possible and with little hope. Let me speak first of my getting off the steamer at Buzzards Bay, as that seems the most misleading thing against me. It is true I did this, but not for the purpose of committing the crime with which I am charged. Such an inference, indeed, is quite the reverse of the correct one, for I came back to Boston that night hoping to save Mr. Haworth from some calamity that I feared was about to overtake him—and which, in fact, did so before I could prevent it.

“My association with the young man during the time I was negotiating the purchase of one of his inventions, had awakened in me a most unusual interest. His quiet and almost childlike sincerity, his trustfulness and simplicity, appealed to me in a way that I cannot describe. I am alone, with no family of—of any kind, and the experience of suddenly being deeply interested in a person was something new to me.

“The last day of the negotiations—which was at the end of a fourteen-day option he’d given us—everything was concluded and we paid over to Mr. Haworth a large sum of money. It was in bills—for he’d asked to have it that way. As we were making this payment it suddenly occurred to me that this trustful and helpless young fellow might get into trouble with it, for in these days there are crackerjacks looking for money who can smell it in a house, just passing by in the street. It was a lonely place where he lived and didn’t look good to me, so I cautioned him about it. But he smiled at me—one of his rare smiles that seemed to sink right into you—and said he knew a safe place for it; and anyway he’d have it there only till the next day.

“The three of us—my partner, his son, and myself—took the steamer for New York that same afternoon, and I tried to get my anxiety about the young man off my mind. But instead of going off it increased, and by the time we were well out in the Bay it was like one of these premonitions you read about. I did everything to rid myself of this feeling—talked with the officers, ordered dinner, walked in the wind on the top deck—but it was no use, and by seven o’clock I realized that something had to be done.

“The steamer was due at the canal in about an hour, and I remembered they had to slow down to half speed or less for the passage through. So I got young Harker to make inquiries in a sort of casual way, as if it was only from curiosity on his part, as to whether they’d stop at some place along the canal if a person wanted to get off. If they said no, I told him to throw out feelers to see if money would do it. But there was no use—the thing was impossible.

“By this time I was in a—a most trying nervous condition. Suddenly I realized that, without even thinking about it, I’d made up my mind to jump off the steamer while she was in the canal and in some way get back to Roxbury. I did this as the boat was passing the village of Buzzards Bay. It was quite dark at the time, and I waited till the steamer had passed through the Bourne Highway Bridge, as I knew the passengers would be watching the great draw come down into place, and even if the lights along the canal hit me, no one would be looking.

“After I got out of the swirl a few strokes brought me to shore. It was a sort of low flat along there, and I got across it and up on to the road embankment that is the north approach to the bridge. There wasn’t any garage in sight and in a sort of desperation I stopped a car coming up toward the bridge and asked where the nearest one was. The man inside asked me what was wrong, for I was soaking wet, and I told him it was a matter of life and death for me to get to Boston. He said he’d just come down from there and was only a quarter of a mile from his destination, so I could take the car he had (it was a hired one) if the chauffeur wanted to do it, and he’d go on foot the rest of the way. I suppose my dripping clothes made an impression. I fixed the chauffeur all right with a couple of watersoaked ten-dollar bills, telling him I’d double it if he did the trip under eighty minutes. And I want to say that everything this man has testified to is the truth, for he couldn’t possibly have known who I was, how I got to Buzzards Bay, or where I was going in Boston. I’d be sorry indeed to get this innocent man into trouble.

“My reason for leaving the car at some distance from the house on Torrington Road was not because I planned to commit a murder—as the Prosecution would have it translated, but only that I wanted to approach the place with the utmost caution. Robbers or safe smashers would have their lookouts posted, and it was up to me to get at the inside operators before they had warning.

“I crawled in at the gate and worked along behind shrubbery. But I hadn’t got halfway to the house when I made out the dim forms of two men moving about. This was a tremendous relief, for I took them for the lookouts, and their being there showed I was in time: if the job was done they’d be gone. So I slid in among the bushes and crawled around to the rear of the house.

“The two doors at the back were locked, but I happened to think of the basement door, and on trying, found it was open.

“Luckily for me, my pocket flashlight still worked, and with it I was able to run through the dark basement and up the stairs, across the kitchen (which was also dark) and through the butler’s pantry. I bunted open the swing door and ran into the long room where we’d been sitting that same afternoon, but for a moment couldn’t see anything at all, there was such a strong light on. It dazzled me, and I suppose I must have stood with my electric torch pointing toward Mr. Haworth, as the last witness testified. I really have no idea which way it was pointing as I stood there blinded by the glare and trying to see. In a moment I made out Mr. Haworth standing near the table in the middle of the room lighting his pipe, and instantly started toward him, calling out his name. But just as I did so two gunshots blazed out from somewhere quite near—though I couldn’t say exactly where—and the poor fellow went down. I got to him just as the lights went out, but as my pocket light was still on I was able to see him, and I found he was dead.

“While I was there on the floor by his side I heard a sound from the butler’s pantry, and instantly got to my feet. My light was still on, but I switched it off after some little difficulty with it, and shouting out that nobody must touch anything—for I had the feeling there were people about and I knew the police would want everything left as it was—I hurried out of the house by the way I’d come in. As I got out into the air it began to dawn on me what trouble I’d be in if anyone saw me there and they couldn’t find the man who’d committed the crime. My only safety lay in getting out of Boston without being recognized, for if my presence there was known it would lead to their finding out that I’d jumped off the steamer, and that would put me in a terrible position—always supposing they couldn’t find the guilty man.

“I got around into Boston by way of Brookline, and in a poorly lighted side street I ran across a tough-looking bum wearing old and grimy clothing and carrying a considerable load of alcohol. I struck a bargain with him, and we exchanged clothes in an unlighted alley among factories closed for the night. He understood in a bleary way, that I’d fallen in the water and wanted a dry outfit, which, of course, was the truth—so far as it went.

“While I was hurriedly disguising myself in this way it suddenly came to me that my absence, when the passengers disembarked from the steamer _North Land_ in New York, could hardly fail to be noticed. They’d have to file between the two ticket takers at the gangway, and pass down the gangplank under the watchful eyes of the ship’s officers—several of whom I’d come to know quite well. Harker and his son, leaving the steamer without me, would be more than likely to cause comment.

“It was then that I happened to think of the night expresses, which hadn’t left Boston yet and were due in New York two hours or more before the arrival time of the steamer. Why couldn’t I go back on one of them and manage, without being seen, to slip aboard the _North Land_ from a rowboat the minute she docked? If I was seen doing this it would look bad, but no worse than if I wasn’t on the steamer at all. This way I had a chance—and as the testimony given here has shown, I took it.

“I appreciate the forbearance of the Court in permitting this extended recital—made, I confess, in the face of a realization that it cannot save me. But perhaps some time, long after this crowning error in the rather extended series of police blunders has been committed, the fact that it _was an error_ may come to light—and——”

No more could be heard, for Mr. McVeigh was on his feet shouting objections. “I object, Your Honor, and I ask that the reference made by the accused to the police of this city be stricken from the record and the Jury instructed to disregard it!”

The Judge spoke in a voice that seemed especially low, coming after the District Attorney’s vociferous demands.

“That may be stricken out,” he said.

“Will the Court permit me to apologize?” Pentecost asked almost in a whisper and with evident contrition.

“What’s the sense of that?” snapped McVeigh. “It’s off the record—that’s all I want!”

But a man face to face with a death sentence is usually permitted some latitude, and the Judge indicated by a slight motion of the head that he could do so.

“Permit me then, Your Honor, to say that I regret having made use of the expressions I did, and certainly would not have done so had I been aware how sensitive the District Attorney is to the mere mention of the little spiritistic frolics with the Police Department that have recently taken place.”

Pentecost had finally got in a reference to the mediumistic phenomena which had played so amazing a part in the case—something he had been playing for a chance to do since taking the stand. This man’s statement before the court that was trying him was undoubtedly one of the most adroit pieces of pure and unadulterated chicane that he’d ever attempted—at any rate in that line. To fit an innocent and sympathetic tale like that to the multitude of incriminating facts established by the testimony against him;—to bring it out with just the pathetic hopelessness, exactly the sincerity and precisely the manner and inflection which would make every point tell and thus inspire confidence and pity, was something near to marvelous.

He knew well enough that it would do him no good in court, but he knew, too, that it would do him enormous good where he wanted it. The statement made little short of a sensation, and not alone with those who heard it, but with the millions who read it in the newspapers. To most people, of course, it seemed to explain everything. What if Pentecost couldn’t prove it? Let the Prosecution _disprove_ it—that was the thing! How noble of him to say that the State’s witnesses told the truth—and then show exactly how it _was_! Etcetera,—etcetera.

In court, as I’ve indicated, it was another matter. The only thing Mr. Brookfield (for the Defense) could do, was to review the contradictions in which he’d skillfully entangled many of the witnesses for the prosecution, and end with an eloquent plea for the credibility of the Pentecost statement which agreed with the testimony given before the court at every point, and to challenge anyone, in court or out to find a flaw in it.

The District Attorney, of course, tore it all to pieces. He had declined to cross-examine the accused “after such a ridiculous and flimsy tale,” and took care of it in his summing up. The fact is—but no one was aware of it at the time—he had a decided disinclination to give the accused any further chances with the Jury.