Boston a novel
regardless of whether some of their Italian friends may have taken the
stand and made false alibis for them.”
“Why should innocent people have to be defended by perjury, Mrs.
Thornwell?”
“For only one reason that I know, Governor--that they know positively
the other side is preparing a perjured case against them. We have
established that, but we have never had any judgment upon it, except
that of Judge Thayer.”
One of the lawyers here considered it advisable to justify the high
fees which the Governor was paying him out of his private purse to
sit day by day and listen to these wrangles. “Mrs. Thornwell,” he
interposed, “you overlook the fact that the Supreme Judicial Court has
passed upon Judge Thayer’s rulings. As good citizens, we must have some
belief in the competence and disinterestedness of our highest court.”
Cornelia turned her brown eyes upon him. These eyes had somehow lost
their softness, and had a sparkle that might be malice. “Are you going
to advance that doctrine in your new brief on the Jerry Walker case?”
“My God!” thought the legal gentleman, and it took all his blue-blood
inheritance and Harvard training to keep his annoyance from showing
on his face. He relapsed into dignified silence, and pretended not to
see the look of mischief which his enemy Henry Cabot Winters shot at
him. Truly a comical situation: This gentleman, who was counsel for the
Governor in the Sacco-Vanzetti case, also was one of the counsel for
Jerry Walker, and was on the point of filing before the Supreme Court
of the United States an application for a writ of certiorari, to take
that case away from the highest court of Massachusetts and reverse its
decision. In that application the lawyer and his associates were going
to make the most outrageous charges--implying that the Supreme Judicial
Court of Massachusetts had become a “house of refuge for the rich and
powerful,” and declaring flatly that the judgment of the Full Court
was “made in bad faith,” and that “there is nothing more odious than
judicial favoritism,” which in this case had been “exercised in favor
of bankers.” A marvelous thing, that flexibility of the legal mind,
which can hold two diametrically opposite opinions at the same time;
sorting out truth and error into two baskets, as it were, and carrying
both to market, one in the right hand and one in the left!
XV
But it didn’t do Cornelia a bit of good to score points like that; it
only made these gentlemen hate her. She must swallow her indignation,
and come back to beg for mercy. “Remember, Governor, you must be
_sure_. You are doing something that can never be undone. There is an
old saying--I don’t know who is the author--that ‘only an infallible
judge should pass an immutable sentence.’”
“Do you know that those men are innocent, Mrs. Thornwell?”
“Of course I don’t know that; how could I know it--unless I had been
with them at the time? But I have been studying the case for seven
years, and I believe that they are innocent, and certainly I know
this--that they have not been proved guilty. I know all that I need to
know--that they did not have a fair trial.”
“Well,” said the Governor, “I know that they are guilty, so I don’t
care whether they had a fair trial or not.”
Cornelia stared at him; she was so taken aback by the remark that she
could hardly believe she had heard it. “You know they are guilty,
Governor Fuller?”
“I know it.”
“But how can you know it, unless there was a fair trial--somewhere,
somehow--to establish it?”
“I have sources of information, Mrs. Thornwell, which I am not at
liberty to reveal. You should find out what the Italian colony thinks
about this case.”
“Governor, what are you saying? Some one has come and whispered into
your ear, and you have been willing to believe it!”
“You cannot expect witnesses to tell all they know in the face of such
peril as has been created in this community, Mrs. Thornwell.”
“So then, it is exactly as Vanzetti said to me--for weeks he has been
saying it: ‘We are being murdered by the whispers of unknown men!’
Boston has gone back to the days of Russia under the tsars, of Turkey
under the sultans, of China under the mandarins! Spies come and whisper
secrets, and our rulers execute men upon words which they cannot or
dare not produce in open court!”
One of the lawyers thought he had better justify his fees again.
“Surely it is not quite so bad as that, Mrs. Thornwell--”
“It is so bad that it cannot be worse! And I implore you, Governor
Fuller--consider, before you take this fatal step, which will blast the
rest of your life! You are executing men upon secret testimony--but I
tell you, the world will insist upon knowing what that testimony is!
History will never let you alone until you tell what it is! And when
mankind has learned that it was the whispers of spies--the gossip of
what you are pleased to call ‘the Italian colony’--then you will face
such a blast of indignation as no man can face and live!”
After that they did not want to listen to her any more. After that
she was a distracted old woman who had fallen under the influence of
sinister “Reds,” and lost entirely her mental balance. All they desired
was to keep her from wasting the time of a busy and important public
man. They would be polite, of course--even in Russia and Turkey and
China the high officials were doubtless polite to old ladies of the
ruling caste. “Glad to have seen you again, Mrs. Thornwell. I will give
my best consideration to what you have said.” So Cornelia made her way
out through the crowds, with tears in her eyes for all the newspapermen
to see and report.
“Henry,” she asked, when they had got by themselves, “what can those
whispers be?”
Said the lawyer, “There’s a man in that State House crowd who will talk
with me, and I’ll see if I can find out.”
XVI
Michael Angelo Musmanno was in Washington, haunting the empty chambers
of the United States Supreme Court. The justices were on vacation,
but he lodged in the office of the clerk the two appeals from the
Massachusetts courts. He entered the formal appearance of Hill and
himself, paid the docketing fees, and the only thing remaining to
perfect the appeals was the record of the case, which the clerk of the
Dedham court had promised to send but which had not yet arrived. This
was later secured, and duly filed.
But this procedure did not of itself postpone the execution, and Monday
midnight was the hour set. Would any judge order a stay of execution?
The lawyers were rushing to this one and that; it was a free-lance
matter now, every man for himself--but still they found time to form
opinions of one another. The Boston lawyers thought they knew Boston;
they were conservative, and did things in a dignified manner, and held
newspaper reporters off at the end of a ten-foot pole. The New Yorkers,
on the other hand, were radicals, fighting in the open, and welcoming
the reporters as allies. They accused the Boston crowd of being jealous
about the case--“acting like a bunch of prima donnas!” said one.
Also among the committee, the frantic last-hour antagonisms between
those who wanted to save Sacco and Vanzetti as human beings, and
those who wanted to make them into symbols of the class war. Hardly
a telegram could be sent, or a statement given to the press, that
did not involve the controversy. The differences of ideas had become
embodied in personal antagonisms. The communists were collecting
sums of money for the defense, and the committee charged that this
money was not coming to them, but was being used for communist
propaganda. The communists replied with charges that the committee was
wasting its funds upon high fees to capitalist lawyers. Charges and
counter-charges--to the great glee of the enemy. The whispering gallery
which was the State House buzzed and hummed with gossip. The spies came
running, and the Governor’s advisers were on tip-toe. “What are they
doing now? What do they say about this? About that?”
The “New York nuts” organized another “death march.” This time it was
led by Captain Paxton Hibben, diplomat, war correspondent, and army
officer; dapper, erect, and with sharp little military mustaches. He
knew all about marches and parades, of course, and Boston knew him
because the _Transcript_ had slandered him and then had to retract and
apologize. Hibben was a Harvard master of arts, and with him came Dos
Passos and Hapgood, bachelors of arts, and therefore subordinates; also
James Rorty, the poet; and Clarina Michelson, from Greenwich Village,
a tireless soul who did the hard work; and several humble wage-earners
with names never heard before on Beacon Street. They marched their
allotted time--one-two-three-four-five-six-seven--with a captain of
police holding a watch on them; then they were led off under escort,
with the crowd hooting, and a few cheering.
At the corner of Joy Street, Captain Hibben, being in advance,
commanded, sharply, “Files right!” The huge police sergeant who had
him in charge looked at him, and said, “Were you in the service?” The
answer was, “I was a captain in the 332nd Field Artillery in France.”
“Well, Captain,” said the sergeant, “this is a strange place for you to
be!” “If you knew as much about Boston as I do, you would be with me,”
said Hibben; and in the old Joy Street police station, so oddly named,
they had a chat. Hibben had more than one man’s share of adventures to
tell; he had been second secretary in the American legation in old St.
Petersburg, he had been a war correspondent in the Near East in the
early days of the war, and secretary of the Russian Red Cross for the
Bolsheviks; a Chevalier of the Order of St. Stanislaus (Russian), an
Officer of the Order of the Redeemer (Greek), and of the Order of the
Sacred Treasure (Japan). “Holy smoke!” said the police sergeant; and on
Monday morning in court he was wholly unable to remember that he had
seen this starred and beribboned diplomat on the picket-line, and so
Hibben was discharged. The sergeant meant it for a favor, but it was a
cause of vexation to the prisoner, who had prepared a ringing statement
to read in court--and now it was a dud!
XVII
The three condemned men--Madeiros always with them!--had been moved
back into the death-house; into the three little cells with clean,
smooth white-tiled floors, and doors that were never opened--no guard
ever entered and no prisoner ever came out, except to die. Six feet
in front of the cells ran a painted line, beyond which no visitor was
permitted to step; at least, it had never yet happened in the history
of Massachusetts, which lives by precedent.
But now Luigia Vanzetti arrived in Boston, followed by a stream of
reporters, eager to make the most of this human interest story--“sob
stuff” is the technical name. A frail, pathetic woman, weighing not
more than a hundred pounds, and looking for all the world like a New
England school teacher--she was coming to the prison to meet her
brother, whom she had not seen since he was a youth. She had come all
the way from Villafalletto to help him die, and naturally she would
wish to step over the painted line and clasp him in her arms. To obtain
this favor all the eloquence of the ladies of the Sacco-Vanzetti
defense was concentrated upon Warden Hendry. They came to his office
and wept, and prayed, and stormed and scolded, until at last the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts broke a precedent, for the first time in
its three hundred years of history.
Bart was led out from his cell, and allowed to sit in a chair on the
other side of the painted line. The warden himself brought Luigia, and
two guards stood by to see that she did not give the condemned man any
poison, or a revolver, or an Italian stiletto. They tottered into each