Boston a novel
of Italian anarchists that I have observed, they can go on insisting
that black is white longer than any other human beings I have ever
seen. But somehow it has got to be put across to them that they can’t
go before a Yankee jury with those stories--it will be throwing away
their lives.”
“What stories, Mr. Swenson?”
“Well, the one about what they did on the night they were arrested. I
can’t get a single one of those fellows to admit to me that they were
in front of the Johnson place that night; yet it’s a physical fact that
any jury will see--there’s a swampy meadow on both sides of the road,
and no other way for Sacco and Vanzetti to have got from the place
where they admit they got off the street-car to the place where they
got on again. If we’re going to save them, we’ve simply got to make a
story that a jury will believe.”
There was a pause; Lee Swenson got up and went to the door that led
into the dining-room, and opened it, to make sure the Negro maid was
not listening. Then he came back, and when he spoke again, it was in a
lower voice. “Mrs. Thornwell, I know enough about Boston to understand
that you will be startled to hear me discuss the ‘making’ of stories to
be presented to a jury.”
“You use what I might call an optimistic phrase, Mr. Swenson.”
“Every professional man does that when he deals with the shady parts of
his job. You may know that when the fashionable ladies go to a surgeon
for an abortion, he refers to it as a ‘curettage’.”
“I have three daughters,” said Cornelia, placidly. “But I thought that
in this case, if we are dealing with men who are innocent--”
“You thought we might trust to the truth?”
“I admit I was that naïve.”
“Well, Mrs. Thornwell, I can only tell you--in my experience with labor
frame-ups in a dozen states, I have always found it necessary to fight
the devil with his own fire.”
VIII
Cornelia’s little round face wore an anxious look, and her soft brown
eyes were wide open, staring at the man in front of her. She saw a big,
rough-hewn face, marked by small-pox; with a lower jaw which had a way
of thrusting itself up, making a deep crease on each side of the mouth.
The eyes were set under shaggy yellow brows--in short it was the face
of a fighting man, no product of a Back Bay drawing-room.
But somehow Lee Swenson had learned how people felt in
drawing-rooms--possibly from Henry James, whom he read incessantly.
“You are saying to yourself that I grew up in the wild and woolly west,
Mrs. Thornwell, and things are different in Massachusetts. But I assure
you it is one system, from Maine to California, when some radical is
accused of violence in the class struggle. The authorities are sure the
man is guilty, if not of this crime, then of others just as bad, and so
to ‘make’ a case against him is a worthy work. When a class-war trial
begins, you will see on the stand police officers who know that it is
part of their job to swear to whatever the chief tells them; and maybe
an ex-convict, who knows that the prosecution has something on him, and
testifies as a condition of getting off; and a prostitute, who carries
on her ancient profession at the discretion of the police. In this case
there will be workers from that shoe factory, semi-morons, incapable
of knowing the difference between right and wrong, but knowing what
a reward is, and having rehearsed a lesson until they can say it in
their sleep. It will be simple and easy--‘Yes, I saw the bandits, I saw
them shoot, I am positive these are the men.’ These witnesses will sit
with Sacco and Vanzetti in front of them, and when they are asked to
describe the bandits, they will describe the men in front of them, and
what could be more convincing?”
“I attended the Plymouth trial,” said Cornelia. “I was shocked by its
unfairness, but I hated to believe it was a deliberate frame-up.”
Said Lee Swenson: “My knowledge of your Massachusetts procedure was got
at the Ettor-Giovannitti trial, seven years ago, as perfect a frame-up
as ever came under my eyes. The men were no more guilty of murder than
I was; every particle of the testimony was ‘made,’ and the whole case
prepared and the indictments drawn up by lawyers of great corporations.
The victims were Italians, I.W.W. leaders, efficient and dangerous--the
more so because one of them was a fine poet. And how did we save their
lives, Mrs. Thornwell? Was it by trusting to the truth? As a matter of
fact, we had seventeen eye-witnesses to the shooting of Anna Lo Pizzo,
and they absolutely insisted that it was done by a police officer, and
they identified the officer; but because they were all Italians, and
there were so many of them, we didn’t dare use their story, for fear
the jury would think it was a frame-up! That’s how far the truth gets
you in Massachusetts!”
Lee Swenson waited for Cornelia’s comment; but what could she say?
“Some day,” continued the lawyer, “I’ll tell you the inside of that
story--as weird a tangle of plot and counterplot as you could want for
a crime-romance. The district attorney was carrying on a political
fight against William M. Wood, the head of the woolen trust, and so
we were able to get hold of the checks which Wood had paid to have
dynamite planted, in a frame-up against the union leaders. With that
evidence in hand we practically blackmailed the executives of the
woolen mills, and made them take the stand, one after another, and
testify that the speeches of the strike leaders had been opposed to
violence. I could name several laws of your great Commonwealth we broke
in putting that job across--and if we hadn’t done it, the world would
never have read ‘Arrows in the Gale,’ by Arturo Giovannitti.”
Cornelia sat staring before her, pondering this strange moral dilemma.
At last she said, “I have always been taught, Mr. Swenson, that one
gets a certain moral backing from telling the truth.”
“I know--I also have read Emerson; but how would it work in our courts
of law? Consider Vanzetti’s trial in Plymouth. There was an alibi,
as good as any one could want. The crime occurred on the day before
Christmas, and everybody had something to remember--the eels. Did you
accept that alibi?”
“I was absolutely convinced by it. I have been all over North Plymouth
with Trando, and he showed me the places; every spot is alive to him
with the memory of Bart, whom he adored. The things jump out of the
child, in a way that couldn’t happen if he had had to learn them. He
will interrupt a talk, ‘There is one of the houses where I took the
eels, and Bart was across the street, and I had to go for change.’ He
will say, ‘Under that tree he dismissed me, and gave me fifty cents for
the work.’ If you knew those simple, kindly people, Mr. Swenson, you
couldn’t doubt their story.”
“All right--but where does that leave your argument? You trusted to
the truth with that Plymouth jury--and it got you nowhere! No, Mrs.
Thornwell, we must fight the prosecution with its own weapons. We have
to do the reverse of what they have done--convince ourselves that the
boys are innocent, and that whatever we do to get them off is a worthy
work. And then take a joy in the performance--learn to build a good
alibi with the same pleasure that a novelist gets from constructing a
detective story, with every detail fitting precisely, and contributing
to the final result--an acquittal, and a booming reputation as a lawyer
who has never lost a client.”
“Is that really what you want me to believe about your profession, Mr.
Swenson?”
“In strict confidence, you understand, Mrs. Thornwell!”
“Oh, of course.”
“I want you to believe there is no other way to be a successful
criminal lawyer in America; I have never heard of any man who has done
it, and I do not believe it can be done. That is the game, and you
either play it, or you play some other game.”
“It sounds as if it would be hard on the nerves.”
“This is America, and you know our motto, ‘It’s a great life if you
don’t weaken.’ You play for high stakes, and every time it is ‘doubles
or quits,’ if you understand the slang of the gambler. Win the big case
and you’re on top of the heap; lose it, and you’re a dead one! That’s
why it’s so foolish of me to take a case like this. There is no way
to win except to make a big public splurge; and then, if I don’t make
good, it is back to the sticks for me. That is the real moral problem
that confronts a radical lawyer, Mrs. Thornwell--can he afford to have
a heart? Can he feel sorry for some hero-soul like your Bart, who has
apparently got into a jam not of his own making? It’s a decision I have
to make, and naturally it depends very largely upon Bart’s friends.”
There was a pause. “Just what is it you want me to say, Mr. Swenson?”
“For the present, nothing in particular. That may come later. What I
want is for you to know the situation--what a murder trial is, and how
it has to be fought--so that later on, when you find out about this
detail and that, you won’t be horrified and disgusted with me, and draw
out and leave me alone with the Italians.”
IX
Lee Swenson had said his say, and it was up to Cornelia. She sat with
her two hands locked together, and her eyes closed, and only the
trembling of the lids to tell what was going on within. When at last
she spoke, her voice was weak, and so were her words. “I never had
anything like that put up to me in my life, Mr. Swenson.”
“I can believe that. Your life has been lived among people who are not
accused of crimes. And you have your strict moral code--which doesn’t
allow for perjury!” Then, seeing a trace of tears in the old lady’s
eyes, he added quickly, “I fear that I misunderstood you in one way,
Mrs. Thornwell--I thought you knew more about your great moral city
than apparently you do. You went to consult Larry Shay about this case,
didn’t you?”
“How did you know that?”
“Well, I have sources of information. How did you come to go to him?”
“My son-in-law, Henry Cabot Winters, named him.”
“Why did he name him?”
“He said he would be the best man to get the boys off.”
“And what happened when you went to see him?”
“He wanted fifty thousand dollars, and I told him we didn’t have it.”
“What did he say?”
“Well, he pointed out that it was a capital case, and would mean a lot
of hard work.”
“What did you understand by that?”
“Wasn’t it obvious? It will take a lot of time to prepare the case, and
it may be a long trial.”
Lee Swenson laughed, one of those polite laughs which he kept inside
him, out of consideration for Boston. “You are much too good, my dear
Nonna! I think I will call you by Bart’s name, if you don’t mind,
because it is friendly, and at the same time respectful.”
“I don’t mind,” said Cornelia.
“Out west,” said the other, “they call me Lee, and they don’t wait a
whole lifetime, as they do in Boston. But now let me explain about
Larry Shay: if he had taken the case, there wasn’t going to be any
trial.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean that Larry is the official ‘fixer’ for the political ring which
governs Boston and its environs. If you have committed a crime, and got
caught, your friends go to him to find out what it will cost to have
the case dropped.”
“Oh, Mr.--Lee!”
“You, lovely and naïve blue-blood lady, carried to this legal shark a
proposition to bribe some of the prosecuting officials of your state,
and he made you an offer, and you didn’t even know what it was about!”
“Do you really know all that?”
“Everybody knows it that knows about the insides of this town. Worse
than that--they ‘make’ the cases, for the purpose of collecting
blackmail. I could tell you quite a number of stories, only they are
not fit for a lady’s ears--having to do with women and road-houses.”
There was a pause, while Cornelia thought hard. “You mean, Lee Swenson,