Boston a novel
A topsy-turvy world, a lunatic’s dream of a world, impossible to
believe in, even when you saw it with your eyes and heard it with
your ears! What could you make of a world in which you studied Lola
Andrews for months, and came to know every quirk of her fantastic
soul; in which you saw her exposed and discredited by witness after
witness--even a policeman and a newspaper reporter to whom she had
admitted that she did not see the faces of the men she thought were the
bandits; and then, in the face of all this, you saw the Honorable Fred
Katzmann, district attorney of Norfolk County, stand up to address the
jury, and solemnly declare: “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!”
IV
And then Carlos Goodridge! This man, the manager of a small music
store, had happened to be in a pool-room near the scene of the crime.
There were four other men in the room, and none of them had got a
glimpse of the bandits, and to these others Goodridge had admitted that
he could not identify the bandits. “If I have got to say who the man
was, I can’t say.” But seven months later Goodridge and his wife were
in court, charged with stealing several hundred dollars of money and
goods from the music store. It so happened that Sacco was there at the
same time, pleading to some motion, and Goodridge saw his opportunity,
and told the authorities that he recognized Sacco and could identify
him as one of the South Braintree bandits. Could a deal have been made?
Impossible to say; but the case was “placed on file”--that is to say,
Goodridge did not have to serve the sentence for his crime, but took
the witness stand and swore to the guilt of another man.
And here was Lee Swenson, insisting to Cornelia and Betty and Joe that
the prosecution would be able to “get away” with that! Judge Thayer
would find some trick of the law to bar all testimony to the effect
that Goodridge had a sentence hanging over him; he would send the
jurors from the room while the matter was argued, so they would never
know they were listening to a criminal. Lee insisted that the only hope
would be to “get something else” on that fellow! Lee’s instinct, what
he called his “smell for crime,” told him that Goodridge had been in
jail. But where? And how to prove it?
It was a matter to which the lawyer hung on with bulldog grip; they
must follow this clew and that, they must get more investigators, spend
more money. But they had only a few weeks, and the right clew came
too late! After the trial they knew all about Carlos Goodridge--his
real name was Erastus Corning Whitney, which in itself meant that he
had committed perjury when he testified against Sacco. He had served
terms in Elmira Reformatory and in Auburn State Prison, New York, and
was now wanted in that state for grand larceny. He had had a number of
wives, and Swenson collected a string of affidavits from these ladies,
setting forth his habits of marrying under various names, of stealing
everything in sight, and of lying freely. One added that he had been
attacked by Italians whom he had cheated of their belongings, and had
borne a grudge against Italians ever since.
Too late! Too late! The curse that lay upon the Sacco-Vanzetti case,
that everything came too late! When the only thing you could do was
to make another motion before Webster Thayer, and have that just and
upright judge respond, “Motion denied!” Lee Swenson and one of his men
tracked “Goodridge” to the little village of Vassalboro, Maine, and
confronted him with his record, and he held out his wrists for the
handcuffs. Later they had him arrested, but--strange solidarity of the
rulers of America--New York State did not want him now, could not be
persuaded to take him! When once a criminal has obliged the police in
any part of the country, he has become a member of the gang, and is
immune.
And stranger yet, the august judiciary will rally to his defense, and
not permit him to be slandered by having his criminal record exposed!
Webster Thayer, a Daniel come to judgment, would hand down his decision
on the motion for a new trial, rebuking the defense for its pursuit
of Goodridge, and saying that he had done right to resist a lawyer’s
efforts to intimidate him. “Motion denied!”
V
Too late! Too late! Several times, in the midst of investigations for
South Braintree, they turned up evidence concerning the earlier case.
Evidence which would have saved poor Bart, if only it could have been
got to the jury! New witnesses--Yankee witnesses--who had seen the
Bridgewater shooting, and declared that the bandits did not look like
Vanzetti! Witnesses who had stated this to the police, and been told
to go home and keep quiet! Now this case was legally dead; Vanzetti’s
friends could not even have the poor pleasure of bringing the new
evidence to the attention of Judge Thayer. No matter what happened at
the coming trial, Bart would stay in Charlestown prison fourteen more
years--save in the unlikely event that Massachusetts might elect a
governor with a heart.
So now Cornelia heard those ghostly voices which on past occasions had
shouted to her in vain! If only she had waited until that family which
was away from home had come back! If only she had turned up this street
instead of that! And of course these vain regrets brought terrors for
the future; Cornelia and her friends began to hear, far off and faint,
the ghostly voices warning them about the new case. They were like
enchanted people in an old-time legend, living halfway between two
worlds, holding communion with both. Lee Swenson, sitting in Cornelia’s
big chair, with his chin in his hand and his heavy brows knitted in
thought, became some medieval magician, wrestling with spirits and
demons he challenged, but could not command.
_Creature of Flame, thou shalt not daunt me!
’Tis I! ’Tis Faust! Thy peer I vaunt me!_
Many things this new Faustus demanded of the “busy spirit that ranges
round the world.” Find the man with a bullet hole in his overcoat!
Again and again this clew turned up; there had been a man by the name
of Roy Gould, who had been fired upon by the bandits, and the bullet
had pierced his coat. But nobody knew this man’s address. Manifestly,
the police would not have overlooked such a witness; and the fact that
he was not listed by them made it sure that he had failed to identify
Sacco and Vanzetti. Presently it was learned that he was a salesman of
shaving paste; some one reported that he was in the habit of selling
his wares to crowds at circuses and fairs, so it was a question of
getting a list of all the circuses in New England!
Like all others, this mystery was solved too late. The man turned up,
several months after the trial. The bandit car had passed within five
or ten feet of him, and the bandit who was supposed to be Sacco had
fired at him, and he said it could not possibly be Sacco. He would go
down into history as the “Gould motion”; one of nine different appeals
for a new trial, which would compel Judge Thayer to repeat nine times
his celebrated formula, “Motion denied.”
Also the witnesses who were to refute Louis Pelzer, a shoe cutter and
dullard who had been in the Rice and Hutchins factory when the shots
were fired, and had run to the window, and then dropped down out of
sight. He had really seen nothing and had so stated to many persons;
but the prosecution was to get hold of him, and drill him for a star
witness. Deep in the soul of this Jewish boy was a reverence for
authority, the buried memories of a hundred pogroms, when his ancestors
had cowered in ghetto tenements and seen whole families brained
before their eyes. When a blue uniform appeared in the room, when a
prosecuting official frowned upon him, something inside Louis Pelzer
gave way.
So he was going to say that one of the bandits was the “dead image”
of Sacco; he would learn this phrase, and repeat it as often as
desired. And where were the witnesses to break him? Three of them,
fellow-workers, would be found by the defense; but the most important
of them would be found too late. Four months after the trial, Louis was
to make an affidavit, declaring that his testimony was false, the words
“dead image” had been put into his mouth by the district attorney. Six
months after that, he was to take it all back, and be safe with the
police again!
But most loudly the ghostly voices shouted about the Pinkerton
reports. The operative “H.H.” had been on the scene immediately
after the crime, and his reports wiped out the most important of
all the witnesses of the prosecution, Mary Splaine. Not merely had
she identified other men, but she had told stories to the Pinkerton
operative which in themselves discredited her. And all this was known
to the prosecution--but not a hint of it to the defense! Most amazing
circumstance of all--that detective was going to attend the trial, and
take the stand and testify against a defense witness! Henry Hellyer,
the “operative H.H.,” came to the court-room where Mary Splaine swore
away the life of Sacco, knowing what she had told him, and what he
had written and turned in to his employers! The mockery of it--the
devilishness of it--that prosecuting authorities would play such a
trick! And the ghostly voices would shout into the ears of Cornelia
and Betty and Joe, and no one of them would hear a sound! Lee Swenson
might sit with his chin in his hand, and bend his brows and torture his
wits all night--but the “busy spirit that ranges round the world” could
never be conjured to give him a hint of that secret!
VI
There was a fatality hanging over Cornelia. She had seen it coming--no
way to stop it, yet she had pushed the thought away and refused to face
it. But now the trial was only a week off, and there could be no more
evasion. Lee Swenson telephoned, asking if he might come to dinner that
evening; he wanted to be alone with her, he said--and she knew the time
had come.
Lee looked very tired; there were deep lines about his mouth, and deep
shadows under his eyes, and he hardly tasted his very good dinner. For
a while Cornelia managed to divert him--asking for the news. A curious
development in the case, ready-made for a detective romance: from a
scrubwoman whom he had befriended, Lee had learned that detectives had
hired the janitor of his tumble-down office building to deliver the
contents of his trash-basket every night! He knew that they had their
minds fixed upon the sixteen thousand dollars which they thought Sacco
had buried; so the lawyer would divert his tired mind by drawing maps
of buried treasure! He made a plot of Sacco’s garden: sixteen feet
north from the southwest corner, twenty-two feet east--then dig! The
next time Cornelia went to Stoughton, she must find out if anybody had
done so!
Dinner was over, and the maid dismissed, and the doors closed; the
clouds came back to the lawyer’s face. “Nonna,” he said, “we are going
to lose these boys!”
“Oh, Lee!” Cornelia’s voice almost failed her.
“They have got us sewed up in a strait-jacket.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Do you realize what lies ahead of this trial? We start on the day
after Memorial Day, and then comes the anniversary of Belleau Wood, and
then Bunker Hill Day, and before we get through it will be the Fourth
of July! And all these dead soldier boys they are bringing home, all
the weeping and praying and dedicating our lives to our country!”
“What has that got to do with it?”
“You ask me seriously? This is going to be the great peacetime service
for heroes to render to the nation; a defense of our heritage against