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Title: The Room with the Little Door
Author: Molineux, Roland Burnham
Language: English
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_The Room with the
Little Door_
_By_
_Roland Burnham Molineux_
[Illustration]
_G. W. Dillingham Company_
_Publishers_ _New York_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration]
COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY
ROLAND
BURNHAM MOLINEUX
_All Rights Reserved_
_Entered at
Stationers Hall_
ISSUED JANUARY, 1903
_The Room with the
Little Door_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_To
My Father
General Edward
Leslie Molineux
With
Reverence_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CONTENTS_
CHAPTER PAGE
_Introduction_ _17_
_I._ _The Room with the Little Door_ _19_
_II._ _The Little Dead Mouse_ _26_
_III._ _A Forbidden Song_ _30_
_IV._ _The Murderers’ Home Journal_ _34_
_V._ _Fads_ _54_
_VI._ _The Mayor of the Death-Chamber_ _62_
_VII._ _A Psychological Experiment_ _67_
_VIII._ _Me and Mike_ _79_
_IX._ _Old John_ _82_
_X._ _Her Friend_ _94_
_XI._ _Life_ _97_
_XII._ _My Friend the Major_ _99_
_XIII._ _A Dissertation on the Third Degree_ _108_
_XIV._ _It’s Just Like Her_ _145_
_XV._ _Shorty_ _158_
_XVI._ _An Opinion on Expert Opinion_ _180_
_XVII._ _Prologue to a Little Comedy_ _195_
_XVIII._ _Impressions: The Last Night and The _197_
Next Morning_
_XIX._ _Impressions: Dawn in the Death-Chamber_ _208_
_XX._ _Impressions: While the Jury is Out_ _211_
_XXI._ _Impressions: The Friendship of _234_
Imagination_
_XXII._ _The Last Story_ _241_
_XXIII._ _The Story of the Ring, by Vance _243_
Thompson_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_Introduction_
Most of the following is true, or founded on truth. A few are
waifs—products of my imagination; little stories that came into my mind
from time to time. Some of them are from letters written home while I
was confined in the Tombs Prison in New York City, and in the
Death-Chamber at Sing Sing.
In them I have not inflicted myself to any great extent upon the reader.
Herein is chiefly what I saw when trying to look upon the bright side.
There are also glimpses of the side which cannot be made bright, look at
it as one may.
But if anything in these pages leads some one to think of what must be
endured in either place, let me say, that no suffering was ever
willingly caused by the officials with whom I came in contact during my
“banishment,” and I take this opportunity to thank them all, without
exception, for their consideration, sympathy, and unvarying kindness to
me and mine.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_The Room with the Little Door_
_CHAPTER I_
_The Room with the Little Door_
There are few who can describe life in the Death-Chamber at Sing Sing.
The officials can, but will not. Visitors there are few; and most of us
who know it so well, come and go like our predecessors, saying nothing
afterwards about our experiences, for an excellent reason.
The corridor in the Death-Chamber is not large. Ten cells for the
condemned men face it, most of them on one side. Their inmates are not
supposed to see much of each other. When one of our number walks in the
corridor for exercise, curtains are drawn down in front of all the
cells, and we see upon them what our fellow-inmate often resembles—a
shadow. A shadow, and a voice which calls to us, that is his identity.
There are no windows in these cells; three sides are solid wall; their
fronts face the corridor, and are barred like cages. In them one can
easily imagine himself a bear in a menagerie, even to the sore head that
animal is afflicted with more or less occasionally. In front of the bars
and curtains are wire nettings to keep our visitors from coming too near
us. There are no hand-clasps, no kisses. The corridor and cells
constitute the Death-Chamber. It has two doors; an entrance—few of the
condemned ever use that door for any other purpose; and an exit—a final
one—leading into the Execution Room and to the “Chair.”
It is very light indeed in the Death-Chamber. Glass skylights by day,
and gas and electric light by night, throw their beams into every corner
of our cages of steel and stone. There is no privacy. The guards pace up
and down night and day, always watching. There is no sound while they do
this, as their shoes, like ours, are soled with felt. It is like living,
eating, sleeping, and bathing in a search-light. It is like being alive,
yet buried in a glass coffin. We enter the front door; exist for a year
or so, and then go out through the “little door,” as we call it, some
morning to a very welcome release. From the moment we arrive the
monotony begins, and continues always, broken now and then by such
excitement as a half hour’s exercise in the corridor, the weekly bath
and shave, and, best of all, a visit, which must be from some member of
our immediate family. We see our guest through those miserable bars and
netting which divide us. A keeper must hear everything we say. These
things are all that ever happen in that chamber of death, except
greeting new arrivals, and saying good-by now and then to a fellow we
have suffered with. No newspapers come to us, but books from the
excellent library, as many as one wants, are supplied. We receive our
mail after it has been opened and read, provided it is thought proper
for us to have it. If the letter contains the news we are all
awaiting—the final news—it is improper. That information is kept from
one as long as possible. All the tobacco is provided. It is called
“State.” It puts you in a “state” when you first attempt to smoke it. No
clock ticks in that room, and none is needed, because the value of time
and its relation to affairs is eliminated. Enough for us in there that
it is either day or night. What do we care about the hour? To us time is
just an endless waiting without expectancy. Imagine it for yourself.
Each second seems an hour long—and we are kept in there for years.
This is the life we lead, and who would care to speak or write of such
an existence? Is there anything to tell about this living death—this
sort of noiseless purgatory in which, as the months go by, past
experiences, the hopes and fears and happinesses which were, grow
fainter and fainter, till, like the future, they inspire us with nothing
but indifference, leaving only the present to be endured?
Yet there is one thing here which interests us intensely; which is
before us all the time, and which some day will close behind us. On one
side is life—such as it is—on the other instant death.
To pass through will be an experience surely. It is seldom opened; I
have observed it so just seven times; but when it is ajar—things happen.
Whenever we look out of our cages we see it; we close our eyes—we still
see it. When exercising in the corridor one passes and repasses it;
though we walk away, we know we are going towards it. Thinking by day
and dreaming by night, it is always with us, and irresistible is its
fascination. All else here is insignificant; and to us the Death-Chamber
is but “The Room with the Little Door.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER II_
_“The Little Dead Mouse”_
It would seem impossible for any one to escape from the Death-Chamber.
But there is a story of one man who refused to stay, and who, under the
very eyes of his keepers, without any privacy or apparatus, manufactured
the poison with which he ended his life; for that is almost the only way
you can end your stay in the Death-Chamber.
The man’s crime, his history, does not affect this story, but his
personality does. He was the quietest man of all; and men who are
waiting death are usually quiet men. A German by nationality, very
gentle, almost affectionate one would think, from the fact that he
caught and tamed a small mouse to which he seemed devoted. Now a mouse
is a rare thing within the precinct of which I speak, for stone and
steel do not offer it the crevices it affects. But the German—he was
called “Professor” because he wore glasses—had asked when he arrived if
any mice had been tamed. “You can teach them tricks,” he said. He used
to sleep all day, and at night very patiently lay and watched the bread
crumbs he scattered on the floor. He did this for months; and at last
the great event occurred. Can you guess what he used for a trap? His
stocking. He did teach the mouse tricks. He taught it to eat meat out of
his hand, which was not difficult, and to come when he called, which
was. It slept with him. This took patience. Remember, he had no string
with which to tie it, and had to keep it under his drinking cup at first
to prevent its running away.
Time went by. Winter changed to summer, and with that season came a
letter to the “Professor” and a death warrant to the warden. This was
for the “Professor” also; that is, it was to be read to him, and—was it
sympathy, or what? Death came to the little mouse at that time. I
suppose that every man would confess that it is disturbing to receive
the news that he must go through the “little door” in the Death-Chamber
into the beyond, and so it affected the “Professor,” philosopher though
he undoubtedly was. Perhaps it was not the news, but the loss of his
little friend; perhaps it was both; at any rate the “Professor” took to
his bed. The prison doctor came, winked at the keeper, and said,
“Fright; let him alone.” So they let the “Professor” alone, and the
“Professor” died; but when they went into the cell, they found the cause
of his illness had not been fright at all. It was erysipelas. Over his
breast were long scratches, deep as little teeth could make them (we
have no pins in the Death-Chamber), and flattened down on them and
tightly bound lay the putrid remains of “the little dead mouse.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER III_
_A Forbidden Song_
Sometimes in the evenings, the Death-Chamber seemed quite a different
place, and we all forgot our _ennui_ because some one started a song. I
have heard good singing there, and some of us understood music. So when
“Eddy,” with his really good tenor, would start up something we all
knew, books would close and pipes go out, and we all would join in and
sing ourselves out of the blues.
What did we sing? Everything, from “America,” with special gusto at the
“Sweet land of liberty” part, to the last popular song whose strains had
been wafted to our “desert island.” How we sang! When we could not
remember or did not know the words we sang on just the same. Hours have
actually speeded that way, when we happened to be in the mood, and we
were all the better for it. Did I say we sang everything? No, not
everything. There were strong men there, determined men, who had done
and would do desperate things. But there was one song ever in our minds
and in our hearts that never came to our lips, and which not one of us
would have dared even to hum. Not a voice could have trembled through
had it started. Every one thought of it; no one ever suggested it. You
know the one I mean.
One night when we were through an especially good concert (I had sung a
solo) some one shouted out “Police!” Now, of course, not one of us
wanted to have anything further to do with that department. It was only
our way of calling for a “light.” We have no matches in the
Death-Chamber; there is phosphorus in them, and you might—. So when
George, our keeper, had come to my cage with the burning paper spill,
and when my pipe was going cheerfully, I said: “George, music certainly
does affect the emotions, but under some circumstances, I imagine, it
could make one quite blue. Did you ever notice that?”
“I should say so,” was the reply. “I remember once starting a song here
that was never finished for that same reason.”
“What was it?” said I, turning away, for I knew the answer before it
came.
“It was ---- ---- ----.”
“Damn this tobacco! the smoke gets into my eyes.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER IV_
_The Murderers’ Home Journal_
No newspapers were allowed in the Death-Chamber, therefore the longing
for them among its inmates may be imagined. But the law that supply
always follows demand, was operative even within the walls of the “dead
house,” and properly so; for had we not all become intimately acquainted
with Law? Therefore we had a newspaper of our own.
Let me tell you of the happy days (happily past) when I was
editor-in-chief and proprietor of “The Murderers’ Home Journal,”
sometimes lovingly referred to as “The Dead House Squealer.” The public
will never turn over a file of its pages, but they may read here some
extracts from its columns. As to the paper itself, it was as artistic as
black and blue pencils could make it. We all contributed what and when
we pleased. It appeared when convenient, and as nothing was charged for
advertisements or subscriptions, no wonder it prospered. Every one in
our community read it and read no other. It contained real poetry,
jokes—what jokes!—essays on our neighbors’ behavior, and news—_local_
news, together with advertisements which simply compelled attention. The
letters therein to the editor-in-chief left nothing to the imagination.
And the leaders—ah, I wrote them! How proudly I referred to myself as
“we”! Sometimes I used a pencil almost as blue as myself, never a pen—a
vein can be opened with a pen.
Every proprietor admires and praises his own publication, and I shall
proceed to “Munsey” mine. I can say without egotism, since it is but
imperfectly expressed justice, that there has never been another
newspaper “approaching” it. “Old Sol” does not affect the Death-Chamber;
no sun shone on it, so of course we could not “see it in the ‘Sun’”; but
we were as up to date in our own affairs as the “Times” permitted, as
sensational in local matters as all the “yellows” combined; nothing in
the “World” got ahead of our “Journal” in this respect. Having no “News”
we invented it, just as do the newspapers for which you pay, but we
never had to take anything back. The “Tribune” from which it issued was
my cage, and I, the editor-in-chief, remained as deaf as a “Post” to all
abuse (I am used to it). As for a “Press,” we had none. It was printed
by my tired fingers. The illustrations were alluring, and though we
received neither “Telegram” nor “Mail and Express,” yet we never forgot
a text to “Herald” our first column. It was always the same one—“Damn
the Jury.” Its politics were “sound.” (All politics are that.) We
opposed the government with a capital O, and that institution responded
with the only practical solution for restraining the license of modern
journalism—it killed the editors. I can truthfully say that it cost me a
great deal of money to escape even as far as the “Tombs.” Many of my
unfortunate associates have also “passed away” to similar places, and I
wish some reporters I know of could be assigned to interview them.
I pass over all the local news which appeared in the “Murderers’ Home
Journal.” Such announcements as “John, the Greek, has come back for
nineteen years—foolish John!” “Bill Newfeldt caught a mouse in his sock
last night—poor thing!” Such as the above, and the chronicled fact that
Doctor Sam’s office hours in the morning were from twelve A.M. to twelve
P.M., and in the afternoon from twelve P.M. to twelve A.M. (in spite of
this he had no “patients”), or a brilliantly worded “ad” advising the
reader to take “Molineux’s Bromo-Seltzer”; all these were replete with
absorbing interest to us, but not to you.
It was when the “divine afflatus” came upon us, as had the influenza the
month previous—we all had it—that you might be interested. Many and
varied were the verses that deluged the editorial sanctum; jingles,
triolets, lyrics, epigrams, and of course the very first offered
was—there, you have guessed it—“Spring.” I give it just as it came to
me, leaving it for you to decide whether it be humorous or pitiful.
SPRING IN THE DEATH-CHAMBER.
Sweet Spring is here, and we all know it too,
But not, alas, as outside poets do.
Here are no birds, or flowers, or murmuring stream,
Our Spring arrives—when they turn off the steam.
This is a touching song by some true lover of dumb animals, written upon
an occasion when one of them insisted upon sharing his couch:
MY RAT.
I love my rat so tenderly,
He is so gentle, don’t you see?
He guards my slumbers every night,
To keep me from the slightest fright.
No lions or ferocious bears
Can steal upon me unawares,
For there is such a noise in here
’Twould fill their cruel hearts with fear.
I love my rat, if he should die
Great tears of anguish I would cry.
Here is a particularly admired effort. It appealed to every member of
our community on account of its spirited and militant sentiment. They
say I wrote it. Undoubtedly it will appear in evidence against me in
case of a new trial—hearsay evidence is “great stuff”:
DAWN.
When morning comes, and Joe pounds on the bar,
Calling me back from happy dreamland far;
Although “they say” that two were killed by me,
How I regret I cannot make it _three_!
The following admirable pastoral was written by a gentleman with a
longing for the delights of rural life—or life of any other kind:
MY ONION.
I love to see my onion grow
And send its shoots up in the air.
It is a homely plant, I know,
But yet its stalks are green and fair.
They say the rose would smell as
If called by any other name,
And so to make my joy complete;
A rose and onion are the same.
For you may call it what you like,
By any name that’s long or small,
And though you smell all day and night,
The onion has no smell at all.
This is wilful peevishness: the protest of some professional kicker:
MY SOCKS.
My feet are number seven, but the law says I must wear
A pair of socks that are five sizes small;
That’s why I cry aloud and dance and at the keepers swear,
And on the State the wrath of Heaven call.
I wish the Sheriff, Governor, the Judge and President
And the Jury were all here behind the locks;
And that ministers of justice would their living long prevent,
For my toes are packed like sardines in a box.
From one of those detestable individuals who wants everything:
THE BARBER.
The barber with his little chair comes every Saturday,
And after he has shaved us all, he vanishes away.
And once a month he cuts our hair; oh, what an hour of pride!
He cuts so much and well that we all want to go outside.
But when I asked the keeper kind (My, I was awful bold!),
“No, no,” he said, “just see your head, I fear you would catch cold.”
SULKY ROLIE.
I go to Sing Sing public school,
Where naughty boys are sometimes sent,
Receiving as a general rule
A goodly share of punishment.
I try so hard to do what’s right,
I study long and never play;
Why then have I this wretched plight
That they should “keep me in” all day?
It is natural for a man to strive for perpetual success; but we, who are
to lose our lives, should bear lesser misfortunes with greater fortitude
than is expressed by this poet. The editor is not in sympathy with his
contributor:
CHESS.
When I play chess with other boys,
It’s one of all my dearest joys
To hear them rant and storm and tear,
If by my skilfulness and care
They should the losers be.
Sometimes I am not feeling well,
Since I the “honest truth” must tell,
And though you would not think they’d dare,
I’m walloped well. Gosh! how I swear!
If they should checkmate me.
In an early issue a gem of an epigram appeared, and straightway epigrams
became the mode—we all affected them. The vogue was hard while it
lasted. A dozen times a day I was assured over the wireless telephone
(Nature’s) that Bill or Mike or another had a “bird” for the next issue.
Here are some of them.
This one was the “first offence.” If you like it, it is mine; but of
course if any one is going to get mad about it, then another fellow, one
of the dead ones, was its author. Is not its sentiment exquisite?
AN EPITAPH WHICH CANNOT BE USED TOO SOON.
Here lies a judge, whose last words I indite:
“I’ll go to Heaven—I’ll go this very night.”
He died as with himself he yet conversed;
_As usual_—his decision was reversed.
Another of great beauty and singularly apt. I have a shrewd suspicion
that it refers to the same person:
TO A VERY LEARNED JUDGE.
His Honor is wrong, in error, unwise.
He blunders in every case that he tries;
With “Wisdom” he will not compromise.
So I asked him the reason why.
The judge replied, after due reflection,
“To ‘Wisdom’ I have a good objection:
She had nothing to do with my election.”
“I agree with you,” said I.
Still another, evidently referring to the same respected jurist. It is a
lofty and improving message from the Bench. I am very partial to this
one:
HEARD IN COURT.
I’ve changed my mind. Oh, no, I haven’t! Did I?
What? I charged that way? No, indeed! I did!
I mean that I said, No. Yes, Yes! I did not.
Then I will charge it. What? My meaning hid?
My former rulings? I forget them, curse it!
My opinion is not quite clear, and I reverse it!
Modesty restrains me from mentioning the author of this glittering
example of pure idealism:
THE COLONEL.
The colonel lay dying. An angel appeared.
This man of great family and titles he cheered,
“Fear not, to a better place you will be borne,”
The colonel’s reply was—“To Hell with reform!”
After a certain assistant district attorney, noted for his verboseness,
had made his closing argument, the jury convicted the composer of this
couplet. He seems to resent it:
THE JURY.
To call them twelve trees would be nothing unkind;
They were crooked and green; they were swayed by the wind.
To an assistant district attorney who proved nothing but his own desire
for notoriety and his ability to make a noise and keep the Court of
Appeals busy. Those who heard him sum up the first important case he
ever had, and the one on which rests his reputation (for brutality and
unfairness), may remember and see the application to a certain part of
his closing address:
He persecutes the charming “Bell,”
His “brazen tongue” has now full “swing,”
With clamorous lies he “told” this “knell,”
Produce, produce, produce the—“ring.”
AN EPITAPH TO AN “ABLE ASSISTANT.”
In him a great philanthropist we see,
The friend of negro wench and stable boys,
He taught the gentle art of perjury,
To get convictions every vice employs.
This reminds me of Longfellow (it is so different):
TO A CERTAIN EXPERT.
I’m an expert. I raise chickens, so I know about a “quill,”
How it writes and what you think of while you sign a note or “bill,”
I’ll appear against or for you; either side without regard,
I can tell my favorite rooster by his claw marks in the yard.
Two wings this fowl possesses; o-“pinions” two have I
There’s one for you, or one for him, for any who will buy.
Like him, I love to “scratch” in dirt. I’m crooked as his walk,
I “plume” myself, and like my hens I cackle when I talk,
I’m “hatching” out a plot just now, really it’s very funny,
It’s all a guess—ridiculous—but then, I need the money.
Some lyrics found their way into those columns. Here is only one of
them, for I fear your interest, like the newspaper itself, has ceased:
TO HER PHOTOGRAPH.
Painted by sunlight, all the brightness caught,
From out the sky and to my prison brought.
No vision, essence, song, so sweet by half,
As smiles to me from out her photograph.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER V_
_Fads_
The Death-Chamber is well worth studying. Our community is certainly
interesting. Already I have made a discovery. Every one of us is busy.
Here are many languages, temperaments, and moods, but we all have our
fancies and our fads.
For instance, there is the Italian next door who makes gorgeous picture
frames from scraps of paper, decorating them with colored pencils; these
are considerately furnished by the State to prevent him from going
crazy. His creations are wonderful, and as his mood at present is
devoutly religious, his cage looks like a cathedral. Many are the saints
that smile benignly and beckon hospitably; and yet Larry does not want
to join them.
The religious mood is usually the last of a progression beginning with
despair. It is in the latter frame of mind that new arrivals appear.
Then there is the studious period, with which I struggle just now, when
one reads a great deal and works out chess problems with bits of paper
on a home-made board.
Yes, I read incessantly, often under difficulties. Recently I had
selected “Paradise Lost.” Ah, it was a venerable tome—ragged and
bethumbed; dog-eared and tattered was that volume in the Sing Sing
prison library. I believe its back was also broken. Many cells had it
visited. Apparently it was appreciated by the inhabitants thereof. Poor
creatures, they too had lost their paradise; but, alas, others had found
it—and had moved into the book itself—generations of them! I perused
Milton’s matchless epic. The stately iambus, the exceptional trochee,
dactyl, amphibrach, and anapest rolled and sang solemn music in my soul.
I read:
“Thus they,
Breathing united force, with fixèd thought,
Moved on in silence----”
What is that! What _is_ that!! On my wrist, up my arm! Another, another!
Not _that_, but _those_—the myriad hosts of Apollyon’s army. They were
starved, _they_ entered their paradise! Ah, that book was unusually
lively reading, for while holding the volume, while improving my mind,
the inhabitants—the appreciative ones—had improved their opportunity.
They ascended my sleeves for lunch—the book was intellectual food for
me, I was food for—I will spare the reader’s feelings, the good
housewife is their enemy. Just as Satan with appropriate taunts hurled
his mighty javelin at the archangel, so I flung the sweet singer’s poem
into the corridor, thereby adding to its appearance of usage. It was
returned in triumph to the library with a pair of tongs. Some day,
perhaps, an interested visitor may see this volume, the librarian may
even indicate it with pride, and judging by appearances (which are quite
deceptive) will remark how fond the poor “cons” must be of good reading,
of classic literature, of standard works. As for me, my fad is _new_
books.
Of the other fads, among the many, is one which the man possesses who
makes exquisite paper boxes. His paste was soap, till I taught him to
use oatmeal. Then there is the Greek who grows onions. It is for
company, surely, for he cannot speak two words of English, and has not a
single visitor. The library contains no Greek books, and the English
ones are Greek to him. Once a week the great Empire State presents a raw
onion to each condemned man. Death-Chamber and raw onions—what a
combination for producing tears! Let me inform the commonwealth that the
onions are superfluous. Some of us eat them. I give mine away, but the
Greek plants all of his. This is vastly exciting. First he makes little
paper boxes that just hold them, then packs them round with tobacco,
moistens the latter, and then sits down and watches them grow. This is
almost literal, for never did “green bay tree” so flourish. From the
rapid way they shoot up, I know that if any blossoms or fruit grew on
the stalks they would be little balloons. And the color! the most
beautiful green you ever saw—this from the tobacco. I have always
suspected that “State” tobacco was made from some sort of—fertilizer! So
the Greek watches his onions, and the death-watch watches the Greek.
I try to imagine his thoughts. It is easily done. I am sure he sees the
little cottage and garden in the far-away archipelago where he helped
his mother do just what he is doing now. Perhaps that is the first thing
he remembers—perhaps it will be the last. He is not handsome, but how
his face lights up sometimes! Then I know that he is living over the
days when, as a youth, he worked in the vineyards or among the currant
bushes at home. There is a romance behind it all, you may be sure.
Yesterday he was here watching his onions with all his usual care;
to-day he is gone, and the keepers are sweeping his onions out and
throwing them away, for no one cares for the onions except the Greek,
and no one regrets the Greek, except, perhaps, the onions.
Happily this is not a sad ending, for “John, the Greek,” has been given
a hope—he has gone to New York for a new trial. His life was never in
the slightest danger, he having been tried and sentenced by a judge who
has condemned many men to electrocution, and not one of them, I believe,
was ever executed, because their trials before this judge have been
found by a higher court to have been illegal. This is one of “His
Honor’s” little ways—he also has his fad.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER VI_
_The Mayor of the Death-Chamber_
I had ruled undisputed for a year—it seemed a century. By common consent
I was the acknowledged “Mayor of the Death-Chamber,” and very properly
so, for was not I the oldest inhabitant? All questions were referred to
me. I was the final court of arbitration; what I said “went.”
This delightful state of affairs was undisturbed, even undisputed, until
Benjamin appeared. Benjamin was a gentleman of color, a youth with a
penchant for politics. Before he had been among us long enough to learn
to appreciate “State” tobacco, he became rebellious. He disputed my
authority. He was evidently jealous. His ambition vaunted itself till it
seemed as if he would attempt to appropriate to himself the perquisites
of my high office. Benjamin was altogether impossible. He knew all about
politics; his brother worked for an alderman. Benjamin insisted upon
expounding their intricacies and the subterfuges necessary to carry
wards and districts. What a mayor could or could not do was an open book
to him. Benjamin knew everything. He would hear no reason, listen to no
explanation, had no respect for my year in the Death-Chamber. He
trampled upon my rights; he was unceremonious, even familiar. He
questioned the legality of my claims. He demanded a fair and open
election, announcing himself to our citizens as a candidate, the
people’s candidate, the poor man’s friend, a Democrat! All that evening
he gave us of his oratory. He denounced me in every scathing phrase to
which he could lay his tongue. I was an aristocrat, a representative of
trusts, a vile Republican.
A rival had presented himself. The issues were joined. I bribed him into
silence with a cigar. The next evening he demanded two to stop talking.
I refused. It was war to the death. I made no speeches, but consulted
with my constituents. “We were seven,” and seven fat cigars left my
pocket; but into the same receptacle from whence they came I put the
solid and unanimous vote of the Death-Chamber. I did more. I taught
Benjamin a lesson. I told him I did not care for that office any more;
that it was a burden I would gladly lay down. He wept as he thanked me.
He worked hard, and received pledges of support from every voter—they
had their instructions.
It seemed a “walkover” for Benjamin. He began to think how “Honorable”
would sound before his name. The voting proceeded. The superintendent of
elections was the night keeper. He announced Benjamin’s unanimous
election to the office of Mayor. The sounds of revelry and thanksgiving
from Benjamin’s cage sounded like rival camp-meetings possessed of the
devil. He—Ben, not the latter—made an eloquent speech of thanks as
befitting the occasion in which, for the last time in his life, he spoke
well of me.
In response he heard the announcement of my election as—Governor. Then
there was silence in Benjamin’s executive mansion, the “city hall,” as
he had just christened his cell. The first official act of “His
Excellency” was to exercise his inherent right and remove “His Honor,
the Mayor,” from office. Benjamin never recovered. When, a few months
later, they escorted Ben through the “little door,” I think he was
perfectly willing to go.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER VII_
_A Psychological Experiment
(A Chronicle of the Tombs)_
It was in the old Tombs prison and in the old days which are past, when
they hung men in its courtyard, and it was a very hot night in summer.
Of all the human beings within its walls—keepers and kept—one man alone
was there because he wanted to be. Not another beneath its old roof but
would gladly have changed his position—on either side of the bars—for
the free hot night without. It was blistering, and there was no breeze
or beer to be obtained in the Tombs, and very little rest or sleep.
Does it seem incongruous that a man of wealth, culture, and position
should be there of his own volition? Not at all; he was trying an
experiment. And that was why, after a liberal expenditure of money and
the use of some little influence, this young man was the occupant of
that particular narrow cell for the night. What he saw there was very
little, for the apartments were constructed from a point of view not
scenic but secure. What he heard might perhaps better be left unsaid.
And what he smelt was indescribable. For this story is of the Tombs in
the old days, and really to describe it at night and in summer would be
to drive realism insane. The home of misery, revelry, and some
repentance—tears and jests six inches apart—romance and death, young sin
and old crime; folly, vice, and worse, all mixed together and seasoned
with a very little humor.
The Tombs is like a sieve, separating the unjust within from—well, the
more or less just without. It is like some great iron net through which
the tide of criminal life surges, and many are the strange fish caught
therein. If fish, one of my senses assures me that many of them have
been out of their natural element for a long while. Some of them were
not caught yesterday or even the day before. They are old, and you know
it even as you approach.
But it is with this young man’s feelings we have to do. In spite of the
investigator’s unpleasant surroundings, his thoughts were those of happy
anticipation, and his mood that of extreme satisfaction. All unmindful
of the misery on every side, he paced up and down the little cell, in
which the faint light from the corridor chased shadows on the stone
floor and dim walls. His face bore a look of triumph. He congratulated
himself. What to him were the disturbances that assaulted his senses,
the noises of those who amused themselves according to their
possibilities, or the snoring of some who dully slept, luxuriating in
the comforts of the best home they had ever known, the vomiting of a
drunken sailor across the tier, an obscene song from a young negro with
a falsetto voice heard along the corridor, or the clog dancing of an
“artist” directly over his head, who whistled his own accompaniment.
These things were nothing. He scarcely heard the shriek of the delirium
tremens case in the hospital ward below, nor the curses of the person
constrained in the straight-jacket. The remarks of the poor devil
occupying the “cooler” were naught. The smell of iodoform was lost to
him, for all this had nothing to do with his experiment.
Had you seen the books on theosophy, occult science, reports of
psychological societies, etc., in his beautiful apartments uptown, you
would perhaps have guessed his object. But only he could have told you
properly of his enthusiastic devotion, his absorbing interest in these
studies, and, most of all, of his disappointing attempts at personal
research. For in spite of closest study, deepest investigations, and
widest experimenting, his longing and anxiety to see an apparition had
never been satisfied. Such things as ghosts existed, he was sure of
that—he knew it. Others had seen them. But his ardent longing to have
personal demonstration of their presence remained unsatisfied, despite
the many séances attended, desperate colds contracted in churchyards,
and heroic pilgrimages to alleged mahatmas. Oh, the bitterness of
hearing and rehearing the success of others whose accounts he even found
himself jealous enough to doubt!
But at last it had come—this inspiration. Did the doctrine of
environment mean anything at all? Assuredly! Here was the key to the
situation, and that is why arrangements had been effected by him to
sleep alone in the cell, the very bed, and bedclothes of a man hanged
that afternoon. That is why he awaited midnight in the Tombs—midnight in
“Murderers’ Row.”
He had been careful to attend the execution and to view the remains so
as to recognize the astral body when it should appear later, for was it
not absolutely certain that the spirit, consciousness—call it what you
will—of the departed man would return searching for its body? And where
to if not this little space the earthly part had occupied so long and
where every emotion had been known? Surely this cell would be the first
place to attract the released spirit. Here for the deceased had been the
dreamings of past days, the horror of the realized present, the torture
of the anticipated future. Long days and longer nights in which the
inmate had burned with the fever of hope or shivered with the chill of
despair. In this room his mind had been the home of every emotion. What
hate, revenge, fear had these walls seen glower from his eyes! What
prayers had been heard in weaker moments, confessions perhaps solitude
had wrung from his lips! Here had been all passions. Here he had heard
the cold voice of the sheriff reading the death warrant. Success was
assured. There could be no doubt about it; and it had remained for this
adventurer to discover the untrodden path. He was there to note and
describe everything. Sublime discovery, method extraordinary, most
perfect system of wresting the unknowable from the superhuman! He felt a
veritable Columbus of daring. And the envy of his fellow-investigators
in turn when he should give his contribution to science and should read
his paper! Why, this very experience would be quoted in books! It nerved
him to attempt anything.
He took out a note-book and began to prepare the opening of his
prospective address. The night keeper on the last round accepted his
cigars and said good night. It grew quieter. The singers were hoarse,
the hospital patient quiet or drugged into quietness, and the inhabitant
of the “cooler” had expressed all his opinions of every one and
subsided. The time had come to prepare for the reception of the released
spirit. It was his own body the experimenter proposed to submit as the
material part to which the murderer’s consciousness might find access.
He must undress. He did so, and contemplated the soiled sheets; but it
was in the interests of science, and he did not hesitate. And now to
compose his mind, to cultivate an abstracted calm, to wait and observe.
Such was the success of this attempt that he slept.
* * * * *
Twelve solemn strokes.... He awoke. A dim light filtered in from the
corridors. There were low murmurings in the air. The stairway creaked. A
chain rattled. And somewhere far off a gate closed with a clang. The
proverbial cold perspiration streamed from him. The orthodox goose-flesh
appeared. His hair rose as it ought to. His flesh literally crept.
Everything was as it should be. All the proper symptoms in their proper
order. Something was in the room with him.
Was it the murderer’s spirit returning? The black cap over his gleaming,
protruding eyes, groping in the darkness back to his last place of rest,
feeling his way, searching the bed, and touching the intruder of his
domicile? Yes, he feels something resembling the murderer’s clammy,
trembling fingers passing over him. Victory? Success? Eureka? This awful
moment should be the happiest of his life.
But a great horror came upon him. With a shriek which awoke the warden
and deputy warden, the principal keeper, the deputy principal keeper,
the guards, turnkeys, watchman, nurses, messengers, and all the
prisoners, every living soul within the walls, he threw back the
bedclothes and looked with agonizing eyes at—a score of bloated little
red demons running away into the shadows as fast as their innumerable
legs could carry them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER VIII_
_Me and Mike (A Chronicle of the Tombs)_
“That’s me and Mike,” he exclaimed, reverently removing the newspaper
covering and thrusting an old tintype into my hands. And then I
recognized “Mike,” for he came to see my neighbor every day—in his
mother’s arms. We (Mike’s father and I) were neighbors, and
neighborly—which are two different things—and often walked together
during exercise hours, I listening and he telling of the doings of the
little “geezer” and the “tricks me and Mike have turned off together.”
Yes, I knew Mike, and he grew to look for the candy I sent him by Apple
Mary, but he never thanked us; and, considering his short two years of
life, Mary and I did not expect it. His mother spoke to Mike’s father—on
the other side of the bars, no doubt about it. I have heard her! Papa
talked back, but Mike only smiled and cooed. Among other things, my
neighbor told me that the police “had him right,” and so it seemed, and
the day of sentence came round. “Me and Mike” and Mike’s mother
exchanged kisses and epithets; then the sheriff began his search. He
found the tintype and gave it to Mike’s mother despite angry protests;
and then my neighbor made a very foolish move. It was towards his hip
pocket; he put up a good fight while it lasted. But he was overpowered
and handcuffed and the concealed weapon drawn forth—it was Mike’s little
blue shoe. Somehow or other I did not see the rest of it very
distinctly.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER IX_
_“Old John” (A Chronicle of the Tombs)_
Do funny things happen in the Tombs? Lord bless you, yes! Why, you have
only to visit it to meet the prince of humorists. Come! He will be at
the door to meet you; in fact he is “laying” for you, and will show you
through the entire institution and out again—which is not a detail. He
is affable to a degree, and you would be vastly amused if, like us, you
were on the “inside.” But you will probably listen seriously; and
although you will not lose a word of his remarks, you will lose all
their exquisite humor. It is Old John who has the fun all to himself,
for he is a wag in his way, and combines business with pleasure. He is a
true story-teller. How I envy him his imagination! What tales I would
tell if it were mine! I could—yes, I would write several novels and do
five-act plays, dozens of them. Old John could easily be a poet or a
writer. He certainly is an actor. No tragedian who I have ever heard can
put such horror into his voice. His sepulchral tones, with just the
proper amount of tremolo in them, would make the fortune of any
Thespian. Of course it is impossible for type to reproduce it.
Old John shows you through the main building, the Women’s Prison and
Boys’ Prison, together with the New Prison, the Ten-Day House, the
Hospital, Kitchen, _et al._ He romances with the ardor of a born
raconteur; he knows you will pay him something, but were that not so, I
believe he would do it for the love of his art.
“Do you see that man? He’s in for m-u-r-d-e-r!” You shudder and turn
away, saying “poor fellow” perhaps, and the sweet girl you are escorting
gets a little closer to your strong right arm; and immediately you are
vastly interested in this subject, and determined to thoroughly discuss,
to exhaust the topic. And yet the unfortunate man may have committed no
more heinous crime than the theft of a door mat, or that equally
felonious one of peddling clams without a license. Yet I am sure you
would readily condone this departure from the exact truth, even were you
aware of it. Old John selects the crime to fit the physiognomy of his
subject and enjoys your curiosity immensely, but he never smiles. A neat
little gloved hand may have slipped into yours, or more likely you have
appropriated it—I have known it to be done—and to prolong the moment you
ask, “Where is Molineux?” The question is not altogether an unfamiliar
one; it has been asked so often that Old John has given it very
considerable thought; and in his answer he rises to a high dramatic
effect. “I dasn’t show you!” he quavers. “I dasn’t even go near where he
is my own self”—each tone is a triumph of horror, the descending cadence
drives the blood back into your heart, and that pretty girl—bless
her!—imagines a Molineux eight feet tall, who eats raw meat, and can
neither read nor write. He winks at me if I am standing by and overhear.
How does he keep from laughing?
Oh, the fund of information he will impart to you as he guides you
around! “Yes, the men is allowed to walk up and down in their cells or
to sit on the bed daily.” All this on one tone and in one breath. What
an engineer John is! Listen to his description of the mighty wall which
encloses the Tombs: “That high wall around the prison was built at great
expense of money, time, and men, so as to put the yard inside of it.”
And an architect! “This building and that building isn’t the same
building at all.” Ah, there is method in it all! He is leading, as every
great dramatist does, up to his climax. Old John approaches it with
reverential awe: this great beam of wood, lying in the yard, what
stories it could tell! But John anticipates any superfluous remarks this
obsolete institution might make for itself.
“Do you see that beam of wood? That’s the last piece of the old gallows;
all the rest has been cut up for relics; here the rope was tied.” Old
John’s monologue, which follows, closes with these words: “And here you
see the marks made by the axe in the hands of the hangman when it cut
the rope that sprung the trap, launching the unhappy wretch into
eternity. They do not hang yet any more, they make them sit in a chair
up at Sing Sing, and kills them with nobody knows what.” He never says
electrocution, it’s too much for him; perhaps he does not believe in
it—neither do I.
We suspect that every now and then John freshens up these marks himself;
should this part of the old apparatus be painted, John would lose half
his income—those chips, not his face, are his fortune. How little a
quarter must seem, how good is life to a visitor after hearing John and
seeing the old gallows! Old John is a judge of human nature: if he
thinks you will stand it, he points to a black stone in the side of the
old Tombs and tells you it is where a colored man dashed his brains out
long ago rather than be hung, and how the successive wardens have tried
unsuccessfully to remove the stain.
I remove my hat to his genius when I recall an instance of John’s
impromptus. One afternoon a well-known clergyman called and joined me in
my walk over the cobblestones in the prison yard. We talked long and
earnestly—the dominie and I—and smoked large black cigars. Old John
arrived with a party of eager visitors. Old John was in a state of prime
satisfaction; business was good and his pilgrims were appreciative.
After pointing me out, he was asked if the minister was Molineux’s
spiritual adviser. Oh, John, what inspired you to sin, and have you ever
confessed it? Was it the dominie’s cigar? “Do you see that reverend
gentleman? He was arrested this morning for throwing his mother-in-law
out of the third-story window; he will get twenty years at least.” The
horror-stricken visitors looked at the calm, intellectual face at my
side and gasped. Not one of them had curiosity about me after that. I
was a poor worm in comparison with my more awful companion. I wonder
what they will say should they enter Dr. ----’s beautiful church some
Sunday and see him in the pulpit.
John never “smiles.” Wait a minute! Hold on about that! About once a
month he is missed over night; they say he does “smile” periodically,
and then very frequently indeed; the next morning every one in the Tombs
accuses him of gallantry. No wonder; John has a very handsome goatee,
and knows it. We accuse him of gallantry. How immensely pleased he is,
and how modestly he protests! “Methinks he doth protest too much.” I
asked him once about the matter. “Is it true, John, these things I hear
about you?” This was his reply: “Some says I do and some says I don’t.”
You will never get Old John to compromise himself. I suspect he has,
like many of us, taken the “third degree” at some time during his long
life. I said to him, “John, you have been here a long time, and must
have acquired quite a lot of money; why don’t you go home and settle
down?” Could Solomon excel the reply? “Because they would take away the
little I have and send me back for more.” I shall not be more definite
about my friend’s age, for two reasons. The first is that he would not
like it; the second, that I do not know it—no one does, no one remembers
when he first came. There is much speculation in the Tombs as to Old
John’s financial status; on this question he keeps his own counsel; he
can always change a $50 bill; perhaps he is your landlord.
There is another matter upon which he imparts information to
visitors—the most important one—it comes like the catastrophe of a play,
just before the curtain is rung down. “Do you see that man all dressed
up in brass buttons?” (pointing to a keeper). “He’s a keeper, _he_ gets
paid a salary for _his_ services. But I only gets what the kind
_visitors_ gives me, and all I gets over a dollar I buys tobacco with
for the poor unfortunate men you see dressed up in stripes, who have no
money!” Whew! Old John (the rascal) will give the tobacco in the next
world—_perhaps_! and a light with it—maybe.
Out of consideration for many years’ sojourn with Old John, I will not
state his salary. But if I ever get out of here (which _I_ never will),
and Old John should die (which _he_ never will), I shall apply for his
position. Come and see the old Tombs for yourself, where so many good
fellows have lived and died, before it is too late. Come and listen to
Old John, and pay him well, for it’s worth the money.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER X_
_Her Friend (A Chronicle of the Tombs)_
Bridget, alias “The Rummager” (rummager means thief, pickpocket), was
incorrigible; had always been so, and there were many reasons for it,
such as heredity, environment, opportunity, habit. Bridget had been in
the “Pen” (Penitentiary), the work-house, the Tombs. “Had been,” for
“The Rummager” was free. She was just leaving the latter prison on the
afternoon of Monday, February 24, 1902. There was money in her pocket.
She had worked in the laundry doing washing for the aristocrats and
millionaires over in the men’s prison.
Freedom and money! This had always before meant a celebration, but
to-day Bridget kept on her way towards Chinatown, passing for the first
time the side doors of the saloons which had been best loved and most
patronized. She did what she had never done before under such
circumstances—she hurried home. Bridget was welcomed, was invited to
make an occasion of the event. She declined. This behavior caused
consternation and criticism in “The Barracks.” Bridget hurried away to
the “Bend.” There she haggled with Isaac over the price of a dress—a
black dress. Finally it was hers, but it took her last penny—and all her
other bills and coins.
Bridget disappeared. This was no novelty, such occurrences were not
unusual. No one worried about it. Some hours afterward they learned that
she was working. They jeered at and reviled the joker who brought the
news. That afternoon, for the first time in her life, Bridget earned an
honest dollar. It was perhaps the first money not spent in dissipation.
The next morning was the first time she had ever bought flowers. “The
Rummager” laid them upon the coffin of her friend—“The Tombs Angel.”
[NOTE.—Mrs. Salome C. Foster, of blessed memory, for many years
devoted herself to the unfortunates confined in the city prisons.
This valuable and beautiful life was lost in the Park Avenue Hotel
fire, February 22, 1902.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER XI_
_Life_
All that is enjoyable; all that one would possess, and do if one could,
is summed up in this word—Life!
What is it that the young would see? and the flight of which is
regretted by the old? It is Life!
This is the almost universal meaning of the word. You speak it, and
think of dance and song, women and wine, sunlight, blue skies, and
freedom.
To us it has another meaning—try and imagine it.
Sometimes when an important trial is closing and the jury is out till
midnight perhaps, we, the inhabitants of the Tombs, sit up and listen
for the little bell which rings in the prison, because one of us is
being brought back across the “Bridge of Sighs.”
Here he comes! “What did you get?” calls out a friend from the top tier,
and there is a clutch at every heart, a horror that you on the outside
will never be able to appreciate, when we hear the answer, the sentence
most dreaded—“LIFE.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER XII_
_My Friend the Major_
Without exception, the Major is one of the finest men I have ever met. I
like him so much that I am willing to tell a truthful story, or rather,
tell a story truthfully (which is a very different thing), at my own
expense.
It was this way: Benjamin had got religion. Benjamin preached a long
sermon to us every single evening; he preached revival sermons,
missionary sermons, and obituary ones on all the fellows who had gone
through the “little door.” When he had exhausted these—and us, he would
say, “Now this is what I am going to say about _you_, Mr. Roland, after
you have gone.” What followed would depend on how I had treated him
during the day.
Another reason why Ben preached. Benjamin had made me this very handsome
proposition: He knew a man in Brooklyn who owned a tent. _I_ was to hire
that tent, and sing outside to attract a crowd. We agreed that I could
do that successfully. Then _I_ should enter and sing inside, and _he_
would stand at the door and collect ten cents from all who entered (if
there were any so foolish). Then _he_ would preach, after which _I_
should sing again while HE took up a collection. I tried to suggest
other orders of events, but Ben insisted that this was the _only_ one he
could agree to; and as it seemed perfectly fair, I consented. If Ben had
only lived, how rich and famous we should have become, and happy, too,
for Ben enchanted me with descriptions of all the nice colored girls we
should meet. Life was _very_ tempting. On account of this arrangement
with me Ben thought it necessary to rehearse his sermons every night, so
as to get into practice. He addressed them to “youse poor, mean,
miserable, damned sinners in here in the Death-Chamber.” His elocution
consisted of main strength.
We were tired of it, so Larry swore out a warrant; Shorty indicted him;
Eddy committed him to prison; and finally he was brought to trial. John
was the jury. I defended my colored brother, and the Major, who was on
duty that evening, prosecuted him. Why did I defend him? Because he sent
me three oranges and implored my help. I asked him if these were all he
had (this is a lawyer’s first duty toward himself). They were, so I
accepted his retainer, and told him not to worry about his
affairs—neither did I.
The case came up that evening, and I asked for a postponement, for I
have observed that all expensive attorneys do this. No adjournment was
allowed, however, so I explained to my client that the District
Attorney’s office was trying to “railroad him,” and he must raise more
funds. He tendered a paper of State tobacco and three toothpicks. I took
the tobacco, but refused to consider the toothpicks as collateral—I had
seen newer ones. I demanded more tobacco; he had to borrow another
package. Then, knowing I had everything he possessed, I was ready to
proceed.
“Judge Sparta,” of Binghamton, presided, and a more learned and
impartial jurist never wore “sneaks” (felt-soled slippers). The trial
proceeded under his just rulings, and with great decorum. The evidence
was so conflicting, that it was agreed between counsel that whoever made
the best speech in summing up should win the case. I felt sorry, indeed,
for my opponent, for the Major is a silent man. I summed up with all my
usual eloquence. Even the judge was affected as I pleaded and
threatened. I was humorous and scornful by turns, the jury wept or
laughed at my pleasure, and when I spoke of Benjamin, I made a bishop of
him, dressed him in episcopal robes, and placed him at the head of a
great university (the tent). I showed how his white hair would be loved
and venerated at this seat of learning—_if_ he lived. There was not a
dry eye in the Death-Chamber when I finished this part of my oration.
And when I closed with a scathing arraignment of the Major’s legal
methods, the great crowd in the auditorium, who had remained spellbound,
prisoners to my eloquence, burst into frantic cheers. During all the
time I had been speaking not a single man had left the room. “That
speech should be put in the fourth reader,” said the judge. I had a
right to think that mine indeed had been a powerful effort—I had made a
home run. I was number one. I knew I had the Major licked.
The Major’s speech! Words fail me to describe how, from lofty to still
more lofty flights his oratory ascended, climax upon climax and further
climaxes still! Even I was thrilled. I forgot my case, my
client—everything. I may say it was a long speech—yes, I think I am
justified in saying so. First came Henry Ward Beecher’s great abolition
sermon, then Ingersoll’s oration at the grave of his brother, next
Lincoln’s immortal speech at Gettysburg. Heavens! what a memory that man
had. The very bars of our cages melted like wax as he proceeded to
declaim his own speech of thanks on the occasion when the Tarrytown Fire
Department presented him with a speaking trumpet. Here the enthusiasm of
my constituents could be restrained no longer. They cheered the Major.
They reviled _me_! I was told to get under the bed. Then followed the
Masonic burial service, about our weary feet having come to the end of
the toilsome journey before the Great White Throne. When the Major
reached this point Benjamin could see, in his mind’s eye, the cemetery,
the open grave amid the tombs and monuments; he could see the pall, the
coffin under it, and—himself inside the coffin. Blue perspiration exuded
from Benjamin’s person. I could plainly hear his teeth chatter as these
awful phrases rolled from the Major’s lips as only he can roll them.
They made Benjamin sick—I didn’t feel very well myself.
Of course the jury, who was another Mason, convicted Benjamin of the
crime of—heresy in the _last_ degree. But Ben maintained to the very day
of his death that the Major “conjahed me with churchyard dirt,” and I
believe the Major always has a rabbit’s foot concealed about him; at
least I hope so, if it brings him good luck.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER XIII_
_A Dissertation on the Third Degree_
That the present condition of affairs regarding the administration of
justice in New York City is unsatisfactory, will hardly be denied, while
such glaring instances of recent incompetency are fresh in the public
mind. The many comments and editorials appearing in the best
metropolitan newspapers attest that our citizens are conscious of the
defects in this department, while the press of other cities throughout
the country, and even abroad, reminds us in no uncertain tones how we
are regarded by our neighbors. This matter has been recognized of recent
years, and attention called to it by investigating committees appointed
by our Legislature. But the efforts of these committees have been too
widely distributed; they have attempted to investigate too many things
in general; and the methods of the District Attorney’s office in
particular, although regarded with suspicion by a large majority of
those who read and think, and with contempt by those who know,
remain—unexposed, despite the fact that they demand immediate attention.
It would seem as if some of the strenuous periodicals with which we are
blessed, or otherwise, would find here a fruitful field for sensational
effort; but it is precisely to “yellow journalism” that the District
Attorney’s office caters; and this branch of the press will be unlikely
to turn and bite the hand which feeds it so generously. The better type
of journalism will have none of these matters. Those of the legal
profession who know—the lawyers practising in criminal law courts—must
be careful not to offend so powerful an institution, whose disfavor
might mean ruin. And the Bar Association ignores or postpones action. No
persons in private life care to take the initiative; and perhaps they
are right. It is safest not to interfere. Why then should I undertake
the task? Simply because I have suffered unjustly, and have seen others
suffer injustice. This is my sole warrant and authority. And in this
matter I am very much in earnest.
The present state of affairs is the result of previous conditions, older
methods of criminal procedure, which have been developed and expanded
until at the present time they have overstepped all decency.
Let us begin at the beginning, for what I am about to describe may
happen to any one. When a man is arrested the police proceed as follows:
Invariably starting with protestations of sympathy and faith in their
prisoner’s innocence, they make offers of help and assistance. The
suspect is coaxed into a confession if possible; this is the first
degree. Let us further suppose that, on his part, all guilt or knowledge
is denied. Then the second degree is “worked.” Here traps will be laid
for him—he will be lied to, threatened, frightened, it may be. A lawyer
may now appear. He says an agonized mother has retained him to take the
case; he guarantees immediate release, and is ready to hear the story.
But suppose the “agonized mother” to have been dead many years,
naturally his services are declined. It is well. The confidence would
have been extended to a policeman. I have heard that a cassock sometimes
robes the same individual on a similar errand. This “moral suasion” may
be extended over even a day or two, reinforced by such pleasantries as
being awakened the moment one drops asleep. Meals are “forgotten,” a
drink of water is an impossibility; or liquor is plied if that will open
lips. In summer a cheerful fire may burn very near the cell door; the
windows are closed, one may perspire a trifle. If the season be winter,
no inconvenience is felt by reason of superfluous heat. This is not
denied by police officials. I believe Superintendent Byrnes describes
all these methods in his book, and tells how a suspect is locked up in a
cell with the instruments of the crime he is accused of having
committed, or even with the “corpus delicti” itself. Proof of this
method is found in that atrociously and hideously managed persecution of
a young woman, in which evidence collected in this manner was offered in
court—and very properly ruled out by the presiding judge. The case is
too recent to be forgotten.
If the prisoner still remains obstinate, the third degree follows in due
course. This is not at all the bloody affair which some fancies have
painted it. The appearance of those who have just gone through the
ordeal indicates nothing unusual—perhaps a little pallor and a slight
derangement of the digestive organs; for to be struck in the stomach
with a lusty fist enclosed within a boxing glove or beaten across the
kidneys with a piece of rubber garden hose leaves no marks, that is, on
the _outside_. No right-minded person who has experienced this will ever
complain to the courts; he has no witnesses; “there is more in the
closet.” I believe that the “third degree” is very seldom used unless
there is almost a moral certainty that the person subjected to it is the
proper one to receive this modern torture.
I have never experienced the “third degree.” To me, as to every other
good citizen, the term had been a familiar one; but the details never
having been made public, my impressions of this ceremony were extremely
vague, until a time came when opportunities were frequent to get
information regarding this matter at second-hand, decidedly the best way
of obtaining it. During the exercise hours in the Tombs prison, I walked
with scores of men who have gone through this initiation. For two years
I asked questions of those who could not possibly be in collusion to
deceive me; and as all their stories agreed, I think I have given a
correct description of the three degrees. My little diary, kept all that
time, contains my notes and lies before me. There was another place in
which I heard about the third degree. On rainy days in the Death-Chamber
at Sing Sing prison, when it was too dark to read (and there were many
“gloomy” days during those two years), we whispered our experiences to
one another. All my companions had been taken to Police Headquarters or
to station houses when arrested. I went to the Tombs directly from the
Coroner’s Court; across the “Bridge of Sighs,” or, as we call it, “The
Suspension of Howls,” and there is no “third degree” practised in the
Tombs.
The “third degree” is not a fixed ceremony. It is regulated to suit the
individual (I do not mean his taste), and differs with the personality
of the grand master. Its object is simply to promote conversation in the
hope that something compromising will be said. It is almost always a
success; some persons become even garrulous. No excuse or explanation is
ever made for the third degree, because its use is vigorously denied by
those in authority. But I do make such an excuse; there is much to be
said in its favor. Guilt cannot be hunted down by innocence. You must
“match cunning with guile,” “you must fight the devil with fire,” and
when clubs are trumps—play them.
Take this matter home to yourself; imagine a case in which you are very
much interested. Your house has been entered and all your wife’s jewelry
stolen; you complain to the police. Of course, having done so, the
yellow journals print a full account of the robbery, also more or less
flattering fake portraits of yourself and family. Your bath-room,
through which the burglar entered, is described in detail; your billiard
table, library cuspidor, etc., are photographed and printed life-size in
the evening editions. The next day a portrait of the pretty typewriter
employed at your office is displayed, whom some lynx-eyed reporter has
discovered wearing diamonds. Then everything you _never_ did in your
life is disclosed. The “journalists” take possession of your home; an
old pair of slippers and a bicycle hat of bygone days are discovered.
You stole the jewelry yourself, you know you did! Your hidden sins stand
revealed in all their repulsiveness. The finger of sensational
journalism has torn the mask of hypocrisy, so long and successfully
worn, from your repellant countenance at last. Confess, miserable
wretch! Pictures of Judas Iscariot, Captain Kidd, and others of their
type appear in the hysterical press. They are all labelled with _your_
name. How you will be roasted! “It is said,” etc., that on dark nights
you steal forth to exhume deceased infants from their tombs—and to eat
them. Are you ill-advised enough to deny this? Beware! As for the
partner of your joys and sorrows, “We have it on undeniable authority,”
etc., etc., that she went yachting with that gay club fellow Noah, and
has been engaged to each one of his guests in turn. For a penny, “all
who run may read” these romances; the only redeeming feature being that
those who read do not believe. While this is going on your better half
stays in her room and weeps.
The servants leave, and you have to answer the door-bell yourself and be
polite(?) to the representatives of the press, who call every few
moments for interviews, and who never print a word you say to them.
Every tradesman you deal with sends a collector with his bill; your life
insurance policies are cancelled.
Then the police captain of the precinct sends for you. You go prepared
to be cast into prison. Not so; while the “Journal,” “World,” and
“Herald” have been clearing up the mystery of this “inside job,” the
police have made an arrest. The prisoner is a well-known burglar. On
that night and at the time your house was entered he was seen loitering
outside, but just at present he won’t talk. You know that he either
robbed you himself, or watched while a confederate did. Do you want your
wife’s property? Do you want your character back again? Do you want to
get “hunk”? Remember, whoever entered your house came prepared to kill.
Perhaps you are a father, and know your conscientious duty towards that
eldest son of yours, your own flesh and blood, when he has misbehaved
and is sulky. Do you birch him? Do you trounce him, or do you stop to
argue? Is it more brutal to inflict corporal punishment upon a man than
upon a child?
But you don’t stop now to debate that question. You fling yourself upon
your knees, and with tears implore that you be allowed to assist at—“the
third degree.” You even offer all the worldly goods you have left for
the privilege of plying that garden hose yourself—just once, where it
will do the most good. Stop, sir, the law forbids! After a couple of
howls the peevishness of your new acquaintance vanishes. He speaks. In a
few hours your property is restored, and you are distributing cigars and
buying wine for the reporters, in the hope that they will stop lying
about you. Your wife condescends to speak to you for the first time in
days. If upon his trial the rogue should plead that an illegal
confession had been wrung from him, and the police should deny it, would
you go to court and corroborate the thief, or would you “lie like a
gentleman”?
The question is, Is the “third degree” ever used to compel a confession
from an innocent person, or to satisfy a grudge? In either case the
abuse, not the use, is to be condemned. Are theories made up without
evidence, and some poor victim made to fit the case by means of torture?
Was “Frenchy” really innocent and in prison all those years? If not, why
was he pardoned a few months ago? Was McAuliffe beaten to death to
satisfy a grudge, or for fear of future revelations? It is not my
business to find out. I have been informed that at the last election the
people selected some one else to do that; and if in theorizing upon
these subjects to myself I have come to no conclusion which I care to
give here, I am sure I do the “Finest” no injustice, for they have
theorized on my case for nearly four years, and have come to no
conclusion at all.
The first and second degrees are efforts to outwit a criminal. They
would seldom entrap an innocent person. Moreover, the accused need not
answer questions, and this should be the course pursued by any one
accused of crime, no matter how innocent. The first and second degrees
are admitted to exist; the third degree has been described, and, on the
whole, I am inclined to approve of it, although unlawful. It has brought
many criminals to justice; but I do not defend the _fourth degree_,
which is the name I use, for the lack of a better one, to describe the
present state of affairs existing in the office of the public
prosecutor. It is a continuation of the others, after the affair reaches
the hands of an Assistant District Attorney with an ambition for a
record for securing convictions—one looking for a reputation. It is made
possible by twin evils of recent birth: yellow journalism and expert
testimony. Summed up, it is the use of slander and perjury. In the
“fourth degree” the pen is mightier than the night stick—the victim is
not pounded with the “locust,” but in the press. Like the fourth
dimension of space, if there is one, this state of affairs is invisible;
but invisible only because we will not observe.
Permit me to prove the existence of this fourth degree. Time was, when
trials in the criminal courts of this county were intended to determine
the guilt or the innocence of the accused. All this is changed now;
convictions must be obtained by every and any means, when money and
reputations are to be made; and the secret methods of convicting
innocent men constitute the fourth degree. Immediately upon arrest, or
even before, public opinion is aroused against the suspect by
inflammatory newspaper statements in which the victim is accused of
crime; the presumption of innocence is no longer allowed him. His family
is branded by the most contemptible calumnies; and the public is assured
in every edition that the authorities have ample proof of the accused’s
guilt, that new evidence is constantly pouring in, and that conviction
is a certainty. During this trial in the newspapers, fake evidence is
published; opinions of previous officials not noted for their
over-blameless public lives are printed, experts are turned loose—all of
them, of course, on one side—and this is kept up until it is believed
that public opinion has been swayed against the victim. Eulogies on the
generosity and fairness of the assistant prosecutor in charge are
printed editorially (making certain the source from whence these
articles emanate, for in our day, the District Attorney’s office has
become a news agency for sensational journalism). In the manner affected
by all savages, this red fire is burnt, tum-tums are beaten, stink-balls
thrown to distract public attention from what is about to happen.
Now comes an all important part of the fourth degree. The public
prosecutor declares that he has never known a plainer case of guilt; and
deprives the accused of the examination before a magistrate, which the
law guarantees him, by “railroading” the case before the Grand Jury,
which has been prepared and prejudiced by poisoning the wells of
information—the press. These proceedings being secret, evidence
favorable to the defendant is suppressed; and lies can be manufactured
if needed, for no cross-examination of witnesses is permitted. It is the
golden opportunity of any secret foe. Of course an indictment can always
be secured under such circumstances, the accused branded and thrown into
prison, and need never know one word of the evidence against him. Great
is the political and legal capital of the Assistant District Attorney
who manages a case in this way, especially if the victim be a big fish.
He is called a “Fearless Prosecutor”—an “Able Assistant.”
If the accused has money he can appeal to a higher court and have such
an illegal indictment set aside, but the prosecuting attorney will make
this process long and expensive. The more money the accused spends now,
the less he will have for the necessities of the trial, and his wily
opponent knows this well. The Able Assistant is not troubled with
matters financial. There are fresh bond issues for him, if necessary.
Should the Grand Jury refuse to indict and discharge the accused, the
“Fearless One” simply arrests him again, and repeats his efforts before
another Grand Jury; all the time assuring the public that the prisoner’s
millions will not save him, and that the prosecutor can be trusted to
drag him to the bar of justice. He does it, too, sooner or later. That
is, it is called the “bar of justice.” During this time the people’s
counsel makes his grand stand play. He challenges the accused under
enormous headlines—“Are you innocent of the crime?” Then produce the
culprit, prove his guilt; and this learned and generous gentleman of
legal attainments will release you.
Finally, the accused is cast into prison, and kept there. He must rely
on his friends and his lawyers. This is all very well presuming he has
them, but hard indeed for the poor fellow who has none. In other words,
a man is put in a position where he cannot defend himself. Perhaps the
offence is a bailable one, let bail be offered; it is immediately
increased. The unfortunate victim cannot get out on bail. The Able
Assistant will see to that. In the meantime, any persons who it seems
probable are to be witnesses for the defence are subpœnaed and
terrorized, if possible, threatened with arrest, insulted, bullied. The
yellow newspapers, hungry for sensation, have put the defendant at the
mercy of every blackmailer and crank. Their offers of reward invite all
men without principle, but with a price, to make fake identifications
which will implicate him. Does the prosecution desire any particular
person for a witness? Such persons are simply kidnapped and put in the
House of Detention.
Time elapses, perhaps years; all is now ready for the trial in court.
No! I have forgotten to mention that the county of New York will give a
lawyer five hundred dollars to defend a penniless man accused of murder.
This is American, this is fair play, it is a helping hand to the under
dog. Under, because the fearless prosecutor can spend, and has often
spent, hundreds of thousands of dollars to obtain a conviction. His
limit is the sky, for it costs his pocket nothing, and when the
prosecution makes the issue on expert testimony, the odds on conviction
will be two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which the State may
perhaps spend, to this five hundred dollars granted to the defendant.
At the trial, everything the law forbids the police to do, is permitted
to the District Attorney. In his opening and closing addresses, he
exaggerates shamelessly, and tries to prejudice the jurymen with poison
distilled from his own imagination. For three months he will be allowed
to pour expert testimony into the jury box. And by the way, if a man is
guilty, does it take a matter of a quarter of a million and a quarter of
a year to show it? At this trial proper—or rather improper—the
caricaturist with drawing-board, the jackal reporters—all the cannibals
of Park Row, join in the man hunt. Nothing is sacred. Old age, grief,
womanhood, innocence are but so much material for the “story.” The
official stenographer’s report is a prosaic thing—away with it. The
defendant’s appearance, his conduct—will be indeed a problem for the
readers of the penny dreadfuls—for while the “Journal” describes his
eyes gleaming in their sockets like an infuriated bull’s, the “World”
chronicles the tears which course down his pitiable countenance, and the
“Herald” comments on his indifferent and callous demeanor.
But if the State has not proved me guilty? the prisoner may ask. A
fallacy, my friend; in these days you must prove your innocence. Of
course the accused is convicted. No man, however innocent, can
successfully combat the fourth degree. Everything has worked like a
charm; but at last, after two years, perhaps, or more, the case reaches
the Court of Appeals. Then the master stroke is given, the _finesse_ of
which is startling even to old criminal lawyers. That the conviction has
been obtained illegally is universally admitted. How will the attorney
for the people induce the Court of Appeals to sustain it? Of course, the
method will be in the nature of an innovation; for the fourth degree is
a new thing, and just as certainly will it be something unjust.
Judging others by himself, the Able Assistant will rely on the use of
money. Special counsel is obtained to try to have the illegal conviction
sustained in the higher courts. A man of national reputation, the leader
of his party, and noted for his political influence and his willingness
to use it; who, strangely enough, when high in office appointed some of
the judges who are to listen to his argument, may be retained to argue
before the Court of Appeals, and beg that it allow the conviction to
stand. The honorable special counsel receives a great many thousands of
dollars for doing this, and in one case had at last the opportunity of
gratifying a little personal grudge of nearly twenty years’ standing. As
the epitaph of the Western man read, “He did his damnedest; angels could
do no more.”
In one case I have in mind nothing could equal this person’s eloquence
when arguing in the higher courts _against_ a new trial for the
defendant, unless it was his effort when, a few weeks later, he insisted
in a lower court that the defendant _must_ be tried again; thus proving
that there are two sides to a case—the inside and outside. Consistency
is a jewel, a rare one in the Criminal Court Building, County of New
York, for after all this fuss and expenditure, the “good lady” who held
the office of District Attorney dared not try the case, but left it to
his successor. All this is not an imaginary case; it is my own. I know
whereof I speak.
Just consider for a moment another case recently tried. Does it not
furnish further proof of the fourth degree?
Two men were involved—one was to be killed in earnest, because he had
inherited money; the other was nearly killed with kindness to make the
former killing possible. The office had no case against the first man.
But they arrested him; nor against the second man, so they arrested him,
also. The Assistant District Attorney who prosecuted them had a private
practice while holding public office. The charge against these men was,
that they had killed a third man, who really died a natural death—an old
man who had money. Now began the offers to each prisoner, separately, to
inform on the other. This always happens. The result in this case was
nil. Both protested their innocence, but the fearless prosecutor found
the weaker-natured of the two during these interviews. It was the second
man. To him was offered absolute freedom—and what else?—if he would say
the other did the murder. He did so. The examination took place. There
the other proved the informer’s story a lie; he proved a perfect alibi,
which could not be shaken. The legal adviser of the people had
employed—perjury. That was the one thing proved. Circumstances were now
changed; that story would not work. Remember there were millions at
stake, and the Able Assistant had a private practice. So quite a
different lie was invented and sworn to by the second man. This was also
proved to be a perjury, something for which no prosecutor’s witness is
ever prosecuted. Still the first man, the legatee, was held for trial.
But during the long wait of years in the Tombs for him, how did the
second man, the Assistant’s tool, fare? I said he was killed with
kindness. Of course that is not literal; but the Fearless Prosecutor
took good care of him; he was supplied with every comfort—no key was
ever turned on him.
In return he subscribed to any and all statements which were required to
kill number one. At the trial he made still a different confession from
the two previous ones; the third one was that he himself had committed
the murder at the instigation of the defendant. A self-confessed
murderer, a triple perjurer, he is now scot-free, and an innocent man is
in the Death-Chamber.
These are the methods of the fourth degree. The Court of Appeals does
not approve of them; one District Attorney has been removed from office
by the Governor; but another, he of the ever-ready biography, has handed
them down to his sons as an heritage of fame.
The public has no idea of the enormous number of cases which are
reversed by the Court of Appeals. Here is a recent one. A young man was
sentenced to imprisonment for twenty-five years by a General Session’s
judge. But the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, when reviewing
the case, said: “The defendant’s guilt has not been proven. It is not
even proven by the evidence that _any_ crime was committed.” This is a
fact, and any one who will take the trouble to read the published
decisions will find it and many more such instances.
Of the convictions obtained by the District Attorney in the Court of
General Sessions, a small proportion of the convicted men have money to
appeal to the higher courts, and the percentage of new trials granted is
high. How much higher would it be if _all_ cases were appealed? In other
words, think of the poor devils who are in State prison unjustly because
of their lack of money.
There is a remedy for this state of affairs. We have a legislature, a
bar association, and a legal aid society. Among all these could not some
arrangement be made for inspectors, to whom a man unjustly convicted
could complain and receive assistance? Is there no relief or redress for
the sufferers from the fourth degree, when even the third degree is
forbidden by law?
If the third degree is brutal, the fourth is hellish. Call the third
illegal assault, and you must name the fourth murder illegally designed.
By means of the fourth a gentleman can be hounded to death by his
enemies. In the third degree a criminal has his ears boxed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER XIV_
_It’s Just Like Her (A Chronicle of the Tombs)_
The missionaries I have met! Mind, I am not speaking of the professional
ones, those who are officially connected with the Tombs, or with Sing
Sing prison; nor the chaplains. Years of experience have taught them
their good work; they do it properly and without the aid of trumpets.
Nor do I mean the ladies, who out of the goodness of their hearts, come
and sing to us on Sundays. I am referring to those kind creatures who
have made it their “life work” to come here _occasionally_ and bestow
tracts and cheering words upon us; the kind that carry enormous Bibles,
full of colored book marks, pressed against their flat chests, and who
punctuate their sentences by rolling their eyes upward. These book
marks, I am convinced, are what make them so round-shouldered. They do
not come during all the year: with summer they receive calls, doubtless
from a celestial source, to “green fields and pastures new”; while the
real helpers stay and, with us, bear the heat and burden of the day.
How I have been comforted by the visitations (on _clear_ days during the
winter, and _how_ I have prayed for stormy ones) of these devoted and
self-appointed examiners of my beliefs, and by a perusal of the
literature they thrust upon me, “The Drunkard’s Home” (this to me, who
have never tasted liquor in my life); “The Path to Hell” (when I am
there already); “A Life of Sin” (I have always lived at home with my
parents). Still another piece of literature informs me that I may
possibly be a Christian, but _not_ a _clean one_—if I smoke. Oh, the
irony of life! with all this abundant and excellent supply, I am not
allowed, while in the Tombs, to shave myself!
What a spiritual uplift I experienced by the sudden appearance of a
female of uncertain age, who demanded: “Where are you going to spend
eternity?” and before I could answer, “Not with _you_ if I can help it,”
she put her second question. “Do you pray, brother? Do you get right
down on your knees and lift yourself up?” (wouldn’t that be a stunt? it
is also a mixed metaphor, but what do missionaries care for rhetoric?)
On the first day of my incarceration a good lady (she is also a type of
all the others) introduced herself to me in this manner: Transfixing me
with an awful glance she said, “Man’s nature is _three_fold: physical,
intellectual, spiritual. I am here to minister to your _spiritual_
necessities.” This she proceeded to do by telling me to “look up, hope
on, it is brighter further off”; and that I was in a prison cell—“for a
_purpose_.”
Hardly had she passed on and left me happy in my solitude when her place
was taken by another, and then another, who gave place to still another,
all with the same tracts and expostulations. Not one of them neglected
to tell me, that even St. Paul had been put in prison (for a purpose,
doubtless), and that John Bunyan, although in a similar state of
durance, had written that great and good book, “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Had
I ever read it? I pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to read it again for
my own good. After several hours of this, I also was in the mood to
write—I wrote this and to my mother—begging her to come and sit in front
of my cell all day, and to bring a broom; but still they came. My
mother’s presence and the absence of the broom but gave them the
opportunity to inflict her also.
Oh, the missionaries! are there no bandits in America? Why, oh why, do
they insist on questioning me about my soul, and offering to wrestle
with my most secret sins, when there is a man in the next cell who needs
underclothes? After hearing the missionaries and being promised another
call on the morrow, I wonder that the men do not rush to the District
Attorney’s office and accept “pleas.” Sing Sing would seem preferable to
another visitation.
I must not forget Sister “Goo-Goo,” who is so sympathetic. She stands
outside, looking into my cell through the barred door; she also looks
alluring. She sighs, then whispers, “This may be your door of hope.”
“Then why is it kept locked?” I beg to inquire.
Sometimes they come on Sundays with last year’s religious papers and
magazines; they come and gossip with the keepers; or they bring a friend
to whom they show the sights and point out us poor unfortunates. It is
pleasant to watch them as they meet and compare dress goods patterns
which they produce from their pocket-books; how briefly the hours go by,
what brotherly and sisterly love; how they enjoy themselves; how happy
_we_ are while they do _this_.
Of course we exchange experiences when they have departed; and, good
souls, their visits often provoke some humor in the gray days of our
existence. During the exercise hour one morning I overheard the “hard”
man tell another, “her skirts” (that woman) “says she is praying for me,
but it won’t hurt me none, for I’ve got an alibi.”
“See what the old ‘four-eyed gent’ just gave me,” said the wooden-legged
man. It was a tract on the sin of dancing.
“He’s all right,” cut in another, “the old ‘polar top’s’ going to see
the judge about me and I’ll only get two years.”
“Oh,” said the lame man, “that’s what the judge _intends_ to give yer
_now_; after ‘the century plant’ talks to him for three or four hours,
the judge will give you eighty years.”
How the missionaries love each other! few are on speaking terms; but
must they make _me_ their confidant; do I not suffer sufficiently? This
is what I must listen to, “That woman over there putting her ‘stuff’
through the bars is one of the very worst liars who comes here; you
can’t believe a word she says. You don’t want to have anything to do
with her; the less you tell her the better. What do you think, she keeps
the money she collects for the poor prisoners.”
My visitor goes and his place is taken by the “friend” he has just
eulogized. “Did that man say anything about me? Did you ever hear of his
doing any good for any one? He ought to be put out.”
This good lady is followed by another, her sister in the Lord. The
second one does not speak to the first; but she does speak of her and
imparts her social and financial status. “Oh, yes, she’s very wealthy;
she could afford to do _much more_ than she does; she lives in a
brownstone house, and keeps three servants; but _I_ have given
everything I possess to the Lord.”
Oh, the cant! the cant one hears in the Tombs.
But there is another kind; there are the real workers who bring gladness
and help; there _was_ the “Tombs Angel,” there is “Sister Sunshine,” and
“Sister ----”; but it is of her I started to tell this story. I heard it
from a court officer over in the Criminal Court Building during my
examination before the Coroner.
I was in the “box,” which means the “pen,” that is to say, the “stall”
in which you wait till you are called before the judge, and my friend
the officer said, referring to a very miserable specimen in the opposite
“pen,” who was in convulsions by reason of his anger:
“He’s the worst ever; the worst ever I see; the very worst. Why, what do
you think? he cursed the Sister—what? did I? Did I call him down?”
The Sister he referred to is one of the black-robed saints, who for the
sake of the lowly Nazarene devote their lives to laboring among the
sinners and unfortunates in the city prisons. The object of the keeper’s
wrath was the toughest man in the Tombs—to have that distinction one
must be hard indeed.
The treatment which this particular Sister of whom I speak had received
at the hands of the hard citizen was somewhat as follows, according to
my informant: First, he had lied to her; then he had asked of her an
impossibility. Of course she had attempted to do it. Of course she
failed; then he insulted her, and what he said I am ashamed to write;
but tears were in her eyes when she turned away. But for all that—wait,
I am ahead of my story.
It seems that previous to this he had abused his own lawyer until that
worthy would do little or nothing for him. “Let him go. No one will help
him, anyhow—there’s no one who would be a witness for him. He has no
friends—there’s no evidence that can save him,” said his legal adviser.
At the trial, which took place that day, the day it stormed so, some
evidence _did_ appear which proved him absolutely innocent; never was
this expected; it came from an old enemy; he had not dreamed this
possible.
How did this happen? She (the Sisters hear much that no one else does)
had learned of this witness, and in spite of the man himself and her own
outraged feelings, had procured his defence and acquittal.
“He didn’t deserve it, but then that is just her way,” said my friend
the attendant. “Whose way?” I asked. “Don’t you know? Why, God bless
her, I thought every one knew Sister Xavier.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER XV_
_“Shorty”_
Had I been the Governor of the State of New York, I would have pardoned
“Shorty.” There was universal sorrow in the Death-Chamber when he died,
for we knew his story, and every one of us felt that justice might have
been satisfied in another way. Each of us had learned to respect this
stupid-faced little fellow of five feet one inch; who walked with such
heavy feet, and whose stooped shoulders were the result of a long life
of excessive hard work, yet Shorty was only twenty-two years old.
On arriving among us, there was something very like an animal about him.
He could not read or write; he learned to do both while there. Larry, an
Italian member of our guild, taught him. At that time, when he was not
drawing pictures for “The Murderers’ Home Journal,” which the editor had
to suppress, he was catching flies; he did this almost as well as a
monkey—and why not? How the flies loved Shorty! But this was at first.
So was his feud with our colored brother, Benjamin, which was renewed
daily. Every morning Shorty told Benjamin that his face was black, and
urged him to wash it. Benjamin replied; Shorty responded; Benjamin
observed, and then the keeper would interfere.
What trivial things bring about misunderstandings among friends. A mere
nothing at all will start a quarrel in the Death-Chamber. We had cookies
for Sunday dinner, “the kind mother used to make,” all dotted over with
dried currants. She gave them to me when I was a good boy: she gave them
to me incessantly. Shorty replaced the currants with dried flies, and
sent them in the twilight to Benjamin with his compliments.
Benjamin was in a dark cell, it was a dark day; Benjamin—my pen refuses
to write it. I shall never be hungry again as long as I live, when I
think of what happened.
“I doan think much of dem currants,” said Ben.
Shorty replied, “No-a-currant—heap a—” My pen again refuses its task.
No; I cannot tolerate the thought, can you? Don’t ask me to write that
word, and then I need not repeat Benjamin’s reply, for Ben’s reply was
_awful_ to hear.
This started the feud, and a little pleasantry of Ben’s not long
afterwards added kerosene to the flame. Benjamin bided his time. One
evening he challenged Shorty to a game of checkers, for a paper of
chewing tobacco a side; best two games in three, the winner to take all.
Now in the Death-Chamber each of us had made a checker-board, and the
squares of each board were numbered alike; so, when an important match
is made, we can follow the game as the combatants call off the moves by
numbers to each other. It is just like a chess match “by cable,” and we
are almost as far away from each other, although in the same room. The
stakes were put up in the keeper’s hands. Shorty won the first game,
Benjamin the second, Shorty the third, and took the tobacco. Shorty was
jubilant; he declared that “Ben knew nothing from the game what he is
about.”
It became strangely silent in Benjamin’s cell. Benjamin was waiting
until Shorty should regale himself with the victor’s spoils. For worlds
Ben would not have lost a word of Shorty’s remarks. The noises which
proceeded from “little Italy” later were worth waiting for. There were
two dead mice hidden away in the interior of that package of tobacco.
“How does yer like dem kurrents?” asked Ben. “Doan yer be afeared to
chaw dem, dey’s perfectly ripe.”
They were.
No more presents were exchanged after that. It is sad when friends lose
confidence in each other.
Shorty spoke a language of his own. It was English in sound and accent,
but the grouping of the words was according to his own sweet will. For
Shorty the rules of syntax had no terrors.
One day he told me his story. “I did was from Italy six year. All the
time mostly work the railroad on. So much big, heavy carry ties. That
don’t make me any never mind. I get the mon. Ah! that is altogether
something—three hundred dollar. I will go home. Ah! a prettyful of a
girls is there to marry.”
Then Shorty told me how he came to New York to take the steamer. Here he
met some friend who invited him to the Italian colony across the river
in Jersey.
“He did went.” Every one said how foolish he was. “Such a nonsense. You
don’t know what’s no good. You talk like a nanny goat.” Why not marry
the beautiful daughter of the house at which they were calling, “ain’t
yer”?
The mother slipped away while the father and friends argued with Shorty;
they were all so kind and convivial. Yes, their new friend must marry
Agnes. The three hundred dollars should set them up in housekeeping, the
prospective father-in-law, who was in “publitics,” would obtain a
brilliant position for Shorty; only a fool would do anything else. And
then the mother brought in the girl, dressed as every mother’s heart
would prompt for the occasion. Shorty looked into her eyes; at the
borrowed plumage; he had, alas, already looked into the cup.
“Ah,” said he to me, overcome by the mere remembrance; “Ah, there was
something not to believe it.”
“Did you like her?” I asked.
“You have good to talk, the same thing is to me,” said Shorty, and there
was a sob in his voice.
Then he went on to tell how the mother took care of the three hundred
dollars; how they, Shorty and the girl, signed a paper; this made them
man and wife, he explained, and then they celebrated—“Maka th’
congratulate.”
Then came the tragedy. “It was one o’clock after twelve—I feel awfully
worse—I don’t know what isn’t—I want my wife,” explained Shorty.
“You must be drink,” said the mother.
“Why don’t you say what you are telling about?” cried the father.
“I want de mon!” demanded Shorty.
“Lie business!” screamed the father.
“Throw away! No believe!” said the friends.
Shorty was trembling as he went on with the story.
“That’s a fearful, what I see? A sharpa wire (stiletto). Ah, that is a
_different_ something!”
Shorty was magnificent now; no words were necessary to tell the story,
his face and gestures showed me all that happened. Tearing back his
shirt, he showed me a long, jagged scar from shoulder to waist.
“Quicker, quick into hall. Light no more. What you have? It is to fight.
Right away quick off. Bigger man throw down on me. They kill. I
shoot—just the same like this—_Dio! Madre de Dio!_—on the floor, the
mother! So, little, small hole in face. I do be arrested.”
As the French say, figure for yourself what justice poor Shorty received
at his trial against these witnesses and without his money—a paper man
in hell would get a fairer chance. So it came to pass that Shorty
arrived in the Death-Chamber at Sing Sing, and deported himself at first
as I have described.
But there came a time when Sister Xavier brought him an Italian Bible
and catechism, and Larry Priori taught him to read them. Then Shorty was
a different creature. He became a man—quiet, considerate, industrious,
and we respected him. About this time came a letter and photograph from
Italy—from home. They read the letter to Shorty—he could not read
writing as yet—they gave him the photograph because it was not a
tintype. You may not possess a tintype in the Death-Chamber. A man once
cut his throat with a picture of his mother; they have been more careful
since. The picture had been taken by a rural artist in some little
mountain town. Shall I ever forget it? On a gilt chair—no, a throne—sat
his mother in peasant dress. I only remember that she had on white
stockings and congress gaiters, and that the elastics on the sides of
them were worn out. She must have weighed a ton, and evidently was
frightened to death. Perhaps the camera _was_ an “evil eye.” The father
on one side looked a hundred and fifty years old. He must have toiled
every moment of it. Oh, the sister on the other side of the mother, how
hideous she is! But listen: that the good saints might be pleased to
look with pity upon her brother at the other end of the earth (the
letter said this), his sister walked to and from church every
day—barefooted. “It’s about eight miles away,” sobbed Shorty. “Let me
see the picture again. It looks different to me now.” Shorty wept;
Shorty howled; Shorty prayed to the picture. He covered the back of it
with soap, pressed it against the wall, and knelt before it.
Humor and agony are near neighbors in the Death-Chamber. From Italy had
come one hundred dollars; all his family possessed. This was to be used
in arguing the appeal. It was forwarded to an Italian banker in New York
to Shorty’s credit. It was then, and not till then, that Shorty’s
brother appeared. All Shorty had to do was to sign a paper. The brother
had the paper all ready, and the keeper brought a pen. Well, I guess
_not_! Have you forgotten about the three hundred dollars and the other
paper Shorty signed? Shorty hadn’t. While there was breath in his body
he would not sign another paper. It was “lie business.” Then the brother
explained it all over again, the keepers explained, and the “P. K.,”
meaning principal keeper, came with an interpreter and explained many
times over that it was for a trial, lawyer; trial, lawyer. “Don’t you
see, Shorty?”
Shorty stood with his short legs apart, hands behind him, pipe in the
corner of his mouth, and eyes half closed, listening to all they had to
say.
“Throw away lawyer,” remarked Shorty.
“Yes, yes, Shorty, but he’d use it to get you a new trial.”
“I had trial. See?” urged he of small stature.
“No, no, Shorty; a _new_ trial—_new_—_new_!”
“They give new trial? Yes?” Shorty was delighted.
“I don’t know,” said the P. K.
“I wait,” said Shorty, and dismissed them all.
An Italian lawyer came, engaged in a conversation lasting hours, which
sounded like a battle royal between ten thousand enraged parrots; he
departed in tears. An Italian priest came, prayed strenuously, and went
away. The one hundred dollars remained in the bank. Shorty would not
sign a paper to save his life. It’s bad luck to put your name to a
paper, _very_ bad luck, indeed.
In the course of time (a very long time) Shorty’s case reached the Court
of Appeals, and the Court of Appeals decided against Shorty. This made
Shorty furious. He explained that he had been convicted again; that he
had not been present, an outrage; that no witness had spoken for him;
that no one had “said the word.” Why didn’t they send for him, for the
witnesses? Why? a _thousand_ whys? No one was ever able to make him
understand.
Again the brother came. Shorty was going to the “good heaven,” he would
not need the one hundred dollars, but his “loving brother” could use it
in his business; would he sign the paper?
“No! no—no!” said Shorty. Beads of rich perspiration stood out on
“loving brother’s” forehead. “Loving brother” had spent much money;
there was the Italian lawyer, the priest, the carfare, the paper. Loving
brother’s grief was piteous to see. For the sake of the dear _Dio_,
would Shorty sign the paper? No! no—no! Then Shorty might go to the
eternal bad place. Loving brother left and came no more.
Benjamin asked Shorty why he did not give the money to his brother.
“No!” said Shorty.
“What _in hell_ is yer going to do with it?” asked Benjamin.
“No-a hell,” replied Shorty. “Heaven! Go wash your face.”
Larry’s time drew near. Shorty’s chum and teacher was to go out through
the “little door” and be killed. How Shorty prayed for him! But prayers
are not _always_ answered in the Death-Chamber. Larry said good-by to us
and departed; seven others have bidden me good-by. And now there was no
one for Shorty to talk to in his mother tongue.
Shorty’s time drew near, the day was fixed. Loving brother wrote to him,
there was much news in the letter. The girl over in Jersey, whom Shorty
always spoke of as “my wife,” had married another. The couple, her
father, and the mutual friends who had brought Shorty to call so long
ago and Shorty’s brother were going to buy a keg and have a picnic on a
certain day, the same day that Shorty looked ahead to on his calendar,
and— The picnic was to be in honor of that event.
It was just after this letter that Shorty’s eyes went way back into his
head. Shorty ate little or nothing. Those terrible prison lines began to
cut into Shorty’s face. Every day they grew deeper, starting at the
eyes, carving furrows to each end of the mouth, and extending to the
chin. They divided Shorty’s face into three ghastly panels. Shorty’s
skin was turning clay color—and why not? Shorty will soon be—dust. He
got thin; you could almost see through Shorty’s hands.
Shorty prayed night and day, crawling up and down his cell on his hands
and knees, kissing the floor, licking the feet of the crucifix they had
given him. All night long, all night long he did this. We who lay awake
and tried to read heard him mumbling as the beads dropped through his
fingers; heard the tap, tap, tap of his forehead on the floor, repeated
hundreds of times before each of the many pictures of the saints which
were stuck up on the walls. In front of each of these pictures were
little fly-covered heaps of decaying food—Shorty’s votive offering to
the good saints. The saints never accepted the offerings, but the flies
and roaches did. They came by millions, flying and crawling to devour
it; they covered the walls of Shorty’s cell; they covered Shorty. The
saints, in gorgeous crimson and blue robes, with their mitres, crooks,
and uplifted fingers regarded Shorty. Their eyes followed him about
wherever he knelt. Perhaps they will save Shorty’s soul, but they do not
drive away the flies.
Shorty’s brown knees came through his trousers, the toes of Shorty’s
slippers turned up like cotton hooks from kneeling, kneeling, all day
long, all night long.
The priest noticed these things, heard the account of Shorty’s nocturnal
devotions, and told him to stop them, for he realized then—what we had
known long before—that the strain had been too much for Shorty’s
intellect—that Shorty was insane. But Shorty prayed on, harder than
ever. The good Sisters and the priest did all they could to moderate his
devotions. During those final weeks we noticed that they besought him to
do something; what, it was a mystery to us. Finally the morning came—the
_last_ morning.
The priest blessed him, and as they opened the cell-door in the early
morning for the last time, asked him, “Do you forgive _your enemies_?”
then pleaded “you _must_ do it. Say ‘_yes_,’ for _God’s_ sake say _yes_.
You must, or God will not—” The priest was weeping now.
“_No! no—no!_” screamed Shorty, as they marched him away.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER XVI_
_An Opinion on Expert Opinion
(with special regard to the testimony of Experts in Handwriting)_
The law admits opinion evidence by experts under certain conditions.
This is doubtless right when such experts qualify as _specialists_ who
have prepared themselves by recognized methods regarding some department
of science, art, or industry; and when their testimony is confined to
stating facts and deductions only, omitting all abstract speculations.
The admission of such testimony is, doubtless, necessary. The fields of
science, art, and industry are enormous; and in each, one man during one
life can only hope to acquire thorough knowledge of one small part of
his particular enclosure. Hence “specialties” have arisen—the one
lifework of one man. Specialties represent a movement of “from the
general to the particular.” In the field of science, for instance, is
the department of surgery; and of all kinds of surgeons is one
particular specialist, the dentist. So in art, music is but a little
part of all art, and the violinist but a specialist in music. Industry
classifies into business and agriculture, each in turn susceptible of
innumerable sub-divisions, each a specialty. By this arrangement it is
seen that almost every man is to some degree a specialist, or should be
one; therefore, when particular information is required it must be
sought from the specialist. We seek to appropriate his experience, and
naturally turn in our inquiry to those who seem best qualified to supply
our wants. The true expert should be, then, a very particular
specialist. In the field of industry and art we should require that he
be experienced and successful. In science, that he possess definite
knowledge—exactness.
So far, no complaint whatever can be made against the employment of
experts (specialists). It is a necessary thing; it occurs every day in
everyday life, and their testimony is very properly allowed in criminal
and other court proceedings. But it is undoubtedly wrong when used
unjustly; as, for instance, by the State or a very rich man against an
opponent too poor to protect himself—and the testimony of experts in
handwriting is often so used. It is especially unjust when an expert on
a scientific subject holds no other commission or diploma than one
bestowed upon him by—himself—an expert in handwriting has no other.
No one would employ a self-instructed physician, retain a self-taught
lawyer, or a chemist who never went to school; in fact, the
self-educated are almost excluded from the higher professions.
Consider the formal course of study necessary to become a physician, a
minister, or lawyer—schools and all their examinations, the four years
in college, and all the examinations pertinent thereto, and then the
special post-graduate courses at schools of law, medicine, or divinity.
We trust and respect these professions, because we know of their
preparation; this is their guarantee. They are tested over and over
again to see if they can do their work. Only then do they obtain
diplomas. We require this very thing from our engineers, firemen, coal
miners, and accountants before they are granted a license. But the
handwriting expert passes no examinations, and possesses no diploma. He
need not even procure a license.
The expert in handwriting may have your life, liberty, and fortune in
his hands; but he comes from—where? Who taught him? Who has tested or
examined him as to his knowledge and accuracy? Think of it! The right to
swear away the life, or liberty, or property of another is bestowed upon
this class of “experts” by themselves. And the law permits it. Where do
this class of “experts” study their “science”? What school has classes
or lectures on this subject? What college has a chair for the
instruction of experts in questions of disputed writings? Is there a
university with a department for their training? What does Harvard,
Yale, Princeton, Columbia in America, or Oxford and Cambridge in
England, have to say on this subject? All scientific things are
recognized by these great colleges and universities. The study of
questions arising from disputed handwritings is recognized in none of
them; hence this study is not, at least as yet, a science. Another
reason why this study is not a science, is that it is based on the
theory of probabilities; it is mere speculation. For this reason experts
in handwriting cannot even agree together on their own specialty. They
lack the unity of even a trade. Experts in handwriting have no guild—no
society. Why is this? Because this class of professional witnesses can
never formulate their conflicting theories; they cannot agree on any one
point; they have no common standards, no principles laid down and agreed
to, no mutual foundation or basis for their theories to rest upon. Again
why? Because they would have to violate them in the very next case into
which they might be called. Therefore experts in questions of disputed
handwriting are not scientists.
In courts of justice no experts should be allowed to plead (_ex-parte_)
for the side they espouse. Experts in handwriting are notorious for
this; and their methods and deductions are always according to the
testimony desired by the side retaining them. Their opinions are
tinctured by retainers. In many cases where large sums of money are
involved in litigation, as, for instance, a disputed “will case,”
experts in handwriting appear on each side. The question in such cases
often narrows down to the simple proposition: “Is the signature of the
last will and testament genuine?” It must be either genuine or forged;
and yet we find the phenomena of prominent experts in handwriting
holding diametrically opposite views, and giving reasons under oath in
support of their opinions. Now it naturally follows that if one side is
right, the other side _must_ be wrong, and _vice versa_; the signature
cannot possibly be both genuine and forged. If the testimony of _all_
the experts is in accord with _conscience_, some experts are—to be
charitable—inaccurate.
The expert in handwriting can seldom be coaxed into a position in which
he can be _proved_ wrong. Really it is extremely simple. Is the
signature of the deceased so exact that no one would dare dispute it?
Not he! The expert will declare it a tracing should his retainer
dictate; otherwise _not_; but whichever way he testifies he can never
really be _proved_ wrong, at least in this world, since the one who
could tell has passed away to another. Under the circumstances, no
wonder the expert can afford to be very positive.
In criminal cases these experts affect the side of the prosecution. Is a
conviction secured? It is the result of his skill, while in case of an
acquittal, he protests that justice has been cheated, and the
prosecuting attorney never fails to indorse this view. He dearly loves a
forgery case. If retained by the prosecutor, that official will protect
the expert, and have witnesses to corroborate his opinion; while, should
the defence secure his services, the expert’s opinion will be
corroborated by the defendant himself. The only thing which will _prove_
the expert in error would be a confession—an unlikely occurrence.
But disputed writings, disguised, and anonymous communications are his
joy, and again it is almost impossible to prove him wrong; and again his
work is very simple. In these cases the guilty man, whoever he may be,
never comes forward to admit his crime, so that the expert can blame
whom he pleases or, rather, whom he is paid to blame. It is simplicity
itself—similarities are to be pointed out. It is self-evident that all
writings must contain similarities, for were there no resemblances the
art of writing would be useless. In fact, that one person can read
another person’s writing, is based on this principle. Surely it is just
because we all do make the twenty-six letters of our alphabet more or
less alike, that we can read each other’s writing at all. In such a case
the _dissimilarities_ (and they are in all writing) will be regarded as
attempts at disguise. And, since all writings must consist of
similarities or dissimilarities, either or both will be argued as proof
against a victim of this kind of evidence. To sum up, their art is to
offer a theory favorable to the side retaining them, in such a manner
that it may be believed or doubted, but which cannot be disproved.
Another question regarding this class of experts is, do they keep their
oath, “to tell the truth, the _whole_ truth, and nothing but the truth?”
If engaged by the prosecution do they disclose the points favorable to
the defendant—no matter how apparent? Never. Although under oath to tell
all, they are advocates for one side only. They are always positive,
they swear to their opinions; but are they accurate? Suppose they should
be tested, examined with writings of known and living persons, and knew
nothing of the circumstances of the case, and had no District Attorney
to warn and protect—suppose some one tried to fool them—a child could do
it!
The law limits all opinion evidence. It is not considered as good as
testimony to fact; much has been written on the justice of so doing.
Judge Woodward in “The North American Review” for October, 1902, has
treated the subject from a legal standpoint. In this article referred to
he shows in no uncertain way how the opinions of experts in questions of
disputed handwriting are regarded by bench and bar, especially in the
higher courts. Moreover, he cites many instances of injustice done by
this kind of opinion evidence. Beside this, I believe, there is a justly
popular prejudice against this particular kind of expert testimony.
I have tried to show that this opinion evidence—expert testimony in
regard to questions of disputed handwritings—is less accurate and has
less authority than the opinion of other specialists. If this is true,
should it not be limited to a greater extent than all other kinds of
expert testimony? And to this end I venture to propose the following:
That a commission be appointed to thoroughly and exhaustively examine
all so-called public and official experts in handwriting. No thorough
and conscientious expert would object to being tested as to his
qualifications. Licenses should be issued to the successful candidates.
(Few “sheepskins” would be needed.) Such a license should be required
before the expert can practise in court.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER XVII_
_Prologue to a little Comedy
written in the Death-Chamber, and called_
ONCE IN A HUNDRED YEARS.
I come to tell you how the author sat
And looked upon the picture of his love.
He spoke to her—you know he could do that—
And she replied. But this you must believe.
Although no ears received her charming words,
Nor keenest eyes saw her sweet lips pronounce—
It was her heart which spoke to his and said
What none but they may know. ’Twas thus she brought him
Of love and faith and joy and merriment.
The last alone he has set down because
No tongue or pen can tell the other three.
But they, God bless them, knew it in their souls,
And so do I—for, would you think it,
I’m that happy man. Is there another
Half so blessed—“Once in a Hundred Years?”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER XVIII_
_Impressions—The Last Night and the Next Morning—The Last Night_
There are unwritten laws and canons for all important occurrences in the
Death-Chamber. I do not mean the prison rules; but the way “we” have of
doing things. For instance, the new arrival, after he has passed through
all formalities at the officials’ hands, and they are many, is initiated
by “us” on the first night passed in our society.
This is an ancient and honorable custom, and like all initiations, a
secret. These fixed ceremonies occur all through his long and brutal
life in the Death-Chamber.[1] Long, for even a short stay in it makes
him old; brutal, because his punishment is—death. Is that not enough?
And to add thereto years of solitary confinement is to kill him not
once, but over and over again. The system is all wrong. Oh, the years in
the Death-Chamber! The loneliness, the quiet. Hell must be a quiet
place.
Footnote 1:
See the very humane recommendations of the Hon. Cornelius V. Collins,
Superintendent of State Prisons, in his report for 1901.
When at last it is drawing to a close, when the Governor has refused to
interfere, the officials proceed in this manner: On Saturday the
“fortunate one” on stepping from his bath is ordered into a new cell—the
one next to the “little door” leading to the execution chamber. Here he
receives everything new: new bedding, new clothes from head to foot, and
then his knick-knacks, pipe, tobacco, boxes, books, and the packages of
letters from home, ragged and blurred from reading and rereading; all
have been very carefully searched. He receives something else, for this
change in itself is his notice that one week from the following Monday
he will be moved again. No questions are ever asked; he has seen it all
before; but should he ask, the only reply will be, “I don’t know.”
From that moment a certain unwritten etiquette among us is never
violated. His own way in everything, as far as we can possibly
comprehend it, is our law. Does he ask for a song or story, his demand
is acquiesced with at once. Will he play checkers? He may choose his
opponent, and he will always win. We send him our oranges, the top layer
from the box of cigars one has purchased. We do anything, everything we
can to please him. Has there been a quarrel between him and another, it
is completely forgotten. On his part, he must make the ghastly
regulation jokes during the week. These are two in number, one with the
keeper about the new suit of clothes: “I suppose _you_ will be wearing
this week after next.” Number two is with the barber: “Don’t forget to
cut my hair short on top.” From now on the “death watch” (two keepers)
sits in front of his cage every night. During this week occurs the
greatest horror we are called upon to bear, _i.e._, to hear the last
farewells of our companion to mother, wife, sister, or child. While
listening to their cries we anticipate the agony in store for those _we_
love. My heart bleeds when I remember what I have heard in the
Death-Chamber. It is unspeakable. I cannot write of it.
Then comes the last night. Everything must be done very exactly now. Our
code prescribes for everything; nothing must be omitted, no custom may
be violated. The early evening passes as usual. Generally he asks for
songs, perhaps he will sing one himself. That is as it may be. But at
midnight the last rites among us of the Death-Chamber take place. The
keeper comes to my cell carrying, perhaps, the little paper box my
departing friend has kept his tobacco in so long; one that he made and
decorated himself.
“Keep that to remember me by,” I hear from the direction of the little
door.
“Thank you,” I reply.
“Good-by. I hope you have luck and get out,” is the next part of the
ritual.
I must respond, “Thank you. Good-by, and God bless you.”
This is repeated with each one separately. He gives everything away,
books, pipe, all. For six months he has been turning over in his mind
just what treasure each of his companions shall receive when the last
night comes. The responses never vary. They are now as they were ten
years ago; they will be the same twenty years from now if that hell on
earth is still in existence.
No one speaks to him or to any one else after that. He is reading and
rereading each of those letters for the last time and destroying them.
We hear him tearing them up one by one. “Swish, swish, swish.” Then it
is quiet, very quiet in the Death-Chamber. I am not sleepy; the other
fellows do not seem to be sleepy. They are reading. I sit up and write
this; to-morrow I will write the other half.
_The Next Morning_
I have often read in the newspapers the supposed meal partaken of by the
departing guest “furnished from the Warden’s table.” No newspaper
reporter seems able to resist a description of the last breakfast, and
no two papers ever publish the same one. Did the wretch gorge himself to
the extent indicated, indigestion and not electricity would carry him
off, and justice be cheated. No, he is not even stimulated to the extent
of a cup of coffee, and for a good reason; a full stomach is not a good
conductor. You will read that “the man was indifferent.” I tell you he
was glad to go. “That he made no trouble.” Why should he? “Our horror,”
how we are affected by our companion’s death, is portrayed. As a matter
of fact, we envy him. Anything, everything is better than existence in
the Death-Chamber.
During the night, if you have lain awake, and one has been known to be
so foolish, you may have felt a very slight vibration, perhaps it is
imagination; perhaps it is the dynamo. If you have slept, and do not
hear the death-watch draw down the curtains in front of all the cells
when the night outside turns gray, you will surely be awakened by the
noise of many feet. It is the priests who have entered. Their ordinary
shoes on the flagging of the corridor sound like thunder, thunder moving
away. Now it subsides to the murmuring of Latin prayers. As you lie in
your cell (the drawn curtains make it resemble a little box) wide-awake,
you know that the last confession is being made, the last sacrament is
being administered. This is another reason why no breakfast is given to
the traveller. I saw it all one morning; the curtain was not quite down
to the floor. I made myself as flat as possible. I saw the priest bless
and kiss him; hold up the cross before his eyes; bid him have faith, and
then back out of the cell. “He,” who is so soon to be “it,” followed.
Then I heard the procession march rapidly into the next room. “Bang!”
said the hungry little door as it closed.
What happens in there, and how it felt three minutes later, I cannot
tell you; but I came very near finding out. Will you believe me that
this day is a long one? _You_ fellows outside can do much to divert the
mind from disagreeable thoughts; _we_ have breakfast, and sit down to
wonder which one of us will be the next to go. Poor Benjamin, you have
the advantage of us now; you have found “Nirvana” while we are worrying;
you are reposing in your bed—of quicklime.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER XIX_
_Impressions—Dawn in the Death-Chamber_
I listened for the shrieking whistle of the milk train. It has come and
gone, and the echoes have died away among the hills of Ossining, those
beautiful hills, just—outside. The little family of sparrows who live in
the skylight of the dead-house—I know each one by name—awake and angrily
pipe their protest at the disturbance. Some of them fly down into the
stale, tobacco-laden air and hop on the floor looking for crumbs.
I can hear Shorty, at the other end of the corridor, in the last cell of
all, talking to himself, or to God. Others are mumbling while they doze.
Larry shrieked twice during the night. And I? I received a visit
yesterday and have lain awake thinking over the incident and of what the
future means to me.
I am morbid!
I have made the story of the little dead mouse—it is all imaginary, but
it is what I have resolved to do myself if----
All these are signs not to be disregarded; I know something is about to
happen; I lie in bed and watch for it. Outside, I know that nature is
cool and gray—delightful. I wait; it comes. The fierce yellow light
begins to fade from out the electric globes; and finally, as it becomes
less intense, each little red wire is visible; which fades into pink and
disappears. The fearful light, the cruel, torturing, piercing light is
gone. And that is how dawn comes to us in the Death-Chamber.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER XX_
_Impressions_
_While the Jury is Out—The First Jury_
It is said that everything is relative. A fixed period of time, for
instance, is either long or short, according to circumstances. There is
an exception to this rule. Time is always long while the jury is out. Be
this period eight hours or six minutes in duration, either constitutes a
life-time. I know, for I have experienced both.
To a man whose brain is analytical, here is a splendid opportunity to
administer to his mind some of its own medicine. While the first jury
considered my case I noted my impressions in my little red diary, for,
thought I, this is a road over which few travellers pass; it is really a
unique experience, an episode in a life. I will record my impressions.
That jury was most considerate; it did not hurry me in the slightest; it
was out eight hours. I started to record my impressions while the second
jury deliberated; it interrupted me in six minutes—but I have forgiven
it.
Here are the thoughts which came to me during the period at the end of
my first trial; but before I quote from my note-book—it will be
unnecessary to open it, for I shall never forget what is inside—it may
be of interest to know the circumstances under which the entries were
written.
My trial for murder is almost over. The evidence against me has all been
given—there was none offered in my defence, for technical reasons. The
closing arguments by counsels have been made; the judge has charged the
jury, and the jury is out. My fate rests upon the knees of the gods. All
of which means that I am in a little iron pen, and that twelve men
occupy the next room, deliberating whether life or death shall be my
portion. I am very tired; for full three months I have been under a
physical strain and a mental tension—I have been falsely accused, I am
innocent. There are three who know this—myself, the man who did the
murder, and God.
February 10, 1900. The first entry at 3.30 o’clock P.M.
The keepers are watching me curiously. Their trained eyes are like
microscopes, through which they study and compare my conduct with that
of previous defendants whom they have guarded under similar
circumstances. They are calculating how long it will take for me to
break down and show nervousness. I think they have a bet on the subject.
It is irritating. If I should ask for a drink of water, they would
exchange glances. I must not throw away my cigar before it is quite
smoked up, neither must I let it go out—for these are bad signs. No
laughter on my part, even should something impress me as being
amusing—it would sound “forced.” And, above all, no blowing of the nose,
even if I want to. They will suspect a surreptitious use of my
handkerchief for another purpose. Any one may guess, and very cleverly,
at mental agony expressed through physical distress. But what if there
are no visible signs of distress? There shall be none. I wonder how they
will interpret my occupation of writing this? If they imagine I am
making my will they must think me possessed of much to give away.
I have speculated about my guards and answered their kind inquiries. I
am killing time; the afternoon is slipping away quickly. At any rate,
the jury cannot stay out much longer. I look at my watch—eight minutes
and a half have passed. Good God! Only eight minutes and a half!
The second entry at four o’clock.
I am chemist enough to love an experiment. The jury is the unknown
substance; the testimony, the reagent; my case is in solution; what will
precipitate?
I think of the judge’s charge. I can repeat it word for word; it is
seared into my brain; but it would have been more cruel had it aroused a
false hope. How did it impress the jury? Over and over again, the old
question cries out in my mind: “What will the jury do?”
You may be sure I selected pleasant-faced men; men with little fans made
of wrinkles at the corners of their eyes; men who smiled often; who had
pleasant voices.
What a change comes over a talesman when he becomes a juror! He is
sworn. He takes his seat in the box; he will hold your life in his hand;
you cannot get rid of him. Now you look at him in this new aspect, and
there is a leer about his mouth, a cruelty in his eyes you had not seen
before. Why did you select him—a man with a jaw like that? It was
suicide.
I think of the prosecution’s case. They will convict me, of course. I
reconsider it from my point of view. No, they cannot! No jury in the
world could convict on such theories. But on what will they base an
acquittal? There was no defence. I remember the surprises the district
attorney’s office has sprung upon me—the unanswered witnesses, the
fervent experts swearing to the impassioned hypothetical questions of
the prosecutor, and his closing address, scathing, unjust. There is no
chance for me—the odds are thousands to one against acquittal.
Even so, whispers Hope, that happens every day. Think of the
lotteries—the odds in them are many thousands to one against the winning
ticket; but one ticket _must_ win. There can be no—That’s it! “The
reasonable doubt”! But there has been no defence. It is hopeless. Then
the presumption of innocence? Ah, they will disagree; I know it, I am
sure of juror number ----; I shall have another chance; but what will
the jury do? Perhaps they will exonerate me.
The third entry: 5 o’clock.
I have gone over the merits of the case again, coolly, dispassionately.
I have counted the points against me on the fingers of my right hand,
and checked off the points in my favor on the left. I shall be convicted
is my conclusion.
How will they take it at home—my mother, my—Stop that! _Stop that!_ You
are not to speculate on that subject; there must be no redness about the
eyes, no twitching mouth when you face that jury for the last time. Use
your brain—think of something else.
I am sick of the case; it can have but one issue. I must drive it from
my mind by some other subject. I must have a proposition to
prove—anything. Why does time pass so slowly? for instance; that will
do.
It _is_ going slowly. This afternoon is a life-time—but why? That is a
very good subject; it is an intensely real one. That this afternoon is
“a life-time” is not only figurative—it is literal. Think of it; as long
a life-time as you will, is composed of what? Of course I mean
mentally—not what happens; that is hardly worth chronicling. What
constitutes our interest in life? Surely it is because we cannot tell
what the next day—or the next moment, for that matter—may bring forth.
We hope, but uncertainty gives that hope its zest. Because we cannot
discount the future, the unexpected is life, and life is Doubt. Can
enough doubt be crowded into a few hours, or even minutes, to constitute
a life-time? You will know it possible if you have ever waited—while the
jury is out.
This must be the secret of the drama—the mimic life—in which the aroused
hopes and fears and sympathies are but other names for doubt. Imagine,
then, the suspense, the doubt, of the waiting man in this play with real
life or death, and concentrate the emotions of a whole audience into
that single brain.
The fourth entry: 6.30 o’clock.
There is a noise in the street below. I look out of the window at the
crowd; they are waiting also from curiosity. Newspapers are being
sold—newspapers full of unjust and imaginary stories about me and mine.
The journalists are eager to sell these inventions while interest in my
case lasts, hence the newspapers are “extras.” While watching this I see
the jury go to dinner in an old-fashioned white stage, such as used to
carry passengers on Broadway. Perhaps it is the same stage in which I
rode with my mother to Manhattanville thirty years ago—I a little fellow
in kilt skirts and white stockings. How well I remember it!
The fifth entry: 8 o’clock.
They will allow no one to see me; that is, none of my friends, but
curious officials come in on imaginary errands to look me over. The jury
returned some time ago; they have now deliberated for five hours.
Evidently some one is holding out. Having done so for this length of
time, it looks like a disagreement; unless some one changes his mind.
Why should a juror change his mind? He has sworn to go by the evidence.
Do the opinions of his companions change the evidence?
I wish that there was no jury system. Having five judges to preside
would be much better. They would go by facts, their ears would not be
tickled by mere eloquence; experience would teach them when witnesses
were lying. And, best of all, five judges would know the real value of
expert testimony; yes, they would know that, for they would hear the
official experts expounding one theory to-day, have heard its opposite
yesterday, and will hear the repudiation of both to-morrow.
The sixth entry: 8.30 o’clock.
They brought me sandwiches and a cup of coffee. While disposing of them
I talked to my friends the keepers, telling them about my experiences in
the cattle business so long ago and so far away. They paid me the pretty
compliment of saying that I take matters more coolly than any one they
had ever seen; that I show no emotion—I knew they were watching for it.
Am I confident? No, I am not. Strange to say, I am becoming indifferent.
After all, what does it matter so far as I am concerned?
Like the stag making his last stand and being torn by the hounds, better
die than escape wounded to suffer more; better have it over and done
with. And as for my home, my family—stop that!
The seventh entry: 9 o’clock.
The refinement of cruelty. I have been taken into the court-room twice;
each time with exposed nerves which are scraped and singed by the
questions the jury has come in to ask, and the answers which push me
nearer to the edge of the precipice. Each time I have gone prepared for
the end. It is interesting, but not amusing. I saw my father last at two
o’clock, seven hours ago. He has grown seven years older since then. My
brother is in court. He is four years my senior; he looks an old man—I
wonder how I look. My attorneys are very serious as they whisper
together.
The eighth entry: 10 o’clock.
Three months I have been on trial; twice a day I have been taken into
court—morning and afternoon. The signal which summons me is made by
rapping a key on the iron door. This is symbolic—key and door. Which way
will the key turn? Will the door open or close for me? I feel that the
next summons will answer these questions. They are rapping the key on
the door.
The last entry: midnight.
I was right. I found out about the key and the door on the third
summons. It is _not_ three times and—_out_.
I entered the yellow room. It was packed. Every one turned to look at
me. It was a picture of a storm at sea; the pale faces were the
whitecaps. It foreboded trouble—shipwreck. A little strain of music had
run in my head all the afternoon—“The Blessing of the Poniards,” from
the “Huguenots”—a full orchestra seemed to play it then; I marched to
it.
We sat down and waited for the jury. While doing so this thought
intruded itself upon me: Had I the gambler’s fever; would “wheel” or
“bank” ever interest me again after this?
Imagine becoming excited over a hundred dollars placed on the red or
black! Of what concern would be a little white ball running around and
tumbling into holes; or cards, two at a time, being drawn from a silver
box; or, for that matter, five pasteboards held in my own hand?
The jury entered; they would not look at me. I knew. The judge entered;
we all rose to show our respect—for his gown. He looked pleased; he must
have known the verdict as well as I.
“The jury will rise.”
“The prisoner will rise.”
What luck! The chimes from the “New York Life” building, around the
corner, struck eleven. Yes, so it proved. “New York Life” was bidding me
good-by. The gentlemen of the jury had agreed upon a verdict. They found
the prisoner guilty of murder in the first degree.
There was applause from the _judge’s_ chambers; a woman’s voice cried
out, “Oh, good! Good—good!” A window opened and I saw a carrier-pigeon
flash out and fly away. All this to the accompaniment of a groan which
ran around the court-room. One woman—God bless her—fainted; and then I
felt my father’s hand in mine.
The game is over, and I have lost. I must be a good loser, for the crowd
in the corridors cheered me—cheered a convicted man on his way to the
“Bridge of Sighs.”
Then I was under a compound microscope. Convicted men seem to be
interesting men; at least, not one of those unwinking eyes would have
missed a single tit-bit of my agony had I displayed any. But plain,
vulgar pride came to my rescue; for I had seen convicted men carried
back to the Tombs, undressed, and put to bed like sick babies; I had
heard them howl all night and beg for liquor; some of them had tried to
throw themselves downstairs.
But my mother, my—stop that! For God’s sake don’t think of that; perhaps
later, in the dark----
We crossed the “Bridge of Sighs.” We stepped into the prison yard,
flooded with moonlight. It was like the last act of “Romeo and Juliet”
among the tombs. Poor, mad Romeo! I thought of other moonlit scenes; of
another Romeo; of love vows never to be renewed—that is, I started to
think of them—something I must not do. It was all the fault of the queen
of night. I had not bathed in her mysterious light for twelve long
months. (It was three years before I worshipped her glory again.)
Never in my life have I been so touched; never so near breaking down, as
when, on that night, the keepers in the Tombs, where I had lodged so
long, expressed to me their sympathy and confidence. I believed in their
sincerity then; I have never doubted it since.
Next morning.
I went to my little cell; and, with my best philosophy, undid the
chattels I had packed so carefully that morning and addressed to home. I
slept. What? Sleep? Certainly. There was no more suspense; I was legally
dead. Life had stopped with its forfeiture; relief had come from doubt.
I slept. It proved my proposition of the afternoon.
THE SECOND JURY. Nov. 11, 1902.
The jury sitting at my second trial has retired, and three years later I
find myself under almost precisely similar circumstances to those just
described. I will note the variations. The suspense, the doubt, should
be worse than at the previous trial, knowing, as I do, what it is to be
a convicted man, and what it would mean to go all through it again. I
know it, all the way from the ceremony of passing the death sentence to
the opening of the little door.
Strangely enough, that same strain of music hums in my brain, repeating
itself over and over again. I do not believe I have thought of it once
during the last three years. Yet, here it is, and I shall march to it
again.
What will the jury do?
I do not think about my case this time; if acquitted, I shall be pleased
for my father’s and mother’s sake. If convicted, as far as I am
personally concerned I am absolutely indifferent. I am like a man who,
having fallen from the roof of some sky-scraper, lies mangled in the
street below. Suppose an old friend comes along and kicks him? He cannot
feel it because his back is broken. I can suffer no more whatever
happens; and I have forgotten how to rejoice.
Acquitted, convicted—I am indifferent. Since that night I watched the
dawn come to the Death-Chamber, as God lives, I have not cared.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER XXI_
_Impressions—The Friendship of Imagination_
I found myself in the Death-Chamber; others were there. Our small
community being an American institution, we were all “free and equal,”
of course with the exception of the former. Unhappy, indeed, would be
the life of any one in that room who did not recognize this equality.
But most of my fellow citizens refused to exist in the present. Making
of the Death-Chamber a half-way house, they alternately lived in the
past, or died in the future; and they were perfectly logical in doing
so; it was quite excusable. Our existence there was certainly not life,
and it was not nearly as comfortable as death. So they brooded, and the
Death-Chamber is a bad place in which to brood. Some of my companions
acted very foolishly when those long, hot, humid summer days arrived.
Here, then, was a problem. I must learn to amuse myself, I must
cultivate my own acquaintance; I must make friends with my own identity.
This was not difficult, for we possessed a mutual friend—a close,
personal, dearly intimate friend. One who had been with me in the mines
of Mexico and on the alkali plains of Texas. Together we had paced the
white decks of yachts in summer; had spent the evenings in my library,
and the days in my color factory in the winter. A friend, who, by
special permission of the warden came to live with me, to share my
degradation. Wasn’t he a good fellow? I consulted my friend: I have
always done so. I am consulting him now, for I am smoking my favorite
pipe. The introduction took place, was accepted on both sides, and I
formed the acquaintance, and afterwards friendship, of my own
Imagination.
My new friend—I hope you will meet him some day, if you have not done so
already—taught me to “penetrate the veil,” to look right through and
beyond and above all conditions. I cultivated the friendship of
Imagination still further, and the whole earth and its fulness became
mine. No one could sentence my thoughts to imprisonment, they were free.
I began to live mentally. It was my birthday.
He counselled me not to waste those years. “What an opportunity!” he
said. So for twenty months I devoured books from the prison library. No
telephones, or duns, or bores could interrupt me; there were no social
duties, no business to interfere. I read, I dreamed, I improvised. Then
it was but a step to writing, and I must say Imagination was very nasty
about that. He made me review my grammar with diligence. To satisfy him,
I had to study rhetoric anew.
He opened my eyes. The Death-Chamber was full of—_life_. There was
Romance, Tragedy, of course; and even Comedy looked in through the
skylight and set me laughing now and then. Material was all around me;
stories about the Death-Chamber came into my mind so quickly that I
could not write half of them down; they sprang up and choked me, where
before had been only barren land. I set down the least horrible, for
some—yes, many—could not be printed; and if you have found these grim or
out of line, it is because of environment and of their truth.
Then Imagination and I went away to England. We wrote a novel. In it are
no prisoners and no crime, but it is full of the sea, brave men, a cruel
woman. It is a tale of love.
Imagination is a humorous fellow—he must have his joke. He made me
interested in things dramatic; he advised the purchase of everything I
could hear of on the subject—text-books, essays. I bought two hundred
plays, and he and I went to the theatre every evening at eight, and
attended matinées on Saturday at two. Just one play each evening, and
after the curtain fell we talked it over and criticised—we analyzed
those two hundred plays—Imagination and I. We laughed at costume
comedies, studied the plays of social life—from Sheridan to Fitch—and
delved for motives in the modern problem plays; watched Mansfield, Drew,
and Sothern in all their rôles. Over Cyrano de Bergerac and L’Aiglon we
poured the tribute of a tear to Rostand’s genius.
And then (how did he keep from laughing in my face?) Imagination egged
me on into writing plays—many of them. If he made me think the
“actable,” he well deserved the name.
It was all my own fault: the smoke from my older friend often got up
into my eyes and warned me. This old pipe of mine played the cynic and
was perfectly frank about my dramas. But I wouldn’t listen. I blundered
on until I found a “_fidus Achates_” to help and guide me. Together we
hope to restrain this strenuous fellow a little.
* * * * *
It’s all over now. My pipe, Imagination, and a faithful friend, I have
found them all, and I “found _myself_” in the Death-Chamber.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER XXII_
_The Last Story_
This is the story I can never tell, yet will spend all the rest of my
life in telling—but how hopelessly. I cannot even think of it without
something coming up into my throat to choke me. It is about my love for
the soldier father, and the mother almost divine, who have suffered with
and for me.
I can no more express this emotion than the sorrow they have borne for
me can be told. Ah, but both are written—written in the deeper lines
upon their dear faces, and illustrated in their grayer hairs; while how
and why I love them, is imprinted eternally upon my heart.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER XXIII—APPENDIX_
_“The Story of the Ring”_
_By Vance Thompson_
_(By the courtesy of the New York “Journal”)_
It was bludgeon against rapier which began yesterday; it was the
battle-axe against the stiletto; it was Osborne against Molineux; and
Molineux won.
Never, I think, was so dramatic a duel fought out in a court-room. There
was very little noise. The surface of it was quiet as a pool. The casual
observer would have seen merely two men—the one in the witness chair and
the other lounging against the lawyers’ table—who seemed to be
exchanging polite commonplaces. They were courteous. Now and again they
smiled at each other, with polite amiability. They “mistered” each
other. Yet underneath this unrippled surface was a tremendous tragic
depth, in which they clutched and struggled, fierce and silent. It was a
fight for life. For Molineux it was life and honor—or the throttling
shame of the electric chair. For Osborne it was either a vindication of
his methods as a prosecuting officer, or it was bitter defeat. He was
fighting for his professional life as truly as the haggard prisoner was
fighting for the breath of life.
Never again will you see such a battle waged—so tense, so watchful, so
merciless.
Molineux, to be sure, came pallid and wasted from the cell where they
have shut him up for nearly four years. He had the look of one of those
mouldy men who creep up into the sunlight now and then from the cellars
of the world. But no sooner had he taken his seat in the witness chair,
no sooner had he faced his adversary, than the race showed in him. He
threw back his prison-worn head and squared his shoulders; he set his
jaws until his thin lips made a straight line, like a sabre gash, across
his face. He was ready; every nerve and ounce of brain in him was alert.
He was ready to do battle for his life. The apathy and sluggishness of
the cell-dweller fell away from him. In this supreme moment he was
almost the man he had been before they arrested him and put him away.
As for Osborne, he was flushed, savagely earnest. His eyes blazed
whether he would or not, and every now and again he smote his great red
hands together. The joy of battle was upon him. Such joy the Apache
knows when he sights his enemy; such joy must have stirred the gladiator
when he rushed into the arena. To be sure this exaltation did not last
through the day, but for a few hours it added zest to the duel.
Just such a mob as should have watched this duel gathered in the
court-room. Heaven knows where they came from—these women with
out-of-date clothes and pendent earrings; these perfumed girls with
slashing hats and equivocal eyes. They crowded in, guarded by fatted
municipal underlings; they filled one-third of the court-room; and all
day, like cigarette girls at a bullfight, they chewed sweetmeats and
craned and whispered and grinned. Then there were those who had business
there—that honest, white old man, General Molineux, unwavering in belief
in his “boy,” for one; for another, there was Harry Cornish—gray from
head to foot this one. He was dressed in gray; his gloves were gray; his
very face was gray, and the eyes in his deep-lined face were the color
of ashes. All day he sat watching the prisoner with swift, furtive
glances; watching the reporters; watching the audience; always watching,
watching.
There was never so observing a man.
What of Molineux? He made an excellent witness. He gave an impression of
utter sincerity. Perhaps this was due to Mr. Black’s admirable
examination. Perhaps it was due to the fact that he was telling the
truth. In any case, he scored heavily. The jurymen nodded approval. Had
the case gone to them last night they would have given him—beyond all
doubt—the key of the street. Molineux, too, looked content.
The Assistant District Attorney began slowly. Round-shouldered, stooping
a bit, in an ill-fitting new coat, with red face and prognathous jaw, he
stood for a moment staring at the prisoner. His eyes were burned out as
though from lack of sleep. Molineux straightened up in his chair and
joined his hands in his lap. Evidently he was summoning all his
resolution and all his self-possession. At last he was face to face with
the man who for nearly four years had bent every energy of his fierce
nature to the task of destroying him; of blackening his home, and
branding him with the red mark of murder. And this he knew would be the
fiercest assault of all—the final one. He was on guard.
They crossed swords very ceremoniously at first. Beneath all the
politeness there was, on one side, a deadly and savage earnestness; on
the other was the wariness of the man whose back is to the wall and who
fences for his life. And yet how suave they were! They might have been
rehearsing the amiable history of Gaston and Alphonse. It was “Mr.
Molineux” and “Mr. Osborne.” One almost expected the “My dear Mr.
Molineux” and “My dear Mr. Osborne.” And so, with a curious, almost
artificial smile on his red and heavy face, the great Apache of the
District-Attorney’s office began. He wanted to know about the divorce
case.
“How old were you, Mr. Molineux?” he asked.
“Fifteen, Mr. Osborne,” was the answer.
Mr. Osborne looked painfully shocked; just so a man might look should he
be arrested as a burglar while making a midnight call upon a friend.
“Fifteen!” he repeated. “And the husband was a dear personal friend of
yours, was he not?”
Molineux acknowledged that he knew the husband. The prosecutor nodded
significantly to the jurymen. They, being men of the world, and some of
them bull-necked men of the world, did not seem to take it very
seriously. Molineux seemed rather ashamed of it. Osborne, however, would
not let go. Three times he went over it, as a woman wipes a dish,
turning it first on this side and then on that. At last the good gray
judge wearied of it.
“He’s already answered all that,” he said quietly.
Osborne flashed up like gunpowder. All the savagery in him showed in an
instant. It was as though a bulldog had shown his teeth. He took a step
forward toward the bench and half snarled, half shouted:
“Your Honor, I can’t cross-examine this witness if you interrupt me like
that!”
Mr. Jerome clutched his assistant’s arm and tried to quiet him, but
Osborne shook him off. Justice Lambert looked at him and smiled his
enigmatic, up-the-State smile.
“I will interrupt you, Mr. Osborne,” he said, “whenever I think it
necessary. Now go on.”
Mr. Osborne went back to his place and drank a large glass of water.
That soothed him, but for the rest of the session his nerves were out of
tune, and then the burden of politeness lay heavy upon him. Then for a
little while he questioned the prisoner as to his knowledge of
chemistry. Molineux admitted that his attainments were fairly good. He
knew of it all a paint maker need know.
So far Osborne had been defeated all along the line. The defendant had
answered every question unhesitatingly and with engaging frankness. He
had parried every thrust, even that deadly lunge of his fifteen-year-old
co-respondent.
The Assistant District Attorney seemed to think in lumps. He jumped
backward and forward in his cross-examination in a way that would have
baffled an ordinary witness.
Never once, however, did he lead Molineux into a quagmire. Osborne sat
down, drank a glass of water, and whispered to Jerome. While his
adversary sought for a new weapon, Molineux turned and looked through
the green-shaded window. For an instant the alert air of
self-possession, the look of the ready swordsman, fell away from his
face. The old, weary prison look crept over it. It was as though a mask
had slipped from some tired dancer’s face. He looked haggard, yellow,
old. As he turned he saw, just over his head, the cruel Roman symbol of
vengeance—the faces and the axe; saw, too, the calm women who spin the
thread of life, crouching on the shadowy, frescoed wall, a naked skull
at their feet. Something seemed to grip his throat. He strangled a
moment, then he coughed and spat. With a sudden gesture he drew his
hands across his eyes and pulled himself together. Osborne’s burnt-out
eyes were fixed on him. At that very instant he had himself in hand
again. From that moment he never for a second lowered his guard. His
attention was persistent as the pull of a magnet. His will was like
steel. He shunned every quagmire and escaped every pitfall with
marvellous dexterity, and with seeming unconsciousness that he had
passed the peril by.
He is an extraordinary man. The brain in him is first rate. His
intelligence is high above the average. Withal there seems no
insincerity in him. He was fighting for his life, but he talked as
calmly as though he had been in a drawing-room. Not only did he answer
every question, he went out of his way to volunteer information. He
answered questions to which his counsel objected until Mr. Black said:
“Oh, well, let him answer—let him tell everything.” And it was this very
frankness that at first confused and finally baffled the great Apache of
the prosecution. Moreover, his courtesy was charming. When Mr. Osborne
floundered in the midst of an intricate sentence the defendant would
help him out.
Gradually this told upon the Assistant District Attorney’s nerves. It
is difficult to bully a polite, accomplished man, and Mr. Osborne’s
successful cross-examinations have always been those in which he
banged the witness about the ears with a bludgeon. An hour before the
usual time for the adjournment of court he had had enough of it. To
his ill-concealed discontent he was told to go on with his
cross-examination. He shifted from subject to subject, playing, as it
were, round the case. Always the little prisoner met him, cool,
efficient, ready. At last, upon the insistence of District-Attorney
Jerome, an adjournment was granted. Mr. Osborne went away to furbish
up new weapons for to-day.
Molineux stood up. He glanced at the jury. They were whispering
together. Evidently it had been a good day for the defence. The rapier
had mastered the bludgeon. And as he stood there, waiting for the
jailmen to take him to his cell and lock him in, his father came up, a
smile on his careworn, tragic face, and laid one arm around his neck.
“I am proud of you, my boy,” he said; “proud of you.”
That was bravely said. It is easy enough to be proud of a son who wins
his way in the world and gets honor and fame. It is finer, perhaps, to
be proud of the son who carries himself well in the hour of black shame
and peril; who can bear himself well even though the next day may send
him to the electric chair. What was he proud of, the old fighting man?
Of the good blood, perhaps, that flows the steadier the greater the
danger is.
* * * * *
For fifteen fateful minutes Molineux was on the stand this morning.
Assistant District-Attorney Osborne had spent the greater part of the
night preparing for his promised attack. He had assured the court that
he would occupy two hours in probing the pallid little man who stands
charged with murder. He promised a sensation.
“Osborne has something up his sleeve,” said the lawyers.
The spectators buzzed it among themselves.
“Osborne has something up his sleeve!”
And so he had; but it was only his arm. The expected did not happen. The
sensation did not materialize. And yet Molineux could not foretell this
when he took his seat in the witness chair and clasped his nervous hands
upon his knee. He was cold and white and firm; watchful, too, for
Osborne faced him with an air of savage concentration.
It was the crisis of the trial. It was the crucial moment. It was the
crossroads, whence one path led to freedom and the other ran darkly away
to shame and death. Molineux knew it. Osborne knew it. They eyed each
other like men who are to meet in the death struggle. The Assistant
District Attorney was evidently nervous. He moistened his lips with ice
water and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. Then he threw one leg
across the table in his free and easy way and leaned forward. Having
failed by direct questions to tangle the little prisoner in the net, he
attacked him indirectly—and not very chivalrously—by dragging in the
name of that unhappy woman who is now Molineux’s wife. Of course, from
the viewpoint of a prosecuting officer, all is fair in law. It is fair
to help a witness, fair to throw mud at a woman—even though she is
outside the case and aloof—but it is not always wise. In a low voice he
began questioning the prisoner.
“Did Barnet pay any attention to your wife?” he asked.
Molineux’s face hardened. He brought his jaws together; a glimmer like
that of steel leaped into his misty eyes; but that was all. He answered
the question quietly enough, but it was evident that the introduction of
his wife’s name touched him on the raw. All that was chivalrous in him
came to the surface. And in spite of the fact that he was rusted in
prison for four years, there is still a deal of chivalry in him.
He admitted that Barnet had paid many attentions to Miss Cheeseborough
in the days before he and she had become betrothed. It was another
indirect way of getting Barnet into the case and of insinuating a motive
for murder.
“Did you give your wife an engagement ring?” the Assistant District
Attorney asked.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“I should like to explain that, Mr. Osborne.”
“I am not trying to entrap you, Mr. Molineux,” said the prosecutor,
sweetly, “but suppose you answer my question. Wasn’t that ring bought
November 18, 1898—one week after Barnet died?”
“There were two rings,” said Molineux.
Then he told the story of the ring. It was a strange romance to listen
to in the stifling home of crime. It was like a lily blooming in a
pesthouse. As Molineux told it his voice softened into wonderful
tenderness. He did not look at Osborne. He did not seem to see the jury
or the crowded, morbid court-room. He was living again the days of love.
“There were two rings,” he repeated. “One was a mizpah ring—like this
one,” and he drew the ring from his finger. “My mother gave this ring to
me long ago. I have always worn it. Miss Cheeseborough admired it, and I
gave her one like it for a Christmas present. Then, when we became
engaged, she said that should be her engagement ring—she would have no
other. But when we came to arrange for our wedding she decided that the
mizpah ring should be our wedding ring. It was sentiment,” he added; “it
was her wish. And so I bought the second ring, of which Mr. Osborne has
just spoken.”
All this was said very simply. There was, however, such pathos in the
voice, so fine a sincerity in the face, that the effect upon the jury
and upon the audience was extraordinary. It was the first time that
Molineux had shown his heart—he held it out for the Assistant District
Attorney to peck at. And there was a pause. Mr. Osborne fumbled his
papers and hesitated. Then he asked a few unimportant questions, which
did not mask his defeat. Abruptly he sat down. The famous duel had been
fought and lost. Molineux had outpointed him at every turn. For a while
the Mad Mullah of the District Attorney’s office sulked, refusing
comfort. In vain Jerome hugged him round the neck and patted his
shoulder.
It has lasted fifteen minutes. In that time the case was virtually
tried. Osborne’s last attack was not his best. The Apache who goes out
for a scalp should not loiter by the way to throw stones at a woman. So
far from helping his case by bringing in Mrs. Molineux, he hurt it.
Osborne’s attack upon the prisoner’s wife paved the way for his most
telling defeat. It opened the door for Molineux. It permitted him to
recount the romance of the ring. It gave him an opportunity to show that
there was more in him than a keen and wary brain—that there was a heart.
And that went home to the jury. All the world loves love, and a juryman
is like the rest of us—part of the world.
He gave Molineux his opportunity, for the man who defends a woman is
always in the right.
And he used it superbly. There were no heroics. There was only the story
of the ring. There was only romance. There was only a hint of true love
and an old love story. That was all, but it turned the truculent
prosecutor’s attack into utter defeat. Osborne knew it. Molineux knew
it. The great cross-examiner’s promised flaying of Molineux had
miscarried. Had Osborne been retained for the defence he could have done
no more for the pallid little prisoner. He flung himself into his chair
and sat there, gulping ice water, mopping his red face.
The prisoner kept his seat in the witness chair.
Governor Black arose. His hands in his pockets, a smile on his face, he
looked at his client.
“I have no questions to ask,” he said cheerfully. “That is all, Mr.
Molineux.”
The prisoner went back to his accustomed place. The old father got him
by the hand. They laughed softly as they gripped hands. The little
prisoner was years younger than he was two days ago. His eyes looked
human and bright. At last he could see the sunlight shining. He and hope
were together again. His lawyers shook his hand again and again. The old
General whispered to him, proud and happy. It was as though the case was
already won.
And it all happened in fifteen minutes—in ten minutes—in five
minutes—while Molineux was telling the story of the ring.
A better witness never took the stand. Unguided, without a single
interruption from his counsel, he foiled the great Apache of the
prosecution at every turn. If he did not win his case, it is because the
case is past winning. He won, at all events, the sympathy of the
swarming spectators. He impressed, in any case, the wearied jurors.
Again it was rapier first and bludgeon second.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Room with the Little Door" ***
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