THE TRIAL
November had come and the day for the great Trial had come with it. Events had been moving rapidly, and political and social forces concurred to gather the citizens of the City-State into two opposing parties. Within one of them resided the aristocratic principles taught by Helen Lorimer, and within the other—though far more obscurely—the disorganizing tendencies of The Beehive. Between these formidable elements of political disturbance and political prestige the Mayor directed his course with consummate skill. The man’s enormous power of concentration, his impetuous activity, became the marvel of the commonwealth. This ambitious scholar and orator, touched with a utopian idealism, which Briggs had thought betokened at the outset simply weakness, and mental inertia—a view which the Mayor’s conduct at first quite appropriately justified—had amazed the politicians, with his swift recoil from all their shifty opportunism.
He had introduced important reforms, he had established new standards of proficiency in the city’s business, he had deliberately approached his constituents of all shades of opinion, and he had not hesitated to declare himself the exponent of a vast utilitarianism, which aimed at the perfect government of the City, and the realization within its borders of universal happiness. He had been referred to by some wag as the City’s Augustus, who was engaged in the Sisyphean task of reconciling irreconcilable elements, and building a permanent commonwealth upon the treacherous sands of caprice, selfishness, pride, extravagance, and envy.
They said the Mayor was trying to maintain the traditional State—a well ordered union of all forces, conditions, and occupations—whereas the State oscillated between two opposite inclinations, one making for an oligarchical rule of wealth, and family, the other for a proletariat of a levelling demagoguery. They pointed to the fact that the Mayor encouraged the ceremonials of the Holidays, that he officiated at the laying of corner stones, he affected a public ostentation; his frequent allocutions to the people were in the nature of lectures, and his endorsement of all plans of public improvement, his familiar frequentation of the poorer section of the City, his undisguised appeal to the rich for support, all these things pointed to his realization of a conflict which only his multifarious sympathies for the present concealed. And they were right.
The Mayor was the visible bond of a provisional peace. His method, as these ingenious and learned critics pointed out, was the Augustinian _pax Romana_, by which he attempted as far as possible to reconcile divergent interests, and, in a process of universal stimulation, ministering to the municipal pride, to hide the increasing mobilization of the forces of conservatism and radicalism in opposite camps. But these forces daily grew more compact, and busily engaged their respective resources—in papers, magazine writers, public speakers—to illustrate and defend their theories. It was felt by the more thoughtful that society stood upon the verge of conflict, which might mean several things. Two prominently emerged. A civil state on the one hand constituted upon a stricter enforcement of the individual rights of property, and on the other some yet indefinable new social organism which subjected individual rights to legislative revision, and in all probability to legislative annulment. The situation had become interesting, and below the mere academic surface of affairs burned the fires of a temperamental hostility, that would not be content with a peaceful solution.
The Mayor—smarting with an inner pain he confessed to no one, as indeed he had no one to confess it to—became involved in a propaganda of mutual toleration, and worked upon an Aristotelian basis of a state utilizing all tendencies in the preservation of a fabric of checks and balances, with mutual toleration. The sting of his unmerited repulse by Mr. Lorimer, might have easily led him into reprisals and retaliation. It might naturally have turned his thoughts towards the creation of conditions bearing more heavily upon the rich—the Carrara group of proud conservatives but it did nothing of the sort. The man preserved a perfect mental serenity, and weighed with even more scrupulous care the exact proportions of his sympathies with either faction, hoping to develop a third and balancing power, which would control the electorate.
His public acts were marked with a fine regard for justice, his innovations in the financial government of the city were well considered, and his appointments critically excellent. Not a trace of selfishness could be detected in his work, not the slightest yielding to corrupt influences, not the most tenuous showing of political craft. And this in no wise jeopardized his reputation among the very classes who suffered rebuff at his hands. For it was too well understood, as Mr. Briggs told Tom Ratler, that the Mayor was a compromise candidate at the last election, and had himself emphasized the independent attitude he was entitled to bear towards all parties. All this had won him praise from the moderates and sensible, but it had also brought him into a less enviable estimate with the rancorous and radical of both sides.
Had he been a weak man, intellectually, this even course might have assumed the expression of timidity, or simply a puritanical notionalism that, by some kind of exact partition of its smiles to either quarter, hoped to conciliate all. Not so with the Mayor. His strength was unmistakable, and his language tremendously forcible and correct. No one knew that his ingenious and convincing language, his incessant anxiety and explanatory emphasis, the vigorous novelty of his addresses and Bulletins, had their source of power in the smarting and bruised heart of the man, for, as will occur with such temperaments, where a pride of despotic power, and at the same time a pride of jealous apprehension, the pride of an unusual mind associated with a personal history of struggle and self-denial, has been deeply wounded, the energies of the mind storm some new citadel of difficulty, and minister distraction. Such consolation is indeed temporary, but it suffices to allay the worst aches, and if the effort brings praise and distinction, smothers the fires of fever and desire.
In an article of much length which had appeared in the numbers of one of the best magazines, the Mayor had anonymously discussed the situation. The article attracted attention, and was made the text of editorials and sermons, of conversation and drawing room talk, and every one knew that its author was the Mayor. In it the Mayor had aired his studies of Roman History—a favorite topic with him—relying as he did upon such pictures of the first days of the Empire as Ferrero has given us. In a pregnant paragraph he depicted the whole dilemma.
“The predicament of the ancient Roman State at the time of Augustus, if we accept the delineation of Ferrero, was the supineness of the governing classes, their reluctance to exercise the functions of Rule, their intolerable surrender to indulgence, to the depravity of a sensual and oriental luxuriance, and the dilettantism of literary tastes. With Rome at that time engaged in a hopeless task to revive an ancient decorum, and the stolidity of an antique moral forcefulness, the problem of Augustus seems to have been how to distribute the burdens of government, and save himself from the arduous responsibility of “running the machine” alone.
“At the top was a nobility dissipated, selfish, and forgetful, which had lost the manhood of its former state, and now revelled in glorious depravities which an eastern civilization had introduced, and made irresistible; next to it was a knighthood class interested in attaining wealth, in successful business enterprises, in the exploitation of the resources of the vast empire, and also too willing to surrender the burden of government to any one—and Augustus had grown in their eyes semi-divine—who would conduct it, so as to least disturb their enterprises of thrift and emolument. Below them came the masses of retainers, freemen, slaves, veterans, small merchants, and artificers, professional loafers, and impecunious litigants, who looked to the government and the richer guilds for entertainment and support, for gladiatorial shows and bread.
“Our present condition is rather one of Social War, because all wish to govern, and the political prowess of individuals was never more imposing. There is here no disintegration of Ambition. Our danger is not one from surrendered rights, but rather from the clamorous claim for more rights, from the importunity of too many doctors.
“Society sensibly oscillates between two possible extremes, and the old adage that government is Compromise, forms, with this City-State, the _ideal programme_, under the control of sense, toleration, and accommodation. Our vitality is enormous. Our talent unlimited, our wealth boundless, the freshness and vigor of enterprise unimpaired, our mental activity exaggeratedly quick and responsive. There is no general lethargy here, though we enlist every element of pleasure. The elective franchise was never more greedily enjoyed, never more desperately believed in and used. We have become _doctrinaire_, but the philosopher carries his shillalah and his gun. Theories have become creeds, and there are martyrs to die for them. THE STATE MIGHT BECOME DISRUPTED THROUGH WAR, IT WILL NEVER DISAPPEAR THROUGH INANITION.”
The crystallizing process continued, and the two parties confronted each other, the Conservatives—called The Plum-Puddings—and the Radicals—called The Levellers—and the event of some determined strikes had more sharply defined them. Force had been vigorously used to suppress the disorders, that had arisen in their wake and The Beehive, anxious to breed a deeper feeling of distrust, willing to start into action the most wicked and dangerous characters upon some crusade of retaliation and violence, had seized the chance to sow the seed of discontent and Revolution.
The Mayor had been thoroughly straightforward and insistent He had made it clear that street disorder must cease, he had denounced The Beehive, and threatened it with suppression; he had summoned a mass meeting of the temperate people and in a great speech had reiterated his control over the best elements, and effected a complete suspension of criticism. The Mayor loomed larger. His hand worked with masterly precision, and he was found at every point able and alert. The bigots—and Mr. Lorimer was one of them—remained silent in company, when his praises were sounded, through behind closed doors, and in each others’ company, they denounced him. The radicals feared him, and Longtinsky and his gang cursed him.
Mr. Briggs and Tom Ratler longed for the exile and forcible expulsion of Longtinsky. They kept up a close watch over The Beehive, and Briggs, in private, gave Tom long winded bodings of disaster, if the sheet was not soon stifled. He indulged—so far as the Mayor would let him—in ornamented appeals, but the Mayor discerned the mistake of interference just at the moment, and The Beehive continued its polluting course, though hidden from public view. The Mayor was right. The Beehive frenzied a few, and made them murderers at heart—as it turned out murderers in fact—but it had not extended influence, and its vicious constituency only seemed formidable, because it was hypothetically involved with a much less violent Socialism.
The trial of the incendiaries, or the suspects, in some way focused the attention of all parties and factions. What with the applause of the Socialists over the re-trial, and the promised liberation of innocent men, the cries of protest put up by such extremists as Mr. Livingston, the intervention of the Mayor, and the known interest of Miss Lorimer in the matter, the trial attained a magnified importance.
It acted as a call for truce, and all agreed to watch its developments before they organized for a further campaign of assault and abuse. It became a strategic point, and might have been construed as a pivotal opportunity for one or the other side to score a victory. In reality it had no important relation to the political embarrassment. And this the Mayor knew. But it was distinctly distracting. It was an exhibition of magnanimity on the part of a representative aristocratic family—the Lorimers—and it was at the same time denounced by many of the Plum-Pudding complexion as a ridiculous tampering with the proper course of the Law, and a sop to discontent.
As a matter of fact its influence was favorable to the Plum-Puddings, and Miss Lorimer became a popular illustration of goodness. It disconcerted Longtinsky and Poniatowsky, and made them rave with hate. It gave Longtinsky some anxiety for the preservation of his own neck, and as his designs upon Helen Lorimer had suffered discomfiture, he was beside himself with fear lest the unjustly condemned men—professedly his confederates—would, in the case of their liberation, turn upon him and rend him.
He consulted much with Poniatowsky who had become involved more closely with him, and voluntarily—for Jessie’s sake—embarked in his perilous ventures. Longtinsky had foreseen Poni’s capitulation, and he used him unscrupulously, as a tool, which he fully intended to reject and destroy at the right moment.
Longtinsky was terribly deceived as to the strength of his sympathizers, but in his delusion he concocted the outrageous and impossible scheme of a Massacre of the Rich. He planned it for the day or week after the completion of the trial. Then two things might happen. If it succeeded he would rush forward and forcibly establish a government, or somehow, in the tumult, secure a place in the new order of things; if it did not succeed he would flee, and—if Poniatowsky followed him—he would KILL him. So too in the subterranean camp of The Beehive and in the contorted depths of Longtinsky’s brain the trial became a datum point and a cause of action.
Helen Lorimer had interested Amato in the trial, and in the small child, Shimura, who was to upset the state’s contention. During the summer Shimura had been kept at the secluded and beautiful home of Mr. Moser in Maine, on the shores of Penobscot Bay. Here the deformed and strange waif, with his precocious sympathies, and his eager mind grew stronger, and his meagre and weird inconsistent body assumed a better aspect. Amato loved to talk with this boy and seemed to enjoy the curious psychological problem he presented. It was a most genuine interest and it affected Helen deeply; she recognized it and felt grateful for it.
The trial court was in the New Court and Government Building upon Centre and Chatham Street, in a room of princely proportions, and handsomely decorated, after the style then prevalent of mural embellishments. The selection of the jury had been a long and wearisome process, for it was difficult to find twelve men sufficiently free of prepossessions to serve the purposes of the trial.
At last that preliminary was completed, and the trial began. Helen Lorimer had at first hesitated to attend the sessions of the court, for she believed that the Mayor might be also an occasional or even frequent visitor to the trial, and, as no word had passed between them since his letter of rejection, she dreaded to again meet him. She had indeed not been unobservant of his actions and words, and she secretly admired them, but his continued silence had angered her, and slowly—very slowly—she effaced the dear impression he had made, turning more and more willingly to the handsome creature at her side, who attached himself to her daily life by innumerable attentions, with a modest unwearying devotion, where too she saw the visible notes of passion.
Her apprehensions were suddenly removed by a public announcement in the public prints that the Mayor during the weeks or days of the trial would take a vacation in the far West, where, it was also reported he would be engaged in preparing his annual message to the Legislature—a report currently believed to be a personal vindication of his views as to the value of a purely material and utilitarian interpretation of government—an anonymous writer in one of the dailies had said that the Mayor believed in _Euthanasia_ for all incurables, and death for the hopelessly insane.
This retirement of the Mayor permitted Helen to attend the trial, and with her went Amato. The scene presented by the court was picturesque in the extreme and the movement of the trial dramatic. A marble canopy covered the chair of the presiding judge, a marble platform supported the desk of dark wood before him, on either side along the walls extended paintings of the course of Justice, from the delivery of the Ten Commandments, to the ratification of the Constitution of the United States, meeting at length, as they encompassed the sides of the great room, in a symbolic _alto relievo_ statue of Justice herself, holding her balanced scales, with bandaged eyes, and her symmetrical sword directly opposite to the seat of the Judge, who thus might be constantly reminded of his duty and his power.
A fence of bronze enclosed the customary area in front of the judge, for the actors in the judicial play, filled with tables and chairs, and a raised marble and cushioned seat to the right formed the unusual rostrum for the witnesses. Behind all these details of necessary formal construction the court room held an amphitheatrical arrangement of perfectly white chairs, upon which the spectators were permitted to arrange themselves in still further contributory scenic groups. The color effect as might be imagined, was at least extraordinary; the illuminated walls, the white throne of the judge, the black wood of the desks and tables before him and the clustered white seats of the auditorium, with the carelessly composed but effective groups of the lawyers and clerks, and the crowded audience, in which mingled upon terms, at least, of physical contact, the elements and representatives of the divided political cohorts, a heterogeneous assemblage of faces and costumes, instilled throughout with expectancy and excitement. Among them all were not a few of the very poor, friends of the prisoners, and not a few dark and scowling faces, emissaries of The Beehive. Longtinsky was never seen at the trial, though Poniatowsky was.
One of the opening dramatic moments was the entering of the prisoners, the six men previously condemned to death; Dalzell, Vinta, Bingo, Fabrizio, Polinck, Rinker. Dalzell was an Englishman, Vinta, Fabrizio, and Polinck Italians, Bingo and Rinker born in America of Swedish parents. The six men filed in under a heavy guard, and took their seats within a railing to the left of the court room. Every face in the crushed space looked at them, and this stare they met in very different ways. Dalzell, Rinker, and Bingo smiled feebly, but appeared unconcerned; the Italians were less assured, and shrank together almost as if they resented the effrontery of this exposure. The moment passed, the names of the prisoners were called, and responded to, and the gavel of the judge fell as the prosecution promptly rose to open the case.
Among those who had secured the privilege to a seat within the rail were Mr. Briggs and Tom Ratler, the former as a _quasi_ representative of the Mayor, and the latter as his companion. The eyes of these two searched the prisoners eagerly for Polinck. Although to Mr. Briggs the re-trial was nonsense, yet at least he felt that Polinck was the arch conspirator, next to Longtinsky, and the ring leader of the men captured. Polinck was perhaps the largest and strongest of all the prisoners. For an Italian he was of unusual height and stoutly composed. His dark face punctured by two flashing eyes and further intensified in its unpromising expression of villainy by a heavy and curled black moustache would have readily attracted attention, and almost the most indifferent scrutiny would have recoiled from its hard favored and sinister glance. Singularly for an Italian the hair was not profuse or abundant, and actually carried a few white threads among its black excess of rather thin locks, which, seen from the back, confessed an incipient baldness. This scantiness of hair gave the dreaded Polinck a curiously incongruous mien, which might have at first provoked amusement, had not any such inclination been quickly suppressed when he raised his malignant eyes. Tom Ratler studied his face with interest, and besides Tom in the back of the court room another student of physiognomy was engaged in the same duty. It was Poniatowsky. He regarded Polinck as a rival for the favor of Jessie, and indeed Polinck—in better days for both of them—had told him he intended to marry Jessie. It was not altogether to Poni’s liking that the huge Italian should return to the pursuit of his courtship, though Poni grimly smiled at the unlikelihood of his meeting with much encouragement, smiled even more grimly at the likelihood of his leaving this world altogether.
Even more interesting to Mr. Briggs than the prisoners were the members of the Jury.
On account of the political antagonism among men in the great city, and the assumed importance of the trial in strengthening their affiliations with one or the other parties, as there should be an acquittal or another conviction, the counsel for the prosecution and for the defense had strained every effort to exclude from the jury those who sympathized with the conservatives, as well as those who confessed their radical prejudices. The result had been only to fill the box with twelve men, who professed complete impartiality, and a satisfactory confidence to judge the evidence uninfluenced by any political sympathies. Mr. Briggs studied their faces with anxious scrutiny, and secured for his pains a general impression of intelligence, unrelieved by any distinction, and absolutely free of personal idiosyncrasies, which was a point in their favor. Helen Lorimer on the front row of the white chairs, reserved for the auditors, was no less interested, and her examination produced a similar impression of safety, though her wishes in regard to the trial were the reverse of those of the irreconcilable secretary.
Miss Lorimer and her companion attracted much attention, and their good looks won for them approving comments. A good many women and not a few men rejoiced to see the famous patroness of the poor, and of some of the culprits now being tried, and the no less famous propagandist of the philosophy of caste. It was naturally assumed that the handsome man who accompanied her was to be her future husband, though on that score the suspicions were rather whispered than spoken aloud. The excitement of the occasion and her own deep confession of solicitude gave to Miss Lorimer great animation, and added not a little to her radiance and beauty.
Indeed the lawyers for the prosecution would have willingly excluded her, for they felt her influence prejudicial to their case. They knew that it was largely through her efforts that the new testimony had been procured, and they acknowledged the power she exerted throughout the community by her unquestioned talent, goodness, and activity. They dreaded the effect upon the admiring and forgetful jurors. They had struggled with some legal subterfuges to secure her expulsion, but it was a forlorn attempt, and doomed to failure. The trial began, and Miss Lorimer remained an observant listener. And Amato was no less interested. The trial was a novelty for both, and its details with their dramatic touches, the skilled conflict of the lawyers, the dignity and impassiveness of the judge, and the manifold coloring of humanity in it all, even its dull processes and wearisome tracts of routine, attracted them. From first to last they remained absorbed auditors and listeners.
Mr. Meldexter, the District attorney for New York County, made the opening address to the Jury. He depicted in words of courteous rebuke the fresh attempt to release the condemned after a fair trial by their equals, and then, warming up to the subject, with withering scorn foretold its failure, affirming, in an eloquent conclusion, that the course of Justice could not be swerved by any subterfuges of interest, or any inventions of pity. His address gave Mr. Briggs the keenest satisfaction, and his nudges of Tom Ratler punctuated the telling points of the oration. Miss Lorimer heard it with incredulity and admiration. She knew Mr. Meldexter was quite unprepared for the sort of evidence Mr. Moser would offer, and his soaring tirade gave her no alarm.
The evidence against the accused followed. It consisted for the most part, as far as it was vital, of the testimony of the police, with some additional proofs of the criminal character of the prisoners. The principal point made, was the arrest of the prisoners among a crowd of others, who escaped, rushing from the burning building at the very moment when the explosions occurred which destroyed life, and wrecked the Settlement House, that quickly caught fire and disappeared in smoke and flames. This was followed by various identifications of the prisoners by witnesses, who offered their opinions and experiences with them (the prisoners) as raising a presumption that they (the prisoners) were undesirable citizens. The examination of one of these, unexpectedly furnished amusement to the court room, and threw even a shade of diversion over the sombre faces of the accused men.
The witness was an old woman who carried on her physiognomy the most complicated record of time’s effects, in a wilderness of wrinkles, and who kept one—it was apparently all she possessed—elongated incisor always in view, overlapping her lower lip, like the fang of a dog constantly on guard. She spoke in a voice which if not seriously damaged by time in its loudness, had been entirely robbed of any of its former sweetness. Her little eyes retired into dull browned and stained sockets, and from those hiding places kept a weirdly incessant stare at the examiner, twitching now and then convulsively, or closing completely as if they sought a moment’s respite from so much publicity. Her skinny and pallid fingers were clasped together over the top of an umbrella, whose distended sides and numerous patches betokened a contemporaneous age with its owner.
When asked her name and age she confessed to the appellation of _Emily Pint_, and with reference to her age snapped out that; “it didn’t consarn ennyone, and enny how was something she knowed nuthin’ about.”
The examiner then directed her to raise her eyes and inspect the prisoners, and tell such things as she veraciously might affirm of their antecedents, and reputation.
The old woman turned round slowly and fixed her unwinking eyes upon the men. She remained this way silent and observing for a few minutes much to the astonishment of the lawyer who exhibited some annoyance, not unaccompanied with perplexity and who finally allowed his impatience to frame the indiscreet question, “whether she was ready to answer?”
“Why—yees—I am, purviding you don’t ask me too much.” “Madame I intend to ask you all that is required for the proper instruction of the Jury,” retorted the lawyer with dignity.
“Well—well—don’t git peevish. I’ll tell ye whativer I know but I suppose you don’t want me to tell you what I don’t know.”
An audible titter met this sally, and was rebuked by the court, who warned the witness that frivolity would be sternly punished; an allocution which brought the lean visage of the old woman sharply round in the direction of the judge and put on it an expression of such whimsical perturbation, that the previous titter threatened to become outright laughter.
“Tell the Jury if you know the prisoners or any one of them.”
“I know ’em all, and a bad bunch too Mister,” almost shouted the witness, whose excitement carried her along in a torrent of abuse; “They come one night inter my store and slammed round outrageous; they pit me inter an empty barrel, and tied me ’ands and ’elped ’emselves to tobbaccy and pipes and amost enny thing they could lay their ’ands on; they is a good-fer nuthin’ loafin’, thievin’, snickerin’ lot of bums—and thet’s the gospel truth.”
“And they left no recompense to you for their abstractions?” asked the cross examiner.
“I’m a leetle deef” squealed the old woman with a disengaged hand to her ear. “Bit ef you mean by _tractions_ the stuff they took off why—No—they jist robbed pure and simple, and I niver got out ef thet barrel till the nex day—the dirty trash dey are—and me a respectable ooman as must earn her way in the warld—Ah, Ha!” in her excitement she had risen from the marble witness bench, and was shaking her umbrella above her head at the amazed prisoners, while the amusement in the audience developed dangerously, and the judge was rapping for quiet, and the assistant sheriffs were hurrying in the direction of the irate female, who still shouted; “Ah-Ha! I’s got yees now mee honey-birds, and old Emily Pint will mek yees holler as ye did me, ye black skinned unrighteous varmints. Wen ye pit me in the barrel ye askt me ef I could preach a sarmon. Weel—I just guess ye don’t care for this sart of a sarmon—do ye—me jolly chucks. Is it more ye want me to say?—” and the frenzied woman, quite beside herself with the malice of revenge turned to the astounded judge, flourishing her umbrella in the air, while the energy of her action tumbled the ancient head-gear which shielded her frowzy locks down her back, and left her gasping with her minute eyes shining with the baleful flicker of a crazy joy.
Order was restored, and the exhausted witness sank back in the seat; the judge sternly inquired if the witness was necessary, and, being assured that the prosecution regretted the episode, turned to Mr. Moser, and requested him to cross-examine if he thought it expedient. Mr. Moser rose and approached the still panting woman and quietly—as if from some casual curiosity—asked her if she could say how many men were in the party that perpetrated this outrage.
“How many?” queried Emily Pint, “dere was tree of dem, one as stopped the door, another held me in de barrel—de slab-faced scab—and the ither swiped mee trade—” her excitement returned, and Mr. Moser waved to the clerks who led her away, while he audibly remarked that there happened to be six prisoners—a fact already impressed on the audience, who in various states of fluttering comment, had again leaned back in their chairs, and waited, with renewed animation, for the further progress of the case.
The prosecution without calling Longtinsky, had at the instigation of Mr. Briggs, undertaken to show the acquaintance of the prisoners with _him_, and the influence upon them of his paper, The Beehive. This was done by a number of witnesses, whose testimony was not even questioned by the defence. At last the prosecution rested, and Mr. Moser addressing the court, opened the defence.
He admitted the heinous nature of the outrage committed, its dangerous effects, the necessity for its summary punishment, but he insisted that there could be but one opinion as to the further necessity of punishing the real miscreants, and that Justice would only fail in her mission if the innocent suffered, and the guilty escaped; that Society could not afford to blindly look for victims for her revenge—much as Emily Pint had done—without discriminating between its real foes and superstitious culprits. He alluded to the fact that the previous trial had been held under the immediate influence of great excitement, when the startled city, blinded by its apprehension of some menacing convulsion sought too quickly the condemnation of any one that might satisfy its natural but unreasonable thirst for retaliation. The defence, he said, engaged itself to show that three of the prisoners were absolutely innocent, two doubtfully concerned in the outrage, while it freed itself absolutely from any contract to limit the amount of guilt properly to be affixed to Lorenzo Albertino Marchesa Polinck.
This announcement was heard with very different sensations in all parts of the court room, and it was received everywhere with interest, and for the most part, among those not personally concerned in the outcome of the trial, with approval. Popular sentiment had already changed, and the new aspect put upon the case received deliberate and rational attention throughout the city. It was not acceptable to Mr. Briggs, it left Tom Ratler dubious. The sudden concentration of guilt upon Polinck brought the strangest sort of grin to the face of Poniatowsky, while to the excepted man himself it summoned a tide of color that darkened his swarthy cheeks, and spread in encircling rings about his bull-sinewed neck. Helen Lorimer and Amato lost no word of the address, and to Miss Lorimer the hope of saving the unfortunate men—deluded, deceived, duped, and misused, grew stronger. Mr. Moser continued.
He said he would introduce a new name in the register of the accused, the name of a man whom it would be necessary to subpoena to the trial, one whom—after he had finished his work—he believed the industrious and learned District Attorney would find it incumbent upon him to place where he now saw the six prisoners at the bar, and that man was Peter Tolstoy Longtinsky. There was a perceptible stir in the audience. It began at a number of points, and it consisted of a variety of movements. Some people suddenly looked up, others shifted their positions, and whispered to their neighbors, some glared and seemed uneasy, many smiled and shook their heads, with a “I told you so,” expression, and two men got up and left the court house. One of these was Mr. Briggs, the other was Poniatowsky. Mr. Briggs went out to take precautions that Longtinsky should be placed under surveillance at once, and that his chance of escaping from the city should be prevented; Poniatowsky went out to tell Longtinsky of the new threat and to make new plans.
Longtinsky had kept his eye and ear—so to speak—on the trial. Poni had told him of every move, and many others too. He knew the danger that filled the air for him, and yet he did not stir. Riveted by a strange infatuation that his destiny was upon the eve of blossoming into the powers of control that he dreamed of, and which seethed through his dusky brain, and ran before him in beckoning panoramas of riches and eminence, he refused to flee the city, though each day was to make it more and more clear that his safety was elsewhere. And now this deliberate assault by name; the certainty of his arrest, and possible trial, if not as a principal as an instigator, a conspirator, would almost surely follow.
No one suspected the new evidence, and it might be too damaging. Longtinsky and Poni knew the real state of the case, and to Poni it was a fixed fact that Longtinsky would be tried for the crime. He knew his guilt, Longtinsky had confessed that. Poni held Longtinsky in no great esteem, but they had become intertwined in a plot for gain, for revenge. Poni would have liked to come into close quarters with Tom Ratler, and Longtinsky thirsted for the death of Helen Lorimer. Poni felt no too great confidence in Longtinsky’s loyalty, but at the minute he felt his life was essential for his own plans. So he hurried from the court room with the announcement of Mr. Moser in his ears, just as Mr. Briggs made his way to the police headquarters to direct the close watch of the editor of The Beehive preliminary to his subpoena and arrest.
Mr. Moser had finished his speech, and deferred the offering of his evidence, just as Poniatowsky entered the small room—editorial chambers and bed-room—where the ponderous editor was buried deep in the composition of a great leader. He burst impatiently into the room; “Come put up your ink and pens—the long road for you. Tinsky you’re a pinched man, Moser says _you did it_,” he cried. Longtinsky raised his head and a terrified look covered his face, but he overcame it, and twisting his chair around, he faced the excited Italian, and told him to take a seat and tell all he knew.
Poni not only told all he knew, but he added much more he did not know. He drew in the most alarming outlines the probable course of events, stopping at nothing that might unsettle the—to him—inexplicable inertia of the man before him. And yet in spite of his horrible forebodings, in which with sundry realistic gestures he tried to make the anarchist understand the unpleasant aspects of hanging, Longtinsky remained unmoved. His face did show momentary terror, but it vanished the instant he let his imagination dwell on the magnificent insurrection his irresistible appeals would bring about.
Suddenly he jumped to his feet, his ungainly figure making the effort more surprising; his misshapen mouth shaped itself into a strange smile, his little eyes glittered and his portentous ears seemed almost to extend themselves, as he seized the astonished informer by the shoulders, looked straight down upon him, and exclaimed;
“Poni, I will not leave. _Never._ Let them take me. It will be the sign for the great revolt. Already three bands of the faithful are ready to rise. One word and the new Era starts. Be ready. They can prove nothing. I will add this to the appeal here,” and he slapped his broad hand down upon the loose leaves of paper which bore his weekly message of discontent and upbraidings and exhortation, “Let it come, the Torch, the Dagger—but finally _Victory_.”
Poniatowsky stormed to his feet, maddened beyond endurance by this folly; the obsession of the man stupified him at times, he had been growing worse, Poni wondered if he was entirely sane;
“Damnation,” he cried, “Tinsky you’re a doomed fool. If you can’t see the way out of this I can. I’ll not pull a rope tighter. Jessie and I get out of this. Where’s the girl?”
Again the plotting mood returned to the editor, and his stalking craft seized the opportunity to fasten the brigand before him to his purpose and plots. A deep malevolence beguiled him; neither he nor Poni nor Jessie nor any one should leave the city. The hate he bore Helen Lorimer rose and stifled sense. At any rate, first her death, and—then—perhaps—_perhaps_—Flight!
He motioned to Poni to take the chair he had thrown against the wall in disgust. The man reluctantly obeyed. Longtinsky stood in front of him, and his words were spoken in a lower tone, with more hesitation and with brief pauses; “Poniatowsky,” it was seldom his listener had been addressed with so much ceremony, and he resented it, but remained silent, “I want you to take my place here—right here with Jessie—see everything is fixing for the outbreak; we have ammunition, dynamite, and the men are all drilled for the _uprising_. Let them take me, let them imprison me, convict me,” his voice was rising with a sort of wail that fairly disconcerted his hearer, “and then I give the word—our plans are laid, and you lead an assault on the courthouse—see—there will be Tom Ratler,” a curse passed from the lips of Poni, “and there will be Briggs, and—there will be—I know it—I know it—there will be Helen Lorimer. Remember your promise—she is dead and Jessie is _all yours_—Yes all yours. Let Bomber strike the houses at Carrara, and Putkof light the torches at the river sides—and then our men will gather—_the men that lost the strikes_—They have forgotten nothing—nothing—they will march on the armories—on the City Hall—there are two thousand ready. I have strong husky men and—I can arm them—I have two barges on the East River full of guns—full—You start!—Yes, they are there: they look like dirt scows, but their holds are full of guns. Madder is on one, Felix on the other; they hate the Mayor; he threw them over after the elections—Bomber has a cache of guns and powder at High Bridge and Putkof enough kerosene to burn a navy. We have a friend in the janitor of the armory at Thirty-fourth street. We can make that our headquarters; we can sweep the city—the start made, the rest is easy. You must stay—you must take my directions, keep things together and—remember _Jessie is yours_—and—wealth, money, pleasure—power,” he was speaking louder, faster, and Poni, dazed with the revelation of the underground, unsuspected combinations, the immensity of the plot, was dumb; “Here are the keys to this desk,” he handed Poni a bunch of keys, “in there are directions—the whole plan—work it out for me, Poni, for Jessie; I see their cursed scheme—arrest me and all is nipped—Ah! ha! they think so—but Poni—give them the lie—the slip. Come let me finish this,” pointing to the unfinished editorial “and to-night, we will go over everything and get all ready, and then let them take me—”
There was something almost maniacal in the man’s fever of desperation, as he revealed things he had never whispered before. In a moment he laid bare his big intrigues, and subterranean conspiracies. Poni was dumfounded; for once his nerve deserted him, he felt Longtinsky’s mental strength and silently he left the room, after a promise to return in the night, when Longtinsky would assemble also the _others_, and the plotters for the destruction of the City would complete their plans. Everything had been leading to this; the danger had been lowering; now with this new trial of the convicted men, with whose execution his—Longtinsky’s—preparations might have been further prolonged—with this new trial, and his dreaded Summons—his probable arrest—the cloud had broken, and nothing but resistance and the _Power of Riot_ remained to be tried.
While Longtinsky thus shattered Poni’s dreams of escape from the spinning and tightening coil of circumstances, with a new bond of ambition, six plain clothes men—detectives—gathered in the street, and six more in the street beyond, and six upon Delancey and Grand streets, waiting for orders, to produce Longtinsky in court.
And that night the plotters came. There were Madder, a strong thick and undersized man, Felix a dark handsome Greek, Bomber a perverted American, tall and slender with a curling moustache which he kept waxed to the ends of its line-like length, and Putkof a Russian, glowering, silent, and dangerous. Longtinsky pulled out his papers from the drawer to which he had given Poni the keys, and sat among them, and went over everything. Poni of course was there too. The tough brigand was stupified with it all. His contempt for Longtinsky began to change into a devotional admiration and wonder. The man’s careful campaign, its parts and detail and the—monstrous audacity of it all!
Longtinsky talked and talked, his apathy of manner had vanished, the bulky frame shook with rage, and then the harsh voice ran on accentuating point after point. At times he lost command of the practical side of his Revolution, and he mounted into flights of empty and floundering eloquence. This was the old Longtinsky as Poni had known him, but the next minute he was outlining means and ways with the skill of a born commander. Every thing was rehearsed, suggestion from all sides heard; the reports were favorable, his confederates were sure of their men. They had blinded their eyes with promises, and infuriated them with denunciations. They would act together, and the distracted city would surrender. Besides the moment was auspicious; the military were for the most part away at some annual military practice in Chicago. When Longtinsky heard this he jumped to his feet, but instead of some voluble exclamation of pleasure, he just turned to Poni, and spoke swiftly and softly.
“Here is the man I leave to represent myself; if I am to be imprisoned consult with him. But Act, Act; leave nothing undone, and strike together, Poni at the Court House—Remember Poniatowsky to be THOROUGH—Bomber at Carrara, Putkof at the shipping, Madder and Felix where they are wanted.”
He sat down, and there was silence—and yet—had their ears not been deadened by the awful project that held them for the instant speechless, and Poni amongst them, enthralled with the, to him, utterly unaccountable magnitude of Longtinsky’s daring—had they not been so enthralled, they might have heard a faint groan somewhere above them as if in the ceiling itself. It came from Jessie. She had heard everything; she had heard her father’s threat during the day against Helen Lorimer, and she had heard Poni’s curse of her lover, and she had heard that her father was about to be arrested, and she had again seen the figures of the assembling officers of the law, from her attic porch.
Her mind had been excited and restless for weeks. Things she felt were drawing to a dreadful crisis. There had been goings and comings; silently at night; long in the depths of the night. She knew that men had slept in the little room which her father used for his work, and had left in the mornings, she knew that in the cellar where The Beehive was printed, there had been secreted strangers for days.
There was a sombre restlessness about Longtinsky; he had forgotten often to speak to her in the mornings as customary, and she heard him at night moaning—sometimes cursing—in his sleep, then shouting orders. Jessie became terrified; about her was a thickening mystery of anticipated terrors. And now;—she knew all—; in the crazy tenement where the walls were not so thick that patient and acute ears could not hear through them, there were also rents, and openings, and it was through one of these directly over their supposed concealment that Jessie, by removing a carelessly inserted block of wood, could see and hear the conspirators.
The next day Mr. Moser resumed his case. The court room was packed; the news that Longtinsky would be summoned, the probability of new sensational evidence, the increasing half-realized conviction that the case would go against the State; the comment—generally favorable, often enthusiastic, sometimes, and in some editorial quarters, sarcastic—upon the presence of Helen Lorimer; the sensation created by her handsome companion, the unknown quantity of the new evidence; all contributed to draw the people, and to add to the surprise that the Mayor was not in the city. For it was currently understood that he had interested himself in securing a new trial, and that this again had been accomplished through the intermediation of Miss Lorimer.
Everybody was on hand as the clock announced the hour for the court sitting, and as the judge took his seat, and the court attendants scanned the multitude for any infractions of the dignity of the place, and the crier shouted his unintelligible formula, time-honored and venerable, and always declaimed with the frantic impatience of indifference to its immemorial usage. The eyes of the constant visitors saw two new features in the court room; they were quickly noted by every one; the big shapeless figure of Longtinsky, and the singular elfin body of the boy Angelo Shimura. And curiously they were seen in juxtaposition. Longtinsky, in charge of the Sheriff sat to the left within the railing enclosure, not far from Mr. Moser, and the child sat at the left side of the lawyer. Thus brought into proximity the sombre, sullen, and disfigured face of the Anarchist, surmounting a short, thick, and sprawling form, appeared more conspicuously in the contrast furnished by the weird, long and somewhat cadaverous boy with his copious black hair, his strained eyes, and a pale face, on which glowed the suspicious carnation of ill health in its pallid cheeks.
None watched this strange waif, thrown upward in the waves of confusion and mischief, to rescue the innocent, with more love and solicitude than the noble hearted woman who felt the danger of the boy’s inexperience and his strangeness, and his alarm, in the midst of this multitude, and in the glaring light of the public action. Her heart truly grieved for him, and she trembled at the probable chance that his story would not be believed, and that the relentless process of cross-examination might confuse and intimidate him, and beneath its pitiless exactions his tale—vouched for in her moral certitude that he told the whole truth—would crumble away, and vanish, fruitless and unfulfilled.
“Angelo Shimura take the chair,” called out the clerk, and the hitherto immobile and inconspicuous body stirred quickly, and, admonished by Mr. Moser, who followed him to his ordeal, walked to the chair, or bench, was sworn and, concentrating his eyes upon Mr. Moser, awaited his examination. To Miss Lorimer’s and Amato’s surprise and great relief, the child seemed indifferent to his surroundings. He scarcely noticed them; a glance at the observant judge alone showed his realization of a singular position, while for one instant he raised his face and looked towards Helen Lorimer and Amato, who both encouraged him with a smile, and Amato pressed his hands together as if clasping the boy’s own. That passed in a flash, and the precocious child leaned forward as if really anxious for the beginning of his testimony, his big head with its pale brow seeming exaggerated in size, by the abundant hair covering it.
“Angelo,” said Mr. Moser in a low tone, “where were you born?”
“In New York,” the voice was astonishingly clear, and the words spoken almost without a foreign accent.
“Where are your parents?”
“Dead,” without a quiver of feeling.
“How then were you brought up? Where have you lived?”
“Andrea Bocaglia and Michiela Bocaglia took me home and fed me.”
“You lived with them?”
“Yes Sir.”
Mr. Moser turned to two figures at his side, and said; “Andrea and Michiela Bocaglia stand up,” and then to Angelo “Are these the persons you mean?”
Angelo laughed softly, “Yes; they are.” The disconcerted and perplexed couple looked at the boy with smiling faces, and took their seats.
“Angelo” continued Mr. Moser “How did you live with Andrea and Michiela Bocaglia?”
“I lived in the streets. They gave me food and I slept in a corner of the room.”
“Did you go to school while you lived in this way?”
“Sometimes Sir.”
Then followed question after question, showing the vagrant life of the child, his occasional weeks of attending school, his hours of wandering through the streets, selling papers, or matches, or shoe strings, his honest return of all the money he received to his foster parents, his own frequent hunger, his obedience, his longing for a better life—this told with a humble pathos that brought tears to the eyes of Helen Lorimer, and many others, in the huge audience—his meeting with a big man who gave him a book with pictures, and invited him to his home, where he did a little work about the house, and was paid for it, the good food he received in this house, from the man, and his daughter, who was very kind to him, and then with an almost preternatural grace and simplicity he told how his heart had grown to this man and he loved him, how he followed him, watched him, listened to him, and read—for he was precocious in this—his paper, which he said the man printed, and how he learned there—in the paper—that this man was going to free the people from slavery, and how he had one great enemy—here the boy became confused, and the blood surged to his cheeks, his eyes fell, and the tears ran down, and he wiped them away shamefacedly, as he turned his head aside, and covered his eyes with his arm. He refused to answer.
“What was the name of the great enemy of this man?” asked Mr. Moser coaxingly.
The boy was sobbing, and there was a murmur of sympathy in the crowd before him. Mr. Moser approached nearer, and only the prosecutor interfered to intercept his actual touching of the child, with his hand; “Angelo answer,” suddenly thundered the hitherto mildly persuasive questioner.
The boy uncovered his shrinking face, and whispered, “Miss Helen Lorimer.”
There was a wide spread motion in the audience, and some who were attending to Longtinsky saw his frame shiver, and his brows contract, and his fingers clench. His head fell forward on his chest.
“Is this man here in this room to-day?” continued Mr. Moser, his voice still high and resonant.
The boy looked at Longtinsky, and his face assumed the strangest expression; there was contrition there, and self-reproach one might have said, and then there followed it anger and contempt, and with it, flaring up in the same glow of temper a kind of pity. It was the face of an actor, the face of a fully developed human, of a man; something foreign in its complexity to the face of any child. The next instant Angelo had leaped to his feet, and pointing to Longtinsky shouted; “There he is.”
It was one of the crucial moments in the trial, and, as if with one impulse a tide of wondering and astonishment swept the people off their feet, and hundreds rose in their seats, craning forward in the direction of the pointed finger of the boy. And then something even more unexpected happened. The dramatic pitch was given its finishing intensity, for Longtinsky roused into some consciousness of the possibility of creating a sensation, and always inflated with the delusion of his importance, his mission, and his power, sprang to his feet, slapped himself on the breast, and swinging round from the judge, the lawyers, and the witnesses, to the audience also shouted; “Yes I _am_ Longtinsky;” and in the voice, not ill adapted for oratorical effects, sounded his imposing, ungovernable, conceit.
It was all so unusual, and unlooked for, that a stupefaction seemed to seize the court officers, and even the judge, but with the reaction in the audience of a wave of applause, sense returned; the judge pounded his gavel, the attendants crushed Longtinsky into his chair, and Angelo falling back in his bench sat silent and excited.
From this point onward the interest and power of the trial deepened, developments followed fast, the picture of the operations of Longtinsky and his accomplices came back to the boy, and with a fierce restlessness and eagerness, and with unwonted skill, with picturesque words, he drew the successive scenes of the plot, and the plotters, and the impending dawn of the catastrophe, and the catastrophe itself, forgetting nothing, recalling names, dates, attitudes, incidents, until the seasoned judge gazed at him with admiration, and Helen Lorimer absorbed and almost breathless fastened her eyes upon him with a feeling of terror. It appeared to her too exact, too remarkable, too, so to speak, theatrical.
He rehearsed meetings of Longtinsky and Polinck and other men in the office of The Beehive. Inscrutable as it appeared this boy had been present at many of them. He had secreted himself in some instances behind boxes, trunks, and under tables. He confessed to a distracting dread that somehow he would lose the man whom he strangely loved—Longtinsky, and this arch plotter regarded him without suspicion. He had even invited him in to the room when the means of destroying the Settlement House were talked over.
He followed Longtinsky in the streets at night; followed him to many conferences and meetings elsewhere, though he made it clear that Longtinsky was unwilling to leave his office, and, like a spider in a web, feeling all the threads of his snare, living at its very centre, concealed, himself, and lived a subterranean life. He passed from point to point, drawing nearer and nearer to the last arrangements for the destruction of the House, and the placing of the bombs.
Here Mr. Moser proceeded with caution, getting all he could from the boy, and retracing his steps, as if to confuse the young witness, but never succeeding. The boy’s memory never flagged. His nervous force maintained his strength, and it was evident to Amato, how wisely Mr. Moser had acted in adding all the physical strength possible to the frail frame, by his summering him in the exhilarating north.
Helen Lorimer thought she detected a kind of overweening pride, almost a boastfulness in Angelo, as he felt the scenic pressure so to speak of the crowd’s attention, the absorption of the lawyers, the intentness of the prisoners, leaning over to catch his every word, and the growing dissatisfaction of the prosecutors, as he cleared the ground for the denouement of the last incendiarism of Longtinsky and his friend Polinck. For his narrative concerned them alone, and the men tried for their lives seemed almost absent in the repeated scenes he described of Longtinsky’s preparations.
The story had reached the point where the bombs were brought to Longtinsky’s office, and where a strange man whom Angelo said was not among the prisoners explained their make, and the method of their explosion. On that critical night the boy had been thrown out of Longtinsky’s house by Polinck, and had returned, creeping on all fours to the door of the editorial room—the apartment in Grand Street. It was a warmer night than customary, and a beating stream of rain flooded the city. Crouching at the door which was left unfastened, the boy, crazed with a diseased curiosity, and hungering for the safety of his patron, had slowly pushed it in, and, half protected against the rain, had overheard the last council.
The session of the court was drawing to a close for the day. Electric lights were beginning to flash in the streets, and the judge called the attention of Mr. Moser to the fact of the near adjournment. It was not unnoticed by that gentleman who desired to rest his witness, and begin on the next day the tremendous disclosure he had prepared. He bowed to the court and said;
“Your Honor I will take the witness from the stand, after asking him one more question,” and then advancing to Angelo, whose strained excited visage became with each added memory more and more enthusiastic and eager, he asked him;
“Angelo Shimura do you recognize the prisoners at the bar?” and addressing the judge “may I ask that the prisoners rise for the witness’ better inspection.” It was the first time that Mr. Moser had called attention to the prisoners at all.
The men were ordered to rise, and the six with alacrity stood up; Angelo also stood at the witness stand, and looked at them. Still exalted with his sense of eminence, the boy called off their names, in a clear musical voice, a voice that many had already noted as peculiarly distinct and pure;
“John Dalzell, Pedro Vinta, Alonzo Fabrizio, Charles Bingo, Fred Rinker, Lorenzo Polinck.”
“Angelo have you seen these men, the prisoners now before you, at the house of Longtinsky at any time?”
“No Sir, only Polinck.” There was some half smothered exclamations and the audience understood that the effective stroke was near at hand. The order of the day was however over. There was one more sensation to be recorded. The District Attorney and Mr. Moser conferred a minute, and then Mr. Meldexter stepped forward, and asked the court for the arrest and committal to jail, without bail, of the person of Peter Tolstoy Longtinsky. There was a short debate, and the judge assented to the retention. Longtinsky was a prisoner. The clerk announced the adjournment the people rose while the judge left the bench, and then the surge outward to the doors began, and then too Longtinsky turned to the white chairs of the empty benches, and saw there one figure watching him with a blanched face. It was Poniatowsky. Longtinsky raised his hand and spread the broad fingers over his head; the next instant he was roughly hustled away by guards, and Poni hurried away to tell Jessie her father was a prisoner. It gave him a singular elation. He was now Jessie’s protector. But the next instant he remembered the compact, and that night too he must meet Bomber, Putkof, Felix, and Madder, and the rest. Longtinsky had given the signal. Should they risk the awful adventure?