The next day began the trial of Ed Cole, for the killing of John Dawson.
Militia, equipped by profits from the mountain's wealth, guarded the
courthouse; the strikers, realizing that their salvation lay in
preventing an armed clash, ignored the provocative slurs and taunts of
these guardians of order; but the glint of guns followed wherever they
were, a continuing menace. Ben Spence had finally twisted a half-hearted
consent from the county prosecutor to let him act with the State. "But
they double-cross me every chance they get, Judson," he said as they
walked to the county courthouse together. "That young Chippen, who is
about as much of a lawyer as I am a South Sea Islander, is to handle the
State's case--the youngest and poorest hanger-on around the county
attorney's office. And against him, Dick Mabry, _and_ Hilary, Leach,
Pugh and Garfunkel!"
"They're a good criminal firm----"
"Best in the South. Darned fools, three of them; Tipton Leach is a
lawyer. Darned crooks, all four. The company will do anything to get the
nigger off. And 'Willy' Hawkes, Tuttle's old partner, holds this term!"
Spence took his seat beside Chippen, Pelham with a row of socialists
just behind. Judge Hawkes entered with his usual nervous jerk, twitching
his apologetic way to the raised bench. Richard Mabry, smiling in
velvety assurance, bowed ostentatiously to His Honor; the defendant's
table was otherwise empty. Deputies escorted in the negro, his face
bright with a frightened interest, mixed with delight at his sudden
importance, and confidence in the last whispered instructions of his
lawyers, given half an hour before. The court-room filled rapidly; there
was an uneasy rustle, a half-restrained chatter.
"Is the State ready to proceed?" came the case-weary accents from the
bench.
"We are ready." Chippen's young voice wobbled uncertainly.
"The defendant ready?"
"If the Court please," in Mabry's meticulous accents, "my colleagues--in
a moment----"
The judge leaned back, closing his eyes.
A sudden hush at the door. A stretching of necks from all the fringes of
the room. Walking daintily, with a glaze of dignity which never lost its
underwash of the furtive, came Meyer Garfunkel, youngest of the firm.
Spence leaned forward to Pelham. "Biggest crook in six states! Does all
their dirtiest jobs.... They always come in this way; it impresses the
courthouse crowd."
The door swung again; a succession of breathless "There he is!"-es, as
Colonel Lysander G. Pugh stamped heavily in, with his invariable
atmosphere of busied haste, bowing affably left and right, his weathered
broad-brim clutched beside his brief case.
Another shifting of interest. Tipton Leach, narrow-eyed, a permanent
sneer around his mouth, walking slowly, speculatively. "He is the
brains," continued Spence. "The corporations fear him like sin, in
damage cases. He bleeds them and his clients indiscriminately. But he
knows more law than all the local bench."
Last of all, preceded by his law clerk, Zebulun Hilary himself, his
little red face, under the thinned mop of white hair, sticking out of
his wide collar like a turtle's. "Over eighty, and indestructible! Even
his conscience is asbestos."
There was a leisurely deliberation among the five counsel for the
defendant. Five heads came together, five brains bent their scheming
toward freeing the accused negro, ten eyes quivered with satisfaction at
the prospect.
"Defendant ready?" The jaded judge roused himself to make this
interjection.
Colonel Pugh rose in sallow majesty, his vulture eye sweeping the front
half of the room in indiscriminate defiance of the court, the State,
and, if necessary, the whole United States. Catch Lysander G. Pugh
unready? Impossible! In precise affability his round tones rolled out.
"The defendant is ready, if it please Your Honor." He sat down in
complacent vindication.
An irrepressible ripple of appreciation quivered through the place. Here
was a lawyer who knew how to law!
The plea of "not guilty" was entered; the panel of talesmen called from
the jury room.
Spence leaned over to Pelham again. "First case since the Whitney
scandal when all four have appeared together. They have the perfect
system, Judson. Garfunkel does the second-story work; Leach knows enough
law for all four of them; Zeb Hilary and Colonel Pugh get the business.
They belong to everything--there isn't a lodge of any kind that they
don't flock to. These two go into every political fight, one on one
side, one on the other; they get 'em coming and going. It'll be a treat
to hear them address the jury." He closed his eyes expressively. "Whew!"
Two men lounged in from the clerk's office and took their places at the
defendant's table, as the selection of the jury began. Pelham watched
their activity in bewilderment; as each name was called, they bent over
long lists, and consulted with the lawyers while the talesmen were being
examined. He noticed the deference with which their whispers were
received.
At the first chance, he spoke to Spence again. "Who are those--more
lawyers?"
Ben flashed him a sudden glance. "Don't you know 'Chicory' Jasper, and
Bill Letcher? They're two of the company's 'jury strikers'--'jury
fixers.' They have the dope on each man; interview them in advance, and
all. If a man's ever said anything against a corporation, off he goes."
"But is that ... legal?"
"Supreme Court has ruled that it is." He turned back, to insist on
Chippen's challenging a venireman who had worked in the company's office
before getting state employment.
Three panels were exhausted, before twelve good men and true could be
found who knew, Pelham judged from their answers, nothing whatever about
unions or strikes; who had never heard of this strike; who did not read
the papers. Eight were farmers from distant edges of the county, one was
a bookkeeper as anemic as prosecutor Chippen himself, two were small
business men, and the last a nondescript nonagenarian who called himself
a "watchman."
Once the jury was chosen, the trial went swiftly enough. The State
called the policemen, and made out a prima facie case against the negro.
In answer to old Hilary's glib questions, the officers confessed that
the negro had claimed self-defense; that Dawson's discarded pistol had
an indented shell in it. McGue's evidence as to the fake telephone call
helped; but the case for the State could have been stronger.
The defense evidently intended to take no risks. First they put on
several of those present at the mass meeting when Dawson had denounced
the negro, sympathizers with the _Voice of Labor_ machine. Invariably
these swore to the big strike leader's unreasonable anger against the
expelled member. The radical union men in the room could hardly be
restrained from hissing; but the testimony went in, and, Pelham noted,
Spence's attack lacked some of his usual vigor. At last Cole himself was
called. He gave his evidence with that easy circumspection that told to
the initiated that he had been thoroughly coached. Nor could
cross-examination twist any of his statements.
In rebuttal several of the sincerer strikers were put on; but this last
minute recourse did not impress the jury.
The final speeches for the defense were masterly. Colonel Pugh led off,
and in vulture-like gyrations pictured the incursion of this
carpet-bagger from the North who had thrown good Adamsville men out of
their jobs, and damaged all the business of the district; of his
senseless persecution of this negro; of Cole's loyalty to the miners'
union, and the death of his brothers on the mountain; and finally, of
the negro's own act, a simple defense of the life which God gave him.
"They claim that this defendant received a bribe from a man then an
ex-employee of the company. Who says so? One John McGue, who admits he
is now under indictment in connection with this strike. There is no
corroboration; Cole denies it, Jim Hewin, a deputy sheriff, denies it.
Believe a jail bird against two witnesses like that? Why, they cannot
even invent a motive to account for the fictitious presence of this
fictitious money!...
"Are we to have it written down forever in the annals of Adamsville
that a black man comes into our courts, and does not get justice? Will
you make Ed Cole swing because of the color which his Creator imposed on
him? Will you gentlemen be connivers at the legal lynching of an
innocent man? Will your decision be that a white scoundrel can attempt
to murder a negro, and that the negro must die for a man's first duty,
self-protection?"
He ended with oratorical sky-rockets, and sank, seemingly exhausted,
into the considerate arms of his legal twin brethren, Garfunkel and
Leach.
Spence came next. When he reached the cause of the strike, his words
rang convincingly; but the jury were unsympathetic to this. As he
proceeded to the case before him, he tried to tear the careful web of
evidence which backed up the negro's claim; the talesmen seemed
impressed.
Zebulun Hilary's concluding speech for the negro found him in his most
telling mood. He had been a leading pleader at the bar sixty years
before; and the momentum of that stretch of time had multiplied his
powers of persuasion until even Pelham had to confess his weird mastery
of the emotions of men. He riddled the case for the State; there was no
evidence to contradict the defendant's candid story. He pictured the
desolate Cole home, now sought to be robbed of its last bread-winner; he
wrung the hearts and the consciences of each juryman with powerful
emotional onslaughts. When he finished, an acquittal, unless the last
speaker could change the trend, seemed inevitable.
Chippen's lame summing up only made the case worse for the memory of
John Dawson.
Pelham went out into the sunlight, Harvey Cade joining him. "It's sheer
mockery of justice," came the lawyer's outraged outburst. "Lies, lies,
lies! And Ben Spence soldiering on the job.... He represents the
official union movement, remember."
"You don't think he would----" Pelham's honest horror was written all
over his face.
"He could have done better. As for that Chippen, it's the rare case
where he's smart enough to know that a 'not guilty' will help him more
than a conviction. This is justice--in Adamsville!"
"And always so bad?"
"Why, our Supreme Court," went on the other bitterly, "has granted a new
trial, because the letter 's' was left off the word 'defendants,' and
again because an 'i' was omitted from 'malice.' In another case, where
the indictment charged that 'A did embezzle from B his money,' the case
was reversed, because the Court could not determine who the 'his'
referred to. 'To make it refer to B,' said the learned court, 'would
imply that the Grand Jury intended to charge A with a crime.' What an
implication!... A leading magazine recently said that the criminal
administration in this state is more scandalous than in any state in the
union. It's unspeakable!"
The first edition of the _Register_ was hot with headlines promising
war. Pelham took a copy back to his desk in the Charities' Building,
and, after navigating through excited cables of submarine sinkings, and
profound announcements from minor Washington officials, found the brief
mention of the local case. The jury had rendered the expected verdict of
acquittal, after being out less than half an hour.
Pelham fumbled away the afternoon at his desk, self-disgusted and
dispirited. The country was being sucked into the red whirlpool of
war--a self-inflicted wounding of the white race amounting almost to
race suicide. Labor everywhere had fought, before the conflict, to
prevent its coming; but it was inherent in the spread of world-wide
capitalism. Prussian militarism was a hateful contributing factor; but,
if the Germans had been merely imperialists like the British, the
conflict would have come just the same: labor's dumb impotence prevented
the one saving force from effective prevention. The German socialists
had been traitors to the international, except for scattered heroes like
Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg; long local schooling in servitude had
been too strong. The Allied comrades had not been much better, despite
the facts that the British Labor Party promised continued agitation, and
Italy and France were hopeful. Russia alone seemed firm: although the
amazing news of the March Revolution had been followed by information
that the new government contained more bourgeois than revolutionary
elements....
And now the United States would come in. There would be defections among
the socialists, of course; but Pelham prayed that the mass of the
movement would stand untouched. "I'll stick," he muttered to himself.
"If I'm alone.... But it won't be that bad."
His mind turned to the local situation. There was hope still, in the
nucleus of fighting strikers--this latest judicial outrage would only
increase their determination to defeat the company. But the election ...
the death of Dawson ... the militia ... this decision ... Jane's
leaving.... Things were in a mess.
Most bitterly of all he felt the strike situation. This conflict with
his father had called out all the fighting vigor in his blood; win that,
and he would have achieved something.... If only his mother could have
seen the justice of the strikers' side, and come with him! That would
have been a happy household, just he and his dear mother; no
uncertain-tongued Jane, to scold at him for nothing, and embarrass his
tangled affairs still further by leaving him without any
cause,--certainly without any cause that she knew of. She was utterly
unlike his mother, his turbulent wrath told him; cold, unsympathetic,
un-understanding.... Sweet in a way, but not what he needed....
Well, he would see Louise to-night.