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?