CHAPTER X.

White on Verge of Arrest When Shot.

REV. ANTHONY COMSTOCK, THE FAMOUS REFORMER, TOLD HOW HARRY THAW HAD HIRED HIM TO GATHER EVIDENCE AGAINST ARCHITECT--PROOF OF ORGIES IN MIRRORED DEN FOUND BY DETECTIVES--HARRY WANTED TO PREVENT THE MAN FROM SEIZING IN HIS CLUTCHES OTHER YOUNG AND INNOCENT GIRLS LIKE EVELYN NESBIT--CASE OF CHILD ONLY 15 YEARS OLD LIKE MRS. THAW’S--HUSBAND MADE DESPERATE--ATTORNEY DELMAS TELLS HOW EVELYN’S STORY SHOCKED HIM--GREATER DISCLOSURES AHEAD.

Another blow to the prosecution, almost as great as that dealt by Evelyn in her testimony, came when Jerome learned that Thaw held in reserve the startling story of Stanford White’s entire past, and was ready to produce it at any moment. Anthony Comstock, famous head of the Society for the Prevention of Crime, had the documents. Mr. Comstock prepared a statement for the defense, part of which is substantially as follows:

“I know that much of what Mrs. Harry Thaw has stated on the witness stand is true. I know that Stanford White’s den in the tower of Madison Square garden was arranged as she described it, and that it was the scene of revelries. I know of at least one specific instance. And what I know I learned after I had been given the first clews by Harry Kendall Thaw himself.

“My first knowledge of this case dates from the summer of 1905--about a year before the killing, I should say. One afternoon a tall, well-dressed, well-bred young man came to me in my office in the Temple Bar building. He seemed to be laboring under excitement, and it was evident that he was desperately in earnest. He opened the conversation by asking me if I were interested in the suppression of vice. Then he wanted to know if my society gave special attention to the arrest and punishment of men who preyed upon young girls. I told him that we did. He jumped up abruptly, said he would see me again, and left without telling me his name. At the door he stopped long enough to say he would see me again.

“A few days later he came back, still laboring under strong emotion. He then introduced himself. As nearly as I can recall he said:

“‘I am Harry Kendall Thaw of Pittsburg. I want to tell you of a man who has betrayed more young girls than any other man in New York. He is particularly given to pursuing the young girls of the stage. It is a debt which society owes to itself to halt him now, before he brings shame and sorrow to any more victims.’

“That in effect was his statement,” continued Mr. Comstock, “although of course I asked him a great deal more of the matter. He left after securing my promise to investigate. He agreed to pay the cost of looking into the case. He at once mailed me a check of sufficient size to defray the necessary expenses, and subsequently wrote me several times upon the subject of White, asking each time what progress we were making.

“Our investigation confirmed to a great degree what Thaw had told me. Our detectives were astounded at what they discovered. We worked hard and I learned a great deal, but of all cases these are the hardest to prove under the rules of evidence, and before risking an arrest I determined to catch White.

“I learned that his rooms in the tower were as Mrs. Evelyn Thaw had described them in the trial. Two of our detectives endeavored to hire rooms in the same tower in order to watch his goings and comings. The deal was almost completed when one of the detectives made a bungle. Something which he said or did gave the alarm to the janitor, and, although we were on the waiting list for a long time, and although several times apartments in the tower were vacant, we were never able to secure a suite or a single room.

“We were still vainly trying to arrange a trap for White from which there would be no escape when he dismantled his room in the tower.

“I learned positively of one case of White’s conduct to a girl only 15 years old almost identically as Mrs. Evelyn Thaw describes her own case, but the girl was in the chorus of a road company, and we could not reach her and make a witness of her. We got evidence of other things--things that convince me that what Harry Thaw’s wife now swears is true. I believe in her story and base that belief upon what I know of the man.

“The last time I saw Harry Thaw was only two or three weeks before he shot White. He appeared to be in a desperate state--like a man who is well-nigh frantic. He said to me wildly: ‘You must keep on, you must stop this man, he must be stopped now--at once.”

The defense, on the same day that it secured the Rev. Mr. Comstock’s statement, made another sensational discovery. It obtained proof that the day after the shooting of White, the police searched the studio of White and discovered evidence that showed that Evelyn Nesbit was not the only young girl who had been lured into the Madison Square Garden mirrored-room within a few months.

In the room “with mirrors to left and to right, in the ceiling and on the floor,” in securely locked drawers built into the walls, the police found this evidence. That such a den of vice could have existed in the very heart of the great metropolis seems well nigh incredible. That such practices could have been known by men of social standing, and without protest, is past belief.

Speaking after this discovery, Attorney Delmas was confident of the acquittal of Thaw.

“Before we put Evelyn on the stand,” he said, “I heard her story but once. There was no rehearsal no attempt at dramatic play.”

“The story as she told it in court was not half as dramatic as it was when she told it to me during our preparation of the case.

“Only once in my life have I been so touched with emotion as I was when Evelyn Nesbit first told me her story. That was at the burial of my father.

“As I sat there as a lawyer listening to the girl narrating the story of what she had suffered at the hands of Stanford White, the tears welled into my eyes and I fairly sobbed.

“She told me then that when she awoke and found Stanford White was alone with her in that mirrored bedroom he seemed to her like a big gorilla.

“His hair was disheveled, and the look in his face was like an animal. ‘I screamed with terror,’ she told me. She added many details, which, if she had told the jury, there would have been no need on her part to produce further evidence--as we had not rehearsed our part, I depended simply on her memory as to facts. The presence of the crowded courtroom disconcerted her to the extent that she omitted some of the most revolting features of that fatal night.”