Part 7

They brought me sandwiches and a cup of coffee. While disposing of them I talked to my friends the keepers, telling them about my experiences in the cattle business so long ago and so far away. They paid me the pretty compliment of saying that I take matters more coolly than any one they had ever seen; that I show no emotion—I knew they were watching for it. Am I confident? No, I am not. Strange to say, I am becoming indifferent. After all, what does it matter so far as I am concerned?

Like the stag making his last stand and being torn by the hounds, better die than escape wounded to suffer more; better have it over and done with. And as for my home, my family—stop that!

The seventh entry: 9 o’clock.

The refinement of cruelty. I have been taken into the court-room twice; each time with exposed nerves which are scraped and singed by the questions the jury has come in to ask, and the answers which push me nearer to the edge of the precipice. Each time I have gone prepared for the end. It is interesting, but not amusing. I saw my father last at two o’clock, seven hours ago. He has grown seven years older since then. My brother is in court. He is four years my senior; he looks an old man—I wonder how I look. My attorneys are very serious as they whisper together.

The eighth entry: 10 o’clock.

Three months I have been on trial; twice a day I have been taken into court—morning and afternoon. The signal which summons me is made by rapping a key on the iron door. This is symbolic—key and door. Which way will the key turn? Will the door open or close for me? I feel that the next summons will answer these questions. They are rapping the key on the door.

The last entry: midnight.

I was right. I found out about the key and the door on the third summons. It is _not_ three times and—_out_.

I entered the yellow room. It was packed. Every one turned to look at me. It was a picture of a storm at sea; the pale faces were the whitecaps. It foreboded trouble—shipwreck. A little strain of music had run in my head all the afternoon—“The Blessing of the Poniards,” from the “Huguenots”—a full orchestra seemed to play it then; I marched to it.

We sat down and waited for the jury. While doing so this thought intruded itself upon me: Had I the gambler’s fever; would “wheel” or “bank” ever interest me again after this?

Imagine becoming excited over a hundred dollars placed on the red or black! Of what concern would be a little white ball running around and tumbling into holes; or cards, two at a time, being drawn from a silver box; or, for that matter, five pasteboards held in my own hand?

The jury entered; they would not look at me. I knew. The judge entered; we all rose to show our respect—for his gown. He looked pleased; he must have known the verdict as well as I.

“The jury will rise.”

“The prisoner will rise.”

What luck! The chimes from the “New York Life” building, around the corner, struck eleven. Yes, so it proved. “New York Life” was bidding me good-by. The gentlemen of the jury had agreed upon a verdict. They found the prisoner guilty of murder in the first degree.

There was applause from the _judge’s_ chambers; a woman’s voice cried out, “Oh, good! Good—good!” A window opened and I saw a carrier-pigeon flash out and fly away. All this to the accompaniment of a groan which ran around the court-room. One woman—God bless her—fainted; and then I felt my father’s hand in mine.

The game is over, and I have lost. I must be a good loser, for the crowd in the corridors cheered me—cheered a convicted man on his way to the “Bridge of Sighs.”

Then I was under a compound microscope. Convicted men seem to be interesting men; at least, not one of those unwinking eyes would have missed a single tit-bit of my agony had I displayed any. But plain, vulgar pride came to my rescue; for I had seen convicted men carried back to the Tombs, undressed, and put to bed like sick babies; I had heard them howl all night and beg for liquor; some of them had tried to throw themselves downstairs.

But my mother, my—stop that! For God’s sake don’t think of that; perhaps later, in the dark----

We crossed the “Bridge of Sighs.” We stepped into the prison yard, flooded with moonlight. It was like the last act of “Romeo and Juliet” among the tombs. Poor, mad Romeo! I thought of other moonlit scenes; of another Romeo; of love vows never to be renewed—that is, I started to think of them—something I must not do. It was all the fault of the queen of night. I had not bathed in her mysterious light for twelve long months. (It was three years before I worshipped her glory again.)

Never in my life have I been so touched; never so near breaking down, as when, on that night, the keepers in the Tombs, where I had lodged so long, expressed to me their sympathy and confidence. I believed in their sincerity then; I have never doubted it since.

Next morning.

I went to my little cell; and, with my best philosophy, undid the chattels I had packed so carefully that morning and addressed to home. I slept. What? Sleep? Certainly. There was no more suspense; I was legally dead. Life had stopped with its forfeiture; relief had come from doubt. I slept. It proved my proposition of the afternoon.

THE SECOND JURY. Nov. 11, 1902.

The jury sitting at my second trial has retired, and three years later I find myself under almost precisely similar circumstances to those just described. I will note the variations. The suspense, the doubt, should be worse than at the previous trial, knowing, as I do, what it is to be a convicted man, and what it would mean to go all through it again. I know it, all the way from the ceremony of passing the death sentence to the opening of the little door.

Strangely enough, that same strain of music hums in my brain, repeating itself over and over again. I do not believe I have thought of it once during the last three years. Yet, here it is, and I shall march to it again.

What will the jury do?

I do not think about my case this time; if acquitted, I shall be pleased for my father’s and mother’s sake. If convicted, as far as I am personally concerned I am absolutely indifferent. I am like a man who, having fallen from the roof of some sky-scraper, lies mangled in the street below. Suppose an old friend comes along and kicks him? He cannot feel it because his back is broken. I can suffer no more whatever happens; and I have forgotten how to rejoice.

Acquitted, convicted—I am indifferent. Since that night I watched the dawn come to the Death-Chamber, as God lives, I have not cared.

_CHAPTER XXI_

_Impressions—The Friendship of Imagination_

I found myself in the Death-Chamber; others were there. Our small community being an American institution, we were all “free and equal,” of course with the exception of the former. Unhappy, indeed, would be the life of any one in that room who did not recognize this equality.

But most of my fellow citizens refused to exist in the present. Making of the Death-Chamber a half-way house, they alternately lived in the past, or died in the future; and they were perfectly logical in doing so; it was quite excusable. Our existence there was certainly not life, and it was not nearly as comfortable as death. So they brooded, and the Death-Chamber is a bad place in which to brood. Some of my companions acted very foolishly when those long, hot, humid summer days arrived.

Here, then, was a problem. I must learn to amuse myself, I must cultivate my own acquaintance; I must make friends with my own identity. This was not difficult, for we possessed a mutual friend—a close, personal, dearly intimate friend. One who had been with me in the mines of Mexico and on the alkali plains of Texas. Together we had paced the white decks of yachts in summer; had spent the evenings in my library, and the days in my color factory in the winter. A friend, who, by special permission of the warden came to live with me, to share my degradation. Wasn’t he a good fellow? I consulted my friend: I have always done so. I am consulting him now, for I am smoking my favorite pipe. The introduction took place, was accepted on both sides, and I formed the acquaintance, and afterwards friendship, of my own Imagination.

My new friend—I hope you will meet him some day, if you have not done so already—taught me to “penetrate the veil,” to look right through and beyond and above all conditions. I cultivated the friendship of Imagination still further, and the whole earth and its fulness became mine. No one could sentence my thoughts to imprisonment, they were free. I began to live mentally. It was my birthday.

He counselled me not to waste those years. “What an opportunity!” he said. So for twenty months I devoured books from the prison library. No telephones, or duns, or bores could interrupt me; there were no social duties, no business to interfere. I read, I dreamed, I improvised. Then it was but a step to writing, and I must say Imagination was very nasty about that. He made me review my grammar with diligence. To satisfy him, I had to study rhetoric anew.

He opened my eyes. The Death-Chamber was full of—_life_. There was Romance, Tragedy, of course; and even Comedy looked in through the skylight and set me laughing now and then. Material was all around me; stories about the Death-Chamber came into my mind so quickly that I could not write half of them down; they sprang up and choked me, where before had been only barren land. I set down the least horrible, for some—yes, many—could not be printed; and if you have found these grim or out of line, it is because of environment and of their truth.

Then Imagination and I went away to England. We wrote a novel. In it are no prisoners and no crime, but it is full of the sea, brave men, a cruel woman. It is a tale of love.

Imagination is a humorous fellow—he must have his joke. He made me interested in things dramatic; he advised the purchase of everything I could hear of on the subject—text-books, essays. I bought two hundred plays, and he and I went to the theatre every evening at eight, and attended matinées on Saturday at two. Just one play each evening, and after the curtain fell we talked it over and criticised—we analyzed those two hundred plays—Imagination and I. We laughed at costume comedies, studied the plays of social life—from Sheridan to Fitch—and delved for motives in the modern problem plays; watched Mansfield, Drew, and Sothern in all their rôles. Over Cyrano de Bergerac and L’Aiglon we poured the tribute of a tear to Rostand’s genius.

And then (how did he keep from laughing in my face?) Imagination egged me on into writing plays—many of them. If he made me think the “actable,” he well deserved the name.

It was all my own fault: the smoke from my older friend often got up into my eyes and warned me. This old pipe of mine played the cynic and was perfectly frank about my dramas. But I wouldn’t listen. I blundered on until I found a “_fidus Achates_” to help and guide me. Together we hope to restrain this strenuous fellow a little.

* * * * *

It’s all over now. My pipe, Imagination, and a faithful friend, I have found them all, and I “found _myself_” in the Death-Chamber.

_CHAPTER XXII_

_The Last Story_

This is the story I can never tell, yet will spend all the rest of my life in telling—but how hopelessly. I cannot even think of it without something coming up into my throat to choke me. It is about my love for the soldier father, and the mother almost divine, who have suffered with and for me.

I can no more express this emotion than the sorrow they have borne for me can be told. Ah, but both are written—written in the deeper lines upon their dear faces, and illustrated in their grayer hairs; while how and why I love them, is imprinted eternally upon my heart.

_CHAPTER XXIII—APPENDIX_

_“The Story of the Ring”_ _By Vance Thompson_ _(By the courtesy of the New York “Journal”)_

It was bludgeon against rapier which began yesterday; it was the battle-axe against the stiletto; it was Osborne against Molineux; and Molineux won.

Never, I think, was so dramatic a duel fought out in a court-room. There was very little noise. The surface of it was quiet as a pool. The casual observer would have seen merely two men—the one in the witness chair and the other lounging against the lawyers’ table—who seemed to be exchanging polite commonplaces. They were courteous. Now and again they smiled at each other, with polite amiability. They “mistered” each other. Yet underneath this unrippled surface was a tremendous tragic depth, in which they clutched and struggled, fierce and silent. It was a fight for life. For Molineux it was life and honor—or the throttling shame of the electric chair. For Osborne it was either a vindication of his methods as a prosecuting officer, or it was bitter defeat. He was fighting for his professional life as truly as the haggard prisoner was fighting for the breath of life.

Never again will you see such a battle waged—so tense, so watchful, so merciless.

Molineux, to be sure, came pallid and wasted from the cell where they have shut him up for nearly four years. He had the look of one of those mouldy men who creep up into the sunlight now and then from the cellars of the world. But no sooner had he taken his seat in the witness chair, no sooner had he faced his adversary, than the race showed in him. He threw back his prison-worn head and squared his shoulders; he set his jaws until his thin lips made a straight line, like a sabre gash, across his face. He was ready; every nerve and ounce of brain in him was alert. He was ready to do battle for his life. The apathy and sluggishness of the cell-dweller fell away from him. In this supreme moment he was almost the man he had been before they arrested him and put him away.

As for Osborne, he was flushed, savagely earnest. His eyes blazed whether he would or not, and every now and again he smote his great red hands together. The joy of battle was upon him. Such joy the Apache knows when he sights his enemy; such joy must have stirred the gladiator when he rushed into the arena. To be sure this exaltation did not last through the day, but for a few hours it added zest to the duel.

Just such a mob as should have watched this duel gathered in the court-room. Heaven knows where they came from—these women with out-of-date clothes and pendent earrings; these perfumed girls with slashing hats and equivocal eyes. They crowded in, guarded by fatted municipal underlings; they filled one-third of the court-room; and all day, like cigarette girls at a bullfight, they chewed sweetmeats and craned and whispered and grinned. Then there were those who had business there—that honest, white old man, General Molineux, unwavering in belief in his “boy,” for one; for another, there was Harry Cornish—gray from head to foot this one. He was dressed in gray; his gloves were gray; his very face was gray, and the eyes in his deep-lined face were the color of ashes. All day he sat watching the prisoner with swift, furtive glances; watching the reporters; watching the audience; always watching, watching.

There was never so observing a man.

What of Molineux? He made an excellent witness. He gave an impression of utter sincerity. Perhaps this was due to Mr. Black’s admirable examination. Perhaps it was due to the fact that he was telling the truth. In any case, he scored heavily. The jurymen nodded approval. Had the case gone to them last night they would have given him—beyond all doubt—the key of the street. Molineux, too, looked content.

The Assistant District Attorney began slowly. Round-shouldered, stooping a bit, in an ill-fitting new coat, with red face and prognathous jaw, he stood for a moment staring at the prisoner. His eyes were burned out as though from lack of sleep. Molineux straightened up in his chair and joined his hands in his lap. Evidently he was summoning all his resolution and all his self-possession. At last he was face to face with the man who for nearly four years had bent every energy of his fierce nature to the task of destroying him; of blackening his home, and branding him with the red mark of murder. And this he knew would be the fiercest assault of all—the final one. He was on guard.

They crossed swords very ceremoniously at first. Beneath all the politeness there was, on one side, a deadly and savage earnestness; on the other was the wariness of the man whose back is to the wall and who fences for his life. And yet how suave they were! They might have been rehearsing the amiable history of Gaston and Alphonse. It was “Mr. Molineux” and “Mr. Osborne.” One almost expected the “My dear Mr. Molineux” and “My dear Mr. Osborne.” And so, with a curious, almost artificial smile on his red and heavy face, the great Apache of the District-Attorney’s office began. He wanted to know about the divorce case.

“How old were you, Mr. Molineux?” he asked.

“Fifteen, Mr. Osborne,” was the answer.

Mr. Osborne looked painfully shocked; just so a man might look should he be arrested as a burglar while making a midnight call upon a friend.

“Fifteen!” he repeated. “And the husband was a dear personal friend of yours, was he not?”

Molineux acknowledged that he knew the husband. The prosecutor nodded significantly to the jurymen. They, being men of the world, and some of them bull-necked men of the world, did not seem to take it very seriously. Molineux seemed rather ashamed of it. Osborne, however, would not let go. Three times he went over it, as a woman wipes a dish, turning it first on this side and then on that. At last the good gray judge wearied of it.

“He’s already answered all that,” he said quietly.

Osborne flashed up like gunpowder. All the savagery in him showed in an instant. It was as though a bulldog had shown his teeth. He took a step forward toward the bench and half snarled, half shouted:

“Your Honor, I can’t cross-examine this witness if you interrupt me like that!”

Mr. Jerome clutched his assistant’s arm and tried to quiet him, but Osborne shook him off. Justice Lambert looked at him and smiled his enigmatic, up-the-State smile.

“I will interrupt you, Mr. Osborne,” he said, “whenever I think it necessary. Now go on.”

Mr. Osborne went back to his place and drank a large glass of water. That soothed him, but for the rest of the session his nerves were out of tune, and then the burden of politeness lay heavy upon him. Then for a little while he questioned the prisoner as to his knowledge of chemistry. Molineux admitted that his attainments were fairly good. He knew of it all a paint maker need know.

So far Osborne had been defeated all along the line. The defendant had answered every question unhesitatingly and with engaging frankness. He had parried every thrust, even that deadly lunge of his fifteen-year-old co-respondent.

The Assistant District Attorney seemed to think in lumps. He jumped backward and forward in his cross-examination in a way that would have baffled an ordinary witness.

Never once, however, did he lead Molineux into a quagmire. Osborne sat down, drank a glass of water, and whispered to Jerome. While his adversary sought for a new weapon, Molineux turned and looked through the green-shaded window. For an instant the alert air of self-possession, the look of the ready swordsman, fell away from his face. The old, weary prison look crept over it. It was as though a mask had slipped from some tired dancer’s face. He looked haggard, yellow, old. As he turned he saw, just over his head, the cruel Roman symbol of vengeance—the faces and the axe; saw, too, the calm women who spin the thread of life, crouching on the shadowy, frescoed wall, a naked skull at their feet. Something seemed to grip his throat. He strangled a moment, then he coughed and spat. With a sudden gesture he drew his hands across his eyes and pulled himself together. Osborne’s burnt-out eyes were fixed on him. At that very instant he had himself in hand again. From that moment he never for a second lowered his guard. His attention was persistent as the pull of a magnet. His will was like steel. He shunned every quagmire and escaped every pitfall with marvellous dexterity, and with seeming unconsciousness that he had passed the peril by.

He is an extraordinary man. The brain in him is first rate. His intelligence is high above the average. Withal there seems no insincerity in him. He was fighting for his life, but he talked as calmly as though he had been in a drawing-room. Not only did he answer every question, he went out of his way to volunteer information. He answered questions to which his counsel objected until Mr. Black said: “Oh, well, let him answer—let him tell everything.” And it was this very frankness that at first confused and finally baffled the great Apache of the prosecution. Moreover, his courtesy was charming. When Mr. Osborne floundered in the midst of an intricate sentence the defendant would help him out.

Gradually this told upon the Assistant District Attorney’s nerves. It is difficult to bully a polite, accomplished man, and Mr. Osborne’s successful cross-examinations have always been those in which he banged the witness about the ears with a bludgeon. An hour before the usual time for the adjournment of court he had had enough of it. To his ill-concealed discontent he was told to go on with his cross-examination. He shifted from subject to subject, playing, as it were, round the case. Always the little prisoner met him, cool, efficient, ready. At last, upon the insistence of District-Attorney Jerome, an adjournment was granted. Mr. Osborne went away to furbish up new weapons for to-day.

Molineux stood up. He glanced at the jury. They were whispering together. Evidently it had been a good day for the defence. The rapier had mastered the bludgeon. And as he stood there, waiting for the jailmen to take him to his cell and lock him in, his father came up, a smile on his careworn, tragic face, and laid one arm around his neck.

“I am proud of you, my boy,” he said; “proud of you.”

That was bravely said. It is easy enough to be proud of a son who wins his way in the world and gets honor and fame. It is finer, perhaps, to be proud of the son who carries himself well in the hour of black shame and peril; who can bear himself well even though the next day may send him to the electric chair. What was he proud of, the old fighting man? Of the good blood, perhaps, that flows the steadier the greater the danger is.

* * * * *

For fifteen fateful minutes Molineux was on the stand this morning.

Assistant District-Attorney Osborne had spent the greater part of the night preparing for his promised attack. He had assured the court that he would occupy two hours in probing the pallid little man who stands charged with murder. He promised a sensation.

“Osborne has something up his sleeve,” said the lawyers.

The spectators buzzed it among themselves.

“Osborne has something up his sleeve!”

And so he had; but it was only his arm. The expected did not happen. The sensation did not materialize. And yet Molineux could not foretell this when he took his seat in the witness chair and clasped his nervous hands upon his knee. He was cold and white and firm; watchful, too, for Osborne faced him with an air of savage concentration.