We were not mistaken as to the intended course of the district attorney; for, when we visited the Tombs for the purpose of interviewing Hawkins, we were informed by the warden that he had obtained other counsel and that our services were no longer required. This was an indisputable indication that he had gone over to the enemy; and we at once began to take such steps as lay in our power to prepare for our defence in case an indictment was found against us. And now we were treated to a dose of the medicine we had customarily administered to our own clients; for, when we tried to secure counsel, we found that one and all insisted upon our paying over in advance even greater fees as retainers than those which we had demanded in like cases. I had never taken the trouble to lay by anything, since I had always had all the ready cash I needed. Gottlieb was in the same predicament, and in our distress we called upon Dillingham to furnish us with the necessary amount; but, to our amazement and horror, our erstwhile client refused to see us or come to our office, and we definitely realized that he, too, had sought safety in confession and would be used by the prosecution in its effort to place the crime of perjury at our door.
From the moment of Hawkins's arrest the tide turned against us. There seemed to be a general understanding throughout the city that the district attorney intended to make an example in our case, and to show that it was quite as possible to convict a member of the bar as any one else. He certainly gave us no loophole of escape, for he secured every witness that by any possibility we might have called to our aid, and even descended upon our office with a search- warrant in his effort to secure evidence against us. Luckily, however, Gottlieb and I had made a practice of keeping no papers and had carefully burned everything relating to the Dillingham case before I had left the city.
The press preserved a singular and ominous silence in regard to us, which lasted until one morning when a couple of officers appeared with bench-warrants for our arrest. We had already made arrangements for bail in the largest amount and had secured the services of the ablest criminal attorneys we knew, so that we were speedily released; but, with the return of our indictments charging us with suborning the testimony of Hawkins, the papers began a regular crusade against us. The evening edition carried spectacular front-page stories recounting my flight to Boston, the entire history of the Dillingham divorce, biographies of both Gottlieb and myself, and anecdotes of cases in which we had appeared and notorious criminals whom we had defended. And in all this storm of abuse and incrimination which now burst over our heads not a single world appeared in mitigation of our alleged offence.
It seemed as if the entire city had determined to wreak vengeance upon us for all the misdeeds of the entire criminal bar. Even our old clients, and the police and court officers who had drawn pay from us, seemed to rejoice in our downfall. Every man's hand was against us. The hue and cry had been raised and we were to be harried out of town and into prison. At every turn we were forced to pay out large sums to secure the slightest assistance; our clerks and employees refused longer to work for us, and groups of loiterers gathered about the office and pointed to the windows. Our lives became a veritable hell, and I longed for the time when the anxiety should be over and I should know whether the public clamor for a victim were to be satisfied.
Gottlieb and the lawyers fought stubbornly every inch of the defence. First, they attacked the validity of the proceedings, entered demurrers, and made motions to dismiss the indictments. These matters took a month or two to decide. Then came motions for a change of venue, appeals from the decisions against us to the Appellate Division, and other technical delays; so that four months passed before, at last, we were forced to go to trial. By this time my health had suffered; and when I looked at myself in the glass I was shocked to find how gaunt and hollow-cheeked I had grown. My hair, which had up to this time been dark brown, had in a brief space turned quite gray over my ears, and whatever of good looks I had ever possessed had vanished utterly. Gottlieb, too, had altered from a jovial, sleek-looking fellow into a nervous, worried, ratlike little man. My creditors pressed me for their money and I was forced to close my house and live at a small hotel. The misery of those days is something I do not care to recall. We were both of us stripped, as it were, of everything at once—money, friends, health, and position; for we were the jest and laughing- stock of the very criminals who had before our downfall been our clients and crowded our office in their eagerness to secure our erstwhile powerful assistance. Our day was over!
It was useless to try to escape from the meshes of the net drawn so tightly around us. Even if we could have forfeited our heavy bail—which would have been an impossibility, owing to the watchfulness of our bondsman—we could never have eluded the detectives who now dogged our footsteps. We were marked men. Everywhere we were pointed out and made the objects of comment and half-concealed abuse. The final straw was when the district attorney, in his anxiety lest we should slip through his fingers, caused our re- arrest on a trumped-up charge that we were planning to leave the city, and we were thrown into the Tombs, being unable to secure the increased bail which he demanded. Here we had the pleasure of having Hawkins leer down at us from the tier of cells above, and here we suffered the torments of the damned at the hands of our fellow prisoners, who, to a man, made it their daily business and pleasure to render our lives miserable. Gottlieb wasted away to a mere shadow and I became seriously ill from the suffocating heat and loathsome food, for it was now midsummer and the Tombs was crowded with prisoners waiting until the courts should open in the autumn to be tried.
We were called to the bar together—Gottlieb and I—to answer to the charge against us in the very court-room where my partner had won so many forensic victories and secured the acquittal of so many clients more fortunate than he. From the outset of the case everything went against us; and it seemed as if judge, prosecutor, and jury were united in a conspiracy to deprive us of our rights and to railroad us to prison. Even when impaneling the jury, I was amazed to find the prejudice against criminal lawyers in general and ourselves in particular; for almost every other talesman swore that he was so fixed in his opinion as to our guilt that it would be impossible to give us a fair trial.
At last, however, after several days a jury of twelve hard-faced citizens was sworn who asserted that they had no bias against us and could give us a fair trial and the benefit of every reasonable doubt. Fair trial, indeed! We were convicted before the first witness was sworn! Convicted by the press, the public, and the atmosphere that had been stirred up against us during the preceding months. And yet, one satisfaction remained to me, and that was the sight of Hawkins and Dillingham on the grill under the cross- examination of our attorneys. Dillingham particularly was a pitiable object, shaking and sweating upon the witness chair, and forced to admit that he had paid Gottlieb and me thirty-five thousand dollars to get him an annulment so that he could marry the woman with whom he was now living. The court-room was jammed to the doors with a curious crowd, anxious to see Gottlieb and me on trial and to learn the nature of the evidence against us; and when our client left the stand—a pitiful, wilted human creature—and crawled out of the room, a jeering throng followed him downstairs and out into the street.
The actual giving of evidence occupied but two days, the chief witness next to Hawkins being the clerk who swore the latter to his affidavit in my office. This treacherous rascal not only testified that Hawkins took his oath to the contents of the paper, but at the same time had told me that it was false. The farce went on, a mere formal giving of testimony, until at length the district attorney announced that he had no more evidence to offer.
"You may proceed with the defence," said the judge, turning to our counsel.