The Prisoner at the Bar: Sidelights on the Administration of Criminal Justice

by Arthur Cheney Train

"But how do you know, Silas?" replies his wife. "Think of the orgies that may have been going on in the kitchen in the last fourteen years!"

"True, true," answers Appleboy, and again renews his determination to see the thing through to the bitter end. Then Mr. Appleboy receives at his office a green slip calling for his attendance on the morrow before the grand jury of the County of New York, promptly at ten o'clock. He has never been to the Criminal Courts building in his life. He only supposes vaguely that it is situated somewhere near the "wholesale district" and not far from the Italian quarter. He associates it with trips to Chinatown, the East Side and the Bowery.

After being thoroughly shaken up by a long journey over the cobblestones in his carriage, Mr. Appleboy finds himself on Franklin Street, between the Tombs, on the one hand, and the Criminal Courts building upon the other. Over his head runs "The Bridge of Sighs." A congregation of loafers, lawyers, runners, policemen and reporters linger upon the sidewalk. Unfamiliar with the means of entrance and exit, Appleboy turns the corner and climbs two long flights of stone steps upon the outside of the building instead of utilizing the side entrance upon the ground floor and taking the elevator. He enters an enormous hall around which, on all four sides, corridors reach to the top of the building. A motley collection of people are hurrying hither and thither. After some difficulty, Appleboy discovers a lift packed with odoriferous Italians, men with bandaged eyes and faces, small, half-clad children, and divers persons smoking enormous, evil-smelling cigars, whom he later discovers to be members of the legal profession. The car stops at the third floor.

"District attorney and grand jury," calls the elevator man. "Grand jury to the right."

Appleboy gets off with the rest of the mob, and wanders down a narrow corridor past rows of offices, until he comes to a policeman standing by the door of a small room crowded with people. There is hardly space to breathe, much less to sit down. From time to time a bell jingles in the distance, a door into another room opens, somebody comes out, and an officer calls out a name. Its owner hastily responds, is shot through the door into the other room, and the door closes again. This process goes on interminably. In a corner, clerks separated by a railing are busily engaged in making out subpœnas and filling in certificates of attendance. Police officers are everywhere. Appleboy takes his stand by the door. It is half-past ten o'clock. He has no means of knowing when he will be summoned before the august body who are deliberating in the next room. He has a craving to smoke, although he makes it a rule never to do so before six o'clock in the afternoon. He has left his newspaper at home, and has yielded up his subpœna to the officer at the door. There is nothing to occupy his attention except the sour visages of those about him. They belong to a class of people who instinctively fill him with disgust, being representatives of what Appleboy and his wife are accustomed to term the "masses."

Person after person is summoned into the other room, but no one seems to want the banker. Pat is there, to be sure, but he is at his usual pastime, enjoying the delights of mastication. He no longer has any "use" for Appleboy. At about a quarter-past eleven, the officer beside the outer door calls the name of Silas Appleboy. Our hero, believing that at last his turn has arrived, starts from his seat, only to be directed to "Come here!" by the officer. He discovers that he has been summoned to confer with a representative of the district attorney, who invites him into a neighboring office.

"Mr. Appleboy," says this young gentleman when the two are comfortably seated, "I see by the papers in the case that a Maria Holohan stole a teapot from you. Under what circumstances was the theft committed?"

Mr. Appleboy, who supposes that the merits of his case have been long since known personally to the district attorney, commences at the beginning and rehearses all his woes and difficulties. The assistant listens courteously, and then, without comment, bows Appleboy out, who returns once more to the ante-chamber of the grand jury. His seat has, meanwhile, been usurped by a corpulent lady in deep mourning, and its former occupant is forced to stand in the corridor for an hour longer. During this period he perchance has the annoyance of hearing Pat remark to a fellow officer in no uncertain tones that "the old guy is no good—a 'dead one'—I didn't even get a smoke off him."