The Court, after such solemn testimony, could not exonerate the Mannerts and Schönleben; and the public shared this conviction. Excitement over the case was not confined to Nuremberg, but spread through all Germany. So high ran feeling against the accused for their obstinate pleas of innocence, that the mob smashed Schönleben’s windows and killed his youngest child as it lay in its mother’s arms.
Mannert’s wife and sons corroborated his statements. Nevertheless, the barber, Kirchmeier, when confronted with them, stuck to his story. The entire absence of all malicious motive strengthened his testimony and gained him full credence from the Nuremberg authorities. So the Mannert family were also consigned to durance, while their residence was searched from top to bottom. Nothing incriminating was found; only in a lumber room one of the planks appeared to have been recently disturbed, and this, although it led to no further discovery, was deemed highly suspicious.
Meanwhile, Schönleben had been again questioned, and still stoutly denied his guilt. When asked as to his accomplices and confederates, he replied that he could have had none, having committed no crime. Beutner, the beadmaker, had no doubt asked him once where Sterbenk’s counting-house was situated, and whether the family all slept upstairs, but, after all, that might be mere curiosity. Beutner excused himself by saying he must have been drunk when he asked such questions—at least, he had no recollection of putting them. Several independent witnesses deposed to having been with Beutner on the night of the robbery till 2 a.m., after which they walked home with him.
The perverse cruelty of the Nuremberg Court, which had accepted Kirchmeier’s story so readily, was not yet exhausted, and, very much as in the case of Calas, given on a previous page, it persisted in seeking a confession as its own best justification. Mannert was still obdurate, however, and force was now applied. Floggings were tried, but quite without result, and at last, a fresh search of the dwellings of both Mannert and Schönleben having proved fruitless, it was resolved to appeal to the antiquated instruments of Nuremberg justice, surviving still, within ten years of the nineteenth century—the priest and the rack.
The power of the priest to extort confession, even from the most hardened criminals, had often proved successful heretofore, and public expectation was raised high that justice would once more be vindicated in this fashion. But the priests failed now. Neither Mannert, nor his wife, nor his sons would make the slightest acknowledgment of their guilt, and it became clear that they had won over the priests to their side. Still the Court was resolute to follow out its own line of action. Confession having failed, it determined to try the effect of flogging the woman, or, if her health did not allow such an extreme proceeding, she was to be strictly isolated, and kept upon bread and water in the darkest dungeon of the prison; lastly, if these merciless measures proved of no avail, she was to be subjected to the rack.
Schönleben, from the recesses of the prison, now made a desperate effort to free himself by reviving suspicion against Beutner. So absolutely helpless and hopeless had justice now become that the Nuremberg Court actually accepted a dream as evidence. Schönleben pretended that he had seen the missing cash-box under a heap of wood at Beutner’s house—seen it only in his dreams, however. This “baseless fabric” of his imagination sufficed to send the officers to search Beutner’s house, and although nothing was discovered, public opinion agreed with the judges in again accusing Beutner, and he was held to be implicated, despite the renewed proof of a satisfactory alibi. Nobody believed Beutner’s witnesses.
The next incident in these shameful proceedings was the death of Frau Mannert, who succumbed to the cruel treatment she had received. She died protesting her innocence to the last, and the priests who shrived her in the dark underground cell where she breathed her last expressed much indignation at the shocking ill-usage to which she owed her death.
Four more months passed, bringing no relaxation in the law’s severity towards those whom it still gripped in its cruel clutches. Who shall say what their fate might have been? But now, at last, an unexpected turn was given to the inquiry, and by pure accident justice got upon the right track. Certain rumours reached the ears of one of the judges, who proceeded to investigate them. These rumours started from a beer-shop, where someone in his cups had been heard grossly to abuse a locksmith, Gösser by name, and his assistant, Blösel. The vituperation ended in a direct charge of complicity in the Sterbenk robbery. Blösel sat speechless under the attack, but his master, Gösser, tried lamely to repudiate the charges. It was remembered now against these two that, although miserably poor till a certain date, they had become suddenly rich; had bought good clothes and silver watches, had launched out into many extravagances, and were always ready to stand treat to their friends. Gösser just now had applied for a passport to leave Nuremberg and go to Dresden; and passports were in those days rather expensive luxuries, and generally beyond the means of persons in straitened circumstances. Schönleben once more contributed his quota to the newly formulated charge; he had always suspected him, he said; and this time he had good reason to do so. When the police arrested Gösser and his assistant (they were always glad to arrest anybody), the two prisoners incontinently confessed their crime.
Gösser, a man of thirty-three, had settled in Nuremberg with his wife and family about a year previously. He was a shiftless, aimless fellow, and it was only by serious money sacrifices that he obtained admission into the guild of locksmiths in Nuremberg. Having thus started in debt, he was never able to get clear