The money that Moore needed in floods came in dribbles—$18.30 from an Italian picnic in Connecticut, an anonymous dollar bill posted in Seattle, $38.65 from the Pietro Gori Group of Nokomis, Illinois, the occasional windfall of five hundred dollars collected by the Workers’ Defense Union at a New York meeting in Beethoven Hall, a small but steady flow from Moore’s friends in the United Mine Workers. Moore knew that what was required was a full-time treasurer to coordinate finances and fund-raising. He wanted Felicani to quit La Notizia and devote all his time to the job at a regular salary. Felicani would not hear of it. He was willing to work until midnight each night on the committee accounts, or on propaganda, or whatever else needed doing, but those pathetically small sums that kept dribbling in for the defense of his friends—he could not bear to pay himself from that money. He insisted on keeping a record of every amount received, no matter how small, and of every cent paid out.
Moore did not see the point of such finical accounting. To him it was foolish to waste time on columns of figures when two men’s lives were at stake. He and Felicani were always at odds about money. To Felicani it seemed that no matter how much he provided, Moore always needed more. It was as if the lawyer had a hole in his hand. For Moore it was both ridiculous and humiliating that he, the general counsel of the I.W.W., whose name struck sparks from coast to coast, who had taken this case out of the gutter and made it a world issue, should have to appear hat in hand before a printer-nobody to beg for money—and often not get it! Time and again Moore saw what he considered promising investigations shut off by the anarchists. Later he was to ask himself if some deeper motive than a financial one lay behind their refusals. On October 20, 1922, the doctrinaire Frank Lopez, who had become secretary of the Defense Committee, wrote Moore:
I warn you to keep your hands off of many things that in order to obey or please other persons you had been trying to do for many months past.
To supplement such part-time detectives as Robert Reid, Moore hired two permanent investigators, Tommy Doyle and Albert Carpenter. Doyle, a pious Catholic, was still young enough to think of himself as a sleuth, so intrigued at playing Sherlock Holmes that he did not care whether he was investigating thieves, anarchists, or Republicans.
Carpenter was an older man, more self-contained, oriented to radical reform. He and Moore had first meet in San Diego, during the free-speech fight of 1911. Together they had tracked down and exposed the perjurer, Frank Oxman, in the Mooney-Billings case. In Everett, Washington, in 1915, after a dockside clash in which five I.W.W.’s and two sheriffs were killed and seventy-four Wobblies later indicted for first-degree murder—a national record—Carpenter acted as Moore’s chief investigator. In Chicago during the 1917 I.W.W. trials, after Moore had been framed by the police and was on the run, it was Carpenter who kept track of him through Lola Darroch, then Moore’s secretary. Once Moore had settled down in Rollins Place, it seemed only natural for him to send for his old reliable friend.
Moore had early become convinced that the South Braintree holdup was the work of a gang of professionals. Also, his legal sixth sense warned him there were unexplored depths to such equivocal witnesses as Louis Pelser, Lola Andrews, and Carlos Goodridge. It seemed a pity to him to have the money problem overshadowing all the others.
On May 4, 1922, Moore filed the second supplementary motion, the Gould-Pelser motion. Roy Gould was the razor-paste salesman who on the day of the South Braintree murders had stood near the crossing and been fired at from the getaway car, the bullet passing through his overcoat lapel. No one, not even Jimmy Bostock or Frank Burke, had been so close to the moving car or had such a clear view of its occupants. Immediately after the shooting Gould gave his name and address to a Braintree policemen, John Heaney. Soon afterward he left town to follow the summer carnivals and country fairs across New England with his razor paste.
Moore first learned about Gould and his experience from Frank Burke, who had known him for some time. No one, however, seemed to know what had become of Gould. Moore sent Reid all over New England inquiring at every carnival he could trace, without success. Finally on November 3, while Burke was in Portland, Maine, on business, he noticed Gould’s name on the register of his hotel. Burke was almost too astonished to believe his eyes. When the two met, Gould said he had gone to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island shortly after the murder, and had not read much about the trial.
Moore came to Portland on the next train and found Gould perfectly willing to tell his story about South Braintree. The man who had fired at him that day, Gould said, was someone he could never forget. Moore paid Gould’s way to Boston and there showed him photographs of Sacco and Vanzetti. Gould was positive that neither was the man who had fired at him. Later Moore took him to the Dedham jail where they talked with Sacco. After watching Sacco for about ten minutes Gould said he was certain that this was not the gunman and he was willing to sign an affidavit to that effect.