Sunday’s rain continued into Monday, leaving the city and the State House streaked with fog. Fuller returned from New Hampshire early in the morning and again told the waiting reporters his decision would be ready on Wednesday. During the morning he talked with Jackson, Moro, and other members of the Defense Committee. In the afternoon he spent several hours with the Brockton policemen, Connolly and Vaughn, and after they left he conferred with John McAnarney. During the day he sent for Judge Thayer, who was spending his vacation at Ogunquit, Maine. Thayer arrived at the State House a little after six. The reporters noted that the governor’s mood seemed genial. They thought it a good omen for the prisoners.
Tuesday morning the governor was closeted with Assistant District Attorney Ranney. At lunch time he informed reporters that he had seen 102 witnesses besides those from the Plymouth trial. That day, however, the fate of Sacco and Vanzetti was overshadowed by the noontime news from the Summer White House in the Black Hills of South Dakota where Calvin Coolidge had just announced: “I do not choose to run for President in nineteen twenty-eight.” Boston political gossips at once recalled how the vacillating governor had made himself nationally known as Law and Order Coolidge by what seemed, at least outside Massachusetts, to have been his firmness in handling the 1919 police strike. Perhaps there would be a Law and Order Fuller now, another President from the Bay State.[29]
The week between the submission of the Lowell Committee’s report and the governor’s decision was one of vexing suspense that added to the growth of Sacco-Vanzetti militancy all over the world. Even the apolitical sports-minded newspaper readers in America, who had remained so far indifferent, could no longer restrain their curiosity as to the outcome of this mortal contest. Life and death, the seven-year issue with all its implications, now lay in the stubby hands of the ex-bicycle mechanic.
Correspondents from the various newspaper services had come to Boston and set up their headquarters in the State House press gallery next to the balcony entrance of the House of Representatives. For the first time in Massachusetts history permission was given to run in telegraph wires from outside. The news for the first three days, however, was scant: the names of a few last witnesses, the rare glimpse of the governor, a brush-off remark from Hard-boiled Herman. Time seemed out of focus. The newsmen waited in the corridor outside the executive chambers, wandered through the Hall of Flags, made notes in the House balcony under the suspended Sacred Cod totem.
Wednesday, August 3, broke fair in Boston, with the fog bank receding along the line of harbor islands. Fuller put in a brief appearance at the State House, told the reporters he would give them the news at 8:30 that night, then announced he was leaving town to put the last touches on his decision. Actually he went no farther than a suite at the Ritz-Carlton at the other end of the Public Gardens, where he shut himself up with a Boston newspaperman, Edward Whiting, who did the actual writing, since the self-made governor was not capable of such sustained literary effort.
Just after dusk a crowd of several hundred gathered across the street from the State House, looking up at the five lighted windows in the left wing of the otherwise darkened building until dispersed by the police. At the Hanover Street defense headquarters the two littered rooms were filled with tense silent figures. Mary Donovan sat by the telephone to answer calls in English, Moro took over when the caller was Italian. Frankfurter, in his shirtsleeves, squatted on a bale of papers. Gardner Jackson kept dashing to and from the State House. Most of the others were Italians from the North End. The thin light from an unshaded fixture drew out the lettering on the wall posters in bas-relief: JUSTICE IS DEAD in German; CALVARY OF SACCO AND VANZETTI in Italian; a Mexican poster demanding LIBERTY AND JUSTICE.
At the State House a score of reporters were waiting at the double-doored entrance to the executive chambers when Fuller finally reappeared at 8:26, his plump face set and unsmiling above his starched collar. He brushed past, impervious to questions. At 8:50 he reappeared, and read out a statement he had scribbled on the back of an envelope:
“I am very sorry not to oblige you with an interview. I can truthfully say that I am very tired and I trust the report will speak for itself. I would prefer not to indulge in any supplementary statement at this time.” He promised that copies of the decision would be distributed at 9:30.
Nine-thirty passed into ten, with still no sign from behind the closed doors. There was the same impersonal sense of tension as when a jury is out, the same unreality of the immediate moment. The reporters walked up and down the darkened echoing corridors, talking and smoking. Most of the crowd driven away from the State House had drifted downtown to Newspaper Row. Hundreds gathered in front of the Globe and Post buildings to watch the blackboard bulletins. It was a strangely quiet crowd. A Globe reporter looking down from the second floor at the upturned heads wondered how anyone could tell what they were thinking. The director of Station WEEI had held an announcer ready all evening to go on the air with a special bulletin; now that the closing hour of eleven was approaching, he debated whether he should shut down. Mary Donovan and Moro at defense headquarters kept repeating over the telephone, “No news, Nothing yet.” Louis Stark, pacing the State House corridor, began to doubt whether he would be able to meet the Times’ 11:30 deadline.
Finally at 11:25 the double doors opened and Hard-boiled Herman appeared with several clerks who carried copies of the decision in sealed envelopes, each addressed with the name of a newspaper. Stark sprinted for the marble stairs, ripping open his envelope and flipping through the pages: