“I wish the execution might be delayed,” I said, “until I can talk with this man again. He might give me some information of value.”
The chief of staff nodded his head, and as I went out, reached for the telephone.
I drove back to the prison. The commandant, now smiling and suave, led me, when I asked to see the prisoner, to a window overlooking the prison yard. There he pointed to a figure lying in the reddened snow. It was the “New Yorker.”
In a party of condemned prisoners taken out for execution, there was a woman from the East Side of New York. She brought up the rear of the little column. She was a tall, fine-looking Jewess, and bore herself proudly, looking with scorn at the firing-squad.
When the death-grove was reached there was some delay. She observed Americans among the on-lookers, and beckoned them over to her.
“Why, they’re not going to shoot me,” she boasted. “Look at me—I am an attractive woman. I have been in that prison two months.” And significantly, “I have been a good friend to the commandant. Tell him I want to speak to him.” She smiled coyly.
The commandant came. He smiled at her admiringly, and gave her an intimate wink.
“Of course I am not going to have you shot,” he declared. “I had to bring you out here to make the others think that I am not showing you any favoritism. But my soldiers have orders not to aim at you. Do not fear the volley.”
These was a sharp command. The rifles came up. Some of the condemned dropped to their knees in the snow to pray, some made a brave show of facing the muzzles without a tremor, others openly wept. But the woman stood upright, with a confident smile on her lips, sure that none of the bullets was for her.