We were arrested again at the door. That night we were indicted by the grand jury; I for bringing stolen property into the state of California, and Spokane for receiving it from me. The police saw we were framing and using money, so they, rather than be beaten, began framing us. Our cases were transferred into another court where they could do some fixing, and we couldn’t. The indictments meant that we would have to wait for trial. I began to get uneasy about the stones I had in the safety box. The police were tearing the town open for them, not knowing that nearly all of them had been sold. I told our lawyer where to get the key to the box, gave him a password, and told him to take the junk out and put it in some safe place. The police “tailed” every visitor we had and even the lawyer in hopes of locating the stones, and he had to be careful.
Making another application for a writ of habeas corpus, which he knew would not avail us, he had the hearing set for ten o’clock in the morning. This alarmed the coppers and every one of them was at the courtroom when the case was called. Everybody was there but our attorney. The hearing was held up for fifteen minutes. During this fifteen minutes he was at the safety vault lifting the plant, while every detective on the case was waiting in court. He came in, nodded to us, apologized to the court, and went on with the case with the parcel of loot in his pocket. The writ was denied, of course. I told him to put the stuff away, and he did.
When I asked him about it later, he looked me straight in the eye and said: “Did you think I was damn fool enough to keep that stuff around me? Say, when court adjourned that day I went straight down to the foot of Powell Street and threw it in the bay.”
This didn’t look just right to me, but what could I do? I was only a poor, honest burglar in the hands of a highway lawyer. He got us a copy of the testimony given the grand jury, and from it I learned what had caused our arrest—Spokane’s passion for gambling.
After lifting the watches and rings in the little Northern town, he tried his luck at the faro table and lost his expense money. This forced him to open the parcel and sell a couple of the watches to a gambler for enough money to buy his return ticket. The next day the gambler took them to the town where I stole them, fifteen miles away, across the line, and tried to pawn them. He was arrested and told where he got them. In an hour the police learned about the express package of “sample ore” Spokane shipped. It was seized en route to San Francisco. There was a big reward for the burglar, and the Northern police, wanting it, decided to capture him. Instead of wiring to have him arrested the first time he went to the express office, they hurried here and got him themselves.
Spokane was repentant, but it was too late. I did not reproach him.
His wife was faithful, and devoted to him, and visited us daily at the prison, bringing papers and small delicacies. One evening, while we were chatting on a bench in the visiting room, an officer came and took him out to another room. Several policemen were standing around, and there seemed to be something stagy going on that I couldn’t understand. Suddenly, as I sat talking to Mrs. Spokane, a screen at the other side of the room was knocked aside and Irish Annie dashed from behind it, heaping abuse on me and trying to get her hands on my friend’s wife.
Annie’s furious appearance was like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. I saw instantly that she had been poisoned against me. I tried to talk to her but she wouldn’t listen, and the coppers stood between us pushing me away to make her think I was trying to get my hands on her and strangle her. Mrs. Spokane had collapsed on the bench, almost fainting from fear and wondering what it was about. Annie was led away screaming threats. Spokane’s wife went home, and we back to our cell where we tried to piece together this unexpected angle.
I saw the police were playing my game better than I could. They knew I was trying to frame myself out; they began framing me in, and with Irish Annie they had a dangerous lead on me. It was plain to me that they had told her she was discarded for another woman; that they had called Spokane away to leave me alone with his wife while Annie watched from behind the screen. I could almost hear them saying to her: “There you are. There’s the woman he left you for. There’s the woman he hung his diamonds on, and spends his money on. How he got her is a mystery to us; she’s a decent woman. She’s crazy about him and believes he is innocent.”
Then Annie, too ready to believe herself “a woman scorned,” turned copper on me, knocked the screen away, and poured out the vials of her wrath. Still I wasn’t much alarmed about the case and I couldn’t help admiring the coppers for the way they tooled Annie and chiseled her out of her right senses. They assumed I was guilty; that gave them the right to assume that she, being my companion, knew something about the burglary. They were justified in getting it out of her by fair or unfair means. I knew she was ignorant of the least detail of it, and felt like laughing at them for wasting time on their elaborate scheme.