Our attorney made many efforts to see her, but the police had her in a hotel under the eye of a matron, and he and his runners failed.
At last he subpœnaed her as our witness and had her brought to his office. All his eloquence got nothing out of her. She was mute and stayed mute till the day of my trial. She had not been before the grand jury. We had no police-court examination and there was no way of finding out what she was going to say till she went into court. The attorney was apprehensive. I wasn’t. I told him of the night I first met her shivering in a Chicago doorway, of the warm clothing I got for her, and of the night I staggered out of her crib with the dead man over my shoulder. I told him in detail of our meeting in the North by chance, and of our relations there. He was old and wise. He shook his head thoughtfully and quoted the poet’s line about scorned women and their hellish fury.
The prosecution clamored for a speedy trial of the case. Almost ten thousand dollars had been spent by the Canadian authorities in retaining a firm of high-priced lawyers to prosecute; in transporting witnesses and paying hotel and other bills, and for private detectives hired to spy on the local police. Still no diamonds showed up. Spokane was offered a job with the Pinkerton Detective Agency if he would turn on me. I was promised my liberty if I would turn up the stones. We kept up our cry of innocence and made no statements at any time. A week before the day set for my trial, our attorney was stricken in his study and died in his chair, of heart failure.
We had to get another lawyer and pay another stiff fee. I went over the case with him, but somehow was unable to convince him that I had not talked too much to Irish Annie.
At my trial she swore, and she wasn’t mealy-mouthed about it, either, that I told her of the burglary when I was planning it; that I offered her part of the stones when I got them; that she was afraid to take them because they were stolen. She added that she would have notified the police then, but was afraid I would kill her or have her killed. On cross-examination she said she was not testifying in hope of a reward or in revenge; that she was glad to be rid of me, and hoped I would be sentenced to life so I couldn’t get out and murder her.
The next witness was a pawnbroker the police dug up. Spokane had sold him a piece of jewelry. It was identified by the loser and put in evidence. The witness identified me as the one who sold it to him and produced his book showing a fictitious name Spokane had signed. I got alarmed and protested loudly. Spokane, who was in court, jumped up and cried out to the judge that he pawned the article. The court ordered him to sit down, and my lawyer told him if he testified to that, he would be convicted on his own statement of receiving it from me, when his trial came on. Our attorney tried to get a sample of my handwriting before the jury. The prosecutors objected, and the judge ruled that no exemplars could be admitted in evidence unless they were written before the burglary was committed. I could not dig up any that old, and the case went to the jury with no defense except my sworn denial of guilt.
When the jury disappeared in their room and court was adjourned, I lit a cigarette. Before I had half finished, the jury was back with their verdict, “Guilty, as charged.”
Spokane’s trial was set, but I made affidavit that he was an innocent tool in the matter, and he was dismissed. He worried himself sick because of his carelessness in getting me arrested and in a few months fell a victim of tuberculosis. His devoted wife contracted it in nursing him and long before I was at liberty they were both dead and buried.
In due time I was sentenced to eight years at Folsom. The case went on appeal to the supreme court and I settled down for a long wait in the old Broadway county jail. My case gave me food for much interesting thought. I was guilty. Justice had overtaken me. But let us see how justice fared. It seemed to me that the blind goddess got a tough deal herself. Everybody connected with the case outraged her. The first judge took money. The coppers framed me in. The witnesses perjured themselves. The second judge was so feloniously righteous that he stood in with the framing. My lawyer was a receiver of stolen goods—even stole some from me. And the police told me that the Jewelers’ Association beat them out of the reward.
That’s one side of the case; here’s another. The jeweler was bankrupt. The Canadian authorities spent ten thousand dollars. The state of California had to feed and clothe me while I was in prison.