Sentencing a man to be hanged, and hanging him, however, are two very different things. Yet the court persisted. It was determined to carry out the decision of the jury of "twelve good men and true,"[A] this Jew, scion of Jacob, of Israel, of Solomon, and Job, and others, had money at his back, plenty of it, as we shall see presently; and they were spending it lavishly, to save his neck, which was long. Perhaps that explains what came to pass later.
The counsel for the defense hired a detective, A Great Detective. The greatest detective in all the world. No one can deny this, since he said so himself, at least this is how he was quoted by a paper, which, for the purpose of this story, we shall call the "Big Noise." It was a "noise," too. But, to get back to the detective, The Great Detective.
The leading papers corroborated the fact that he was the greatest in the world, and so he shall be, in this story, as well. We are compelled to quote the "Big Noise" again. It claimed, very urgently, that these papers were paid to corroborate the detective. So be it.
The leading dailies and the greatest detective in the world got together, with a view to obtaining a new trial for the Jew, after which they hoped, of course, in some subtle manner, to extricate him from his very embarrassing predicament.
The detective did the posing, and he was some poser, and the papers did the rest. The most obstinate proposition which they were up against, was that the people believed the Jew to be guilty, but naturally read the papers.
Now The Great Detective's picture had been seen by almost everybody who read, or ever had read anything, so we must appreciate that he was a familiar figure. But, in addition to what had occurred in regard to the detective, more came to pass. Pages of the Sunday edition were devoted to his cut, and other pages to his ability as a mystery solver. From the way the papers wrote of him and reproduced his pose, he made Sherlock Holmes, Raffles, Arsene Lupin, and even Nick Carter, look like thirty cents with the three invisible.
He began, in opening the case, a series of angles. At first, of course, he viewed it from an Attalia angle. Forthwith, after this, he went to Chicago and viewed it from a windy angle. From St. Louis, he viewed it from a "show me" angle; and while he was out that way, he chased across to Kansas City, and saw it from that angle. And 'ere anyone was aware of it, he had crossed the prairies to Denver, and viewed it from a mountain angle. Behold then, upon picking up the morning paper, where the great detective has reached New York, and was viewing the case from that angle; but space will not permit of recording further these many angles indulged in by the greatest detective in the world, for the defendant in the case of the state versus the Jew.
All of these angles were followed with much color by the Attalia papers. Moreover, papers elsewhere mysteriously took up the Jew's cause, by following the angles of the detective. All except the "Big Noise." It was busy viewing the detective from its angle. But it was not, of course, endowed with such an abundance of readers, therefore, for the time, it was not noticed much. It was later, however.
Now we come to the most extraordinary phase of the case, leaving the prisoner in his cell for the present.