Next morning I telephoned Gottlieb and met him by appointment at a hotel, where we had a heated colloquy, in which he seemed to think that I was totally to blame for the failure of our attempt. He was hardly himself, so worn out was he with anxiety, not having heard from me until he had read of Hawkins's apprehension in Boston; but, now that I was able to talk things over with him, we agreed that any effort to spirit our client away would have been equally unsuccessful, and that the one course remaining for us to pursue was to put on as bold a front as possible and let the law take its course. It was equally useless for us to try to conceal our own whereabouts, for all our movements were undoubtedly watched; and the best thing to do, it seemed to us, was to go as usual to our office and to act as nearly as possible as if nothing had happened.
We were not mistaken as to the intended course of the district attorney; for, when we visited the Tombs for the purpose of interviewing Hawkins, we were informed by the warden that he had obtained other counsel and that our services were no longer required. This was an indisputable indication that he had gone over to the enemy; and we at once began to take such steps as lay in our power to prepare for our defence in case an indictment was found against us. And now we were treated to a dose of the medicine we had customarily administered to our own clients; for, when we tried to secure counsel, we found that one and all insisted upon our paying over in advance even greater fees as retainers than those which we had demanded in like cases. I had never taken the trouble to lay by anything, since I had always had all the ready cash I needed. Gottlieb was in the same predicament, and in our distress we called upon Dillingham to furnish us with the necessary amount; but, to our amazement and horror, our erstwhile client refused to see us or come to our office, and we definitely realized that he, too, had sought safety in confession and would be used by the prosecution in its effort to place the crime of perjury at our door.
From the moment of Hawkins's arrest the tide turned against us. There seemed to be a general understanding throughout the city that the district attorney intended to make an example in our case, and to show that it was quite as possible to convict a member of the bar as any one else. He certainly gave us no loophole of escape, for he secured every witness that by any possibility we might have called to our aid, and even descended upon our office with a search- warrant in his effort to secure evidence against us. Luckily, however, Gottlieb and I had made a practice of keeping no papers and had carefully burned everything relating to the Dillingham case before I had left the city.
The press preserved a singular and ominous silence in regard to us, which lasted until one morning when a couple of officers appeared with bench-warrants for our arrest. We had already made arrangements for bail in the largest amount and had secured the services of the ablest criminal attorneys we knew, so that we were speedily released; but, with the return of our indictments charging us with suborning the testimony of Hawkins, the papers began a regular crusade against us. The evening edition carried spectacular front-page stories recounting my flight to Boston, the entire history of the Dillingham divorce, biographies of both Gottlieb and myself, and anecdotes of cases in which we had appeared and notorious criminals whom we had defended. And in all this storm of abuse and incrimination which now burst over our heads not a single world appeared in mitigation of our alleged offence.
It seemed as if the entire city had determined to wreak vengeance upon us for all the misdeeds of the entire criminal bar. Even our old clients, and the police and court officers who had drawn pay from us, seemed to rejoice in our downfall. Every man's hand was against us. The hue and cry had been raised and we were to be harried out of town and into prison. At every turn we were forced to pay out large sums to secure the slightest assistance; our clerks and employees refused longer to work for us, and groups of loiterers gathered about the office and pointed to the windows. Our lives became a veritable hell, and I longed for the time when the anxiety should be over and I should know whether the public clamor for a victim were to be satisfied.
Gottlieb and the lawyers fought stubbornly every inch of the defence. First, they attacked the validity of the proceedings, entered demurrers, and made motions to dismiss the indictments. These matters took a month or two to decide. Then came motions for a change of venue, appeals from the decisions against us to the Appellate Division, and other technical delays; so that four months passed before, at last, we were forced to go to trial. By this time my health had suffered; and when I looked at myself in the glass I was shocked to find how gaunt and hollow-cheeked I had grown. My hair, which had up to this time been dark brown, had in a brief space turned quite gray over my ears, and whatever of good looks I had ever possessed had vanished utterly. Gottlieb, too, had altered from a jovial, sleek-looking fellow into a nervous, worried, ratlike little man. My creditors pressed me for their money and I was forced to close my house and live at a small hotel. The misery of those days is something I do not care to recall. We were both of us stripped, as it were, of everything at once—money, friends, health, and position; for we were the jest and laughing- stock of the very criminals who had before our downfall been our clients and crowded our office in their eagerness to secure our erstwhile powerful assistance. Our day was over!
It was useless to try to escape from the meshes of the net drawn so tightly around us. Even if we could have forfeited our heavy bail—which would have been an impossibility, owing to the watchfulness of our bondsman—we could never have eluded the detectives who now dogged our footsteps. We were marked men. Everywhere we were pointed out and made the objects of comment and half-concealed abuse. The final straw was when the district attorney, in his anxiety lest we should slip through his fingers, caused our re- arrest on a trumped-up charge that we were planning to leave the city, and we were thrown into the Tombs, being unable to secure the increased bail which he demanded. Here we had the pleasure of having Hawkins leer down at us from the tier of cells above, and here we suffered the torments of the damned at the hands of our fellow prisoners, who, to a man, made it their daily business and pleasure to render our lives miserable. Gottlieb wasted away to a mere shadow and I became seriously ill from the suffocating heat and loathsome food, for it was now midsummer and the Tombs was crowded with prisoners waiting until the courts should open in the autumn to be tried.
We were called to the bar together—Gottlieb and I—to answer to the charge against us in the very court-room where my partner had won so many forensic victories and secured the acquittal of so many clients more fortunate than he. From the outset of the case everything went against us; and it seemed as if judge, prosecutor, and jury were united in a conspiracy to deprive us of our rights and to railroad us to prison. Even when impaneling the jury, I was amazed to find the prejudice against criminal lawyers in general and ourselves in particular; for almost every other talesman swore that he was so fixed in his opinion as to our guilt that it would be impossible to give us a fair trial.
At last, however, after several days a jury of twelve hard-faced citizens was sworn who asserted that they had no bias against us and could give us a fair trial and the benefit of every reasonable doubt. Fair trial, indeed! We were convicted before the first witness was sworn! Convicted by the press, the public, and the atmosphere that had been stirred up against us during the preceding months. And yet, one satisfaction remained to me, and that was the sight of Hawkins and Dillingham on the grill under the cross- examination of our attorneys. Dillingham particularly was a pitiable object, shaking and sweating upon the witness chair, and forced to admit that he had paid Gottlieb and me thirty-five thousand dollars to get him an annulment so that he could marry the woman with whom he was now living. The court-room was jammed to the doors with a curious crowd, anxious to see Gottlieb and me on trial and to learn the nature of the evidence against us; and when our client left the stand—a pitiful, wilted human creature—and crawled out of the room, a jeering throng followed him downstairs and out into the street.
The actual giving of evidence occupied but two days, the chief witness next to Hawkins being the clerk who swore the latter to his affidavit in my office. This treacherous rascal not only testified that Hawkins took his oath to the contents of the paper, but at the same time had told me that it was false. The farce went on, a mere formal giving of testimony, until at length the district attorney announced that he had no more evidence to offer.
"You may proceed with the defence," said the judge, turning to our counsel.
I looked at Gottlieb and Gottlieb looked at me. The trial had closed so suddenly that we were taken quite unawares and left wholly undetermined what to do. We had practically no evidence to offer on our behalf except our own denials of the testimony against us; and if once either of us took the stand we should open the door to a cross-examination at the hands of the district attorney of our entire lives. For this cross-examination he had been preparing for months; and I well knew that there was not a single shady transaction in which we had participated, not one attempt at blackmail, not a crooked defence that we had interposed that he had not investigated and stood prepared to question us about in detail.
"What shall we do?" whispered Gottlieb nervously. "Do you want to take the stand?"
"How can we?" I asked petulantly. "If we did we should be convicted —not for this but for every other thing we ever did in our lives. Let's take a chance and go to the jury on the case as it stands."
After consulting with our counsel, the latter agreed that this was the best course to pursue; and so, rising, he informed the court that in his opinion no case had been made out against us and that we should, therefore, interpose no defence. This announcement caused a great stir in the court-room, and I could see by the faces of the jury that it was all up with us. I had already surrendered all hope of an acquittal and I looked upon the verdict of the jury as a mere formality.
"Proceed, then, with the summing up," ordered the judge. "I wish the jury to take this case and finish it to-night."
So, with that, our counsel began his argument in our behalf—a lame and halting effort it seemed to me, for all that we had paid him twenty-five thousand dollars for his services—pointing out how neither Dillingham nor Hawkins was worthy of belief, and how the case against us rested entirely upon their testimony and upon that of the clerk, who was an insignificant and unimportant witness injected simply for the sake of apparent corroboration. Faugh! I have heard Gottlieb make a better address to the jury a thousand times, and yet this man was supposed to be one of the best! Somehow throughout the trial he had seemed to me to be ill at ease and sick of his job, a mere puppet in the mummery going on about us; yet we had no choice but to let him continue his ill-concealed plea for mercy and his wretched rhetoric, until the judge stopped him and said that his time was up.
When the district attorney arose and the jury turned to him with uplifted faces, then, for the first time, I realized the real attitude of the community toward us; for in scathing terms he denounced us both as men not merely who defended criminals but who, in fact, created them; as plotters against the administration of justice; as arch-crooks, who lived off the proceeds of crimes which we devised and planned for others to execute. It was false and unfair; but the jury believed him—I could well see that.
"These men have made a fat living for nearly a generation in this city by blackmail, bribery, and perjury. They have made a business of ruining homes, reputations, and the lives of others. They have directed the operations of organized bands of criminals. They are the Fagins of the city of New York. Once the poor and defenceless have fallen into their power, they have extorted tribute from them and turned them into the paths of crime. Better that one of them should be convicted than a thousand of the miserable wretches ordinarily brought to the bar of justice!"
And in this strain he went on until he had bared Gottlieb and myself to our very souls. When he concluded there was a ripple of applause from the spectators that the court officers made little attempt to subdue; and the judge began his charge, which lasted but a few minutes. What he said was fair enough, and I had no mind to quarrel with him, although our counsel took many exceptions. The jury retired and my partner and I were led downstairs into the prison pen. It was crowded with miserable creatures waiting to be tried —negroes and Sicilians, thieves and burglars—who took keen delight in jostling us and foretelling what long sentences we were to receive. One negro kicked me in the shins and cursed me for being a shyster, and when I protested to the keeper he only laughed at me.
About half an hour later an officer came to the head of the stairs and shouted down:
"Bring up Gottlieb and Quibble!"
Our keeper unlocked the pen and, followed by the execrations of our associates, we stumbled up the stairs and into the court-room. Slowly we marched around to the bar, while every eye was fixed upon us. The jury was already back in the box and standing to render their decision. The clerk rapped for order and turned to the foreman.
"Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed upon a verdict?" he intoned.
"We have," answered the foreman unhesitatingly.
"How say you, do you find the defendants guilty or not guilty?"
"We find both of them guilty!" replied the foreman.
A slight shiver passed through Gottlieb's little body and for a moment the blood sang in my ears. No man can receive a verdict of guilty unperturbed, no matter how confidently expected. The crowd murmured their approval and the judge rapped for silence.
"Are you ready for sentence?" asked the judge.
We nodded. It was useless to prolong the agony.
"I have nothing to say to you," remarked the judge, "in addition to what the district attorney has said. He has fully expressed my own sentiments in this case. I regard you as vampires, sucking the blood of the weak, helpless, and criminal. Mercy would be out of place if extended toward you. I sentence you both to the full limit which the law allows—ten years in State's prison at hard labor."
An officer clapped us upon the back, faced us round toward the rear of the court-room, and pushed us toward the door leading to the prison pen, while another slipped a handcuff on my right wrist and snapped its mate on Gottlieb's left.
"Get on there," he growled, "where you belong!"
The crowds strained to get a look at us as, with averted faces, we trudged toward the door leading to the prison pen. Our lawyers had already hastened away to avoid any reflected ignominy that might attach to them. The jurymen were shaking hands with the district attorney.
"Adjourn court!" I heard the judge remark.
With a whoop, the spectators in the court-room crowded upon our heels and surged up to the grating before the door.
"There's Gottlieb!" cried one. "The little fellow!"
"And that's Quibble—the pale chap with the thin face!" said another.
"Damn you! Get out of the way!" I shouted threateningly.
"There go the shysters!" retorted the crowd. "Sing Sing's the best place for them!"
The keeper opened the door and motioned back the spectators. I staggered through, shackled to my partner and dragging him along with me. As the door clanged to I heard some one say:
"There goes the last of the firm of Gottlieb & Quibble!"