Part 56 (2/2)
The seconds were now creeping minutes. Normando's ceaseless mumbling was like that of a man distraught by torture. A hand was used to silence him. The spectators were upon their feet and bent forward in attention; the cordon of officers closed in behind the accused as if to throttle any act of desperation.
The judge pa.s.sed the verdict down to the minute clerk, who read in a clear, distinct, monotonous tone:
”Celso Fabbri, Frank Normando, mistrial. Salvatore di Marco, Frank Garcia, Giordano Bolla”--the list of names seemed interminable-- ”Gaspardo Cressi, Lorenzo Cardoni, Caesar Maruffi”--he paused for an instant while time halted--”not guilty.”
After the first moment of stunned stupefaction a murmur of angry disapproval ran through the crowd; it was not loud, but hushed, as if men doubted their senses and were seeking corroboration of their ears.
From the street below, as the judgment was flashed to the waiting hundreds, came an echo, faint, unformed, like the first vague stir that runs ahead of a tempest.
The shock of Norvin Blake's amazement in part blurred his memory of that dramatic tableau, but certain details stood out clearly afterwards. For one thing he heard Bernie Dreux giggling like an overwrought woman, while through his hysteria ran a stream of shocking curses He saw one of the jurors rise, yawn, and stretch himself, then rub his bullet head, smiling meanwhile at the Cressi boy. He saw Caesar Maruffi turn full to the room behind him and search for his own face. When their eyes met, a light of devilish amus.e.m.e.nt lit the Sicilian's visage; his lips parted and his white teeth gleamed, but it was no smile, rather the nervous, rippling twitch that bares a wolf's fangs. His color had come flooding back, too; victory suffused him with a ruddy, purple congestion, almost apoplectic. Then heads came between them; friends of the prisoners crowded forward with noisy congratulations and outstretched palms; the rival attorneys were shaking hands.
Blake found himself borne along by the eddying stream which set out of the court-room and down into the sunlit street, where the curbs were lined with uplifted faces. Dreux was close beside him, quite silent now. A similar silence brooded over the whole procession which emerged from the building like a funeral cortege. When the moments brought home the truth to its members they felt, indeed, as if they came from a house of death, for they had seen Justice murdered, and the chill was in their hearts.
But there was something sinister in the hush which gagged that mult.i.tude.
Many readers will doubtless recall, even now, the shock that went through this country at the conclusion of the famous New Orleans Mafia trial of twenty years ago. They will, perhaps, remember a general feeling of surprise that an American jury would dare, in the face of such popular feeling and such apparently overwhelming evidence, to render a verdict of ”not guilty.” In some quarters the farcical outcome of the trial was blamed upon Louisiana's peculiar legal code.
But the truth is our Northern cities had not at that time felt the power of organized crime. New York, for instance, had not been shaken by an interminable succession of dynamite outrages nor terrorized by bands of Latin-born Apaches who live by violence and blackmail; therefore, the tremendous difficulty of securing convictions was not appreciated as it is to-day.
There was a universal suspicion that the last word concerning the New Orleans affair had not been written, so what followed was not entirely a surprise.
XXIV
AT THE FEET OF THE STATUE
Two hours after the verdict there was a meeting of the Committee of Justice, and that night the evening papers carried the following notice:
”Ma.s.s-MEETING”
”All good citizens are invited to attend a ma.s.s-meeting to-morrow morning at 10 o'clock at Clay Statue, to take steps to remedy the failure of justice in the Donnelly case. Come prepared for action.”
It was signed by the fifty well-known men who had been appointed to represent the people. That incredible verdict had caused a great excitement; but this bold and threatening appeal brought the city up standing. It caused men who had been loudly cursing the jury to halt and measure the true depth of their indignation. There was no other topic of conversation that night; and when the same call appeared in the morning papers, together with a ringing column headed,
”AWAKE! ARISE!”
it stirred a swift and mighty public sentiment. Never, perhaps, in any public press had so sanguinary an appeal been issued.
”Citizens of New Orleans,” it read in part, ”when murder overrides law and justice, when juries are bribed and suborners go unwhipped, it is time to resort to your own indefeasible right of self-preservation.
Alien bands of oath-bound a.s.sa.s.sins have set the blot of a martyr's blood upon your civilization. Your laws, in the very Temple of Justice, have been bought, suborners have loosed upon your streets the midnight murderers of an officer in whose grave lies the majesty of American law.
”Rise in your might, people of New Orleans! Rise!”
A similar note was struck by editorials, many of them couched in language even stronger and more suited to fan the public rage. The recent trial was called an outrageous travesty on justice; attention was directed to the d.a.m.nable vagaries of recent juries which had been impaneled to try red-handed Italian murderers.
”Our city is become the haven of blackmailers and a.s.sa.s.sins, the safe vantage-ground for Sicilian stilletto bands who slay our legal officers, who buy jurors, and corrupt sworn witnesses under the hooded eyes of Justice. How much longer will this outrage be permitted?” So read a heavily typed article in the leading journal.
A wave of fierce determination ran through the whole community.
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