LITMIR.BIZ

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particularly if he be a defendant accused of a crime, in reality works against him; just as the right to take the stand in fact compels every defendant to do so or suffer the penalty of refusal in the form of the jury’s natural assumption that he is afraid to do so because he is guilty. Of this great principle the Bloodhound now proposed to avail himself to the utter annihilation of Paddy Mooney and Mr. Tutt, both of whom he was resolved should plunge down into the abyss of discreditability.

      For he knew that because he held a public office of large responsibility any question put by him to Mooney would be in the jury’s eyes tantamount to an accusation; particularly after he had evinced such an apparent fair-mindedness by asking the judge to quash the burglary, receiving and larceny counts in the indictment.

      The issue now hung in the balance. A police officer had sworn to finding a loaded pistol on the prisoner, and a self-confessed crook had corroborated him; the defendant had vehemently denied it, although the force of his denial had been somewhat tempered by his admission of having been previously convicted of assault. In view of the judge’s admonition that the burden of proof would be on the prosecution to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, the jury might acquit. Something must be done. O’Brien did not hesitate. He would “smear” Mooney so that nobody would pay the slightest attention to his denials, however convincing under other circumstances they might have been. It would not be difficult. Any hint or suggestion that Mooney was a professional “gun”—the slightest innuendo to that effect, probably—would be enough; even if he didn’t look it. For look it he certainly did not, as he sat motionless on the witness chair—more like a clay statue than a man, his chalky face set and his narrow shoulders foursquare to the world—an impotent yet defiant creature, like a wild animal driven into a hole or fettered to a stake. Only when his eyes over Mr. Tutt’s shoulders met those of Annie Murphy did his stubborn expression soften. O’Brien caught the looks that passed between them and scowled. That sort of thing always had a bad effect on the jury. He must “can” it somehow. He strolled back to his place and faced Mooney again.

      “You come from the Gas House district, don’t you?” he asked.

      “No,” replied Mooney.

      “Ever hear of the Gas House Gang?”

      “Yes, but I’m not one of them.”

      “Oh, you’re not, eh? I didn’t ask you that. Why did you hurry so to slip that in?”

      “I object!” interposed Mr. Tutt. “Such a suggestion is improper and prejudicial.”

      Judge Watkins, who despised technicalities, waved him aside.

      “I will permit the question. The witness volunteered a statement. He may be examined upon it.”

      Mr. Tutt subsided.

      “Because,” retorted Mooney, “you were trying to make the jury think I was.”

      “Maybe you’re right!” countered the Bloodhound with a grin at the jury box. “Now, how many times have you been convicted of crime in other States?”

      “Never!” cried Mooney. “And you can’t prove it either.”

      “Well, maybe I can’t prove it,” admitted O’Brien easily, “but,” he added insinuatingly, “I can inquire how many times you have committed burglaries—say, in New Jersey?”

      Mooney’s jaws trembled and he grasped the arms of his chair so tight that his hands went white. He turned indignantly to the judge.

      “Your Honor,” he protested, “has this man got the right——”

      “Answer the question!” admonished His Honor. “This is proper cross-examination.”

      “Well?” sneered O’Brien.

      “I never committed any burglary!”

      “No burglaries! What kind of crimes, then, have you committed?”

      “I never committed any crimes!”

      Mooney thrust forward in his seat toward his torturer and clinched his jaws. It was all nuts for O’Brien.

      “Oh!” he laughed. “You didn’t, eh? I thought you were just out of Sing Sing!”

      “But I hadn’t committed any crime.”

      “So you were innocent that time? Just as you claim to be now!”

      “Delaney railroaded me for Mickey Morrison!”

      The Bloodhound reddened with anger.

      “Strike that out!” ordered Judge Watkins. “Don’t volunteer. Answer only the questions put to you. Were you innocent that time?”

      “Yes—I was!” declared Mooney with such obvious sincerity that O’Brien wished he had not asked the question. So far he had not scored heavily, although his adversary was getting groggy. At that instant Delaney re-entered the room and approached the rail with a large book in his hand.

      “S-st!” he whispered to O’Brien, handing over the book. “Ast him if last December he didn’t smash Sugar Grady’s nose down on Hudson Street wit’ a blackjack; an’, say, ast him if he wasn’t one o’ the bunch ’at beat up Inspector Boyle with brass knuckles over behind the engine-house.”

      The Bloodhound’s eyes gleamed. Real stuff! He put the questions to Mooney, receiving with an indulgent grimace the latter’s emphatic denials, and the jury, who had seen his conference with the police officer, made sure that a desperate thug was seated before them, while Mr. Tutt, a satiric smile playing about his withered lips, vowed vengeance deep and dire upon the unscrupulous O’Brien.

      But the Bloodhound, frenzied at the scent of human gore, was now resolved to rend Mooney limb from limb. With all the gleeful malice of a Spanish inquisitor about to tear out his victim’s beating heart with a pair of incandescent pincers, this charming understudy of Satan sauntered nonchalantly up to the witness and, holding the Professional Criminals of America so that the jury could plainly read the title, opened the book and running his finger down a page as if to mark the place—and looking up from time to time as he apparently read what he there had found—put to the hapless being in the moral death chair before him, as if solemnly declaring the accompanying accusation to be true, the following question:

      “Did you not, on September 6, 1917, in company with Red Burke, alias the Roach; Tony Savelli, otherwise known as Tony the Greaser; and Dynamite Tom Meeghan, crack the safe of the American Railway Express at Rahway, New Jersey, and get away with six thousand dollars?”

      There was no doubt about O’Brien’s having caught the jury now. Just as John Hancock signed his name to the Declaration of Independence so large that no one need use spectacles to read it, so Paddy Mooney screamed his outraged denial so loud that even the dead might well have heard him.

      “It’s a lie!” he yelled, jumping up and shaking his fist at O’Brien. “I never knew any such people. And I never was in Rahway.”

      “So you say!” the Bloodhound taunted him. “But don’t you know that both the Roach and the Greaser testified at their trials that you were there?”

      “Wait a moment!” interpolated Judge Watkins. “Do not answer until your counsel has time to object. Mr. Tutt, do you object to the question? If you do I will exclude it.”

      But Mr. Tutt gravely shook his head.

      “I prefer to have him answer it,” he said.

      “I know nothing about it at all!” protested Mooney. Once more he turned to the bench. “Your Honor,” he cried, “he’s framin’ me! I——”

      Judge Watkins banged his gavel.

      “You will have your chance to explain on the redirect,” he remarked coldly, for he, too, was now convinced that the witness was a desperate criminal.

      “That is all!” declared O’Brien,

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