CHAPTER IVTHE UNEQUAL FIGHT
May no other man realize what I suffered in the weeks of confinement in the jail at Keene.
Innocent of the crime of burglary, a man who had always stood up boldly among his fellow-men, looking all squarely in the eye, to be thus ignominiously, horribly entangled in the meshes of the law was to set upon him the torments of hell. I doubt, if there be a corner set apart, in the infernal region, in which certain condemned ones must meditate forever over their evil deeds, whether their mental agony will be a tittle of the writhing anguish that besieged my soul, until I was left a wreck of my former self.
Ay, the torture I endured—an indescribable, lingering horror—can in no manner be compared with the most excruciating physical distress that mortal may bear and survive, except to demonstrate, by comparison, the insignificance of the latter. So far apart are they, that they stand as the East from the West, the remotest Past from the remotest Future.
I was at times far removed from a calm contemplation of my position, and on more than one occasion wondered if my brain would retain its normal reasoning. Once I feared that I would go stark mad, with the wild rush of a thousand fancies, pursuing each other through my brain, like so many little green-eyed imps. Oh, it was horrible. And there came moments when I cursed man and God, and raved that man was a misnomer for all that was devilish and that God was only a myth. Again, and I was being sifted, as it were, through a sieve of the finest mesh, that part of me left in the sieve being transformed into all that was vile, and my pulverized self passing through, all the good in me, being blown to the four winds of heaven. No doubt that this was a fantasy, yet as I lay in my cold cell I was so vividly impressed that it seemed a hideous reality.
Following such an affliction, there would come calmer moments, in which I was able to contemplate my condition, in much the same manner as a hardened criminal. When this mood possessed me, I had an awful, haunting dread of what the future might hold to rule my after days. But, as the time passed, and I had frequent consultations with my attorney; talked of the associations I had had with the man Wyckoff, whom I had come to know as Mark Shinburn; discussed my arrest at Stoneham, when I believed, at first, that I was the victim of a joke;and went over the various stages of my case, I began, at intervals, to be somewhat philosophical.
It was a hard matter to realize, that I, an innocent man, was actually under arrest and locked in the same jail with professional criminals, and accused, jointly with them, of burglary. Yet more difficult was it to believe that this man Shinburn was Wyckoff, the United States deputy marshal and guest at my hotel. Though he was identically the same smooth, affable gentleman in jail that I had met and travelled with the year before, I found it almost impossible at times to believe that he was a criminal—which I knew from the accumulating evidence. Day after day I came in contact with him, talked with him, discussed the evidence for and against him, and heard him confess to being sorry that his acts had involved me. I had liked Wyckoff the deputy marshal, and I liked none the less Mark Shinburn, though he was the means of my undoing.
My attorney, A. V. Lynde, with whom I had done no little real-estate business, often visited me in jail, and we discussed the points that were held by the prosecution to be positive proof of my guilt. There was my journeying about the country with Shinburn and Cummings, while they were, at the same time, plotting to rob the Walpole Bank, and many other points that were brought against me, but of a still more circumstantial nature. All these matters were laid before me, and I could well understandhow some people might honestly believe me guilty.
As I lay in jail, I did not know that the avarice of a stockholder of the Walpole Bank would lead him to persecute me almost beyond measure. I did not think that he would, with good reason to believe me guiltless, use his influence to set one of the real criminals free, and set the law upon me, in order that he might recover the loss he had sustained through the robbery. I did not know that he would continue his persecution until every dollar of my wealth was stripped from me, and I was left at the mercy of my friends to defend my innocence. But so it was.
While I lay in jail, asking day by day for a hearing, the coils of injustice were being tightened about me. The prosecution did not show its hand by any too quick action. It was only when the process of the law must be carried out that there was no longer secrecy kept by those who held my fate in their hands. I had asked for an immediate hearing on the day of my arrest, but it had been denied me. One would have thought that a man who had borne a good reputation in a community bordering on the very jail that held him, would have been given more consideration than a professed criminal. It was not so. The earliest opportunity given me to be heard was four weeks after my arrest. Then I was afforded only a chance to plead not guilty to the charge, forthe district attorney, F. F. Lane, asked for an adjournment for two weeks and was given it. What conspiracy was hatched during those two weeks, I shall allow the facts to tell in their undeniable way.
The jail was one, for strength, that modern builders might copy with profit to governments. It was of granite walls, two feet thick, with double-barred windows and ponderous doors, well secured with massive locks. The main floor of the jail proper was used for small fry thieves and petty offenders, but the second floor contained three cells which were used for the safe keeping of those charged with murder and felony. Shinburn, Cummings, and I occupied these cells. The two end ones were light, but that in the middle was on the order of a dungeon. My cell was large, and two windows opened from it to the street.
One morning, shortly after the adjourned hearing, I missed Cummings. No meals were brought to him that day, and when I could speak to the jailer’s wife, she told me that he had been set free. At the first opportunity I communicated with Shinburn, whose cell was the farthest from mine. He said that Cummings had been let out of the back door of the jail, so to speak, after relinquishing all claim to the five thousand dollars he had when Detective Golden arrested him.
“Although the district attorney knew that Jim sold the bond to the Scranton man, it was not possibleto prove that the cash found on him was received from the sale,” said Shinburn; “and when Jim said he’d let up on the dust in case there was no conviction, Lane let him go. What’s more, Jim’s railroad fare was paid to Rochester.”
Galling to me were these facts, if facts they were; and I had no reason to doubt Shinburn in view of the positive information that Cummings was no longer a prisoner. What a turn of fate was it, indeed, that wrought out the freedom of a guilty man and left me, the innocent one, still in jail! Was it any wonder that I groaned aloud and wondered whether there was a God?
I now recall with what rapidity my case was called after the district attorney had gotten Cummings out of the way. It was put forward with all the vigor that I had clamored for six weeks prior, and excuses were made that the delay was caused by the difficulty in framing the case. As the time for the hearing drew near, I had a feeling that I was in deadly peril, though Mr. Lynde assured me that there was no doubt that I would not be held for the grand jury.
At last the day of the hearing before the magistrate came, and Shinburn and I were taken into court. Mr. Lynde represented me, while Don H. Woodward, a bright young attorney, had been retained by Shinburn. The latter’s brother Frank, of Saratoga, had come East to look after his interests.At times I had hopes that I would be free at the close of the hearing, and again I would be despondent. I knew that I ought not to be where I was, and it did seem to me that no circumstances ought to be convincing enough to long imprison an innocent man. The discharge of Cummings, by what means I never quite knew, created a grave doubt in me; besides, I hadn’t much faith in the wisdom of the magistrate at the hearing.
Mr. Lynde made a good representation for me, and so did Woodward for Shinburn. In taking up my case, Mr. Lynde asked for a separate hearing on my behalf, on the ground that the facts in the charge were vastly different from those Shinburn must meet. This, District Attorney Lane opposed with all his legal power and personal influence. All the pleading that my attorney or I could do fell on unsympathetic ears, apparently. My plea, as an innocent man, for the administration of common, humane justice, was as futile as was Mr. Lynde’s. It was ruled that Shinburn, the guilty, and White, the innocent, must be examined together. And we were. The facts were against him, and I, with him for a millstone about my neck, as it were, was held to await the action of the grand jury. Shinburn, being guilty of the crime charged, had hoped to escape, and it seemed to me that I had a right to.
Thus was I doomed to stand in the same prisoners’ dock with him, my case tightly fastened to his withlegal thongs,—the innocent and the guilty to stand or fall together! What an unequal fight, what an injustice, was dealt me!
In my declining years I often wonder, if there be a Supreme Ruler,—and I believe there is,—whether, on the Judgment Day, there’ll not be an awful reckoning for those who were so unjustly against me in my vain battle to establish my innocence.
Realizing how matters were going, I asked Mr. Lynde to retain the services of Mr. Woodward, and as I bade him good-night at the jail, we’d decided to call to our aid also, ex-Judge Cushion and John M. Way, both of whom I knew very well. The bail in my case was fixed at fifteen thousand dollars, and in Shinburn’s, five thousand more. I hoped to be out into the world again, before many hours, no matter what the future held for me beyond the grand jury. As I meditated over the release of Cummings and the action of the magistrate, I actually would not have been surprised if Shinburn had been discharged, while I, alone, was held to an accounting.
While I had lain in jail, Herbert Bellows began a suit in tort in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, and, attaching my property, sacrificed it at a forced sale. Though the trial of the suit was never had, I was stripped of my property and left financially helpless, save for the loyalty of my friends. Notwithstandingthis lack of means, these friends, not a few of them my creditors, came to my assistance, and I was admitted to bail. In the meantime the grand jury handed down a joint indictment against Shinburn and myself, and the case was placed on the calendar of the October term of the Cheshire County Court.