George Kelley now reappeared briefly to say that on April 16 he had
got to the factory at seven in the morning and Sacco had already been
working there three-quarters of an hour.
* * * * *
Friday evening about ten o’clock, long after the courthouse gate had
been bolted and the jury locked in for the night, John Drummond, the
courthouse janitor, heard a noise in the library and found Jerry
McAnarney lying collapsed on the center table. One of the deputy
sheriffs drove him back to Quincy. Actually, Jerry was malingering
to give Moore an extra day he claimed he needed for tracking down a
new witness. Next morning Thomas McAnarney told Judge Thayer that
his brother was under a doctor’s care and asked for a postponement.
Thayer adjourned the court until Tuesday, July 5.
The prospect of the long week end dismayed the jurors, most of whom
had hoped to be back with their families by the Fourth. However, they
felt somewhat more cheerful after Judge Thayer told the sheriff to
see that they were taken on an outing over the holiday. When John
Dever heard that after a month of sitting still they were going to
the beach, he felt the way he used to when the circus came to town.
The rest of Saturday the jurors spent as usual—playing cards,
talking, reading the cut-up remains of the newspapers, and going out
to meals. Sunday afternoon they went on their usual ride, this time
through Wellesley and the Newtons.
Monday morning, after breakfast at the Dedham Inn, they went by bus
to the wooden-turreted Cliff House at North Scituate. There they sat
in rocking chairs on the wide veranda, looking out over the sea and
enjoying the breeze until their shore dinner was ready. Dever long
remembered that meal—clams and lobsters and more lobsters. George
Gerard, the Stoughton photographer, had a Graflex with him. He had
been born in Paris, and the others kidded him at the table, telling
him it was too bad he couldn’t go down on the beach and take French
pictures of the girls. During the afternoon Sheriff Capen produced a
fishpole for each man and they sat on the rocks in the sun, joking
and fishing.
It was almost dark by the time they got back to the courthouse. Dever
felt contented even though his face and arms were red and the skin
tingled on the back of his neck. As he went up the courthouse steps
he noticed fireflies zigzagging about.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] The six Winchester shells found on Sacco in the police station
were of this same obsolete type, a parallel overlooked by the
prosecution and barely hinted at by the defense during the trial but
emphasized later.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE TRIAL: III
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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