Yet owing to the
subtle suggestions contained in Mr. Tutt's inflections and demeanor the
jury leaped unhesitatingly to the conclusion that here was a man so
ignorant and debased that if he were not deliberately lying he was being
made a cat's-paw by the police in the interest of the On Gee Tong.
Miss Malone fared even worse, for after a preliminary skirmish she
flatly refused to give Mr. Tutt or the jury any information whatever
regarding her past life, while Mooney, of course, labored from the
beginning to the end of his testimony under the curse of being a
policeman, one of that class whom most jurymen take pride in saying they
hold in natural distrust. In a word, the white witnesses to the
dastardly murder of Quong Lee created a general impression of
unreliability upon the minds of the jury, who wholly failed to realize
the somewhat obvious truth that the witnesses to a crime in Chinatown
will naturally if not inevitably be persons who either reside in or
frequent that locality.
Twenty-four days had now been consumed in the trial, and as yet no
Chinese witnesses except Ah Fong had been called. Now, however, they
appeared in cohorts. Though Mooney had sworn that the streets were
practically empty at the time of the homicide forty-one Chinese
witnesses swore positively that they had been within easy view, claiming
variously to have been behind doors, peeking through shutters, at upper
windows and even on the roofs.
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