Page:The Great Harry Thaw Case.djvu/136

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

state had paid out $250,000. If Juror Bolton had been incapacitated by his wife's death, all this expense would have been useless.

When the failure of the trial was feared, Mrs. Thaw sought to cheer her husband. Perhaps her woman's wit had warned her that she must look her prettiest, for on her visit to the Tombs prison she wore for the first time a new and modish little brown frock, its coat set off with jaunty silk fixings. She was radiant and smiling as she jumped out of her cab and ran up the steps to the iron gates of the Tombs.

As she waited to be taken to her husband, a jail guard showed her a message which had come in the mail for her husband. It was a postal card, a picture of a bunch of violets, bearing in a childish hand this inscription:

"Dear Mr. Thaw: I am a little Baltimore girl. I send you this as a token of my sympathy. Yours,

"Lulu Bell."

The wife's face dimpled with pleasure. "Isn't that sweet?" she said. "I know Harry will appreciate it."

Dr. Charles Wagner, the alienist, who took the stand when the trial was resumed, declared there could be not the slightest doubt that Thaw was insane at the time of the shooting, and told the jury that Harry had declared a "sudden impulse" made him slay White.