The two months preceding the trial were months of restless agony to the prisoner, Kalmar. Day and night he paced his cell like a tiger in a cage, taking little food and sleeping only when overcome with exhaustion. It was not the confinement that fretted him. The Winnipeg jail, with all its defects and limitations, was a palace to some that he had known. It was not the fear of the issue to his trial that drove sleep and hunger from him. Death, exile, imprisonment, had been too long at his heels to be strangers to him or to cause him fear. In his heart a fire burned. Rosenblatt still lived, and vengeance had halted in its pursuit.
But deep as was the passion in his heart for vengeance, that for his country and his cause burned deeper. He had been able to establish lines of communication between his fatherland and the new world by means of which the oppressed, the hunted, might reach freedom and safety. The final touches to his plans were still to be given. Furthermore, it was necessary that he should make his report in person, else much of his labour would be fruitless. It was this that brought him "white nights" and black days.
Every day Paulina called at the jail and waited long hours with uncomplaining patience in the winter cold, till she could be admitted. Her husband showed no sign of interest, much less of gratitude. One question alone, he asked day by day.
"The children are well?"
"They are well," Paulina would answer. "They ask to see you every day."
"They may not see me here," he would reply, after which she would turn away, her dull face full of patient suffering.
One item of news she brought him that gave him a moment's cheer.
"Kalman," she said, one day, "will speak nothing but Russian."
"Ha!" he exclaimed. "He is my son indeed. But," he added gloomily," of what use now?"
Others sought admission,--visitors from the Jail Mission, philanthropic ladies, a priest from St. Boniface, a Methodist minister,--but all were alike denied. Simon Ketzel he sent for, and with him held long converse, with the result that he was able to secure for his defence the services of O'Hara, the leading criminal lawyer of Western Canada. There appeared to be no lack of money, and all that money could do was done.
The case began to excite considerable interest, not only in the city, but throughout the whole country. Public opinion was strongly against the prisoner. Never in the history of the new country had a crime been committed of such horrible and bloodthirsty deliberation.
It is true that this opinion was based largely upon Rosenblatt's deposition, taken by Sergeant Cameron and Dr. Wright when he was supposed to be in extremis, and upon various newspaper interviews with him that appeared from time to time. The Morning News in a trenchant leader pointed out the danger to which Western Canada was exposed from the presence of these semibarbarous peoples from Central and Southern Europe, and expressed the hope that the authorities would deal with the present case in such a manner as would give a severe but necessary lesson to the lawless among our foreign population.
There was, indeed, from the first, no hope of acquittal. Staunton, who was acting for the Crown, was convinced that the prisoner would receive the maximum sentence allowed by law. And even O'Hara acknowledged privately to his solicitor that the best he could hope for was a life sentence. "And, by gad! he ought to get it! It is the most damnable case of bloody murder that I have come across in all my practice!" But this was before Mr. O'Hara had interviewed Mrs. Fitzpatrick.
In his hunt for evidence Mr. O'Hara had come upon his fellow countrywoman in the foreign colony. At first from sheer delight in her rich brogue and her shrewd native wit, and afterward from the conviction that her testimony might be turned to good account on behalf of his client, Mr. O'Hara diligently cultivated Mrs.
Fitzpatrick's acquaintance. It helped their mutual admiration and their friendship not a little to discover their common devotion to "the cause o' the paythriot in dear owld Ireland," and their mutual interest in the prisoner Kalmar, as a fellow "paythriot."
Immediately upon his discovery of the rich possibilities in Mrs.
Fitzpatrick Mr. O'Hara got himself invited to drink a "cup o' tay," which, being made in the little black teapot brought all the way from Ireland, he pronounced to be the finest he had had since coming to Canada fifteen years ago. Indeed, he declared that he had serious doubts as to the possibilities of producing on this side of the water and by people of this country just such tea as he had been accustomed to drink in the dear old land. It was over this cup of tea, and as he drew from Mrs. Fitzpatrick the description of the scene between the Nihilist and his children, that Mr. O'Hara came to realise the vast productivity of the mine he had uncovered. He determined that Mrs. Fitzpatrick should tell this tale in court.
"We'll bate that divil yet!" he exclaimed to his new-found friend, his brogue taking a richer flavour from his environment. "They would be having the life of the poor man for letting a little of the black blood out of the black heart of that traitor and blackguard, and may the divil fly away with him! But we'll bate them yet, and it's yersilf is the one to do it!" he exclaimed in growing excitement and admiration.
At first Mrs. Fitzpatrick was most reluctant to appear in court.
"Sure, what would I do or say in the face av His 'Anner an' the joorymin, with niver a word on the tongue av me?"
"And would you let the poor man go to his death?" cried O'Hara, proceeding to draw a lurid picture of the deadly machinations of the lawyer for the Crown, Rosenblatt and their associates against this unfortunate patriot who, for love of his country and for the honour of his name, had sought to wreak a well-merited vengeance upon the abject traitor.
