Appelbaum called Sophie and told her that the governor had said no. Sophie was devastated. Kohn had shown him the Dictaphone records, but the governor said it didn’t change the actual facts of the case itself, especially given the evidence from the bullets. Loeb called Inez and begged her to go lobby Whitman herself. Inez took the train to Albany, but was told the same thing. Afterward, Inez called Sing Sing to tell the prison officials that Charlie Stielow was not going to be pardoned. After a silence on the line, the prison operator said that they could still get a stay, but only from a justice of the state supreme court. At the Albany train station with the rain pouring down, Inez called Sophie immediately, but the line was busy. Knowing that Sophie was probably working the case, Inez knew it could be busy all night. Just then, Inez saw that her train had arrived. She knew that if she got on the train, she wouldn’t be able to talk to Sophie for several precious hours. But Inez would be closer to home, where she might need to be for this new plan—if it even was one—to work at all. So Inez got on the train, a prayer on her lips.
At Sing Sing that night, Charlie’s last meal was potatoes and chicken, followed by a piece of ice-cold strawberry shortcake. Stielow was then moved to the Last Dance, the final cell on the Last Mile, as his last earthly possessions were cleaned out of his cell and divided among the rest of the residents. John Hulbert, the bald executioner (who was mostly just an electrician), got very nervous as he checked switches, wires, and volts.
While in Albany, Grace stayed at the Ten Eyck, going over her new evidence from Mrs. Voorhees. Her story was that her family had taken in a hobo one night as a boarder and fed him some supper. This man had strangely brought up the Stielow murders a full day before the papers reported on it. She was sure of it. Mrs. Voorhees also remembered that the man had strange dark spots on his clothes. She said that his name was O’Connell. He was quiet but smiled a lot, Mrs. Voorhees said. At one point, he cracked some kind of odd joke about the last old man who had served him dinner. Mrs. Voorhees didn’t very much feel like laughing.
Grace looked around for tramp haunts under bridges and near fire pits. But she couldn’t find O’Connell. She heard a rumor that he had supposedly shot his own favored buckskin yellow horse with a .22 the morning after the murders. She kept looking on the road but could find no sign of him. Then, she realized that she had not found him because he might not be free. Not too long after that, Grace located him in an Auburn prison. O’Connell had been convicted for a murderous assault, having shot at a man named Lewis Brown. O’Connell was known in the trade as a “gun man.”
Clarence O’Connell came from Medina. His family were what the locals called swamp angels. His father had been an unlucky gambler of poor character. Last year, O’Connell’s mother left her boyfriend for his best friend—Erwin King. The three remained friends, all three of them, and lived a gypsylike life around the fuzzy Pennsylvania border with Clarence and his own small family for the better part of last year. They traded horses and committed crimes.
Clarence smiled when he said that he had no idea where Erwin King was. They had a falling out, he said. Had she come all this way for nothing?
Grace had to find King right now.
*
It was very late on Friday night, July 28. Justice Charles L. Guy of the New York Supreme Court was in the well-appointed library of his Convent Avenue home, selecting a book before bed. The phone rang. He answered it.
“This is Sophie Irene Loeb speaking,” said the voice on the phone.
“Oh, yes,” the judge answered. He paused, checking the clock on his mantel. “I assume that you would not call me up at this hour unless something urgent was at hand?”
Sophie didn’t stand on ceremony. She had a history with this particular judge.
“Judge Guy, you can save a human life!” Her voice wriggled a little, so she took a moment to bolster it.
“Judge,” Sophie said again, more firmly, “do you remember saying, not long ago, that I had the mind of a man and the heart of a woman, and that where an issue involving both heart and mind were concerned you would take my opinion against that of most men? Did you mean that?”
“I remember perfectly saying that,” the judge said. “And I should not have said it unless I meant it.”
He paused again.
“What can I do?”
“There is a man in Sing Sing,” Sophie explained, “condemned to die at a quarter to six o’clock tomorrow morning—this morning, for it is after midnight now—of whose guilt there is the gravest doubt. I know that no jury cognizant of all the facts in the case would ever have found him guilty! I am familiar with every bit of the evidence produced at the trial, and I have evidence that neither judges, jurymen, nor district attorneys have seen—parts of it I secured myself.”
Sophie told the short version of the story, especially of how Stielow had been before the courts nine times and been sentenced or resentenced to death in six of them. Three times notices went out to the necessary legal witnesses for his execution, and twice the executioner had made the trip to the chamber. He was there now. Sophie explained that new evidence was available only today, so Stielow’s only hope would be a stay of execution by a justice of the New York Supreme Court.
Judge Guy listened. Sophie could almost hear him thinking through the line.
“My dear Miss Loeb,” the judge finally said. “It is impossible for me to act unless I have sworn testimony before me. I must see his new evidence before I can sign a stay.”
Sophie was ready for this.
“The new evidence is on its way,” she said.
At that moment, Inez and her husband were en route from Westchester County with the documents that the governor had, on that same day, twice declined to act on. After Inez had told Sophie about finding a Supreme Court justice, Sophie immediately thought of Judge Guy, whom she knew and thought highly of. Sophie told Inez to get on the train for Manhattan. Sophie then called Stuart Kohn, who got in his car in Stony Brook and headed to the city. They would be there in two hours, carrying the Dictaphone transcripts that had failed to move Whitman.
“You must see Mrs. Boissevain and Mr. Kohn,” said Sophie. “They, with Mrs. Grace Humiston, have been working night and day to secure this new evidence. Mrs. Humiston is developing important clues at the sight of the murder right now.”
Another pause. Sophie swooped in.
“I should come to your house, Judge, only I am confined to my bed with neuritis and am so weak that my nurse is holding the telephone to my ear while I am talking to you.
“Promise me that you will take up the case tonight,” Sophie asked. “They will both be at your house by half-past two o’clock.”
Justice Guy didn’t hesitate any longer. “I shall hold court at any hour they may arrive.”
At three thirty that morning, Kohn finally drove up to the home of Judge Guy in Manhattan. It was a white-knuckle drive in the dark. Kohn was surprised to see two police motorcars already at the curb. Apparently, there had been reports of a suspicious man lurking around the judge’s home sometime past midnight. The cops produced the man from the shadows: it was Misha Appelbaum, who had been waiting for Kohn to arrive. He said the judge had gone to bed but would get up and hold court in his library when they were ready.