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By Root 2494 0

with one hand while holding a gun in the other. We were on the third floor and there was no fire-escape. I called out: “Look out, you’ll break your neck!” “Why the hell don’t you open the door? Are you deaf?” He swung through the window and was in the room. I walked over to the entrance and unlocked it. Twelve men, led by a giant, crowded into the apartment. The leader grabbed me by the arm, bellowing: “Who are you?” “I not speak English—Swedish servant-girl.” He released his hold and ordered his men to search the place. Turning to me, he yelled: “Stand back! We’re looking for Emma Goldman.” Then he held up a photo to me. “See this? We want this woman. Where is she?” I pointed my finger at the picture and said: “This woman I not see here. This woman big—you look in those small boxes will not find her—she too big.” “Oh, shut up!” he bawled; “you can’t tell what them anarchists will do.”

After they had searched the house, turning everything upside down, the giant walked over to the book-shelves. “Hell, this is a reg’lar preacher’s house,” he remarked: “look at them books. I don’t think Emma Goldman would be here.” They were about to leave when one of the detectives suddenly called: “Here, Captain Schuettler, what about this?” It was my fountain-pen, a gift from a friend, with my name on it. I had overlooked it. “By golly, that’s a find!” cried the Captain. “She must have been here and she may come back.” He ordered two of his men to remain behind.

I saw that the game was up. There was no sign of Mr. N. or the Tribune man, and it could serve no purpose to keep the farce up longer. “I am Emma Goldman,” I announced.

For a moment Schuettler and his men stood there as if petrified. Then the Captain roared: “Well, I’ll be damned! You’re the shrewdest crook I ever met! Take her, quick!”

When I stepped into the cab waiting at the curb, I saw N. approaching in the company of the Tribune man. It was too late for the scoop, and I did not want my host recognized. I pretended not to see them.

I had often heard of the third degree used by the police in various American cities to extort confessions, but I myself had never been subjected to it. I had been arrested a number of times since 1893; no violence, however, had ever been practised on me. On the day of my arrest, which was September 10, I was kept at police headquarters in a stifling room and grilled to exhaustion from 10.30 a.m. till 7 p.m. At least fifty detectives passed me, each shaking his fist in my face and threatening me with the direst things. One yelled: “You was with Czolgosz in Buffalo! I saw you myself, right in front of Convention Hall. Better confess, d’you hear?” Another: “Look here, Goldman, I seen you with that son of a bitch at the fair! Don’t you lie now—I seen you, I tell you!” Again: “You’ve faked enough—you keep this up and sure’s you’re born you’ll get the chair. Your lover has confessed. He said it was your speech made him shoot the President.” I knew they were lying; I knew I had not been with Czolgosz except for a few minutes in Cleveland on May 5, and for half an hour in Chicago on July 12. Schuettler was most ferocious. His massive bulk towered above me, bellowing: “If you don’t confess, you’ll go the way of those bastard Haymarket anarchists.”

I reiterated the story I had told them when first brought to police headquarters, explaining where I had been and with whom. But they would not believe me and kept on bullying and abusing me. My head throbbed, my throat and lips felt parched. A large pitcher of water stood on the table before me, but every time I stretched out my hand for it, a detective would say: “You can drink all you want, but first answer me. Where were you with Czolgosz the day he shot the President?” The torture continued for hours. Finally I was taken to the Harrison Street Police Station and locked in a barred enclosure, exposed to view from every side.

Presently the matron came to inquire if I wanted supper. “No, but water,” I said, “and something for my head.” She returned with a tin pitcher of tepid water, which I gulped down.