Word: hissing
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Lawyer Lloyd Paul Stryker, who commands some of the highest fees in the business (up to $75,000 a case), was going into his big act: the summation for the defense in the perjury trial of Alger Hiss, onetime bright young man of the State Department...
Orchestral Theme. At first Stryker talked almost into the jurors' faces until he was apparently warned off by his colleagues. They observed that the jurors were not warming up to the performance. After this Stryker stood back. There was only one witness in the whole world who said Hiss had transmitted State Department documents to Chambers in February and March of 1938, Stryker pointed out. That was Chambers. He quoted Prosecutor Tom Murphy's opening statement: "If you don't believe Chambers, then the Government has no case...
...expert had testified that the State Department documents had been typed on the Hiss typewriter; he could tell by the formations of the letter "G" for example. "You can look at all the 'Gs' you want," Stryker snorted, "they look good to me." He airily dismissed Mrs. Chambers' detailed testimony of homely intimacies between the two families. "You remember her," he said scornfully. "She sat there waving her hands as though she were priming a pump...
...Alger Hiss," he whispered huskily, "is a brilliant man. Everything he has ever done is pure, wholesome, clean, fine. Do you think that Alger Hiss would ... prostitute his great career . . . ? This isn't a case, it's an outrage...
...Chambers had testified that in the fall of 1937, Hiss lent him $400 to buy a car. Records of a Baltimore automobile company showed that Esther Chambers bought a car on Nov. 23, 1937. The Government looked at the Hisses' Washington bank account, found it showed a withdrawal of $400 on Nov. 19, 1937. The Hiss explanation was that they used the money to buy furniture. The importance of these bits of documentary evidence to the Government was that they established the Chamberses' intimate knowledge of the Hisses' private affairs more than a year after Hiss testified...