1247 Sheet – Supreme Court Georgia Appeals of Leo Frank, 1913, 1914

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slip in the clock, we all went out of the factory and went downstairs and locked the door, and I was going to go down to the office, to police headquarters, because the officers said they wanted to show me some notes which they said were found near the body of the little padlock and staple which they showed me had been withdrawn, and which they said had been taken down to the station the first time they had Newt Lee down there.

Now, gentlemen, I have heard a great deal, and so have you, in this trial, about nervousness, about how nervous I was that morning. Gentlemen, I was nervous, I was very nervous. I was completely unstrung, I will admit it; imagine, awakened out of my sound sleep, and a morning run down in the cool of the morning in an automobile driven at top speed, without any food or breakfast, rushing into a dark passageway, coming into a darkened room, and then suddenly an electric light flashed on, and to see the sight that was presented by that poor little child. Why, it was a sight that was enough to drive a man to distraction; that was a sight that would have made a stone melt; and then it is suspicious, because a man who is ordinary flesh and blood should show signs of nervousness. Just imagine that little girl, in the first blush of young womanhood, had had her life so cruelly snuffed out, might a man not be nervous who looked at such a sight? Of course I was nervous; any man would be nervous if he was a man. We went with the officers in the automobile, Mr. Rogers was at the driving wheel, and Mr. Darley sat next to him, I sat on Mr. Darley's lap, and in the back was Newt Lee and two officers. We rode to headquarters very quickly and on arrival there Mr. Darley and I went up to Chief Lanford's office where I sat and talked and answered every one of their questions freely and frankly, and discussed the matter in general with them, trying to aid and to help them in any way that I could. It seemed that, that morning the notes were not readily accessible, or for some other reason I didn't get to see them, so I told them on leaving there that I would come back there that afternoon, which I ultimately did; after staying there a few minutes, Mr. Darley and myself left, and inasmuch as Mr. Darley hadn't seen the body of the little girl, we went over to Bloomfield's on Pryor Street and Mitchell, and when we went into the establishment, they told us somebody was busy with the body at that time and we couldn't see it, and we started to leave, when we met a certain party with whom we made arrangements to watch the building, because Newt Lee was in custody at that time. Mr. Darley and I then went over to Montag Brothers to see if any of the Montags had come down town that morning, we arrived at their place, and found the same was locked and that nobody was down there. We walked from Montag's place on Nelson Street down to Mitchell and Forsyth Streets, where I bade Mr. Darley good-bye, and I walked down Mitchell Street to Pryor, where I caught a Georgia Avenue car and rode to the house of Mr. Sig Montag, our General Manager, corner of Glenn and Pryor Streets, and called on Mr. Montag and discussed with him at length and in detail what I had seen that morning and what the detectives had to say. After my conver