The power of the prosecutor’s case—to the extent it rested on fact—the power lay in the adamantine refusal of all to believe in Jim’s intelligence. In their ability to ascribe more than an almost preverbal animal responsiveness to him.
“What contempt he must have for whites,” Frank thought.
“He says ‘nawsuh’ and lowers his eyes. And he raped the girl, and killed her, and is killing me, and evades all penalty and all suspicion by saying ‘nawsuh.’”
“Jim did not write the note, for Jim cannot write. Who, then, was the only person capable, placed at the scene? Who …?” the prosecutor had said.
But there were the letters. There was the black girl who had gone to his lawyer’s office and offered to sell the letters Jim had written her.
The handwriting appeared to be the same as in the Mary Phagan note, “man has his way wid me.” And Jim had signed them. There it was. There was the man proved a liar.
“Then,” Frank thought, “if there were only two who could have written the note, and if the writer was the murderer, and if it were shown that Jim wrote …”
But what happened to the letters?
“Love thing, I wants jus to be your man, an …”
Day after day, Frank waited. And he waited till the end of the trial. His requests to his lawyer were answered by the same patient nod of the head.
But the letters never appeared, and the trial ended, and he was sentenced to die.