The Enemy

Alger Hiss faced his enemy. Last week he sat under the water-drip torture of cross-examination by Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Murphy, the man who is trying to convict him of perjury. If the Government's accusations were true, Hiss had spent 15 years leading an almost incredible double life, and Murphy was set on proving it. Hiss's face showed the strain of the 28 days of the first trial, of the 23 days so far of this one. The strain was also apparent in the frozen, drawn face of Priscilla, his wife, who sat behind the lawyers' cluttered tables in the small, hushed courtroom.

There were no dramatics, only a kind of slow suspense. For most of the participants, and to some extent for Alger Hiss himself, the nation's most celebrated trial had become a kind of mechanical, well-mannered nightmare.

The Quarry. At 10:15 every morning, carrying a rolled-up umbrella, wearing rubbers if there is a hint of rain, punctual Alger Hiss, with his wife, climbs the long front steps of Manhattan's U.S. Court House. Crowded in an elevator with half a dozen reporters, lawyers, jurors, he rides up to the 13th floor. Reporters, long since accustomed to his constant, faintly smiling presence, discuss him calmly within his hearing--in the elevator, in the corridor outside the courtroom, in Andre's restaurant near the old World Building. There the Hisses also go for lunch; the management keeps their table reserved.

In the paneled courtroom are the solemn, bored or curious faces: friends of the Hisses, friends of the lawyers; Alice Roosevelt Longworth; Mrs. Kermit Roosevelt making sketches; one day the new Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr.; a handful of anonymous spectators lucky enough to get in; Judge Henry Goddard, uttering scarcely a word; the wooden-faced male jurors; the lady jurors wearing increasingly frivolous hat styles; Hiss's grey-haired attorney, Claude B. Cross; and dominating the court by sheer size--Hiss's determined adversary.

In every word he rumbles, able Prosecutor Murphy displays his conviction of Hiss's guilt. He rises, puffing out his cheeks a little, eyes on his quarry. Hiss's head on his thin neck is cocked to one side. His only gestures are with his head, which he ducks, shakes, nods, rolls from side to side. His hands are kept folded in his lap; his eyes are fixed steadily on Murphy's face.

The Inexplicable. It was the 24th day of the second trial. Murphy rumbled casually: "Would it embarrass you if I asked you about some of the suicides in your family?" Said Hiss softly: "No." There had been two, his father and his sister? Hiss said: "That is correct."

Methodically, relentlessly, Murphy rumbled on. He read the photostat of a letter written by Hiss. It showed that Hiss had been on intimate terms with Noel Field, once a State Department colleague and also accused of complicity in the Soviet spy ring. Field had vanished behind the Iron Curtain.

Imperturbably, warily, Hiss walked around Murphy's legal traps. He was wanly amused sometimes at Murphy's bristling. Occasionally he himself showed a flash of anger. He argued tirelessly over the usage of words. But his insistence on his innocence never wavered.

Point by point Murphy went over the Government's evidence: the notes in Hiss's handwriting which ex-Communist Courier Whittaker Chambers had had in his possession; the stolen documents which were typed on the Hisses' Woodstock typewriter.

How had Chambers got hold of them? What was inexplicable by Hiss's version of the case, Alger Hiss simply did not try to explain. After four days, Murphy ended his crossexamination, and Hiss stepped down. To the stand came Priscilla Hiss, who this week will face the implacable Murphy.

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