(2 of 3)
A.—I left for a short walk in the afternoon, after Miss Betty Gow had arrived from Englewood to take care of the baby. . . . After I returned from my walk I walked around from the driveway under his window and tried to look for him. I attracted the attention of Miss Betty Gow by throwing a pebble up to the window, and she then held the baby up to the window to let him see me.
Second stone:
Q.—Do you recall your walking on the wooden walk, or did you get off of it?
A.—I walked from the driveway along by the side of the house where it was quite muddy. . . .
Q.—You say you did walk in the mud there?
A.—Yes.
Third stone:
Q.—Now you have told us about the sleeping suit, and if I may be defensively leading for a minute, did the child have any thumb protectors on? . . .
A.—Yes, he had. It is a wire thumb guard which had a piece of tape through the sides of it and was fastened around the wrist of the sleeping suit on the outside.
The prosecution placed the following value on these three bits of testimony from Mrs. Lindbergh:
By exhibiting the baby at the window, Nurse Gow and Mrs. Lindbergh paraded the fact to any kidnapper lurking in the neighborhood that the child was in the house, at the same time giving the snatcher a good notion of the nursery's location. The prosecution plans to bring witnesses to the stand who will swear they saw Hauptmann lurking in the neighborhood.
Mrs. Lindbergh's footprints in the mud explain the mysterious "woman's" tracks which led investigators at first to believe the snatcher had a female accomplice. The State now contends that Hauptmann did the job alone.
The fact that the baby's thumb guard was tied outside the night dress indicates that the snatcher would have to remove the thumb guard to remove the sleeping garment. The thumb guard was found some 3,000 ft. from the Lindbergh house. Therefore, contends the State, the child was probably killed when the ladder broke, its corpse stripped shortly after the kidnapper left the house. The sleeping suit was used as an earnest of good faith by the writer of the ransom notes, which the State's handwriting experts will attribute to Hauptmann.
Father. Col. Lindbergh was the State's third witness. When he took the witness chair, reporters' eyes popped wide with amazement to see that the aviator was wearing a revolver in a shoulder holster under his loose-fitting coat. Oldtime newshawks recalled that the flyer had been carrying a gun for five years, ever since cranks began sending him threatening letters.
He, too, did much to bolster Prosecutor Wilentz's case. At about 9:10 or 9:15 on the night of the snatching, Col. Lindbergh recalled, he had heard a noise which might have come from the kitchen and remarked to his wife: ''What is that?"
Q.—Was it the sort of noise that would come from the falling of a ladder?
A.—Yes, it was, if the ladder was outside.
Resuming the stand next day, Col. Lindbergh continued the tale of his ordeal up to the time of the ransom payment. And here Attorney General Wilentz considered that he had scored the biggest point of the trial's first week.