"Your Witness, Mr. Murphy"

Lawyer Lloyd Stryker's voice lifted in pride and reverence last week. "Call Mr. Justice Felix Frankfurter," he said. Dressed in an ordinary brown suit but robed in his uncommon prestige, little Justice Frankfurter stepped to the stand. He had come from the Supreme Court to Manhattan to be a character witness for Alger Hiss, his onetime Harvard law student, on trial in Federal Court for perjury. The Government had rested and Alger Hiss had begun his defense.

Few defendants in a criminal case had ever had more impressive assistance. Justice Frankfurter adjusted his glasses and cleared his throat. "I will rely on Your Honor to keep me within bounds," he told Federal Judge Samuel H. Kaufman. "Of course, sir," beamed Judge Kaufman.

Yes, Hiss had been a member of the Harvard Law Review, Justice Frankfurter told Lawyer Stryker. Yes, members of the Review were certainly young men of "intelligence, character and ability." In 1929, Harvard Professor Frankfurter had picked Hiss to serve as law clerk for the late great Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Still robed in his prestige, little Justice Frankfurter left the stand--to be followed by egg-bald Supreme Court Justice Stanley Reed, under whom Hiss had served when Reed was solicitor general. Like Frankfurter--and like Illinois' Governor Adlai Stevenson and Ambassador-at-large Philip Jessup, both of whom testified by written deposition--Reed agreed that Alger Hiss was a man of "loyalty, integrity and veracity."

An Old Woodstock. Against those imposing character witnesses was the prosecution's vastly detailed case, based chiefly on the evidence of the stolen State Department documents in the possession of Whittaker Chambers, onetime Communist espionage agent. Some of those papers were admittedly in Alger Hiss's own handwriting. All but one of the rest had been typed (according to an FBI expert) on an old Woodstock typewriter which had once belonged to Hiss. The defense turned to the documentary evidence.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Murphy watched vigilantly as Hiss's lawyers called an elderly colored woman to the witness stand. She was Mrs. Claudie ("Clytie") Catlett, onetime Hiss housemaid. The Hisses, she testified casually, had once given her children "an old typewriter."

Excited murmuring filled the courtroom. The point was obvious: if the defense could prove that the Hisses did not even have the typewriter when the documents were typed (in the early months of 1938), Hiss's case would look fairly secure. Mrs. Catlett's young son, Mike, recalled that it was an old Woodstock. From under the defense table, Defense Lawyer Edward McLean dramatically dragged a battered machine. Was this it? Mike pecked at a couple of keys and decided that it was.

On crossexamination, Prosecutor Murphy went after the Catletts relentlessly. When did the Hisses give them the machine? Mrs. Catlett's memory proved vague on the point. Her son Pat placed the time at around December 1937. Shortly after he got it he had taken the machine to a shop on K Street to be repaired. Murphy roared at Pat: "What if I told you that the shop on K Street wasn't opened for business until September 1938?" Pat said finally: "I don't know the time."

Minor Statesman. Then Alger Hiss took the stand. Neat and grave in a crisp summer suit, he was sworn in. He was not and he had never been a Communist; he had never given Chambers any documents, he said. He modestly recounted the story of his life and the many achievements in his successful career, from Harvard to the State Department where he served eleven years--to Dumbarton Oaks where he kept the records of the conference--to Yalta where, in the words of Stryker, he "was privy to the security arrangements for our President"--to the San Francisco meeting where the United Nations was born. There he had worked with the world's statesmen: Marshall, Smuts, Eden, Soong. The pages of history turned in the federal courtroom. Here was a minor but respected actor in those great events, smiling diffidently.

Stryker broke in once: "I'm having a hard time . . . because you are so modest, Mr. Hiss . . . Who brought the U.N. charter back to the President?"

"I was the one picked," said Hiss.

Friend Crosley. "Now tell his Honor . . . when you first met the person who now calls himself Chambers."

Ten months ago, before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Hiss had answered the same kind of questions with careful equivocation. He had admitted knowing Chambers as "George Crosley" only after being confronted with overwhelming evidence of Chambers' past relations with him and after seeing him in the flesh and looking in his mouth. He had hedged virtually every statement then. But now he answered sharply and unequivocally as Stryker questioned him.

He retold his story of a casual relationship with a journalist whom he said he knew only as "Crosley." He had befriended Crosley by subletting him his apartment, and even, for a few days, taking Crosley, his wife and child into his own house. He reiterated his story that he had made Crosley a present of his 1929 Ford. On many occasions he had lent his casual acquaintance small sums of money. Finally, in May or June of 1936, he had broken off "any further contacts" with Crosley who still owed him rent and some $25 in small loans.

New Impressions. He had never seen "Crosley" again until he was confronted with Chambers in August. Chambers was never, "with my permission," in the Volta Place, Georgetown, house which Hiss occupied in 1938.

Neither Hiss nor his wife had ever typed any of the secret documents, he insisted. Any number of people had had access to his office while he was in the State Department. He altered one detail of his previous story. He had told the Grand Jury in December that his "impression" was that he had had the old Woodstock when he lived at Volta Place. His impression had changed. What had changed it? The information he had got from the Catletts, he said.

"You have entered your plea of not guilty," Stryker said. With hands on the arm of his chair and face lifted, Hiss said in a firm voice: "I am not guilty." Said Stryker: "Your witness, Mr. Murphy."

This week, big Tom Murphy began his patient, laborious cross-examination of the well-vouched-for Alger Hiss.

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