N V DARLEY, Sworn In For The State, 18th To Testify

N. V. DARLEY, sworn for the State.

My name is N. V. Darley. I am manager of the Georgia Cedar Company, a branch of the National Pencil Company. I have charge of the manufacturing and labor in the Forsyth Street plant. Mr. Sig Montag is my superior. Mr. Frank and I are of equal dignity in the factory. I was at the National Company's factory on Saturday, April 26th. I saw Mr. Frank and left about 9:40 in the morning. I was there Sunday morning at about 8:20. I saw Mr. Frank that morning. Observed nothing unusual when I first saw him. When we started to the basement I noticed his hands were trembling. I observed that he seemed still nervous when he went to nail up the back door. When we started down to nail up the back door he made some remark about having on new clothes or some more clothes and he pulled his coat off to keep it from getting soiled. When we left the station house and started towards Bloomfields he told me why he was nervous. He said that he had not had breakfast and didn't get any coffee and that they had rushed him by Bloomfields, carried him in a dark room and turned the light on and he saw the girl instantly and that was why he was nervous. The elevator was unlocked. I don't know where the key was. Newt Lee seemed to be thoroughly composed. Mr. Frank stated to me in the basement that he thought that the murder was committed in the basement. Mr. Frank stated that it looked easy for the staple to be pulled out and I agreed with him, because the staple looked black and it looked to me as if it had been pulled out before. On Monday Mr. Frank explained again why he was nervous Sunday morning. I heard him speak of the murder numerous times. When we started down the elevator Mr. Frank was nervous, shaking all over. I can't say positively as to whether his whole body was shaking or not, but he was shaking. Newt Lee seemed to be composed when I saw him at the factory. Mr. Frank could have driven the nails in the back door, but I thought I could do it with more ease. Mr. Frank looked pale Sunday morning. I think he seemed upset, but he did some things around the factory there that a man who was completely upset could not have done, I don't think. When riding down to the police station from the pencil factory Mr. Frank was on my knee, he was trembling. I saw the financial sheet on Mr. Frank's desk. Mr. Frank picked it up in his hand. Gantt was at the factory three or four times after he was discharged. My recollection is that Frank said something about the financial sheet on Sunday. It was on May 3rd that Mr. Haas, the insurance man, asked that the factory be cleaned upon the Malsby side and on the other side. When my attention was called to it I noticed something that looked like blood with something white over it at the ladies' dressing room on Monday morning.

CROSS EXAMINATION.

Mr. Quinn called my attention to the blood spots, Barrett called Quinn's attention to it. Barrett showed me some hair on a lever of the lathe. It was 20 or 30 feet from Mary Phagan's machine on the north side of the room. There were no blood spots on it. I don't think anybody could answer how many strands of hair Barrett found. They were wound around the lever. I don't think there were over 6 or 8 at the outside. It was pretty hard to tell the color. It is my understanding that Barrett has been doing most of the discovering done in the building. He has lost quite some time since the murder, and buys quite some extras and reads them. The white stuff practically hid the spots. It looked like there had been an attempt to hide them, but you could see the spots. It looked like the man who tried to hide them, if anybody did, made a smearing motion and left the spots showing. I saw no blood spots on Mary Phagan's machine. There are hundreds of pay envelopes distributed every week in the factory. The rule is that if a person goes outside of the factory and finds an envelope short we do not correct it. As the pay envelopes are distributed they take them and tear them off, just like this one. The employees take the money out and scatter the envelopes all over the factory. On the second floor where the metal room is the main place where you find the pay envelopes. I was present on Sunday morning when the time slip was taken out. I was looking over Mr. Frank's shoulder. Mr. Frank run it down the number side. This time slip (Defendant's Exhibit "I") looks like the one. Mr. Frank looked down the number side and said it was all right and I verified it. I didn't notice between 9:32 and 10:29 if there was any punch, or between 11:04 and 12, or between 2:03 and 3:01. I identify this (Exhibit "I" defendant) by the numbers 6:01 and 6:32. I look over the financial sheets every Saturday afternoon. The factory week runs from Friday morning till Thursday night. The financial sheet is usually completed about 5:30 Saturday afternoon. The financial sheet shows the week's operation of the factory; the production of the factory, the different kinds of pencils that were produced. There are perhaps 75 or 80 different kinds, besides the special imprint pencils. Mr. Frank had to get all the data from the various departments of the factory, particularly the packing room. The cost of production was estimated most of the time as to the merchandise. The other things were real figures. Merchandise is bought by the month and he had to figure it up at the end of the month to get the average. To arrive at the profit that was made during the week he took the actual value of the pencil and the amount of expenses that was paid out for material, labor, etc. He had to get all the data, all the reports and make all those calculations. It usually took him from about half past two or three o'clock on Saturday until five-thirty, and some times later. This financial sheet (Defendant's Exhibit "2") is in Frank's handwriting and is the one I saw on his desk Sunday morning. I left the factory at 9:40 and he hadn't started the financial sheet then. He usually started the financial sheet from 2:30 to 3 o'clock. I am familiar with Frank's handwriting. All of this financial sheet is in his handwriting. To get the figures 2765 1/2, net 2719 1/2, under material cost, he had to look at how many labels had been used, how many boxes, whether they were carton or plain ones, partition, rubbers, amount of lead used and amount of slate used. He got the reports that gave him that data from the different departments of the factory. To arrive at that result is quite a calculation. It is my opinion that it took a skillful, clear-headed man to calculate that. Yes, I am familiar with the elements that enter into that calculation. To arrive at the net results of the figures just named, you have to get the amount of rubbers, tips, lead, wrappers, labels, boxes, whether carton or plain boxes, partition, whether it is cheap or good lead. The 2765 1/2 means 2765 1/2 gross. Further on down you find the different items that make up that figure under the head of wrappers, leads, tips, etc. The next figure is under rubber, 720 gross at 61/2c. Those figures come from the plugging department or he can get them from the goods as they are delivered to the packing room, by knowing the styles and numbers, you can tell whether it is a tipped or untipped pencil. You get that from the shipping room and the other from the metal room. He arrives at the figures on the reports turned in. It requires a good deal of calculation, mostly multiplying. The next figure is under tips, 1374 gross at ten cents. He gets that from the packing room. The ten cents means what the tips cost to produce. That's a stipulated price. The next heading is lead, 747 gross at 15c. and 1955 gross at ten cents. He has to go through these reports the same way except he doesn't have to work the cost of that, it's taken care of in the account. He has to arrive at the number of gross, but the cost is fixed. The next item is supplied at 5c. per gross, boxes 3771 at 2c., assortment boxes 279 at 10c., wrappers 2535 at lc. He gets those reports from the boxes of pencils in the packing room. He gets the reports as to the rubbers and the labels from the packing room. The cost per gross is fixed, but he has to figure out the quantity. The next item is assortment boxes, wrappers, skeletons. The next item, cartons. The next item is pay roll, Bell Street. The next, slats from the slat mills. As the slats are delivered from the slat mill, a report comes with it, and those reports are taken at the end of the week and added up. There are about five of those shipments during the week. He has to take the data that accompanys each shipment and adds all that up at the end of the week. The next item is "pencils packed," (top of sheet). There are 24 itemized here, and the word "jobs" implies I don't know how many different kind of jobs. There are 24 different kind of pencils. He puts them there as having been produced that week. He got the reports as to the quantity of each kind of pencil and had to tabulate all those reports and arrive at the total of each kind. No, I don't think he had to figure out the cost of production of each kind, but he figures the quantity of each kind of pencil and shows its value on the sheet. Starnes and Black and Anderson and Dobbs were there on Sunday morning. We went all over the factory. I don't remember about hearing of any blood being found on Sunday at all. There was a great deal of excitement there that morning. We see spots all over the factory floor. We have varnish spots, and people get their fingers cut, we have every color spots you can think of. I have been working in factories for 24 years. It is a frequent occurrence in establishments where a large number of ladies work that you will see blood spots around dressing rooms. I have seen them a good many times. I have seen it at this factory. Mr. Frank had on a brown suit on Saturday and Monday. On Sunday he had a different suit on. I never noticed any scratches, marks or bruises on Mr. Frank on Sunday. There was a little girl in Mr. Frank's office on Saturday morning, by the name of Miss Mattie Smith, and her sister-in-law's time was wrong and Mr. Frank told her to wait a few minutes and he would straighten it out for her. She had been paid $3. 10 too much, and she gave me back the money when she found it was wrong and I gave it to Mr. Frank and he said he was glad because it balanced his cash. She then started out of the factory and got to the stairway and she came back again and said that her time was wrong the other way, and I said "Little girl will it do all right to straighten it Monday," and she said "Yes. " I then asked her how was her father, and she said, "My father is dying, I think. " Then she spoke to me about getting some assistance from the office for burial expenses, and she commenced to cry and I walked down the steps with her to the front door. That was about 9:20. Mr. Frank stayed at the factory until 9:40, when we left together. We went on up to the corner of Hunter and Forsyth, took a drink of sodawater at Cruickshank's at the corner of Forsyth and Hunter. He left me then and started towards Montag's. That's the last I saw of him until Sunday morning. The elevator box was unlocked Sunday morning, and anybody could have pulled it open and started the elevator. The elevator makes some noise. It is driven by a motor. It makes more noise when it stops at the bottom than when it starts. There is nothing to stop it except when it hits the bottom. I have seen these cords that we tie up slats and pencils with in every part of the factory. I have raised sand about finding them in the basement; they go down in the garbage. There are several truck loads of waste and debris every day. The general cleaning up of the premises was had on Tuesday after the murder. The factory is five stories high, between 150 and 200 feet in length and 75 or 80 feet wide. It is an extremely dirty place. In some places the floor is gummed an inch thick, and in some parts of the metal room it is one eighth of an inch thick, it might not average that all over. It is always dark on the first floor, through the hall toward the elevator. On a cloudy day it is very dark. We keep a light burning there most of the time. I couldn't say whether we had cleaned up all the trash and rubbish around the factory, because there are corners and crevices which we don't usually get to. Saturday, April 26th, was a dark, bad, misty day, until about 9:30. It was cloudy most of the day. It was dark there around the elevator on the first floor and we had big heavy boxes piled up there. One of them must have been almost as large as a piano box. If a man got between those boxes, we would have had to hunt to find him. It is very dark on the second floor between the clock and the metal room. It is dark behind the ladies dressing room and on the side next to the ladies' toilet. As you go to the stairs from the metal room, it is very dark. A person sitting at Mr. Frank's desk in his office could not see anyone coming up those stairs. It would be impossible to see anyone coming up those steps from anywhere in Mr. Frank's inner office, you would have to go outside of it. There is no lock on the metal room doors. In the metal room there are a great many vats and a great many boxes and things containing stock and goods just south of the ladies' dressing room. It is piled up very bad back there. Averaged anywhere from 2 to 6 or 8 feet in height. It isn't used at all except for storage. The metal room contains three or four large vats that have got lids on them. They are shallow, but they are large inside. They are about a foot and a half deep. Nobody is supposed to be in any part of the building on Sunday, that is the only time we don't have a watchman. The factory is supposed to be locked entirely. The elevator steel cables have some slack in them. It isn't like a stiff iron in them. It would shake when you catch hold of it. There are two cables, you pull the right one to come down and the left one to go up. You can catch it and shake it in your hand. Yes, Mr. Frank is a small, thin man, about 125 or 130 pounds. Yes, Mr. Dorsey served a subpoena on me to come down to his office. I didn't know that he did not have any right to subpoena me. Yes, I thought I was being subpoenaed to come into court. They served two subpoenaes on me and sent for me one time. The first time I went there, Chief Lanford, Mr. Dorsey, Mr. Stephens and the stenographer was there. They all asked me questions. One would ask me a question and before I got that answered, another would ask me a question. The next time I went there, Mr. Dorsey, Mr. Starnes, Mr. Campbell and the stenographer were there. Mr. Dorsey did all the questioning this time. When Mr. Frank was engaged on his work in the factory he was very intent on his work, very earnest and industrious. I don't think a day passed at the factory that Mr. Frank did not get nervous. When anything went wrong he would wring his hands and I have seen him push his hands through his hair. When things went wrong it would upset him. If anything out of the ordinary happened I have seen him a thousand times, I suppose, rub his hands. At a factory like this things don't usually go right all day, there is something wrong all the time. When anything went wrong it rattled him and he would frequently call on me to straighten it out. He would show the most nervousness when he would go over to Montag's with the mail, and he would raise sand about something and he would come back very nervous. If Mr. Frank saw anything going wrong inside the factory, he would refer the matter to me. I never saw Mr. Frank speak to Mary Phagan. I don't know whether he knew her or not. I didn't know we had a girl by that name in the factory until I found it out afterwards. The two men working up in the fourth floor all day Saturday could have come to the second floor into the metal room and down into the basement if they wanted to, they had the whole run of the factory. Yes, I have seen all kinds of papers down in the basement. The paper that note is written on is a blank order pad. It is either the carbon or white sheet, one is white and one is yellow. That kind of paper is liable to be found all over the building for this reason, they write an order, and sometimes fail to get the carbon under it, and at other times they have to change the order and tear it out and throw it in the waste basket in the office and from there it gets into the trash. That kind of little pad is used all over the factory. The foreladies make their memorandum on that kind of tablet. You will find them all around. It is one of the biggest wastes around the place. They are all over the building, and any man that worked around the factory or ran the elevator or swept up the different floors would be more likely to come across them than anyone else, because they are thrown on the floor. There was an order to keep the clock door locked, but on this occasion the key was lost and the clock door was open. When I got there Sunday morning the clock door was unlocked. Mr. Frank could not have unlocked it because the key was lost. With the clock door unlocked, anyone who understands the clock, could have punched for all night in five or ten minutes. I made the same mistake Mr. Frank made in thinking that all the punches had been made all right. I looked over the factory at noon today and compared it with some points on this picture (Exhibit "A" for State). This big space in the cellar appears to be short. Those steps in the cellar are much longer in reality. The platform itself is about 15 feet long, and the incline is 17 feet, making 32 feet the length of it. The distance between the walls of Mr. Frank's office and the elevator shaft is 5 feet to 5 1/2 inches. The elevator shaft is ten feet, but on the picture the space between the elevator shaft and Mr. Frank's office looks almost as wide as the elevator shaft itself. One is ten feet and the other is 5 1/2. As to what occasions I recall seeing Mr. Frank nervous, I recall once that he came in one afternoon on a street car when it ran over a little child. He came in about 2:30 and he couldn't work any more on his books until a quarter after four. He trembled just as much on that occasion as he did on the Sunday after Mary Phagan was killed. Another time I remember when I went over to the main factory and he and Mr. Montag had a fuss on the fourth floor. Mr. Montag hollered at him considerably and he was very nervous the rest of the evening, he shook and trembled. He says "Mr. Darley I just can't work," and some of the boys told me he took some spirits of ammonia for his nerves. Everybody was excited in the factory that morning after Mary Phagan was killed. Starnes and Black and Rogers were there and it seems like they were all excited. Looked like everybody was worried. As to another mistake in the picture (State's Exhibit A), the bottom of the ladder in the basement is much closer to the elevator than what is shown on the picture. It is about 6 feet. On the picture it looks to be about 10 feet and the toilet in the basement is closer to the wall than the picture shows, it is right up against the wall. The picture doesn't show the Clarke Woodenware partition back of the elevator. The door to the Clarke Woodenware Company also is closer to the elevator than the picture shows. On the stairs from the first to the second floor there are double doors instead of single doors as shown on the picture. The picture shows up Frank's inner office a good deal larger than the other office. As a matter of fact the outer office is larger. The outer office is 12 feet 4 inches wide. The inner office ten feet 3. The picture shows a great big wide place for a door between the inside office and the outside office, making it look like a double door. That is a representation to show a full view from Frank's desk into the hall, as a matter of fact it is a single door, standard size. It looks like it was drawn to open up a space to give as much view as possible out into the hall. The safe is shown to be about half its real size on this picture. On the picture it is shown to be about one-third the width of the door, as a matter of fact it is about the same size. When the safe door is open, it shuts off three-fourths of the view from Frank's office out into the hall, unless you stand up high enough to look over it. The picture also shows the south wall of the outer office on a line with the clock. The picture doesn't show up the wardrobe in the inner office, nor the two cabinets that are in there. I don't think it is a very accurate picture. It opens up Frank's inner office a whole lot better than it really opens up. Sitting at Frank's desk and looking out through the door towards the clock, in reality you have a looking space of only 25 inches. You can just see about four numbers on clock number 2. You could not see anywhere near the stair case, or in the neighborhood of it.

RE-DIRECT EXAMINATION.

I felt nervous from the time they told me the girl was dead, until I left the building. I was not trembling; I was simply excited and worried. Well, Starnes was nervous. He looked as if he were worried. He seemed nervous both in talk and manner. I can say the same thing of the rest of the officers who were there. Mr. Frank was more nervous than the others. The men were all about as nervous on Monday and Tuesday. Everybody seemed to be in a turmoil and shaking. Mr. Holloway and Mr. Schiff were shaking. I noticed Mr. Schiff's hands shaking Monday morning. Mr. Holloway was about in the same shape. Mr. Frank was very nervous Tuesday after the extra came out saying that they were going to arrest him. That was about 15 or 20 minutes before they arrested him. As to who gets up the data for Mr. Frank for the financial sheets, Mr. Loeb some times, and Mr. Gantt used to get up some, and Mr. Schiff gets it up sometimes. Mr. Frank got it up himself, sometimes. No, I do not know that Mr. Schiff furnished it to him all the time. I never noticed whether Lee was nervous or not at any time, but of course, he looked bothered and worried. Mr. Frank told me that the slip he took out of the clock Sunday morning had been punched regularly. I made the same mistake standing right there by his side. I didn't see Mr. Frank date the slip. It ought to have been dated the 26th. The slip I saw didn't have any time on it except the watchman's time. I don't know whether I would know it or not, to identify. The slips are not made in duplicate. As to whether there is any mark on the slip to enable any one to identify it, as the one taken out that night, my memory is that it was started at 6:01 or 6:32. Of course nobody could tell who punched the clock, one man's punch is just like another. That diagram or picture (State's Exhibit A) is a fair representation of the building as a whole, it is not a fair representation of the interior. I never knew there were any stairs in the basement until this matter came up. They are never used to my knowledge. There is a way of closing the door in rear of second floor from upstairs. The regular place of keeping these order blank books is in the outer office. There is no regular place in the basement to keep paper, but it is thrown out in the waste basket and gets down in the trash. There is no use for that paper anywhere but in the office, but that doesn't prevent it from being scattered around. I have scratch pads of that shape scattered around even in the basement. That scratch pad is used all over the factory, everywhere there is a foreman or a forelady. No, not in the area around the elevator there. The trash is carried downstairs right in front of the boiler. Sometimes if they are in a hurry they leave it around the elevator for a little while, and when I go down I make the negro move it to the boiler. It is usually burned. Some of it may stay there for a week, some of it burned right away.

RE-CROSS EXAMINATION BY DEFENDANT.

Montag and Frank merely had some words when Frank became so nervous. Schiff was trembling Monday, Holloway also, I noticed Miss Flowers began to cry and scream and I had to go in there and get hold of her myself. That was Tuesday morning. The whole factory was wrought up. I couldn't hardly keep anybody at work. I had to let them go on Monday, and I wished I had let them go for the rest of the week, for I couldn't get any work out of them. I wouldn't say that I couldn't get any work out of Christopher Columbus Barrett, since, but he has lost a good deal of time. I would have to look to the pay roll to tell.