Arrayed behind the jurors, standing, sitting, kneeling in conversation, but compressed like so many sardines, were the less dignified members of the House of Representatives.

Suddenly Abrahams heard a Capitol policeman to his left announce, “Well, fellers, here she goes.”

Abrahams’ gaze swung directly ahead. Everyone on the Chamber floor who had been standing or crouching was now finding a seat. The Acting President pro tempore of the Senate, John Selander, and his colleagues, Hankins and Watson, were marching single file toward the rostrum. Immediately in front of the elevated bench, with the marble counter beneath which the clerks sat, they closed ranks. They passed the empty long oak table and tooled leather chairs at the right of the podium-similar long wooden table and chairs were on the opposite side, and Abrahams remembered these were reserved for the managers-continued past the vacant seat perched between the rostrum and the counter, where the witnesses would sit in turn, and they disappeared through the two doors opened for them. The doors remained open.

The august Chamber was hushed, as if a mammoth blanket had been thrown over it and smothered it. Senators and representatives alike leaned forward attentively. The occupants of the gallery were stilled, craning their necks to see what would come next. The reporters in the front row of their gallery were half on their feet, hanging over the cream-white rail of the balcony.

Through the gaping doors that led from the Senators’ Private Lobby into the Senate Chamber there materialized the lone, erect figure of a patriarch, as imposing and aloof as an austerely draped statue of Eternal Lawfulness and Righteousness. Abrahams recognized him at once. This was Noah F. Johnstone, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, resplendent in his billowing black robe of office. For a fraction of a second, his keen, sunken eyes took in the scene before him, and then, as his committee of escorts, Selander, Hankins, Watson, clustered around him, Chief Justice Johnstone entered the Chamber proper.

Immediately, in a human wave that broke from the front to the back of the auditorium, senators and representatives came respectfully to their feet. In the balcony above, the spectators and journalists also rose.

Gathering the skirt of his judicial robe in one hand, Chief Justice Johnstone climbed to the summit of the rostrum, then wedged himself between his high-backed chair and desk, and waited. His escorts had hurried back to the door, where a second robed figure, the senior Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Irwin Gray, a younger, smaller judge, waited. Speedily, Senator Selander showed him up to the top of the rostrum.

Now the two justices of the Supreme Court were alone, with every pair of eyes upon them. Justice Gray held forth a Bible, and Chief Justice Johnstone placed his right hand upon it and raised his left hand high.

In his rumbling bass, the Chief Justice intoned, “I do solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Douglass Dilman, President of the United States, I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and the laws: so help me God.”

And now Chief Justice Johnstone, dismissing his associate with a nod, settled into the high-backed chair of the presiding officer, and held his silence while the congressmen and visitors and press followed his lead and sat down.

The Chief Justice lifted a heavy gavel, struck it once, and its wooden sound echoed throughout the Chamber.

“The Senate will come to order,” the Chief Justice announced. “Since the senators present did yesterday take the oath required by the Constitution, the Senate is now organized for the purpose of proceeding to the trial of the impeachment of Douglass Dilman, President of the United States. The Sergeant at Arms will make proclamation.”

Chief Justice Johnstone sat back, and directly beneath him the Sergeant at Arms of the Senate, Harold L. Greene, clearing his throat, bellowed out, “Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye! All persons are commanded to keep silence on pain of imprisonment while the Senate of the United States is sitting for the trial of the Articles of Impeachment against Douglass Dilman, President of the United States.”

Immediately after the Sergeant at Arms had lowered himself to his chair, Senator Selander came to his feet from behind his front-row desk. “I move that the Secretary of the Senate notify the managers on the part of the House of Representatives that the Senate is now organized for the purpose of proceeding to the trial of the impeachment of Douglass Dilman.”

The Chief Justice assented with a nod. “Since the rules of proceeding were adopted unanimously by the Senate yesterday, to the effect that the Senate is now organized as a separate and distinct court of judgment rather than as the Senate sitting in its legislative capacity, the Secretary of the Senate may now notify the managers of the House of Representatives that the Senate is ready to receive them.”

As the Secretary of the Senate, officious as a dapper Pekinese, hastened into the Private Lobby, and the Chief Justice pulled at his nose and then inspected his gavel, many members of the Senate fell to putting their heads together and consulting in whispers.

Nat Abrahams touched a wide-eyed, neatly dressed adolescent page boy on the shoulder. “Young man, I’m one of the attorneys for the President. Will you go to the Formal Office of the Vice-President where three of my colleagues are waiting-tell them, ‘Nat Abrahams says it’s time’-and you bring them right here. Do you know your way?”

“Yes, sir!” The page boy was off at a run.

When Abrahams gave his attention to the Chamber again, he saw that the five managers of the House had aligned themselves in a straight row before the bar. The Sergeant at Arms was once more standing, announcing the presence and readiness of the prosecuting managers of the House, and introducing them by name, one by one.

Narrowly, Nat Abrahams studied his opponents in this death struggle. The easiest to identify was their leader, Representative Zeke Miller, because of his semibald head, his cocky spread-legged stance and continually fidgeting fingers, and his customary showy attire, this afternoon an inappropriate (almost defiant) unseemly Glen plaid suit in shades of blue and green. To his right, more conservatively garmented, standing ramrod-straight, was the veteran Majority Leader of the House, Representative Harvey Wickland. Beside him, scratching a thigh, was the gawky, uneasy Minority Leader of the House, Representative John T. Hightower. Next to him stood the stunted, potbellied Representative Seymour Stockton, renowned for his drawling, long-winded oratory. Finally there was the boyish, intellectual, new-breed Southerner (“new-breed meaning they quote University of Virginia geneticists instead of Calhoun to prove Negroes are inferior,” one liberal newspaper had remarked), Representative Reverdy Adams, with his pyramid tuft of hair, thick sideburns, horn-rimmed glasses.

Nat Abrahams counted noses: two Southerners, one Easterner, one Northerner, one Westerner; three Protestants, one Catholic, one Mormon; five graduates of Law Schools who had become politicians and members of the House of Representatives. A formidable and colorful crew, Nat Abrahams decided, thinking of the President’s own managers who were, like himself, relatively staid.

There would be a problem here, Abrahams foresaw: since the Senate was not a usual courtroom, it would be more receptive to emotional argument and pleadings. The House managers had been schooled by countless campaigns to speak the Senate’s language, which was also the people’s language. Dilman’s managers possessed no elective political experience, and their legalistic pleadings might be considerably less effective. Nat Abrahams promised himself to remind Hart, Tuttle, and Priest that they had better incorporate into the wisdom of Blackstone some of the wisdom of such eminent American philosophers as Dale Carnegie, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Bruce Barton, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Robert Ripley, and Artemus Ward.