Word: algers
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...first 13 days of its second run in Manhattan's federal court, the perjury trial of Alger Hiss had progressed with a singular absence of melodrama. Whittaker Chambers spent seven days as a witness, much of the time under crossexamination, stepped down with both his testimony and his Buddha-like calm intact. His shocking tale was corroborated as before by his wife and a long list of Government witnesses. Voices were seldom raised; time and repetition had lent a curious matter-of-factness to an incredible affair...
...well of a federal courtroom in Manhattan sat the tall man in the neat suit, motionless but intent. Beside him sat his wife. For the better part of three days last week the eyes of the pair-Alger and Pris cilia Hiss-were fixed on the man in the witness chair...
Their accuser, Whittaker Chambers, quietly went back over his old story: that Alger Hiss, a trusted government official facing trial for the second time on a charge of perjury, had fed secret documents into ex-Communist Courier Chambers' spy ring. But to the familiar mosaic he added a few sharp, new fragments...
Arrangement with Peters. Bit by bit during previous congressional hearings, Alger Hiss had admitted knowing Chambers more than just casually as a magazine writer around Washington; finally he had admitted giving Chambers, his wife and daughter temporary haven in his home. Now Chambers reconstructed again a story of close intimacy between the two families, adding new details, recounting trips he had taken with the Hisses...
...opening address, Attorney Cross indicated that a minor witness in the first trial might play a major role in this one. Cross declared that he would prove that it was not Alger Hiss but another former State Department employee, Henry Julian Wadleigh, who had fed the controversial State Department documents to ex-Communist Courier Whittaker Chambers. The defense had hinted the same thing in the first trial, but could not make it stick. Preliminaries over, Chambers took the stand...