Produced by Charles Keller
WITHIN THE LAW
From The Play Of Bayard Veiller
By Marvin Dana
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. The Panel of Light
II. A Cheerful Prodigal
III. Only Three Years
IV. Kisses and Kleptomania
V. The Victim of the Law
VI. Inferno
VII. Within the Law
VIII. A Tip from Headquarters
X. A Legal Document
X. Marked Money
XI. The Thief
XII. A Bridegroom Spurned
XIII. The Advent of Griggs
XIV. A Wedding Announcement
XV. Aftermath of Tragedy
XVI. Burke Plots
XVII. Outside the Law
XVIII. The Noiseless Death
XIX. Within the Toils
XX. Who Shot Griggs?
XXI. Aggie at Bay
XXII. The Trap That Failed
XXIII. The Confession
XXIV. Anguish and Bliss
CHAPTER I. THE PANEL OF LIGHT
The lids of the girl's eyes lifted slowly, and she stared at the panel
of light in the wall. Just at the outset, the act of seeing made not the
least impression on her numbed brain. For a long time she continued to
regard the dim illumination in the wall with the same passive fixity
of gaze. Apathy still lay upon her crushed spirit. In a vague way, she
realized her own inertness, and rested in it gratefully, subtly fearful
lest she again arouse to the full horror of her plight. In a curious
subconscious fashion, she was striving to hold on to this deadness
of sensation, thus to win a little respite from the torture that had
exhausted her soul.
Of a sudden, her eyes noted the black lines that lay across the panel
of light. And, in that instant, her spirit was quickened once again. The
clouds lifted from her brain. Vision was clear now. Understanding seized
the full import of this hideous thing on which she looked.... For the
panel of light was a window, set high within a wall of stone. The rigid
lines of black that crossed it were bars--prison bars. It was still
true, then: She was in a cell of the Tombs.
The girl, crouching miserably on the narrow bed, maintained her fixed
watching of the window--that window which was a symbol of her utter
despair. Again, agony wrenched within her. She did not weep: long ago
she had exhausted the relief of tears. She did not pace to and fro in
the comfort of physical movement with which the caged beast finds a
mocking imitation of liberty: long ago, her physical vigors had been
drained under stress of anguish. Now, she was well-nigh incapable of any
bodily activity. There came not even so much as the feeblest moan from
her lips. The torment was far too racking for such futile fashion of
lamentation. She merely sat there in a posture of collapse. To all
outward seeming, nerveless, emotionless, an abject creature. Even
the eyes, which held so fixedly their gaze on the window, were quite
expressionless. Over them lay a film, like that which veils the eyes of
some dead thing. Only an occasional languid motion of the lids revealed
the life that remained.
So still the body. Within the soul, fury raged uncontrolled. For all the
desolate calm of outer seeming, the tragedy of her fate was being acted
with frightful vividness there in memory. In that dreadful remembrance,
her spirit was rent asunder anew by realization of that which had become
her portion.... It was then, as once again the horrible injustice of her
fate racked consciousness with its tortures, that the seeds of revolt
were implanted in her heart. The thought of revenge gave to her the
first meager gleam of comfort that had lightened her moods through many
miserable days and nights. Those seeds of revolt were to be nourished
well, were to grow into their flower--a poison flower, developed through
the three years of convict life to which the judge had sentenced her.
The girl was appalled by the mercilessness of a destiny that had so
outraged right. She was wholly innocent of having done any wrong. She
had struggled through years of privation to keep herself clean and
wholesome, worthy of those gentlefolk from whom she drew her blood.
And earnest effort had ended at last under an overwhelming
accusation--false, yet none the less fatal to her. This accusation,
after soul-wearying delays, had culminated to-day in conviction. The
sentence of the court had been imposed upon her: that for three years
she should be imprisoned.... This, despite her innocence. She had
endured much--miserably much!--for honesty's sake. There wrought the
irony of fate. She had endured bravely for honesty's sake. And the end
of it all was shame unutterable. There was nought left her save a wild
dream of revenge against the world that had martyrized her. “Vengeance
is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord.”... The admonition could not
touch her now. Why should she care for the decrees of a God who had
abandoned her!
There had been nothing in the life of Mary Turner, before the
catastrophe came, to distinguish it from many another. Its most
significant details were of a sordid kind, familiar to poverty. Her
father had been an unsuccessful man, as success is esteemed by this
generation of Mammon-worshipers. He was a gentleman, but the trivial
fact is of small avail to-day. He was of good birth, and he was the
possessor of an inherited competence. He had, as well, intelligence, but
it was not of a financial sort.
So, little by little, his fortune became shrunken toward nothingness,
by reason of injudicious investments. He married a charming woman, who,
after a brief period of wedded happiness, gave her life to the birth
of the single child of the union, Mary. Afterward, in his distress over
this loss, Ray Turner seemed even more incompetent for the management of
business affairs. As the years passed, the daughter grew toward maturity
in an experience of ever-increasing penury. Nevertheless, there was no
actual want of the necessities of life, though always a woful lack of
its elegancies. The girl was in the high-school, when her father finally
gave over his rather feeble effort of living. Between parent and child,
the intimacy had been unusually close. At his death, the father left her
a character well instructed in the excellent principles that had been
his own. That was his sole legacy to her. Of worldly goods, not the
value of a pin.
Yet, measured according to the stern standards of adversity, Mary was
fortunate. Almost at once, she procured a humble employment in the
Emporium, the great department store owned by Edward Gilder. To be
sure, the wage was infinitesimal, while the toil was body-breaking
soul-breaking. Still, the pittance could be made to sustain life, and
Mary was blessed with both soul and body to sustain much. So she merged
herself in the army of workers--in the vast battalion of those that give
their entire selves to a labor most stern and unremitting, and most ill
rewarded.
Mary, nevertheless, avoided the worst perils of her lot. She did not
flinch under privation, but went her way through it, if not serenely, at
least without ever a thought of yielding to those temptations that beset
a girl who is at once poor and charming. Fortunately for her, those
in closest authority over her were not so deeply smitten as to make
obligatory on her a choice between complaisance and loss of position.
She knew of situations like that, the cul-de-sac of chastity, worse
than any devised by a Javert. In the store, such things were matters of
course. There is little innocence for the girl in the modern city.
There can be none for the worker thrown into the storm-center of a great
commercial activity, humming with vicious gossip, all alive with
quips from the worldly wise. At the very outset of her employment, the
sixteen-year-old girl learned that she might eke out the six dollars
weekly by trading on her personal attractiveness to those of the
opposite sex. The idea was repugnant to her; not only from the maidenly
instinct of purity, but also from the moral principles woven into her
character by the teachings of a father wise in most things, though a
fool in finance. Thus, she remained unsmirched, though well informed as
to the verities of life. She preferred purity and penury, rather than a
slight pampering of the body to be bought by its degradation. Among her
fellows were some like herself; others, unlike. Of her own sort, in this
single particular, were the two girls with whom she shared a cheap room.
Their common decency in attitude toward the other sex was the unique
bond of union. In their association, she found no real companionship.
Nevertheless, they were wholesome enough. Otherwise they were
illiterate, altogether uncongenial.
In such wise, through five dreary years, Mary Turner lived. Nine hours
daily, she stood behind a counter. She spent her other waking hours
in obligatory menial labors: cooking her own scant meals over the gas;
washing and ironing, for the sake of that neat appearance which was
required of her by those in authority at the Emporium--yet, more
especially, necessary for her own self-respect. With a mind keen and
earnest, she contrived some solace from reading and studying, since
the free library gave her this opportunity. So, though engaged in
stultifying occupation through most of her hours, she was able to find
food for mental growth. Even, in the last year, she had reached a point
of development whereat she began to study seriously her own position in
the world's economy, to meditate on a method of bettering it. Under this
impulse, hope mounted high in her heart. Ambition was born. By candid
comparison of herself with others about her, she realized the fact that
she possessed an intelligence beyond the average. The training by her
father, too, had been of a superior kind. There was as well, at the back
vaguely, the feeling of particular self-respect that belongs inevitably
to the possessor of good blood. Finally, she demurely enjoyed a modest
appreciation of her own physical advantages. In short, she had
beauty, brains and breeding. Three things of chief importance to any
woman--though there be many minds as to which may be chief among the
three.
I have said nothing specific thus far as to the outer being of Mary
Turner--except as to filmed eyes and a huddled form. But, in a happier
situation, the girl were winning enough. Indeed, more! She was one of
those that possess an harmonious beauty, with, too, the penetrant charm
that springs from the mind, with the added graces born of the spirit.
Just now, as she sat, a figure of desolation, there on the bed in
the Tombs cell, it would have required a most analytical observer to
determine the actualities of her loveliness. Her form was disguised by
the droop of exhaustion. Her complexion showed the pallor of sorrowful
vigils. Her face was no more than a mask of misery. Yet, the shrewd
observer, if a lover of beauty, might have found much for delight, even
despite the concealment imposed by her present condition. Thus, the
stormy glory of her dark hair, great masses that ran a riot of shining
ripples and waves. And the straight line of the nose, not too thin, yet
fine enough for the rapture of a Praxiteles. And the pink daintiness of
the ear-tips, which peered warmly from beneath the pall of tresses. One
could know nothing accurately of the complexion now. But it were easy to
guess that in happier places it would show of a purity to entice, with a
gentle blooming of roses in the cheeks. Even in this hour of unmitigated
evil, the lips revealed a curving beauty of red--not quite crimson,
though near enough for the word; not quite scarlet either; only, a red
gently enchanting, which turned one's thoughts toward tenderness--with
a hint of desire. It was, too, a generous mouth, not too large; still,
happily, not so small as those modeled by Watteau. It was
altogether winsome--more, it was generous and true, desirable for
kisses--yes!--more desirable for strength and for faith.
Like every intelligent woman, Mary had taken the trouble to reinforce
the worth of her physical attractiveness. The instinct of sex was
strong in her, as it must be in every normal woman, since that appeal is
nature's law. She kept herself supple and svelte by many exercises, at
which her companions in the chamber scoffed, with the prudent warning
that more work must mean more appetite. With arms still aching from
the lifting of heavy bolts of cloth to and fro from the shelves, she
nevertheless was at pains nightly to brush with the appointed two
hundred strokes the thick masses of her hair. Even here, in the sordid
desolation of the cell, the lustrous sheen witnessed the fidelity of
her care. So, in each detail of her, the keen observer might have found
adequate reason for admiration. There was the delicacy of the hands,
with fingers tapering, with nails perfectly shaped, neither too dull
nor too shining. And there were, too, finally, the trimly shod feet, set
rather primly on the floor, small, and arched like those of a Spanish
Infanta. In truth, Mary Turner showed the possibilities at least, if not
just now the realities, of a very beautiful woman.
Naturally, in this period of grief, the girl's mind had no concern with
such external merits over which once she had modestly exulted. All
her present energies were set to precise recollection of the ghastly
experience into which she had been thrust.
In its outline, the event had been tragically simple.
There had been thefts in the store. They had been traced eventually to a
certain department, that in which Mary worked. The detective was alert.
Some valuable silks were missed. Search followed immediately. The goods
were found in Mary's locker. That was enough. She was charged with the
theft. She protested innocence--only to be laughed at in derision by
her accusers. Every thief declares innocence. Mr. Gilder himself was
emphatic against her. The thieving had been long continued. An example
must be made. The girl was arrested.
The crowded condition of the court calendar kept her for three months in
the Tombs, awaiting trial. She was quite friendless. To the world, she
was only a thief in duress. At the last, the trial was very short. Her
lawyer was merely an unfledged practitioner assigned to her defense as
a formality of the court. This novice in his profession was so grateful
for the first recognition ever afforded him that he rather assisted than
otherwise the District Attorney in the prosecution of the case.
At the end, twelve good men and true rendered a verdict of guilty
against the shuddering girl in the prisoner's dock.
So simple the history of Mary Turner's trial.... The sentence of the
judge was lenient--only three years!