of the conclusions of a young doctor who examined Brokoski’s body
after it had grown cold. He accepted Whalen’s guilt as an established
fact. He assumed that the bullet entered at the breast. There was then
nothing to do but to trace its course through the tissues of the body.
If his views were correct, the ball would have lodged somewhere behind
Brokoski.”
“But it flew out into the alley,” argued the governor, “and shattered
the window in doing so.”
“True,” assented Gilman, “and yet you assume all the while that Whalen
fired the shot. Of course the circumstances attending the tragedy, the
occasion, the quarrel, Whalen’s flight, and the finding of his gun,
lent strong color to that presumption.”
“But the shattered window,” the governor interpolated.
“Yes, and the shattered window. Now,” he continued, “a surgeon,
experienced in gunshot wounds, might have been able to distinguish
in such a wound as Brokoski’s, the point of the missile’s entrance
from the point of exit. Of course it is not certain. The youth the
police called did not think such an inquiry important, whereas it was
vital. A pistol fired point-blank at a man would blacken his breast
with powder. The velocity of the ball, fired at such range might have
been sufficient to knock the man over backward, instead of allowing
him to fall upon his face as he did. Then, there’s the window. It was
shattered, the police said, by the ball. Even the glass in the upper
sash was broken. The frame on the outside was blackened by powder, the
stains even now being visible. Now, a bullet flying the distance it
must have traversed between Whalen’s hand and the window, would, in all
probability, simply have perforated the glass with a round, clean hole.
But the weapon having been fired in close proximity, the concussion
shattered the whole window.”
After a silence Gilman resumed:
“Now then, assume that the bullet entered Brokoski’s back and emerged
from his breast. The conclusion deduced from the circumstances I have
suggested, is impregnable when that bullet is located in a position in
front of Brokoski.”
During the recital the governor lay in his deep chair, his arms across
his breast, his finger-tips together. He regarded Gilman through
half-closed eyes. A thoughtful observer would have said that he had
heard the essential elements of the tale before. When he spoke, after a
silence which had begun to annoy the private secretary, he said:
“Well, your hypothesis is tenable. In fact, it is one of the prettiest
cases I ever saw put together.”
Gilman stirred uneasily.
“But did you learn anything as to the identity of the person, who, if
your suppositions are correct, killed Brokoski?”
“That’s the weak point,” Gilman promptly admitted. “A sufficient motive
is utterly lacking, if we eliminate partisan hatred. It was shown that
Whalen killed him in an impulse of passion, and that alone saved him
from the death penalty. But I feel that my reasoning is valid. The
conviction was strengthened by Whalen’s manner and expression the other
day. He never killed Brokoski, I tell you.” Gilman smote his thigh for
emphasis. “Why he chooses to die in prison a silent martyr I don’t
know--but the woman does.”
The governor assumed a sitting posture.
“Damn it!” exclaimed Gilman, after a momentary silence, “if those
stupid police had examined the mud in the alley beneath the window that
night, they would have found tracks that would have changed the course
of this whole business.”
The governor bent farther forward, burying himself in an intense
concentration of mind. For a time interminable to Gilman, he sat thus.
His cigar went out. The ice in his glass melted, spun on the crystal
brim, and sank with a tiny splash and tinkle. The little pile of burned
cigarettes, the black ends of consumed cigars, the mass of tobacco ash
deposited in a whisky glass, absorbed its tepid liquid, and stunk.
The room grew chill, and the mists of the fountain which played in
mournful solitude beneath the rocking elms in the grounds, permeated
the atmosphere. The brooding night added her terrors and her cares.
Gilman took a sip of liquor, lighted a fresh cigarette, rose, and
walked up and down the room. He thought of the election, so near at
hand. He looked at the governor bowed there before him. What was
Whalen, or the woman, or anybody to him? Let the prisoner die! What
was he to the governor? John Chatham’s party needed him, his country
needed him, his time needed him, mankind and human progress needed
him. If he pardoned Whalen, what was to become of him? The conviction
of Brokoski’s murderer alone could save him from such apparent
stultification, here on the eve of an election at which, in the foolish
phrase of modern politics, he sought vindication. Was this conviction
possible? The bare thought halted Gilman beside the governor. He laid a
hand on his shoulder.
“These abstruse propositions wouldn’t stand before a jury in a criminal
court,” he said. “Let Whalen stay.”
The governor lifted his head.
“But you just now said that he was not Brokoski’s murderer.”
Gilman hesitated. When he spoke, he said:
“A jury of twelve sworn men has said that he is.”
* * * * *
Two days after the private secretary’s return, the newspapers were full
of stories concerning his movements. Whalen’s picture was exploited,
correspondents sought the governor for interviews, and the _Courier_
charged that, in his desperation, he intended to pardon Whalen, that
he might have, in his campaign, the assistance of that skilled and
unscrupulous manipulator. The pack of country newspapers took up the
_Courier’s_ cry. Whalen’s illness was either ignored, or referred to as
feigned, at the direction of prison authorities and the governor. And
yet a certificate pigeonholed in Gilman’s desk, signed by the prison
physician, stated that Thomas Whalen had pulmonary tuberculosis and was
in a moribund condition.
In his office in the city William Handy, the chairman of the state
central committee, read these newspaper stories, and swore as he did
so. That night the shrewdest and maddest politician in the state stole
out of town. The next morning Gilman was surprised when the big man
burst through the door marked “private,” brushed by him and entered,
unannounced, the governor’s chambers. Before the stately door swung to
behind him, Gilman heard him demand:
“What’s all this I hear about your pardoning Tom Whalen?”
The private secretary did not hear the governor’s reply, for with
deliberate step he had crossed the room and closed the door. He heard
nothing clearly, for Handy’s voice came to him smothered, and the
governor’s not at all. Once he thought he heard “mawkish sentiment,”
and “the action of a political imbecile,” but what he mostly
distinguished was muffled profanity. The young man for the first time
in his experience was delighted when his bell buzzed just then. When
he entered upon the scene, the governor, rocking complacently in his
high-backed chair, was saying:
“But what if it’s my duty?”
“Duty be damned!” shouted Handy, rising to his feet, and smiting the
desk with a heavy fist he had had folded during the conversation. The
wrath which the politician had kept bottled up overnight had burst out
at last.
“I am running this campaign,” he cried, “and as long as I do run it,
I do not propose to tolerate such incredible folly as pardoning Tom
Whalen.”
Gilman, wide-eyed, gazed in amaze at the two men. Handy stood glaring
at the governor, his fist fastened where it had fallen. The governor’s
lips were tightly compressed. A sheet of scarlet swept over his dark
face. Both men were strong-willed. The tensity of such a moment
could not long endure. Its contagion spread to Gilman’s nerves. The
governor’s splendid frame seemed to dilate, and Gilman suddenly became
conscious that the admiration he had always given the man had never
before measured up to the fullness of John Chatham’s deserts. It was
with relief that he saw the governor’s glance turn from Handy to bend
on him.
“Gilman,” he said, “have a pardon made out for Thomas Whalen.”
This answer to Handy’s threats was punctuated by a flash from the
governor’s eyes.
“And Gilman--” the governor continued.
“Yes, sir.”
“Wire that woman--what’s her name?”
“Barry?”
“Yes--Barry--wire her to come. I think I shall prefer to tell her
myself.”
Handy dropped, heavy with exhaustion, into his chair. He tried to
speak, but had trouble with his articulation. When he mastered his
tongue, he could only blurt:
“Now you have done it, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” said the governor in gentle assent, “I have done it.” The sigh
that ended this remark was one in which a heart-burdening care was
dissipated. It was a sigh that resolved a vast difficulty.
When the woman came the next morning, Gilman led her at once into the
governor’s presence. Before him lay a large document, lettered in
preposterous script, lined in red ink. The woman knew this imitation
parchment to be the pardon of Thomas Whalen. The governor rose and
stood until she had seated herself, and then said, drawing the pardon
on the desk to him, “I have decided to grant the application for
Whalen’s pardon.”
The woman’s fingers clawed the carved arms of the chair. Gilman stared
with parted lips. The governor continued as he hastily scanned the
pardon:
“I take this action because circumstances recently revealed lead me to
believe that Whalen is innocent.”
The governor dipped his pen in the ink.
“They form a very abstruse proposition,” he said, poising his pen
nicely in his fingers, “and I am not sure that every one can grasp it.”
The governor spoke meditatively. The two persons in the room silently
regarded him. Something in the man, in the moment, impelled awe. He set
his hand to the paper to write, but paused an instant longer. His eyes
wandered from the document. As he raised them over her, the woman bowed
her head. Out through the open window, out through the summer morning,
over the wimpling foliage of the trees, far, far away they gazed. And
then he sighed, as a woman sighs, and turning, signed the pardon of
Thomas Whalen. A moment he sat still as an ancient statue, and then
dropping the pen on the desk, he turned toward Gilman with a smile. The
action relieved the young man from the spell which bound him.
“Are you going before the people with that story I worked up?” he cried.
Fiercely, without awaiting a reply to a question already answered, he
wheeled on the woman.
“Do you see what he has done? He has given up all--he has killed
himself! He says Whalen is innocent--and doesn’t even know upon whom to
fasten suspicion! Don’t you--my God, woman--can’t you see?”
Slowly the situation was borne in upon her understanding. Her mouth
opened with a gasp, her eyes widened.
“Why!” she said, jerking her words from a choking throat. “He knows who
did it. I told him. It was--me.”
The door latch clicked behind her. She turned in the direction whence
came the sound, and repeated, as if the interrupter contradicted her:
“Yes, I did it. I killed Brokoski.”
Her strength failed her. She sobbed convulsively.
“Yes--I--did--it,” she repeated. “I--did--it.”
Gilman stared in wonder. Here, then, was the person who had stood
in the alley beneath the window that night, whose footprints would
have led him to the solution of his mystery, to the end of his clever
chain. The problem of her motive for slaying Brokoski alone remained.
He longed to ask her, but she had collapsed unconscious in her chair.
Turning to the governor he implored light. A word informed him of the
accidental killing of Brokoski by a jealous woman who was trying to
shoot his vis-à-vis. Then he demanded in tones reproachful:
“Why did you not tell me this?”
“Because,” the man quietly responded, “I do not war on women.”
The door whose latch had clicked had opened wide, and William Handy
entered, smiling.
Governor Chatham was assorting papers on his desk, as a man would whose
routine work had received a trifling interruption. Handy remained on
his feet.
“John,” he said, “John, I take off my hat to you. I admire your nerve.
I recognized it years ago, that day you presided over our convention
in the old seventh district--remember?--the day you turned me down so
hard. Remember?”
The governor smiled.
“This ain’t flattery,” said Handy, seating himself in a leather chair.
“You’re not only all I’ve said, you’re a devil of a good fellow to
boot.”
Handy spoke seldom. He never wrote letters, but sent word, according
to an ancient maxim uttered by one of the political fathers. But when
he did speak, he spoke bluntly, in the same tone in which he would
have called a man a liar. The governor raised his hand to stay Handy’s
compliments.
“Yes, John,” he persisted. “You’re a hell of a good fellow, but,” he
added, “you’re a damn poor politician.”
There was the faintest shadow of a smile on the governor’s face. Handy
closed his eyes until they were the merest slits. He puffed his cigar
back to life.
His head was wrapped in scarfs of smoke.
“When does the grand jury sit?” he inquired, after a time.
“Not till the December term.”
“We can have a special one impaneled. I’ll have Donnelly call it.”
Donnelly was a judge of dignity and erudition, and Handy spoke of him
as if he were his hired man, which he was.
“The boys’ll be glad to get Tom back in the nineteenth. O’Rourke says--”
“Look here, Handy,” said the governor, whirling about in his chair,
and speaking as sharply as a precinct captain at a primary. “I want
none of Tom Whalen’s work in the nineteenth--not while I’m running for
governor. But then,” he added gravely, “he’s only going back to the
nineteenth to die.”
Handy grunted. “Well, I’ll have Fitzgerald pinch the girl anyway, and
keep her in the Division Street station till after election.”
The governor looked at Handy. “William,” he said, “you might as well
understand now, that that would be wholly useless. I am convinced
of Whalen’s innocence absolutely, beyond all doubt, but it will be
impossible to get a jury to convict the one who did kill Brokoski on
such evidence as convinced me.”
“But she confesses,” urged Handy.
“To whom?”
“To you.”
“Exactly. But what if that confession be a privileged communication?”
Handy looked up in amazement. “You don’t mean you wouldn’t testify?”
The governor’s countenance lost its legal expression, and became
suddenly human. If Handy had been a thinner man he would have jumped
when the governor said:
“Do you think I would send a woman to the penitentiary to elect myself
governor?”
“Are you sure confessions to a governor are privileges?” inquired
Handy, who was adhering to practical things.
The governor’s face put on its legal mask again, and he replied:
“Well, the question is unsettled--”
“Who presides in the criminal court this winter?” inquired Handy,
“any of our fellows?” Handy’s whole philosophy of life was pull. The
governor resumed, without answering:
“The question has never been decided. Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, upon
the trial of Aaron Burr, ruled, if I remember, that a _subpœna duces
tecum_ might be issued to the president for a letter addressed to him,
leaving the question of the production of the letter--”
“Oh, say, John,” broke in Handy, “Burr’s dead, isn’t he? And he wasn’t
a good fellow, anyway, or he’d never got in that far. Go on with your
legalities--I myself do not propose to go to jail for contempt for
refusing to testify.”
“You?”
“Yes, me.”
“What have you to do with it?”
“Oh, nothing much,” said Handy, “only I happened to be inside that
door just now when she confessed--and there’s Gilman besides.” Handy,
his cigar tilted upward, smoked on voluminously and smiled through the
smoke with deep satisfaction. The governor averted his face. Lines of
trouble drew themselves across his brow. Presently he turned to the
chairman.
“Handy,” he said, “I may be reëlected and I may not--probably not.
However that may be, I insist upon this: I want that woman, for the
present, let alone. I have faith in the people. I am willing to go
to them on my record. They may or may not reëlect me. I shall not,
at any rate, have my motives impugned. I only want, when the turmoil
has subsided, when the subject can be viewed with clear eyes and
investigated by clear heads and clean hands, to see justice done.”
“Oh,” said Handy, “to hell with justice.”
“Well, then,” asked the governor, “what do you say to a little mercy
now and then?”
THAT BOY
It must have been sometime in the winter or spring of 1891 that I first
saw him. I had just been elected to the legislature. It was the famous
Reform Session, you will remember, that proved to be of such benefit
to stenographers and space writers. During the six months that general
assembly lasted I lived at the St. James hotel. It is probable that I
first saw the boy behind the counter of the cigar stand in the lobby of
the hotel. It is probable that I had seen and spoken to him many times
before I gave him any especial notice. What first arrested my attention
was a law book. I had stopped at the cigar stand one evening after
dinner to get some cigars, and as he rose to attend upon my wants, he
took the book from his lap and laid it down upon the counter. While
he was under the counter getting out a box of the brand I wished--for
I never relish, somehow, cigars taken from a show case--I turned the
book over and idly looked at its title. I remember very well that it
was Reeves’ _History of the English Law_. It struck me as rather odd
that a boy behind a cigar stand should be reading such a book. It was
not a book that law students, in my state, at any rate, generally read.
I know that I never read it (through) and probably never shall read it,
although it is, of course, a wise and ancient book. I asked him why he
read it.
“Why,” he said, “I’m studying law!”
As I lighted a cigar, I looked at the boy. He was tall and overgrown,
and thin with his overgrowth, with spare wrists that thrust themselves
out of frayed cuffs. His face was sallow, and he was not good to
look upon. His clothes were worn bare to the threads. He had every
appearance of being poor, almost hungry. I fancy I disliked him.
“When do you expect to be admitted?” I asked casually.
“Oh,” he replied, blithely enough, “in two or three years. Then I go
into politics.”
This, I have said, was in 1891. If anything impressed me, it was the
hopelessness of it all.
In 1893, early in the summer, I went down to the capital to argue a
case at the June term of the supreme court. In the evening, after
a hard day in court, I strolled out Lafayette Street to mollify my
nerves. Toward the edge of the town I saw a thin youth walking with a
girl. The girl wore a white dress. The evening was balmy. The moon was
shining. The lilacs were in bloom, and their odor was on the air. As we
passed each other, the youth’s appearance struck me as familiar. At the
time I thought that he was the boy who used to tend the cigar stand in
the St. James, and read Reeves’ _History of the English Law_, whom I
had naturally forgotten.
In the spring of 1898--I remember the time, not, of course, because it
has anything to do with the boy but because we were then engaged in the
track elevation cases--I went over to the Gregory Building one morning
to see Judge Goodman, in order to get him to consent to the Updegraff
case going over the term. That was a case which involved the doctrine
of merger, and I needed some additional time for preparation.
As I entered the offices of Goodman, Peck, Gilmore and Eckhart,
I turned to the office boy, who was sitting near the door at the
futile little desk all office boys occupy, and on which they scribble
mysterious things, to ask whether the judge was in. When I spoke to the
boy he looked up and smiled and called me by name. He seemed to be, for
some reason, glad to see me, as if I had been some one from home. In
fact, he said:
“Have you been down lately?”
I examined him quite attentively for an instant. He had half risen from
his chair, and stood, or hung, in an awkward attitude over his desk.
Presently I recognized him as the boy who used to tend the cigar stand
in the hotel at the state capital, and read Reeves’ _History of the
English Law_. I asked him what he was doing in the city.
“Why,” he said, in apparent surprise at my question, “I’m practising
law!”
His eyes, in his pale face, dilated with a childish pride, until they
were large and round and brilliant. He had drawn himself quite erect,
and now he waved his hand toward the wall, and there I saw, in a new
oak frame, the old familiar law license the supreme court issues to
poor devils with illusions. There it was, bearing the seal of the
court and the signatures of the seven justices. I read the boy’s
name, written on the imitation parchment. It was the first time I had
ever known what he called himself. I was amused by his having had his
license framed.
“So you are in Judge Goodman’s office, are you?” I said, rather
ineptly, to be sure, but merely to have something to say.
He made the obvious reply, and spoke of Judge Goodman’s kindness to
him. I asked him how he was getting along.
“Well,” he replied, “rather slowly, of course--just at first, you
know. But then I think if I can stick it out a while--say five or six
years--I’ll be all right.”
I kept on looking at the old familiar law license, and thinking of my
own. I have not seen it for years. I think my wife has it somewhere,
in a tin tube with the diplomas and our marriage certificate and her
father’s discharge from the army and other family charters, if it is
not lost.
Then--for I felt that I should say something--I asked him how everybody
was in the capital.
“I don’t get down any more,” he said; “it costs, you know.”
And then he was silent, and I did not care to look in his eyes. I
noticed that the black cravat he had on was very old, and worn through
in places. Also that he was actually out at the elbows, as to the right
arm at least, for there, in the sleeve, was a ragged hole that showed
the soiled lining of his coat. Presently the boy said:
“When you go down, tell them you saw me, won’t you?”
Of course it was presumptuous in him, but I thought of those five or
six years. In that time he would learn--that and other things. Just
then Judge Goodman stuck his head out of his private room.
* * * * *
I happened to go to the capital in May of that year. We were then at
war, you will remember. I told the man who kept the cigar stand in the
lobby of the St. James that I had seen the boy in the city, that he was
practising law there, and wished to be remembered to his friends. I
think I told him, also, that the boy was doing well, and already making
a favorable impression upon many of the older and more prominent
members of the bar. But the man shook his head and responded:
“Why, haven’t you heard? He’s gone to war--enlisted in the First
Infantry!”
I hid my surprise from the man, and told him I had heard that, of
course, but that the bar regarded his absence as merely temporary.
That summer I got into the habit of scanning the lists of sick and
disabled soldiers who were at Chickamauga and the other fever camps, or
in Cuba. I was especially likely to do this where the First Regiment
was concerned. It was a practice foolish in a way, because it took up
time in the morning, and was only a meaningless list of names, anyway.
But then, we were rather proud of the First in the city that summer,
for it was our crack regiment, you know, and my wife had one or two
acquaintances among the young officers, who reflected a certain glory
upon her, and gave a color to her conversation.
A friend of mine at the capital, a lawyer, often sent me, two or three
times a week, perhaps, copies of the local papers, and these frequently
published little bits of personal gossip about boys from that town
who had gone to “the front,” as they put it. The country papers gave
a more personal tone to their war articles than did the city papers.
These latter seemed to think that a war is got up especially for the
officers. Doubtless they were about right.
After a while, the First went to Cuba. The regiment got there too late
for active fighting in the operations about Santiago, but not too late
for duty in the trenches, with their freshly upturned earth, damp and
saturated with malaria. Nor did they get there too late for the fever.
Many of them contracted it, and some died of it. I used to read the
lists of the sick and dead, to see if the names of any of my wife’s
acquaintances in the field, line or staff, were among them.