"Mr. Griscom," said Marriott, wondering if that were the right question,

longing for some inspiration that would be the one infallible test for

this situation, "did you report to the authorities these remarks of

Koerner's at the time he made them?"

Griscom hesitated.

"No, sir," he answered.

"Why not?"

"I didn't think it necessary."

"Why didn't you think it necessary?"

"Well--I didn't."

"Was it because you didn't think Archie was in earnest--because his

words were not serious?"

"I didn't think it necessary."

Marriott wondered whether to press him further--he was on dangerous

ground.

"To whom did you first mention them?"

"To the deputy warden."

"This man here?" Marriott waved his hand at Ball with a contempt he was

not at all careful to conceal.

"Yes, sir."

"When was that?"

"Oh, about a month ago."

"After Kouka's death?"

"Yes."

"Griscom," said Marriott, risking his whole case on the words, and the

silence in the room deepened until it throbbed like a profound pain,

"when Ball came to tell you to testify as you have against Archie, he

promised to get you a pardon, did he not?"

Eades was on his feet.

"There is no evidence here that Ball went to the witness," he cried. He

was angry; his face was very red.

Marriott smiled.

"Let the witness answer," he said.

"The question is improper," said Glassford.

"Is it not a fact, Griscom, that Ball made you some promise to induce

you to testify as you have?"

Griscom hesitated, his eyes were already wavering, and Marriott felt an

irresistible impulse to follow them. Slowly the convict's glance turned

toward Ball, sitting low in his chair, one leg hung over the other, a

big foot dangling above the floor. His arm was thrust straight out

before him, his hand grasped his cane, his attitude was apparently

careless and indifferent, but the knuckles of the hand that held the

cane were white, and his eyes, peering from their narrow slits, were

fastened in a steady, compelling stare on Griscom. The convict looked an

instant and then he said, still looking at Ball:

"No, it isn't."

The convict had a sudden fit of coughing. He fumbled frantically in the

breast of his jacket, then clapped his hand to his mouth; his face was

blue, his eyes were staring; presently between his fingers there

trickled a thin bright stream of blood. Ball got up and tenderly helped

the convict from the chair and the court-room. And Marriott knew that

he had lost.

Yes, Marriott knew that he had lost and he felt himself sinking into the

lethargy of despair. The atmosphere of the trial had become more

inimical; he found it hard to contain himself, hard to maintain that air

of unconcern a lawyer must constantly affect. He found it hard to look

at Eades, who seemed suddenly to have a new buoyancy of voice and

manner. In truth, Eades had been uncertain about Griscom, but now that

the convict had given his testimony and all had gone well for Eades and

his side, Eades was immensely relieved. He felt that the turning point

in the great game had been passed. But it would not do to display any

elation; he must take it all quite impersonally, and in every way

conduct himself as a fearless, disinterested official, and not as a

human being at all. Eades felt, of course, that this result was due to

his own sagacity, his own skill as a lawyer, his generalship in

marshaling his evidence; he felt the crowd behind him to be mere

spectators, whose part it was to look on and applaud; he did not know

that this result was attributable to those mysterious, transcendental

impulses of the human passions, moving in an irresistible current,

sweeping him along and the jury and the judge, and bearing Archie to his

doom. But Eades was so encouraged that he decided to call another

witness he had been uncertainly holding in reserve. He had had his

doubts about this witness as he had had them about Griscom, but now

these doubts were swept away by that same occult force.

"Swear Uri Marsh."

There was the usual wait, the stillness, the suspended curiosity, and

then Bentley came in, leading an old man. This old man was cleanly

shaven, his hair was white, and he wore a new suit of ready-made

clothes. The cheap and paltry garments seemed to shrink away from the

wasted form they fitted so imperfectly, grudgingly lending themselves,

as for this occasion only, to the purpose of restoring and disguising

their disreputable wearer. Beneath them it was quite easy to detect the

figure of dishonorable poverty that in another hour or another day would

step out of them and resume its appropriate rags and tatters, to flutter

on and lose itself in the squalid streets of the city where it would

wander alone, abandoned by all, even by the police.

As Archie recognized this man, his face went white even to the lips.

Marriott looked at him, but the only other sign of feeling Archie gave

was in the swelling and tightening of the cords of his neck. He

swallowed as if in pain, and seemed about to choke. Marriott spoke, but

he did not hear. Strangely enough, it did not seem to Marriott to

matter.

This witness, like Griscom, had been a convict, like Griscom he had

known Archie in prison; he and Archie had been released the same day,

and he had come back to town with Archie.

"What did he say?" the old man was repeating Eades's question; he always

repeated each question before he answered it--"what did he say? Well,

sir, he said, so he did, he said he was going to kill a detective here.

That's what he said, sir. I wouldn't lie to you, no, sir, not me--I

wouldn't lie--no, sir."

"That will do," said Eades. "Now tell us, Mr. Marsh, what, if anything,

Koerner said to Detective Quinn in your presence?"

"What'd he say to Detective Quinn? What'd he say to Detective Quinn?

Well, sir," the old man paused and spat out his saliva, "he said the

same thing."

"Just give his words."

"His words? Well, sir, he said he was going to kill that fellow--that

detective--what's his name? You know his name."

The garrulous old fellow ran on. There was something ludicrous in it

all; the crowd became suddenly merry; it seemed to feel such a gloating

sense of triumph that it could afford amusement. The old man in the

witness-chair enjoyed it immensely, he laughed too, and spat and laughed

again.

It was with difficulty that Marriott and Eades and Glassford got him to

recognize Marriott's right to cross-examine him, and when at last the

idea pierced its way to his benumbed and aged mind, he hesitated, as the

old do before a new impression, and then sank back in his chair. His

face all at once became impassive, almost imbecile. And he utterly

refused to answer any of Marriott's questions. Marriott put them to him

again and again, in the same form and in different forms, but the old

man sat there and stared at him blankly. Glassford took the witness in

hand, finally threatened him with imprisonment for contempt.

"Now you answer or go to jail," said Glassford, with the most impressive

sternness he could command.

Then Marriott said again:

"I asked you where you had been staying since you came to town and who

provided for you?"

The old man looked at him an instant, a peculiar cunning stole gradually

into his swimming eyes, and then slowly he lifted his right hand to his

face. His middle finger was missing, and thrusting the stump beneath

his nose, he placed his index finger to his right eye, his third finger

to his left, drew down the lower lids until their red linings were

revealed, and then he wiggled his thumb and little finger.

The court-room burst into a roar, the laughter pealed and echoed in the

high-ceiled room, even the jurymen, save Broadwell, permitted themselves

wary smiles. The bailiff sprang up and pounded with his gavel, and

Glassford, his face red with fury, shouted:

"Mr. Sheriff, take the witness to jail! And if this demonstration does

not instantly cease, clear the courtroom!"

The _contretemps_ completed Marriott's sense of utter humiliation and

defeat. As if it were not enough to be beaten, he now suffered the

chagrin of having been made ridiculous. He was oblivious to everything

but his own misery and discomfiture; he forgot even Archie. Bentley and

a deputy were hustling the offending old man from the court-room, and he

shambled between them loosely, grotesquely, presenting the miserable,

demoralizing and pathetic spectacle that age always presents when it has

dishonored itself.

As they were dragging the old man past Archie, his feet scuffling and

dragging like those of a paralytic, Archie spoke:

"Why, Dad!" he said.

In his tone were all disappointment and reproach.

The incident was over, but try as they would, Glassford, Eades, Lamborn,

Marriott, all the attaches and officials of the court could not restore

to the tribunal its lost dignity. This awesome and imposing structure

mankind has been ages in rearing, this institution men had thought to

make something more than themselves, at the grotesque gesture of one of

its poorest, meanest, oldest and most miserable victims, had suddenly

collapsed, disintegrated into its mere human entities. Unconsciously

this aged imbecile had taken a supreme and mighty revenge on the

institution that had bereft him of his reason and his life; it could not

resist the shock; it must pause to reconstruct itself, to resume its

lost prestige, and men were glad when Glassford, with what solemnity he

could command, told the bailiff to adjourn court.

XVII

At six o'clock on the evening of the day the State rested, Marriott

found himself once more at the jail. He passed the series of grated

cells from which their inmates peered with the wistful look common to

prisoners, and paused before Archie's door. He could see only the boy's

muscular back bowed over the tiny table, slowly dipping chunks of bread

into his pan of molasses, eating his supper silently and humbly. The

figure was intensely pathetic to Marriott. He gazed a moment in the

regret with which one gazes on the dead, struck down in an instant by

some useless accident. "And yet," he thought, "it is not done, there is

still hope. He must be saved!"

"Hello, Archie!" he said, forcing a cheerful tone.

Archie started, pushed back his chair, drew his hand across his mouth to

wipe away the crumbs, and thrust it through the bars.

"Don't let me keep you from your supper," said Marriott.

Archie smiled a wan smile.

"That's all right," he said. "It isn't much of a supper, and I ain't

exactly hungry."

Archie grasped the bars above his head and leaned his breast against the

door.

"Well, what do you think of it, Mr. Marriott?"

"I don't know, Archie."

"Looks as if I was the fall guy all right."

Marriott bit his lip.

"We have to put in our evidence in the morning, you know."

"Yes."

"And we must decide whether you're going on the stand or not."

"I'll leave it to you, Mr. Marriott."

Marriott thought a moment.

"What do you think about it?" he asked presently.

"I don't know. You see, I've got a record."

"Yes, but they already know you've been in prison."

"Sure, but my taking the stand would make the rap harder. That fellow

Eades would tear me to pieces."

Marriott was silent.

"And then that old hixer on the jury, that wise guy up there in the

corner." Archie shook his head in despair. "Every time he pikes me

off, I know he's ready to hand it all to me."

"You mean Broadwell?"

"Yes. He's one of those church-members. That's a bad sign, a bad

sign." Archie shook his head sadly. "No, it's a kangaroo all right,

they're going to job me." Archie hung his head. "Of course, Mr.

Marriott, I know you've done your best. You're the only friend I got,

and I wish--I wish there was some way for me to pay you. I can't

promise you, like some of these guys, that I'll work and pay you when I

get--" He looked up with a sadly humorous and appreciative smile. "Of

course, I--"

"Don't, Archie!" said Marriott. "Don't talk that way. That part of

it's all right. Cheer up, my boy, cheer up!" Marriott was trying so

hard to cheer up himself. "We haven't played our hand yet; we'll give

'em a fight. There are higher courts, and there's always the governor."

Archie shook his head.

"Maybe you won't believe me, Mr. Marriott, but I'd rather go to the

chair than take life down there. You don't know what that place is, Mr.

Marriott."

"No," said Marriott, "but I can imagine."

Then he changed his tone.

"We've plenty of time to talk about all that," he went on. "Now we must

talk about to-morrow. Look here, Archie. Why can't you go on the stand

and tell your whole story--just as you've told it to me a hundred times?

It convinced me the first time I heard it; maybe it would convince the

jury. They'd see that you had cause to kill Kouka!"

"Cause!" exclaimed the boy. "Great God! After the way he hounded me--I

should say so! Why, Mr. Marriott, he made me do it, he made me what I

am. Don't you see that?"

"Of course I do. And why can't you tell them so?" Marriott was

enthusiastic with his new hope.

"Oh, well," said Archie with no enthusiasm at all, "with you it's

different. You look at things different; you can see things; you know

there's some good in me, don't you?"

It was an appeal that touched Marriott, and yet he felt powerless to

make the boy see how deeply it touched him.

"And then," Archie went on--he talked with an intense earnestness and he

leaned so close that Marriott could smell the odor of coffee on his

breath--"when I talk to you, I know somehow that--well--you believe me,

and we're sitting down, just talking together with no one else around.

But there in that court-room, with all those people ready to tear my

heart out and eat it, and the beak--Glassford, I mean--and the blokes in

the box, and Eades ready to twist everything I say; well, what show have

I got? You can see for yourself, Mr. Marriott."

Archie spread his hands wide to show the hopelessness of it all.

"Well, I think you'd better try, anyhow. Will you think it over?"

XVIII

Marriott heard the commotion as he entered the elevator the next

morning, and as the cage ascended, the noise increased. He heard the

click of heels, the scuff of damp soles on the marble, and then the

growl of many men, angry, beside themselves, possessed by their lower

natures. The chorus of rough voices had lost its human note and sunk to

the ugly register of the brutish. Drawing nearer, he distinguished

curses and desperate cries. And there in the half-light at the end of

the long corridor, the crowd swayed this way and that, struggling,

scrambling, fighting. Hats were knocked off and spun in the air; now

and then an arm was lifted out of the mass; now and then a white fist

was shaken above the huddle of heads. Two deputy sheriffs, Hersch and

Cumrow, were flattened against the doors of the criminal court, their

faces trickling with sweat, their waistcoats torn open; and they

strained mightily. The crowd surged against them, threatening to press

the breath out of their bodies. They paused, panting from their efforts,

then tried again to force back the crowd, shouting:

"Get back there, damn you! Get back!"

Marriott slipped through a side door into the judge's chamber. The room

was filled. Glassford, Eades, Lamborn, all the attaches of the court

were there. Bentley, the sheriff, had flung up a window, and stood there

fanning himself with his broad-brimmed hat, disregarding exposure, his

breath floating in vapor out of the window. On the low leather lounge

where Glassford took his naps sat Archie close beside Danner. When he

saw Marriott a wan smile came to his white face.

"They tried to get at me!" The phrase seemed sufficient to him to

explain it all, and at the same time to express his own surprise and

consternation in it all.

"They tried to get at me!" Archie repeated in another tone, expressing

another meaning, another sensation, a wholly different thought. The

boy's lips were drawn tightly across his teeth; he shook with fear.

"They tried to get at me!" he repeated, in yet another tone.

Old Doctor Bitner, the jail physician, had come with a tumbler half-full

of whisky and water.

"Here, Archie," he said, "try a sip of this. You'll be all right in a

minute."

"He's collapsed," the physician whispered to Marriott, as Archie

snatched the glass and gulped down the whisky, making a wry face, and

shuddering as if the stuff sickened him.

"I'm all in, Mr. Marriott," said Archie. "I've gone to pieces. I'm

down and out. It's no use." He hung his head, as if ashamed of his

weakness.

"Well, you know, my boy, that we must begin. It's up to us now. Can

you take the stand?"

"No! No!" Archie shook his head with emphasis. "I can't! I can't!

That fellow Eades would tear me to pieces!"

Marriott argued, expostulated, pleaded, but in vain. The boy only shook

his head and said over and over, each time with a new access of terror:

"No, Eades would tear me to pieces."

"Come on, Gordon," called Glassford, who had finished his cigar, "we

can't wait any longer."

The following morning, the defense having put in its evidence and

rested, Lamborn began the opening argument for the State. It had long

been Lamborn's ambition to make a speech that would last a whole day.

He had made copious notes, and when he succeeded in speaking a full

half-hour without referring to them, he was greatly encouraged. When he

was compelled finally to succumb, and consult his notes, he began to

review the evidence, that is, he repeated what the witnesses had already

told. After that he began to fail noticeably in ideas and frequently

glanced at the clock, but he thought of the statutes, and he read to the

jury the laws defining murder in the first degree, murder in the second

degree, and manslaughter, and then declaring that the crime Archie had

committed was clearly murder in the first degree, he closed by urging

the jury to find him guilty of this crime.

In the afternoon Pennell opened the arguments for the defense. Having

won the oratorical contest at college, and having once been spoken of in

print as the silver-tongued, Pennell pitched his voice in the highest

key, and soon filled the court-room with a prodigious noise; he had not

spoken fifteen minutes before he had lashed himself into a fury, and

with each new, fresh burst of enthusiasm, he raised his hoarse voice

higher and higher, until the throats of his hearers ached in sympathy.

But at the end of two hours he ceased to wave his arms, no longer struck

the bar of the jury-box with his fist, the strain died away, and he sank

into his chair, his hair disheveled, his brow and neck and wrists

glistening with perspiration, utterly exhausted, but still wearing the

oratorical scowl.

All this time Eades and Marriott were lying back in their chairs, in the

attitudes of counsel who are reserving themselves for the great and

telling efforts of the trial, that is, the closing arguments. When

Marriott arose the next morning to begin his address, the silence was

profound. He looked about him, at Glassford, at Eades, at the crowd,

straining with curious, gleaming eyes. In the overflowing line of men

within the bar on either side of the jury-box he recognized several

lawyers; their faces were white against the wall; they seemed strange,

unnatural, out of place. The jury were uneasy and glanced away, and

though Broadwell lifted his small eyes to him, it was without response

or sympathy. Marriott was chilled by the patent opposition. Then,

somehow, he detected old man Reder stealing a glance at Archie; he kept

his eye on Reder. What was Reder thinking of? "Thinking, I suppose,"

thought Marriott, "that this settles it, and that there is nothing to do

now but to send Archie to the chair."

Reder, however, in that moment was really thinking of his boyhood in

Germany, where his father had been a judge like Glassford; one day he

had found among the papers on his father's desk the statement of a case.

An old peasant had accidentally set fire to a forest on an estate and

burned up wood to the value of forty marks, for this he was being tried.

He felt sorry for the peasant and had begged his father to let him go.

When he came home at night he asked his father--

Marriott made an effort, mastered himself; he thought of Archie, leaning

forward eagerly, his eyes fixed on him with their last hope. He had a

vision of Archie as he had seen him in the jail--he saw again the supple

play of his muscles under the white skin of his breast, full of health,

of strength, of life--kill him? It was monstrous! A passion swelled

within him; he would speak for him, he would speak for old man Koerner,

for Gusta, for all the voiceless, submerged poor in the world.... He

began.... Some one was sobbing.... He glanced about. It was old Mrs.

Koerner, in tears, the first she had shed during the trial.... Archie

was looking at her.... He was making an effort, but tears were

glistening in the corners of his eyes....

It was over at last. He had done all he could. Men were crowding about

him, congratulating him--Pennell, Bentley, his friends among the

lawyers, Glassford, and, yes, even Eades.

"I never heard you do better, Gordon," said Eades.

Marriott thanked him. But then Eades could always be depended on to do

the correct thing.

All that afternoon Archie sat there and listened to Eades denouncing

him. When Marriott had finished his speech, Archie had felt a happiness

and a hope--but now there was no hope. Eades was, indeed, tearing him

to pieces. How long must he sit there and be game, and endure this

thing? Would it never end? Could Eades speak on for ever and for ever

and never cease his abuse and denunciation? Would it end with

evening--if evening ever came? No; evening came, but Eades had not

finished. Morning came, and Eades spoke on and on. He was speaking

some strange words; they sounded like the words the mission stiffs used;

they must be out of the Bible. He noticed that Broadwell was very

attentive.

"He'll soon be done now, Archie," whispered Marriott, giving him a

little pat on the knee; "when they quote Scripture, that's a sign--"

Yes, he had finished; this was all; soon it would be over and he would

know.

The jurymen were moving in their seats; but there was yet more to be

done. The judge must deliver his charge, and the jurors settled down

again to listen to Glassford with even greater respect than they had

shown Eades.

During the closing sentences of Eades's speech Glassford had drawn some

papers from a drawer and arranged them on his desk. These papers

contained portions of charges he had made in other criminal cases.

Glassford motioned to the bailiff, who bore him a glass of iced water,

from which Glassford took a sip and set it before him, as if he would

need it and find it useful in making his charge. Then he took off his

gold eye-glasses, raised his eyebrows two or three times, drew out a

large handkerchief and began polishing his glasses as if that were the

most important business of his life. He breathed on the lenses, then

polished them, then breathed again, and polished again.

Glassford had selected those portions of the charges he kept in stock,

which assured the jury of the greatness of the English law, told how

they must consider a man innocent until he had been proved guilty beyond

a reasonable doubt, that they must not draw any conclusions unfavorable

to the prisoner at the bar from the fact that he had not taken the

witness-stand, and so on. These instructions were written in long,

involved sentences, composed as nearly as possible of words of Latin

derivation. Glassford read them slowly, but so as to give the

impression that it was an extemporaneous production.

The jurymen, though many of them did not know the meaning of the words

Glassford used, thought they all sounded ominous and portentous, and

seemed to suggest Archie's guilt very strongly. For half an hour

Glassford read from his instructions, from the indictment and from the

statutes, then suddenly recalling the fact that the public was greatly

interested in this case, he began to talk of the heinousness of this

form of crime and the sacredness of human life. In imagination he could

already see the editorials that would be printed in the newspapers,

praising him for his stand, and this, he reflected, would be beneficial

to him in his campaign for renomination and reelection. Finally he told

the jurymen that they must not be affected by motives of sympathy or

compassion or pity for the prisoner at the bar or his family, for they

had nothing to do with the punishment that would be inflicted upon him.

Then he read the various verdicts to them, casually mentioning the

verdict of "not guilty" in the tone of an after-thought and as a

contingency not likely to occur, and then told them, at last, that they

could retire.

At five o'clock the jury stumbled out of the box and entered the little

room to the left.

XIX

It was four o'clock in the morning, and the twelve men who were to

decide Archie's fate were still huddled in the jury room. For eleven

hours they had been there, balloting, arguing, disputing, quarreling,

and then balloting again. Time after time young Menard had passed

around his hat for the little scraps of paper, and always the result was

the same, eleven for conviction, one for acquittal. For a while after

the jury assembled there had been three votes for conviction of murder

in the second degree, but long ago, as it seemed at that hour, these

three votes had been won over for conviction of murder in the first

degree, which meant death. At two o'clock Broadwell had declared that

there was no use in wasting more time in voting, and for two hours no

ballot had been taken. The electric lamps had glowed all night, filling

the room with a fierce light, which, at this hour of the winter morning,

had taken on an unnatural glare. The air was vitiated, and would have

sickened one coming from outside, but these men, whose lungs had been

gradually accustomed to it, were not aware how foul it was. Once or

twice in the night some one had thrown up a window, but the older men

had complained of the cold, and the window had to be closed down again.

In that air hung the dead odor of tobacco smoke, for in the earlier

hours of the night most of the men--all, indeed, save Broadwell--had

smoked, some of them cigars, some pipes. But now they were so steeped

in bodily weariness and in physical discomfort and misery that none of

them smoked any longer. On the big oaken table in the middle of the

room Menard's hat lay tilted on its side, and all about lay the ballots.

Ballots, too, strewed the floor and filled the cuspidors, little scraps

of paper on which was scribbled for the most part the one word,

"Guilty," the same word on all of them, though not always spelled the

same. One man wrote it "Gildy," another "Gilty," still another

"Gility." But among all those scattered scraps there was a series of

ballots, the sight of which angered eleven of the men, and drove them to

profanity; on this series of ballots was written "Not guilty." The

words were written in an invariable, beautiful script, plainly the

chirography of some German.

It was evident that in this barren room, with its table and twelve

chairs, its high blank walls and lofty ceiling, a mighty conflict had

been waged. But now at the mystic hour when the tide of human forces is

at its farthest ebb, the men had become exhausted, and they sat about in

dejected attitudes of lassitude and weariness, their brains and souls

benumbed. Young Menard had drawn his chair up to the table and thrown

his head forward on his arms. He was wholly spent, his brow was bathed

with clammy perspiration, and a nausea had seized him. His mind was too

tired to work longer, and he was only irritably conscious of some

unpleasant interruption when any one spoke. The old men had suffered

greatly from the confinement; the long night in that miserable little

room, without comforts, had accentuated their various diseases, all the

latent pains and aches of age had been awakened, and now, at this low

hour, they had lost the sense of time and place, the trial seemed far

away in the past, there was no future, and they could but sit there and

suffer dumbly. In one corner Osgood had tilted back a chair and fallen

asleep. He sprawled there, his head fallen to one side, his wide-open

mouth revealing his throat; his face was bathed in sweat, and he snored

horribly.

In another corner sat Broadwell, his hands folded across his paunch.

The flesh on his fat face had darkened, beneath his eyes were deep blue

circles and he looked very old. He had been elected foreman, of course,

and early in the evening had made long and solemn addresses to the jury,

the same kind of addresses he delivered to his Bible-class--instructive,

patronizing, every one of his arguments based on some hackneyed and

obvious moral premise. Particularly was this the case, when, as had

befallen early in the evening, they had discussed the death penalty.

This subject roused him to a high degree of anger, and he raged about

it, defended the practice of capital punishment, then, growing calm,

spoke of it reverently and as if, indeed, it were a sacrament like

baptism, or the Lord's Supper, quoting from the ninth chapter of

Genesis. Old Reder had opposed him, and Broadwell had demanded of him

to know what he would wish to have done to a man who killed his wife,

for instance. Reder, quite insensible to the tribute implied in the

suggestion that his action would furnish the standard for all action in

such an emergency, had for a while maintained that he would not wish to

have the man put to death, but Broadwell had insisted that he would, had

quoted the ninth chapter of Genesis again, shaken his head, puffed, and

angrily turned away from Reder. One by one he had beaten down the wills

of the other jurors. He was tenacious and stubborn, and he had

conquered them all--all but old Reder, who paced the floor, his hands in

the side pockets of his short jacket. His shaggy white brows were knit

in a permanent scowl, and now and then he gathered portions of his gray

beard into his mouth and chewed savagely. He was the one, of course,

who had been voting for acquittal; his was the hand that had written in

that Continental script those dissenting words, "Not guilty."

When this became known, the others had gathered round him, trying to

beat him down, and finally, giving way to anger, had shaken their fists

in his face, reviled him, and called him ugly names. But all the while

he had shaken his head and shouted:

"No! no! no! no!"

For a while he had argued against Archie's guilt, then against the

methods of the police, at last, had begged for mercy on the boy. But

this last appeal only made them angry.

"Mercy!" they said. "Did he show that old woman any mercy?"

"He isn't being triedt for der old woman," said Reder. "Dot's what the

chudge saidt."

"Well, then. Did he show Kouka any mercy?"

"Bah!" shouted Reder. "Did Kouka show him any?"

"But Kouka"--they insisted.

"_Ach_! To hell mit all o' you!" cried Reder, and began to stalk the

floor.

"The Dutch dog!" said one.

"The stubborn brute!" grumbled another. "Keeping us all up here, and

making us lose our sleep!"

"I tell you," said another, "the jury system ought to be changed, so's a

majority would rule!"

"It's no use, it's no use," Reder said in a high petulant voice; "you

only make me vorse; you only make me vorse!" He held his hands up and

shook them loosely, his fingers vibrating with great rapidity.

Then it was still for a long while--but in the dark and empty

court-room, where the bailiff slept on one of the seats, sharp,

unnatural, cracking noises were heard now and then; and from it emanated

the strange weird influence of the night and darkness. Through the

window they looked on the court-house yard lying cold and white under

the blaze of the electric lamps. The wind swept down the bleak deserted

street. Once they heard a policeman's whistle. Osgood was snoring

loudly.

"Great God!" shouted Duncan irritably. "Can't some of you make him stop

that?"

Church got up and gave Osgood's chair a rude kick.

"Huh?" Osgood started up, staring about wildly. Then he came to his

senses, looked around, understood, fell back and went to sleep again.

And Reder tramped up and down, and Broadwell sat and glared at him, and

the others waited. Reder was thinking of that time of his boyhood in

Germany when the old peasant had been tried for setting the wood afire.

The whole scene had come back to him, and he found a fascination in

recalling one by one every detail, until each stood out vividly and

distinctly in his mind. He paced on, until, after a while, Broadwell

spoke again.

"Mr. Reder," he said, "I don't see how you can assume the position you

do."

"It's no use, I tol' you; no use!"

"But look here," Broadwell insisted, getting up and trying to stop

Reder. He took him by the lapel of his coat, forced him to stand an

instant, and when Reder yielded, and stood still, the other jurors

looked up with some hope.

"Tell me why--"

"I don't _vant_ to have him killedt, I tol' you."

"But it isn't killing; it isn't the same."

"Bah! Nonsense!" roared Reder.

"It's the law."

"I don't gare for der law. We say he don't die--he don't die den, ain't

it?"

"But it's the _law_!" protested Broadwell, thinking to add new stress to

his argument by placing new stress on the word. "How can we do

otherwise?"

"How? Chust by saying not guildy, dot's how."

"But how can we do that?"

"Chust _do_ it, dot's how!"

"But it's the law,--the _law_!"

"Damn der _law_!" roared Reder, resuming his walk. And Broadwell stood

looking at him, in horror, as if he had blasphemed.

There was silence again, save for Osgood's snoring. Then suddenly, no

one knew how, the argument broke out anew.

"How do we know?" some one was saying. It was Grey; his conviction was

shaken again.

"Know?" said Church. "Don't we know?"

"How do we?"

"Well--I don't know, only--"

"Yes, only."

"You ain't going back on us now, I hope?",

"No, but--" Grey shook his head.

"Well, you heard what the judge said."

They could always appeal to what the judge had said, as if he spoke with

some authority that was above all others.

"What'd he say?" asked Grey.

"Why--he said--what was that there word now?"

"What word?"

"That word he used--refer--no that wasn't it, let's see."

"Infer?" suggested Broadwell.

"Sure! That's it! Infer! He said infer."

"By God! I guess that's right! He did say that."

"Course," Church went on triumphantly. "Infer! He said infer, and that

means we can infer it, don't it?"

Just at that minute a pain, sharp and piercing, shot through Reder's

back. He winced, made a wry face, stopped, stooped to a senile posture

and clapped his hand to his back. His heart suddenly sank--there it was

again, his old trouble. That meant bad things for him; now, as likely

as not, he'd be laid up all winter; probably he couldn't sit on the jury

any more; surely not if that old trouble came back on him. And how

would he and his old wife get through the winter? Instantly he forgot

everything else. What time was it, he wondered? This being up all

night; he could not stand that.

As from a distance he heard the argument going on. At first he felt no

relation to it, but this question must be settled some way. The pain

had ceased, but it would come back again. He straightened up slowly,

gradually, with extreme care, his hand poised in readiness to clap to

his back again; He turned about by minute degrees and said:

"What's dot you saidt?"

"Why," began Church, but just then Reder winced again; clapped his hand

to his back, doubled up, his face was contorted. He was evidently

suffering tortures, but he made no outcry. Church sprang toward him.

"Get him some water,--here!"

Chisholm punched young Menard; he got up, and pushed the big white

porcelain water pitcher across the table. But Reder waved it aside.

"Nefer mind," he said. "What was dot you vas sayin' a minute back?"

"Why, Mr. Reder, we said the judge said we could infer. Don't you

remember?"

Church looked into his face hopefully, and waited.

Broadwell got slowly to his feet, and moved toward the little group

deliberately, importantly, as if he alone could explain.

"Here, have my chair, Mr. Reder," said Broadwell with intense

politeness.

"No, nefer mind," said Reder, afraid to move.

"What the judge said," Broadwell began, "was simply this. He said that

if it was to be inferred from all the facts and circumstances adduced in

evidence--"

"Besides," Church broke in, "that old woman said he _was_ the fellow,

down at the police station--it was in the paper, don't you remember?"

"Oh, but the judge said we wasn't to pay attention to anything like

that," said Grey.

"Well, but he said we could infer, didn't he?"

"Just let me speak, please," insisted Broadwell, "His Honor went on to

say--" he had just recalled that that was the proper way to speak of a

judge, and then, the next instant, he remembered that it was also proper

to call the judge "the Court," and he was anxious to use both of these

phrases. "That is, the Court said--" And he explained the meaning of

the word "infer."

Reder was listening attentively, his head bent, his hand resting on his

hip. Broadwell talked on, in his low insinuating tone. Reder made no

reply. After a while, Broadwell, his eyes narrowing, said softly,

gently:

"Gentlemen, shall we not try another ballot?"

Menard got up wearily, his hat in readiness again. The jurors began

rummaging among the scraps for ballots.

A street-car was just scraping around the curve at the corner, its

wheels sending out a shrill, grinding noise.

"Great heavens!" exclaimed McCann, taking out his watch, "it's five

thirty! Morning! We've been here all night!"

Outside the city was still wrapped in a soft thick darkness. Eades was

sleeping soundly; his mother, when she kissed him good night, had patted

his head, saying, "My dear, brave boy." Marriott had just sunk into a

troubled doze. Glassford was snoring loudly in his warm chamber;

Koerner and his wife were kneeling on their bed, their hands clasped,

saying a prayer in German, and over in the jail, Archie was standing

with his face pressed against the cold bars of his cell, looking out

across the corridor, watching for the first streak of dawn.

XX

Marriott awoke with a start when the summons came. The jury had agreed;

his heart leaped into his throat. What was the verdict? He had a

confused sense of the time, the world outside was dark; he could have

slept but a few minutes, surely it was not much later than midnight. He

switched on the electric light, and looked at his watch. It was

half-past six--morning. He dressed hurriedly, and went out.

The clammy air smote him coldly. The day was just breaking, a yellow

haze above the roofs toward the east. He hurried along the damp

pavement, an eager lonely figure in the silent streets; the light spread

gradually, creeping as it were through the heavy air; a fog rolled over

the pavements and the world was cold and gray. An early street-car went

clanging past, filled with working-men. These working-men were happy;

they smoked their pipes and joked--Marriott could hear them, and he

thought it strange that men could be happy anywhere in the world that

morning. But these fancies were not to be indulged with the leisurely

sense in which he usually philosophized on that life of which he was so

conscious; for the court-house loomed huge and portentous in the dawn.

And suddenly the light that was slowly suffusing the ether seemed to

pause; there was a hesitation almost perceptible to the eye in the

descent of morning on the world; it was, to Marriott's imagination,

exactly, as if the sun had suddenly concluded to shine no longer on the

just and the unjust alike, but would await the issue then yeaning

beneath that brooding dome, and see whether men would do justice in the

world. Somewhere, Marriott knew, in that gray and smoky pile, the fate

was waiting, biding its time. What would it be?

He had remained at the court-house the night before with Pennell and

Lamborn, several of the court officials and attaches, and a dwindling

group of the morbid and the curious. An immediate agreement had been

expected, allowing, of course, for the delay necessary to a preservation

of the decencies, but as the hours dragged by, Marriott's hopes had

risen; each moment increased the chance of an acquittal, of a

disagreement, or of some verdict not so tragic as the one the State had

striven for. His heart had grown lighter. But by midnight he was

wholly exhausted. Intelligence, which knows no walls, had somehow

stolen out from the jury room; there was some eccentricity in this

mighty machine of man, and no immediate agreement was to be expected.

And then Marriott had left, trusting Pennell to remain and represent the

defendant at the announcement of the verdict. It was about the only

duty he felt he could trust to Pennell. And now, hurrying into the

court-house, his hopes rose once more.

Something after all of the effect of custom was apparent in the

atmosphere of the court-room, where the tribunal was convened thus so

much earlier than its wonted hour. The room was strange and unreal,

haunted in this early morning gloom by the ghosts of the protagonists

who had stalked through it. Glassford was already on the bench, his

eyes swollen, his cheeks puffed. Lamborn was there, in the same clothes

he had worn the day before,--it was plain that he had not had them off

at all. And there, already in the box, sat the jury, blear-eyed,

unkempt, disheveled, demoralized, with traces yet of anger, hatred and

the fury of their combat in their faces, a caricature of that majesty

with which it is to be presumed this institution reaches the solemn

conclusions of the law. And there, at the table, still strewn with the

papers that were the debris of the conflict, sat Archie, the sorry

subject over which men had been for days quarreling and haggling,

harrying and worrying him like a hunted thing. He sat immobile, gazing

through the eastern windows at the waiting and inscrutable dawn of a day

swollen with such tragic possibilities for him.

Glassford looked sleepily at Marriott as he burst through the doors.

His glance indicated relief; he was glad the conclusion had been reached

at this early hour, even if it had haled him from his warm bed; he was

glad to be able thus to trick the crowd and have the law discharge its

solemn function before the crowd came to view it.

"Gentlemen of the jury," he said, "have you agreed upon a verdict?"

"We have, your Honor." Broadwell was rising in his place.

Glassford nodded to the clerk, who walked across the floor, his heels

striking out sharp sounds. Marriott had paused at the little gate in

the railing. He clutched at it, and supported himself in the weakness

that suddenly overwhelmed him. It seemed to him that the clerk took a

whole age in crossing that floor. He waited. Broadwell had handed the

clerk a folded document. The clerk took it and opened it; it fluttered

in his fingers. Now he hastily cast his eye over it, and Marriott

thought: "There still is hope--hope in each infinitesimal portion of a

second as he reads it--" for he was reading now:

"'We, the jury, impaneled and sworn well and truly to try and true

deliverance make in the cause wherein the State is plaintiff and Archie

Koerner is defendant, for verdict do find and say that we find the

defendant--'" Marriott gasped. The clerk read on:

"'--guilty as charged in the indictment'."

"Gentlemen of the jury," said the clerk, folding the paper in his formal

manner, "is this your verdict?"

"It is," said Broadwell.

"So say you all."

There was silence. After a while Marriott controlled himself and said:

"Your Honor, we demand a poll of the jury."

Slowly, one after another, the clerk called the names, and one after

another the jurors rose.

"Is this your verdict?" asked the clerk.

"Perhaps," thought Marriott as each one rose, "perhaps even now, one

will relent, one will change--one--"

"It is," each man answered.

Then Glassford was speaking again--the everlasting formalities, mocking

the very sense of things, thanking the jury, congratulating them,

discharging them.

And Archie Koerner sat there, never moving, looking through the eastern

window--but now at the dawn no more, for the window was black to his

eyes and the light had gone out of the world.

XXI

Archie sat by the trial table and looked out the window toward the east.

The window from being black became gray again--gray clouds, a scumbled

atmosphere of gray. When the jury came out of the box, after it was all

over, a young clerk in the court-house rushed up to Menard and wrung his

hand in enthusiastic, hysterical congratulation, as if Menard in the

face of heavy opposition had done some brave and noble deed. And Archie

wondered what he had ever done to this young clerk that he should so

have it in for him. Then Marriott was at his side again, but he said

nothing; he only took his hand.

"Well," thought Archie, "there is one man left in the world who hasn't

got it in for me." And yet there actually seemed to be Danner. For

Danner bent over and whispered:

"Whenever you're ready, Dutch, we'll go back. Of course--no particular

hurry, but when you're ready."

Archie wondered what Danner was up to now; usually he ordered them about

like brutes, with curses.

"You'll be wanting a bite of breakfast," Danner was saying.

Breakfast! The word was strange. Were people still eating breakfast in

this world, just as if nothing had happened, just as if things were as

they used to be--before--before--what? Before he shot Kouka? No, there

was nothing unusual about that; he didn't care anything about Kouka.

Before the penitentiary and the bull rings? Before the first time in

the workhouse, when that break, that lapse, came into his life? But

breakfast--they would be carrying the little pans about in the jail just

now, and that brought the odor of coffee to his memory. Coffee would

not be a bad thing.

"Any time," he said to Danner.

Then they got up and walked away, through the gray morning.

In the jail, Danner instantly unlocked the handcuffs, and as he jostled

Archie a little in opening the door, he said:

"Oh, excuse me, Dutch."

What had got into Danner, anyway? Inside he wondered more. Danner

said:

"You needn't lock this morning; you can stay in the corridor, and I'll

have your breakfast sent in to you in a moment."

Then Danner put up his big hand and whispered in Archie's ear:

"I'll see the cook and get her to sneak in a little cream and sugar for

your coffee."

Archie could not understand this, nor had he then time to wonder about

it, for he was being turned into the prison, and there, he knew, his

companions were waiting to know the news. Most of them were in their

cells. Two of them, the English thief and Mosey--he could tell it was

Mosey by the striped sweater--were standing in the far end of the

corridor, but they did not even look. He caught a snatch of their

conversation.

"What was the rap, the dip?"

"No, penny weightin'."

They appeared to be talking indifferently and were no more curious--so

one would say--than they would have been if some dinge had been vagged.

And yet Archie knew that every motion, every word, every gesture of his

was important. He tried to walk just as he had always walked. They

waited till Archie was at his cell door, and then some one called in a

tone of suspense that could be withheld no longer:

"What's the word, Archie?"

"Touched off," he called, loud enough for them all to hear. He spoke

the words carelessly, almost casually, with great nonchalance. There

was silence, sinister and profound. Then gradually the conversation was

resumed between cell and cell; they were all calling out to him, all

straining to be cheerful and encouraging.

"That mouthpiece of yours 'll spring you yet," some one said, "down

below."

Archie listened to their attempts to cheer him, all pathetic enough,

until presently the English thief passed his door, and said in a low

voice:

"Be gime, me boy."

That was it! Be game! From this on, that must be his ideal of conduct.

He knew how they would inquire, how some day Mason and old Dillon, how

Gibbs and all the guns and yeggs would ask about this, how the old gang

would ask about it--he must be game. He had made, he thought, a fair

beginning.

Danner brought the breakfast himself, and good as his word he had got

the cook to put some cream and sugar in his coffee. Not only this, but

the cook had boiled him two eggs--and he hadn't eaten eggs in months.

The last time, he recalled, was when Curly had boiled some in a can--had

Curly, over in another part of the prison, been told?

Archie thanked Danner and told him to thank the cook. And yet a wonder

possessed him. He had never known kindness in a prison before, save

among the prisoners themselves, and often they were cruel and mean to

each other--like the rats and mission-stiffs who were always snitching

and having them chalked and stood out. Here in this jail, he had never

beheld any kindness, for notwithstanding the fact that nearly every one

there was detained for a trial which was to establish his guilt or

innocence, and the law had a theory that every one was to be presumed

innocent until proved guilty, the sheriff and the jailers treated them

all as if they were guilty, and as if it was their duty to assist in the

punishment. But here was a man who had been declared guilty of a

heinous crime, and was to receive the worst punishment man could bestow,

and yet, suddenly, he was receiving every kindness, almost the first he

had ever known, at least since he had grown up. Having done all they

could to hurry him out of the world, men suddenly apologized by

showering him with attention while he remained.

When he ate his breakfast Archie felt better,--Mr. Marriott would do

something, he was sure; it was not possible that this thing could happen

to him.

"Any of youse got the makin's?" he called.

Instantly, all down the corridor on both sides, the cells' voices rang:

"Here! Here! Archie! Here, have mine!"

"Mr. Marriott gave me a whole box yesterday, but I smoked 'em all up in

the night!" he said.

XXII

Those persons in the community who called themselves the good were

gratified by Archie's conviction, and there were at once editorials and

even sermons to express this gratification. Lorenzo Edwards of the

_Courier_, who hated Marriott because he had borrowed ten dollars of

Marriott some years before and had never paid it back, wrote an unctuous

and hypocritical editorial in which he condemned Marriott for carrying

the case up, and deprecated the law's delay. The _Post_--although Archie

had not talked to a reporter--printed interviews with him, and as a

final stroke of enterprise, engaged Doctor Tyler Tilson, the specialist,

to examine Archie for stigmata of degeneracy. Tilson went to jail,

taking with him tape and calipers and other instruments, and after

measuring Archie and percussing him, and lighting matches before his

eyes, and having him walk blindfolded, and pricking him with pins, wrote

a profound article for the _Post_ from the standpoint of criminology, in

which he repeated many scientific phrases, and used the word

"environment," many times, and concluded that Archie had the homicidal

tendency strongly developed.

The Reverend Doctor Hole, who had his degree from a small college in

Dakota, had taken lessons of an elocutionist, and advertised the

sensational sermons in which he preached against those vices the

refinements and wealth of his own congregation did not tempt them to

commit, spoke on "Crime"; even Modderwell referred to it with

complacency.

In all of these expressions, of course, Eades was flattered, and this

produced in him a sensation of the greatest comfort and justification.

He felt repaid for all he had suffered in trying the case. But Marriott

felt that an injustice had been done, and, such is the quality of

injustice, that one suspicion of it may tincture every thought until the

complexion of the world is changed and everything appears unjust. As

Marriott read these editorials, the reports of these sermons, and the

conclusions of a heartless science that had thumped Archie as if he were

but a piece of rock for the geologist's hammer, he was filled with

anger, and resolved that Archie should not be put to death until he had

had the advantage of every technicality of the law. He determined to

carry the case up at his own expense. Though he could not afford to do

this, and was staggered when he ran over in his mind the cost of the

transcript of evidence, the transcript of the record, the printing of

the briefs, the railroad and hotel bills, and all that,--he felt it

would be a satisfaction to see one poor man, at least, receive in the

courts all that a rich man may demand.

Within the three days provided by law, Marriott filed his motion for a

new trial and then he was content to wait, and let the proceedings drag

along. But Eades insisted on an immediate hearing.

When Glassford had announced his decision denying a new trial, he

hesitated a moment and then, with an effect of gathering himself for an

ordeal, he dropped his judicial manner, called Eades and Marriott to the

bench, leaned over informally, whispered with them, and finally, as if

justifying a decision he had just communicated to them, observed:

"We might as well do it now and have it over with."

Then he sent the sheriff for Archie, and the bailiff for a calendar.

There were few persons in the court-room besides the clerk and the

bailiff, Marriott and Pennell, Eades and Lamborn. It was a bleak day;

outside a mean wind that had been blowing for three days off the lake

swept the streets bare of their refuse and swirled it everywhere in

clouds of filth. The sky was gray, and the cold penetrated to the

marrow; men hurried along with their heads huddled in the collars of

their overcoats--if they had overcoats; they winced and screwed their

faces in the stinging cold, longing for sunshine, for snow, for rain,

for anything to break the monotony of this weather. Within the

court-room the gloom was intensified by the doom that was about to be

pronounced. While they waited, Eades and Lamborn sat at a table,

uneasily moving now and then; Marriott walked up and down; no one spoke.

Glassford was scowling over his calendar, pausing now and then, lifting

his eyes and looking off, evidently making a calculation.

When Bentley and Danner came at last with Archie, and unshackled him,

Glassford did not look up. He kept his head bowed over his docket; now

and then he looked at his calendar, the leaves of which rattled and

trembled as he turned them over. Then they waited, every one there, in

silence. After a while, Glassford spoke. He spoke in a low voice, into

which at first he did not succeed in putting much strength:

"Koerner, you may stand up."

Archie rose promptly, his heels clicked together, his hands dropped

stiffly to his side; he held his head erect, as he came to the military

attitude of attention. But Glassford did not look at him. He was gazing

out of the window again toward that mysterious window across the street.

"Have you anything to say why the sentence of this court should not be

passed upon you?" he asked presently.

"No, sir," said Archie. He was looking directly at Glassford, but

Glassford did not look at him. Glassford waited, studying how he should

begin. The reporters were poising their pencils nervously.

"Koerner," Glassford began, still looking away, "after a fair and

impartial trial before a jury of twelve sworn men you have been found

guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree. The trial was

conducted carefully and deliberately; the jury was composed of honest

and representative men, and you were defended, and all your rights

conserved by able counsel. You have had the benefit of every immunity

known to our law, and yet, after calm deliberation, as the court has

said, you have been found guilty. We have, in addition to that, here

to-day heard a motion for a new trial; we have very carefully reviewed

the evidence and the law in this case, and the court is convinced that

no errors were committed on the trial detrimental to your rights in the

premises or prejudicial to your interests. It now becomes the duty of

the court to pass sentence upon you."

Glassford paused, removed his glasses, put them on again; and looked out

of the window as before.

"Fortunately--I say fortunately, for so I feel about it"--he

nodded--"fortunately for me, I have no discretion as to what your

punishment shall be. The law has fixed that; it leaves nothing to me

but to announce its determination. My duty is clear; in a measure,

simple."

Glassford paused again, sighed faintly, and settled in his chair with

some relief, as if he had succeeded in detaching himself personally from

the situation, and remained now only in his representative judicial

capacity.

"Still," he went on, speaking in an apologetic tone that betokened a

lingering of his personal identity, "that duty, while clear, is none the

less painful. I would that it had not fallen to my lot." He paused

again, still looking away. "It is a sad and melancholy spectacle--a

young man of your strength and native ability, with your opportunities

for living a good and useful life, standing here to hear the extreme

penalty of the law pronounced upon you. You might have been an

honorable, upright man; you seem, so far as I am able to ascertain, to

have come from a good home, and to have had honest, frugal, industrious

parents. You have had the opportunity of serving your country, you have

had the benefit of the training and discipline of the regular army. You

might have put to some good use the lessons you learned in those places.

And yet, you seem to have wilfully abandoned yourself to a life of

crime. You have shown an utter disregard for the sacred right of

property; you have been ready to steal, to live on the usufruct of the

labor of others; and now, as is inevitable"--Glassford shook his head

emphatically as he pronounced the word "inevitable"--"you have gone on

until nothing is sacred in your eyes--not even human life itself."

Glassford, who found it easy to talk in this moral strain, especially

when reporters were present to take down his words, went on repeating

phrases he employed on the occasions when he pronounced sentence, until,

as it seemed to him, having worked himself up to the proper pitch, he

said, with one last tone of regret:

"It is a painful duty," and then feeling there was no way out of the

duty, unless he resigned his position, which, of course, was out of the

question, he straightened in his seat, turned, looked up at the ceiling

and said, speaking more rapidly, "and yet I can not shirk a duty because

it is disagreeable."

He clasped the desk before him tightly with his hands; his lips were

pale. Then he said:

"The sentence of the court is that you be taken by the sheriff to the

penitentiary, and there delivered over into the custody of the warden of

the said penitentiary, by him to be guarded and safely kept until the

fourteenth day of May next ensuing, on which day the said warden of the

said penitentiary shall cause a current of electricity to be passed

through your body, and to cause the said current to continue to be

passed through your body--until you are dead."

Glassford paused; no one in the court-room moved. Archie still kept his

eyes on Glassford, and Glassford kept his eyes on the wall. Glassford

had remembered that in olden days the judge, when he donned the black

cap, at some such time as this used to pray that God would have mercy on

the soul of the man for whom he himself could find no mercy; but

Glassford did not like to say this; it seemed too old-fashioned and he

would have felt silly and self-conscious in it. And yet, he felt that

the proprieties demanded that something be said in the tone of piety,

and, thinking a moment, he added:

"And I hope, Koerner, that you will employ the few remaining days of

life left to you in preparing your soul to meet its Maker."

With an air of relief, Glassford turned, and wrote in his docket. On

his broad, shining forehead drops of perspiration were glistening.

"The prisoner will be remanded," he said.

Archie faced about and held out his left wrist toward Danner. The

handcuffs clicked, Marriott turned, glanced at Archie, but he could not

bear to look in his white face. Then he heard Danner's feet and

Archie's feet falling in unison as they passed out of the courtroom.

XXIII

Danny Gibbs, having recovered from the debauch into which Archie's fate

had plunged him, sat in his back room reading the evening paper. His

spree had lasted for a week, and the whole tenderloin had seethed with

the excitement of his escapades. Now that it was all over and reason

had returned, he had made new resolutions, and a certain moral

rehabilitation was expressed in his solemn demeanor and in the utter

neatness of his attire. He was clean-shaven, his skin glowed pink from

Turkish baths, his gray hair was closely trimmed and soberly parted, his

linen was scrupulously clean; he wore new clothes of gray, his shoes

were polished and without a fleck of dust. His meditations that evening

might have been profoundly pious, or they might have been dim, foggy

recollections of the satisfaction he had felt in heaping scathing curses

on the head of Quinn, whom he had met in Eva Clason's while on his

rampage. He had cursed the detective as a representative of the entire

race of policemen, whom he hated, and Quinn had apparently taken it in

this impersonal sense, for he had stood quietly by without resenting

Gibbs's profane denunciation. But whatever Gibbs's meditations, they

were broken by the entrance of a woman.

She was dressed just as she had always been in the long years Gibbs had

known her, soberly and in taste; she wore a dark tailor suit, the jacket

of which disclosed at her full bosom a fresh white waist. She was

gloved and carried a small hand-bag; the bow of black ribbon on her hat

trembled with her agitation; she was not tall, but she was heavy, with

the tendency to the corpulence of middle years. Her reddish hair was

touched with gray here and there, and, as Gibbs looked at her, he could

see in her flushed face traces of the beauty that had been the fatal

fortune of the girlhood of Jane the Gun.

"Howdy, Dan," she said, holding out her gloved hand.

"Hello, Jane," he said. "When'd you come?"

"I got in last night," she said, laying her hand-bag on the table.

"Give me a little whisky, Dan." She tugged at her gloves, which came

from her moist hands reluctantly. Gibbs was looking at her hands,--they

were as white, as soft and as beautiful as they had ever been. One

thing in the world, he reflected in the saddened philosophy that had

come to him with sobriety, had held unchanged, anyway.

"I said a little whisky, Dan!" she spoke with some of her old

imperiousness.

"No," he said resolutely, "you don't need any. There's nothing in it."

He was speaking out of his moral rehabilitation. She glanced at him

angrily; he saw that her brown eyes, the brown eyes that went with her

reddish hair and her warm complexion, were flaming and almost red. He

remembered to have seen them flame that dangerous red before. Still, it

would be best to mollify her.

"There ain't any more whisky in town," he said, "I've drunk it all up."

She laughed as the second glove came off with a final jerk.

"I heard you'd been hitting the pots. Isn't it a shame! The poor kid!

I heard it's a kangaroo."

Gibbs made no comment.

"He was a raw one, too, wasn't he?"

"Well, he's a young Dutchman--he filled in with the mob several moons

back."

"What was the rap?"

"He boosted a rod, and they settled him for that; he got a stretch.

Then he was in when they knocked off the peter in that P. O. down in

Indiana."

"That's what I couldn't get hip to; Mason wasn't--"

"No, not that time; they had him wrong; but you know what them elbows

are."

"They must have rapped hard."

"Yes, they gave them a five spot. But the Dutch wasn't in on that

Flanagan job, neither was Curly. That was rough work--the cat, I

s'pose."

Jane, her chin in her hands, suddenly became intent, looking straight

into Gibbs's eyes.

"Dan, that's what I want to get wise to."

Her cheeks flamed to her white temples, her breast rose tumultuously,

and as she looked at Gibbs her eyes contracted, the wrinkles about them

became deeper and older, and they wore the hard ugly look of jealous

suspicion. But presently her lip quivered, then slowly along the lower

lashes of her eyes the tears gathered.

"What's the matter, Jane?"

"You don't know what I've stood for that man!" she blazed out. "I could

settle him. I could send him to the stir. I could have him touched

off!" She had clenched her fist, and, at these last words, with their

horrible possibility, she smote it down on the table. "But he knew I

wouldn't be a copper!" She ended with this, and fumbling among a

woman's trinkets in her hand-bag, she snatched out a handkerchief and

hastily brushed away the tears. Gibbs, appealed to in all sorts of

exigencies, was at a loss when a woman wept. She shook with weeping,

until her hatred was lost in the pity she felt for herself.

"I never said a word when you flew me the kite to keep under cover that

time he plugged Moon."

"No, you were good then."

"Yes," she said, looking up for approval, "I was, wasn't I? But this

time--I won't stand for it!"

"I'm out o' this," said Gibbs.

"Well," she went on, "his mouthpiece wrote me not to show here. But I

was on at once. Curly knew I was hip from the start"--her anger was

rising again. "It was all framed up; he got that mouthpiece to hand me

that bull con, and he's even got McFee to--"

"McFee!" said Gibbs, starting at the name of the inspector. "McFee!

Have you been to him?"

"Yes, I've been to him!" she said, repeating his words with a satirical

curl of the lip. "I've been to him; the mouthpiece sent me word to lay

low till he sprung him; Curly sent me word that McFee said I wasn't to

come to this town. Think I couldn't see through all that? I was wise

in a minute and I just come, that's what I did, right away. I did the

grand over here."

"What was it you thought they had framed up?" asked Gibbs innocently.

"I can't follow you."

"Aw, now, Dan," she said, drawing away from the table with a sneer,

"don't you try to whip-saw me."

"No, on the dead!"

"What was it? Why, some moll, of course; some tommy."

Gibbs leaned back and laughed; he laughed because he saw that this was

simply woman's jealousy.

"Look here, Jane," he said, "you know I don't like to referee these

domestic scraps--I know I'll be the fall guy if I do--but you're wrong,

that's all; you've got it wrong."

She looked at him, intently trying to prove his sincerity, and anxious

to be convinced that her suspicions were unfounded, and yet by habit and

by her long life of crime she was so suspicious and so distrustful--like

all thieves, she thought there were no honest people in the world--that

her suspicions soon gained their usual mastery over her, and she broke

out:

"You know I'm not wrong. I went to see McFee."

"What did he say?" asked Gibbs, with the interest in anything this lord

that stood between him and the upper world might say.

"Why, he said he wouldn't say nothing."

"Did he say you could stay?"

"Well," she hesitated an instant, "he said he didn't want me doing any

work in town; he said he wouldn't stand for it."

"No, you mustn't do any work here." Gibbs spoke now with his own

authority, reinforcing that of the detective.

"Oh, sin not leery!" she sneered at him. "I'm covered all right, and

strong. You're missing the number, that's all. I'm going to camp here,

and when I see her, I'll clout her on the kurb; I'll slam a rod to her

nut, if I croak for it!"

"Jane," said Gibbs, when he had looked his stupefaction at her, "you've

certainly gone off your nut. Who in hell's this woman you're talking

about?"

"As if you don't know! What do you want to string me for?"

Gibbs looked at her with a perfectly blank face.

"All right, have it your way."

"Well," she said presently, with some doubt in her mind, "if you don't

know and just to prove to you that I _do_ know, it's the sister of that

young Koerner!"

Gibbs looked at her a long time in a kind of silent contempt. Then he

said in a tone that dismissed the subject as an absurdity:

"You've passed; the nut college for you."

Jane fingered the metal snake that made the handle of her bag; now and

then she sighed, and after a while she was forced to speak--the silence

oppressed her:

"Well, I'll stay and see, anyway."

"Jane, you're bug house," said Gibbs quietly.

Somehow, at the words, she bowed her head on her hands and wept; the

black ribbon on her hat shook with her sobbing.

"Oh, Dan, I am bug house," she sobbed; "that's what I've been leery of.

I haven't slept for a month; I've laid awake night after night; for four

days now I've been going down the line--hunting her everywhere, and I

can't find her!"

She gave way utterly and cried. And Gibbs waited with a certain aspect

of stolid patience, but in reality with a distrust of himself; he was a

sentimental man, who was moved by any suffering that revealed itself to

him concretely, or any grief or hardship that lay before his own eyes,

though he lacked the cultured imagination that could reveal the sorrows

and the suffering that are hidden in the world beyond immediate vision.

But she ceased her weeping as suddenly as she had begun it.

"Dan," she said, looking up, "you don't know what I've done for that

man. I was getting along all right when I doubled with him; I was doing

well--copping the cush right along. I was working under protection in

Chi.; I gave it all up for him--"

She broke off suddenly and exclaimed irrelevantly:

"The tommy buster!"

Gibbs started.

"No," he protested, "not Curly!"

"Sure!" she sneered, turning away in disgust of his doubt.

"What made you stand for it?"

"Well," she temporized, forced to be just, "it was only once. I had

rousted a goose for his poke--all alone too--" She spoke with the pride

she had always had in her dexterity, and Gibbs suddenly recalled the

fact that she had been the first person in all their traditions who

could take a pocketbook from a man, "weed" and replace it without his

being aware; the remembrance pleased him and his eyes lighted up.

"What's the matter?" she demanded suddenly.

"I was thinking of the time you turned the old trick, and at the

come-back, when the bulls found the sucker's leather on him with the

put-back, they booted him down the street; remember?"

Jane looked modest and smiled, but she was too full of her troubles now

for compliments, though she had a woman's love for them.

"I saw the sucker was fanning and I--well, Curly comes up just then and

he goes off his nut and he--gives me a beating--in the street."

She saw that the circumstances altered the case in Gibbs's eyes, and she

rather repented having told.

"He said he didn't want me working; he said he could support me."

Gibbs plainly thought well of Curly's wish to be the sole head and

support of his nomadic family, but he recognized certain disadvantages

in Curly's attitude when he said:

"You could get more than he could."

"Course, that's what I told him, but he said no, he wouldn't let me,

and, Dan, you know what I did? Why, I helped him; he used to bust tags

on the rattlers, and he hoisted express-wagons--I knew where to dispose

of the stuff--furs and that sort, and we did do pretty well. I used to

fill out for him, and then I'd go with him to the plant at night and

wait with the drag holding the horses--God! I've sat out in the jungle

when it was freezing, sat out for hours; sometimes the plant had been

sprung by the bulls or the hoosiers; it made no difference--that's how I

spent my nights for two winters. I know every road and every field and

every fence corner around that town. It gave me the rheumatism, and I

hurt my back helping him load the swag. You see he didn't have a gager

and didn't have to bit up with any one, but he never appreciated that!

And now he's lammed, he's pigged, that's what he's done; he's thrown me

down--but you bet I'll have my hunk!"

"That won't get you anything," Gibbs argued. "Anyway," he added, as if

he had suddenly discovered a solution, "why don't you go back on the gun

now?"

She was silent a moment, and, as she sat there, the tears that were

constantly filling her eyes welled up again, and she said, though

reluctantly and with a kind of self-consciousness:

"I don't want to, Dan. I'm getting old. To tell the truth, since I've

been out of it, I'm sick of the business--I--I've got a notion to square

it."

Gibbs was so used to this talk of reform that it passed him idly by, and

he only laughed. She leaned her cheek against her hand; with the other

hand she twisted and untwisted the metal snake. Presently she sighed

unconsciously.

"What are you going to do now?" Gibbs asked presently.

"I'm going to stay here in town till I see this woman."

"But you can't do any work here."

"I don't want to do any work, I tell you."

"How'll you live?"

"Live!" she said scornfully. "I don't care how; I don't care if I have

to carry the banner--I'll get a bowl of sky-blue once in a while--and

I'll wash dishes--anything!" She struck the table, and Gibbs's eyes

fastened on her white, plump little fist as it lay there; then he

laughed, thinking of it in a dish-pan, where it had never been.

"Well, I'll do it!" she persisted, reading his thought and hastily

withdrawing the fist. "I'm going to get him!" She looked at Gibbs for

emphasis.

"Jane," he said quietly, "you want to cut that out. This is no place for

you now--this town's getting on the bum; they've put it to the bad.

It's time to rip it. This rapper--"

"Oh, yes, I've heard--what's this his name is now?"

"Eades."

"What kind is he?"

"Oh, he's a swell lobster."

"They tell me he's strong."

"He's the limit."

Her eyes lighted up suddenly and she sat upright.

"Then I'll go see him!"

"Jane!" Gibbs exclaimed with as much feeling as he ever showed. He saw

by the flashes of her eyes that her mind was working rapidly, though he

could not follow the quick and surprising turns her intentions would

take. He had a sudden vision, however, of her sitting in Eades's

office, talking to him, passing herself off, doubtless, for the

respectable and devoted wife of Jackson; he knew how easily she could

impose on Eades; he knew how Eades would be impressed by a woman who

wore the good clothes Jane knew how to wear so well, and he felt, too,

that in his utter ignorance of the world from which Jane came, in his

utter ignorance of life in general, Eades would believe anything she

told him; and becoming thus prejudiced in the very beginning, make

untold work for him to do in order to save his friend.

"Jane," he said severely, "you let him alone; you hear?"

She had risen and was drawing on her gloves. She stood there an

instant, smiling as if her new notion pleased her, while she pressed

down the fingers of her glove on her left hand. Then she said

pleasantly:

"Good-by, Dan. Give my love to Kate."

And she turned and was gone.

XXIV

Elizabeth had heard her father enter and she imagined him sitting in the

library, musing by the fire, finding a tired man's comfort in that quiet

little hour before dinner. Sensitive as ever to atmospheres, Elizabeth

felt the coziness of the hour, and looked forward to dinner with

pleasure. For days she had been under the gloom of Archie's conviction;

she had never followed a murder case before, but she had special reason

for an interest in this. She had helped Marriott all she could by

wishing for his success; she had felt his failure as a blow, and this,

with the thought of Gusta, had caused her inexpressible depression. But

by an effort she had put these thoughts from her mind, and now in her

youth, her health, her wholesomeness, the effect of so much sorrow and

despair was leaving her. She had finished her toilet, which, answering

her mood, was bright that evening, when she heard Dick enter. Half the

time of late he had not come home at all, sometimes days went by without

her seeing him. She glanced at the little watch on her dressing-table;

it was not yet six and Dick was home in time for dinner; perhaps he

would spend the evening at home. She hoped he had not come to dress for

some engagement that would take him away. Her father, she knew, would

be happy in the thought of the boy's spending an evening with him;

almost pathetic in his happiness. Of late, more and more, as she noted,

the father had yearned toward the son; the lightest word, a look, a

smile from Dick was sufficient to make him glow with pleasure. It made

Elizabeth sad to see it, and it made her angry to see how her mother

fondled and caressed him, excusing him for, if not abetting him in, all

his excesses. But these thoughts were interrupted just then by Dick's

voice. He was in the hall outside, and he spoke her name:

"Bess!"

The tone of the voice struck her oddly. He had pushed open the door and

hesitated on the threshold, peering in cautiously. Then he entered and

carefully closed the door behind him. She scented the odor of Scotch

whisky, of cigarettes, in short, the odor of the club man. His face,

which she had thought ruddy with the health, the exuberance, the

inexhaustible vitality of youth, she saw now to be really unhealthy, its

ruddy tints but the flush of his dissipations. Now, his face went white

suddenly, as if a mask had been snatched from it; she saw the weakness

and sensuousness that marred it.

"Dick!" she said, for some reason speaking in a whisper. "What's the

matter? Tell me!"

At first a great fear came to her, a fear that he was intoxicated. She

knew by intuition that Dick must frequently have been intoxicated; but

she had never seen him so, and she dreaded it; she could have borne

anything better than that, she felt. He sank on to the edge of her bed

and sat there, rocking miserably to and fro, his overcoat bundled about

him, his hat toppling on the side of his head, a figure of utter

demoralization.

"Dick!" she said, going to him, "what is it? Tell me!"

She took him by the shoulders and gave him a little shake. He continued

to rock back and forth and to moan;

"Oh, my God!" he said presently. "What am I going to do!"

Elizabeth gathered herself for one of those ordeals which, in all

families, there is one stronger than the rest to meet and deal with.

"Here, sit up." She shook him. "Sit up and tell me what ails you."

The fear that he was intoxicated had left her, and there was relief in

this. "And take off your hat." She seized the hat from his head and

laid it on the little mahogany stand beside her bed. "If you knew how

ridiculous you look!"

He sat up at this and weakly began drawing off his gloves. When he had

them off, he drew them through his hand, slapped them in his palm, and

then with a weary sigh, said:

"Well, I'm ruined!"

"Oh, don't be dramatic!" She was herself now. "Tell me what scrape

you're in, and we'll see how to get you out of it." She was quite

composed. She drew up a chair for him and one for herself. Some silly

escapade, no doubt, she thought, which in his weakness he was half glad

to make the most of. He had removed his overcoat and taken the chair

she had placed for him. Then he raised his face, and when she saw the

expression, she felt the blood leave her cheeks; she knew that the

trouble was real. She struggled an instant against a sickness that

assailed her, and then, calming herself, prepared to meet it.

"Well?" she said.

"Bess," he began fearfully, and his head dropped again. "Bess"--his

voice was very strange--"it's--the--bank."

She shivered as if a dead cold blast had struck her. In the moment

before there had swept through her mind a thousand possibilities, but

never this one. She closed her eyes. There was a sharp pain in her

heart, exactly as if she had suddenly crushed a finger.

"The bank!" she exclaimed in a whisper. "Oh, Dick!"

He hung his head and began to moan again, and to rock back and forth,

and then suddenly he leaned over, seized his head in his two hands and

began to weep violently, like a child. Strangely enough, to her own

surprise, she found herself calmly and coolly watching him. She could

see the convulsive movements of his back as he sobbed; she could see his

fingers viciously tearing at the roots of his hair. She sat and watched

him; how long she did not know. Then she said:

"Don't cry, Dick; they'll hear you down-stairs."

He made an effort to control himself, and Elizabeth suddenly remembered

that he had told her nothing at all.

"What do you mean," she asked, "by the bank?"

"I mean," he said without uncovering his face, and his hands muffled his

words, "that I'm--into it."

Ah, yes! This was the dim, unposited thought, the numb, aching dread,

the half-formed, unnamed, unadmitted fear that had lurked beneath the

thought of all these months--underneath the father's thought and hers;

this was what they had meant when they exchanged glances, when now and

then with dread they approached the subject in obscure, mystic words,

meaningless of themselves, yet pregnant with a dreadful and terrible

import. And now--it had come!

"How much?" she forced herself to ask.

He nodded.

"It's big. Several--"

"What?"

"Hundreds."

"Hundreds?"

He hesitated, and then,

"Thousands," he said, tearing the word from him.

"How many thousands?" she asked, when she could find the courage.

Again he cowered before the truth. She grew impatient.

"Tell me!" she commanded. "Don't be a coward." He winced. "Sit up and

face this thing and tell me. How many thousands have you stolen?"

She said it in a hard, cold voice. He suddenly looked up, his eyes

flashed an instant. He saw his sister sitting there, her hands held

calmly in her lap, her head inclined a little, her chin thrust out, her

lips tightly compressed, and he could not meet her; he collapsed again,

and she heard him say pitifully, "Don't use that word." Then he began

to weep, and as he sobbed, he repeated:

"Oh, they'll send me to the penitentiary--the penitentiary--the

penitentiary!"

The word struck Elizabeth; her gray eyes began to fill.

"How much, Dick?" she asked gently.

"Five--a--"

"More?"

He nodded

"How much more?"

"Twice as much."

"Ten, then?"

He said nothing; he ceased sobbing. Then suddenly he looked up and met

her glance.

"Bess," he said, "it's twenty-three thousand!"

She stared at him until her tears had dried. In the silence she could

hear her little watch ticking away on the dressing-table. The lights in

the room blazed with a fierce glare.

"Does Mr. Hunter know?"

"Yes."

"When did he find out?"

"This morning. He called me in this afternoon."

"Does any one else know?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

Dick hung his head and began to fumble his watch-chain.

"Who, Dick?"

"One other man."

"Who? Tell me."

"Eades."

She closed her eyes and leaned back; she dropped her arms to her sides

and clutched her chair for support. For a long while they did not

speak. It was Dick at last who spoke. He seemed to have regained his

faculties and his command.

"Bess," he said, "Eades will have no mercy on me. You know that."

She admitted it with a slow nod of her head, her eyes still closed.

"Something must be done. Father--he must be told. Will--will you tell

him?"

She sat a moment--it seemed a long moment--without moving, without

opening her eyes; and Dick sat there and watched her. Some of the color

had come to his face. His eyes were contracting; his face was lined

with new scheming.

"Will you tell him, Bess?"

She moved, opened her eyes slowly, wearily, and sighed:

"Yes."

She got up.

"You're not going to tell him now?"

He stretched out a hand as if to detain her.

"Yes, now. Why not?" She rose with difficulty, paused, swayed a little

and then went toward the door. Dick watched her without a word. His

hand was in the pocket of his coat. He drew out a cigarette.

She went down the stairs holding the baluster tightly; her palm, moist

from her nervousness, squeaked on the rail as she slid it along. She

paused in the library door. Her father was lounging in his chair under

the reading-lamp, his legs stretched toward the fire. She could just

see the top of his head over the chair, the light falling on his gray

hair.

"That you, Betsy?"

The cheer and warmth of his tone smote her; again her eyes closed in

pain.

"Yes, it's I," she said, trying for a natural tone, and succeeding, at

least, in putting into her voice a great love--and a great pity. She

bent over the back of the chair, and laid her hands on his head, gazing

into the fire. The touch of her hands sent a delicious thrill through

Ward; he did not move or speak, wishing to prolong the sensation.

"Dear," she said, "I have something to tell you."

The delicious sensation left him instantly.

"Can you bear some bad news--some bad, bad news?"

His heart sank. He had expected something like this--the day would

come, he knew, when she would leave him. But was it not unusual?

Should not Eades have spoken--should not he have asked him first? Her

arms were stealing about his neck.

"Some bad news--some evil news. Something very--"

She had slipped around beside him and leaned over as if to protect him

from the blow she was about to deliver. Her voice suddenly grew

unnatural, tragic, sending a shudder through him as she finished her

sentence with the one word:

"Horrible!"

"What is it?" he whispered.

"Be strong, dear, and brave; it's going to hurt you."

"Tell me, Bess," he said, sitting up now, his man's armor on.

"It's about Dick."

"Dick!"

"Yes, Dick--and the bank!"

"Oh-h!" he groaned, and, in his knowledge of his own world, he knew it

all.

XXV

"Ah, Mr. Ward, ah! Heh! Won't you sit down, sir, won't you sit down?"

Hunter had risen from his low hollow chair, and now stood bowing, or

rather stooping automatically to a posture lower than was customary with

him. The day before or that afternoon, Ward would have noticed Hunter's

advancing senility. The old banker stood bent before his deep,

well-worn green chair, its bottom sagging almost to the floor. He had

on large, loose slippers and a long faded gown. The light glistened on

his head, entirely bald, and fell in bright patches on the lean, yellow

face that was wrinkled in a smile,--but a smile that expressed nothing,

not even mirth. He stood there, uncertainly, almost apologetically,

making some strange noise in his throat like a chuckle, or like a cough.

His tongue moved restlessly along his thin lips. In his left hand he

held a cigar, stuck on a toothpick.

"Won't you sit down, Mr. Ward, won't you sit down, sir?"

The old banker, after striving for this effect of hospitality, lowered

himself carefully into his own deep chair. Ward seated himself across

the hearth, and looked at the shabby figure, huddled in its shabby

chair, in the midst of all the richness and luxury of that imposing

library. About the walls were magnificent bookcases in mahogany, and

behind their little leaded panes of glass were rows of morocco bindings.

On the walls were paintings, and all about, in the furniture, the rugs,

the bric-a-brac, was the display of wealth that had learned to refine

itself. And yet, in the whole room nothing expressed the character of

that aged and withered man, save the shabby green chair he sat in, the

shabby gown and slippers he wore, and the economical toothpick to make

his cigar last longer. Ward remembered to have heard Elizabeth and her

mother--in some far removed and happy day before this thing had come

upon him--speak of the difficulty Mrs. Hunter and Agnes Hunter had with

the old man; he must have been intractable, he had resisted to the end

and evidently come off victorious, for here he sat with the trophies of

his victory, determined to have his own way. And yet Ward, who was not

given to speculations of the mental kind, did not think of these things.

At another time Hunter might have impressed him sadly as an old man; but

not now; this night he was feeling very old himself.

"I presume, Mr. Hunter," Ward began, "that you imagined the object of my

visit when I telephoned you an hour ago."

"Oh, yes, sir, yes, Mr. Ward. You came to see me about that boy of

yours!"

"Exactly," said Ward, and he felt his cheek flush.

"Bad boy, that, Mr. Ward," said Hunter in his squeaking voice, grinning

toothlessly.

"We needn't discuss that," said Ward, lifting his hand. "The situation

is already sufficiently embarrassing. I came to talk the matter over as

a simple business proposition."

"Yes?" squeaked Hunter with a rising inflection.

"What does the shortage amount to?" Ward leaned toward him.

"In round numbers?"

"No," Ward was abrupt. "In dollars and cents."

Hunter pursed his lips. Ward's last words seemed to stimulate his

thought.

"Let us see," he said, "let us see. If I remember rightly"--and Ward

knew that he remembered it to the last decimal point--"it amounts to

twenty-four thousand, six hundred and seventy-eight dollars and

twenty-nine cents."

Ward made no reply; he was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees,

gazing into the fire. He did not move, and yet he knew that the old

banker was shrewdly eying him.

"That, of course," said Hunter with the effect of an afterthought, "is

the principal sum. The interest--"

"Yes, that's all right," said Ward. Hunter's last words, which at any

other time would have infuriated him, in this instance made him happy;

they reassured him, gave him hope. He knew now that the old banker was

ready to compromise. Then suddenly he remembered that he had not smoked

that evening, and he drew his cigar-case from his pocket.

"Do you mind, sir, if I smoke?"

"Not in the least, Mr. Ward, not in the least, sir; delighted to have

you. Make yourself perfectly at home, sir."

He waved his long, thin, transparent hand grandly and hospitably at

Ward, and smiled his toothless smile.

"Perhaps you'd smoke, Mr. Hunter."

Ward proffered him the case and reflected instantly with delight that

the cigar was a large, strong Havana, rich and heavy, much heavier than

the old man was accustomed to, for from its odor Ward knew that the

cigar Hunter was consuming to the last whiff was of cheap domestic

tobacco, if it was of tobacco at all.

"Thank you, sir," said Hunter, delighted, leaning out of his chair and

selecting a cigar with care. "I usually limit myself to one cigar of an

evening--but with you--"

"Yes," thought Ward, "I know why you limit yourself to one, and I hope

this one will make you sick."

When Ward had smoked a moment, he said:

"Mr. Hunter, if I reimburse you, what assurance can I have that there

will be no prosecution?"

"Heh, heh." The old man made that queer noise in his throat again.

"Heh, heh. Well, Mr. Ward, you know you are already on your son's

bond."

"For ten thousand, yes--not for twenty-four."

"Quite right!" said Hunter, taken somewhat aback. Then they were silent.

"What assurance can you give me, Mr. Hunter?" He took the cigar from

his lips and looked directly at Hunter.

"Well, I'm afraid, Mr. Ward, that that has passed out of my hands. You

see--"

"You told Eades; yes, I know!" Ward was angry, but he realized the

necessity for holding his temper.

"Why did you do that, Mr. Hunter, if I may ask? What did you expect to

gain?"

Hunter made the queer noise in his throat and then he stammered:

"Well, Mr. Ward, you must understand that--heh--our Trust Company is a

state institution--and I felt it to be my duty, as a citizen, you know,

to report any irregularities to the proper official. Merely my duty, as

a citizen, Mr. Ward, you understand, as a citizen. Painful, to be sure,

but my duty."

Ward might not have been able to conceal the disgust he felt for this

old man if he had not, for the first time that evening, been reminded by

Hunter's own words that the affair was not one to come within the

federal statutes. What Hunter's motive had been in reporting the matter

to Eades so promptly, he could not imagine. It would seem that he could

have dealt better by keeping the situation in his own hands; that he

could have held the threat of prosecution over his head as a weapon

quite as menacing as this, and certainly one he could more easily

control. But Hunter was mysterious; he waded in the water, and Ward

could not follow his tracks. He was sure of but one thing, and that was

that the reason Hunter had given was not the real reason.

"You might have waited, it seems to me, Mr. Hunter," he said. "You

might have had some mercy on the boy."

Ward did not see the peculiar smile that played on Hunter's face.

"If I remember, Mr. Ward, you had a young man in your employ once,

who--"

Ward could scarcely repress a groan.

"I know, I know," he hastened to confess.

"Yes, exactly," said Hunter, his chuckle now indicating a dry

satisfaction. "You did it as a duty--as I did--our duties as citizens,

Mr. Ward, our duties as citizens, and our duties to the others in our

employ--we must make examples for them."

"Yes. Well, it's different when your own boy is selected to afford the

example," Ward said this with a touch of his humor, but became serious

and sober again as he added:

"And I hope, Mr. Hunter, that this affair will never cause you the

sorrow and regret--yes, the remorse--that that has caused me."

Hunter looked at Ward furtively, as if he could not understand how such

things could cause any one regret. Out of this want of understanding,

however, he could but repeat his former observation:

"But our duty, Mr. Ward. We must do our duty--heh--heh--as citizens,

remember."

He was examining the little gilt-and-red band on the cigar Ward had

given him. He had left it on the cigar, and now picked at it with a

long, corrugated finger-nail, as if he found a pleasure and a novelty in

it. Ward was willing to let the subject drop. He knew that Hunter had

been moved by no civic impulse in reporting the fact to Eades; he did

not know what his motive had been; perhaps he never would know. It was

enough now that the harm had been done, and in his practical way he was

wondering what could be done next. He suddenly made a movement as if he

would go, a movement that caused Hunter to glance at him in some

concern.

"Well," said Ward, "of course, if it has gone that far, if it is really

out of your hands, I presume the only thing is to let matters take their

course. To be sure, I had hoped--"

"Keep your seat, Mr. Ward, keep your seat. It is a long time since I

have had the pleasure of entertaining you in my home."

Entertaining! Ward could have seized the wizened pipe of the old man

and throttled him there in his shabby green-baize chair.

"Have you anything to suggest?" asked Ward.

"Would not the suggestion better emanate from you?" The old banker

waved a withered hand toward Ward with a gesture of invitation. Ward

remembered that gesture and understood it. He knew that now they were

getting down to business.

"I have no proposition," said Ward. "I am anxious to save my son--and

my family." A shade of pain darkened his countenance. "I am willing to

make good the--er--shortage." How all such words hurt and stung just

now! "Provided, of course, the matter could be dropped there."

The old banker pondered.

"I should like to help you in your difficulty, Mr. Ward," he said.

"I--"

Ward waited.

"I should be willing to recommend to Mr. Eades a discontinuance of any

action. What his attitude would be, I am not, of course, able to say.

You understand my position."

"Very well," said Ward in the brisk business way habitual with him.

"You see Eades, have him agree to drop the whole thing, and I'll give

you my check to cover the--deficiency."

The banker thought a moment and said finally:

"I shall have an interview with Mr. Eades in the morning, communicating

the result to you at eleven o'clock."

Ward rose.

"Must you go?" asked Hunter in surprise, as if the visit had been but a

social one. He rose tremblingly, and stood looking about him with his

mirthless grin, and Ward departed without ceremony.

XXVI

All the way to the court-house Elizabeth's heart failed her more and

more. She had often been in fear of Eades, but never had she so feared

him as she did to-day; the fear became almost an acute terror. And,

once in the big building, the fear increased. Though the court-house,

doubtless, was meant for her as much as for any one, she felt that alien

sense that women still must feel in public places. Curiosity and

incredulity were shown in the glances the loafers of the corridors

bestowed on this young woman, who, in her suit of dark green, with gray

furs and muff, attracted such unusual attention. Elizabeth detected the

looks that were exchanged, and, because of her sensitiveness, imagined

them to be of more significance than they were. She saw the sign

"Marriage Licenses" down one gloomy hallway; then in some way she

thought of the divorce court; then she thought of the criminal court,

with its shadow now creeping toward her own home, and when she reflected

how much cause for this staring curiosity there might be if the curious

ones but knew all she knew, her heart grew heavier. But she hurried

along, found Eades's office, and, sending in her card, sat down in the

outer room to wait.

She had chosen the most obscure corner and she sat there, hoping that no

one would recognize her, filled with confusion whenever any one looked

at her, or she suspected any one of looking at her, and imagining all

the dreadful significances that might attach to her visit. While she

waited, she had time to think over the last eighteen hours. They had

found it necessary to tell her mother, and that lady had spent the whole

morning in hysteria, alternately wondering what people would say when

the disgrace became known, and caressing and leaning on Dick, who

bravely remained at home and assumed the manly task of comforting and

reassuring his mother. Elizabeth had awaited in suspense the conclusion

of Hunter's visit to Eades, and she had gone down town to hear from her

father the result of Hunter's effort. She was not surprised when her

father told her that Hunter reported failure; neither of them had had

much faith in Hunter and less in Eades. But when they had discussed it

at the luncheon they had in a private room at the club, and after the

discussion had proved so inconclusive, she broached the plan that had

come to her in the wakeful night,--the plan she had been revolving in

her mind all the morning.

"My lawyer?" her father had said. "He could do nothing--in a case like

this."

"I suppose not," Elizabeth had said. "Besides, it would only place the

facts in the possession of one more person."

"Yes."

"We might consult Gordon Marriott. He would sympathize--and help."

"Yes, that might do."

"But not yet," she had said, "Not till I've tried my plan."

"Your plan? What is it?"

"To see John Eades--for me to see John Eades."

She had hung her head--she could not help it, and her father had shown

some indignation.

"Not for worlds!" he had said. "Not for worlds!"

"But I'm going."

"No! It wouldn't be fitting!"