I
To outward appearance the whole of the courtroom scene was drab,
ordinary. There was the stuffy rectangle of a room, half dark in the
January dusk, for all that the electric lights glowed with meager
incandescence. There was the judge, in his robe, at the desk of the
court. There were the jurymen, solemn as in church. There the court
stenographers, bald, active as ants. There the men of the daily
journals, more aloof, more judicial than the judge. There the press of
morbid spectators, leaning forward like runners on the mark. There the
policemen, court attendants, whatnot, relaxed of body, concentrated of
eye, jealous of the dignity of the court as a house-dog of its master's
home. Through the windows of the court could be seen the bulk of the
Tombs, heavy, hopeless, horrible as the things whence it takes its
chilly name.
The case of the people _versus_ Anna Janssen for the murder of Alastair
de Vries droned on.
The district attorney, youngish, slim, lithe, a little sinister--the
impression of a hunting-dog all over him--was examining a witness, a
rat-faced man who had something of the old-time bartender or private
detective about him.
"It was your business, as attendant at the Oriental Garden, to see that
order was kept?"
"Yes, sir."
"There was no semblance of disorder at all until you heard the shot
fired?"
"No, sir."
"Mr. De Vries was at a table with a party?"
"Yes, sir."
"You heard the shot and you saw Mr. De Vries fall forward?"
"Yes, sir. Crumpled up, sort of."
"Then you ran to him?"
"Yes, sir."
"You saw the woman Janssen back of the hall with a revolver?"
"Yes, sir."
"What was she doing?"
"She was laughing."
"Was she drunk?"
"The laugh sounded drunk."
"Was she very much under the influence of liquor?"
"She could n't have been, else she would n't have got away."
"You are certain that it was the prisoner?"
All eyes in the court-room were turned to the prisoner in the dock.
And there was in the sordid trial chamber a sense of great disturbance
in the air, though, from the minds and personalities of all gathered
there, there rose in gray tendrils a haze of doubt, of disbelief, of
mystery.
She sat in the dock, in the sordid court-room, among the unseemly
officers and the public, as a statue in some public square might stand
above the rabble. Mature, magnificent, the prisoner seemed almost like
some goddess from a Norse mythology.
First, her strange coloring made all catch their breath. Her face was
tanned to an absolutely golden hue, and out of this work of delicate
bronze there looked, calm and confident, two eyes that were blue as
sea-water. Her eyebrows, her hair, were bleached by the sun until her
eyebrows were two half-moons of silver, until her hair was the pale,
beautiful gold of honey in dark lights and like vivid strands of live
silver when the light fell on it. She had the strange, exotic
appearance of the women of Saba Isle, the ancient colony of Holland
sailors and Carib Indian belles, a small dot in the West Indies where
there is a town on the top of a mountain, and life is as in the garden
of the Hesperides.
It was not alone her coloring, her splendid face. From her there came
such an aura of health, of spiritual strength, it seemed impossible
that this woman was the chorus girl Janssen who had been the cast-off
mistress of the rake and spendthrift De Vries, who had been drunk, who
attended cabarets with wine-merchants and Broadway belles. This woman!
Impossible! In her own calm eyes there seemed also a look that said
more: "This is ridiculous. I can't have done this. Why am I here?
Why don't they get up and let me go?"
Even the rat-faced witness was perturbed.
"The prisoner in the dock?" he said with a sense of puzzled wonder.
"The prisoner in the dock?"
"Well, don't mind the prisoner in the dock, then. It was the woman
Janssen you saw."
"I am sure of that."
"You were well acquainted with her appearance. You couldn't have been
mistaken?"
"No, sir, I could not have been mistaken. She was often at the
Oriental with Mr. De Vries. Sometimes every night for a week. I could
not have been mistaken. It was she shot Mr. De Vries."
The district attorney sat down, with a gesture of his hand toward
Howard Donegan, the prisoner's counsel. With his massive body, with
his massive head, with his cruel jurist's face, Howard Donegan was as
much a part of the attraction for the public as was the prisoner, the
notoriety of the ten-year-old case, the romantic capture of Annette
Janssen. The great Irish-American was the foremost criminal lawyer of
his day, all but invincible when defending a man or a woman with the
slightest chance of escape, and right on his side. As a cross-examiner
he was dreaded as the plague. The public would get the thrill of
seeing a superbly cruel and magnificent performance when Donegan arose.
Even now the rat-faced witness shook as with ague as Donegan turned
casually toward him, with hooded eyes. But Donegan shook his head. He
did not wish to cross-examine.
Even the judge was surprised.
"Did I hear aright?" He leaned forward, his fine mystic's face in
lines of doubt and worry. "The counsel for the prisoner does not wish
to cross-examine?"
"Your Honor heard aright. I will not cross-examine."
Through the big chamber there was a buzz of comment, of doubt, of all
but horror. Was there nothing to be done for this woman? Even if she
did kill De Vries, give her a sporting chance for her life! "What is
Donegan doing?" the public, the attendants, the newspaper reporters
asked themselves with mistrust. Was he throwing her down?
There was a tensing in court, a tightening, as of drama. Already there
was a sense in every one's chilled veins of the horrible harness of the
electric chair. But Donegan only drowsed.
"You can step down," the Court told the witness.
The rat-faced man crept from the witness-box, white, shaking still with
the fear of Donegan's eye. He tried to get a seat in the benches, but
none would make room for him. And though he had only done his duty,
and that at command of the law, there was about him, as he slunk from
the room, the look there was about him who was surnamed Iscariot, as he
crept from the garden on the Mount of Olives, on the world's most
tragic dawn.... Like a story from some old book there unrolled before
the public the history of Anna Janssen of ten, or twelve, or fifteen
years before, in a New York we know no longer, so changed is it in that
brief space. Then it was a riotous spendthrift, a glorious waster,
hell-roaring, somehow lovable, and now it is a burgess of standing,
with all the burgess virtues.
And the eyes of the court-room glistened as old names appeared like
Falstaffian ghosts. The Poodle Dog, the German Village, the Holland
House, the Knickerbocker. Gorgeous, blowsy, out of a dim past they
rose for an instant. Baron Wilkins's and Nigger Mike's. And there was
the thin clink of glasses across forgotten bars. And at three o'clock
of a morning the flying wedge at Pat's was hurling some truculent guest
to the sidewalk. And gunmen were gunmen then, not strike-breakers.
Old days, great days, and only a dozen years before. And John
Barrymore was not _Richard III_ but the comedian of "Are You a Mason?"
And Mr. Chambers had written "The Danger Mark," and Lieutenant Becker
still patrolled the streets. And Mannie Chappelle and Diamond Jim were
still alive and merry, who are now dust, God rest them! And cops
grafted and politics were corrupt, after the old and pleasant
tradition. And out of the side door of saloons came the old-fashioned
drunkard, who with the old-fashioned ghost-story and the old-fashioned
Christmas is laid to rest forevermore. And the voice of Dr. Parkhurst
was heard through the land.
Ichabod! Gone is glory!
The night life of Paris was hectic, hysterical. The night life of
Berlin was heavy, somehow sinister. But, lush, extravagant, now
joyous, now _macabre_, the foam of New-World liquor, the night life of
New York challenged the heavens with streaming rays, retiring only
before the chaste, armored dawn. Like some Thousand and One Nights of
some writer of the people, it challenged the imagination, it intrigued,
it repelled. Overdone not seldom, often in bad taste, but virile,
rude, and unabashed, it claimed recognition with brazen clamor.
And on this stage, and against this background, now leading woman to De
Vries, now being supported by a caste of wasters, brokers, men about
town, there moved Anna Janssen, the Swedish Beauty. Cast in the form
and figure of a Norse goddess, fit for great epics, she was a figurante
in a debauched side-show. Her eyes, which were blue as the sea and
should have been pure and passionate as the sea, were drenched with
wine, and her mouth, with its clear-cut outlines as of a woman of the
painter Zorn's, which should have been firm as a budding flower, was
relaxed and wet from kissing.
A woman of Broadway, hungered after and yet despised, she might have
gone the accustomed path that leads from the chattering magnificence of
Broadway to the sinister silence of Potter's Field. Down the old
beaten decline toward sordid Death she could have gone, and none would
have tried to stay her, none to help. And then the end. And the only
result would have been a little chilling in the hearts of the newer
Beauties of Broadway, a ghost whispering in their hearts the most
terrible of epitaphs: The wages of sin is death. For a moment only.
And some celebrity of Broadway might feel sad for an hour, with easy
sentiment: "Poor Anna! And I knew her when she wore diamonds, and New
York was at her feet!" Or some respectable citizen in his warm home
might treasure secret, ashamed memories, and never avow them. And some
one might even seek out her grave to say a hurried prayer and make an
offering of flowers. And the rest would be silence.
But that, in a mood of drunken pique, she shot and killed Alastair de
Vries!
Of her life there is little to be said. It is a life that a thousand
girls have lived. Admit the evidence which satisfied a judge in a
trial of murder and it boils down to this: The daughter of a Brooklyn
mechanic, she got a place in the chorus of a big musical comedy, and
was flattered and courted by the blades of Broadway. And the one to
whom she fell victim was Alastair de Vries, who had forsaken Fifth
Avenue to travel westward to Broadway. Of the old patroon stock which
had settled New Amsterdam and been lords of the manor along the Hudson
before the English came, bankers and traders, soldiers and explorers,
all there remained of them was one moneyed boy who saw adventure only
in ruining the daughters of tradesmen where his forebears had seen it
in hacking out the destiny of a New World.
Blond, rather chubby, not yet thirty, Alastair de Vries had already had
a large biography in the Sunday papers and weeklies of gossip in New
York. Annette Janssen was one of perhaps twenty conquests and she was
not the last. She was the all but last.
He took her from the chorus, gave her everything she desired, made her
for her brief life the semiannual queen of Broadway.
And then a small brunette came along, acclaimed as the Queen of the
Ponies, and, turning like a flash, De Vries hurried to conquer the new
arrival. And Anna shot him, not because of jealousy, not because she
loved him, but just to make trouble.
There's her life for you. There are what the dazzling facts of her
queendom of Broadway amount to. There they are, without their glitter
and romance. Through the black magic of Sinister Alley they shine like
fireflies, but, like fireflies, in the calm sanity of daytime they are
nothing but grubby crawling things we flick from our palms with a
_moue_ of distaste....
Day followed day, and witness witness, and item by item the sordid
chronicle was written. Each fact attested and proved to the
satisfaction of the court, to the satisfaction of the public. It was a
sort of journey toward a definite objective--a journey on which the
public was invited to see Justice hearken to the call of the people of
the State of New York.
There was no doubt about it. Coldly, callously, for a whim, in a
moment of piqued vanity, a chorus girl had shot a gentleman.
And then in the mind of every one there loomed, as it approached nearer
until its horrible lines, its terrifying aura were visible, the
objective of the voyage--the dreadful electric chair.
"Why does n't Donegan do something? Why? Why? Why does n't he put up
a fight at least?"
But Donegan drowsed on. Only when the prisoner in the dock threw him a
swift look of appeal, as she did occasionally when some damning point
was raised, did he drop the granite mask. Now and then her face would
blanch under the tan, and her mouth quiver. And then would come a
miracle in Donegan. Those harsh bulldog features would relax, the
glinting eyes open, and over the hated face would play the smile
of--oh, forty years ago--when he was just an innocent, likable Irish
boy, and not a great jurist, whom communion with the sinister qualities
of the law, and battles for life and liberty, and knowledge of strange
strata in the minds of men, which is good for none to know, had
transformed into a dark angel with a protective and flaming sword.
But the smile did n't reassure the public.
"Yes, he 's smiling. He 's confident, all right. But why does n't he
do something?"
Had the people in the court-room read of this trial in their
homes--read the bare facts, the testimony of witnesses, there was not
one who would have wasted a second thought on Anna Janssen. Perhaps in
the hearts of one or two there would have lingered the feeling that it
was not right she should be strapped horribly in the chair. But that
would have been chivalry, not justice. One and all would have said:
"That is what the death penalty is for--to remove from human contact
one who has no right to God's sunshine, and who has arrogated to her
vile and puny self the right of the Creator, the disposal of human
life. Muffle her up. Hustle her away. Throw on the current and hide
her in quicklime. Life is not for such as she!"
But between the woman whom the witnesses had drawn in black, sinister
colors and the lady in the dock there was a continent of difference.
True, she was the same height, the same figure, but for a healthy
development of years. True, such marks of identification as Anna
Janssen the chorus girl had, might be noted on the body of her who was
a prisoner at the bar.
But the body of Anna Janssen the chorus girl was soft and white and
made for sinister loving, while that of the woman in the dock was
healthy and hard and tanned, after the fashion of Eve, whom the Lord
God made in the garden. And Anna Janssen's had swayed alluringly with
provocative sophistication, while the carriage of this woman was erect
and of great dignity. And the eyes of the chorus girl had been full of
evil knowledge and unhealthy flame, but this woman's had wistfulness
and a strange mystery.
And in the heart of every one there rose a cry: "This is not the same
woman. This is a good woman!"
There is a theory of an old medical school whose name--not that it
matters--I regret to have forgotten. And it is this: that every seven
years the human body changes. We have not the same bones, nor the same
skin, the same muscles at thirty-five that we had at twenty-eight.
They are worn out and are eliminated, and new tissue takes their place.
It may be wrong, but it is a very taking theory. It explains to us how
the track athlete of some years ago becomes the paunchy, bald-headed,
repulsive man of to-day. It explains how the well-fed man of the world
may turn into a harsh-faced monk. It explains to us how the soft,
succubine chorus girl of a dozen years before became the splendid
amazon that Anna Janssen is to-day.
And yet this may be wrong about the body. But about the mind (and
there you have the inner person) there is one thing certain, not a
theory but a fact--that people change completely. Like a child's
slate, the mind is, on which a thousand things are written. The young
take so much for granted; the old know. And gallantly they write this
for a fact, that for a falsehood. But day by day they live and learn,
as the old saw goes. And simple equations become quadratic. And the
writing on the slate is altered month by month, as new factors of life
are realized. All is a correction, a readjustment.
This is gradual, but occasionally, very occasionally, by some mental or
spiritual cataclysm all on the slate is sponged clear. And a new and
startling departure takes its place. As we see in the inner
personality of Anna Janssen the change from the petty arithmetic of
Broadway, the venal crooked sums of Sinister Street, to the gigantic
calculus of life as the Lord God conceived it, when He formed man of
the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life; and man became a living soul....
The district attorney turned from his last witness to the twelve men in
the box. "Gentlemen," he said, in the manner of a workman well
satisfied with the progress of the job in hand, "I have proved the
crime and proved the perpetrator, the circumstances, the setting, the
motive. There is but one more thing to be done to clinch this case
home like a nail in a horse's shoe. It is now ten years between the
time this murder was committed and the bringing of the prisoner to the
bar of justice. There is but one more thing to do to remove the
smallest iota of doubt that the prisoner at the bar and Anna Janssen,
Alastair de Vries's mistress, are one and the same person. And to
prove this I shall call to the witness-stand the detective who arrested
Anna Janssen in Tahiti, and in whose custody the prisoner has been from
that day until she was brought to justice here--a period of nine years
and four months in all."
"Officer Thomas McCarthy!"
"Officer Thomas McCarthy to the stand."
The public craned forward, and with that strange shifting sound that
betokens an immensity of interest they settled themselves in their
seats for the recital of the detective. Here was the great attraction
of the trial--the story of McCarthy and Anna Janssen alone on a desert
island, a murderess and the officer who arrested her. More than the
morbid interest of the killing of De Vries, more than the realistic
tale of old New York that was, more than the spectacle of a woman
dicing for her life, more than the prospect of watching Donegan, the
greatest of criminal lawyers, harass the court, and pound the battered
witnesses, and at last possibly and probably carry off the prisoner as
in an old-time rescue from Tyburn, was the promised recital of the
adventure in the lonely Southern sea. There had been one romantic
story of it in one day of the papers, and then no more, for the matter
would have called forth intense comment from the papers, arousing
sympathy or hatred, and the case was _sub judice_.
But that one story stirred the imagination of the public. And the
sordid tale told of a woman killing her fickle lover in an attack of
offended vanity faded into a golden haze of romance. The scented smell
of the tropics came to their nostrils, and their eyes saw golden sands
and phosphorescent seas. And here the palms murmured with a rustle as
of exotic silks, and the Bird of Paradise winged its iridescent flight
through the opaque Marquesan dusk. And the spirits of strange gods
moved upon the face of the waters....
Here was a setting for Scheherazade and here characters for a master
writer: a patrolman of New York, young, athletic, unspoiled, canny with
the knowledge of his native city, brave as only his kind is brave; and
here a woman from the sloughs of the Tenderloin, an admitted beauty, a
proven murderess.
What drama had happened in that isle of dreams, in that immense act of
nine rolling years? And did she love him, or did she hate him? And
had he succumbed to her, as Adam to Lilith in Eden, before Eve was? Or
had he resisted her as Anthony of Egypt resisted the succuba in the
desert near Fayum? And did she wheedle him with words sweeter than
honey? Or did she curse him with strange black blasphemies? Or was it
just one long, dumb vigil of hatred? Or had they become friends,
hunter and hunted, marooned now on the islands of strange dead gods?
In God's name, what?
At any rate they would soon know.
"Officer Thomas McCarthy, this way!"
Then, of a sudden, up rose Howard Donegan. The judge on his bench, the
jurymen, the prosecuting attorney, the court, the prisoner herself, all
looked at him with a hesitant surprise. Somehow his action was
surprisingly dramatic. He stood up slowly and said nothing, but looked
around. Into the drama of crime and romance, there was injected a new
element, powerful, sluggish, but immensely sure.
"If it please the Court," went his heavy, significant voice, "may I say
a few words?"
"It is hardly regular, at this period, Mr. Donegan," the judge said,
puzzled. "Surely you will have an opportunity later on."
"The opportunity is opportune only now." Like some strange gargoyle in
an old cathedral the great animal appeared. His eyes, under their
threatening hoods, were black and beady like the eyes of some
malevolent creature of the jungle. His mouth, a wide, thin slit,
pouted like the mouth of a fish. His sedentary body was massive and
grotesque like some monster of a mad artist's drawing. His voice
creaked like unoiled machinery. But--God!--what power was there!
"Your Honor, men of the jury, and Mr. District Attorney, at any point I
could have obstructed the course of this trial until all of you were
weary in your chairs. I could have obfuscated facts and motives and
testimony until you were as uncertain of truth as Pilate. The woman
Wilkins--I could have shown that her word was no more to be depended on
than the word of the village idiot. Mr. Howland Christy, De Vries's
relative--I could have shaken him on the stand until he would have been
uncertain of his testimony, for he is an honest man. And the usher of
the cabaret--if I had concentrated on him, I could have made that
whisky-sodden brain, that broken will, contradict everything he had
said.
"But I did none of these things. I made no haze of doubt out of honest
facts. For why? Because these facts are true. I grant them freely!"
There were a rustle and a murmur in the room. The public was suddenly
aghast. What was this from Donegan? Treachery? Who ever heard of a
counsel granting things like that? Good Lord! what was the man doing?
The murmuring went on in spite of the judge's gavel, the attendants'
cries.
Donegan swept the room with his black, minatory glance, and the
murmuring died.
"Your Honor, Mr. District Attorney, men of the jury, a crime is not an
instantaneous action. What goes before a crime is important, and not
less important is what follows it. Has the affair been brooded over,
or has it been the result of momentary passion, and has the deed been
regarded with smug satisfaction, or with quaking horror?
"And what effect has this had on the prisoner, on the world, on its
time? So many things have to be taken into consideration when we are
adjudging the crime.
"Gentlemen, the law and legal procedure are as easy to comprehend as a
child's primer. The office of the district attorney is to see that a
malefactor is brought to justice. The office of the jury is to decide
whether that action was or was not done. The object of the judge is to
weigh, decide, and in the name of the people say what shall be done
with a member of the community who has hurt the interests of the
community by his or her action. The duty of the counsel for the
prisoner is to see that his client is not traduced by false witnesses,
nor his or her liberty endangered by unfacts.
"But the object of all in the court-room is to see that justice is
done, though the heavens crumble.
"I have examined no witnesses. I shall examine none. But I ask this
in the latitude of the Court, and in the name of that Justice whose
servants we one and all are, as much myself, advocate for the prisoner,
as the district attorney for the people of the State of New York, as
the jury in the box, as the judge on his bench: that the next witness,
Thomas McCarthy, shall be allowed to tell his own story in his own way,
relating facts which may not seem germane to the case, but which I
claim are as pertinent as the pistol with which the crime was committed
or the _corpus delicti_ itself. I ask this of the Court and I request
the Court so to direct."
"This is hardly regular, Mr. Donegan."
"I ask this in the name of Justice!"
"This is a court of Justice, Mr. Donegan." The judge's manner had a
slight rebuke. "But if the district attorney is agreeable--"
The district attorney, a little nettled, but rather awed before the
tremendous purpose of Donegan, shrugged his shoulders.
"Very well, Mr. Donegan," the judge nodded. "The district attorney--"
Donegan addressed the jury--"is calling Thomas McCarthy to prove the
identity of Anna Janssen. He is an officer of the City of New York, a
witness for the State of New York. The attorney has called him to
prove that the prisoner in the dock is Anna Janssen. I shall not
examine him. But when he has given his testimony for the district
attorney he will have given his testimony for me.
"And I shall have proven that the chorus girl who killed Alastair de
Vries is not the woman who stands in the dock!"
There was an instant's sighing from the courtroom, a momentary
relaxation. So Donegan had fought and won his first fight, and now
they were going to hear the History of the Spicy Isles. Now all the
mystery would be lifted that had been hanging about the court-room like
a necromancer's mist.
"Call Thomas McCarthy!" Donegan barked from the side of his mouth.
"Officer Thomas McCarthy."
"Thomas McCarthy to the stand!"
As he stood in the witness-box, McCarthy seemed to bulk tremendously in
the room. As Anna Janssen seemed to fill the court spiritually, so he
seemed to fill it physically. Emanations of strength, emanations of
power came from him like current from a battery. He was not six feet
tall, but so erect did he stand, so free was his carriage that he
seemed to tower above all in the court-room. He was not a big man, but
he suggested tremendous strength, so easily with the smallest movement
did the sinews ripple beneath his coat. Brown as copper, his face had
not the strange mystery of Anna Janssen's, because his eyes and hair
were black, where hers were fair. Yet he was strange.
It was principally that he was out of place in his city clothes. One
could have imagined him easily as some young athlete in the Olympic
games, hurling the discus possibly, or flinging himself over the high
jump. Or one might have suffered him in the clothes of summer in the
country, soft rolling collar and roomy sport coat. But in the
"business suit" of some department-store, he seemed like an actor some
inept stage manager had dressed. Grotesquely, a police badge was
pinned to the lapel of his coat.
As he entered the box, Anna Janssen turned toward him with a swift
outpouring of her eyes. It might have been interest, but it was warmer
than interest. It might have been appeal, but it was more confident
than appeal.
"You are plain-clothes officer Thomas McCarthy?" the district attorney
examined.
"Yes, sir. Number eight thousand nine hundred and seventeen."
"Attached to police headquarters?"
"Yes, sir."
"Tell us the circumstances under which you arrested the prisoner."
"The Commissioner--the Commissioner--" McCarthy began, faltered,
suddenly stopped.
"Yes, the Commissioner."
But McCarthy seemed struck by sudden panic.
"Yes, yes!" the district attorney became irritable. "The
Commissioner--" He rapped the table.
Donegan rose.
"McCarthy," he explained gently, "has had no one to talk to for seven
years but my client. He finds it hard to get his words right. Take
your time, McCarthy," he told the witness. "Close your eyes. Say it
as if you were saying it to yourself."
The prisoner threw him a look of gratitude.
"I was on the vice squad under Inspector O'Gara." The witness found
words at last. "One morning the Commissioner sends for me. It was
when the trouble was on about the graft in the Raines-law hotels. The
Commissioner looks at me kind of hard.
"'Are you on the square, McCarthy?' he says.
"'Yes, Commissioner, I 'm on the square,' I tells him.
"'It's news to me they 's any one on the square,' the Commissioner
laughs kind o' mean.
"'Tell me, McCarthy, were you ever mixed up with a woman?' I gets
chilled all over, because I thinks some one's trying to frame me.
"'No, sir. Never,' I answers.
"'Then why were n't you?'
"'I don't know,' I says, 'except it was my people were from Ireland and
brought me up their own way. When I was a kid, Commissioner, I could
go to confession without holding out, and I guess I can do it to-day.'
"'Oh, you 're one of them good Irish cops,' he sneers. 'I heard tell
on them, but I never met one before.'
"'Well, you meet him now.' I looks him cold in the eye. And then I 'm
sorry, because I sees he means nothing. He 's just sore.
"'Well, square cop,' he says, 'I got a job for you. Anna Janssen,' he
says, 'is found. A rich guy hides her and brings her to Tahiti on his
yacht. She's there now. The French authorities,' he says, 'have made
a pinch. Go get her.'
"'All right,' I says, and turns to go.
"'Just a moment, McCarthy,' he says. 'I said: "Get her." You
understand? Get her. And keep her. Was a man to try and escape on
you, what would you do?'
"'I 'd shoot,' I says. 'I 'd bring him in, alive or dead.'
"'Well, shoot her.'
"'Oh, gee, Chief!' I says. 'I can't shoot a woman.'
"'Well, then, shoot yourself,' he says. 'At any rate, if you come home
alone, come home cold storage. I 'll pay the freight. And that 'll be
all,' he says.
"I goes to Paris, and from Paris to Marseilles--"
"That's all right, McCarthy," the district attorney waived. "It does
n't matter how you went. Tell us what happened at Tahiti."
"In Tahiti something tells me all is not right. The steamer I come on
docks in the morning and leaves that afternoon, and I hopes to make it
with Janssen. Maybe it's because I can't get their French and our
consul is not a well man, but they delay me until the steamer goes and
then I 'm left flat. The extradition papers must be in order, they
say. But there is too much of this belle-prisoner stuff.
"Well, all's finished and they takes me to her. 'Well, Janssen,' I
says, 'we got you.' 'Now that you got me, what are you going to do
with me?' she laughs; and every one laughs. Right away I see they 're
all rooting for her, and they like me like a souse likes water.
"Honest, Judge, I don't blame them. They's few white women in that
place and, such as they are, they 're not lookers. And the Kanaka
girls, for all they are pretty as a picture, they ain't human and they
_ain't_ healthy, you know, as we white people think. Anna certainly
had the looks, and was white, and had the pep, and they were all crazy
about her. The Frenchmen are daffy about women, and they don't think
nothing about a woman shooting a man--nothing at all.
"So they smiles at me and they says, 'You must see our beautiful island
before you sail away with the belle prisoner!'
"'Your island is fine,' I tells them, 'and, no offense meant, but it's
got nothing on Manhattan Island. And as for the belle prisoner,' I
says, 'ain't you folks forgetting something? This dame is as nifty a
little murderess as ever I sees.'
"'It was a crime passional,' they says, and they shrugs their shoulders.
"'Tell that to the judge,' I says. 'I 'm only the copper.'
"'Well,' they say, 'unfortunately Monsieur will have to enjoy our
island for three weeks. The next liner will not be here until then.'
"'Oh, is that so?' I laughs. 'Well, let me tell you something. While
you guys was examining the papers for your belle prisoner, I was doing
a little scouting around the harbor. And they's a schooner leaving
to-night for San Francisco. I guess that 'll do us all right.'
"'Impossible!' They go wild. 'A lady cannot travel--'
"'Cut the lady stuff,' I says. 'She's my prisoner.'
"She was a trading schooner, dealing in copra, oranges, cotton,
mother-of-pearl, and such like, but once she must have been a fine
yacht. There were state-rooms still aboard her, though now they were
filled with junk for trading, but I made a deal with the captain and he
cleans one out and fixes it up for Janssen. And then I takes Janssen
down to the docks.
"Judge, you'd 'a' thought she'd saved the country instead of killing De
Vries, the way they acted about that woman. They lined up on the docks
of Papeete, all the men and a good many women, too. And they sang and
they danced and they said good-by. 'When you get off, come back,' they
says to her. They got on my nerves so much, I had all I could do not
to laugh dirty, when they says that about getting off.
"Janssen looks at the boat, and looks at the people. And she goes
crazy-mad. 'Damn you, damn you!' She turns on me. 'Only for you, I
'd not be going back!'
"'Yeh, only for me,' I says, 'you would n't have killed De Vries. It's
all my fault, hey? Now, listen to me, Janssen. You 're my prisoner,
and my prisoner you 'll remain. You had the game; now pay up, and stop
hollering. You and I are from the same town, and I know you. You
ought to know me a little better. I would n't have been sent for you
if I had n't been able to take care of myself. All your French friends
won't save you from a New York cop, once he 's out to get you. You 're
beat, Janssen,' I tells her; 'you might as well give in.'
"She looks at me a long time.
"'I 'm not beat yet,' she says.
"The captain tells us he's going to stop at Nukahivo and a few other
islands to take cargo aboard. He 's an old guy and sensible, and
Janssen plays up to him to beat the band, so I takes no risks and keeps
close. Even if he is an old guy and has n't any ambition, still and
all, nobody likes a copper, and every one hates to see a prisoner taken
home, especially if it's a woman. So I give Janssen and him no chance
for private conversation. Once clear of the islands, I think, and all
will be well. Janssen sees my game.
"'You don't give me much chance with the old fellow.'
"'No, ma'am,' I laughs. 'That's your business. I give you no chance.
You 're beat, Janssen. What's the use of fooling yourself?'
"'Oh, I 've still got an ace in the hole. I 'm not beat yet!'
"She turns in early. 'I suppose you 're going to lock the door?' she
asks me.
"'What's the use? They's other keys. The islands are near at hand,
and they could put you off in a boat. I 'm not going to lock the
door,' I tells her, 'but I 'm going to sleep outside it, up against it.
It opens out, and the smallest movement will wake me up. You 're beat.'
"'All right! I 'm beat,' she says, and she turns in.
"I puts myself against the door, and falls asleep on the deck. It
might have been ten minutes after it, but it was really hours, the door
opens. It's the middle of the night, for the stars are high, and there
's nothing to be seen, and the waves keep lapping the bow of the
schooner and she dips pretty like a cantering horse. And suddenly I 'm
awake and lonely and wet with dew. I looks up and there 's Janssen
above me, big and handsome and her eyes like the stars.
"'You 're not comfortable there, McCarthy,' she whispers.
"'I can't say as I 'm on a bed of roses,' I tells her.
"'Why don't you come inside?'
"'I don't know what you mean,' I says.
"'Never mind what I mean,' she laughs. 'Come on in.'
"'I think I 'll stay where I am,' I says kind of short.
"'I 'm not accustomed to having invitations like this refused.' There
was a kind of jar in her voice.
"'They 's lots of things you 're not accustomed to, you better get
accustomed to right away,' I says. 'You 're accustomed to fine hotels.
Now you got to get used to the Tombs. You 're accustomed to lying down
on couches. Now you got to get accustomed to sitting up, very
straight, in a chair at Sing Sing.' I did n't want to be brutal toward
her, Judge, but I did n't want her to be making passes like that at me.
"What she says to me then I could n't tell, Judge. But she closes the
door with a slam and leaves me be.
"I notices the wind is getting kind o' high, and that when the schooner
pitches she sort of jars, and that under the green light on the
starboard sight of the boat the water is rushing past very quick. The
boat is lying over and the sailors pass me quick as lightning and in
the cordage the air is whining like a broken fiddle-string, but over it
all I can hear Janssen cursing in her cabin, cursing just like the
girls cursed in the old days when a pinch was made in the Tenderloin,
cursing me because I would n't fall for her."