The Turn of the Balance
- -
- 100%
- +
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: