XIX “Fiat Justitia Ruat Caelum”
The trial of Rose Légère was precisely the farce that Violet had expected and that Angel had planned. In ninety of such cases out of every hundred, the chief witnesses for the state are suppressed by fear or force, and the prosecution collapses. Thus, in the present instance, had not the newspapers made first-page announcements of the Légère woman’s arrest and so attracted to the case the momentary attention of an effervescing moral public, the District Attorney’s office would, in fact, have contented itself with submitting the indictment and asking for a verdict of not guilty.
With Violet in the hospital during the session of the Grand Jury, Wesley, now a man of power, had been able to refresh Larry Riley’s memory to such a point that, in the hands of the prosecutor, the policeman’s evidence was sufficient to insure the finding of a true bill; but when the case was called for trial the situation was vastly changed. The girl that had followed Violet into the net had been cast back into the sea of the city and utterly swallowed up. Violet herself had recanted. The elder inmates of the Légère establishment regarded the law as their natural enemy and, had they been disposed to assist it, could in no wise have been regarded as credible witnesses. The action had, therefore, to rest entirely upon Riley’s testimony, and for Riley’s testimony there was virtually no corroboration procurable.
“You’re a good thing—I don’t think,” remarked the weary-faced young Assistant District Attorney as, on the morning of the trial, he met Dyker in the corridor of the court. “We shoved this case about five years ahead on the calendar to please you, and the night before it’s called your witness comes to my office and eats her deposition.”
Wesley had already heard that piece of news. When, in order to keep an eye upon Violet, he had, some time previously, sought her at Katie’s tenement, and had received a series of uncredited vows to the effect that the Irish girl had no idea of the whereabouts of her late charge, he had begun to look for a recantation. It was the sort of game that he had himself frequently played, and he blamed his own lack of foresight in not better providing against it. Then other interests had arisen. The campaign came on apace; there were newer enemies than Rose to be dealt with, and, when the wires leading from the District Attorney’s office had informed him that the expected had occurred, he received the word with calm philosophy.
“Well,” he carelessly laughed in reply to the young assistant’s sally, “that’s always the way: we elect you people into your jobs and then you think that we ought to get up your cases for you and hold your witnesses.”
He went on his way, unconcerned. Scarcely less concerned, the young assistant, knowing that his cause was lost, proceeded into court with a solemn air calculated to convince an outraged public morality of his high intent; challenged juror after juror with a frowning brow; outlined his case with biting logic; examined Riley, as the officer on the beat, together with the other policemen that had made the arrest, in an heroic style eminently pleasing to the reporters; finally worked himself into a profuse perspiration of Ciceronian invective against the prisoner and, mopping his weary face, sat down.
Equally without concern, and knowing his cause was won, counsel for the defense, a suave little personage, played his rôle as the cues came to him: retained his suavity through an opening statement flatly denying that of his learned young friend; pretended to drop a little of the suavity through a series of cutting cross-examinations that left nothing of the policeman’s vague testimony; and gave an excellent imitation of throwing away all the rest of the suavity when, in an impassioned speech, quite up to that of his learned young friend, he declared that he would call no witness (which he did not dare to do), because the Commonwealth had wholly failed to make out its case (which was quite true), and because a respectable lady, the daughter of a mother, had been outraged by ruffianly officers, her humble home ruthlessly wrecked, and her livelihood endangered (which was absolutely false).
So, at last, without any pretense at concern whatever, the bottle-nosed personage on the bench ceased drawing pigs on his blotter, and, sharing the common knowledge of the fate of the case, gravely instructed the unwashed jury that if they thought two and two were four they should so find, whereas if, on the other hand, they believed four to be the sum of one and one plus one and one they were to perform their sworn duty and so report. And the unwashed jury, without leaving the court-room, declared Rose Légère an innocent woman.
The innocent woman, still the pleasantly stout lady of the brewery advertisement, shook gratefully the soft paw of her forensic defender.
“Thank God that’s over,” said she, with quite as much feeling and quite as much reason as many others of us return praise to Heaven for benefits that originate a good deal nearer earth.
The suave defender smiled.
“Yes,” he said, “thank God—and pay me.”
“You’ll get a check in the morning,” Rose replied, “an’ I haven’t a grudge against nobody, though I do think that other lawyer might ‘a’ got less gay with his tongue.”
“He was only doing his duty, Mrs. Légère. It’s the law, you know.”
“What if it is? I didn’t make it. What I don’t like to see is the way you people’ll go back on your friends because somethin’ or other’s the law.”
She gathered her silk skirts free of contamination by the low crowd in the court-room, and made her way to a waiting taxicab outside.
“I think,” she said, as that vehicle began to pump through the streets, “I’ll pay a little call on Mr. Wesley Dyker.”
She found him, somewhat surprised beneath his drooping lids, at his office, and he immediately agreed to see her alone.
“Now then,” she said pleasantly, seating herself unasked before his desk and leaning easily back in her chair, “what I want to know is: Am I goin’ to be let alone?”
Dyker stroked his crisp mustache. He wanted to gain time.
“You were acquitted, then?” he asked.
“Looks like it, don’t it? See here, Wes, I know where all my trouble come from, an’ I can pretty well guess how it come; but I’m willin’ to ferget it if you are. Are you?”
Dyker’s slow eyes were raised to hers, then lowered.
“Yes,” he said.
“All right. Now you’ll need me an’ I’ll lend a hand, but I’ve got to know first off if I’m not goin’ to be interfered with.”
“You had better see O’Malley about that.”
“No, I hadn’t. You went to see him first; go to him again.”
“I——” Dyker twirled a pencil between his white fingers. “I shan’t be sorry if I do?”
“You will not.”
“I may count on that, may I?”
Rose squared herself in her chair.
“Got a talkin’-machine around here?” she inquired.
“Why, no.”
“Because I’d like to have some soft music while I tell you the story of my life—see?”
“I don’t believe you have to tell that.”
“Yes, I do. I want you to know just what I am; then you’ll see whether you can depend on me. I was brought up decent—that’s the truth. I had my church an’ Sunday-school like you had, an’ perhaps more. The other sort of school I had to quit early, because my old man wasn’t paid enough to keep me on, an’ I had to go to work myself. I was under the age; but I swore I wasn’t, so that was all right, an’ after I’d tramped over the whole town, I got a job filin’ letters an’ addressin’ circulars in a young broker’s office. I was mighty little, but I was mighty good lookin’. I thought he took me for what I could do, but I found out he took me for my looks.”
She spoke quite without emotion, and Dyker, in spite of himself, was interested.
“It cost that broker a lot to live,” she continued; “so much that he couldn’t afford to get married. When he’d got through with me, after a few years, an’ the baby was dead in the hospital, my people were so damned respectable that I didn’t dare go home to them. Wall Street had been plungin’; nobody’d buy stocks; I couldn’t get a job there. Times was hard and I couldn’t find a place anywhere else. It was up to me to starve to death, go into a home an’ be marked for life, or get real money the best way I could.”
She paused, and Wesley found himself interjecting an urging “Well?”
“Well, I got the money. My broker put me up in a flat. He stole the cash to do it, an’ when the fly-cops got next, he blew out his brains. I was still high and dry, so I got a couple of girls to help me. Then I met Mike O’Malley’s brother—the one that’s dead now—an’ he squared things for me so’s I could open up the place you knew. He owned my joint an’ was right an’ regular. He saw to it I wasn’t bothered, an’ we paid for protection an’ furnished an address when his brother needed one for voters. I never had no trouble ’till O’Malley’s brother was dead an’ you queered me with Mike himself.”
“And is that all?”
“Yes, that’s all. It’s about what you’d learn from any other woman in my line of work. But I’ll tell you one thing: I got my girls however I could—a lot of ’em because your friends brought ’em, an’ everyone that was brought that way I paid for, fair an’ square an’ good an’ heavy; I had to keep the women down because expenses was so high; but no man was ever cheated in my place, an’ no man was ever robbed with my knowledge. I may have bad habits of my own, even for my sort of a life; but I always treat my customers on the level, an’ I always see that my girls treat ’em on the level, too.”
“What about the hangers-on?” asked Wesley.
“You mean about Angel? Well, I played double because I didn’t know who was goin’ to be on top, an’ in this business you’ve always got to be on the winnin’ side. Now you are on top an’ there can’t be no question. I’m in this line because I’ve got to live; I couldn’t do nothin’ else; an’ I’m goin’ to keep on in it as long as I live. You see now that I’ve always been on the level in one way; you see that I haven’t no reason now not to be on the level in the other way.—Will you go an’ fix it with O’Malley?”
He did fix it. He fixed it that afternoon, and he fixed it so firmly that, within ten days, Rose, with her former minions gathered from the corners where she had hidden them, was living and prospering in the house that Riley had raided.
Impartial Justice had been satisfied.