VI
Marriott was sensible of a hostile atmosphere the moment he entered the police station. The desk sergeant glanced at him with disapproval, kept him waiting, finally consulted an inspector, blew savagely into a speaking tube, and said:
“Here’s a young lawyer to see Koerner.”
The contemptuous description, the tone, the attitude, all expressed the hatred the police had for Archie, a hatred that Marriott realized would extend itself to him for taking sides with Archie. The turnkey, a thin German with cheek-bones that seemed about to perforate his sallow skin, a black mustache, and two black, glossy curls plastered on his low forehead, likewise scowled and showed reluctance.
“How many damned lawyers,” he said, taking a corn-cob pipe from his mouth, “is that feller going to have, anyway?”
“Why,” asked Marriott in a sudden hope that ignored the man’s insolence, “have there been others?”
“Humph!” said the turnkey, jangling his heavy keys. “Only about a dozen.”
“Well, I’ll see him anyway.”
Marriott had waited thus for Archie and for other men who had done crimes; but never for one who had killed a man. He felt a new, unpleasant sensation, a nervous apprehension, just a faint sickness, and then—Archie came.
The boy stepped into the turnkey’s room with a certain air of relief; he straightened himself, stretched, and within the flannel undershirt that showed his white, muscular neck to its base, his chest expanded as he filled his lungs with the welcome air. He threw away his cigarette, came forward and pressed Marriott’s hand, strongly, with hearty gratitude.
The turnkey led them to a dingy room, and locked them in a closet used as a consulting cabinet by those few prisoners who could secure lawyers. The gloom was almost as thick as the dust in the closet. Marriott thought of all the tragedies the black hole had known; and wondered if Archie had any such thoughts. He could not see Archie’s face clearly, but it seemed to be clouded by too many realities to be conscious of the romantic or the tragic side of things. It was essential to talk in low tones, for they knew that the turnkey was listening through the thin, wooden partition. Marriott waited for Archie to begin.
“Well?” he said presently.
“Got a match, Mr. Marriott?” Archie asked.
Marriott drew out his silver match-box, and then looked at Archie’s face glowing red in the tiny flame of the light he made for his cigarette. The action calmed and reassured Marriott Archie’s face wore no unwonted or tragic expression; if his experience had changed him, it had not as yet set its mark on him. Marriott lighted a cigarette himself.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” said Archie, dropping to the floor the match he economically shared with Marriott, and then solicitously pressing out its little embers with his foot.
“I got your message only this morning.”
“Humph!” sneered Archie. “That’s the way of them coppers. I asked ’em to ’phone you the morning they made the pinch.”
“Well, they didn’t.”
“No, they’ve got it in for me, Mr. Marriott; they’ll job me if they can. I was worried and ’fraid I’d have to take some other lawyer.”
“They told me you had seen others.”
“Oh, some of them guys was here tryin’ to tout out a case; you know the kind. Frisby and Pennell, some of them dead ones. I s’pose they were lookin’ for a little notoriety.”
The unpleasant sensation Marriott felt at Archie’s recognition of his own notoriety was lost in the greater disgust that he had for the lawyers who were so anxious to share that notoriety. He knew how Frisby solicited such cases, how the poor and friendless prisoners eagerly grasped at the hopes he could so shamelessly hold out to them, how their friends and relatives mortgaged their homes, when they had them, or their furniture, or their labor in the future, to pay the fees he extorted. And he knew Pennell, the youth just out of law-school, who had the gift of the gab, and was an incorrigible spouter, having had the misfortune while in college to win a debate and to obtain a prize for oratory. His boundless conceit and assurance made up for his utter lack of knowledge of law, or of human nature, his utter lack of experience, or of sympathy. He had no principles, either, but merely a determination to get on in the world; he was ever for sale, and Marriott knew how his charlatanism would win, how soon he would be among the successful of the city.
“I tell you, Archie,” he was saying, “I can’t consent to represent you if either of these fellows is in the case.”
“Who? Them guys? Not much!” Archie puffed at his cigarette. “Not for me. I’m up against the real thing this time.” He gave a little sardonic laugh.
It was difficult to discuss the case to any purpose in that little closet with its dirt and darkness, and the repressing knowledge that some one was straining to hear what they would say. Marriott watched the spark of Archie’s cigarette glow and fade and glow and fade again.
“We can’t talk here,” said Archie. “You pull off my hearing as soon as possible, and get me out of here. When I get over to the pogey I’ll have a chance to turn around, and we can talk. Bring it on as soon’s you can, Mr. Marriott. Won’t you? God! It’s hell in that crum box, and those drunks snoring and snorting and havin’ the willies all night. Can’t you get it on to-morrow morning?”
“Can we be ready by then?”
“Oh, there’s nothin’ to it down here. We’ll waive.”
“We’ll see,” said Marriott, with the professional dislike of permitting clients to dictate how their desperate affairs should be managed. “You see I don’t know the circumstances of the affair yet. All I know is what I’ve read in the papers.”
“Oh, well, to hell with them,” said Archie. “Never mind what they say. They’re tryin’ to stick me for that Flanagan job. You know, Mr. Marriott, I didn’t have nothin’ to do with that, don’t you?”
Archie leaned forward in an appeal that was irresistible, convincing.
“Yes, I know that.”
“All right, I want you to know that. I ain’t that kind, you know. But Kouka—well, I got him, but I had to, Mr. Marriott; I had to. You see that, don’t you? He agitated me to it; he agitated me to it.”
He repeated the word thus strangely employed a number of times, as if it gave him relief and comfort.
“Yes, sir, he agitated me to it. I had to; that’s all. It was a case of self-defense.”
Marriott was silent for a few moments. Then he asked:
“Have you talked to the police?”
Archie laughed.
“They give me the third degree, but—there was nothin’ doin’.”
Marriott was relieved to find that he did not have to face the usual admission the police wring from their subjects, but Archie went on:
“Of course, that don’t make no difference. They can frame up a confession all right.”
“They’d hardly do anything that desperate,” said Marriott, though not with the greatest assurance.
“Well,” said Archie, “I wouldn’t put it past ’em.”
Marriott finished his cigarette in a reflective silence, dropped it to the floor and imitated Archie in the care with which he extinguished it. Then he sighed, straightened up and said:
“Well, Archie, let’s get down to business; tell me the particulars.”
And Archie narrated the events that led up to the tragedy.
“I wanted to see the old people—and the kids—and Gus.” He was silent then, and Marriott did not break the silence.
“Say, Mr. Marriott,” the boy suddenly asked, “where is Gus?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s become of her? Do you know that?”
“N-no—,” said Marriott. He felt that Archie was eying him shrewdly.
“You know,” said Archie in the lowest tone, “I’m afraid, I’ve got a kind of hunch—that she’s—gone wrong.”
Marriott feared his own silence, but he could not speak.
“Hell!” Archie exclaimed, in a tone that dismissed the question. “Well, I wanted to go home, and I goes, Curly and me. Kouka followed; he plants himself across the street, gets the harness bulls, and they goes gunning. Curly, he sees him—Curly can see anything. We lammed. The coppers misses us; and we gets on a freight-car. They cuts that car out, and we stays in it all night. Damn it! Did you ever hear o’ such luck? Now did you, Mr. Marriott?”
Marriott owned that he had not.
“In the morning,” Archie went on, “they lagged us and we ran—they began to shoot, and—”
He stopped.
“Well,” he said very quietly. “I had my rod, and barked at Kouka. I got him.”
Marriott wished that he could see Archie’s face. It was not so dim in there as it had been, or so it seemed to Marriott, for his eyes had accommodated themselves to the gloom, but he could not read Archie’s expression. He waited for him to go on. He was intensely interested now in the human side of the question; the legal side might wait. He longed to put a dozen questions to Archie, but he dared not; he felt that he could not profane this soul that had erred and gone astray, by prying out its secrets; he was conscious only of a great pity. He thought he might ask Archie if he had shot, aimed, intentionally; he wished to know just what had been in the boy’s heart at that moment: then he had a great fear that Archie might tell him. But Archie was speaking again.
“Say, Mr. Marriott,” he said, “could you go out to my home and get me some clothes? I want to make as good a front as I can when I go into court.”
“Your clothes seem pretty good; they look new. They gave them to you, I suppose, at the penitentiary?”
Archie laughed.
“I’d look like a jay in them stir clothes,” he said. “These—well, these ain’t mine,” he added simply. “But get me a shirt, if you can, and a collar and—a tie—a blue one. And say, if you can, get word to the folks—tell ’em not to worry. And if you can find Gus, tell her to come down. You know.”
Marriott went out into the street, glad of the sunlight, the air, the bustle of normal life. And yet, as he analyzed his sensations, he was surprised to note that the whole affair had lacked the sense of tragedy he had expected; it all seemed natural and commonplace enough. Archie was the same boy he had known before. The murder was but an incident in Archie’s life, that was all, just as his own sins and follies and mistakes were incidents that usually appeared to be necessary and unavoidable—incidents he could always abundantly account for and palliate and excuse and justify. Sometimes it seemed that even good grew out of them. Sometimes! Yes, always, he felt, else were the universe wrong. And after all—where was the difference between sins? What made one greater than another? Wherein was the murder Archie had done worse than the unkind word he, Gordon Marriott, had spoken that morning? But Marriott put this phase of the question aside, and tried to trace Archie’s deed back to its first cause. As he did this, he became fascinated with the speculation, and his heart beat fast as he thought that if he could present the case to a jury in all its clarity and truth—perhaps—perhaps—