XVI
The instant Marriott entered the court-house the next morning he was sensible of a change; it was as palpable as the heavy, overheated atmosphere indoors after the cool air outdoors. He could not account for this change; he knew only that it had come in the night, and that it boded some calamity in the world. Already it seemed to have had its effect on the men he met, clerks, attachés, and loafers; they glanced at him stealthily, then averted their eyes quickly. Somehow they filled Marriott with loathing and disgust.
As he went up in the swiftly-ascending elevator, the old man who operated it gave him that same look, and then observed:
“Something’s in the air to-day.”
Yes, thought Marriott, something is in the air. But what?
“I reckon it’s going to storm,” the white-headed veteran of the great war went on. “My rheumatiz hurts like hell this morning.”
What mysterious relation was it, wondered Marriott, that bound this old man through his joints—gnarled by the exposure of his service to his country so long before—to all nature, foretelling her convulsions and cataclysms? What mysterious relation was it that bound men’s minds to the moral world, foretelling as well its catastrophes and tragedies?
“I reckon it’s the January thaw,” the old fellow jabbered on, his mind never rising above the mere physical manifestations of nature.
The crowd was denser than ever, and there in the front row, where she had been every day of the trial, was old Mrs. Koerner, with eyes that every day grew deeper and wider, as more and more tragedy was reflected in their profound and mysterious depths.
“Call Henry Griscom,” said Eades.
The crowd, the jury, the lawyers, waited. Marriott wondered; he felt Archie’s breath in his ear and heard his teeth chatter as he whispered:
“I knew old Jimmy Ball had something framed up. Great God!”
The crowd made way, and the tall, lank form of the deputy warden shambled into the court-room. A man was chained to him.
“Great God!” Archie was chattering; “he’s going to split on me!”
The man whom Ball had just unshackled took the oath, and looked indecisively into Ball’s eyes. Ball motioned with his cane, and with a slow mechanical step, the man walked to the witness-stand and perched himself uneasily on the edge of the chair.
Archie fixed his eyes on the man in a steady, intense blaze; Marriott heard him cursing horribly.
“The snitch!” he said finally, and then was silent, as if he had put his whole contempt into that one word.
The emaciated form of the man in the witness chair was clothed in the gray jacket and trousers of a convict of the first grade. The collar of his jacket stood out from a scrawny neck that had a nude, leathery, rugose appearance, like the neck of a buzzard. If he wore a shirt, it was not visible, either at his neck or at his spindling wrists. As he hung his head and tried to shrink from the concentrated gaze of the crowd into his miserable garments, he suggested a skeleton, dressed up in ribald sport. It was not until Eades had spoken twice that the man raised his head, and then he raised it slowly, carefully, as if dreading to look men in the eyes. His shaven face was long and yellow; the skin at the points of his jaw, at his retreating chin and at his high cheek-bones was tightly stretched, and shone; he rolled his yellow eye-balls, and winked rapidly in the light of freedom to which he was so unaccustomed.
“Who is he?” Marriott whispered quickly.
“An old con.—a lifer,” Archie explained. “One o’ them false alarms. He’s no good. They’ve promised to put him on the street for this.”
But Eades had begun his examination.
“And where do you reside, Mr. Griscom?” Eades was asking in a respectful tone, just as if the man might be a resident of Claybourne Avenue.
“In the penitentiary.”
“How long have you been there?”
“Seventeen years.”
“And your sentence is for how long?” Eades continued.
The man’s eyes drooped.
“Life.” The word fell in a hollow silence.
“And do you know this man here—Archie Koerner?”
The convict, as if by an effort, raised his eyes to Archie, dropped them hastily and nodded.
“What do you say?” said Eades. “You must speak up.”
“Yes, I know him.”
“Where did you know him?”
“In the pen.”
It was all clear now, the presence of Ball, the newspapers’ promise of a sensation, the doom that had hung in the atmosphere that morning. Marriott watched the convict first with loathing, then with pity, as he realized the fact that when this man had spoken the one word “life”—he had meant “death”—a long, lingering death, drawn out through meaningless days and months and years, blank and barren, a waste in which this one incident, this railroad journey in chains, this temporary reassertion of personality, this brief distinction in the crowded court-room, this hour of change, of contact with free men, were circumstances to occupy his vacant mind during the remaining years of his misery, until his death should end and life once more come to him.
“And now, Mr. Griscom,” Eades was saying with a respect that was a mockery, “tell the jury just what Koerner said to you about Detective Kouka.”
The convict hesitated, his chin sank into the upright collar of his jacket, his eyes roved over the floor, he crossed, uncrossed and recrossed his legs, picked at his cap nervously.
“Just tell the jury,” urged Eades.
The convict stiffly raised his bony hand to his blue lips to stifle the cough in which lay his only hope of release.
“I don’t just—” He stopped.
The crowd strained forward. The jury glanced uneasily from Griscom to Eades, and back to Griscom again. And then there was a stir. Ball was sidling over from the clerk’s desk to a chair Bentley wheeled forward for him, and as he sank into it, he fixed his eyes on Griscom. The convict shifted uneasily, took down his hand, coughed loosely and swallowed painfully, his protuberant larynx rising and falling.
“Just give Koerner’s exact words,” urged Eades.
“Well, he said he had it in for Kouka, and was going to croak him when he got home.”
“What did he mean by ‘croak,’ if you know?”
“Kill him. He said he was a dead shot—he’d learned it in the army.”
“How many times did you talk with him?”
“Oh, lots of times—every time we got a chance. Sometimes in the bolt shop, sometimes in the hall when we had permits.”
“What else, if anything, did he say about Kouka?”
“Oh, he said Kouka’d been laggin’ him, and he was goin’ to get him. He talked about it pretty much all the time.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s about all, yes, sir.”
“Take the witness.”
Griscom, evidently relieved, had started to leave the chair, and as he moved he drew his palm across a gray brow that suddenly broke out in repulsive little drops of perspiration.
“One moment, Griscom,” said Marriott, “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
The court was very still, and every one hung with an interest equal to Marriott’s on the convict’s next words. Griscom found all this interest too strong; his pallid lips were parted; he drew his breath with difficulty, his chest was moving with automatic jerks; presently he coughed.
Marriott began to question the convict about his conversations with Archie. He did this in the belief that while Archie had no doubt breathed his vengeance against Kouka, his words, under the circumstances, were not to be given that dreadful significance which now they were made to assume. He could imagine that they had been uttered idly, and that they bore no real relation to his shooting of Kouka. But the difficulty was to make this clear to the crystallized, stupid and formal minds of the jury, or rather to Broadwell, who was the jury. He tried to induce Griscom to describe the circumstances under which Archie had made these threats, but Griscom was almost as stupid as the jurors, and the law was more stupid than either, for Griscom in his effort to meet the questions was continually making answers that involved his own conclusions, and to them Eades always objected, and Glassford always sustained the objections. And Marriott experienced the same sensations that he had when Quinn was testifying. There was no way to reproduce Archie’s manner—his tone, his expression, the look in his eyes.
To hide his chagrin, Marriott wiped his mouth with his handkerchief, leaned over and consulted his notes.
“A life is a long time, isn’t it, Griscom?” he resumed, gently now.
“Yes.” Griscom’s chin fell to his breast.
“And the penitentiary is not a good place to be?”
Griscom looked up with the first flash of real spirit he had displayed.
“I wouldn’t send a dog there, Mr. Marriott!”
“No,” said Marriott, “and you’d like to get out?”
“Sure.”
“You’ve applied for a pardon?”
“Yes.”
Marriott’s heart was beating fast. At last he had a hope. He could hear the ticking of the big clock on the wall, he could catch the faint echoes of his voice against the high ceiling of the room whose acoustic properties were so poor, he could hear the very breathing of the crowd behind him.
“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 attachés 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.