“That’s your girl, Ruth,” Tom said.
I said Myra too believed Judd could have done it. But not Artie.
Tom looked up with an odd smile. Nobody had really suggested it could have been Artie. He was only being held because of Judd’s phony alibi. So why had Artie’s girl felt she had to deny the possibility?
Then I recognized that Myra was as afraid as Ruth.
The families, Tom said, seemed not to be worried. They had called Horn, and he had assured them the boys would be sent home as soon as certain technicalities were clarified.
And that seemed all that was known. “Listen,” I said to Tom, “I promised we wouldn’t use the names of the girls.” He shrugged.
We went out and picked up the morning papers. The Tribune had dug up some campus talk about Judd: “a brilliant atheist.” His friend Artie Straus, it said, had not yet confirmed Judd’s alibi.
And there was one new item, exclusive. A chisel had been picked up on the night of the murder by a private night watchman who had seen it thrown from a car, on Ellis Avenue, not far from the Kessler house. The blade of the chisel was wrapped in adhesive tape. There was blood on the tape. The chisel was believed to be the murder weapon. And the car from which it had been thrown was a dark sports model. It could have been a Stutz, like the one owned by Judd Steiner.
The Examiner had more about the millionaire playboy suspects. Judd was a strange sinister genius who kept to himself. Artie, whom Judd was trying to involve in his alibi, was one of the most popular men on campus, especially with the girls. Myra ’s name was mentioned, as was Dorothea Lengel’s – “girls of good family” often seen with him.
We went up to the office. At daybreak, there wasn’t a soul in the Globe building. We went to Tom’s desk, and on a sheet of paper began to enumerate the points against Judd. The glasses. An unproven alibi. Now, the chisel.
Coldly enumerated, in the calm of that huge empty room, each point in itself seemed dubious, and the whole monstrous accusation seemed a nightmare. But for me, the strongest point of all, unwritten, was Ruth’s weeping. Yet this too seemed to have a thousand possible meanings. Perhaps she had wept in dismay that I could be trying to prove Judd a murderer, only because he had gone out with my girl.
Tom too, starting to put together our story, said we had better be careful. There was nothing really definite. Boys from families like that couldn’t be held much longer. Probably some big lawyer would appear the moment the courts opened, with a habeas corpus writ.
Instead, we heard that Horn was permitting an interview. Thus the families could be reassured that the boys were receiving no rough treatment. After the late-hour questioning, Judd had been sent to rest up, at the South Clark Street station, and Artie to Hyde Park.
I felt sure that when I saw Judd face to face, I would know. I would see him somehow as with Ruth’s eyes, with Ruth’s intuition.
And when I saw him my instant reaction was one of shame, for having last night been half convinced of his guilt. A large group of us, reporters and photographers, assembled in the South Clark Street station. We were led to the rear detention cells. Judd was in one of them. He greeted us with utter calm, chatting about his “adventure”, and answering, with politeness and gravity, even the silliest sob-sister questions.
Some food had just been brought in for him; there was coffee, but no spoon, and Judd eased the atmosphere at once by borrowing a pencil from Richard Lyman with which to stir his coffee. “I hope you have another one for your notes,” he said. And recognizing me, he said “Hello” with a smile that admitted social acquaintance, but made it clear that this would not give me an edge in the interview.
We joked a bit about his few hours in jail, and Judd declared that in Mr. Horn’s place he would do the same – it was the State’s Attorney’s duty to make an absolutely thorough investigation.
Lyman took the lead, and asked about the glasses.
“It’s queer,” Judd said. “All along when I read in the papers about the glasses, I had a feeling they might be mine.”
“Why didn’t you check on it?” Mike Prager cut in.
“Well, I suppose there are things we don’t really want to find out. Wouldn’t that be the psychology of it?”
The questioning got to his alibi. “I certainly hope those girls come forward,” Judd declared. “It may be a bit embarrassing, but it is more embarrassing for me if they don’t.”
We all laughed, and made the point about their honour being safe since they walked home. Peg Sweet said archly, “That is, if they did walk home?”
Judd smiled amiably. Somebody behind me asked, “What would you do with ten thousand dollars?”
Eagerly Judd replied, “Why on earth should anyone imagine I would kidnap someone for ransom? I get all the money I want from my father, and besides, I teach three classes in bird lore, and get paid for it.” He seemed to be speaking directly to me. And in that moment I was sure he was innocent. What indeed had I been blaming him for? An interest in sixteenth-century Italian pornography? Did that make him a pervert and a murderer? Confronting him, I found the whole idea impossible to believe, and from that moment, I suppose, there had to grow for me the mistrust of human confrontation that is so deep a mark upon our time. What could you truly know of anyone by looking into his face, his eyes?
Tom’s stock phrase – “What do you know for sure?” – reverberated in my mind as I walked from the police station. For besides Judd’s story, there was Artie’s. If you believed one, you couldn’t believe the other. Yet both were polite, smiling, and eager to help solve the dreadful crime.
Artie had been brought back to the State’s Attorney’s headquarters. Through the glass door to the corner office I could see him talking to Padua. Artie waved to me, and presently Padua came out.
“Listen, Sid, maybe you can help us.” Wasn’t I the one who had been with Artie that day, finding the drugstore? And wasn’t I a fraternity brother of Artie’s?
I nodded, but said that didn’t mean an awful lot.
Still, he said, maybe I could talk to Artie. The other fellow, Judd, had at least told some kind of a story. But Artie wouldn’t remember anything. “You know how it is. We don’t want to keep these fellows any longer than we have to. Ask him for God’s sake just to tell the truth. Maybe they were up to some kind of shenanigans-”
I didn’t believe Artie would tell me anything, but I couldn’t refuse to try.
“Just one thing,” he said. “Don’t tell him Judd’s story.”
I went in. “Hail the boy reporter!” Artie said. “Hey, have you got me in the papers?”
“You’re famous.”
“Am I a suspect? Hey, this is the nuts!”
I grinned. “Well, you know this is a hell of a case, Artie, and the glasses were all they had to go by.”
“Oh, I don’t blame them,” he said. “But my mother is kind of upset, otherwise this would be fun.” He threw away a half-smoked cigarette and almost instantly lighted another.
“Artie, look,” I said. “Why don’t you tell the truth, whatever it is, and get it over with? Whatever you and Judd may have been up to, it isn’t worth being suspected of the crime.”
“You think I was up to something with Judd?” he asked.
“Oh, hell, you’re always together,” I said.
“That what he said?” He smiled back at my smile. “Yah, you’ve been busy making time with my girl!” he kidded. “I’ve got my spies in operation. Hey, what does Myra think? She think Judd could have done a thing like that?”
“Well, those glasses were pretty embarrassing,” I said. “And the fact that you don’t remember anything specific about Wednesday makes it look worse for him.”