When Judd awoke there was coffee, and Horn was back, looking newly shaven. Then Padua came into the room with Artie.
Artie was wearing a hiding, self-conscious grin. The nearness of Artie had brought in Judd the automatic throb of mind and heart together, but now there came an emptiness as he recalled what Artie was doing. In trying to twist the story, Artie was deserting their togetherness, killing it.
Mr. Horn was amiable. “Now, boys, we want to read you your statements. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to give us your corrections.”
Padua handed Judd a copy of Artie’s statement. At once Judd saw the little mistake about when they first planned the thing, and even that small error was incomprehensible to him. How could Artie have forgotten that night ride after raiding the frat? He read on, until there came the part about who was driving the Willys.
This was the second moment of shattering for Judd, after having been told, the night before, that Artie was confessing. Now, Artie was breaking their union.
Judd fixed his eyes on his friend, who had been reading Judd’s own confession. At that moment, Artie flushed and leaped up, talking angrily. “In the first place, he says the chisel was wrapped by me. It was wrapped by him, Judd Steiner, in Jackson Park. He wrapped that chisel while waiting there in Jackson Park on that little nine-hole golf course. All right.”
Artie’s objection was partly true. Sitting next to each other in the car, Artie had said, “I’ll show you,” and started the tape around the hard blade, then handing it to Judd to wrap.
“In the second place, he mentioned the idea of the thing, well, the main thing was to get the burial place, and the means of throwing that package. The place was his, and he struck on that idea of the train.”
That was it, then – Artie wanted step by step to put the full blame on him, his idea, his burial place, his chisel, his killing! Artie would make himself out as only an accessory. For one instant the scene of their planning, the chummy evenings in the house, came back to Judd, and he felt grief. But he listened on. “He doesn’t mention the method of killing,” Artie declared. “He had that very well conceived and planned out, as evidenced by the ether in the car, which was absolutely the notion to be followed through. The boy was to be etherized to death, and he was supposed to do that because he had a number of times chloroformed birds and things like that, and he knows ornithology. I don’t know a damn thing about that.”
“Yes, but the ether wasn’t used, was it?” Horn asked. “Who hit him with the chisel?”
Artie snapped, “He did.”
“Who is he?”
Judd tried again to catch Artie’s eye, to look him straight in the eye. Artie affirmed, “Judah Steiner, Jr. He was sitting up in the front seat-” and then he caught himself.
At Artie’s terrible slip, a double impulse of pity and of exultation, like some reversible electric current, went through Judd, and as Artie floundered Judd even felt an anxiety for his partner, now at last proven the weaker.
“I mean I was sitting up in the front seat,” Artie started again. “This is obviously a mistake. I am getting excited.” The prosecutors scarcely concealed their smiles. “This Kessler boy got up in the front seat. He didn’t see Judd till he was inside the car.” Artie was fully recovered now, and despite his own powerful desire to intervene and contradict, Judd felt a satisfaction that Artie was doing better. “I introduced Judd to this Kessler boy and then took him into the car.”
With these words Artie turned, pouring the rest out directly at Judd. “I have been made a fish of right along here. This story – all this alibi, all these women, and being drunk in the Coconut Grove and everything – we planned that definitely. It was definitely decided that that story was not to go after Wednesday noon, which was to be a week after the crime. After that we were just to say we didn’t know what we were doing. We felt that you were safe with your glasses after a week had passed and that your glasses being out there would not necessitate an airtight alibi. And then you came down here Thursday and told the story you had agreed not to tell!” Artie was shrieking now. “I came down to Mr. Horn, I denied being with you, Steiner, and being at the Coconut Grove; I stuck to our agreement! But when they started talking about the Grove and Lincoln Park, I put it together and knew you had told the alibi story you should not have told, so I stepped in to try to help you! And I think it is a damned sight more than you would have done for me. I tried to help you out because I thought that you at least, if the worst came to the worst, would admit what you had done and not try to drag me into it in that manner.”
Artie was staring into his face. It was for Judd like the moment that comes to any man in the discovery that the woman who had glowed for him, whom he loved, is a slut, and there is a bewildering dismay in him, and he thinks to himself, But I knew it all the time; I knew it when she was abandoned with me, when she did all those dirty things with me – they don’t count for dirty only because you yourself are doing them – but I knew she would do the same with other men. And sinkingly the man knows he may have to love her still and be alone for ever in his love.
So at this moment Judd felt eternal solitude coming upon him. The dignity, the consistency, of the deed had been broken; they were no longer wilful gods, but caught boys squirming to throw blame, and he wanted only to detach himself so he might at least retain his own idea of integrity.
Judd turned on Artie. “I am sorry that you were made a fish of and stepped into everything and broke down and all that. I am sorry, but it isn’t my fault.”
Horn broke in. “Now listen, boys. You have both been treated decently by me?”
Judd responded, “Absolutely.”
“No brutality or roughness?”
“No.”
Artie was still silent. “Not one of you has a complaint to make?”
“No,” Judd said.
“Have you?” Horn asked Artie.
“No,” Judd heard Artie mutter.
As they were led out, Artie didn’t look at him.
With unrelenting speed and energy, Horn sought to sew up his hanging case before lawyers could get to the boys and tell them to keep their mouths shut. Horn thought ahead to the defence. An insanity plea, undoubtedly. Some chance, with their brilliant school records! And Horn sent out men to secure depositions from fraternity brothers, from teachers, and from girl friends – had they ever known Judd or Artie to be anything but intelligent and self-possessed?
When we assembled again in Horn’s office, the boys were brought in to us, refreshed, alert, though hostile to each other.
A new phase of the bizarre story was opening.
At once came our questions about remorse. Artie said he was sorry, but only because the adventure had not succeeded. Judd said, “I have examined my reactions and can’t say that I have experienced any such sentiment as remorse.”
Would he do the thing again?
No, Judd said, with deliberation, but only because he now knew that there could be no perfect crime – some error would always be made.
While Artie scarcely spoke, Judd suddenly became torrential. After all, he said, it was not entirely wrong that they had been caught. Now they could fully explain their ideas; even if they paid with their lives, it was in a sense the only way to establish the new concept that had guided them. The failure, the slip-up, was a flaw in the experiment. The magnitude of the idea remained.
He began then to explain his superman philosophy – the freedom from all codes, sentiments, superstitions, even from fear of death itself. He was to go on talking all day, as our cavalcade retraced the path of the crime.