Only at the end of the meal, as we arose, Judd took an opportunity to talk quietly with me, as two who are publicly opponents but privately have much in common. “Have you seen our friend Ruth?”
“No,” I said. “I haven’t had a chance in the last few days, but I talked to her on the phone. She – she sent you her sympathy.”
He gave me a furtive look. “Make my apologies to her, will you?”
As Horn was hustling the boys away, a reporter called a last question. Did they have any word for their parents?
“Yes,” Judd snapped, “tell my father it’s time he got me a lawyer.”
As it was Saturday night I went to see Ruth.
This should have been my moment of triumph – a young reporter coming to his girl after trapping the most sensational murderers in all history!
As I entered, she came toward me with a forced smile. “No, really, Sid, it was fine what you did, it was brilliant, and I want you to know-” We stood near each other, we almost leaned to kiss, but then only grasped hands, and I knew it was gone.
I gave her Judd’s apology. She whispered, “Poor kid.”
My nerves were all gone. I burst out, “Why keep sympathizing with him? He’s a plain monster! Artie at least has some remorse, but not Judd! He’s even bragging! He throws us all this fancy Nietzsche superman philosophy as if it makes everything excusable!”
She stood listening, silent, and this provoked me to a stumbling, even patronizing, effort at reconciliation. Too bad, I went on, that she had been attracted by Judd for a few days, fooled, but now -
Her eyes had filled with tears. I reached for her, but she drew aside. “Oh, Sid!” was all she said. Then Ruth let her tears flow, and I felt they were not only for Judd, not only for us, but for the whole sick world.
Ruth said, “Let’s go for a walk.”
As we walked to the park, I found myself suddenly talking in a streak about the case, about us. “Ruth, it was when I told you about Judd’s glasses that I saw you believed he had done it. Something in you knew. That was when I went out to find more proof.”
She drew her hand from mine. “Then I did it too,” she said.
“What, what did you do? For God’s sake, how can you blame yourself, how can you blame us for catching them?”
“Oh, no. They had to be caught. Oh, I suppose I’m a coward.” We stood in the park and then, oddly, sat on a bench.
“Sid, I owe it to you – there’s something I have to tell you,” she said. And she told me about going out with Judd that time to the dunes.
I felt sick, sick for myself, then frightened as she talked. Alone, out there. He could have done anything.
“Nothing happened,” Ruth said.
But the sickest part I couldn’t ask in words. Had she felt – as with me?
She sensed that question too and took my hand this time. “It was something different, not like with you. Sid, something drew me to him. Perhaps because he needed someone so much and he keeps everything down deep inside himself.”
How could I feel jealousy for the poor bastard? And yet I blurted, “And after that, on the dunes, you went out with him again?”
“Yes.”
“Why, Ruth? Why?”
“I don’t know… he even spoke of marrying…” Her voice cried for understanding. “I – I think then I loved him. Oh, Sid, it would be wrong not to tell you. Perhaps it was only pity. I knew he was suffering from something terrible he couldn’t tell me. He hides everything in himself. Perhaps” – her voice became small, choked – “perhaps that’s even what made him do it.”
I didn’t quite understand that remark and felt that she would not be able to explain it either. Then she was calmer; Ruth even asked, it seemed to me quite impersonally, if I believed they should be executed.
I said I believed intellectually that capital punishment was pointless, merely vengeance, but when you saw a thing of this kind you simply felt that the perpetrators should be put out of this world.
She was silent, and I blundered again. I said, “Ruth, why should this make anything wrong between us? I didn’t murder anyone.”
Then it all burst out of her, in agony, in bitterness. “No? Haven’t you been working night and day, so excited, so eager too to be in on the kill, and don’t you want to see them hang even though you’re intellectually against it!” She doubled over, weeping. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
If I could have admitted, then, some feeling of shame, we might have got past that dreadful barrier. I see that now.
The two families could no longer deny the facts to themselves. Artie had been permitted to telephone his mother; thus she had indeed finally heard it from his own voice. “Yes, Mother, it’s true, I did it. I’m sorry for what it’ll do to the family. I’ll do anything you want me to.” It went on like that. His mother couldn’t speak except to repeat his name and ask over and over again, “Why? Why? How could you, Artie?”
Mrs. Straus was upstairs when Artie’s telephone call came. She and Artie’s father took the call together; though he would not speak into the phone, he sat beside her. Then he went into his study.
All were afraid for him. Randolph Straus was high-strung, sensitive; that was why he was sometimes so unapproachable. A nephew of Nathan Weiss, the founder of the great Corporation, he was now its executive head, and already, Straus knew he would resign. The name must not blot the company. He would resign, for he could not face the world.
What private guilts arose in each of the parents? Did Artie’s mother ask herself if it was a punishment for unfaithfulness to her church, for not raising her children as Catholics? Did his father partly revert, asking himself if the ancient archaic laws could be in force?
Then, at last, his brother Gerald walked in and said, “We have to make plans.”
Plans, plans – what plans were there to make? But he came out with Gerald, and sat with them; his sons, his brothers, his wife’s brothers, and the Feldschers had come. There was talk in twos, in threes, mostly hushed – the child’s clothes burned in their own furnace, right here in this house – and the dreaded word unuttered, then uttered at last. It could only be insanity.
And that word sounded at last the deeper fears. For as in every large family, there was one who was sick – a cousin in an asylum – and now the waves seemed to reach for them all. Would every girl of the family feel the dread fate in her womb? Was this what Artie had done to them?
But Randolph Straus would not accept it. And he stood up and spoke for all of them to hear. “It’s his own fault! That boy had everything! Since he was a child, he’s been taking advantage, getting himself into trouble because he knew we’d have to get him out of it. We’ve covered up every mess he got into – he lied, he was wild, he cheated at cards, he stole; yes, we all knew it. He drove like a wild man, not caring for anyone’s life. No one can say we didn’t try with him; he’s no good, and now he has done this and he will pay for it himself! Let him take the consequences of the law.”
His voice did not break but seemed barely to reach to the last word. And he would speak no other word. He had denounced Artie, he had reverted to those ancient archaic laws, he would not speak Artie’s name ever again, he did not want to hear of him.
After a moment his brother Gerald said, “But we’ve got to get him a defence. You can’t call that interfering with the law.”
Lewis remarked, “Whatever we do, they’ll say we’re trying to buy it.”
James said, “If we don’t help him, it’ll look worse.”
The sons confronted their father. But the father remained silent. No matter what was done, Artie’s life saved, or his body hanged, to him Artie was eliminated.
With this point reached, cousin Ferdinand Feldscher suggested talking to Judah Steiner; the families should perhaps best act in unison.
When the call came from the Strauses, Judah Steiner did not have the strength to go. “You go, Max. What needs to be done for him, do it.”