Horn had got all he wanted from them; so he turned them over to the sheriff, to be booked at last, charged with their murder.
There was a narrow connecting bridge, between the administration building and the cells, and Artie went first over it, getting ahead of the turnkey, who snapped, “What’s your hurry? You’ll have plenty of time here.”
He didn’t feel out of place. The closing door, the turning lock had familiarity. Artie looked to his cellmate with an almost mischievous glance, as though they were two kids. But the cellmate was a dull-witted farm lad, who didn’t even seem impressed by who Artie was. After brief exchanges of what they were in for – the cellmate had done a robbery with a gun – Artie stretched on his bunk.
He had seen himself often, lying behind solid dungeon walls. After Miss Nuisance had tucked him in tight and placed his teddy bear beside him and gone out, shutting the door as the lights went off, he would turn to the bear, and it came to his lips now, the magic beginning, “and now, Teddy…” But here the light never really went out.
And now, Teddy, they got us. But the master criminal, the greatest of them all, cannot be held by locks and bars. No, Teddy, this place is easy – you saw that guard, that screw, give me the eye, the one at the main gate. He’s in our pay; he’s part of the master criminal’s gang. And in a few days, as soon as we’re ready, we’ll tip him the wink, and the gate will accidentally be left open and we’ll walk right out of here.
Meanwhile we’ll play the game just like we did with Miss Nuisance. We will be model little boys. They will trust us, and we’ll wander around and get the layout…
But Mumsie hasn’t come to say good night to poor Artie. Only Miss Nuisance. Mumsie is busy with her baby. A new baby must be taken care of by Mumsie. All right for you!
Is Nuisance gone? Safe in her room? Sneak the flashlight from under the mattress. The detective book. The master criminal kidnappers. Snatch the baby right in his own house, and bring him up to the hiding place in the garret; everything works perfectly. That Italian organ grinder outside plays the signal-tune that says the ransom is ready. That means ten grand is ready.
No, we’ll do it differently. We’ll pretend to play cops and robbers with little brother. Yes, Mumsie, I’d love to play a game with Baby.
Shh, Teddy, here’s the plot. That little stupe believes everything you tell him. You pretend you’re on his side, helping him catch the master criminal, and I will be lying in wait at the top of the stairs. You bring the little bastard up, and pow! I’ve got him! It was an accident! Nobody knew the pistol was loaded. Poor baby, oh, my sweet little kid brother!
Then, punishment. They lock you in your room.
Revenge! Do the same to them!… “Now, Artie, this is your new governess, Miss Newsome, and you must be very nice to her.” There she goes into her room! Turn the key on her! Listen to the prisoner pound on the door! “Oh, Artie! Arthur! You naughty -!”
Then Miss Nuisance made him sit on a chair. Mumsie didn’t save him from her. Mumsie said obey Miss Newsome. All right for you, Mumsie, I’ll get even with you. In some dark hallway, pow!
They were leading him to the scaffold and Miss Nuisance was walking behind, reading A Tale of Two Cities out loud to him…
Turning over on his pallet, feeling something crawling under his clothing, Artie sat up. Bugs, lice.
Judd folded his trousers and his coat, placing them on the floor. He said a terse but civil good night to his cellmate, a car thief. The immense loneliness came over him.
He lay down with his hands under his head. And then all at once, in the quiet of the cell, Judd understood how stupid he had been in the last two days. A superman was not bound by the conventions of telling the truth! It was not against him, personally, that Artie had lied, but for his own self, as a god made his own truth.
A wave of relief passed through Judd. He had Artie back.
Would he see Artie tomorrow? In the yard?
The next morning when they were marched into the jail yard, Judd went up to Artie at once, his hand extended. “We got into this together, let’s go through with it together,” he said. “I’m sorry if I did anything that might strain our friendship.”
Artie blinked, then put out his hand, too, while over his face came that roguish, college-boy grin.
As Wilk and Ferdinand Feldscher came into the consultation cell, the boys rose, Artie with a sheepish look toward Feldscher, and Judd to address Wilk with undisguised adulation. “I am a great admirer of yours. May I say I consider you one of the greatest minds of our time?”
Well, he would try to be of help, Wilk said. But he did not see much hope. What had made them talk so much!
Raising his head, Judd said he guessed he had wanted to show off.
“All right. Now that’s finished with. Remarks like this thing about finding a friendly judge-” Wilk shook his head, eyeing Judd sadly. “You didn’t really say that?”
Judd declared that he couldn’t recall, exactly.
“Henceforth,” Feldscher admonished, “no matter what is asked, by reporters or anybody, you reply, ‘I must respectfully decline to answer upon advice of counsel’. Got that?”
“I must respectfully decline…” they parroted.
Feldscher glanced from one to the other. “Have they questioned you about other crimes?”
Artie’s face twitched.
“The papers are full of stuff. They claim you did everything from that gland atrocity to the killing of Cock Robin.”
“Have you got the papers?” Artie asked eagerly.
Feldscher shook his head. “Everybody is finding taped chisels all over Chicago.” His eyes had not left Artie’s face.
Artie returned his gaze unblinkingly. “I must respectfully decline to answer upon advice of counsel.”
For the time being they let it stand that way.
It was Wilk’s telephone now that rang incessantly with anonymous and obscene threats. A hundred and ten killers saved from the gallows? He himself would hang from a street lamp before he could add these two to his list!
And at midnight, flaming up beneath his windows, was the burning cross.
When news of it came, I rushed to the Midway, to see only the charred remnants, as of a huge box kite. Fire engines were pulling away. It was the Ku Klux Klan. The first burning cross in Chicago. No, no one had seen hooded white figures. Some said a truck had stopped, a dozen men had set up the ready cross, touched matches to it, and driven off.
For Wilk? I was dazed. What had this crime to do with the K.K.K.? All I knew were the general things. K.K.K. was something to be joked about, yet vaguely menacing. All those men in their white sheets, their regalia, were subjects for Mencken’s jokes in The Smart Set. They were symbols of stupidity. And they had seemed rather distant from Chicago. Wasn’t it a Southern thing that had started after the Civil war, against Negroes? The nearest that it had ever come to Chicago was some town in Indiana. A burning cross had been reported there. And they would come at night and grab somebody – some minister involved in a scandal, perhaps – they would grab him and take him to a wood and whip him. They were not only against Negroes. Catholics and Jews, too.
And Wilk. An atheist. A defender of Jews.
Then a remark of my father’s came to my mind. When I had called home, on Sunday, his only remark about the case had been, “One thing is lucky in this terrible affair, Sid. It’s lucky it was a Jewish boy they picked.” My father, with his one yardstick. What will it do to the Jews?
It was to take me a long while to perceive the inverted, subterranean way in which there was a meaning to their all being Jewish. The immediate result of the cross-burning was a police guard set around Jonathan Wilk. Despite his protests.