“There you go,” Charlie said. “Let’s get back to the office. You give ’em your pictures, and I’ll write the piece that goes with ’em.”
* * *
Naturally, the arrests of the Supreme Court Four caused banner headlines to flower in newspapers from sea to shining sea. Just as naturally, the papers split on party lines. The ones that backed Joe Steele called the justices the worst traitors since Benedict Arnold-if not since Judas Iscariot. The ones that didn’t like the President called him even worse.
It came out. . somehow. . that the foreign country the justices were said to be working for was Germany. In Berlin, William L. Shirer asked Adolf Hitler what he thought of the justices’ arrest. The Führer, he reported, looked at him as if he’d lost his marbles. “Except for Hollywood, I pay no attention to the United States,” Hitler answered. “As for these judges, are they Jews?”
“Not so far as I know,” Shirer said.
Hitler shrugged. “Well, perhaps they need purging even so.” Not too much later, during the Night of the Long Knives, he showed he knew everything he needed to know about purges.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court Four and their lawyers demanded writs of habeas corpus so they could appear in court and try to show that they’d been improperly arrested and imprisoned. A judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals refused to issue the writs. So did the judges of the U.S. District Court for Washington.
That fed fresh conniptions. Everybody who didn’t like Joe Steele quoted Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution: The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
The judges, of course, were judges, and didn’t have to explain why they did what they did. Joe Steele didn’t have to explain anything, either. His stern face didn’t encourage people who hankered for explanations. But he did talk to reporters not long after the Associate Justices went to their cells.
“I don’t know what everyone is getting so excited about,” he said. “It’s not as if habeas corpus hasn’t been suspended before. Lincoln did it, for instance.”
“That was during a rebellion!” Three reporters shouted the same thing at the same time. Charlie was one of them, as much to see what Joe Steele would do as for any other reason. Poking the animal behind the bars to make it jump and roar wasn’t always a reporter’s smallest pleasure.
Joe Steele didn’t jump or roar. He made a small production of filling his pipe and getting it going. After sending up some smoke signals, he said, “Friends, I have news for you. The Constitution is not a suicide pact. As Lincoln asked when Chief Justice Taney complained about his suspension of habeas corpus, ‘Are all the laws, but one, to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?’ The men who have been arrested are a clear and present danger to the United States. They must not be set at liberty to subvert the country further until proceedings against them are complete.”
Walter Lippmann looked ready to blow a gasket. “Lincoln did what he did during the Civil War!” the liberal columnist called. “We aren’t at war now!”
“No?” Joe Steele puffed some more. He turned his head toward Lippmann, his expression as opaque as usual. “Isn’t the United States at war against hunger, and against poverty, and against want? Aren’t those four justices fighting for the enemy?”
“That has nothing to do with treason, or with spying for Germany,” Lippmann said. “And we’re at peace with Germany.”
“The Attorney General will show in the proceedings against these men how they follow Hitler’s lead and take Hitler’s money,” Joe Steele answered. “And we were at war with Germany not so long ago, and we may be again one day, if Hitler stays on the road he is walking. Not all enemies openly declare themselves beforehand.”
“You’re dancing on the Constitution for your own purposes!” Lippmann exclaimed.
Puff. Puff. “I don’t think so, Mr. Lippmann,” Joe Steele said coolly. “I have the responsibility. All you have is a deadline. I am not sorry the writs of habeas corpus were denied. Those men will keep hurting the country if they are set free, or else run away to their Nazi paymasters.”
All you have is a deadline. That was the best answer Charlie had heard from a man in power to a poking, prodding reporter. Still. . “You won’t change your mind?” Charlie asked.
For the first time at the press conference, Joe Steele looked honestly surprised. “Change my mind? Of course not.” The idea might never have occurred to him before. His voice firmed as he went on, “The four traitors from the Supreme Court will stay in prison until proceedings against them go forward.”
And that was about as much that as anything was ever likely to be.
* * *
HABEAS CORPUS DENIED AGAIN! shouted the New York Post. The smaller subhead was PRESIDENT SAYS SUPREME COURT TRAITORS TO STAY JAILED TILL TRIALS. Mike Sullivan eyed the words in the newspaper that paid his salary as if they belonged to some language other than English.
He went through the whole story, which even quoted a couple of questions from his brother. He was shaking his head before he got halfway down, and shaking it more than ever by the time he tossed the paper down on his desk. “Man,” he said. “Man, oh, man.”
He was working on a piece about a Wall Street brokerage house where money kept disappearing into thin air. . and into brokers’ pockets. He couldn’t keep his mind on his writing. He picked up the paper and read the story about Joe Steele’s press conference over and over. If habeas corpus went bye-bye. .
“If habeas corpus goes bye-bye, we’re all screwed. Every one of us,” he said at lunch that day. The stuffed cabbage on his plate left something to be desired. The Goulash House was around the corner from the Post’s offices, and was cheap and quick. Good? That could be a different story. Sometimes you’d rather talk than eat.
“Have his carcase,” one of the other reporters said between forkfuls of Wiener schnitzel.
“Not funny, Ken,” Mike said.
“Hey, I thought it was,” Ken said. “That’s the name of the Dorothy Sayers mystery from a coupla years ago, remember?”
“Um-” Mike hoped he looked sheepish, because he felt that way. “I forgot all about it, to tell you the truth. Stella likes whodunits, but I go in more for adventure stuff.”
Ken turned to the guy behind the counter. “Hey, Jules, draw me a Falstaff, willya?”
Jules, Mike happened to know, was really named Gyula. “I vill do dat,” he said-his accent sounded just like Bela Lugosi’s, only he didn’t have pointy teeth or turn into a bat. Mike had never seen him turn into a bat, anyhow.
The reporter chuckled to himself, but not for long. Nothing seemed funny in light of the day’s big story. “I’m not kidding,” Mike said. “Honest to God, Joe Steele wants to make like Mussolini or Hitler. Without habeas corpus, he can throw anybody in the can for as long as he wants and lose the key.”
Ken swigged from his beer. “He can, sure, but will he? Why would he? You put people in jail for no reason, you get all their friends and relations ticked off at you and you lose the next election.”
“So what’s he doing, then?” Mike demanded.
“You ask me, he’s putting the old squeeze play on the Supreme Court,” Ken answered. “They bounced some laws of his, and he’s telling them there’s a price for everything even if they do wear those black robes. It’ll all have a happy ending, just like in the movies.”