The Red Book Magazine/Volume 30/Number 2/The Price of Success

by Edwin Balmer

 

THE PRICE
of Success

By Edwin Balmer

NEIL THURSTON, upon descending from Hallowell's office in the State Bank Building, turned up the slope of Union Avenue toward the residence section on the Ridge. It was a sunny, hazy October afternoon, warm even for Indian summer in central Illinois, and as it was Saturday, the farmers and the people pf the little villages near Norfolk were motoring to town. Neil knew most of them, and when they spoke to him, he called back often by name: “Hello, Reed! —How're you, Caswell? —Same to you, Walt!”

“Feelin' purty good to-day, Neil,” Saunders the dry-goods merchant observed; he was in shirt-sleeves before the screened door of his store.

“You don't seem to be complaining yourself!”

“Not much!” Saunders swung to open his door. —“Him?” he replied to some one coming out. “Neil Thurston, our State's attorney... .. Young? Yep—started soon, for he's going a long ways, that boy!”

Saunders' hearty voice carried after Neil; others were ere nodding and claiming attention, and though Neil desired more than ever before to reach quickly the house at the top of the Avenue, he also had more reason to make sure of slighting no one.

He turned in at the gray gate, finally; Marion Cody had come out to meet him from the house set far back among the trees.

“Something good's happened, Neil!”

“How do you know?” He had seized her hand, and when she turned and started back toward the distant house with him, he slipped his arm about her slender waist. She was white and lithe and soft in summer things, a linen dress, with gay scarf and dainty, pointed buckskin shoes; her light flaxen hair was parted and drawn severely back; she tantalized him most that way when with her blue eyes suddenly laughing she altered in a second from a prim to roguish Priscilla. For she was twenty-two, young enough to try and utterly fail to look a little older to him of twenty-eight.

“You're not quite crushing me!”

eat He relaxed the tension of his arm. “Sorry!”

“Don't be! What is it?”

“Let's sit down here,” he said. Here was a little knoll carpeted with brown and gold where the oaks above still held leaves enough for shade and the tree-trunks shut them off from sight from the house and from the Avenue.

“Kiss me now! he commanded when they had established themselves amid the leaves.

“You'll tell all, then—all I want to know?”

“All! Marion, I'll tell you all!”

“Now then!”

“They—I mean Hallowell and the people here, at least—want me to go to Washington, to Congress.”

“To Congress!”

“This way, dear. Hallowell got back from the White House this morning; he saw a few men here—Mr. Saunders, Gregory and some others; then he sent for me. Joe Armistead is slated for South America—to be minister or ambassador somewhere down there. So he'll resign his seat in the House; there'll have to be a new Representative from this district.”

“You!”

“Maybe, Marion! That's all—maybe. No one knows yet that Armistead's going to resign, except the men Hallowell's told; they're going to back me. They told me to be ready, when the time comes to put me up.”

“Ready, Neil? How?”

“Well, other men will run against me, of course. The Belfast people will want either Dana or Macey. They're both older than I, and have a lot more experience—there's no use fooling ourselves about it; and they're both stronger to-day than I. But neither of 'em are in public office now. I am. People are watching me; public cases will come to me which will show what I'm worth. I'm sure to have my chance between now and the nomination, Hallowell says. Big cases 'break' in a place like this every once in so often; there's been none since I've been State's attorney, but one's due. And if I handle it right, it will carry me—us, Marion—to Congress!”

“You'll handle it right!” She bent closer confidently, and he sat with his arm about her while they gazed together far away beyond Norfolk to the brown and green beautiful country falling away, in gentle undulations, beyond the borders of the county to the new domains of the congressional district. So, side by side in silence, each dreamed the same dream. He could not speak of it yet even to her; and she, before telling it to him, waited till he lay with his head in her lap and her fair, slender fingers ran through his dark hair and she could touch his cheek and hold his forehead between her hands.

“It's sort of strange and awfully exciting, isn't it, Neil, to find ourselves, all of a sudden, not living just in this big county any more but to be thinking about winning Belfast too, and the rest of the counties in our district! Why, we can't even see half the district from here! And then, all of a sudden, we'll be living in the State!”

“How, Marion?”

“When you're Senator, dear.”

“Don't be foolish!”

“I'm not! Do you think I can doubt you?”

Neil left her at last, late in the evening, and went to his room to pray—in such informal manner as he besought the Provider of opportunity—for his chance. Marion then was kneeling quite simply under the window beside her bed and looking up at the autumn stars as she prayed to God to give him his chance. Thus, nightly, she made supplication; and whether or not that prayer was answered, at least it was at one of the times that she was upon her knees that his chance came to him.

Seven miles away, but still within Norfolk County, a girl was struggling with an assailant. The identity of the man was a problem to be paramount in Norfolk County for many, many days; it was one to stir the district and the State and even to spread certain of its sensations for a while throughout the nation.

The girl was recognized by the first passer-by who saw her in the grass near the Belfast Road early the next morning. She was the girl who sold tickets for the Star Theater at Norfolk; her name was Beulah Drell; and she had been dead, so physicians said, for eight hours. The coroner's jury found that one Spencer Kane, of Chicago, had been seen driving alone with her on the Belfast road late in the evening; he had returned alone and much excited to a garage, and no one had seen Beulah alive again. Accordingly Kane was held to the grand jury, who promptly indicted him for murder. His family, who had cast him off, but who balked at having one of the name hanged, retained in his cause the Chicago firm of Guyler, Wadrop and Kramer, who during twelve years had never failed to secure acquittal—or at worst, disagreement of the jury—in any criminal case where they appeared for the defense. Guyler and Kramer themselves arrived in Norfolk, and for the sake of local connection they associated with them Macey of Belfast.

Neil did not need to have Hallowell drop in to emphasize the portent of all that.

“Well, young feller, we asked for a little irrigation for your prospects,” he said. “Looks like we've busted down the dam.”

Neil tried to smile. He had kept himself locked in his office all day while worked over the case for State; he had been hard at it, and evening, for two weeks. Hallowell locked the door behind him took the chair near Neil's desk, “How goes it?” He nodded toward the open law-books.

“Pretty good, I think. Kane's guilty!”

“Of course he's guilty! That aint what I came about; can you put it over on Guyler?”

“I'm certainly going to try.”

“That aint enough, Neil; you're going to do it!”

“I guess I could have said that as well!”

“Steady!” Hallowell warned; he hunched his chair nearer Neil so that his hand rested beside Neil's on the desk. “Look here; they've doubled the odds against us but they couldn't do that without doubling our stake when we win!”

Neil remained silent. He was still shaking after the long strain of his day's study and planning, and at the suspense of the near approach of the trial.

“If this was goin' to be any common case,” Hallowell continued, “which you'd win against Macey or Dana or any other boob from about here, it'd maybe get you a nomination for Armistead's job; but as it is, against the Chicago crooks, with Macey trailing in, when you [lick] them you've got a sure thing, Neil—a sure thing for Congress! And a blamed sight further than that! Go on Guyler, and you've got a running start to carry you through the House and into the Senate, or anywhere else this State can send you! Stick it to that bunch, and you'll have everybody lickin' your boots. There's nobody that the voters love like they do a winner. No one's ever licked Guyler, Wadrop and Kramer in any jury case; but you're going to do it. Lose, and you're just another poor boob who Guyler's walked over; but put it to him right, and everyone—everyone who's been [crazy] to jump on those crooks but don't dare to while they're getting away with everything—will tumble over themselves to hand you what you want!”

Neil flushed dizzily. Hallowell watched him a moment. “Now, this is what I came about, Neil. Disillusion yourself if you think you're bucking any busher game. Come to! Guyler, Wadrop and Kramer 're clever; but brightness aint all they've used to get off two hundred and twenty-eight men guilty of the criminal code through arson and bank-bustin' down to murder; it's crooked stuff too—cleverness and crooked stuff. You've got to look for that every second and with everyone from ba(illegible text) and witnesses to judge and jury. And you've got to more than look out for it; you've got to buck it!”

“Buck it?” Neil repeated in Hallowell's tone.

“Like a lawyer,” Hallowell emphasized, “—not like a Sunday-school superintendent. You've got to fight crookedness—if you want to see justice done—fight it as you fight fire. With fire! Do you get me? Or Guyler will set another murderer loose to stroll the streets and laugh at the law and the poor jays who try to enforce it—like you!”

Hallowell moved his hand and struck Neil familiarly. Neil, not trusting himself yet to speak, drew away with repulsion. Hallowell arose and turned his back to disregard it.

“The case comes on the calendar day after to-morrow,” he commented casually.

“Yes,” Neil replied.

Hallowell reckoned. “Jury-pickin' will take all of a week; your side, how much more?”

“A week.”

“Give Guyler a week for his witnesses; then about three weeks from now you'll be going after him; there wont be much to skid the case either way before then. But when you win the break in your favor, I'll see that The Post gets a wire from Washington about Armistead's quitting. I can spring it any time now; and that'll be the time. Good luck!”

Neil spent an hour that evening with Marion; it was the last he might allow himself, for an alarmingly indefinite time. It was particularly good to talk to her again after being with Hallowell and his sort. Neil did not doubt that Guyler would use any methods necessary to win; but if Neil found him fighting foul, the thing to do, of course, was simply to expose it.

“SO you made the appointment to take Beulah Drell riding that night?”

“Yes sir.”

“What did you do next?” Neil demanded.

“I went to the Union Avenue Garage, as I stated in my direct testimony,” Kane repeated slowly and calmly, “and hired the car. It was a Ford.”

“What time was that?”

“Ten minutes after ten.”

“Did you engage a driver?”

“No sir; I drove myself.”

“How did you arrange that with the garage?”

“They knew me there.”

“You had taken cars out before under like circumstances?'

With the question the crowd, packing the benches of the courtroom, strained farther forward. Neil stood confronting the prisoner on the witness-stand; he could see at the edges within his vision only a slight shift in the vague background of humanity, but he felt an increase of tension. He could observe it more marked in the jury. With the question, the big form of Guyler towered before the judge.

“I object!” Guyler boomed.

The prisoner on the stand waited, calmly demanded watching his counsel; the judge gazed at Guyler too. It seemed to Neil that the judge did not really deliberate after the big lawyer protested. He merely hesitated in order to make it appear hat he deliberated,

“Objection sustained,” he ruled.

Neil's mind already had recast the question.

“When did you take a car, without a driver, from that garage before?”'

“I can't give the exact dates.”

“Those occasions, whenever they were, were also for the purpose of taking girls driving alone with you?”

Guyler had remained on his feet. “Object!” he thundered again. Neil pressed his lips tight as the judge delayed.

It was getting along toward noon of Wednesday of the third week of the trial—the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. The first week had gone, as Hallowell had predicted, to the selection of the jury—a long, baffling week during which Neil had questioned and challenged and rejected jurors only to feel, when at last the box was full, that Guyler had from the first desired the twelve men whom Neil had accepted.

Neil then had presented the case of the State—a clear, complete, absolutely convincing case, he had reckoned it, until Guyler and Kramer had started their merciless cross-examination of his witnesses. Neil tried to forget how they had ripped his case to pieces, sneering, discrediting, mocking and all the time turning the most telling points against the prosecution. Rage mastered Neil, at other moments, as he realized the travesty they had succeeded in making out of the truth. The week which should have been “his” ended almost in triumph for Guyler. Then, on Monday, Guyler had brought on his witnesses. The first of these had testified briefly and had been offered only as preparation for Kane's dramatic taking of the witness-stand Tuesday morning to testify in his own defense. The prisoner had testified all day, with Guyler quietly and skillfully drawing him out, while Neil had to sit silent and helpless, hearing Kane make himself out a persecuted and slandered man. There was no doubt at the end of that day that, if the case had gone to the jury at once, they would have freed Kane without leaving their box.

But at last Guyler had had to turn his witness over to the State, and Neil had started his attack on Kane's story. Kane kept everyone's sympathy at first; Neil fought for two hours with the consciousness that everyone was against him and that the more he assailed Kane, the more he added to the conviction that the prisoner was simply persecuted. It was only a minute ago that Neil had started the first stir against the accused.

“Now we will return to the particular evening when Beulah Drell was your companion. Where did you drive first?”

“To the Star Theater.”

“Did you stop there?”

“No; I went past and stopped at the corner of Elm and the Square.”

“Why did you not stop for her at the theater?”

“We had agreed to meet at Elm.”

“It was dark there, I suppose.”'

“Darker than before the theater—yes sir.”

“And there were fewer people about?”

“Yes sir.”

“That suited your purposes better?”

Neil glanced to the jury; sympathy for the prisoner was slipping away—no doubt of it now.

Guyler felt it too. “Object!”

The judge again sustained him; but Neil was quite cool as he continued:

“Did you mention the appointment to anyone?”

“I don't know whether I did or not.”

“Did you give anyone an explanation of why you wanted a car that evening?”

“No sir.”

“You did not tell Gibson, at the garage, that you were going toward Belfast to look for a wallet you had lost?”

“No sir—yes sir,” stammered the prisoner.

“Which do you mean?” demanded Neil.

For the first time since the trial started, Neil felt the thrill of advantage over Guyler; he had brought the big lawyer again to his feet to fight for time for his client; and everyone must know it. The prosecution had shaken Kane in his prepared story; he had forgotten to what he had testified the day before and the explanation he had given then. Neil forced Guyler down; he pressed the cross-examination through the meeting of Kane with Beulah; he ripped from the accused the final shreds of sympathy. Then he pushed on to less personal, more damning details.

“Then you drove where?”

“On the Belfast Road.”

“Your car had a license-tag attached then?”

“I don't know.” Kane, sullen and frightened, took refuge in evasion.

“Do you know that it did not have a license-tag on the rear?”

“I don't know.”

“Did you look at the rear to see if the license-number was in place?”

“No sir—not till I brought the car back to the garage.”

“What happened then?”

“One of the men called my attention to the fact that the number was missing.”

“What time was that?”

“A quarter past eleven.”

“What explanation did you give?”

“I may have said: 'It must have dropped off.'”

“You meant it dropped off while you were driving?”

“Not—not necessarily.”

“Did you take any other action in regard to it?”

“I paid the garage two dollars to cover the expense of getting a duplicate tag.”

“By that you admitted losing the number?”

“Object!” Guyler roared; sweat stood on his red brow. Neil faced Guyler and smiled. When Neil turned back to the prisoner, he forced from him the admission that he had passed two cars on the Belfast Road: one had turned a light upon him and Beulah—whereupon Kane had lowered his head.

“Why did you do that?” Neil pressed him.

The prisoner, unprepared for that, floundered a minute before offering: “I was driving and was afraid their light would dazzle me.”

“You did not do it for concealment?”

“No sir.”

NEIL took Kane over the rest of his story. Kane and Beulah had driven to Hazen's Crossroad, four miles from Norfolk; then they had quarreled. Because of that, Kane claimed, she had asked to be put down at the crossroads and to return alone to Norfolk by the interurban. It was then eleven o'clock, and the car was due. Kane stuck to his story that he had put her down and she had gone alone to the car-line.

“Did you go away?”

“No sir; I stayed in the car at the crossroads watching her walk toward the car-line.”

“You could see her clearly all the way to the car?”

“Almost—that is, the moon went under before she got to the car-line; I couldn't see her for the last hundred yards, But a minute later—there was plenty of time for her to reach the car-line—the Norfolk car came.”

“You saw her get aboard?”

“I saw some one I supposed was her get aboard.”

“You did not follow to see?”

“No sir; I didn't doubt it was her.”

“Then you immediately drove away?”

The prisoner swore that he had; he had returned to Norfolk, he said; but he had not returned directly. He had gone ten miles about by a detour on Hazen's Crossroad and the South Norfolk Pike. He had had no errand on that road; he had merely been driving because he was excited. The excitement was because he had quarreled with Beulah Drell; that was all, he said. The time of he passing of the electric car, which Kane testified he had waited to see, was known; it was eleven o'clock; he had returned to the garage at a quarter past eleven. He had driven, therefore, at better than forty miles an hour.

“How were the roads?” Neil challenged.

“Good.”

“Not wet or muddy?”

“No—that is, not—” (Kane faltered and looked to his counsel, who fought for him again but vainly) “not very.”

“Did you cross Hazen's Creek?”

“Hazen's Creek? Yes—yes sir, of course.”

“There was no mud on the bottoms near the creek?”

“Some mud, maybe.”

Whether it was a mile or two miles or half a mile Kane could not say; but he was quite sure it did not hold him back—much. Guyler, Kramer and Macey were taking turns now trying to check the rush of the prosecution; but Neil denied them. He saw Guyler watching the clock. Adjournment had been agreed early that day over Thanksgiving; and Guyler was watching the clock for it!

“Now you say that these roads which you took for our return were absolutely deserted? There was no one to see you come back that way?”

“Yes sir.”

“You did not see anyone on the South Norfolk Pike?”

“No sir—not till I was a block from the garage.”

“When you were again on Elm Street, upon the same road that you would have been had you returned direct by the Bristol road?”

Guyler was up again. “Your Honor,” he said to the judge, “by agreement we were to take recess at this hour over Thanksgiving Day.”

“Your Honor,” Neil said, “when the witness has answered this question, I am satisfied to have finished with him till Friday morning. I am willing to give the defense the respite it desires!” He turned again toward Kane.

“Yes,” the prisoner answered.

WAITING, as was his custom, till the crowd had cleared, Neil followed the prisoner's counsel out to the street. Guyler did not delay for him, with the condescending courtesy he had shown after former sessions. Kramer did not seem to see him at all; and Macey swiftly slipped away. Outside the courthouse, from the noise which came through the doors, some sort of demonstration was going on; and it was not for the defense. Now Neil heard his name; when he came out, some one yelled for everybody to go up the square away from the courthouse; men seized Neil and hustled him along.

Saunders was at his shoulder. “You've got those Chicago crooks on the run, Neil! Say, do we know it! The boys like you for this morning; and they're going to send you to Congress! News just came and 's spreading about. Joe Armistead's resigned; he's going to Venezuela or somewhere. Post got the wire while you were laying out Guyler! The boys want you, when you've got him all laid out, to go to Washington for them!”

Neil looked about dizzily; the shouting of his name confused him; and friends, acquaintances and men whom he didn't know at all were pushing to be near him, to slap him on the shoulder and cry commendation. They were from the courtroom, most of them; and the rest had been sent there by Hallowell after the “word came from Washington.” Neil knew that Hallowell had worked all that up; but Hallowell would have done that only when he felt the break in Neil's favor. Indeed, Hallowell couldn't have worked up these people from the courtroom for a beaten man. This shouting meant not only that Hallowell but the crowd in the court too believed that he was winning—at least that he was not being beaten.

But he did not let any feeling of triumph take hold upon him—he got free of the crowd as soon as he could. He had shown Guyler, perhaps, that he was not just a country lawyer; but that was not licking Guyler. In fact, now more than ever must he look out for Guyler; now was the time when there was nothing Guyler might not do.

So Neil worked till late that night and the next morning too. Thanksgiving dinner was with Marion, and the afternoon hours were hers too—hours when, for his sake and that of the case, he must not think of the trial.

The afternoon was warm and clear, following sharper, wet weather; and he kept his promises pretty well for a time as they drove leisurely mile after mile beside the brown fields of corn stubble; there were farms where the stalks yet stood and where the tops of the turnips and the yellow gourds of late squash and pumpkins lay between the rows. They cut through meadows and wound down into the creek-bottom; they discovered a wonderful, lonely old road—little more than overgrown ruts—running beside the creek for miles 6n end and most delightfully deserted. They loafed along this more and more contentedly until they began to recognize its windings again. It was leading to Hazen's Crossroad at the creek-bridge; and as that meant return to the trial, they stopped the car and got out. They found a brown glade still warm in the sun where for a while they sat and watched the creek flowing at their feet.

“The case, as it stands now,”—Neil said aloud his thoughts then—“is exactly this—”

“Dear, ought we?”

“Oh, Marion, it means all our future! Everything! I can't really think of anything else at all!”

“I know!” She seized his hand, which had clasped hers, and bending, she brought it to her lips. “Nor I! What is it?”

“I'll talk it out to you, as it's in my mind now. It'll help me any amount. I just found out yesterday, you see, the point to hammer on to win.

“The thing I've got the jury thinking about is what road Kane took to get back to Norfolk; everything now is going to depend on that. He says he never went farther than Hazen's place on the Belfast Road, that he left Beulah there and drove home by way of Hazen's Crossroad and the South Norfolk Pike. Now, if he did that, he can't be guilty; for he wouldn't have had the time to take Beulah where her body was found. But since I know he killed her, I know he must have gone on the Belfast Road four miles beyond Hazen's place, and therefore he came back straight on the Belfast Road. Three different witnesses have testified that they saw a Ford car—they couldn't see the driver except to see that he was a man and alone—driving back on the Belfast Road from the place where Beulah was killed; and two of those witnesses testified that the car had no license-tag behind.

“Now, we know that Kane brought back his car to the garage without a license-tag; probably, in his first panic after he realized what he'd done, he took it off and threw it away to avoid identification. He came back in a very excited condition, as he admits and the garage men testified. He claims this excitement was merely because he had quarreled with Beulah; and he claims he couldn't have been the man seen driving a Ford without a license at eleven o'clock on the Belfast Road, because he was at that time coming back the other way; but taking his own timing for that, he must have driven in the dark and through mud at forty miles an hour. Now, I can prove that the car he hired had been used in a race a few days before; it was driven by a good driver in daylight over better roads than Hazen's and the South Norfolk Pike, and the best it could do was forty-two miles. So what he claims is practically impossible. Do you see it, Marion?”

“Of course!”

“For he didn't do it; and I'll hammer on that till I prove it, and I'll get Guyler. I'll get him!”

He jumped up in his agitation and strode away. She sat and looked after him. She knew that, after his review of the argument to her, he wanted to be alone to reconsider, recombine and strengthen it with himself. She watched him proudly and fondly; he was so straight and tall and well-looking and able and honest. There was nothing which he might not do, no place which he might not gain! She leaned back, relaxed and happy, dreaming again of him and of her and all that they would share together.

Neil, his thought all taken by the immediate matter, went on about the bend. He came in sight of the bridge over the creek where Hazen's road crossed. A good deal of rain had fallen on the day before, and so the conditions must be similar to those on the night when Beulah had been killed; Neil could get a good idea of the heaviness of the mud on the low stretches of the road that night. He followed the road for several hundred yards in each direction. All through the bottom was mire and deep mud; he was sure no car could have been driven at any high speed through this stretch.

Neil idled a moment, watching some children playing beside the road. He had found himself often, recently observing children. These were building with bits of board and sticks and an oblong piece of metal. Neil observed them for some time before a jump of his pulse signaled recognition of the metal piece. It was an Illinois automobile license-plate and painted the color of the current year; the number was 67,452! It was the number which had been attached to the car Kane had take from the Union Avenue garage on the night of the murder and which had been missing when he returned. The was no doubt about it; Neil's own witnesses had put figures in evidence—67,452!

For an instant, against all his reason, fear struck through Neil—fear that Kane was innocent, that he had come this way, as he had sworn; but almost simultaneously suspicion and more than suspicion—the certainty of another explanation—seized him. This was precisely the sort of thing he should have expected now, he said to himself. Guyler had planted it there; the realization enraged him so that it drove away all doubt. He stepped down beside the children and picked up the license-tag from where they had laid it in the soft soil.

“Where did you get this?”

The oldest boy—he was not more than five—explained that they had found it right over there; they hadn't taken it from anywhere. The child led Neil through the cattails and flags and the rank, coarse grasses a few yards farther on and showed him the mark in the mud where plate had lain; the print was clear, as also were the tracks of the child who had discovered the treasure. Neil thanked the boy, and keeping the tag, he climbed back upon the road.

Neil had recognized long before, of course, that one of Kane's first moves after his arrest would be to inform Guyler where he had thrown the license-tag; Guyler, or some one sent by him, had undoubtedly secured it immediately and taken it away from beside the Belfast Road. The subsequent act had become completely clear to Neil now. Guyler had had the plate “planted” here. Neil could not tell precisely when it had been planted, for it was enameled metal, made to resist exposure to weather; it might have been put here days ago, but more probably not.

So this was the devilish, insidious sort of trick which Guyler had schemed! When Neil would be completing his proof that Kane could not have driven back by Hazen's Road, Guyler had planned to have this found by some one and brought to the court; it would seem to have been jarred off Kane's car when it jumped from the bridge. But though Neil knew Guyler had put it there, that was no proving it.

Neil stooped to the stream and washed the metal and paint clean of the mud; then he wiped it and put it under his coat. He decided against showing the plate even to Marion, for she was very young and a girl and lacked sophistication of the ways of such as Guyler. So Neil kept the tag under his coat and chose a path back about the bend which took him first to the car standing in the ruts of the old road; he opened his tool-box and put the plate down under his tools; then he returned to Marion.

“Everything all arranged now, Neil?” She gave him her hand to help her up.

“All right! Shall we go home?”

After he had taken Marion home, the license-plate was more of a problem than before. He drove on still pondering; he continued to the Belfast Road, and the direction guided his decision. There was only one logical place to put the plate that was the place where it belonged and from which Guyler had taken it. Neil did not know the exact spot to which he should return it; but it must be near the Belfast Road about seven miles out. He drove that far. I was quite dark now, and he got out and opened his tool-box and tossed the license-plate into a little thicket. Either it would not be found there, or if it was it would be found about where it belonged.

A FARMER, clearing brush, happened upon the license-tag just thirty-one hours later and at once brought it to the court. The State that morning had witnesses on the stand to confute Kane's claim that he could have driven back by Hazen's Road in the time and under the conditions stated; the farmer offered his testimony to the State, which accepted him as a witness and put in evidence the lost license-number found in the bushes three miles farther along the Belfast Road than Kane said he had gone, and a half-mile from where Beulah Drell was found. This witness closed the reply of the State; Guyler, on cross-examination, was unable to discredit the witness.

That afternoon the Chicago newspapers which were giving greatest space to the trial played Neil Thurston's name across the page. His handling of the case was making him known, as Hallowell had promised, not only through the down-State counties but in Chicago. Only one matter troubled Neil, and that was an absurd, irrational fear—the idea that the license-plate might not at first have been thrown away by Kane beside the Belfast Road and later removed by Guyler, but that it might be that Kane had jarred it off into the mud by the creek. This was quite crazy, for Neil was sure that Kane could never have gone that way; yet it plagued him so much that he went off alone along Hazen's Road the next evening.

Neil expected that a glance at the soft clay there would make him perfectly comfortable; he was confident of finding footmarks which would show that, after he had been there, men sent by Guyler had come to find the plate and bring it in evidence. But Neil found no such marks!

That meant that the plate had not been planted there; Kane had lost it; he had come that way; he was innocent! Neil not only had concealed the discovery which would help to free Kane, but he had altered it to evidence against Kane and had used that evidence in the prosecution. And the trial was finished, except for the arguments of the attorneys! It now was Neil's duty, upon the evidence which he had offered, to ask that penalty of death be pronounced upon Spencer Kane according to law.

Neil could make no one believe him if he confessed and claimed that he did it innocently or mistakenly; he could not do that without bringing a charge against Guyler which had no foundation. Ruin was before him—ruin complete and final if he confessed. Everyone but Marion would say that he had tried a trick for his own advantage to beat Guyler and then had lacked the nerve to carry it through.

But Neil had a way out!

Of course he had a simple, easy way to save both Kane and himself! What a conceited chump he was, reckoning as though he already had won a verdict of guilty against Guyler, Wadrop and Kramer, who had not lost a case in twelve years! Of course he must appear to try; but he would be beaten.

Neil became cooler and planned his procedure. The thing to do was to ask for the death sentence—to beg the jury either to hang Kane or acquit him. Juries balked at sentencing a man to death, especially upon circumstantial evidence. So the surest way of freeing Kane was to ask the extreme penalty. Guyler wouldn't do a thing to that.

The speech of the prosecutor at the Monday morning session of court was therefore brief but extreme; it asked for the death-penalty, without recognizing any mitigating circumstances. Kramer spoke first for the defense and for two hours pleaded with the jury: Macey followed then Guyler, closing for the defense, spoke for more than three hours. For the State, Neil spoke again for barely ten minutes—he asked again the extreme penalty. Then the judge gave the case to the jury.

The judge left—he was to be called if the jury reported or asked for further instructions. Guyler and Kramer went out leaving Macey; then Neil's assistants went to a café, finally he went out too, but he did not ear; he walked back to his room and back. Men stopped him on the street, complimenting him, assuring him of success. Hallowell halted him.

“You're jumpy, Neil. Natural enough! But you're all right, boy! You've got 'em, or I miss my guess. How'd you get the hunch—that short, snappy stuff you pulled? It made Guyler sick. He thought you'd buck him at his own game of conning the twelve in the box; you knocked him silly when you crossed him. Now, the jury was expecting to be conned by him; they know his reputation, and they discounted it. When you didn't talk to them at all, it made them feel—I bet—that Guyler was going on talk while you rested on the evidence. And the last talk of yours, when you hardly looked at 'em at all but acted as if Guyler'd said nothing you'd lower yourself to answer—I bet that pulled 'em!”

Neil escaped and went back to the courthouse. At half-past eight—it was after the third ballot; some one said—the jury had reached a verdict. The jury arrived; the prisoner was brought in. Guyler and Kramer returned.

The foreman of the jury answered the judge's inquiry: “Guilty of murder in the first degree!”

Neil stiffened and jerked forward. No one saw it, for everyone was looking at the prisoner; and when those nearest turned, Neil had sunk back in his seat. He did not stir when the counsel for the defense made the formal motions opposing the verdict. Then Hallowell helped him to his feet. “Don't blame you, boy!” Hallowell said. “Some case you fought, but you've won and got Guyler's hide nailed to the door! Remember what I told you? It goes double now! This county and this district'll hand you what you want as soon as you're ready to ask for it!”

“WHAT'S been the matter, Neil?”

“Matter?”

“You've hardly let me see you since the trial; you haven't even telephoned to me, and when I called, you cut me off as soon as you could.”

“I've come to you now, Marion.”

“Yes—but how? I ran to the door when I saw you on the walk, and you hardly touched me. You're sitting over there in that other chair, and you haven't kissed me yet.”

Neil arose from that offensive other chair, but instead of approaching her, he turned to the window.

“I've come to tell you something that happened—that I did during the trial,” he said slowly.

She got up and stood opposite him, and she watched the expression of his face as he continued to gaze out. She caught up his hand impulsively and clasped it, but he did not return the pressure.

“I know how hard it's been for you,” she cried gently. “You're thinking of Kane all the time. It's terrible to send another to—to justice, and to realize that, somehow, we are benefiting by it! But Neil, we didn't do it to benefit ourselves—”

He swung on her almost savagely. “You! Keep yourself out of this, please!”

“You've always said I helped you in good things—I mean the easy things, Neil; so I have the right to say I helped you in the hard duties. Those must be done, dear; and they call for men to do them—men with women. I thought of myself all the time as willing with you everything you did. You—we had to convict Kane for the safety of all other people. I think of that; you must too!”

“No!” He snatched his hand from her. “I did that all alone, myself and for myself—for my rotten chance at Congress. I convicted him crooked—crooked, Marion! I put him across! I asked for his death when I knew he was innocent—knew it, knew it! That's what I've come to tell to you before I tell it to the court. He didn't kill Beulah—Kane didn't. I knew it, and I convicted him!”

He put her from him as she tried to hold to him and check him. “Neil! Why, what's the matter? Kane's guilty, dear! Oh, don't reproach yourself for that. No fear, Neil; he's guilty.”

NEIL drew back; he had prepared himself to see horror in her eyes, aghast at him when he told her; but instead he saw only bewilderment and fright—fright not for herself against him but fright for him.

“Dear Neil,” she was saying, “of course it has been a terrible strain for you fighting against them all; but you mustn't doubt what you did. You—”

“You don't understand yet, Marion! I put Spencer Kane across by a trick! I did it knowingly, intentionally, by planting evidence against him and using that evidence in court. I did it—that is, I began doing it, on Thanksgiving Day, when I was out with you. Listen to me!”

So he told her in detail, and unsparingly, what he had done; and he no longer had to hold her away. For a moment yet, her incredulity combated him; next denial came, then shuddering. “Neil, what a frightful thing to do! But you must stop; you must let me think!”

She sank down on the floor when he released her, and she sat staring up at him. “What a terrible thing you might have done!”

“Might have done!” he iterated.

She got up to her knees and then stood once more. “Yes, a terrible wrong which you might have done, Neil, but no harm, really—to anyone but yourself!”

“No harm?”

“Oh, Neil!” She approached him again and touched him with her hand. “It was an awfully wrong thing for you to do—I can understand that; but as for injury to anyone else, you didn't do that, dear!”

“I didn't?” he mocked bitterly. “I only sentenced a man by a trick!”

“No, Neil!”

“No? Didn't you understand what I said? I found that plate—”

“I understand all you told me quite well, I think, Neil. But also I think I see the whole trouble more clearly now, dear. Because you did wrong in using that evidence of the license-number as you did, you've made so much of it in your mind that you've come to think of it as all the evidence which convicted Kane. But it wasn't that, dear; Kane was a horrible man; he—he did that thing of which you convicted him. He would have been convicted, anyway.

“Neil, I know he would, for he's guilty! I wont say it's woman's instinct, for men had it too—the men on the jury as well as those in the courtroom. I knew all during those last days, before the license-tag was brought in at all, that he was guilty; and the jury knew it; everyone knew it. You were sure of it then; that's why you took up the tag and moved it. And aren't you sure of it now when you think over everything? Even if his lawyers didn't take the plate from beside the Belfast Road and place it near the creek—does that prove that some one else didn't take it there—a child, perhaps one of the playmates of the children you saw there?”

NEIL could not answer directly. “Kane should have the right to have the court determine that. I've already fixed on what I'm going to do. I shall resign to-morrow morning as State's attorney and shall put into the hands of the man appointed in my place—Dana, probably —a full statement of what I did. He will use it to get a new trial for Kane.”

“No—no! That wouldn't be bringing about justice! It would be doing the worst possible thing!”

“How?”

“Why, it would be freeing a guilty man! For Kane's guilty, and you know it! But, if you forgot it because of what you did, everyone else would surely forget it! In the next trial they wouldn't be thinking of what he did but of what you did; and they'd free him for that, when he's guilty—guilty of the most frightful crime a man can commit. And they'd—they'd ruin you!”

“Then what do you want me to do?”

“Nothing till you give me at least time to think. Oh, Neil, you've taken ten days before believing that you should do that. Now this is mine as much as it has been yours and will as much affect my life hereafter. You can give me least half as much time—five days, anyway—before doing anything irreparable. Nothing can happen to Kane in between,.”

But it was an hour before she could pledge him to that.

ON the morning of the second day afterward Neil Thurston received at his office an envelope bearing the name of Guyler, Wadrop and Kramer, of Chicago. It contained a sheet with a single scrawled line: “Come and see me. Dan'l Guyler.”

Neil held it nervously, rereading again and again the four curt monosyllables for their meaning. They brought him menace. Guyler must know, or at least suspect something, to. justify that assured command. Neil took the eleven o'clock train to Chicago.

Guyler received him sitting, in his private room, with his back to the window, so that he could study Neil closely as he came in, but Neil could not make out Guyler's expression.

“Take that chair.” Guyler directed Neil to one close beside his desk. Neil looked about before he complied. Guyler tossed out cigars. “No pictures on the walls, you see, Thurston,” he snorted “No dictaphones behind the books—my word for it.” When you talk in this room you talk to me. Glad you came up so quick.”

“I happened to be coming up,” Neil attempted casually.

“That was good. I wanted to ask you how you found that damned license-tag you beat us with and how you got to it so quick.”

Neil jerked and stiffened in spite of his preparation for just that. Guyler, observing him, grinned.

“Come on, Thurston—come across!”

Neil swore at himself dumbly for a fool not to have confessed while confession might still have been his. Now he was going to have his act proved on him.

“Come on!” Guyler urged genially with the patience of an old hand initiating a novice into the frankness of after-the-verdict confidences. “You put Kane over and did a damned neat job and we've no hard feelings; the case is over. Kane's guilty; his relatives know it—they've known it all along, of course, and they're going to drop it now without trying for another trial. Kane's guilty; you proved it; we admit it. Everything over. What I want to know is how blazes you got to that infernal license-number before we did.”

Neil reacted to one thunderbolt at a time. “Kane's guilty!” he ejaculated. hoarsely. “You said Kane's guilty!”

“Guilty? Guilty as Beelzebub!” Guyler returned. “Whooee! Did you stick over your stuff wondering about that? Say, Thurston, you're a lawyer! We knew Kane'd done it, of course; when he told us about it and how he'd yanked off that license-number after he'd killed her and how he threw it away, we knew the first thing we had to do was to get our hands on that tag; other things could wait. So we sent for it where, he told us he'd thrown it a couple of hundred yards down the road from the body; but we couldn't find it anywhere. We couldn't see how you could have got there before us. But you'd got it, of course; and you handled it right! An ordinary fool would have stuck it in evidence right away, and we'd have handled it easy; but you held it back and spilled it just at the right second.”

NEIL sat back dazed. while Guyler picked up one of the cigars he had flung down, and chewed the end off. “Only one sloppy thing about that, Thurston, if you don't mind a criticism from the losing side; it might have been safer to have had your farmer find it where Kane lost it instead of farther down.

“We had the devil of a hopeless case,” went on Guyler. “Still, we were licked; and when Guyler, Wadrop and Kramer lose any case, they know they've had a man against 'em too good to be getting his mail from a third-class post office. That means we want you with us. Like to get our idea of the terms, or did you sketch out some of your own on the way up?”

Neil collected his dizzy wits; the reaction from his long oppression left him unsteady. “Thank you—thank you,” he repeated, “but I'm not open to an offer.”

“Why not?” Guyler bent forward quickly. “Some one ahead of us?”

“No.”

“Then what's the big idea? Not that Congress idea I heard about in Norfolk! Good Lord, man, after this you don't doubt yourself enough to consider you're cut out for a career in Congress! You're a lawyer! I've been absolutely straight with you; can't you take a chance on me? We're not in court. For the purposes of my personal information and my professional pride, will you tell me where and how you got hold of it?”

Neil gazed at Guyler. “I found it in the mud beside the creek on Hazen's Road. Some children had it. I thought at first you'd planted it there; afterwards I knew you hadn't, but I saw the evidence through.”

“And you want to go back home to run for Congress! Don't do that; you've got the stuff for success! Get geared right—don't lose your nerve; stay in high and see where you travel!” He tossed a memorandum to Neil. “There's my idea of the value you'd be to us to start. Show that to your girl and think it over; then talk to me when you're ready.”

Neil took a taxi to catch the late afternoon train back to Norfolk.

“It's all right,” he said to Marion when they were alone. “I've just seen Guyler. He told me Kane did it.”

“Of course he did it,” she said calmly. She took Guyler's memorandum of the offer to Neil and tore it to bits after he had told her about it. “That's what you brought it to me for, isn't it?” she said.