The Turn of the Balance

Dalrymple, the assistant district attorney, was a good-looking young man with a smooth-shaven, regular face that might have been pleasant, but, because of his new importance, it now wore a stern and forbidding aspect. He was dressed in new spring clothes; the trousers were rolled up at the bottoms, showing the low tan shoes which just then had come again into vogue. He wore a pink flannel shirt of exquisite texture; on this flannel shirt was a white linen collar. This combination produced an effect which was thought to give him the final touch of aristocracy and refinement. When he was not talking to Wilkison or to Fallen, he was striding about the court-room with his hands in his trousers pockets. Once he stopped, drew a silver case from his pocket and lighted a cigarette made with his monogram on the paper.

Marriott turned from Dalrymple with disgust; he looked beyond the railing, and there, on the walnut benches, sat Gibbs, with a retinue that made Marriott smile. They must have come in when Marriott was preoccupied, for he was surprised to see them. Gibbs sat on the end of one bench, as uncomfortable and ill at ease as he would have been in a pew at church. He was shaved to a pinkness, his hair was combed smooth, and he was very solemn. Marriott could easily see that the atmosphere of the court-room oppressed and cowed him; he had lost his native bearing, and had suddenly grown meek, humble and afraid. Marriott knew none of the others; there were half a dozen men, none of them dressed as well as Gibbs, with strange visages, marked by crime and suffering, all the more touching because they were so evidently unconscious of these effects. The heads ranged along the bench were of strange shapes, startlingly individual in one sense, very much alike in another. They were all solemn, afraid to speak, bearing themselves self-consciously, like children suddenly set out before the public. On one bench sat a young girl, and something unmistakable in her eyes, in her mouth, in the clothes she wore–she had piled on herself all the finery she had–told what she was. Her toilet, on which she had spent such enormous pains, produced the very effect the womanhood left in her had striven to avoid.

Marriott smiled, until he detected the deep concern which Gibbs was trying to hide; then his heart was touched, as the toilet of the girl had touched it. Marriott knew that these people were the witnesses by whom Gibbs expected to establish an alibi for Dillon and Squeak and Mandell; the sight of them did not reassure him; he had again that disheartening conviction of the utter lack of weight their appearance would carry with any court; he did not credit them himself, and he began to feel a shame for offering such witnesses. He was half decided, indeed, not to put them forward. But his greater concern came with the thought of Mason, whom he believed to be innocent; where, he suddenly wondered, was the reporter Wales?

But just at this moment the green baize doors of the court-room swung inward and suddenly all the people in the court-room–Dalrymple, Fallen, Wilkison, Marriott, Gibbs, the clerks and the reporters, the bailiff and the group Gibbs had brought up with him from the under world–forgot the distinctions and prejudices and hatreds that separated them, yielded to the claims of their common humanity and became as one in the eager curiosity which concentrated all their interest on the entering prisoners.

They came in a row, chained together by handcuffs, in charge of deputy marshals. They were marched within the bar, still wearing the hats they could not remove. The United States marshal himself and another deputy came forward and joined the deputies in charge of the prisoners. The officers took off their hats for them, and when they took chairs at the table, stood close beside them, as if to give the impression that the prisoners were most dangerous and desperate characters, and that they themselves were officials with the highest regard for their duty.

Wilkison, with great deliberation, was seating himself at the clerk's desk. Ordinarily he held hearings in an anteroom, but as this hearing would be reported in the newspapers he felt justified in using the court-room; besides, he could then test some of the sensations of a judge.

"Aren't you going to unhandcuff these men?" said Marriott to the marshal.

The marshal merely smiled in a superior official way, and the smile completed the rage that had seized on Marriott when the deputies stationed themselves behind the prisoners. Marriott felt in himself all the evil and all the hatred that were in the hearts of these officers; he felt all the hatred that was gathering about these prisoners; it seemed that every one there wished to revenge himself personally on them. Fallen, sitting beside Dalrymple, had an air of directing the whole proceeding, as if his duties did not end with the apprehension of his prisoners, but required him to see that the assistant district attorney, the commissioner and the rest did their whole duty. He sat there with the two rosy spots on his plump cheeks glowing a deeper red, his blue eyes gloating. Marriott restrained himself by an effort; he needed all his faculties now.

"The case of the United States versus Dillon and others." Wilkison was officially fingering the papers on his desk. "Are the defendants ready for hearing?"

"We're ready, yes," said Marriott, plainly excluding from his words and manner any of the respect for the court ordinarily simulated by lawyers. Mason, sitting beside him, and Dillon and the rest followed with eager glances every movement, listened to every word. They forgot the handcuffs, and fastened their eyes on Fallen standing up to be sworn. When the oath had been administered, Dalrymple put the stereotyped preliminary questions and then asked him who the defendants were. Fallen pointed to them one after another and pronounced their names as he did so. When he had done this Dalrymple turned, looked at Marriott with his chin in the air, and said pertly:

"Take the witness."

Marriott was surprised and puzzled; the suspicions that he had all along held were increased.

"How many witnesses will you have?" he asked.

"This is all," said Dalrymple with an impertinent movement of the lip, "except this." He held up a legal document. "This certified copy of an indictment–"

At the word "indictment" the truth flashed on Marriott. He understood now; this explained the delay, the stealth, the subterfuge of which he had been dimly conscious for days; this explained the conduct of the officials; this explained Fallen's absence–he had gone to Illinois, secured the indictment of the four men, and returned. And this was not a preliminary hearing at all; it was a mere formality for the purpose of removing the prisoners to the jurisdiction in which the crime had been committed. He saw now that he would not be allowed to offer any testimony; nothing could be done. The men would be tried in Illinois, where they could have no witnesses, for the law, as he remembered, provided that process for witnesses to testify on behalf of defendant could not be issued beyond a radius of one hundred miles of the court where they were tried; they were poor, they could not pay to transport witnesses, and now the alibis for Dillon and Squeak and Mandell could not be established, and Mason could not have the benefit of Wales's testimony, unless depositions were used, and he knew what a farce depositions are. He had been tricked. It was all legal, of course, but he had been tricked, that was all, and he was filled with mortification and shame and rage.

"Mr. Marriott," Wilkison was saying in his most impartial tone, "do you wish to examine this witness?"

Marriott was recalled. He looked at Fallen, waiting there in the witness-chair, pulling at his little mustache, the pink spots in his cheeks glowing, and his eyes striving for an expression of official unconcern. Marriott questioned Fallen, but without heart. He tried to break the force of his identification, but Fallen was positive. They were Joseph Mason, James Dillon, Louis Skinner, alias Squeak, and Stephen Mandell. When Marriott had finished, Dalrymple rose and said:

"Your Honor, we offer as evidence a certified copy of an indictment returned by the grand jury at this present term, and the government rests."

He looked in triumph at Marriott.

The prisoners were leaning eagerly over the table under which they hid their shackled hands, not understanding in the least the forces that were playing with them. Dillon's long, unshaven face was suspended above the green felt, his eyes, bright with excitement and deepest interest, shifting quickly from Dalrymple to Marriott and then back again to Dalrymple. Mason's eyes went from one to the other of the lawyers, but his gaze was easier, not so swift, hardly so interested. A slight smile lurked beneath the mask he wore, and the commissioner decided with pleasure that this smile proved Mason's guilt, a conclusion which he found it helpful to communicate to Dalrymple after the hearing. Mandell and Squeak wore heavy expressions; the realization of their fate had not yet struggled to consciousness. In fact, they did not know what had happened, and they were trying to learn from a study of the expressions of Dalrymple and Marriott.

Dalrymple continued to look at Marriott in the pride he felt at having beaten him. Because he had really been unfair and had practised a sharp trick on Marriott, he disliked him. This dislike showed now in Dalrymple's glance, as it had been expressed in the sharp, important voice in which he had put his questions during the hearing. He had spoken with an affected accent, and had objected to every question that Marriott asked on cross-examination. He had learned to speak in this affected accent at college, where he had spent four years, after which he had spent three other years at a law school; consequently, he knew little of that life from which he had been withdrawn for those seven years, knew nothing of its significance, or meaning, or purpose, and, of course, nothing of human nature. The stern and forbidding aspect in which he tried to mask a countenance that might have been good-looking and pleasing, had it worn a natural and simple expression, was amusing to those who, like Dillon and Mason, were older and wiser men. Dalrymple had no views or opinions or principles of his own; those he had, like his clothes and his accent, had been given him by his parents or the teachers his parents had hired; he had accepted all the ideas and prejudices of his own class as if they were axioms. He felt it a fine thing to be there in the United States court in an official capacity that made every one look at him, and, as he supposed, envy him; that gave an authority to anything he said. He thought it an especially fine thing to represent the government. He used this word frequently, saying "the government feels," or "the government wishes," or "the government understands," speaking, indeed, as if he were the government himself. The power behind him was tremendous; an army stood ready at the last to back up his sayings, his opinions, and his mistakes. Against such a power, of course, Dillon and Mason, who were poor, shabby men, had no chance. Dalrymple, to be sure, had no notion of what he was doing to these men; no notion of how he was affecting their lives, their futures, perhaps their souls. He was totally devoid of imagination and incapable of putting himself in the place of them or of any other men, except possibly those who were dressed as he was dressed and spoke with similar affectation. He did not consider Dillon and Mason men, or human beings at all, but another kind of organism or animate life, expressed to him by the word "criminal." He did not consider what happened to them as important; the only things that were important to him were, first, to be dressed in a correct fashion, and modestly, that is, to be dressed like a gentleman; secondly, to see to it that his sympathies and influence were always on the side of the rich, the well-dressed, the respectable and the strong, and to maintain a wide distinction between himself and the poor, disreputable and ill-clad, and, thirdly, to bear always, especially when in court or about the government building, an important and wise demeanor. He felt, indeed, that in becoming an assistant United States district attorney, he had become something more than a mere man; that because a paper had been given him with an eagle printed on it and a gilt seal, a paper on which his name and the words by which he was designated had been written, he had become something more than a mere human being. The effect of all this was revealed in the look with which he now regarded Marriott.

Marriott, however, did not look at Dalrymple; he wished Dalrymple to feel the contempt he had for him, and after a moment he rose and addressed the commissioner.

The commissioner straightened himself in his chair; his face was very long and very solemn. He did not listen to what Marriott was saying; having conferred with Dalrymple before the hearing and read a decision which Dalrymple had pointed out to him in a calf-bound report, he was now arranging in his mind the decision he intended to give presently.

Marriott, of course, realized the hopelessness of his case, but he did not think it becoming to give in so easily, or, at least, without making a speech. He began to argue, but Wilkison interrupted him and said:

"This whole question is fully discussed in the Yarborough case, where the court held that in a removal proceeding no testimony can be presented in behalf of the defense."

Then Wilkison announced his decision, saying that Marriott's witnesses could be heard at the proper time and place, that is, on the trial, where he said the rights of the defendants would be fully conserved. Feeling that his use of this word "conserved" was happy and appropriate and had a legal sound, he repeated it several times, and concluded by saying:

"The defendants will be remanded to the custody of the marshal for removal."

The marshal and his deputies tapped the prisoners on the shoulders. Just then there was a slight commotion; Gibbs had pushed by the bailiff and was coming forward. He came straight up to the men. The marshal put out a hand to press him back, but Marriott said:

"Oh, let him talk to them a minute. Good God–!"

The marshal glared at Marriott, and then gave way.

"But he wants to be quick about it," he threatened.

Gibbs leaned over Mason's shoulder.

"Well, Joe," he said.

"I'm kangarooed, Dan," said Mason.

"It looks that way," said Gibbs.

"Dan, I want you to do something for me–I want you to send me some tobacco. You know you can get those clippings in pound packages; they only cost a quarter."

Gibbs looked hurt.

"Joe," he said, "I've known you for forty years, and that's the only mean thing you ever said to me."

"Well, don't get sore, Dan," Mason said. "I knew you would–only–"

The marshal cut them short and marched the prisoners out of the court-room. Outside in the street the prison-van was waiting, the van that had been ordered before the hearing, to take the prisoners to the station.

IX

It was several days before Marriott saw Gibbs again, and then he appeared at Marriott's office with a companion and leaned for an instant unsteadily against the door he had carefully closed. Marriott saw that he was changed, and that it was the change drink makes in a man. Gibbs sank helplessly into a chair, and stared at Marriott blankly. He was not the clean, well-dressed man Marriott had beheld in him before. He was unshaven, and the stubble of his beard betrayed his age by its whiteness; the pupils of his eyes were dilated, his lips stained with tobacco. His shoes were muddy, one leg of his trousers was turned up; and his lack of a collar seemed the final proof of that moral disintegration he could not now conceal. When he had been there a moment the atmosphere was saturated with the odor of alcohol.

"My friend, Mr. McDougall," said Gibbs, toppling unsteadily in his chair, as he waved one fat hand at his companion, a heavy blond fellow, six feet tall, well dressed and dignified.

"I've gone to the bad," said Gibbs. Marriott looked at him in silence. The fact needed no comment.

"The way those coppers jobbed Mason was too much for me," Gibbs went on. "Worst I ever seen. I couldn't stand for it, it put me to the bad."

"Well, you won't do him any good, at that–" McDougall began.

"Aw, to hell with you!" said Gibbs, waving McDougall aside with a sweep of his arm. The movement unsettled him in his chair, and he steadied himself by digging his heels into the rug. Then he drew a broken cigar from his coat pocket, struck a match, and held it close to his nose; it took him a long time to light his cigar; he puffed hurriedly, but could not keep the cigar in the flame; before he finished he had burned his fingers, and Marriott felt a pain as Gibbs shook the match to the floor.

"He hasn't touched a drop for five years," said McDougall indulgently. "But when they kangarooed Mason–"

McDougall looked at Gibbs, not in regret or pity, nor with disapproval, but as one might look at a woman stricken with some recent grief. To him, getting drunk seemed to be as natural a way of expressing emotion as weeping or wringing the hands. Marriott gazed on the squalid little tragedy of a long friendship, gazed a moment, then turned away, and looked out of his window. Above the hideous roofs he could see the topmasts of schooners, and presently a great white propeller going down the river. It was going north, to Mackinac, to the Soo, to Duluth, and the sight of it filled Marriott with a longing for the cold blue waters and the sparkling air of the north.

Gibbs evidently had come to talk about Mason's case, but when he began to speak his voice was lost somewhere in his throat; his head sank, he appeared to sink into sleep. McDougall glanced at him and laughed. Then he turned seriously to Marriott.

"It was an outrage," he said. "Mason has been right here in town–I saw him that day. He ought to be alibied."

"Couldn't you testify?" asked Marriott.

McDougall looked at Marriott with suspicion, and hesitated. But suddenly Gibbs, whom they had supposed to be asleep, said impatiently, without opening his eyes:

"Oh, hell!–go on and tell him. He's a right guy, I tell you. He's wise to the gun." And Gibbs slumbered again.

"Well," said McDougall with a queer expression, "my business is unfortunately of such a nature that it can't stand much investigation, and I don't make the best witness in the world."

Gibbs suddenly sat up, opened his eyes, and drew an enormous roll of money from his pocket.

"How much do I owe you?" he asked, unrolling the bills. "It comes out of me," he said. Marriott was disappointed in this haggling appeal, not for his own sake, but for Gibbs's; it detracted from the romantic figure he had idealized for the man, just as Gibbs's intoxication had done. Marriott hesitated in the usual difficulty of appraising professional services, but when, presently, he rather uncertainly fixed his fee, Gibbs counted out the amount and gave it to him. Marriott took the money, with a wonder as to where it had come from, what its history was; he imagined in a flash a long train of such transactions as McDougall must be too familiar with, of such deeds as had been involved in the hearing before the commissioner, of other transactions, intricate, remote, involved, confused in morals–and he thrust the bills into his pocket.

"It comes out of me," Gibbs explained again. "They hadn't any fall money."

"Have you heard from them?" asked Marriott, who did not know what fall money was, and wished to change the subject.

"No," said Gibbs, shaking his head. "I'm going out to the trial. I'll take along that newspaper guy and some witnesses for the others. I'll get 'em a mouthpiece. Maybe we can spring 'em."

But, as Marriott learned several days later, Gibbs could not spring them. He went to the trial with an entourage of miserable witnesses, but he did not take Wales, for Wales's newspaper would not give him leave of absence, and there was no process to compel his attendance. But Kouka and Quinn went, and they gave Gibbs such a reputation that his testimony was impeached. He could not, of course, take Dean. Dean's business, like McDougall's, was unfortunately of such a nature that it did not stand investigation, and he did not make the best witness in the world. Mason and Dillon and Mandell and Squeak were sentenced to the penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth for five years. At about the same time Archie Koerner pleaded guilty to stealing the revolver and was sentenced to prison for a year.

Marriott left at last for his vacation, but he could not forget Mason taking his unjust fate so calmly and philosophically. He had great pity for him, just as he had for Archie, though one was innocent and the other guilty. He had pity for Dillon, too, and, yes, for Mandell and Squeak. He thought of it all, trying to find some solution, but there was no solution. It was but one more knot in the tangle of injustice man has made of his attempts to do justice; a tangle that Marriott could not unravel, nor any one, then or ever.

X

Like most of the great houses along Claybourne Avenue, the dwelling of the Wards wore an air of loneliness and desolation all that summer. With Mrs. Ward and Elizabeth in Europe, the reason for maintaining the establishment ceased to be; and the servants were given holidays. Barker was about for a while each day looking after things, and Gusta came to set the house in order. But these transient presences could not give the place its wonted life; the curtains were down, the furniture stood about in linen covers, the pictures were draped in white cloth. At evening a light showed in the library, where Ward sat alone, smoking, trying to read, and, as midnight drew on, starting now and then at the strange, unaccountable sounds that are a part of the phenomena of the stillness of an empty house. He would look up from his book, listen, wait, sigh, listen again, finally give up, go to bed, worry a while, fall asleep, be glad when morning came and he could lose himself for another day in work. Dick never came in till long after midnight, and Ward seldom saw him, save on those few mornings when the boy was up early enough to take breakfast with him at the club. Such mornings made the whole day happy for Ward.

But the few hours she spent each day in the empty house were happy hours for Gusta Koerner. She was not, of course, a girl in whom feeling could become thought, or sensation find the relief of expression; she belonged to the class that because it is dumb seems not to suffer, but she had a sense of change in the atmosphere. She missed Elizabeth, she missed the others, she missed the familiar figures that once had made the place all it had been to her. But she loved it, nevertheless, and if it seemed to hold no new experiences for her, there were old experiences to be lived over again.

At first the loneliness and the emptiness frightened her, but she grew accustomed; she no longer started at the mysterious creakings and tappings in the untenanted rooms, and each morning, after her work was done, she lingered, and wandered idly about, looked at herself in the mirrors, gazed out of the windows into Claybourne Avenue, sometimes peeped into the books she could so little understand.

Occasionally she would have chats with Barker, but she did not often see him; he was always busy in the stables. Ward and Dick were gone before she got there. But the peace and quiet of the deserted mansion were grateful, and Gusta found there a sense of rest and escape that for a long time she had not known. She found this sense of escape all the more grateful after Archie's trouble. He had not been at home in a long time, and they had heard nothing of him; then, one evening she learned of his latest trouble in those avid chroniclers of trouble, the newspapers. Her father, who would not permit the mention of his son's name, nevertheless plainly had him on his mind, for he grew more than ever gloomy, morose and irritable. And then, to make matters worse, one Saturday evening Charlie Peltzer threw it up to Gusta, and they parted in anger. On Sunday afternoon she went to see Archie at the jail, and stayed so late that it was twilight before she got to the Wards'. She had never had the blues so badly before; her quarrel with Peltzer, her father's scolding, her mother's sighs and furtive tears, her own visit to the prison, all combined to depress her, and now, in the late and lonesome Sunday afternoon she did her work hurriedly, and was just about to let herself out of the door when it opened suddenly, and Dick Ward, bolting in, ran directly against her.