CHAPTER XIV
Watchmen guarded the doors of the court, which were closed and therefore denoted to Calvin that the courtroom was crowded to capacity. In fact, the police recently had cleared the halls of an overflow and only those persons who had business in the court were permitted to approach.
The doors were opened to a hushed hum of voices and to heads turning countless eyes upon Ellison and Calvin Clarke.
"The State's attorneys," he heard the whispers in tones of awe which heralded him as the awaited agent of death.
He halted for an instant as the doors closed behind him.
The court-room was divided into a large public section which occupied about two-thirds of the space, and into the section set off for the judge, the jury, the prisoner and his counsel and witnesses, for the attorneys and clerks of the State. In this court, the public section lay to Calvin's left, as he entered, and claimed the south half and also the center of the room. It was furnished with rows of brown, massive oak benches arranged in even files, and from end to end every bench this morning held humanity. They faced the judge's seat, the witness stand and the jury box; the windows were behind the benches and on the further side, to the west.
In front of the public section was an open space—an aisle bounded by an oak railing beyond which all the actual processes of trial went on.
By common custom the prosecutors established them selves within the rail to the right; the clerks and court stenographers claimed the center, and to the left sat the defense. The judge presided from a dais against the wall at the center; to his left, as he faced the room, was the witness stand, also confronting the room; and further to his left and facing, not the room, but the judge's seat and the witness stand, was the jury box.
The judge's seat now was empty, and so was the chair for the witness; the jury box also was vacant, but Max Elmen's bald head shone at the table for the counsel for the defense and Max Elmen's spectacled eyes scrutinized his opponents. A companion bald head, less rotund, somewhat more youthfully fringed with hair, marked the presence of Max's son, Herman.
The glint of light moved up Max Elmen's scalp as the Senior counsel inclined his head slightly in sleepy salutation; and Calvin nodded in reply and glanced away. The Royle girl was not at the table of the defense; nor was the prisoner there; he had not yet been brought from the jail.
Before he was aware that he had found her, Calvin was staring into the Royle girl's eyes.
She was in a row of people, some of them seated, others standing just within the rail beyond Elmen's table. Apparently she had turned at the opening of the door and, since she now was relapsing upon her chair, she must have arisen in some impulse which, plainly, had been disappointed. Eagerness faded from her eyes; her lips, which had parted, pressed tight in pale fright, and Calvin, staring at her, summoned to her the eyes of those who watched him; then he felt the swing of the eyes to himself again and hostilely, more hostilely than before.
He turned aside slightly, and advanced, looking down at the opening in the railing through which he strode to his place at the table for the prosecution, realizing that she had risen and turned in her quick, pretty eagerness to welcome Ketlar, when the door had opened, only to see him, who was come to demand Ketlar's life. He realized that the spectators previously had located her and had been observing her and, since they themselves had been awaiting sight of the prisoner, they had followed her feeling. So already she had scored for the defense; she had caught the sympathy of the court-room even before the prisoner had appeared.
Newspaper men surrounded her when Calvin next glanced toward her, and between them he had a glimpse of her shaking her head. "Yes," rumbled Elmen's distinct, heavy voice, "do it, Joan Daisy. It is all right; oblige the boys." So she arose and let them lead her to the witness stand.
Some one screwed a light cord into a socket in the wall behind and a cluster of brilliant white lights gleamed from a metal box fitted with reflectors to concentrate and intensify the beam. An operator trained it upon the Royle girl, and she sat etched in the glare, slight and lovely and pale under the dazzling whiteness. The effect was to make a picture of her in her plain, fitted blue dress, which caused the people on the benches to lean forward, whispering their delight. Cameras clicked and a photographer turned to Calvin.
"Will you stand up before her, pointing at her, please, as if you're cross-examining?"
"No," Calvin refused shortly, indignant at the whole performance.
So the photographers disconnected their light-box, thanked the Royle girl and led her back to her place, having pleased the people.
When the door next opened, it was to admit Ketlar and his guards.
He entered the court where he was to be tried for his life, walking briskly, so that he gained a step upon his guards, who had released him from any manacle which they might have used. He squared his shoulders and lifted his head in a bit of obvious bravado that became him and gave him an air of superiority to his jailing, which was increased by the smart and immaculate appearance of his new, brown suit. His attractive, flaxen hair had been recently trimmed; he had just been shaved and his clear, flawless skin shone pink in the flush of his excitement.
Upon sight of him, Max Elmen immediately arose; Herman arose together with a couple of clerks who accompanied him. Joan Daisy Royle jumped to her feet with a quick, eager exclamation which brought up every one about her. Some one cleared the way before him, and as he stepped toward his place, for the moment he was more like a prince than a prisoner come to court.
Max Elmen warmly extended his hand; Herman imitated his father. The Royle girl gave both her hands to Ketlar's grasp and others pressed to him. The Nesson girl was there.
Calvin Clarke saw the controlled countenance of the woman who, under the light of the street lamp, had asked him for Ketlar's child. She was standing a few feet away, but with all her being intent upon her son, as she had stood at the hearing on the habeas corpus and when she had followed him to jail, never obtruding herself.
Calvin looked quickly away and caught up a paper from his table.
A door in the paneled north wall opened, and every one in the court-room arose as the judge, in his robe, strode from his chambers; and there rolled, in the hush, the heavy rhythm of old phrases heralding that the court was in session; but the judge's entrance was far less impressive than had been the prisoner's.
A clerk handed the judge the inevitable document upon some extraneous routine matter; it was signed and immediately the clerk called, "The People of Illinois against Frederic Ketlar."
Calvin drew up, stiffly; and for a moment his mind would not attack the business before him, but played with the phrase, "The People of Illinois"; and he thought of them busy in their tiers of offices in the tremendous downtown blocks, and indolent in their apartments and suburban residences; he thought of the people of the country towns and of the farms, overcoated and mittened as they went about their chores in the snow over the flat, Illinois plain. So his mind flew to his home, and, returning to himself, he thought how strange for him to stand for the People of Illinois in this steam-heated room in Chicago on this winter day.
Max Elmen rose to his feet, and Calvin heard an expiration, like a great sigh, breathed by the women behind him at this first move of forces in the battle for the life of the boy who just now so jauntily had crossed the room.
Calvin arose, keeping his eyes from the prisoner and from the Royle girl; most particularly from the prisoner's mother he held his glance. The tension of the capital case, in which death—deliberate, decreed death—was the aim of his efforts, pulled at his muscles.
The first man from the panel drawn for the jury presented himself for examination, and Calvin gazed at the dark, foreign face of the fellow and rallied to a feeling of offense which banished his qualm before his duty.
Galaski was the fellow's name; an American he called himself; he even claimed American birth; but Calvin would have none such as him upon this jury.
"Have you conscientious scruples against capital punishment?" Calvin asked him. "Or are you opposed to the same?"
"Huh! What?" demanded Galaski.
"A penalty prescribed by the laws of this State," explained Calvin patiently, "is death for a man convicted of murder. Are you opposed to voting the death penalty for a man found guilty?"
"Not me; I ain't skeary," assured Galaski, comprehending at last. "I'll hang him for you," he promised, gazing at Calvin with full friendliness.
"The State, not an individual, requires the penalty," said Calvin, coldly, repelling the man's offer to do him a personal favor. He would have liked to avoid at this time the speaking of the plain, brutal word for execution. It was too soon and altogether too glib, and Calvin knew that it offended the court-room.
"Have you formed and expressed any opinion as to this case?" he continued.
"Sure I got an opinion. I can read the papers. I said he done it," Galaski replied, heartily; and thereupon, to Calvin's relief, the man was dismissed for cause.
He wanted Americans, true Americans, to try this case; and there ran in his head a sentence from a story which his mother used to tell to him when he was a little boy.
It had to do with a crisis in the Revolutionary War, when General Washington himself was seeing to the outposts before an important engagement, and in order to prevent treachery, he commanded: "Put only Americans on guard to-night!"
Calvin looked at the candidates for jury service, longing to see lean, angular faces of blue-eyed, brown-haired men whom he could trust, longing to read upon the jury lists names like Webster and Bradford and Bancroft.
Instead he encountered "Americans" of swarthy skin and dark eyes, of nomenclature and mentality similar to Galaski. Two came up, one after the other, neither conscientiously opposed to the death penalty nor prejudiced by having expressed an opinion upon the case. Both men attested complete confidence in their ability to render a fair and impartial verdict upon the evidence to be heard. Calvin could find no cause, under the law, by which he could demand their exclusion from the jury box.
Elmen, having examined for the defense, found no fault. On the contrary, it was plain to Calvin that Elmen desired them for the jury for their very lack of character and intelligence, for their lack of tradition and for their incapacity to understand the need of rigorous enforcement of the law.
Calvin had, as also had Elmen for the defense, twenty peremptory challenges in hand. The law allowed him to reject jurymen peremptorily, up to the number of twenty; that was, he could challenge and dismiss, without other cause than his personal dislike or distrust, any juryman or jurymen up to the number of twenty. Elmen, twenty times, could do the same. When his twenty challenges were exhausted, he no longer could exercise the privilege of personal choice, but must accept any man who legally qualified for jury service.
Obviously, an advantage accrued to the side which could keep its peremptory challenges in hand after the other had exhausted its privileges. Calvin appreciated this and temporarily accepted both jurors and then two more, only to challenge the first pair, peremptorily, and to bring up for examination a young man named Rogers, of actual American birth and education, intelligent and of character. Elmen pretended to be willing to accept him and then dismissed him, peremptorily, and brought up a succession of "-skis, -ovitches and -heims" who, before night, forced the State to expend two more peremptory challenges.
A man named Monroe cost Elmen one challenge, soon after court convened on Tuesday; and a Wentworth drew another from the defense while Calvin was questioning and challenging for cause, whenever any reason offered, a succession of many-bloods who, to his mind, had no place in any jury box.
He accepted four men, unwillingly, and later challenged two of these, peremptorily. At night, three jurors remained. So it went on, morning and afternoon, day after day, each side questioning, complaining, trying to show cause why this man and that was unfit, each seeking the men it wanted, each side maneuvering to force the other to spend its dwindling store of peremptory challenges and to save its own.
Calvin went out, after adjournment on Saturday, aware that the week had won Elmen an advantage, aware that he had been obliged to yield to Elmen the prospect of completing the jury with men of his own choosing and, perhaps, insuring a verdict favorable to Ketlar before ever a word of evidence was heard. For the State had exhausted fifteen of its twenty challenges, while Elmen held twelve of his twenty in hand.
Monday, of the second week, cost Calvin three and Elmen two more. So the State started the eighth day with two challenges in hand against ten which Elmen had reserved. At half past eleven upon that Tuesday morning, when ten jurors had been chosen, Calvin spent his last peremptory challenge to disqualify a talesman who reminded him of Gos Augarian.
Ten minutes later, a Greek restaurant owner, by name Andreapolos, qualified for the jury. He was a keen, alert, energetic man, speaking bad grammar and wearing diamonds; and Calvin, questioning him, thought of him as a duplicate of the Greek Polos who had taken over the Barlow place at Clarke's Ferry. Twice Calvin went over his questions, trying to find cause to exclude him, but there was no cause. The State's challenges were gone, and Elmen, smiling sleepily, waved Andreapolos into the jury box.
When the jury was complete, twenty minutes later, Andreapolos obviously was the member of most force and energy; inevitably, he became foreman.
At the beginning of the court session, in the afternoon of the eighth day, Calvin called the witnesses for the State: the tenants of the flat-building by the lake who heard the shot, which killed Adele Ketlar, and who called the police; the policemen who found Adele's body and examined the flat and who arrested and questioned Ketlar and Joan Daisy Royle.
Calvin offered a large plat of Adele Ketlar's flat, showing the plan, the position of furniture and the spot where Adele's body lay. Witnesses approved it, and it was hung upon the wall above the jury box, where it remained throughout the trial.
Two tenants, of neighboring apartments, swore solemnly that they had seen Frederic Ketlar, the same person who now sat in court before them, hurriedly leave the building after the shot was heard.
Max Elmen, for the defense, cross-examined for more than an hour, but failed to shake or discredit them; and at adjournment for the day Calvin felt that the case was proceeding better than he had hoped.
Comment, upon the next morning, was favorable to the State, but after court convened Calvin was conscious of a slight ebb in his tide. The jurymen, as well as the crowd in the court, appeared to expect the prosecution to present some new and more sensational evidence, whereas the case was complete after the State had called Weigal and members of the Echo orchestra—Ketlar's own orchestra—to testify that Ketlar had abandoned the Garden without explanation early in the night on which his wife was killed, and that it was particularly unusual, since it was Saturday.
Elmen cross-examined only perfunctorily. It was plain to Calvin that Elmen was feeling, as he himself realized, the diminution of interest in the witnesses for the State. The jury, like the crowd on the court benches, seemed to be relaxed and waiting without further interest in the prosecution; they wanted to see, upon the witness stand, the girl who had been shown them in the court-room when the jury was being chosen and who since had been banished to the witness-room; they would have her exhibit her beauty and bare her soul to save the prisoner; and they would wait no longer for their treat.