CHAPTER XVII
Calvin left the Criminal Court building with the intention of returning to his rooms and of exhibiting by act, as well as by word, his complete lack of faith in Seifert's tip. It was back-fire, he argued, which was kindled to becloud the investigation of the Considine case.
Of course, he had recollected, and he had just discussed with Ellison, the matter of the anonymous accusation of Baretta which had arrived in the mail following Ketlar's Indictment; but Calvin made in his mind a balance and upon one scale he placed three featherweight, untrustworthy trifles—the furtively spoken warning of a stranger on the street, a nameless scribble, a tip whispered by the painted lips of a road-house coryphee; upon the other scale he heaped the overwhelming weight of the evidence against Ketlar which he had been gathering and arranging throughout three months and which, during the last week, he had presented and endorsed in court.
"What was that conference for to-night, Mr. Clarke?" a voice hailed him and a newspaper man, whom he knew by the name of Oliver, caught step with him.
"On Considine," Calvin replied.
"What's new on it, sir?"
"Nothing," denied Calvin, and he meant it.
"A lot of you were sitting in upstairs," Oliver objected. "And why did they call you over? You haven't been working on Considine; you've been trying Ketlar."
"Yes," admitted Calvin.
"Nothing new on that?" Oliver questioned, suspiciously. "Jury didn't ask to report or for instructions or anything?"
"No," replied Calvin, considering himself to be answering the latter query and he discouraged Oliver from following him.
Alone, he walked on, casting over phrases of his summary spoken before the jury not twelve hours ago, to uphold and strengthen himself in his fixed opinion. Suddenly he halted and stood, buttoning his overcoat collar about his throat in nervous physical response to an abrupt shock to his thought.
In the lighted office, where he had argued the folly of attempting to connect Baretta with a crime certainly committed by Ketlar, he had failed to examine his visual memory of the men; but here, in the darkness, he recollected the appearance of both and was startled by the idea which entered his head.
Comparing their facial features, they did not resemble each other; but in figure they were alike. Ketlar's hair was flaxen and Three-G. George's was black, flecked with white. If one thought of the two men as they were when seen nearby, the difference in hair easily distinguished them; but seen from across a street and through a window and under an electric light, would not Baretta's hair gleam like flaxen gray?
Calvin permitted nothing so definite as doubt of the rightness of what he had done, yet he could not deny a sensation of a shift of burden upon those scales in his mind. He remembered that the Royle girl had sworn, upon the witness stand, that she had seen a short, dark-haired man with Adele Ketlar; and if this was true, the fellow could not have been Baretta; but Calvin considered also, that he had believed that she had lied, indeed he had shown, upon cross-examination, how she had described the man differently at other times and that the fact had been that the fellow was tall and light-haired.
"Like Ket, but not Ket; he wasn't Ket—he wasn't!" she had cried to Calvin himself upon the night she had led him to the beach to show him the stones, which she had called stars, set in the sand.
The scale, weighted deeply down with evidence damning the Royle girl, had lifted a little, and Calvin could not again depress it to where it had been; stubbornly he fixed it where it was, still heavily heaped with proofs against her.
He walked briskly to his rooms and was preparing for bed when the telephone rang. "Jury," he thought, as he grasped the instrument which reproduced for him Oliver's voice, saying: "I got something to interest you, Mr. Clarke."
"What?"
"It hear Considine's gang 're giving out that George Baretta was mixed up with Adele Ketlar and he killed her."
"Are they?" asked Calvin.
"What do you know about it?" Oliver demanded.
"Nothing," replied Calvin, positively; "know" to him was a word of absolute determination.
"This didn't have anything to do with that conference to-night?"
"I have nothing more to say."
"That's how you want to be quoted?"
"Yes," said Calvin and hung up; but within fifteen minutes Oliver was again on the wire.
"I called you back, sir," he explained, unapologetically, "because that tip is coming stronger; we're carrying a story on it to-night, and we want a few words from you to go with it."
"Why?"
"Why, you tried Ketlar; you asked for the rope for him; the jury's out; and there's new evidence."
"Not evidence," repeated Calvin, too quickly. "Talk that any one could start."
"So you'd heard it!"
"You told me yourself," Calvin retorted.
"I'll tell you where I am," Oliver offered generously. "I'm up at the Royle flat and I'm taking Joan Daisy to Tut's Temple to have a look at Baretta. If she identifies him as the man she saw through the window, that'll be evidence."
Calvin pointed out that her word had been shown valueless; but he could not discard the matter. He dressed and after waiting restlessly a few minutes he put on overcoat and cap and descended to the street, where irresolutely he let pass four or five vacant taxis and hailed the next.
"I want you to drive west until," Calvin began his directions and then concentrated them into, "Go to Tut's Temple; do you know where it is?"
"Get in," bid the driver, winking.
Traffic lights gleamed red before west-bound vehicles and shone green to motor cars rushing north and south upon Michigan Boulevard; high in the sky, the ruby lamp at the top of the Wrigley tower revolved slowly and steadily. Calvin watched it, idly, and gazed down from it into the tremendous aisle of the avenue, and he stirred in his seat. His taxi, being west-bound, was halted at the edge of the boulevard, making him a spectator of the midnight scurry upon the wide, snow-tracked street.
The intense, below-zero cold of the early part of the week was moderated somewhat; the midday sun had sufficed even to soften yesterday's snow upon the exposed north and south streets, though the cross roads, shaded by the buildings, remained mantled with white; so the boulevard was streaked with black, bare ruts in which chain-girt wheels clinked upon films of ice congealed by the evening chill.
In five columns north, in five south, sped sedans, limousines with liveried chauffeurs, sport-cars with open sides and racoon-coated youths and girls, town-cars carefully enclosed, taxis, yellow, brown, black, white, blue, taxis crowded and taxis with curtains drawn, touring-cars and busses. Amazing to any one, the midnight current upon this street, most amazing to one who thought how it had been a strip of sandy scrub a single century ago.
Suddenly an orange light glows above the red which blocks the cross street; orange tops the green upon the posts which halve the tumult on the boulevard; the orange is gone; red gleams, and it is as if a mighty hand halts and holds still every car which, at the instant before, moved; for upon all the miles of the boulevard motion has been forbidden and every vehicle obeys; a miracle of authority has been achieved.
The spectacle of it subtly thrilled Calvin as his taxi crossed before the ranks of waiting cars. A display of order always pleased him; but this was mere mechanical order, he considered, as he was driven on; this was chiefly a triumph of engineering, a surface show of discipline. His mind returned to Ketlar and Considine and Three-G. George Baretta and to the Royle girl, taken by a newspaper reporter, to Tut's Temple, where Baretta would be found to-night—Baretta, who had directed the killing of Considine and was "known" to be the murderer of many others, but who flaunted his presence to-night at Tut's Temple because no man nor woman dared to accuse him openly in this city which halted ten thousand cars by the mere change in color of a traffic light.
Calvin Clarke regarded the enormous, endless material productions of this city of many bloods, extended square after square, mile after mile to north, to south, to west, and his mind contrasted its people with the company who, with no motors or machinery or any of these accouterments of power and wealth, entered the Massachusetts wilderness and established civilization by force of individual character and courage. Imagine a Clarke or a Webster or one of the old Barlows (whose home was passed into the hands of a Greek) failing for fear of his own skin to speak out against a known murderer!
What was the reporter, Oliver, doing with the Royle girl? Calvin wondered. If the fellow had started away with her, directly after he had telephoned, he might be at Tut's Temple and leading her to Baretta.
Calvin stirred, uneasily. Tut's Temple was no place for a girl and a reporter to identify George Baretta for any fault whatever; and both of them, or the reporter at least, must know it; neither could be foolish enough to start trouble at the Temple. However, Calvin tapped on the window-glass and called to his driver, "Can you hurry a little?"
Being an active and adventurous young man, in possession of sufficiently ready wit and tact to have survived for nearly six years on police assignments in and about Chicago, the reporter Oliver, who had Joan Daisy in charge, approached the road-house, at present operated under the alias of Tut's Temple, with no illusions whatsoever as to the general nature of ensuing events, were it discerned that the purpose of the visit of himself and his companion was to fasten upon George Baretta the murder of Adele Ketlar.
The establishment, which gleamed in brilliant, Pharaonic colors beside the midnight road, was the actual property of Three-G. George himself, as Oliver very well knew, although the formal deed of title, following Baretta's custom, showed another name. The ostensible ownership changed frequently, as did the appellation of the place itself and also its scheme of decoration, and all for the same reason—trouble with the authorities; but its business never altered.
A smiling but mirthless proprietor, Frank Zenneptha—familiarly shortened to Frankie Zenn—had been the "front" of the house since its most recent renaming and redecorating, after the fashion in vogue at the moment when it had been found advisable to have the place "change hands" again.
Frankie Zenn was, in Oliver's opinion, the gentleman in whose palm had reposed the automatic pistol which had delivered two bullets to Considine, when George Baretta had so bid. This, to be sure, was mere conjecture, not in the least susceptible to legal proof. Further, George Baretta himself was the slayer of Adele Ketlar; and this had become, in Oliver's mind, more than opinion since he had heard the accusation, together with considerable collateral disclosures of Baretta's covert affair with Adele Ketlar, from the lips of the same girl who had passed the tip to Seifert. She once had been attached to Tut's Temple, and she was in such situation now that she had exacted a sclemn pledge, before she spoke, guaranteeing to her that she would not be called against Baretta or quoted in any way.
Joan Daisy Royle, if she identified Baretta, would be quoted; indeed, she wanted to be; so Oliver pleasantly phrased to himself the sensational headlines of to-morrow if he succeeded in pulling off his "beat" to-night. Oliver not only had recognized the risk, but he flattered himself that he had honestly described it to Joan Daisy; and he had found the girl "game." She wanted to go with him, especially when he had told her that Mr. Clarke would have nothing to do with the scheme. There would be actual danger, Oliver argued, only if she and he bungled; very carefully he had explained to her exactly what to do and, as their taxi crossed the imaginary line of the Chicago city limits and entered the purlieus of Three-G. George, he reminded her: "Not a word even to me when we're inside. We drop in like a couple of friends for a few drinks and a fox-trot. You'll spot him; or I'll nudge you who he is if you don't make him out right away. Look him over; then whatever you think about him, keep quiet! We go out, and when I ask you, you tell me, is he the man or not. Can you do it?"
"Of course I can," said Joan Daisy.
"Then we'll have no trouble at all," prophesied Oliver, optimistically thrumming his fingers on the pane. "After we get clear I'll stop at the nearest phone which George has no 'listen' on, and I'll liven up the city editor with the good word you give me."
"And tell the police," begged Joan Daisy, "so they'll arrest Baretta before he sees the paper."
Oliver laughed and patted her arm. "The police are the pluperfect little experts at picking up George. Two men I know got callouses on their hands Just from him. What we want is to route him over the one way road; and we'll do it if you identify him and then stay game."
Joan Daisy huddled in her corner, for she was shivering, and she did not want Oliver to discover it. She felt cold and frightened and, most of all, she felt spent and done. She had imagined until the surprise of Oliver's call at the flat that she had nothing more to do and that there was nothing which any one could do for Ket, except to wait for news from the jury.
The verdict, so Mr. Elmen pompously had promised her, would be for acquittal upon the first ballot, likely, or soon thereafter; but it had become plain that Mr. Elmen partially deceived and might be mistaken altogether; the jury might vote the death penalty which Mr. Clarke had demanded.
Indeed mamma, who had been allowed to attend the trial for a single brief appearance, but who had compensated herself by multiplied perusal of all the versions of the affair in the seven daily newspapers printed in the English language, had been dolefully anticipatory of a verdict for the State. She had honored the evening vigil by unselfishly delaying the draught of her veronal in order to "help" Daisy—said assistance having consisted chiefly of lugubrious but graphic forecasts of events and the proffer of her back to be rubbed.
Dads had disappeared, the long-sustained strain of his sobriety at last terminated. Before Oliver called on Joan Daisy, Dads was quoting Shakespeare to his bootlegger.
"'Duncan's in 's grave
Treason's done 's worst; nor shteel, nor poison,
Malice domeshtic, foreign levy, noshing,
Can touch him further.'
"Sound sentiment," approved Dads. 'Perfectly applicable to a case in hands of jury. Noshing, absholutely noshing can touch it further. Mos' enviable sisuashion."
Joan Daisy had been relaxed and resting (except for intermittent massage of mamma's back) under influence of a similar presumption of inviolability of a case entrusted to a jury, when she had heard the bell and admitted the reporter with his news that some one had named the man, not Ket, whom she had seen through the window with Adele.
It had whipped her up and excited her. She had had but one answer when Oliver asked if she would go with him to identify Baretta; and she had set off, keyed and tense. But during the ride, she had relapsed to a nervous dullness, although Oliver kept talking to her, repeating that here was her chance to free Ket no matter what the jury decided in regard to the case they had heard.
"You'll certainly show up Calvin Clarke," said Oliver; and she sat straight, in her corner, recalling to herself how Calvin Clarke had described her to the jury and how he had assailed her on the stand.
A pylon, of almost Pharaonic proportions, loomed resplendently beside the road. Its material was wood and cheap plaster staff, but it was gaudily painted and brightly illuminated by concealed lights. Back of the garish fraud of a gateway, the old, awkward structure of the oft-renamed and remodeled road-house reared its rectangular and practical flank. Except for a straggle of sheds in the rear, the establishment was a solitary landmark in this neighborhood where the fringe of the city was frayed to a few forsaken-looking shanties, standing far apart on the snow-covered ground which gleamed green under the rays of the midnight moon.
The taxi halted before the pylon, and Oliver stepped out, feeling himself to be none too steady; he helped his companion from the cab, scrutinizing her face in the glare of the gate lights to reassure himself, before he escorted her into this stronghold of Baretta, that the girl kept her nerve.
"All set?" he whispered, unable to discern, because of the quivering of his own hand, whether she was shaking.
Joan Daisy nodded and she lifted her head, as her heart thumps beat her breast and she felt too choked to speak. A door was drawn open by some unseen attendant of the Temple and Joan Daisy invaded the place slightly in advance of Oliver.
She heard the wailing moans of an orchestra and was sensitive to vibrations of dance rhythm in the floor, though she had entered only a sort of vestibule set with empty tables, without covers, and straight-backed chairs. Pushing through a wider portal, screened by swinging doors, she came upon the dancers, skipping and swaying in customary manner over the broad, oblong center of the hall. The usual border of tables and chairs banded the dance-floor; many of these, perhaps as many as a third, were occupied by couples and parties of four who slouched, smoking and mumbling, or who sat, arms about each other, heads close together, or who guffawed, bent over bottles and urging upon each other drinks.
The sight of the hall in no way alarmed Joan Daisy; indeed, it actually reassured her, slightly, so like was it in aspect to midnight festivities to which she was familiar. She saw nothing startling in the big room, nothing especially unusual except the garish, Egyptianese extravagancies of the plaster and paint.
She attracted no significant attention either from the dancers, who glanced at her and Oliver, or from the drinkers at the tables, who gazed up and followed her idly with their eyes. No one indicated recognition of her; and the thumping of her heart lessened as she accompanied Oliver to a table for two and sat down.
She had not expected instantly to be known, for the weeks of the trial had brought her, repeatedly, experiences duplicating those of the days immediately following Ket's arrest, when her picture was in all the newspapers, and when people stared at her printed likeness and then looked up at herself and failed to suspect her identity. To make recognition more difficult to-night, she had donned a strange hat, and when she threw back her coat, she exposed, not the dress she had worn on the witness stand, but a dancing dress six months old.
"What'll we eat?" Oliver asked her, not having deferred to her in the matter of the choice of cocktails which already were being served.
Joan Daisy sipped hers, tasting gin, and it was good gin which warmed her and did not confuse her head, which clearly calculated for her that, though no one else in the place could recognize her, Baretta himself might. For if he were the man who had done the murder for which Ket had been tried, Baretta would know that Joan Daisy Royle had told the truth when she said she had seen some one, not Ket, in the flat with Adele; Baretta would know that she had seen himself and that she, seeing him again, might identify him. There could be no doubt whatever that, if Baretta had killed Adele, he had given especially careful regard to Joan Daisy Royle.
"Sandwich, I'd like," she replied to her partner, who, by a frown, prompted her to appetite more profitable to the house.
"Lobster, in chafing dish, for two," Oliver ordered, splendidly, not waiting for her reconsideration. He profferred his cigarette case, gave her a light and, dropping the match, he leaned over the narrow table to ignite his own cigarette from the tip of hers, imparting meanwhile in whisper: "The black-haired bird, with one eyebrow straight across his face, is Frankie Zenn; I don't see Baretta."
"Neither do I," said Joan Daisy, contemplating the peculiarly persistent smirk of the subordinate who was deemed the slayer of Considine.
"Dance, while we're waiting?" Invited Oliver, who was become the more restless of the two.
She arranged her coat over the back of her chair, aware that she trembled and delayed, hoping that Baretta might not, after all, be present. She stepped to the dance floor, gave a cold hand to Oliver and clasped a hand almost as cold; his arm encircled her and they danced, Oliver talking to her while she looked about.
For whom was she searching? she asked herself, perplexed; what actual memory had she of the man she had seen through the window with Adele? Like Ket, but not Ket, she reminded herself, but failed to restore any reliable image; and her own lies on the witness stand aided her confusion, for she had sworn that the man was short and dark and, though she had known she was lying, yet her own false words had made in her mind a picture which filmed over the true one which she tried to recall.
The music ceased; she returned with Oliver to their table and since he had forbidden verbal discussion of their purpose, he glanced his inquiry at her, and she shook her head.
"Let's have that," Oliver suggested, bidding her serve from the chafing-dish before her, and a few minutes later, when they were eating, he proposed, "Shall we go upstairs?"
Rooms for gambling and other purposes preëmpted the second floor, Joan Daisy had heard; and she had noticed at the further end of the hall a stairway upon which couples disappeared after dancing. Likely enough Baretta, if he were here, busied himself in some gaming room. She did not want to seek him upstairs; the idea set her aquiver, but she said, "All right."
Oliver, however, made no move, having thought better of his own rashness. "Never mind," he said and several minutes later he observed suddenly, while they were making talk of other matters, "We're all right where we are"; and she knew that Baretta had appeared.
He approached her from behind, she realized, as she gazed at Oliver; he seemed to be nearing her, not steadily, but by stages evidently interrupted by stops at tables of his friends. She heard their louder voices and laughter and Baretta's name, "George." "Hello, George" . . . "How's the boy?" . . . She heard a voice, undoubtedly Baretta's, replying cordially, patronizingly, without the slightest quaver of uneasiness. Her heart pounded violently, and her hands held tight to the edge of the table upon which she pulled in physical opposition to the almost unconquerable temptation to turn in her chair.
"Here," ejaculated Oliver, sliding his cigarette case across to her; she ignored it, but watched him elaborately light a cigarette for himself, exhaling much smoke and puffing out his cheeks jovially.
"Good evening," Baretta's voice greeted them with agreeable impersonal accents.
"Good evening," replied Oliver hastily, his cheeks collapsing; and Joan Daisy gazed up at a tall, slender man with gray hair. He had a big, bold nose and wide, unpleasant mouth, a bony chin and small, dark eyes; his face was sallow and splotched and Joan Daisy saw that some of his hair was jet black and the rest pure white. She could not possibly confuse him with Ket, and she had no feeling of having seen him before.
"Good evening," he repeated directly to her. She nodded in reply, holding her lips pressed tight upon her pent up breath; Baretta's little eyes looked at her lips and swept down her figure. He smiled and went on.
She relaxed, feeling only relief at first. She did not know Baretta; he did not know her, she thought; the night would come to nothing. She glanced across at Oliver and saw that, if he was disappointed, he was relieved, too; she had no need to tell him that she had failed at the identification.
"All right," Oliver encouraged her, having lost sight of Baretta, whom she kept in view, over Oliver's shoulder, as the host proceeded along the rows of tables of his guests. His back was turned, but when he was about thirty feet away, he halted beside a group of friends and bent over, affectedly poised as he chatted with a girl; and Joan Daisy, watching, suddenly caught a glimpse of the profile and flaxen-colored hair, with electric light shining upon it, and of the shoulders drawn up in the mannerism and posture of the person whom she had seen through the window of Adele's flat. Like Ket, Baretta appeared at this instant; but he was identical with the image of the man etched in her mind, in this same, affected posture as when he had bent over Adele.
Joan Daisy gasped and gaped, but she was absolutely sure of him; for the confusing film, which had clouded her memory, was cleaned away. Oliver pushed around his chair to see what startled her and they both met Baretta glancing back at them. Promptly Oliver coughed and leaned down, as though he had dropped something on the floor, kicking Joan Daisy's foot meaningly. He did not immediately guess that she had now identified Baretta, but supposed that she had recognized some one else, who would serve as well for his news beat.
"We'll be outside in a minute," he whispered, aided in the recovery of composure by the outbreak of music and the movement of dancers to the floor. "You ready?" Oliver asked.
Joan Daisy nodded, with lips pressed tightly, as when Baretta had addressed her, and with her eyes aglow. No longer was she relaxed, nor did she wish the feeling of security; she was sure that she had seen the man who had been with Adele and she could free Ket. Yes; and strike back at Mr. Calvin Clarke, who had come to Ket's flat for the State, in the name of the People of Illinois, and who had never believed her, though she had taken him out alone to the shore to show him her stars, and though she had told him, once, all the truth! Her lips twisted and she clung to the table edge at twinges of the soreness of her soul from the hurts and insults of the trial; and Oliver thought that she utterly had forgotten where they were and that she would speak out.
"Just a minute," he begged. "I must get my check."
He signaled for the waiter, catching the eye of Frankie Zenn who regarded him fixedly but who made not the slightest response other than to signal the waiter not to approach.
It was this which first warned Oliver and later Joan Daisy that Tut's Temple entertained another visitor whose presence was being studied in relation to theirs and which led to their discovery, while Oliver's check was still withheld, of the arrival of Assistant State's Attorney Clarke.