CHAPTER VIII
It was a matter of proper pride to Dads that, although the police often had arrested him, frequently had cast him at night into a police-station cell for safe-keeping until he could be haled before a magistrate in the morning, never had he been jailed; so Joan Daisy had no precedent, out of her long experience with Dads' misdemeanors, to prepare her for the consequences of Ket's imprisonment.
When Dads had dropped, abruptly, out of the usual round of his daily doings, abruptly also he had resumed his accustomed place, after a brief interval, none the worse, if none the better; but Ket not only had dropped out; he had been obliterated.
His dark and silent flat took on an aspect similar to that which had been Adele's, and which was closed, following the formal findings of the coroner's jury. For Adele's mother had come from Minneapolis and returned with the body of her daughter and had taken with her, also, the little girl who had been Adele's and Ket's. She had packed up and shipped away the furniture, except such articles as Calvin had reserved to hold in evidence; and after a decent time, probably another week or so, the flat would be offered for sublease.
Ket's flat at least remained as it had been, since he had paid his rent in advance; but no one counted upon his return to it. No one, with any money at stake, cared to venture his dollars upon Ket's acquittal. Ket's tailor, paid and well paid for three brown suits recently delivered, called confidentially upon Joan Daisy to discuss the chance of his getting his money if he finished a fourth now "in work"; and he decided not to take the chance. A garageman who had cared for Ket's car, consulted Joan Daisy, when she passed his establishment, and asked her to tell Ketlar he must pay several months in advance or send his car elsewhere for storage. The proprietor appeared to be uncertain as to his right of Hen on the property of a man who might be put to death by the State.
Above the Echo Garden stood in shining letters, "Henny's World-Famous Echo Dance Orchestra!"
Henny's! Henny's name in the lights and Ket's name nowhere! "Henny's" said the radio announcer, when the Echo orchestra was broadcast. Ket no longer was mentioned; Weigal was taking no chances on his receipts by keeping Ket's name above his doors through which, only on last Saturday night, Ket's name had drawn the crowds.
How the men fell away from Ket, if faith in him endangered their dollars! But the girls did not desert him. A dozen of them applied at the jail on the first visitors' day, and some of them saw him. Lola Nesson did, and she talked to him and afterwards told the newspaper reporters about her visit.
Joan Daisy did not even apply at the jail during these days; for Elmen had forbidden her, very impressively, stating that it was essential that she wait before visiting Ket. It was essential, indeed, that she did not even write to Ket, for the present, as also it was essential that she refrain from discussing any feature of the case with any one and most particularly must she avoid discussing or explaining to any one what had been her personal relations with Ketlar, whatever they had been.
"But why?" Joan Daisy had asked, puzzled and frightened. "I've done nothing with him to be ashamed of."
"You must not say even that—for the present," Elmen had warned, his big hand emphasizing the caution. "And you must," he added very deliberately, "be careful of your actions every minute. No indiscretions with any one."
"You'll tell Ket, won't you," begged Joan Daisy, "that I want to see him? And doesn't he want to see me?"
"I will tell him," Elmen promised. He was visiting the jail daily.
On Friday of that week Elmen's secretary telephoned, and the call reached Joan Daisy when she was at work beside Hoberg in his private office.
"Mr. Elmen will see you at two o'clock."
"I'll be there," replied Joan and, thinking of Elmen's big, broad, bald, black-fringed head, she thought also, not of Ket, but of the narrower, brown-haired head of Calvin Clarke to which the broad, bald head was opposed.
Hoberg's red head bent down. "Who is it, Joan? Elmen?" he whispered solicitously. "I'll go see him with you."
Joan Daisy suddenly was become almost breathless in her excitement. She did not want Hoberg's escort, but, even in her excitement, she considered how to prevent her employer from accompanying her without offending him. "Mr. Elmen's a queer man, always so important," she said; and Hoberg, realizing that Elmen probably would not admit him with her, remained in the office.
As she passed out, the draftsmen and girls in the general office gazed at her and followed her with their eyes, as now they always did; the elevator man spoke to her in his new manner of curious concern. Then, on the street, no one knew her; thousands passed her; millions surrounded her—the millions, millions of the people of Illinois, the People of the State who, if they knew, were against Ket and her, because Mr. Clarke had told them to be.
She felt enkindled. She felt herself to be on her way, at last, to strike a blow at Mr. Clarke, who accused, arrested and jailed in the name of the State.
She detached herself from the crowd on the walk, and stepped from the clear, October chill of the street into a vestibule, where an old-fashioned steam radiator was hissing, and which communicated with a hall with a high-vaulted roof, two old-fashioned stories in height, and black iron elevator cages rising and descending upon unwinding cables behind old, black, filigreed gratings.
The building, in contrast to the immaculate, compact and yet far taller, modern structure where Hoberg had his offices, reminded Joan Daisy of the Criminal Courts Building and, in fact, it belonged to the same era. The interior trim, on the floor where Joan Daisy emerged from the elevator, was golden oak as in the court; the musty odor of old, often-washed wooden floors was redolent of the courts and fixed in the girl's mind the image of this building as the courts' opponent since the decade when both were new. There in the courts beside the jail, abode the prosecution; here dwelt the defense.
Above and below Max Elmen's name, in the neat white letters of the black board of the building directory, were series of firm titles which Joan Daisy vaguely had recognized as the names of lawyers famous for their defense of persons accused in great criminal trials. Some of the persons accused had been freed, triumphantly freed, she remembered; but some, in spite of all that their lawyers could do, had been sentenced to the penitentiary for life and never heard of again; and some had been hanged or the gallows in that jail yard below the black walls which imprisoned Ket.
Very soberly, Joan Daisy sought the door which was the entrance to the extensive suite of Elmen, Elmen, Kleppman and Wein. A young, bald man with shell-rimmed spectacles informed her that Mr. Max Elmen was in and that he was expecting her. The young, bald man led her down a long passage, lit by electric lights and carpeted so that no footfall sounded. Books; fat, broad-backed law books in brown and yellow leather and buckram lined the wall to the left; on the right were more books and closed doors, some of them silent; but talk went on behind others. In one office, a man with a high, squeaky voice was dictating, indignantly, "and since the aforesaid Greenough has been deprived of his liberty. . . ."
The bald young man threw open the door just beyond. "Here she is, papa," he announced.
"Come in," invited Max Elmen's heavy voice, cordially. "Come in, too, Herman. You know my son, Herman?" he asked Joan Daisy, extending his long, tapering hand. "This is Herman; he helps me. Tell him anything you would tell me. Sit there, young lady; sit there, Herman."
There, for Herman, was a chair by the wall; there, for Joan Daisy, was a chair directly opposite Mr. Max Elmen's desk, at which he sat with his back to the light, his big, bald head silhouetted against the window. Max Elmen smiled a huge, expansive smile with his frog-like mouth and, surprisingly, Joan Daisy was put at ease by it. Friendliness radiated to her from papa Elmen, and confidence communicated itself from him to her. Nothing was further from him than the sleepiness which he had exhibited in court.
"Fetch the book, Herman," he bid his son and Herman with alacrity produced an imposing, leather-bound volume which he held open before her, pointing to a paragraph.
"You read it," Max Elmen bid Joan Daisy. "You read it for yourself. It is the statute which defines the privileges of a client with her attorney. You are my client; I will represent you in this case, as well as Frederic Ketlar; so you can tell me anything whatever you did, no matter what, you see? I can not tell any one. No; why, if I wanted to, the law forbids. The court itself can not make an attorney tell what his client tells him in confidence. Read the law before you say one more word to me, Client. Then talk to me as your attorney. My son Herman, also he is your attorney."
Joan Daisy read, obediently, and son Herman removed the book. "Now," said papa Max, leaning back with his finger tips pressed together, his large eyes wide open in an expectant, friendly expression. In a moment Joan Daisy was talking, freely and without reserve, relating exactly what she had done on the night Adele had been killed, what she had seen and what she had said to Ket and what had happened after the police and Mr. Clarke had come.
"Good!" interjected Max Elmen, several times. "Good; very, very good!" It was his sole interruption, except for the questions by which he led her into details of matters which he wished her to repeat.
"Good!" he commended her, most emphatically, when she told him of the song from Los Angeles which was coming in on the radio when Ket kissed her at her door; and she had to reiterate that occurrence when her story otherwise was done. "Good. Very good!" Max Elmen rubbed his long hands with pleasure. "Good enough, eh, Herman?" he appealed to his son.
"Very good, papa," replied Herman; and papa Max arose and patted his client on the shoulder.
Joan Daisy warmed with delight. The incident of the song formed in her mind the alibi which would save Ket, and these lawyers seemed to think so, too. "It's a perfect alibi, isn't it, Mr. Elmen?" she cried.
"What?" said Elmen, fingering the plain cloth of her blue jacket. "You dress very properly," he approved. "And you told that very, very well. That will do, certainly. The facts, as you have told them to me, they will do very well, for the present. We will pass them now." He tweaked the plain, approved blue cloth between his fingers and resumed his seat. "Now," he repeated, "I must ask you to be very frank with me. Herman!" he glanced at his son and at the signal Herman quietly departed, carefully closing the door behind him. "Now, you and I," Max Elmen said confidentially to his client, "we can be completely frank. What have been the actual relations between Ketlar and you?"
Joan Daisy caught her breath. "Why, what has he told you?"
"He is very angry at you yet," replied Elmen, "and perhaps not yet frank with me. But he will be, soon. For the present it is not important. It may never be. Probably I will not put him at all on the stand. He will not have to answer questions for two days, maybe for three. Of course you will," continued Elmen coolly. "I expect to keep you on the stand for at least a day; we will be lucky if the State is through with you in two more. One of the first questions I must ask you—and it will be a question upon which you will certainly be cross-examined severely—is, 'What has been the prisoner to your?' I am asking it now. 'You lived with him?'"
"No!"
"That has been the actual fact or that will be merely your answer? Of course it must be your answer."
"It is the fact, Mr. Elmen."
"He was not your lover?"
"No."
"But you loved him?"
"No. I don't know."
"What were you doing with him? What did you intend to come out of your relation with him, if his wife lived?"
"I don't know."
"If his wife—died?"
"Oh, I don't know. I never thought of that, Mr. Elmen. I don't know."
"But, my dear girl, you must know what you thought then."
"I don't."
"You don't remember, you will say? No; that will not do. That will not do at all."
"I remember, Mr. Elmen. But what I remember is all sorts of things; I thought sometimes one thing and then another about Ket."
"What do you intend to tell upon the stand?"
"Why, the truth, Mr. Elmen, whatever they ask me. That's one thing I've learned out of this awful time, to tell the truth, first, last and all the time."
"But you can not possibly tell the truth on the witness stand, my dear young lady. You would be ridiculous before the end of the first hour of cross-examination; and Ketlar will certainly hang."
"Not if I stick to the truth!" Joan Daisy declared her newly formed faith.
"But you can not stick to the truth; no one can," Elmen explained patiently. "For the truth, as you have just said yourself, is never consistent. If you told the truth about what you thought of Ketlar and what you meant to do with him, you would tell sometimes one thing and sometimes another; and both would be true. That is why the truth will never do on the witness stand. For truth cares nothing whatever about consistency and courts care about nothing else. Remember you will be on the witness stand at least two days answering questions put by the prosecution for the sole purpose of making you contradict yourself and showing you inconsistent. God help you, my child, if you go upon the stand trusting to the truth.
"No, we must work out a consistent account, which can hold though attacked on every side by a thousand questions of the clever young men who will try the case for the State. Fortunately, we have already a fair idea of the method of this particular prosecution. It will be conducted, undoubtedly, by Assistant State's Attorney Calvin Clarke," ruminated Elmen, suddenly sleepy as he 'leaned back in his chair; and Joan Daisy, watching him, appreciated that this attack of languor was in some way an expression of satisfaction.
"From what you tell me," he considered deliberately, and now quite closed his eyes, "you and he have indulged in considerable personal antagonism." Abruptly, he sat up and opened wide his eyes, but only stared at Joan Daisy, scrutinizing her from head to foot, as though seeing her for the first time.
It was, in fact, the first time that Elmen had looked at her in connection with the idea which was now in his head. He voiced that idea no more definitely than by murmuring, with satisfaction, as he closed his eyes again, "Excellent. Excellent. I particularly will enjoy opposing Mr. Clarke in this case."
"Why?"
"How well do you like Assistant State's Attorney Calvin Clarke?" Elmen countered.
"I?" cried Joan Daisy. "I hate him, hate him!"
"Excellent!" approved Elmen, again. "Excellent!" Then he sat up, opening his eyes, and returned practically to business. "It is clear to you, of course, that you are the vital witness, almost the sole witness for Ketlar. Your bearing in public, your dress, your manner, your attitude toward your employer, your parents, your friends, particularly toward the prisoner in jail, must be governed at every moment out of regard for consistency of what you will say on the stand. I will teil you in a few days what that must be. For the present, you are doing very well; continue as you are. But if you encounter Assistant State's Attorney Clarke before I see you again, why—"
"Why what?" asked Joan Daisy, when Elmen dropped back in his chair again, with eyes closed.
"By no means bridle your instincts," said Elmen, smiling. "You have done very well in that quarter, too."
A few moments later, he dismissed her.