The Just And The Unjust (23 page)

'No, sir. Just cut my face a little.' He took the cigarette and, after several tries, got it lit from the match Abner was holding.

'Well, it's a nasty thing to have happen,' Abner said. 'We hear it wasn't your fault. That true?'

'I don't see how it could have been, sir. It happened pretty quick. But I was on my side. The state police said the tyre marks showed that.'

'Did they say why they held you?'

'Well, one of them said it was the law. He had to, sir.'

'He didn't have to charge you with manslaughter. You hadn't been drinking, had you? I don't mean, were you drunk. I mean, had you had a drink any time that evening?'

'Absolutely not, sir.'

Jake Riordan said, 'Some of these motor police, Ab, don't show very good sense. The officer should have charged him with being involved in a fatal accident, and the J.P. could have taken bail, and that would be that.'

'Yes,' said Abner, 'that's the only thing.' He looked at the boy, and it did not seem likely that Mason was lying; but the first principle in matters like this was not to jump to conclusions. It was true that the police sometimes didn't show good sense; but, in general, the police, particularly the state police, knew and performed their routine business with intelligence and precision — in motor vehicle cases they were almost always right. If the driver disagreed about the speed or circumstances, he might make a case for himself when it was his word against the officer's; but if corroborative evidence appeared, inevitably it showed that the driver was mistaken. As Mason said, those things happened quickly; and alarm, self-interest, and shaken nerves obfuscated the moment's impressions. The crisis past, very few people failed to tamper with their recollections — just a touch here and there to details which, with only a second or fraction of a second to fix them, could easily be altered, or even wiped out, leaving the conscience clear for any practical purpose of meeting a man's eye or swearing a solemn oath.

Abner said, 'I don't mean to doubt Mr. Mason; but we haven't had a police report yet. And, of course, we'll want to see the arresting officer. If he has no specific grounds for the charge, we'll have to take that up with his superiors. Well, Jake, Marty's fixing the inquest for the day after to-morrow. Mr. Mason understands what bail means, doesn't he?'

'Yes, sir,' Mason said.

'All right, then,' said Abner. 'See you both Friday.' The boy's anxious, uncertain face led him to add, 'Don't worry about it. You go home and get a good night's sleep and you'll feel better.'

In the courtroom they had already resumed.

Harry, his arms folded, his head tipped up as though he were admiring the shadowed, gold-framed portraits on the high wall behind Judge Vredenburgh, said, 'And during that time, were you given any opium?'

'Never.'

'No,' said Harry. 'It was taken away from you down there, wasn't it?'

'I had none on me,' Leming said.

'You had to go without it, didn't you?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And prior to that you had been smoking regularly?'

'That is right.'

'And when they took it away from you, you wanted it, didn't you?'

'Yes, if you got a habit, you want it.'

'And to get it, you knew you'd have to testify, didn't you?'

Leming said, 'That is a lie.'

'You mean, a misapprehension on my part, I hope. It was taken away from you, and you needed it?'

'I needed it,' Leming said doggedly,'but I didn't get it.'

'They cured you, cold turkey, didn't they?'

'I cured myself. They help me.'

'Now,' said Harry, 'isn't it a fact that since you've been in jail here in Childerstown you've been getting narcotics?'

'Never.'

'You weren't given some last night after you got back from this court?'

'No.'

'You deny that?'

'I positively deny it. I was given sleeping pills, but no narcotic.'

'Oh!' said Harry. 'You call it sleeping pills!'

'It isn't opium.'

'How often does the doctor come to see you down at jail?'

'Well, he stops sometimes every night or so. He asks me how I am feeling, something like that.'

'But he always gives you something, doesn't he?'

'He left a pill for me last night. He says, "If you cannot sleep, ask the guard for it.'' And I didn't take it last night.'

'I see,' said Harry. 'He leaves enough pills for you to go over one night to the next?'

'He leaves pills; but they don't do me no good; so he might just as well not leave me them.'

'You'd much rather have it to smoke in a pipe, wouldn't you?'

'Well, not now.'

'You wish us to believe you are all cured. How long have you been a doper?'

'How long have I been what?'

'A doper; a user of morphine.'

'I never used morphine in my life.'

'Just opium, eh? How long have you used that?'

'I told you a couple of years. Around about that.' Abner had been listening abstractedly. He looked at Bunting, who sat relaxed, following the questions and answers with a sort of invisible pointing of the ears, in the habit of court practice that hears, you might almost say, without listening; though paying little outward attention, missing nothing. Bunting held in his hand an inverted pencil, tapping the eraser at measured intervals on the yellow pad before him. He had written:
Doctor Janvier
, the name of the jail physician; so probably he intended a memorandum to answer Harry's insinuations. Next to it he had idly sketched a forlorn, lop-eared dog; with, on second thought, a large bone in its mouth.

Bunting's face, bent down, tipped to the side, caught light from the high windows on the fine textured skin where, around the lips and eyes, the first wrinkles were forming. His flat firm line of cheek and jaw was a good one. Starting, when young, with no claim at all to handsomeness, Bunting's face could be seen to have gained, as the years passed, a fineness of finish. His pointed, convex profile and long neat-lipped mouth took on character. The use of good sense, the habits of control and judgment, informed every feature with strength. Abner was aware of a mild envy, a discontent with his own looser, younger look.

Across the floor at the defence's table Abner could see George Stacey, who was giving good enough examples of what discontented Abner with himself. George's expression showed great but uncertain effort. A look at him told you that George did not know what might happen next, nor what he would do then, if for any reason he were expected to do something. George's fresh, nicely formed face was tense. He was watching Harry closely and calculatingly; he wanted to learn the secret of that assurance. He would like to imitate that ease, that ready command that sent the witness here and there. Knowing his own failings of self-consciousness, the vigour and variety of Harry's attack on Leming probably discouraged George. George had a hand up to his chin, the end of his thumb at his lips, rubbing his teeth with the nail. Beyond George, Basso sat slumped down. He seemed to be asleep. Abner touched Bunting, to point it out to him; but at that moment, Basso moved his eyelids.

On the other side, next to Harry's empty chair, Howell sat huddled, as though, in spite of the oppressive warmth of the shadowed, unmoved air, he felt cold. Howell kept his chin down, half hiding his pale sick face; but his small baleful eyes shifted constantly in furtive arcs. Perhaps in thought he was acting out dramas of escape — perhaps he saw himself starting up, with a blow disposing of one or more of those old men, the tipstaffs; by his speed, making the upper door before the state police at the lower doors woke up. Out the doors and down the hall, he would probably meet no one. Before the courthouse (he was the author of this and could have in it anything that suited him) would be a car at the kerb, with the ignition key carelessly left in. Then, with the speed of thought, the engine roaring up, the flashing dartaway down the sun-filled street; off, at seventy miles an hour, while the police whistles died behind him across the summer countryside — only, Howell never made the first move; and he never would. The galvanic fear of death, applied too often and too long, wore out the body's responses. Howell did not stop fearing; but he remained paralysed, and only his mind hit and ran and got away.

Abner studied him thoughtfully; not himself insensible to that distracting fear; and well enough able to imagine himself in Howell's place. In a month or two Stanley Howell would be dead. They would pronounce him dead, unstrap his body, and carry it out and bury it. Horrible and inconceivable as the idea might be to Howell, that was what was going to happen, not some day, but within a few weeks; as soon as his appeal was turned down with the direction to carry into execution the sentence of the law that you, Stanley Howell, be taken hence by the sheriff—

The words, hard for a man to hear without trembling for himself as well as for Stanley Howell, made Abner recoil. Along with Howell they took hence something in himself — the pleasures of living, the confidence of days to come, the succession of the seasons, the events of the years; and though, of course, in the end it was all one (Beulah cemetery lay there in the moonlight and tree shadows last night)—better later than now! Abner remembered reading in some book, some school book probably, about Greek history or something, of Socrates having been supposed to say, when they told him that the thirty tyrants had condemned him to death: 'And Nature, them.' The come-back, though noble and even snappy, did not make much sense. Abner shook his head.

Beside him Bunting drew a weary breath. To Abner he murmured, 'Don't know whether this wears down the witness; but it certainly wears me down.'

Harry said to Leming, 'When you speak of these little cans, little packages of opium, they cost about how much?'

'Oh,' said Leming, 'there's different sizes. You get small ones, five dollars.'

'How long do they last?'

'Well, a small one, about three days.'

'Then your use of opium costs you about ten dollars a week. Is that correct?'

This testimony might be wearing to Bunting; but Abner could see that the jury found it full of interest; as good as a conducted tour through opium dens or haunts of vice. In simultaneous movement all eyes went to Harry; and then to Leming, as Leming answered, lingered a moment, fascinated; and then back to Harry; and then quickly back to Leming again. 'Now, I think you said you smoked twice a day?' Harry said. 'At what hours?'

'Well, generally before I got to bed at night, late at night; and when I first get up.'

'First thing in the morning?' (A touch of collective nausea appeared on the jurors' faces. Most men wouldn't even smoke a cigar before breakfast.) 'Whenever I get up first.'

'And after you smoke the opium, what happens then?'

'Well, I get up and eat.'

'I thought an opium user had no appetite after he smoked.'

'Oh, no,' Leming smiled and shook his head. 'I see you don't understand anything about opium,' he said mildly.

'I probably don't know quite as much as you do,' Harry said. 'That is why I ask.'

'You wouldn't ask that question if you understood it.'

'Well, can you answer?'

'Yes, I can. Anybody that has the habit can eat after they smoke; but you can't eat before you smoke.'

'You smoke; and go right on about your business?'

'That is right.'

'I suppose this opium has no effect on your memory?'

'No.'

'Well, what effect, if any, does it have?'

'No effect,' Leming said, smiling and shaking his head again. 'If you was to smoke cigarettes, and I was to ask you what effect they had, what would you say? You have the habit; you keep smoking them. If you see you are out of cigarettes, you have to go get some right away. It is when you don't have them, they have effect. In narcotic, you got to take it to keep yourself from being sick, that is all.'

'You mean, as long as you keep taking it, you feel all right?'

'That is correct,' Leming said. He smiled encouragingly at Harry. 'Now, you are getting it!'

'I should say I am,' said Harry. 'How long do you stay sick if you don't have your stuff?'

'Oh, well, five or six days. I mean, if you break your habit, after five or six days you don't crave it.'

'Now, these pills they gave you in jail; they have the same effect as opium?'

Bunting said, 'He has already answered that.' Leming answered, 'I should say not!' He was eager, glad to have the advantage of Harry, and aware of the jury's attentiveness. He smiled again; he gave his head a sadder-but-wiser shake. 'You mean they are not a good substitute?'

'They just give them to try to make me get some sleep; but they don't do no good.'

'And what keeps you from sleeping?'

'Well, I told you that before,' Leming said. 'When you get off the stuff, you can't sleep for a couple of months.'

'It isn't your conscience that's bothering you?'

Taken by surprise, and plainly wounded or deflated by the jab, Leming said, 'Oh, no. Nothing on my conscience bothering me. It should be on the men you are representing!'

Harry said, 'I move that be stricken!'

Judge Vredenburgh jerked his chin up and down. 'It may be stricken out.'

'Now, Leming,' Harry said, 'if I understand you rightly, you claim that you were not offered any inducements of any kind to testify. But you must have had some reason. What was it?'

'Well,' said Leming, 'when Howell told his statement, well, then I figured it was time for me to tell the truth; after Howell had opened up himself.'

'Who told you to do that?'

'I told myself to do it.'

'Had you been advised by your lawyer, Mr. Servadei, or any member of his firm, of any appeal to be made for you if you took the stand for the Commonwealth?'

'Positively not.'

'Did the county detective, Mr. Costigan, offer you anything in the way of a promise of leniency?'

Bunting said, 'If he did, I would like to know it.'

'Never,' said Leming.

To Abner, Bunting said, 'Mr. Wurts is about washed up, I think.' He straightened himself in his seat and began to assemble the papers and file folders on the table. 'Ten of five,' he said. 'I guess his Honour's had enough, too. I was going to put Smalley on and get it over. But she won't take long. We'll have her first, to-morrow. I want Dunglison and Kinsolving; and we'd better read Howell's confession into the record. With luck, we can rest by noon.'