CHAPTER 14

Farragut

A railing separated the spectators from the official part of the courtroom where the judge’s bench, the clerks, press, bailiffs and counsel tables were, and just within the compound thus created a row of chairs ran from one side of the room to the other. Ryan sat in one of them, staring down at well-polished black shoes, aware of the blue-centered detective’s shield he wore on his lapel as required, trying to forget the impatience that gnawed at him. The jury had been selected on Friday; yesterday had been devoted to motions and the opening statements of the assistant district attorney and defense counsel. None of these held anything unusual, although when the judge asked whether either side wanted the witnesses excluded from the courtroom, pending their turn on the stand, Assistant District Attorney Gil Tilbury said he didn’t care and Farragut had said, “No, your honor,” rather emphatically. But no one paid particular attention to it at the time.

But that was why on Tuesday, the day on which Ryan had been told to be on hand, he and Jablonski could sit together in the courtroom, instead of lounging in the judge’s chamber or a witness room. They were both to testify mainly about Derby’s arrest and what he had said at the time and how they had found the murder gun. Ryan was desperately anxious to get it over with.

But Farragut was cross-examining with great leisureliness a medical witness who had testified about Mrs. Connors’ injuries. Apparently he was trying to prove that the blow across her face could have been delivered by a woman as well as a man, and by either a right-or left-handed person. The courtroom was silent and bored as Farragut pursued his questions steadily, mechanically. He was dawdling, for a sound purpose perhaps, but still wasting time and Ryan hated him. He looked backward over his shoulder at the spectators.

Vacant stretches gaped among the long benches. Not much excitement was offered by the certain conviction of an habitual criminal. There was the usual assortment of housewives, some wearing glistening Christmas ornaments like corsages on cheap cloth coats, and shabby old men to whom the trial meant warmth and possibly entertainment, and a few teen-agers. These were The People on whose unknowing behalf the county in which they lived was moving with lethal intent against Harry Derby.

In the corridors outside The People lounged and talked, cursed and smoked, spat and hoped. But within this high, paneled, punctilious chamber that was the size of a gymnasium, their ordinary conduct wavered and died. Rules were observed and conventions honored in ignorant abstraction. A uniformed officer came forward occasionally to demand loudly, “Quiet, please,” or, “Take off your hat!” and the spectators withdrew into themselves and watched and waited without expression. Derby, in a plain blue suit and white shirt, sprawled leanly at the counsel table, frowned and played endlessly with a yellow pencil. Ryan, wishing it were over, tightened his jaws until little hollows appeared under his cheekbones. Jablonski came back from coffee, grinning, and sank beside Ryan with a sigh. Then Ryan’s ranging, anxious gaze saw a newcomer settle himself at the little table that accommodated the reporters. He had a young face topped by short-cropped, prematurely gray hair. This time he wore a tie and brightly shined black loafers with tassels instead of bedroom slippers.

Sandalwood had arrived. Sandalwood was covering the trial.

The little hollows under his cheekbones made Ryan momentarily gaunt. Why was he here?

The scientist from the police laboratory who had performed the spectroscopic analysis of the dust on Derby’s jacket was now on the stand, replying to Tilbury’s direct examination with hands-in-lap composure. Farragut, frowning, lay in wait at the table. Derby balanced the yellow pencil on his finger. Sandalwood borrowed a few sheets of copy paper from another reporter, yawned and took out a ball-point pen. Ryan forced himself to think of Gee Gee and how she had looked last night.

He had dropped unannounced into the night club. Three girls’ names were billed outside; hers was not one of them. He had stood at the bar, hoping to watch the show from there, but almost immediately someone he took to be the manager deferentially asked him to sit at a table and while he was refusing the cigarette girl came up and said Miss Hawes wanted to see him in the dressing room. There had been four girls there, one a dancer he had just watched finish her act. She was toweling sweat-caked powder from an almost bare body. The other three girls wore short smocks carelessly; one was Gee Gee, who put down a Mirror, opened to Winchell’s column, rose, clutched her smock and said, “Hi, Neill,” with friendly cordiality. The smock showed Gee Gee’s fine long legs; that, and the wise inquiring eyes of the other girl, black-edged with mascara, made Ryan self-conscious. He had seen his share of undressed girls but there was an impudent flaunting in this… He said something about going out between shows, and he was a little relieved when she said she could not leave the club and so gave him an excuse for an early departure.

A ballistics man stepped down from the stand after testifying that his examination proved the bullet that had killed Mrs. Connors came from Derby’s gun.

“Edmund Jablonski,” a clerk bawled, and Ryan came back to reality. Jablonski got up, nudging him confidently.

He was on the stand only fifteen minutes. He told the story of how they had spotted Derby, tailed and arrested him, and identified the revolver and checked jacket. He testified that when they first seized him Derby had said something about “killing the old dame” or words like that, but had later turned sullen and finally attacked him. He gave copious credit to Ryan for coming to his rescue and said nothing about a hundred dollar bill. Then Tilbury said, “Cross-examine,” and looked at Farragut. But Farragut waved a thick hand carelessly.

“No questions,” said Farragut, and Tilbury looked a little surprised.

To Ryan things looked brighter. Jablonski had told the main part of the story. His role obviously would be that of corroborating witness. When the clerk called “Officer Ryan” he stepped to the stand and placidly raised his right hand, confident he could forget about Sandalwood.

With careless ease Tilbury ran him through many of the same questions Jablonski had already answered and Ryan replied to them readily, keeping eyes and ears trained on the tall, elegant assistant district attorney. Tilbury concluded quickly. Then Farragut lumbered forward for cross-examination, and Ryan got his first close look at Derby’s famous lawyer.

Absalom Farragut had a wide, graceless body which he draped in baggy, unassuming suits, high old-fashioned collars and string ties, especially designed according to courtroom legend to impress juries with his genial commonality. His face was a granite slab that could relax into a wide, homely smile or become a black pattern of outrage as Farragut chose, and the shock of hair above it was still more brown than gray at the age of sixty-two. Now he pulled back his coat to thrust a big thumb in the belt of his trousers and began addressing Ryan with the good nature of an old man dealing with a brash neophyte.

“You’ve been a detective less than a year, I believe, Mr. Ryan?”

‘That is right.”

“Less than six months perhaps?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Less even than three months?”

“Yes, sir.”

Farragut smiled benignly for the jury. “You are in fact a rookie—eh, Mr. Ryan?”

Ryan felt rather than heard the courtroom’s amusement. He flushed. “Yes, sir.” He looked around. At the press table Sandalwood was bent over a doodle.

“So when you and your partner, Mr. Jablonski, arrested Harry Derby it was Jablonski who was in charge of the…ah…detective team do you call it?”

Ryan knew that Farragut was well aware of what they called it. He said, “That is correct.”

“And so during that operation you naturally did everything that Jablonski told you to do?”

Out of the corner of his mind Ryan barely sensed Tilbury springing volubly to his feet. He mumbled, “No, not…” but no one heard that, not even himself. A dreadful chasm had opened up before him. Farragut knew everything and was laying for him. That was why he had not wanted the witnesses excluded! He had wanted Ryan to see what an easy time Jablonski would have of it, and thus be lulled into a false security. But he was not going to have an easy time of it! He was the carefully-selected victim. Farragut was standing on the opposite side of the chasm that had suddenly opened up and was beckoning him on irresistibly.

There was a wrangle over Tilbury’s objection while Ryan felt his neck grow damply cold within his shirt collar. Then Farragut pressed in again from a different angle, and Ryan began answering questions that brought out the physical layout of the room in which they had arrested Derby, and narrated how they had done it.

“Then you searched him?”

“That is right.”

“What did you find?”

Ryan enumerated the list of belongings as he remembered it.

“How much money was that again, Mr. Ryan?” A thick tongue circled Farragut’s thick lips anticipatorily.

“He had around ten dollars in small bills and change in his pocket.”

“And in his wallet? Did you examine his wallet?”

Now he was getting it. “I did.”

“And how much money did you find in it?”

Until this instant Ryan had never, finally, decided what he was going to say if that question were asked him under oath. Now he answered it without deciding. “It did not contain any money.”

For the first time Sandalwood’s head raised.

“You knew the loot in the robbery was one hundred and twenty dollars, did you not?”

“I did.”

“And you wanted to find that money?”

“Naturally.”

“Answer yes or no, please,” ordered Farragut.

The judge interjected, “And louder, witness. Raise your voice.”

Ryan took a breath. “Yes. I wanted to find the money.”

Sandalwood’s expression was quizzical.

“Did you ask the defendant what he had done with it?” Farragut went on.

Here it was again. “Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“Objection.” Tilbury rose again. “I submit, your honor, that all this is irrelevant and immaterial. The people readily admit that the hundred dollar bill has not been found. The…ah…purpose of these questions—”

“Your honor,” Farragut broke in ponderously, “I should like to enlighten young Mister Tilbury if I may. These questions have a definite purpose. Because they help to lay the foundation of the defense’s contention that the defendant, Harry Derby, was framed.”

Ryan looked down. His palms were wet. His lungs could not get enough air. The chasm had become a bottomless pit, and he, teetering on the edge of it, was losing his balance.

Tilbury chuckled superciliously. The judge told Farragut to proceed.

“Mr. Ryan, what did my client say when you asked him about the hundred dollars?”

“He didn’t say anything.”

“He didn’t answer your question?”

“That is right.”

What could he say?

“Louder, witness!”—from above.

Ryan was near panic.

“Both you and your partner,” said Farragut, his voice rising to thunder, “have testified that Harry Derby admitted he had killed Mrs. Connors—‘killed the old lady’ or ‘old dame’ or some such phrase. Now do you say that he refused to tell you what he did with the proceeds of that robbery?”

“Yes, sir.”

But the words came out better than he could have hoped, and somewhere in his subconscious there sounded a welcome echo of another conversation about this. “I think you should realize,” Said Ryan, looking up, and for a moment his eyes met Sandalwood’s, “that we were arresting an armed criminal who in a minute or two jumped—attacked my partner. We—we didn’t have time to—well, stage a debate with him. Our main idea was to get him into the station.”

Even before he finished speaking he felt he was saving himself, that his words had the simple ring of truth.

The veteran Farragut recognized it too. He waved the answer aside carelessly as though it were of no importance. But in a courtroom everything Farragut said or did was of importance.

“You referred to Derby just now as an armed criminal. Was he armed, Mr. Ryan?”

“His gun was hanging on a nail near the door. That’s the gun that ballistics—”

“Never mind, Mr. Ryan. Just answer the questions I ask, please. Derby did not have a revolver or any other weapon on his person when you broke into his room.”

“We didn’t break in.”

Farragut gave the jury his cracked-granite smile. “He certainly didn’t invite you in.” Again he waved the subject into inconsequence. “In any case, Derby—so you say—attacked your partner.”

“That is right.”

“Why, Mr. Ryan? Why? Why did an unarmed man charge into two men he knew were armed? Were you taunting him?”

“No.”

“Were you giving him the so-called third degree?”

“No!”

“By that, of course, I mean torturing him, to make him—”

Tilbury cried, “Objection!” and Ryan said, “You know that’s not so.”

Farragut did not even wait for the judge to uphold the objection.

“Then I can only conclude,” he said smoothly, “that the reason my client allegedly attacked Jablonski is because Jablonski got too close to him, and in some way or other goaded Harry Derby unbearably to attack him. Right?”

“There was no goading, aside from the kind of talk that goes on when you arrest a hoodlum,” said Ryan. “Perhaps Jablonski got close—but remember your client, as you call him, knew that this arrest meant the electric chair.”

“Never mind that, witness,” said Farragut sharply. “In any case when Derby leaped for Jablonski they closed with each other and wrestled. Right?”

“If you call kicking a man in the stomach wrestling. That’s what your client did to Jablonski.”

“But you had a gun, eh? Yet you didn’t fire?”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

“Because for a second they were too close together.”

“They were too close together.” Farragut relished the words and looked down the jury’s rows. “Too close together. They were in fact locked in a hand-to-hand struggle, were they not, Mr. Ryan?”

“Well, for a second or so.”

“So. For a second or so, you say. Very good. Now then, Mr. Ryan.” Farragut spoke rapidly, like a man in a state of unnatural excitement, and Ryan recognized that he was approaching some goal. “Both you and Jablonski were on hand at the scene of the murder earlier. And of course you handled the smashed lamp.”

“Of course we did not.”

“You did not handle pieces of the lamp?”

“No, sir.”

“Nor Jablonski?”

“Objection—” from Tilbury. “Mr. Jablonski is on hand to testify for himself.”

“Sustained.”

“But you did not handle the lamp, Ryan?” No polite “mister” now; Farragut’s quick, low voice was beginning to cut and tear.

“Objection, please the court. The witness has answered the question once. Besides, Mr. Farragut’s questions have no real bearing—”

“Mr. Farragut’s questions,” Farragut thundered impressively, “are going to show that the dust from the lamp which was presumably found on my client’s work-jacket could actually have been placed there artificially.”

He was addressing the court. But for a fleet second he fastened triumphant, squinting green eyes on Ryan.

Ryan’s face went hot.

This was how it really was. Farragut knew everything, and had purposely passed up Jablonski as too experienced, gambling on Ryan, the rookie, to be more easily tripped. Farragut was betting his client’s life that he could make Ryan stumble into the chasm.

“What does counsel mean by ‘artificially’?” asked the judge with interest.

“Well, since both these officers were at the scene, and might be presumed to have handled the physical evidence there even if they do not recall having done so, it is the contention of the defense, your honor, that their clothing might have received some of the dust in question—become impregnated, so to speak. And if so, it is not impossible that during a hand-to-hand struggle such as has been described between Harry Derby and Detective Jablonski it is also possible that minute quantities of dust might have been transferred from Jablonski’s clothing to my client’s. I should like to remind your honor that the spectroscope is an extraordinarily sensitive instrument—”

“Counsel will confine himself to proper cross-examination.”

“I’m sorry, your honor,” said Farragut contritely, but he was a cat with cream on its face. The idea had been implanted in the jury’s minds.

“I asked a moment ago, Mr. Ryan, if you had handled the lamp or any pieces of it,” he went on. “Of course, I realize that in the excitement and tension of a murder investigation—your first, I believe—I realize it is possible you might do something and forget having done so later. Consequently, I am going to ask you whether it is not possible that you might have, say, picked up a fragment or two of the broken lamp and forgotten it afterwards?”

He looked brightly at Ryan, smiling a pursed-lip knowing smile.

Ryan had to look away. In the rush of fear that engulfed him like turbulent surf he could not think consecutively. He felt physically off balance as though he might pitch out of the witness chair, and he sensed Sandalwood’s gaze on him like a hot, probing lance. He groped wildly for escape.

“Will you search your memory, please?” Farragut went on with smooth rapidity. “Don’t you feel it is possible that you might have—”

Ryan shook his head. He looked toward Tilbury for help, as a boxer looks to his corner. But Tilbury was not looking at him. In the front row of spectators there was a patrician blond girl in a lavish mink coat, smiling brightly and making little finger motions at Tilbury, and he, lounging back in his chair, was nodding understanding at her. His socks and tie were both of the same blue and white checks.

“Why are you sure neither you nor Jablonski handled any piece of the lamp? How can you—”

It was almost impossible to pull himself back to Farragut’s truculent face, the eyes pinched ’round with tight wrinkles of flesh.

Why didn’t Tilbury…?

“No,” he said lowly.

“What did you say, Ryan?”

“Louder, witness.”

Again he ranged the courtroom. Sandalwood was frowning intently at him. Jablonski’s face was a black-and-white scrawl of fear, a caricature of terror.

“No!”

Farragut leaped in with tiger quickness. “Supposing I were to tell you that a beer can was found in the room which also had traces of dust—dust from the lamp. Would you say—”

Ryan did not hear the rest of it.

This was the end. Farragut had him.

He looked beseechingly toward Tilbury. The court was also looking at Tilbury, expecting an objection.

“Answer, witness,” cried Farragut, and Ryan brought his white face up to confront the green-eyed sneer. Tilbury turned suddenly, uncomprehendingly, back to the cross-examination.

A low whistle sounded in the courtroom. Ryan knew what it meant. He was dead; there were other sounds, a rising murmur like a boxing audience makes when one of the fighters begins to lurch into unconsciousness.

There came another whistle. The judge’s gavel banged; he had to answer. Ryan’s wet hands twisted. He looked up; the murmur was louder. And then, dumbfounded, he finally realized that no one in the courtroom was looking at him except Farragut. And Sandalwood.

For a tall, marvelously shapely girl with a wealth of auburn hair under a chic low-brimmed hat was coming down the center aisle, followed by a short, slick-haired man in a bright blue suit who carried a polo coat and seemed trying not to smile. The girl’s expression was grave until she saw Ryan; then she smiled and waved at him. Her lips were masterpieces of curved lipstick and when she loosened her tightly cinched coat, before seating herself on a front bench, it was with an intimate, revealing air that drew another wolf whistle. The gavel banged ineffectually, two reporters hurried out the side door to telephone the city desk for photographers, and half the courtroom immediately recognized Gee Gee Hawes. Sandalwood smiled indolently at her across the intervening space.

It had taken less than twenty seconds for her to enter and be seated with the nightclub manager who accompanied her. But that was enough to save Ryan and to ruin Farragut.

“I had asked you,” said Farragut loudly, trying to recapture the spell he had woven, “if you were aware—” But the court interrupted. “I must remind you, Mr. Farragut, that your question is completely unsupported by any testimony and therefore improper. I will ask the witness and especially the jury to disregard it and its implications.”

Ryan was a drowning man finding dry earth under his feet.

Gee Gee smiled at him. The nightclub manager, whose idea this visit had been, tried to appear nonchalant when a reporter asked them to hang around after for an interview. Presently they went out to be photographed, while Farragut returned to the attack with all the irritation of one who knows his chance has slipped. He had led carefully and dramatically up to that last question, hoping it would force a confused, damaging admission. Gee Gee’s entrance had wrecked his effect. Now Ryan answered his questions cagily and steadily.

After a dozen more Farragut gave up.

Tilbury quickly paraded the three women witnesses to the stand and all three, with just enough uncertainty to make their testimony convincing, identified Derby. Court adjourned.

The girl in mink rose at once, beaming, and flung herself at Tilbury. “Oh, darling, you were wonderful.”

He petted her affectionately. “Wonderful, nothing,” he said. “If they were all as easy as this I’d be ashamed to accept my salary.”

* * * *

Flashbulbs were still firing in the corridor when Ryan and Jablonski reached it and people were looking at Gee Gee and asking “Who’s that? Who is she?” as she stood amid the reporters. Her eyes were bright and she was smiling.

Sandalwood was at one side talking to the nightclub manager. As he and Jablonski passed Ryan heard Sandalwood joking, “Max, you really ought to be ashamed of yourself. Anything for publicity, eh?” Ryan did not look at Sandalwood.

Then Gee Gee caught sight of him and waved and blew Ryan a kiss, and a photographer asked her to do that again. Ryan waved back and pointed to his wrist watch, meaning he had to go; he did not want to get mixed up in that, or have to answer Sandalwood’s questions. “I’ll call you,” he yelled, and she nodded and blew the kiss the photographer asked for. She did it several times.

“Boy, what a dame,” said Jablonski as they went down the stairs. “You know what I think? I think you’re darned lucky, Neill.”

“I’ll tell you what I think,” said Ryan bitterly. “I think this guy’s going to be convicted.”

“Wait and see, Neill, wait and see,” said Jablonski. “That’s all I ask.”

* * * *

But when court resumed next day it was not Farragut but his bespectacled young assistant, McCormick, who took over the defense of Harry Derby. Farragut, it was announced, had suffered a heart attack the previous evening and must rest for at least two months. Courtroom veterans smiled. This was Farragut’s surrender. It was his boast that no Farragut client had ever been executed in his thirty years of practice, and he knew he could not save Derby. So instead he had had a heart attack, and now it was a McCormick client that would go to the chair.

Three days later after an almost pathetically weak defense the case went to the jury, which deliberated forty-five minutes and then returned a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree without recommendation of mercy. That made a death sentence mandatory.