“Well—” He laughed nervously. “I’m married to my law books, I’m afraid.”
“Really? Then I’d watch out for that girl in the outer office; she has a certain glint in her eye.” They talked for a few moments about the old days at P.S. 38. “Not,” Miss Withers admitted, “that I’m surprised at the way you’ve risen in the world. The child is father to the man, and as I look back on it I can see very clearly how you were meant for the law. You used to argue interminably, whether you were in the right or the wrong, and perhaps best when you were in the wrong. I’ve watched your career from a distance, and when I heard the other day that you are to appear in another big murder trial, I suddenly thought it might be possible for me to see you in action.”
“Oh, the Gault case. But it’s been set back on the calendar, or I’d be happy to fix it so you could have a front seat. When the time comes—”
The schoolteacher thanked him. “But I’m afraid I won’t be in town. I’ve retired, you know, and am living out in southern California.”
“Too bad. There’ll be some legal fireworks, if the case ever comes before a jury. I’d like you to see the fun.”
“If?” said Miss Withers sharply, cocking her head.
He looked at her with an added respect. “You don’t miss much, do you?”
“Sascha, you haven’t answered the question!”
“Yes, ma’am. Well, personally I don’t think that the D.A. will press. They haven’t a very strong case against my client, you know.” He waved his hand. “Except for the circumstantial evidence.”
“And except for—” began the schoolteacher, and bit her tongue.
“Except for a so-called surprise witness for the prosecution who has suddenly turned up missing?” At the look on her face Sam Bordin broke into a wide grin. “Wait a minute, don’t get me wrong, I haven’t been tapping wires or listening at keyholes, but those things get around.”
Across the desk the maiden schoolteacher looked hard at the little boy whom she had once assisted over the bumps and potholes of the third-grade curriculum. There were not many among her thousand and more pupils for whom she had once held higher hopes. “You never used to cheat, Sascha,” she finally said softly. “Not in my classroom. You might argue that black was white, but you never cheated.”
He bowed. “Thanks. But why bring that up now, ma’am?”
“Because somebody in this Fagan-Gault affair has cheated and still is. Where is the Kell girl, Sascha?”
It was a clean miss. “You tell me,” he came back swiftly. “Because I have a subpoena here ready to serve on Ina Kell if she ever shows up. Even if the prosecution doesn’t want her on the stand, I do.”
Miss Withers’ sniff was eloquent of doubt, but she said, “You are, I suppose, quite satisfied in your own mind that your client is innocent?”
Bordin hesitated only a moment. “I could hardly express an opinion—”
“Then you think he’s guilty?”
“Not until proven,” said the little man stubbornly. “Listen a minute. It’s an attorney’s job to make the best defense possible for his client. I’m not the judge or the jury. I use every means at my command to get the facts, particularly everything on his side of the story, and to present it all in the best light. I don’t know how you happen to know so much about the Fagan murder—”
“Justice is the problem of every good citizen,” she informed him. “And sometimes my friend Oscar Piper, down at Centre Street, talks to me about his cases.”
The famous Bordin smile congealed a little. “So? I’ll bet you the inspector didn’t tell you that the autopsy showed that Tony Fagan had an abnormally thin cranium, a skull so frail that it might have been smashed during a man-to-man fight by slamming against a wall or other hard object?”
Miss Withers said nothing.
“At the moment,” the lawyer went on, “I have almost decided to base the defense on the fact that while Gault may have been responsible for Fagan’s death, he never premeditated murder but meant simply to beat him up. Manslaughter while in a state of temporary emotional insanity caused by malicious persecution …”
“Been reading up on the Harry Thaw case, Sascha?”
It was Bordin’s turn to say nothing.
“You know perfectly well the man is guilty. There’s the confession, and the lie-detector tests.”
He brightened, like a chess player confronted with a difficult gambit. “But neither is admissible as evidence. The confession, if you can call it that, was verbal and never formally signed or sworn to. As for the polygraph, even Professor Leonarde Keeler, who invented it, always said it must be used by trained technicians, of which there are perhaps a dozen in the nation. But the police, as you probably know, use it as freely as if it were a pencil sharpener, just as they are always using sodium pentothal and the other truth drugs. I don’t mind telling you that I have every hope of being able to satisfy a jury, in spite of everything, that Gault is no murderer at all, and that there is at least a reasonable doubt that he caused the death of Tony Fagan. Gault may have only left his enemy unconscious from a deserved beating, and then some other person or persons happened along and finished the job knowing it would be blamed on Gault anyway.”
“Ingenious,” Miss Withers admitted with a wry smile. “Sascha, you haven’t changed a bit since you were nine. You argued hardest when you were trying to convince me that two and two weren’t necessarily four.” She sighed. “Would you like to do me a favor for old time’s sake? I want an interview with Gault.”
“What?” Bordin was incredulous. “You want me to fix it up for you to talk to Gault in jail—and you lined up with the opposition?”
“I am only with the opposition if he’s guilty, remember.”
The lawyer thought it over a moment. “Hmm. Junior is not what one could call an especially cooperative character. He seems to have certain antisocial tendencies.”
“So many murderers do, don’t they? But I still have, I hope, an open mind. I don’t like to see killers get away, but I also have a deep disinclination to see an innocent man rot in prison—or for that matter an innocent young girl tangled up and perhaps destroyed in what is no real concern of hers at all. Don’t you think this whole affair would be the better for stirring up a bit?”
“You mean you want to play Hawkshaw?”
“The inspector says I’m no detective, simply a catalytic agent. What real harm would it do for me to have a few well-chosen words with Junior Gault?”
Bordin picked up the desk pen. “I’ll see what I can do.” He carefully wrote down the name of her hotel.
“And if it isn’t possible for me to see the accused, could I talk to his family and his fiancée?”
“Whatever for?”
“Why not? There might be facts that haven’t come out.”
“Forget it, Miss Withers,” the lawyer advised earnestly. “Just forget the whole thing. The old couple have taken their son’s arrest very hard, and they’ve crawled back into their shells. Junior’s previous mix-up with a showgirl was bad enough, even if the court did throw her breach-of-promise case out of court, but this was the last straw. You couldn’t get the time of day from them.” Bordin shook his head, lower lip thrust out. “And as for Miss Dallas Trempleau—those socialite dolls have their fine blue blood cut with vinegar. The engagement was quietly broken before Junior got settled in his cell. I even went out and crashed the gates of the big Trempleau house on the North Shore, trying to suggest to Miss Dallas that it would help the defense considerably if she would be there beside Junior in court, and what do you think she said? She said she wished her friend Mr. Gault the very best of luck, but that unfortunately she was about to start out for a trip abroad and so she wouldn’t be able to make it!”
“That does sound rather heartless, doesn’t it? But—”
“They’re all alike,” said Sam Bordin with deep bitterness. “They have no flesh and blood in them—only straw. Just lens lice for the society photographers.”
“Obviously she thought him guilty,” the schoolteacher observed. “Then nobody really believes in Gault’s innocence!”
“Nobody but me,” Sam Bordin countered, almost too quickly.
“I,” Miss Withers corrected. They parted with expressions of mutual esteem, and promises on the lawyer’s part to get in touch with her.
Perhaps he would, but the schoolteacher was glad she didn’t have to hang by her thumbs until Mr. Bordin kept that promise. It had not been a wholly happy interview for her, what with one thing and another. She had preferred Sascha as a nine-year-old. When she came out into the other office, Gracie was smiling up at her from the desk. “I promised you he’d see you, didn’t I?” she said brightly, one woman to another. “His bark is worse than his bite.”
Miss Withers sniffed indignantly. “Sascha Bordin knows better than to bite or bark at me, or I’d take a ruler to him as I have had to do once or twice in the past. He used to be one of my prize pupils, you know. And now he’s a famous criminal lawyer….”
“Trial lawyer, we say,” Gracie corrected. “The best.”
“He’s never lost a client, I understand?”
“Never a death penalty yet.”
“It must be nice,” observed the schoolteacher, “to have so many innocent clients.” She peered down at the old-fashioned gold watch pinned to her old-fashioned bosom. “My, it’s after twelve! Is there a good place to have lunch around here?”
Gracie said there was a nice cozy little tearoom in the next block. Somehow she wound up showing Miss Withers to the place, and facing her across a little booth in the rear of the restaurant. “The pot pie special,” said Gracie. And, “So you were Mr. Bordin’s teacher once! Imagine that!”
“Yes. But now I think he could teach me things. About getting people out of trouble with the law, for instance. Tell me, my dear, would it be much of a blow to his prestige if he really did have a client go to the chair?”
“Jeepers, yes!” Gracie had had a double dry Manhattan, for medicinal purposes, before lunch. “We really need a break right now. Twice in the past year Mr. Bordin had bad luck with his cases. One client got ninety-nine years, and one twenty to life. We just got to get this Junior Gault off, believe me!”
Miss Withers expressed a mild interest in the case, implying that Sam Bordin had discussed it with her casually in passing. “Too bad that Miss Trempleau proved such a broken reed.”
“Oh, he told you?” Gracie sighed. “But you can take that with a grain of salt. I saw Dallas and heard her sing at a charity thing once—very natural and pretty and ladylike; everybody liked her.”
“But Mr. Bordin intimated …”
“Oh, him! If she didn’t want to appear in court on Junior’s side she had some good reason. My boss is sour on that one subject—he has a grouch against everybody on the society page. He’s an idealist, see? And a couple years ago, after he was so brilliant in the Whitfield case, he got taken up by some of the Barberry-Morocco-Stork crowd. Invitations to dinner every night, white tie and tails, Newport and Aiken and so on. Only he had to go and get serious about one of those gilt-edged gals who turned out to have been playing winter rules. Sam Bordin didn’t enjoy the idea that he’d been kept around for laughs.”
“He wouldn’t,” nodded the schoolteacher.
“So he threw away the fancy clothes and settled down to work again. My boss is really an awfully good lawyer when he sticks to it.”
“I believe you,” said Miss Withers dreamily. “And never lost a client! It’s rather a shame, then, that poor little Ina Kell wasn’t one of his clients….”
“Is she lost?” cried the tall girl sharply. “I mean …”
“About as lost as one can get, I fear. I see you recognize the name.”
Gracie nodded. “Why, yes, I wouldn’t say this if you weren’t practically a member of the family, and don’t breathe it to a soul, but there was a Miss Kell who called up in a dither one day when the boss happened to be out of the office. She had to see him right away, and I gathered it was about something that might help free Junior Gault, though she wouldn’t say what. She didn’t even want to give me her name, but I wormed it out of her and promised that if she’d leave her number I’d have him call her back. I put a note on the boss’s desk when I went home, but he didn’t get around to calling her next morning and then it turned out to be only a pay phone somewhere. Isn’t that a shame?”
“I rather think so,” agreed Miss Withers gravely. “And when did all this occur?”
“A couple or three weeks ago. But—”
“Shortly before Ina Kell became officially lost,” the schoolteacher mused. It was odd that Sascha Bordin hadn’t mentioned anything about this to her—or on second thought, perhaps it wasn’t. “Did you try to locate her?”
Gracie nodded. “Everywhere, but she’d just dropped out of sight. The boss thinks that the D.A.’s office found out their prize witness was going to give them the wrong sort of surprise, and got rid of her—”
“Well!” said Miss Withers, somewhat more than baffled, and transferred her attention to her lunch. She seemed to be going around in circles, like a traveler lost in the North Woods.
What was indicated, she decided, was an hour or two of deep cogitation. But when she got back to her little hotel room she was met head-on by Talley the poodle.
Talley had had a dull morning, little brightened by a turn around the block with a bored bellboy as anchor. Long used to the limitless beaches of Southern California, Talley desired lots of exercise.
“Later. Can’t you see that I’m thinking?”
The big apricot-colored poodle had thoughts of his own. With a sort of frenzied resignation he set out to curry favor in every way he knew. He brought his mistress’s slippers, which she did not want. He tossed his beloved rubber rat in the air and caught it; he knocked the telephone off the hook, and barked cheerfully when the operator answered. Then in desperation he went through his entire repertoire of tricks; walked on his hind legs, played dead dog on the carpet and circus dog sitting on a table, chased his pom-pom of a tail and knelt to pray. Finally, clearly implying that he had been silly enough to please any human however unreasonable, he brought his leather lead and laid it firmly at Miss Withers’ feet.
“Oh, very well, you dratted nuisance,” conceded the weary schoolteacher. They fared forth into Central Park, and had already done a fast mile or so when the belated inspiration struck her. “Talleyrand!” she said sharply.
The poodle stopped short, searching his conscience. Then he sat up and pawed apologetically with both furry forefeet.
“Relax. It just occurred to me that French poodles, like gold-headed canes and electric broughams, carry a certain cachet of respectability in some circles. Talley, for once in your life would you care to do something to earn your salt?”
Talley lolled a long, very pink tongue, his eyes hopefully searching her face for some trace of meaning in all those words. He was, he made clear, ready for anything that wouldn’t immediately take him back to the hotel.
“First we must find a phone,” Miss Withers observed thoughtfully. Talley barked, plunging eagerly ahead of her as she altered their course, obviously entering into the spirit of the chase. Only, the schoolteacher told herself, he probably thought her last word had been “bone.”
7
“‘The living should live, though the dead be dead,’
Said the jolly old pedagogue, long ago.”
—GEORGE ARNOLD
MISS WITHERS TRACKED DOWN a telephone, and the coffin-like booth and chain-bound directory that went with it. Somewhat to the puzzlement of the poodle she made no phone call, but headed north again, up Fifth Avenue, to turn east near the Metropolitan Museum and finally wind up in front of an old-fashioned four-story house crowded between looming apartments. But the place still stubbornly clung to a tiny yard on one side, with patches of yellowish-green grass and brown rosebushes that had long since given up the struggle agains
t Manhattan’s fumes. The garden was heaven-sent, and swiftly the schoolteacher rearranged her plans to include this useful stage property.
Shutters were drawn on all the windows of the Gault house, but Miss Withers somehow had a feeling that it was still inhabited. The knobs were polished, and the steps swept clean. She loosed Talley’s leash, then pointed at the iron fence surrounding the deserted little garden. “Do you suppose, Talley, that you could possibly scramble over that thing and get yourself trapped inside?”
The poodle cocked his furry head, politely interested in her conversation but still waiting. Then she remembered that dogs, even poodles, best understand sentences of no more than two or three words. “Go!” she commanded. “Over!”
Talley launched himself, sailed up a good part of the way and then scrabbled a bit, coming down on the other side of the barrier.
“Dig!” said his mistress.
Talley looked around until he found a reasonably soft spot and then began excavating in an uninspired sort of way, casting out earth and stones between his hind legs. His heart obviously wasn’t in this game. No bone had ever been buried here, and the last mole had given up decades ago. But his not to reason why.
“Stay!” ordered Miss Withers, and then climbed the steps and firmly rang the bell. When a nervous little woman in cap and apron answered the door the schoolteacher spoke her own brand of double-talk in a cultured Bostonian accent, and ten minutes later she was sitting on the edge of a needlepoint chair in the stiffly formal living room full of heavy mahogany and obscure oil paintings, facing a little old gentleman and a little old lady.
The bewildered hostess wore black satin and pearls, the host a velvet smoking jacket; both had an odd resemblance to one another and to certain illustrations in old popular magazines. Junior Gault must have been a late child; no great wonder that he had more or less broken with his family and gone in for a Park Avenue duplex and all that went with it.
Nipped in the Bud Page 6