Compulsion

by Meyer Levin

  Wilk’s jaw moved. “By now, you won’t be able to get a writ to get them out of his clutches before Monday morning. He’s got all Sunday to keep them babbling. God knows what he’ll get them to say.”

  “You certainly can’t do anything now in the middle of the night,” his wife said. “Jonathan, at least get some sleep before you decide.”

  Wilk sighed again. “I don’t know if I can do you much good. You’ve got a fine man in your own family, Ferdinand Feldscher.”

  “He begged us to get you,” Uncle Gerald said earnestly.

  “Well, come in the morning.” Wilk looked at his wife. “I suppose the Feldschers thought about alienists. There are only a few top men in town. Arthur Ball – you’d better try to get him.”

  “I’ll call him right now,” Gerald offered.

  “If Horn hasn’t got him already, it’ll keep till morning.”

  When they were gone, his wife said, “Jonathan, it’ll kill you. And everybody will say you’re doing it for the money.”

  Wilk found the answer, the inevitable slogan, at once. “The rich have got as much right to a defence as the poor.”

  Horn had got to the alienists. Dr. Ball was already in Horn’s office, early Sunday, when the boys were brought from the hotel where they had been allowed a last night of ease.

  Several of us were in the room.

  Dr. Ball was keen-looking, kindly, quite aged; he was a professor emeritus of the Northwestern Medical School ’s department of neurology. Instantly Judd began talking about the mental processes of birds. When birds altered their migratory routes by selecting between various sensory stimuli, wasn’t that reasoning? Just as when humans made decisions by selecting between sensory stimuli – like a man between two women. “I am a behaviourist,” Judd announced, while the professor smiled and asked whether in his view a human being had no more control over his conduct than a bird.

  “I take a materialist determinist position,” Judd said, and just then another psychiatrist arrived. The new arrival, Dr. Stauffer, turned to the boys with zest.

  Judd recognized his name. “Ah, you’re an advocate of the Stanford-Binet test – you’re sold on it,” he challenged. He kept on, talking about reflex actions and reaction time. He had measured reactions of a ten-thousandth of a second, Judd said.

  The term “ten-thousandth” caught Horn’s ear, for he now turned to the boys asking why they had fixed on ten thousand dollars as the ransom. Judd laughed at the association and said, “See, everything has a cause.”

  But surely they hadn’t needed the money, Horn said.

  “Why shouldn’t we want it?” Artie said. “Ten thousand dollars is ten thousand dollars.”

  “Well, if I had ten thousand in my pocket right now would you try to lift it?” Horn said.

  “It would be highly improbable that you had ten thousand dollars,” Judd remarked, and everyone laughed at the jibe.

  Dr. Ball asked the boys to tell their story, and Artie began to relate it all over again in every detail. There were elaborate shiftings around, Judd using a filing cabinet as a table. There were thank-yous at the water cooler. All this, we learned at the trial, was being noted down by Dr. Stauffer – the responsiveness, the well-oriented behaviour, the ability to carry on the complex recital through incessant interruptions.

  When Artie had completely finished his story, Dr. Ball looked from one to the other and inquired, in a tone of unaffected curiosity, “But can you tell me why you did it?”

  “I don’t know why on earth I did it!” Judd blurted out.

  Artie was silent.

  At that moment, Judd’s father entered the room.

  That morning was the first time Judah Steiner had called for the car since the thing had happened. He had not seen Emil since the papers had said it was the chaufeur’s unexpected story that had proved to be the last straw causing Artie to break down and confess.

  Emil stood holding the car door open, as always. Judah Steiner stopped for a moment before getting into the car. “I don’t blame you, Emil,” he said. “You did what your conscience told you.”

  Emil gulped some words, how sorry he was. They drove downtown.

  Judah Steiner went up to the same door where, a few nights before, he had appeared as a proud man to make his presence felt. Today he walked uncertainly, dazed, bewildered. All his measurements of life had proven wrong. As he entered, he heard those words of Judd’s in the high clacky voice, “I don’t know why on earth I did it!” and at the same moment their eyes met.

  Judd said, “Hello, Dad.”

  The State’s Attorney was the first to break the silence. “Is there anything we can do for you, Mr. Steiner?”

  “No, no, sir.” Perhaps Steiner felt he had already received the answer to whatever had brought him there.

  “Did you wish to speak with your son alone for a few moments?”

  “Did you get me a lawyer?” Judd demanded, without waiting.

  “Yes,” his father said. “That is arranged. We have engaged the best. Mr. Jonathan Wilk will defend you.”

  A look of triumph came onto Judd’s face. He turned involuntarily to Artie, forgetting for the moment their estrangement. Artie was grinning.

  The father was still looking at his son, his head beginning to shake slightly from side to side. Judd said, “I’m sorry this happened.”

  “Yes,” Steiner said. “We are all sorry.” He turned and withdrew.

  From there, he had Emil drive him to the Wilk apartment. Max was there, with the rest, in the library with its overflow of books in piles on the floor.

  Judd’s father inquired after Mr. and Mrs. Straus. How were they?

  “Lewis took them to Charlevoix,” Gerald said. “Doctor’s orders.” Randolph Straus had a bad heart. Mrs. Straus had fallen into a state of depression. “It’s best for them to leave. What can they do here?” And the hounds, the stupid dirty hounds of the public had already started on them, Gerald said bitterly. Anonymous phone calls, even telegrams.

  Judah Steiner listened. Yes, it was better they should go.

  With all this hysteria, said Ferdinand Feldscher, there was only one course – to delay. To wait for things to die down.

  “Horn will scream his head off if you try any delay,” Wilk said. “We all know him.” No, they had to get right to work on a defence. Unfortunately, Dr. Ball had already been nabbed by the state. So had Dr. Ralph Tierney. Of course there were others.

  Edgar Feldscher had his intent, concentrated look. He offered his thought. “Why can’t we both use them, if they’re the best?”

  Wilk’s eyes lighted up as he caught the idea, but the others were all staring at Edgar Feldscher, uncomprehendingly. He elaborated. Why not make a truly honest, serious attempt to get the best, the latest that modern science could offer, to have a joint comprehensive study made of the boys? Wouldn’t it inspire public confidence, reduce some of this hostility, if both sides agreed to use the same scientific study?

  “And after all that,” Wilk said with melancholy humour, “some totally ignorant layman on the jury will decide on their sanity according to how he likes their faces.”

  All looked to Wilk, the swayer of juries. He drew his hand slowly along his cheek. Just then Mrs. Wilk, with a slight groan, passed him a copy of the Sunday Examiner, pointing to an account of Judd’s conversation while retracing the trail of the crime. Wilk read it aloud: “Young Steiner also discussed the possibility of a guilty plea, saying the best thing for him and for Artie might be to avoid a jury and go before a friendly judge. With their family millions-”

  “Well,” said Wilk dryly, “if we don’t get at those boys and make them stop talking, they’ll hang themselves for sure, judge or jury.”

  “If they haven’t already,” Ferdinand Feldscher muttered.

  Meanwhile an item in another column had caught his brother’s eye. It was about a meeting of psychiatrists, opening in Atlantic City. The top men in the country would all be there. Edgar pointed out excitedly.<
br />
  Gerald spoke decisively. “Somebody better take the night train to Atlantic City.”

  Judah Steiner seemed scarcely to have been following the details, but as the group broke up he drew Edgar Feldscher aside. In an almost ashamed voice, he asked, “Could it be that we are doing wrong to try to defend them?” Edgar Feldscher studied him, his large serious eyes seeming to know the full meaning. “I am trying to think,” Judah Steiner said, “if they were not our sons.”

  Edgar Feldscher placed his hand on the older man’s shoulder. “Our conception of justice requires a defence. That’s why justice holds the scales blindfolded. So as not to see the monsters.”

  Judah Steiner’s head was beginning to shake again. “You feel that anybody has to be defended, no matter what he did?”

  “Yes,” Feldscher said with his small, rather worried smile. “Everyone. That is the basis of our law. Everyone is entitled to a defence.”

  Steiner’s head steadied. “Then you believe we are not responsible for what we do?” he asked, heavily.

  “Yes, we are responsible. But when our behaviour becomes abnormal, there are causes, pressures from outside and from inside, and the individual needs help to overcome such terrible pressures. Besides, there is the whole question of the kind of punishment. Take these boys-” and the way he said it, they could be strangers. “What would be served by their execution? Judd has already shown so much creative power.”

  Again, the father’s eyes filmed. He did not try to hide the tears from Feldscher. “If he is allowed to live, even in prison he might repay with some good-”

  “Yes. That is what I thought.”

  “But what made them do it?” the father asked.

  “Who knows?” the lawyer repeated. “I look at all this as human energy we’re dealing with, free energy, a natural force, which we try all our lives to control. Like electricity, which we use and control, even if we don’t understand its nature. What we have in us, this energy, is a flow of force, and sometimes a part of it flashes out, like lightning.” Judah Steiner was staring at him, unhappily. “I know it doesn’t exactly fit, but it seems to me, and the newer psychologists try to explain it this way, we all have this psychic energy, and we have to channelize it, but sometimes, like a baby – a baby doesn’t know good from bad – it lets through every impulse, what it wants it does, what it wants it seizes.”

  “But how can they be still like babies? They are grown, brilliant, intelligent boys.”

  “Some parts of us can stay ungrown; in some parts of us we are still like babies,” Feldscher said. “We use it in our daily conversation – we say someone is infantile. You can’t blame a baby for what it does.”

  Steiner’s head was shaking again; he couldn’t understand. “You never blame anyone?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do believe there is blame. But I try not to blame right away.” He held his pipe elegantly.

  “I don’t understand.” Steiner turned away. “I don’t understand.”

  The other men were in a circle, their voices subdued, for there had come up a remaining part of the subject so disagreeable to touch that each had held off from it. Judah Steiner did not know, at first, what they referred to, for he had found himself unable to look at the newspapers. But he caught their words now. Ferdinand Feldscher was saying, “It’s to be expected Horn will try to pin every unsolved crime of the last five years on them.” The newspapers were asking about that horrible crime of a few months ago, the taxi driver who had been found mutilated, the “gland robbery” on the South Side. Two assailants, he had said.

  “But he admitted he never got a good look at them; he could never identify his assailants,” one of the others insisted.

  “Well, maybe I shouldn’t mention this,” Max put in, his voice quite low and solemn. “But at my engagement party Artie kept talking all the time about the kidnapping, saying he bet the same criminals committed the two crimes. A lot of people heard him. Someone is liable to remember it now.”

  James Straus said, with his hasty way of getting rid of something nasty, “In the Examiner they mention that student who left the house to mail a letter and was found drowned. Artie knew him. Perry Rosoff.”

  “That poor Rosoff boy was a suicide,” Uncle Gerald stated.

  Hesitantly, James suggested, “Wouldn’t it be better if we asked the boys about all this?”

  There was a silence, a fear-laden silence. Then Gerald said, “Can’t we wait and deal with these matters when and if any evidence is offered?”

  The group began to break up.

  “If there is anything like that,” Ferdinand Feldscher said to his brother Edgar, “can there still be a question of sanity?”

  We were all, by then, puzzling over the other crimes. Tom recalled that strange stormy letter stolen from Judd’s desk. About betraying Artie to a friend. Couldn’t that have been about the other crimes? And the friend, Willie Weiss, was the same fellow they had lunched with on the day of the murder! None of us had talked to Weiss. True, the police had checked and dismissed him. Still, shouldn’t we try to see Willie?

  Tom had to go home; he explained he always had Sunday dinner with his folks. We agreed I should try to see Willie Weiss by myself. This time he proved not difficult to find. I phoned his home and was told he had gone over to do some work at the lab.

  Working at the end of the long room was a round-shouldered figure in a smeared lab coat, perched on a high stool. “Weiss?” I said.

  He had a long, narrow head, held a trifle cocked to one side; his eyes were keen, but his dark skin was completely pocked and his nose was a caricature. “The Horrible Hebe”, we learned Judd called him, and he was ugly in the grand manner. As he slipped off the stool, I saw that he was dwarfish, the head overlarge.

  Willie didn’t seem hostile. Indeed, before I could ask him any questions, he was drawing out from me in extreme detail everything I had done on the story, getting me particularly to tell how Artie had injected himself among the reporters, even among the detectives, with his advice, theories, clues.

  “True to form, true to form,” Willie kept saying about Artie’s behaviour, and then, “I would have guessed he’d be the first one to break down and confess.”

  I observed to Willie that he probably knew them better than anybody.

  “You think I was a third member of the team?” He grinned. “Sure, we had lunch regularly every Wednesday. I was studying them.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes. I’m interested in their psychology. You seen them since they confessed?”

  “I just came from there,” I said. “The State’s Attorney had a couple of alienists in the office, questioning them.”

  “Yes?” He was full of curiosity. “Who?”

  “Dr. Ball. And Stauffer.”

  “Pretty good men,” he conceded. He wanted to know what they had asked. I said they had only had the boys repeat their story of the crime.”

  Hadn’t they asked anything about their life? Their homes? Their families? Their childhood? Hadn’t they advanced any idea about what made the boys do it?

  “No,” I said, “they just asked them if they knew right from wrong.”

  “Goyishe kep!” Willie snapped. His use of the Yiddish expression, dumbheaded gentiles, came with a sidewise grin to me.

  Since he was studying them, I asked, did he have any idea what made the boys do it?

  Only the beginning of a theory, Willie said. Those alienists – had they questioned the boys about the weapon, the particular choice of weapon?

  “No,” I replied. “Why?”

  “Just curious,” Willie said. And he moved to turn back to his work. I stopped him with a direct attack. Had he ever known about other stuff they had done? What about that famous letter of Judd’s?

  “What about it?” Willie grew a trifle sharp.

  It just sounded, I said, as if Judd had revealed to him some crime that Artie had committed.

  “That’s an interesting assumption,” Willie said. “So you co
nnect it with all that junk in today’s paper about additional crimes?” He kept looking at me. “Nah, all Judd did was to hint around to me that he knew things about Artie that I didn’t know.” He mimicked, “‘Artie tells me secrets he doesn’t tell you!’ You know the way girls are with their little whisperings.” Willie shook his head in admiration of his own perceptiveness. “Pure feminine psychology.”

  But even if they were perverts, I said, the way the crime now seemed to have been done, that had nothing to do with it.

  Did I know anything about the new psychology? Willie asked. About Sigmund Freud?

  I knew the catchwords: complexes, suppressed desires.

  “It’s my field,” Willie announced.

  Did the Freud stuff help him to understand Judd and Artie? I asked.

  No, no, he was far from understanding. Weiss was entirely serious with me now. “Only I’ve had a kind of hunch,” he said. It kept sitting on his mind that there was a significance in a couple of things – two things that might turn out to contain the key.

  What two things? What were they?

  “The implement,” he said, “the implement, and then, the burial place.”

  “The implement?”

  Yes. The weapon. The chisel wrapped around with tape.

  So unused were we, in those days, to thinking in symbols that are today common to every imagination, that even under Willie’s shrewd prodding the meaning of it did not occur to me.

  As for the burial place, I thought he meant the swamp, in its entirety. Was he perhaps hinting that other bodies might be found there? I asked him this, point-blank.

  Willie must have decided then, that I was after all not too bright. Then, like an exasperated teacher, he gave me one more chance. “Who do you suppose they were really trying to kill?”

  This time, as by telepathy, I caught his meaning. “Themselves?”

  He gave me the smile of reward to a dense pupil who has at last come through with one correct answer. On the first plane, yes, he agreed, self-destructiveness was clear in both of them. Look at the way Artie drove a car – he had been in any number of accidents – and look at Judd’s dropping his glasses.