by Tedd Thomey
“You mean you’re acquainted with all these men?” Tomiskey appeared to be impressed. “Why, madame, there’s over two dozen names here.”
“I’ve known some of them for years,” she said. “They’re just friends.”
“Who’s Ralph Shrank?”
“A building contractor.”
“Who’s Scotty McNally?”
“Another building contractor.”
“Robert Crenshaw?”
“I haven’t seen him for years.”
“Ward Green?”
“A salesman.”
“What kind of a salesman?”
“Corsets.”
“Who is James Van Der Most?”
“A clerk.”
Tomiskey read through the entire list, asking the same questions about each name. And then he read through the list a second and a third time.
Afterward he paused and his brown eyes, never at rest, studied her carefully.
“Mrs. Chrysler,” he said. “Did you realize that each time I read a particular one of these names you looked down at the floor? And when you answered my questions about him your voice definitely trembled, were you aware of that?”
“I don’t believe I did.”
“Yes, Mrs. Chrysler, you did. Would you like to know which name it was?”
“Not particularly.”
“I think I should tell you, Mrs. Chrysler. It was Ward Green. And are you aware, Mrs. Chrysler, that Ward Green’s initial is W.—the same as on the stickpin?”
For a half dozen heartbeats, the room was silent. From the hall came the low hum of the voices of many other officers, and Alma was visibly startled when an abrupt rap sounded on the door.
Tomiskey opened it and stepped outside. She heard him begin an urgent whispered conversation with another officer, their voices too low to be understood.
In a moment he returned. He shut the door gently, then turned and faced her.
“Mrs. Chrysler,” he began. He folded his arms across the badly-wrinkled serge lapels of his suit. “It is my duty to inform you that Mr. Ward Green has been arrested.”
She felt stifled, as though a hand were crushing her throat, and it was impossible to remain calmly in the rocking chair. She half-rose, then sat back down.
“And Mr. Green has confessed,” said Tomiskey quietly. “He has confessed everything. He has informed us that you, Mrs. Chrysler, helped him murder your husband.”
For an instant, she felt no reaction. No reaction whatsoever.
Then came rage, violent rage, which made her spring from the chair. She fell upon Tomiskey, pummeling him with her fists, driving him backwards until his shoulders struck the door.
“Lies!” she screamed. “He lied! He killed Norman! He did it! And he said he would kill me if I told! I tried to stop him, but he was like a madman! He killed Norman! He killed my husband! I tried to stop him! I tried but—”
She stopped. She backed away from Tomiskey. She realized that in her anger she might have said too much.
“Thank you,” said Tomiskey. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Chrysler.”
CHAPTER 12
When he left the train at Syracuse, Ward Green went directly to his room at the hotel. He was so exhausted, his calves and thighs ached as if he had walked the entire distance. He needed a drink, needed it so badly his throat felt swollen, but he did not take one. He had not had a drink during the train ride either; it was punishment for the events of the terrible night.
He sat alone in the dimness of the hotel room, the lights extinguished. The weight upon his mind was enormous, a vast mass which threatened to plunge through the very tissues of his brain. He still could not believe it. Perhaps it had not happened; perhaps it had happened to someone else, another man, and he merely thought it had happened to himself. But through the tangled thoughts came the sound of his mother’s voice, rising and falling: “Ye shall keep the Sabbath”
And this was still the Sabbath. And he did not need to look at his hands to see the dark red stains in the crevices around his fingernails. The dark red stains which no amount of scrubbing on the train had been able to remove. And through his mind ran other words, a stream of them: “Father, may we be ever mindful that it is in loving our fellow man that we truly love Thee . . .” He had always loved his fellow man; he still loved his fellow man. But if he did, how possibly could he explain the terrible, terrible events of this Sabbath?
He could no longer stand the terrible dryness of his throat. From his coat, which he had dropped on the floor, he removed the bottle of whiskey Alma had given him to drink on the train. It was a pint, still full. He took a long drink, then another, but it tasted sweetish and he decided Alma’s bootleg druggist had sold her part of a bad batch.
Suddenly he could no longer stand the dim silence of the hotel room’s walls. He needed company; somebody to talk to; somebody to keep his mind off things. He walked down the corridor and rapped on the door to 377, Ed Potter’s room.
“Ed,” he said, “can I come in a minute?”
“Sure,” came Ed’s voice. “It’s unlocked.”
He found Ed lying on the bed, reading the Sunday papers, his sample case open on the nightstand, pink sales slip carbons spread around it.
“Mister, you look punk,” Ed said. “That must’ve been some hot date you had.” Ward nodded.
“I fixed it up for you,” Ed said. “I phoned your missus and told her you’d been called to Albany for a sales meeting.”
“Thanks, Ed. You got a drink handy?”
“Sure. In my case.”
It was a bottle of gin, not much better quality than Alma’s pint. He didn’t drink much of it because he was discovering that liquor wasn’t what he wanted. He didn’t know what he wanted. Despite his exhaustion, he didn’t want to rest, or even sit down. It had been a long time since his last meal, but he didn’t want to eat. Nor did he feel like talking to Ed, now that he was here.
Finally he let Ed persuade him to go down to the hotel dining room for dinner, but he couldn’t eat the boiled potatoes and roast lamb which the waitress brought.
“You look sick,” Ed said. “I’ve never seen you look so bad. What in blazes did you do in Albany—go to bed with three blondes?”
Ed grinned and tried to make Ward do the same, but Ward merely shook his head.
“I didn’t go to Albany,” he said.
“Then where did you go?”
Ward did not reply.
He was such poor company that Ed left him shortly after dinner and returned to his room.
Ward sat in an upholstered chair in the lobby. For an interval which had no beginning and no end, he stared at the yellow illuminated face of a large wall clock on the far side of the room. He was aware that the clock had Roman numerals, but not once during the evening was he fully aware of what time it was. He wondered if he should take the money Alma had given him, the seventy dollars from her husband’s wallet, and buy another train ticket, perhaps one to Ohio or Kansas or even Colorado.
But he did not move from the chair.
Much later he noticed that the clock’s hands pointed to twelve. He went wearily to his room and began to undress and when he heard the knuckles tap his door he thought it was probably Ed Potter.
It was not Ed Potter. It was three men with grim, intense faces who announced that they were police officers.
“We’re taking you to the station,” they said.
He was not at all surprised to see them; actually, he had expected them to arrive much sooner.
There was no conversation during the ride in the black Hupmobile to the Syracuse Police Station. But once he was in the interrogation room, an airless chamber that reeked of bad plumbing, there was no end to the talk, no end to the questions which went on for hours. They demanded to know the intimate details of his relationship with Alma. Their minds were filthy with questions. They insisted on knowing how many times he and Alma had met in hotel roomsand what they had done there. They demanded to know why he had helped her kill her
husband.
“Gentlemen,” he replied, “this is ridiculous. I haven’t been near her house for months.”
“We know you were there,” one of the officers insisted. “We’ve got the stub of the Pullman ticket you came back on. Now why don’t you come clean with us?”
They could not understand how he could be so calm. That was because there was no way for them to know that the events of the night before had wrung the last drippings of emotion from him.
He told them nothing. He lied, but not for himself. He lied for Alma. It was the very least he could do. In a situation like this it was necessary for the man to be strong. It was necessary for the man to protect the woman.
It was nearly dawn when the officers gave up on him and put him in a cell. The cell was more comfortable than the interrogation room had been, largely because the plumbing did not smell as bad.
He did not sleep.
At nine o’clock in the morning they allowed him to have a visitor.
It was Ed Potter who came up to the door of the cell, his face pale and shaken.
“My God, Ward!” Ed said. “Have you seen the papers this morning? Nothing but headlines and more headlines! All about you and that woman!”
Ward stared at him blankly.
“Did you?” Ed’s voice lowered to a rough whisper. “Did you do what they say, Ward?”
Ward closed his eyes slowly, then opened them.
“Yes, Ed. I think I did it.”‘
“My God, Ward!” Ed reached through the bars and touched his friend’s hand. “Ward, why did you do it?”
“I don’t know.”
There was nothing more for them to say after that. And soon Ed departed, after promising to do all he could to help.
Half an hour later the officers took Ward down the front steps of the Police Station, to the black Hupmobile at the curb. There was a crowd on the steps and sidewalk, people with strangely curious expressions on their faces. It wasn’t until he was on the back seat, an officer on either side of him, that he realized the crowd had gathered to look at him.
“That’s him,” he heard one of the voices say. “That’s Ward Green.”
CHAPTER 13
Never in her life had Alma Chrysler known such excitement. The excitement began each morning at six, sometimes earlier, when the matrons awakened her. There was never any way of knowing what each day would bring—visits from attorneys, officials of the jail, famous writers, photographers, even ministers.
At first, when she had been a nobody, just another prisoner, she had been very sad, suffering from the blues all day, regretting her foolishness in falling for Tomiskey’s trick. It had been a very miserable trick, the way he’d told her that Ward Green had been arrested and that he’d confessed, making her so angry that she said things she shouldn’t have. Tomiskey had lied. Ward hadn’t been arrested until much, much later and he hadn’t told the police anything for hours and hours.
But now, of course, everything was so different. Now she was a celebrity. Now she had a cell of her own, a very comfortable one with good light, where she could pore over her newspapers and magazines as long as she wished. It was really remarkable how much differently the matrons treated her now, letting her visit with her mother every day, bringing her coffee almost whenever she wished, bringing her chewing gum, bringing her the gifts from her admirers.
And she had many, many admirers—men knew she was an unfortunate woman, a woman terribly wronged by her lover and terribly tricked by the police. The gifts were very nice—flowers, candy, black lingerie, and many of the packages contained notes from perfect strangers, very affectionate, some with proposals of marriage. She had more gifts than she could possibly use, and the matrons loved her for the packages she turned over to them. Even the matrons knew how wronged she had been, how badly she had been treated by the police. The matrons were experts in these matters and as the days went by they became more and more certain that she would get off.
“They’ll never convict you, honey,” said Mrs. O’Rourke every morning when she came with the papers. “Everybody knows that terrible Ward Green did it. And, besides, honey, you’re too pretty to be convicted. You’re a mighty pretty gal, honey.”
And that’s what made it so exciting. Her attorneys, young Mr. Whitcomb and old Mr. Strawn, were positive, too. “Everything’s on your side, Alma,” Mr. Whitcomb told her. “Ward Green’s confession will win it for us. And thank God for all this publicity. Do you realize, Alma, that your name is in the papers these days more often that President Coolidge’s?”
Oh, she knew it, all right. At first, right after her arrest, the headlines had frightened her with their blackness, their exclamation points. She couldn’t understand it then, any of it. She couldn’t understand how one day she was just a housewife, just another mother of a nine-year-old girl, living like other women. And the next day she was famous, with mobs thronging to get a glimpse of her, with reporters pressing in to catch her every word and write it down, and photographers, her every expression.
When the trial started, her picture was in all the papers every day. Even in the papers in Chicago and in Miami and way out in San Francisco. And now it was no longer so difficult to understand. People were extremely interested in her. Thev were interested because she was pretty, because the trial promised to have plenty of sexy testimony, and because the reporters said she was fighting for her life. The reporters loved her, all right. They winked at her and openly admired her figure. They were very brash, some of them. “Look at those hips,” she heard one sav loudly right in the courtroom. “Je-sus! No wonder Ward Green had the hots for her!”
On the morning of the eleventh day of the trial, she awoke in her cell long before six, chilled with excitement. Because this was it—this was the day she was to take the stand and testify in her own behalf. She was so nervous she was unable to eat her breakfast and she didn’t drink more than half a cup of coffee. She’d been drinking too much coffee lately and her nerves were suffering because of it, twitching in the night sometimes and making her perspire even in the mornings when it was cool.
She was cross when Mrs. O’Rourke finally arrived with the papers. Mrs. O’Rourke apologized for being late, explaining that she’d run into two female reporters in the jail corridor who’d badgered her for details about how her famed prisoner brushed her teeth and asked how she obtained bleach for her hair.
“I didn’t tell them,” said Mrs. O’Rourke. “I might have got into trouble.”
“Thank you,” said Alma crisply, pulling the papers from the matron’s hand. “Thank you very much!”
The papers were full of predictions about what she would testify. The eleventh chapter of her biography, “By Alma Chrysler,” was in the morning Press-Bulletin. The New York Union-Telegram printed another article by Fannie Hurst and there was comment by David Belasco in the Daily Express. Mr. Belasco’s words were very kind, calling her a poor, unfortunate woman—“drawn into this mess as she embarked on what she thought was to be the great romance of her life!” And, of course, there were the usual insults in some of the papers, calling her the blond sinner, the marble woman, the tiger woman. The News-Press had a new phrase this morning, a terrible one, calling her the bloody blonde. She promptly tore the copy to shreds and vowed not to read the News-Press any more.
Both Mr. Whitcomb and Mr. Strawn arrived early at the jail and they spent another hour going slowly over the questions and answers. “Excellent,” said Mr. Whitcomb when they finished. “You’ll do fine, Alma.”
She spent the time from eight-thirty to nine on her nails and hair, changing from the drab jail frock into a dress which Mr. Whitcomb had chosen for her. It was entirely black, severely fashioned, with a high neck. Around her throat she wore a black rosary from which dangled a crucifix. She used just a touch of lipstick and no rouge or powder, leaving her face pale and becomingly sallow.
Outside the courthouse, the street and sidewalk were alive with people waiting to see her arrive. The officers
had to drive the people back as she was taken to the entrance. Some of the more excited ones darted in between the officers, pleading for her autograph, and all around her there was a murmuring, a humming of voices and occasionally an insult shouted by some idiot on the fringes of the crowd.
“Gangway!” cried the uniformed lieutenant who directed her escort of officers. “Let Mrs. Chrysler through! Let Mrs. Chrysler through!”
In the corridor directly outside the courtroom, the crowd was more disgusting. People had been lined up since dawn waiting for seats inside, some paying as much as ten and twenty dollars to be among the first in line. But the most sickening by far were those who wore stickpins in their lapels, those dreadful miniature sash weights that were sold on every corner around the courthouse for ten cents each.
When she arrived at the counsel table, Ward was already there, sitting in the same chair that he occupied every day, less than a dozen feet from her own chair. His cheeks were very pallid, there were circles under his eyes and as usual his fingers held a black prayer book.
She did not speak to him. She had not spoken to him since the trial began and she did not intend to speak to him.
She gave him a single glance, the one that Mr. Whit-comb approved, a glance of hatred for the man who had killed her husband, but with a touch of pity for him so the people in the courtroom could see that her feelings were only human. He did not raise his eyes to look at her as she sat down.
She had expected to testify almost at once, steeling herself mentally for the ordeal. But much of the morning session was devoted to legal procedures and a long suspenseful statement by Mr. Whitcomb, who spoke in a low, intelligent voice, giving the jury the background of the Chryslers’ unhappy, quarrelsome home life, telling why he and his legal colleagues had decided she must take the stand to explain how she was dragged into the crime. A noticeable murmur swept the jammed courtroom when Mr. Whitcomb added that he and his assistants would not deny that an adulterous relationship existed between Mrs. Chrysler and Ward Green, and that they would prove Ward Green had used that relationship for his own selfish, damnable purposes.
