Trial by Fury

by Craig Rice

  “Civic virtue is a wonderful thing,” Jake said.

  Malone mopped his brow. “Let’s get out of here before one more woman Comes in and wants me to spring Jerry Luckstone from the Jackson County can. It’ll only take one more to make it a coincidence.”

  “I’m going home to bed,” Tom Burrows said. “I feel as though I ought to stick around, but the Enterprise doesn’t go to press till next Thursday, and my career as a county correspondent is temporarily cut off by the visiting press.” He began closing the office for the night.

  “We reserved a room for you at the hotel,” Helene told the lawyer. They said good night to the newspaperman and started down the street. “It’s a good thing we did, too. That hotel hasn’t had more than five guests at a time since it was built, now all of a sudden it’s overflowing.”

  Main Street of Jackson, Wisconsin, was quieter now, and most of the lights were out. It was past midnight, but a few small groups lingered on the sidewalk talking over the day’s events. Halfway down the street Malone stopped suddenly, looking ahead of him.

  “You mean to say that’s a hotel?”

  The General Andrew Jackson House was a four-story frame structure of three or four assorted styles of architecture, each one apparently added at a different period. It stood on the corner of Main and Third Streets, and a small porch ran around two sides of it to form a small balcony on the second floor.

  “It needs a paint job,” Helene admitted, “but it’s home to us.”

  “Two baths on every floor,” Jake added, “and we managed to get you a room with running water.”

  Malone groaned. “That settles it. I’m having nothing further to do with the murder of Senator Peveley, not for love nor money nor civic virtue.”

  “You can’t leave till tomorrow.” Helene said firmly. “Be brave. Be a pioneer. Think of your grandmother in a covered wagon.”

  “The nearest my grandmother ever got to a covered wagon,” Malone said indignantly, “was my old man’s livery stable.”

  He dubiously inspected the lobby of the General Andrew Jackson House. It was a smallish room, with a staircase running up one side, and a compartment for the clerk in the corner. The few pieces of fumed-oak furniture didn’t encourage him much.

  The sound of voices and occasional laughter came from a doorway marked BAR with a small neon sign. He looked toward it wistfully.

  “Stay away from there,” Jake said, “or you’ll be all over tomorrow’s papers solving the murder of Senator Peveley. It’s full of newspapermen.”

  “Besides,” Helene said, “we all need sleep.”

  Malone sighed. The thin-faced desk clerk who appeared on the verge of complete exhaustion consented to take his name on the register and handed him a key marked 102. With another sigh, Malone picked up his bag and followed Jake and Helene up the turkey-red carpeted stairs.

  Finding 102 proved to be a complicated affair. The General Andrew Jackson House had apparently not only been built during several different periods of architecture, but in several different directions and on several different levels. There were a few steps up or a few steps down at every turn of the narrow corridors. By the time the door was located, Malone had abandoned all hope of ever finding his way out again.

  “I suppose in case of fire, you just jump,” he said mournfully.

  “There’s a rope coiled up on a hook by the window,” Jake said. “Good night and happy dreams.”

  The little lawyer sat down on the edge of the bed and looked around unhappily. It was a smallish room, with two windows overlooking the balcony, papered with an elaborate design of grass, leaves, and bunches of grapes. The furniture consisted of an iron bedstead, painted white, a brown wooden rocker with a worn leather seat, and a battered imitation-golden-oak dresser. There was a tiny washstand in one corner, and above the bed was a print of the The Lone Wolf.

  It had been hot out on the street, but not with the pressure-cooker quality of this room. Malone decided to telephone down for a cold drink, then discovered there was no telephone in the room. He realized there were probably no bellhops, either.

  He went to the window and looked out. At this hour, Jackson, Wisconsin, was quiet and peaceful, even inviting. Down the street he could see an electric sign that proclaimed THE HERMITAGE TAVERN. He grinned at that. Someone in Jackson had studied history.

  It couldn’t possibly be as hot in the Hermitage Tavern as it was in this room. Nor would the Hermitage be full of newspapermen who would lead him into temptation.

  He got lost twice getting to the staircase, left the lobby by the wrong entrance, tried to remember the direction of the electric sign, and got lost again. A half block’s walk took him to the riverbank. He tried again in another direction and wound up in front of the post office on Maple Street. The next turn led him to Fourth Street.

  The gas-station attendant at the corner of Fourth and Maple told him to go back down Maple Street one block, turn left, and there would be the Hermitage Tavern, right on the corner of Third.

  It was a long block between Fourth and Third. Malone was hot, tired, and deep in gloom. In Chicago, now, he told himself, he couldn’t walk a block in any direction without finding someone who’d have a drink with him. Here, he got lost looking for a bar.

  As he approached the corner of Third Street, he saw the reddish glare cast by the sign he had seen from his window. Suddenly he paused, wondering.

  Little, white-haired Henry Peveley was standing at the door marked HERMITAGE LADIES’ ENTRANCE, giving it an oddly rhythmic knock. He looked up, saw Malone, smiled, and whispered, “Hello.”

  Malone decided to play. He whispered a greeting right back.

  “Were you looking for a place to get a drink?” Henry Peveley asked.

  Malone nodded.

  “I’ll fix you up,” the little man said. He knocked again. This time the door opened a crack. An eye peered out and observed Henry Peveley.

  “Friend of mine,” the latter said, pointing to Malone.

  The door was opened wide by one of the most enormous men Malone had ever seen in his life, a middle-aged, red-faced, waddling giant who wore a bartender’s apron tied sloppily about his middle.

  “This is Mr. Malone,” Henry Peveley said. “He’s a friend of mine. You can let him in any time.”

  “Oh, sure,” the bartender said.

  Malone, slightly confused, sat down beside his new friend at one of the sticky tables. His confusion grew when the bartender returned with two coffee cups, each containing a man’s size drink of cheap whisky.

  “This is good stuff,” Henry Peveley told him. “You can trust it.” He lifted the cup. “Here’s looking at you.”

  “Here’s how,” Malone said automatically.

  Henry Peveley shook his head. “Been an exciting day. Hasn’t been so much excitement since somebody stole the skeleton from the high school.”

  “Odd thing to steal,” Malone said.

  “It was odd. Nobody ever found it, either. Lots of crimes go unsolved in this world.” He lifted his cup again.

  “Speaking of crimes,” Malone said, “I don’t suppose you have any theories about your brother’s death?”

  Henry Peveley frowned. The effect was rather as though a nicely scrubbed pink baby had decided to look severe. “It must have had something to do with politics, but I don’t know just what. Still, he’d retired from politics. It’s all rather hard to understand.”

  “Murder often is,” Malone said helpfully.

  “It couldn’t have been for business reasons,” Henry Peveley went on, “Gerald’s not been very active in business for a good many years. He was willing to let other people make his money for him. In fact, he’d gotten rather bored with life lately and decided to take a more active part in things.” He frowned again. “No, business couldn’t have had anything to do with it, and he had no real personal life, so it must have been for political reasons.”

  “That’s very logical,” Malone agreed. “Except that he’d retir
ed from politics.”

  “True.” Henry Peveley nodded vigorously. He raised his voice. “Herb!”

  The elephantine bartender came into the back room and over to their table.

  “Herb,” in a very low voice, “have you a bottle of that I can take home?”

  “Sure thing,” the bartender said, in the same low, almost mysterious voice. He went away, returning in a moment with a flat, dark, unlabeled bottle.

  Henry Peveley turned over a bill from a comfortable-looking roll and carefully stowed the bottle in an inside pocket.

  “Have one on the house,” Herb said, gathering up the cups.

  “The world is in a terrible state,” Henry Peveley said, shaking his head dolefully and looking at Malone, who nodded in return. After a moment he added, “It’s all the fault of the administration.”

  “Absolutely,” Malone agreed. He felt this was no time to get into a political discussion.

  Herb came back with the two refilled cups. Henry Peveley emptied his in one breath and set it down hard.

  “It’s all the fault of that man,” he said firmly. “That man Hoover.”

  Malone felt uncomfortably chilly, in spite of the fact that the temperature still stood at about 92°. Could it be that the heat of the day, and the trip to Jackson, Wisconsin, had unsettled his mind? Or had some strange, Wellsian phenomenon taken place while he was trying to find his way from the General Andrew Jackson House to the Hermitage Tavern?

  He felt all right, he told himself encouragingly. Yet here he was in the back room of a speakeasy, from which his new friend was carrying away a pint of obviously bootleg liquor, and that man Hoover was still President.

  Henry Peveley picked up his change and rose. “I’ve got to get along home,” he said. “If you want to come here again, just remind Herb you’re a friend of mine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  After he had gone, Malone sat staring at the coffee cups for a long time. At last the bartender appeared in the doorway.

  “You’d better bring me another one,” Malone said unhappily.

  It was brought to him in an ordinary glass. He stared at it, then at Herb.

  “Tell me, he said, “how do I look?”

  Herb’s moonlight face broke into a wrinkled smile. He sat down on one of the little wire-back chairs, spilling rolls of flesh over on both hides of it.

  “I guess you ain’t never met Henry before,” he said amiably. “The time I have, listening for him to knock, and washing the labels off a bottle before I sell it to him!”

  Malone downed his drink, fast. “Then I’m all right?”

  “Henry’s a smart man,” Herb said meditatively. “Was a smart boy, too. Manages his real-estate business well. Never has any trouble. But Henry, he lost a powerful lot of money, back in ’29. It kind of unsettled him.”

  Malone said, “You could call it that.”

  “He never got any of it back, either,” the bartender said, wiping off the top of the table. “Not that he can’t get along on what he makes in his real-estate office. He does real well. Yes, Henry’s a smart man.”

  “But?” Malone said hopefully.

  “The only trouble with Henry,” Herb said confidentially, “is that he thinks it’s still 1929. It don’t trouble him much. He gets along fine and tends to his business good, only he thinks it’s still 1929. So he thinks Hoover is still President.”

  Herb rose, gathered up the cups, and started back to the bar. Halfway he paused and heaved another tempestuous sigh.

  ‘The hardest thing in Henry’s life,” he said sadly, “is that he don’t know prohibition’s been repealed yet.”

  Chapter Ten

  Someone had stolen the skeleton from the high school and hung it from the electric light in the center of his room. A tall girl with red hair walked in through the window and gave the skeleton a push that sent it swaying and rattling. The sound it made was a loud, raucous, and rythmic clanging.

  Malone turned over, groaned, and woke up for the eleventh time since two o’clock, in time to hear the last notes of the town clock, which seemed to be ringing just outside his window. By now he’d figured out how to tell time by it. Two strokes for the quarter hour, four for the half, six for the three quarter, and eight for the hour itself, plus the number of strokes for the hour.

  He had an odd feeling that he’d been bound, hand and foot, while he slept, before he discovered that the sheet, now damp and crumpled, had wrapped itself around him in the fashion of an Indian sari. With a little difficulty he disengaged himself, swung a pair of short, plump, hairy legs over the edge of the bed, and sat there curling and uncurling his toes.

  There must have been a time in the winter, he told himself, when white, beautiful snow was banked up high against that window screen, and the pale finger of frost etched delicate designs upon the windowpane. That would have been in February, and here it was only August. It was damned funny that a room could get so warm in just six months.

  He glanced at his watch and found that it was nearly five o’clock. It was going to be a long, hard, and probably unhappy day, he reminded himself, what with small-town politics, murdered Senators, unmarried mothers, and whitehaired, elfish little men who didn’t know that prohibition had been repealed.

  “One reason I stay so young for my age,” he told himself aloud, “is that whenever I decide to sleep, I sleep. No nonsense about either conscience or insomnia.” He drew a long, determined breath. The air carried an odd mixture of sweet clover, fresh earth, and growing things, and the early morning fumes from the Jackson, Wisconsin, tannery. “I just tell myself ‘Go to sleep, Malone,’ and that’s all there is to it.”

  He bravely ignored the warmth and wrinkles of the bed, and buried his face in the pillows.

  It was five minutes before he identified the sound that was keeping him awake. A strange, piping, shrill, and altogether obnoxious sound that came from the birds in the trees just outside his window.

  They not only piped, they yelped. With a sigh, he rolled over on his back and lay there wondering what the hell would get the birds up at this hour. Surely the worms could wait. It wouldn’t be so bad if they all yelped in the same key.

  There was one bird, with a particularly nasty voice, that seemed louder than the rest. That one, Malone decided, was the bird that had waked up all the other birds. Nor was it an ambitious bird who wakened early in order to herald the sun. It was probably a disreputable, disorderly bird who had been out all night, and now had staggered home in the first pale light of day to make the morning hideous.

  Suddenly Malone bounded out of bed, grabbed a heavy glass ash tray from the dresser, and hurled it from the window with all his might. It crashed loudly against the tree, and for a moment there was a wild shrieking and yipping as the offended birds circled wildly up toward the graying sky.

  In the next moment they had all returned to talk things over, at the top of their voices.

  To the east, just across the junction of Main and Third Streets, he could see a mass of faintly pinking clouds piled up over the trees. There were odd-angled roofs half hidden by the foliage, a church tower gilded by the early morning light, the tall cupola of the courthouse where ex-Senator Gerald Peveley had been murdered, a few chimneys, and beyond, low rolling hills, checkered with green and beige fields, reaching out to the horizon. Suddenly he felt deeply sorry for the late ex-Senator Peveley, and hoped that his murderer would be found and punished. Life was just too wonderful to leave.

  Everything, he decided, was almost unbearably sad. Life was wonderful, but nobody seemed to know what to do with it, and the world was beautiful, but nobody looked at it except tourists. He felt that he had discovered an important and impressive truth, and felt uncomfortably lonely about it. Here a kind of perfection of existence was always close at hand, and no one reached for it. Instead people hated each other for inadequate reasons, small hotels were built without air-conditioning, and the damned birds woke one up at five in the morning.

  A shrill whist
le from the street below caught his attention. He looked down and saw Helene, a small, delicate figure in white slacks, her blond hair pale in the early light.

  He hastily pulled the corner of a worn lace curtain over a broad expanse of brown, hairy chest. “You ought to be asleep,” he complained.

  “I can’t sleep. Besides, Jake got up a while ago and he’s wandered off somewhere, and I wish you’d come down and help find him.”

  Malone muttered something about people who could get lost in a town of less than three thousand people, and promised to be right down. A few minutes later he joined Helene on the sidewalk.

  “I don’t suppose there’s a place in town to get a cup of coffee at this hour,” she said. “We might as well walk.” She thrust her hands into the pockets of her slacks, and strolled down the street, looking like a beautiful and absurd little girl who had decided to play tomboy.

  “The only place I’d like to walk is back to Clark Street.” Malone growled. “And I don’t care how many miles it is.”

  He had started to ask something more about Jake, when the town clock rang again.

  Helene counted on her fingers. “Five-fifteen,” she announced.

  The little lawyer shied a rock at a sidewalk sparrow. “That damned clock! Ordinarily they go to bed at eight o’clock in this burg. Why do they have to know what time it is all night long?” He yawned. “Where’s Jake?”

  “Probably a suicide,” Helene said. “About the time the birds began to twitter, he got up and dressed, muttered something about the river, and went out.”

  “Not a bad idea, either, on a day like this,” Malone said gloomily.

  “Think how nice and cool it will be next winter,” Helene said consolingly.

  Malone growled something profane under his breath. “I’d give the next ten winters of my life right now to be back in Chicago, in a nice quiet place to sleep.”

  At the end of Third Street, just before the bridge, a narrow path led off along the riverbank. Helene followed it, the lawyer a few steps behind, complaining loudly about the rocks that got into his shoes. Beyond the shed belonging to the Jackson County Enterprise the path curved off to the right following a bend in the river, and just around it they found Jake sitting on the grass, his back against a tree, gazing soulfully out over the water.