Compulsion

by Meyer Levin

  Her voice becomes low, intimate, almost pleading. “I know, Judd. Ideas like that, Nietzsche and such ideas, they may seem very logical. We can even believe them with our minds. But we don’t have to do them.”

  Is the fear coming up in her? he wonders. For that is what he would need to go through with it.

  “But, Judd, suppose everyone believed like that,” she whispers. “Then everyone would be justified in doing anything. Even murder.” Her whisper is somehow schoolgirlish, and he has an impulse to laugh, yet to kiss her and tell her not to be scared.

  He hears his own voice repeating his favourite ideas. There have to be people who are ready to explore all the possibilities of human experience.

  “Oh,” she says, as though trying desperately to keep up with him, “oh, there have been plenty of people who have found out all about evil.”

  But the higher the type of mind, Judd says, the more there is to be discovered.

  And then she says it. Lightly. She hopes he doesn’t feel, because he has such a brilliant mind, that it is his duty to taste every crime like rape and murder.

  “Oh, the murder now won’t be necessary,” Judd remarks, almost idly. And he catches himself. But she is too confused to notice meanings within meanings. Her brows are contracted, a shadow is over her face.

  “I mean,” he says, “if I were to rape you now, I wouldn’t have to murder you because it would be unlikely that you would announce that you had been possessed. You would be more likely to keep it a secret and become my mistress.” She is breathing quickly. If she makes a move to get up and run away, he knows her movement will unleash him from the last restraint. His arm, his hand holding the heavy field glasses, will describe an arc…

  But she does not move. Are tears coming into her eyes? There is such a questioning in them, such a dismay. And now the moment has come for him, for an act of will. Inwardly Judd feels tumultuously threatened; he doesn’t dare examine what doubts may be rising in him, but some horrible upheaval is there, as if all, all he were ever sure of were suddenly crossed out, wrong! And it is a partner-feeling, too, to the strange sense of almost – almost – Of almost being free, almost attaining. Yes, attaining! The same feeling that he experienced the other night, beside the cistern. To reach the sense of having done, done!

  With an act of will, he rolls his body upon her. Ruth’s body is rigid. Her face is so utterly close to his that Judd can no longer see it, only the eyes, still puzzled and hurt.

  “Please don’t,” she begs. “Judd, please don’t.”

  He tries to insert his knee between her legs, and recalls some definition in a piece of sex literature that it is really impossible to rape a woman, that in the last moment, even against her conscious will, she physically consents.

  With his free hand he tears at his clothing. She seems not so much to be resisting as to have become unliving, frozen. He feels his throbbing power. He will do this. He alone.

  “Judd, Judd, I’m afraid for you!” Ruth calls, with awful anxiety, and he seems to hear the call over a distance of years in the voice of his mother as he tries to walk atop a fence. And all at once her arms are around him, holding him close, close, somehow protectively.

  In that moment it isn’t predominantly a fear of what might happen to herself that pervades Ruth, but a dreadful anguish for the boy, for the sick, sick eyes, for the tyrannic needs in him – not only his sex lust but something far beyond, some horror. And her intuitive gesture is to draw the sick soul into herself, not the drawing in of sex that might come to a mature woman, but the girlish impulse, the drawing in to her heart.

  And then, suddenly, he is spent.

  Her head turns sideways, under him, and he rolls from her.

  Now if death could come through a wish, he would will himself to cease existing. For it is not only the after-sorrow and the physical disgust of spilling; it is the whole sense of failure, incompetence to live, that invades him.

  He lies motionless as she looks at him. He supposes, somehow, he will have to say he is sorry, and he tries to move his lips.

  Ruth says, “Don’t. I understand. I want to understand.” And she makes a slight, tentative gesture, as to touch him, but withholds, knowing she must not touch him.

  Presently the tension lessens. And then a thought begins to come up in Judd, like some distant memory. One way in which the experience has perhaps succeeded, or meant something. For through the entire attempt, even at the most urgent moment, the moment when it always came, there had not come the image of Artie.

  Could he, then, only be like everyone else? Could it be possible that he may come really to be in love with a girl, perhaps this girl? Even marrying, raising a family? Would the whole idea of what that is all about, what ordinary life is all about, come to him, too?

  But if he can be ordinary… He shudders in horror and fear, as of losing his very self, and at the same time he experiences a frightful sense of something wasted, the murder as a false and wasted act. If the newer self is the real one, he has in previous dark error forsworn it.

  On the way back, they do not refer to the experience. They scarcely speak, and yet Judd does not find himself uncomfortable with her. When he leaves her at her house she asks, “Shall I see you again?”

  “Do you want to?” Judd says.

  “If you do.”

  They make a date for Monday evening.

  The crime had become our total obsession. I worked with Tom, running after the police and with the police and ahead of the police from one glimmer to another, and watching the other reporters, and eluding the other reporters, and conjecturing and imagining and listening, and gathering more and more the feeling in the city that some hitherto unknown terror was among us. The child’s fear of wolves prowling in the forest, wolves that will eat you up – this childhood fear seemed now to have leaped awake in every soul in Chicago, and the wolves were the primordial menace, more savage than any beast ever encountered by man. There was a growing presage that something new and terrible and uncontrollable, some new murder-germ, was here involved.

  The threat seemed to be against the logic of life itself, for we must have sensed, beyond the touchable aspects of the mystery, that some killing factor, some element, purely murderous, had broken loose. Even before the boys were arrested, there was this dreadful foreknowledge of the escape of some always present, imperfectly contained violence, and if we did not capture it, if we did not hold it and examine it and master its containment, we were all unceasingly exposed, lost.

  Tom and I were only a couple of reporters caught up in this hysteria. Yet we could see how, among the police chiefs, there was a growing bewilderment. Their statements daily became more contradictory. Every hour there would be a new crop of sensational clues; by nightfall everything would have been disproven; and on the next day the chiefs would again announce that the murderer would soon be caught.

  On Saturday morning, Nolan still declared, in an interview in the Tribune: “There is no doubt in my mind that the man who wrote the suicide letter was the same man who wrote the kidnapping letter.” But by noon the poor suicide had been discounted, forgotten. And a number of other suspects – teachers, even relatives of teachers who owned Underwood portable typewriters – were suddenly being discharged. For though the first expert had stated that the ransom note had been typed on an Underwood, a new expert declared that the machine was a Corona.

  The Kessler mail was flooded with tips, and with abuse. Chief of Police Schramm told us that nearly all of his men were working extra shifts, with leaves cancelled, for a veritable epidemic of kidnapping threats had broken out on the South Side, and along the North Shore’s Gold Coast, too. It was always like that after a big crime, he said, but this was the worst.

  And actually, three youngsters, sixteen-year-olds, sent messages and made a rendezvous in an elaborate plot to have Kessler bring $25,000 or risk the abduction of his other children. The plotters were caught and arrested. But the imitative fever and the released flood of evil
continued unabated. All the quiet-faced people of the city, all the open-faced youngsters – were they all cunning madmen? “You dirty, stingy -! If I had you here I would strangle you to death. We will go a little farther, so watch yourself. You couldn’t keep your dirty mouth closed. To hell with the police. You are crying. You made your money honest. Hah hah. But you will suffer minute by minute you low-down skunk. So low you could walk under a snake. And now every time you disobey us we will strike. Go ahead.” Anonymous.

  From these hate letters, police turned again to the revenge theory. But not one out of a thousand of those letters could have come from people who ever had known Charles Kessler. What weird, filthy, primordial imaginings were revealed, carried around behind unidentifiable city faces, walking around in coats and pants of ordinary men, in dresses of ordinary women! The police passed around to us a number of their scrawls, the obscene symbols, the daggers and mystic suns and moons, and the religious quotations and admonitions! Surely so ghastly a punishment, they wrote, was a visitation for some ghastly sin.

  Yet each day what was known for sure seemed to be diminishing. Even the suspected teacher, Steger, had not confessed, and doubtlessly the police had used everything on him. Mike Prager came out with a story that Steger had finally admitted to an unnatural liking for young boys. But no one could find out where the teacher was being held. We kept asking Captain Nolan. We kept trying the office of State’s Attorney Horn. Then suddenly, instead of merely shrugging, “I haven’t got him,” Horn changed his reply. “For all I know, he’s home.”

  We rushed to the apartment building on Dorchester. Within seconds, a half-dozen cabs with other reporters pulled up. No one answered the bell, no one responded to our knocking. Through the teacher’s door, Mike Prager called offers for an exclusive story. “Name your own price.” We kept calling questions. “Are you going to sue for false arrest? Did you get the third degree?” And finally a tormented, imploring howl came through the closed door. “Let me alone, can’t you!” The questions, the offers increased. But the siege proved futile. After some time, a brother of the teacher arrived with a doctor. “Leave him alone, can’t you! Be human, can’t you!” they pleaded, and managed to slip inside. After more useless badgering, we finally gave up.

  Even the idea we had had of the criminal as an educated man seemed to become uncertain. For this idea had been founded on the wording of the ransom letter. Now, from New York, came a story that the letter was virtually copied from a ransom letter in the previous month’s issue of Detective Magazine. The murderer could be anyone who could read and copy what he read.

  Yes, the murderer would be caught soon, soon, everyone declared. As fright increased in the city, the Tribune’s front-page cartoon showed a cowering man, huddling in a dingy hotel room, clutching a newspaper, with other papers scattered over the floor. “Closing In” was the caption.

  But Artie and Judd, following the editions, as yet felt no such dismay. Only once during those days was Artie irked. A late edition of the News appeared without the murder in the banner headline. Instead, the headline was about some exclusive interview obtained in Rome. The new boss of Italy had given an audience to a crack foreign correspondent. “Fascism is a spiritual movement,” Artie read. And he suggested to Judd, “Say, while you’re over there in Italy, how about buying a couple of those black shirts? They look pretty snazzy.”

  Judd read the rest of the interview, becoming rather excited. “Listen, I must try to see him!” This Mussolini certainly understood the philosophy of Nietzsche. It was by the will to power, Mussolini declared, that Italy would rise again.

  Artie laughed and pulled away the paper to turn to the pictures of the newest murder suspects. There were some good ones.

  A picture of a young woman, a showgirl type, a gangster’s moll. Yes, she really was. She had been living with a confidence man and she herself had phoned the police. She suspected her friend was the murderer. He kept all kinds of poisons in their room, she said, and he possessed a portable typewriter.

  And the police were also investigating a man who lived only a block away from Hartmann’s Drugstore and who had formerly taught science at the Twain School. The man’s neighbours had tipped off the police. They were suspicious of him because he owned a portable typewriter and he liked small boys.

  Police were checking, too, on relatives of the school’s athletic coach. Several of them had been picked up for questioning. Meanwhile, Artie read, preparations were being made to provide absolute privacy for the funeral of Paulie Kessler.

  That night, a floral bouquet arrived at the Kessler home, with condolences from “Harold Williams”. Police cars, cabs rushed to the florist shop, not ten blocks away. The shop was closed. Four of us located the owner in a nearby flat. Yes, he had sold the bouquet, but he had not noticed the name on the card. We told him – the same name as on the ransom letter. Slowly, his first fright-reaction was replaced by a sense of importance, for was he not the sole being who had actually seen the kidnapper-fiend in person? The florist concentrated on recalling the appearance of the customer. Only a few hours ago. Yes. A tall man, about thirty, wearing grey clothes. Wearing glasses? No, but he squinted slightly.

  From this, a portrait of the killer was evolved; newspaper artists drew the picture, everyone was alerted to be on the lookout for a thinnish man – long face, high forehead, age about thirty – wearing a grey suit.

  Moreover, he drove a Winton car! The florist was certain he had seen his customer drive away in a Winton. Thus he corroborated the story told by the little boy who had seen Paulie get into a grey Winton with a tall, thin man!

  And on Sunday morning we were all pretty sure of his identity. He was a druggist named Clement Holmes, who had just tried to commit suicide. Holmes had been taken to the South Side Hospital. He was tall and thin. Police had questioned his wife and daughter, who told how strangely Holmes had been acting. He had been terribly worried about money matters, having recently lost his drugstore. Saturday, he had left the house… Was it at the time “Harold Williams” had appeared at the florist? It proved to be during the very same hour. Later, Holmes had returned in a terribly agitated state and had chased his wife and daughter out of the apartment. When they ventured back, they had found him on the bed, an empty phial of poison in his hand.

  At the hospital, Holmes had been restored to consciousness, but to all questions he gave only babbling, meaningless replies. In the morning, the florist was rushed to the hospital to identify the suspect. But Holmes had vanished! SUSPECT FLEES HOSPITAL! Would the madman turn up at the funeral?

  Somehow, the funeral was held with a degree of dignity. On the plea of the bereaved millionaire and of his friend Judge Wagner, all editors were prevailed upon to restrain their coverage. A police cordon kept photographers at a distance. We agreed among ourselves not to try to interview Paulie’s mother, watching respectfully from across the street as she walked, trancelike, almost carried by her husband and his brother, to the black limousine. Judge Wagner had given us the list of pall-bearers, Paulie’s classmates, the richest boys on the South Side. We watched from across the street as they came out, in their knickers and black stockings; each of them might have been the victim.

  At the cemetery we all stood in a knot, whispering and conjecturing as to whether the murderer might appear. The family procession passed into the grounds, and we followed, remaining at a respectful distance. I heard the rabbi, speaking briefly – the crime was not mentioned; he spoke only of a young life taken in purity. Then the Kaddish, recited very softly by the father. And thus was Paulie Kessler buried a second time.

  We came away hurriedly, for there was a police tip that Clement Holmes had been seen, in a Winton, on Skokie Road.

  Monday, police were checking every registered Winton owner in Chicago. One had even turned up whose name was Harold Williams. But it seemed he had an absolutely airtight alibi.

  In the afternoon there was a sudden wild alarm, and we followed police cars to an address on Har
per Avenue. The pavement was filled with people asking one another what had happened. Police came rushing out of doorways; police were scouring the alleys. It seemed that a tall man in a grey suit, wearing a fedora hat, had come hurrying into a rooming house saying excitedly, “I want a room right away. I’ve got to get off the street!”

  He had behaved so strangely that the landlady had whispered to a lodger to call the police. The stranger must have heard, for he had turned and run out of the house. There had been a wild chase through back yards. But the suspect had got away.

  By then we were looking for a woman, too. The clue came from the glasses. A Lieutenant Cassidy had been detailed to try to trace the spectacles, and he had consulted an optician near the Bureau. The lenses were of a common prescription, as we all knew. But the frame, the optician said, was not a style that he handled. It was a tortoise-shell frame manufactured, he believed, outside of Chicago. Also, the frame was quite narrow. He judged that the glasses might have been worn by a woman. Someone with a thin nose bridge and a narrow forehead. Pictures were drawn of the female accomplice of the man in the grey suit, both of them sitting in a grey Winton car.

  We began to hear stories of pressure. The almost mythical multimillionaire founder of the Weiss-Straus enterprises had appeared in the office of State’s Attorney Horn. He had come down with Judge Wagner. The magnate had asked pointedly about the progress of the investigation. For though the slain boy had been only remotely related to the Straus clan, there were among his classmates two of Weiss’s favourite grandsons. Were they safe? Were any children in Chicago safe as long as this monster remained uncaught, unknown? An editorial of the same tenor appeared in our own paper and in the Post.

  Suddenly, police raids were taking place. Flophouses were combed, derelicts were picked up. Police Chief Schramm came back into the headlines by announcing that he had dropped the ransom theory and now favoured the pervert theory. ROUND UP ALL DEPRAVED, we headlined. Petty ex-convicts, floaters, queers were brought into the stations by the score, and we went and looked at them in the sour-smelling Canal Street lockup, the restless little men with puffy faces, the whisperers, the morons, as we called them. How many were kicked around, battered, abused? Who knew? Who cared?