by Meyer Levin
Running the few blocks to the County Building, I felt I was watched by Judd’s eyes, morose, lustrous, unblinking. I stepped into the cigar store, and phoned Tom in the press room. He came down. We huddled in a corner, while I showed him the two samples.
“Kid, if that bird hangs, you did it!” he said, staring at the evidence.
Could we hold this till tomorrow, for our paper? We decided it was too important. We had to inform Horn.
But upstairs, the offices were empty. They had all gone out to dinner, taking the suspects with them. Nobody knew just where.
This was the famous dinner at the Red Star Inn, near Lincoln Park, an old-style eating place, renowned for its huge schnitzels, apfelkuchen, and other German specialities. If there was a moment when Artie and Judd savoured their adventure, I suppose it was at the time of this dinner. For the sense that they had sought to achieve, the sense of power and superiority in knowing what others did not know, was theirs, here, and together, in the presence of baffled authority itself.
This was the thrill, vibrating in the tension of their still undecided fate. They were so far the masters, and yet, like acrobats who might slip before getting off the wire, they were under a delicious suspense.
Until the cars drew up they could not know they would be together. It was a thought of Horn’s, to confront them in this way, and perhaps catch something in an unguarded moment of surprise and pleasure.
Horn’s own car, with Judd, pulled up first, and Judd in a worldly manner expertized about the restaurant, remarking that his family always had a German cook at home. Just then the second car drove up, and Swasey emerged with Artie. Seeing each other, the boys aluted with hand waves, Artie calling, “Hey! When did they let you out?”
“I’m joining the staff!” Judd retorted.
For the large party, two tables were put together at the end of the main room. The boys were only a few seats apart, with Padua and Horn between them. There was beer to be had at the Red Star, and a good deal of jesting took place about protection and payoff, as the State’s Attorney and his men permitted themselves to indulge.
It might, indeed, have been construed as a farewell party, a send off with no hard feelings. The boys had endured twenty-four hours of examination. Since Artie had confessed his drunken afternoon and the pickup ride, and since their stories jibed, what could they be held for?
But Horn, Padua, Czewicki, Swasey, and the squad of detectives might also have been exulting inwardly. For newspapers had been kept from the boys. They did not know that Judd’s intimate letter had become public. They did not know that they were being looked at with the peculiar contemptuous mirthfulness of bull-showy men for a pair of perverts. No one actually had said, “Watch the fun,” but holding that knowledge key was like having a special pair of glasses through which you could see the punks, nude.
Only you couldn’t see anything. These rich kids had smooth manners that carried them through. Judd was perhaps a bit jumpy, hardly taking his eyes off Artie, but if you didn’t know about that letter, you could put it down to apprehensiveness rather than passion.
Judd was giving his order to the waiter in German, with minute instructions about the seasoning, and all listened, admiringly. Czewicki asked how many languages was it that Judd knew, and Judd replied fourteen, although a few were really only dialects.
“You must be a superman,” Padua remarked, and Judd quietly responded, that wouldn’t exactly be the qualification, according to Nietzsche.
Padua had got in a few hours at the library, reading up on Nietzsche. After all, he said, wasn’t the superman definable as someone with extraordinary abilities? No, Judd said, a superman had to be extraordinary in every way.
Well, how was a superman recognized? Did Judd know any supermen? Was Napoleon a superman?
No, Judd replied. Napoleon had been defeated, and that in itself automatically eliminated him, because a superman could never be defeated.
“You mean, he never makes mistakes?” Padua said.
Judd was apparently too eager to expound his views to catch the echoing word. A superman was really an ideal, he said – what Nietzsche meant was a man who was more than man. In fact you couldn’t precisely translate the word Übermensch – you had to read Nietzsche in the original to understand the concept.
But, Padua persisted, couldn’t a person strive to be a superman, to act like one?
The rest of the men had fallen silent, watching the duel. Yes, Judd conceded, people could strive to exceed themselves, to live by a greater measure of life, the measure of the Übermensch.
Well, for such people, Padua probed, what happened to the laws? If the law said you could drive fifty miles an hour but you wanted to be an Übermensch and drive a hundred miles an hour, who was to decide? Did the ordinary laws of ordinary people apply to the superman or were supermen exempt?
Smilingly, Artie backed up Judd’s explanation. Naturally, a superman would have to live by his own laws – all the great men of the world had made their own laws. Alexander the Great, and Caligula, and Napoleon too had made new laws.
Judd had suddenly grown quiet; he was studying Padua.
But those people were all rulers, Padua argued. They were trying to make new sets of laws for all men to follow. But a superman who was not a ruler, just a citizen – he would still have a law unto himself that would permit him to do anything he wanted, even things that were crimes for other people. Wasn’t that the idea?
“Sure,” Artie began. But Judd cut in; the trap had become too obvious. The Nietzschean idea was only an abstraction, Judd said. You couldn’t apply it in practice because what Nietzsche meant was really for all men to strive to free their spirits, to become greater than they were. First, there had to come naturally gifted individuals, and they might stimulate ordinary men, but eventually there would have to be a society of supermen, a whole nation to try to live by that idea.
“I guess we haven’t got there yet,” Horn said.
The food came then, on huge thick platters. Padua and Judd were staring at each other, smiling as at the end of a round with no one hurt.
After a while, Padua made another try. He remarked about Judd and Artie having gone to the University of Michigan together. They’d really been pretty close friends for several years, then?
Sure, Artie said. He had superintended Judd’s loss of virginity; and he went on to tell about whorehouse escapades in Detroit. Czewicki suddenly made a remark about Oscar Wilde. “You know he was married and had two children. I never realized you could have it both ways.”
Judd coolly informed him that among the Greeks it was quite the custom for married men to maintain their favourite boys.
Horn declared he had learned all he wanted to know about perverts going through the dragnet in this investigation. Artie brightly recalled – hadn’t a member of the police force been caught up in the net, a respectable married man?
Anyway, said Swasey, it was pretty soft for a couple of college boys to have their own car, to run around chasing gash.
There was clinical talk about pick-up techniques. And then: “Now, about those girls the other night, you mean they really didn’t come across?” And Peterson offered advice on how to make them come across.
From McNamara came a throaty gurgle. “Anyway, if they don’t, you can always help each other out.”
Artie laughed with the rest of the crowd. Judd, after an instant, laughed as though he had just caught on.
There was a lull in the conversation. Someone asked for more beer.
It was said that if not for our typewriter evidence, the boys might, that evening, have been released. One other bit of evidence was to come that night, but it was tenuous, and I suppose, had the boys been released, the chauffeur would never even have offered his story.
But Emil had been troubled ever since he had read Judd’s alibi in the morning papers. Judd claimed to have been riding in his car all that afternoon and evening. Emil thought about the matter, driving home after takin
g Mr. Steiner down to his office. In the kitchen, Emil found the three servants, indignant over what was in the papers, and angry because the police had pawed through the house.
Emil didn’t say anything in front of them. But he carried the Examiner upstairs to his apartment over the garage, and he discussed the story with his wife. Of course Judd couldn’t have been connected with the crime, but correct is correct. Now, a week ago Wednesday -
She joined his thought at once. “That was my dentist day. Remember, I spoke to you downstairs. Judd was with you.”
They remembered well, because Emil had told her a thousand times never to interrupt when he was talking to one of the Steiners.
“But I needed the dentist money.”
Then Emil came out with what bothered him. Just then, young Steiner had been telling him the brakes of the Stutz needed adjustment. “He left his Stutz in the garage. He didn’t have it out at all that day.”
“Well, he went with that Artie Straus chasing girls. They must have had some other car.”
“Yes, but here he told the police he was in his Stutz. And at first Artie wouldn’t even admit he was with him.”
“It’s none of our business.”
Another thing: Artie and Judd, the next day – that was Thursday, about noon – had come around the driveway with a Willys. They had been washing it. He had offered to help clean the Willys – there were some dark spots in the rear, wine spots they said – and Artie had refused his help, saying they were all through anyway.
“Well, that would explain it,” she said. “They borrowed some other car.”
Yet Emil kept puzzling. By nightfall he felt it was his duty to mention the matter to the police.
“You want to make a fool of yourself?” his wife argued. “These people are good to us…”
By evening, after the boys had been held more than twenty-four hours, each family was assembled. At the Steiners, there were Judd’s aunt and uncle, his brother, his father. Max was for sending down a lawyer and getting the kid out, before any more dirty stuff, like that letter, was spilled.
Judd’s father was rather silent. He had a way of being present in a discussion without speaking, except to make summaries – not exactly decisions, but summaries that left only one possible decision.
But Aunt Bertha was indignant. The boy had spent the night in jail. What was he getting to eat? Had he had a chance even to change his clothes?
“We can see that he is well treated,” his father said. “But when the authorities are satisfied the boys don’t know anything, they will let them go.”
At the Straus mansion, Artie’s uncle Gerald was taking charge. He was older than Artie’s father, and was the most decisive character among the Straus brothers – a businessman who operated in spectacular flashes.
Arriving with Edgar Feldscher, he demanded action. “What’s Horn holding him for? Is he arrested? If not, let’s get him out.” Feldscher counselled going easy. After all, if Horn started to dig behind that letter… The men’s voices dropped, as though a shade were drawn between them and the women.
Finally, after phoning back and forth between the two families, the Steiner men came to the Strauses. The two brothers, Max and James, went aside. It was Max who said, “We’ve got to look at the thing realistically. We have to consider all the possibilities, even the worst.”
For an instant, their eyes admitted it to each other. They were of about the same age. To each, the brother was still “the kid”, some seven years younger. Max tried now to make a practical suggestion. Maybe the simplest thing would even be, since the boys couldn’t produce those two girls they had picked up – it shouldn’t be impossible to dig up a couple of girls.
James shook his head – too risky.
“I just thought we ought to be prepared for everything. Those cops will stop at nothing to get off the hook on this case.”
That was why somebody ought to go downtown, James said. Just to remind them who the boys were.
And so the two fathers and Uncle Gerald Straus went downtown. Emil drove them to the County Building.
The whole press gang was still waiting around for the boys to be brought back from dinner when the three older men walked into the office.
We crowded around them, these men of millions who had come, we felt sure, to take their sons home. I looked at the two fathers with a dazed sense of my own power, for I held the proof of guilt in my pocket. How had they known so little of their sons! What did my own father know of me?
Judah Steiner, Sr., looked somehow so fatherly, so decent. The other, Randolph Straus, was of a pair with his brother Gerald – both of them more polished-appearing than Steiner, and colder in their manner.
Gerald Straus was the spokesman. “Now, boys, we have no information; you fellows know more than we do. We only came to see Mr. Horn.”
Healy, a staff assistant, explained that Mr. Horn was out to dinner. Yes, he was expected back at the office.
And the boys? Were they in jail? Or where?
They were probably having dinner with Mr. Horn. It was just a matter of getting all the information they could provide…
The mention of dinner with Mr. Horn somewhat surprised and mollified the men. “Naturally,” said Gerald Straus, “we want them to give every assistance they can in this horrible thing. You say they are in Mr. Horn’s personal custody?”
“Yes, he personally is responsible.”
Straus spoke again, choosing his words carefully. “Both families want Mr. Horn to keep the boys until he is fully satisfied that they know nothing that may have a bearing on this crime.”
“The minute he is satisfied,” Healy repeated, “they will be sent home.”
Steiner added that if the boys were going to be held any longer, perhaps it would be best to send down a change of linen, pyjamas.
“Why don’t you give us a ring a little later?” Healy suggested.
The men spoke a moment among themselves, then thanked him, and withdrew. We all followed them to the lift. Gerald Straus was again the spokesman. “Give us a break, gentleman. We want to help, but we also are concerned for our boys and for the family reputations. Some of you fellows have run some pretty damaging stuff about a couple of innocent boys. Now I know what you’re up against, too. But, gentlemen, remember we are pretty responsible families in this town.”
And so they departed.
Fifteen minutes later, the cavalcade arrived from the restaurant. Everyone seemed animated, friendly, but Horn laughingly steered the boys straight through the press crowd. Judd went into Padua ’s office; Artie went along with Swasey.
Tom had tried to stop Horn on the wing; now he strode to the corner door, knocked, and walked in. I followed. “We’ve got something,” Tom said. I put the material on Horn’s desk.
Horn’s short, jabby arms fell on the papers. An instant later, he buzzed for Healy, told him to fetch the original ransom note, and to keep his mouth shut. Of us, he demanded whether we could get hold of the boys who had been with Judd when he typed the law stuff? I said two of them were waiting for my call at the frat.
He nodded. “Get them down here.” His hands were clenching, unclenching. As he looked up, his eyes were glazed. “That dirty pair of fairies,” he muttered. “They had half my staff believing them.”
Tom made our request. Could this break be kept quiet, for the Globe?
Horn stood up, sympathetic. “Fellows, you’re helping me and I appreciate it. I’m going to see your paper gets credit for this.”
Padua brought Judd into the room. We were waved out. As I walked past him, Judd gave me a wary, inquiring look. In my excited state of mind, I imagined it asked if I were trying to do something against him.
Only the typewritten legal notes were in sight on Horn’s desk. Horn asked if he remembered typing this stuff at his house in the presence of several of his classmates? Then Judd saw himself using the portable. So they had him.
But it did not seem possible. He and Artie had proven t
hey were truly of another level; they were minds moving in a fourth dimension unreachable by these mundane police. He stared at his adversaries – Horn, who could say parlez-vous, and Padua, a slick Valentino.
And he began his last struggle, squirming and twisting to slip through their fingers. Yes, he recognized that this added bit of evidence made a link in a fantastic chain. But, he declared, it had not been his typewriter. One of the boys must have brought it along. Who? He couldn’t be sure. Probably Harry Marks. Where could he be reached? Well, he was the son of Gordon Marks of the Marks Stores.
“Call him,” Horn told Padua.
Harry Marks proved to be in Europe.
Horn’s eyes, held on Judd, shone with that unfocused metallic lustre. “You think you’re too clever for us,” he said. “Maybe you’re too clever for yourself.”
Then Judd was in a Marmon again, surrounded by squadmen, speeding once more toward his home, this time to search for the typewriter.
When they entered the house, Judd’s father came toward them with a relieved smile. But Judd spoke loudly. “Now it’s the ransom letter! They want to search the house to see if I’ve got the typewriter that typed the ransom letter!”
Judah Steiner, Sr., seemed not to comprehend. “Is everything all right?”
“Sure. This is quite an experience,” Judd called from the stairs.
Entering his room, he saw the ransacked desk and angrily began to sort his papers. McNamara seized more typewritten notes. Padua, in the doorway, asked, “Those the same batch?” They were. But no Corona was in sight.
The maid was hovering in the corridor. “Say, Miss” – Padua smiled at her – “have you seen Mr. Steiner’s portable typewriter recently?”
