Marriott owned that he had not.
"In the morning," Archie went on, "they lagged us and we ran--they began to shoot, and--"
He stopped.
"Well," he said very quietly. "I had my rod, and barked at Kouka. I got him."
Marriott wished that he could see Archie's face. It was not so dim in there as it had been, or so it seemed to Marriott, for his eyes had accommodated themselves to the gloom, but he could not read Archie's expression. He waited for him to go on. He was intensely interested now in the human side of the question; the legal side might wait. He longed to put a dozen questions to Archie, but he dared not; he felt that he could not profane this soul that had erred and gone astray, by prying out its secrets; he was conscious only of a great pity. He thought he might ask Archie if he had shot, aimed, intentionally; he wished to know just what had been in the boy's heart at that moment: then he had a great fear that Archie might tell him. But Archie was speaking again.
"Say, Mr. Marriott," he said, "could you go out to my home and get me some clothes? I want to make as good a front as I can when I go into court."
"Your clothes seem pretty good; they look new. They gave them to you, I suppose, at the penitentiary?"
Archie laughed.
"I'd look like a jay in them stir clothes," he said. "These--well, these ain't mine," he added simply. "But get me a shirt, if you can, and a collar and--a tie--a blue one. And say, if you can, get word to the folks--tell 'em not to worry. And if you can find Gus, tell her to come down. You know."
Marriott went out into the street, glad of the sunlight, the air, the bustle of normal life. And yet, as he analyzed his sensations, he was surprised to note that the whole affair had lacked the sense of tragedy he had expected; it all seemed natural and commonplace enough. Archie was the same boy he had known before. The murder was but an incident in Archie's life, that was all, just as his own sins and follies and mistakes were incidents that usually appeared to be necessary and unavoidable--incidents he could always abundantly account for and palliate and excuse and justify. Sometimes it seemed that even good grew out of them. Sometimes! Yes, always, he felt, else were the universe wrong. And after all--where was the difference between sins?
What made one greater than another? Wherein was the murder Archie had done worse than the unkind word he, Gordon Marriott, had spoken that morning? But Marriott put this phase of the question aside, and tried to trace Archie's deed back to its first cause. As he did this, he became fascinated with the speculation, and his heart beat fast as he thought that if he could present the case to a jury in all its clarity and truth--perhaps--perhaps--
VII
Archie did not have his hearing the next morning. The newspapers said "the State" was not ready, which meant that Allen, the prosecutor, and the police were not ready. Quinn and Allen had conferences. They felt it to be their duty to have Archie put to death if possible, and they were undecided as to which case would the better insure this result.
Allen found legal difficulties; there was a question whether or not the murder of Kouka had been murder in the first degree. Hence he wished to have Bridget Flanagan identify Archie.
Several days elapsed, and then one morning, Bentley, the sheriff, brought Bridget Flanagan to the Central Police Station in a carriage.
Allen and Cleary and Quinn, with several officers and reporters, were waiting to witness her confrontation of Archie.
The old woman was dressed in black; she wore a black shawl and a black bonnet, but these had faded independently of each other, so that each was now of its own dingy shade. The dress had a brown cast, the shawl a tone of green, the bonnet was dusty and graying, and the black veil that was tightly bound about her brow, like the band of a nun, had been empurpled in the process of decay. She leaned heavily on Bentley, tottering in her weakness, now and then lifting her arms with a wild, nervous gesture. Bentley's huge, disproportionate bulk moved uncertainly beside her, lurching this way and that, as if he feared to step on her feet or her ancient gown, finding it difficult, at arm's length, to support and guide her. But at last he got her to a chair.
At the edge of the purplish veil bound across the hairless brows, a strip of adhesive plaster showed. The old woman wearily closed the eyes that had gazed on the horrors of the tragedy; her mouth moved in senile spasms. Now and then she mumbled little prayers that sounded like oaths; and raised to her lips the little ball into which she had wadded her handkerchief. And she sat there, her palsied head shaking disparaging negatives. The police, the detectives, the prosecutor, the reporters looked on. They said nothing for a long time.
Cleary, trying to speak with an exaggerated tenderness, finally said:
"Miss Flanagan, we hate to trouble you, but we won't keep you long. We think we have the man who killed your dear sister--we'd like to have you see him--"
The old woman started, tried to get up, sank back, made a strange noise in her throat, pushed out her hands toward Cleary as if to repulse him and his suggestion, then clasped her hands, wrung them, closed her eyes, swayed to and fro in her chair and moaned, ejaculating the little prayers that sounded like oaths. Cleary waited. Quinn brought a glass of water. Presently the old woman grew calm again; after a while Cleary renewed his suggestion. The old woman continued to moan. Cleary whispered to two policemen and they left the room. The policemen were gone what seemed a long time, but at last they appeared in the doorway, and between them, looking expectantly about him, was Archie Koerner.
The policemen led him into the room, the group made way, they halted before the old woman. Cleary advanced.
"Miss Flanagan," he said very gently, standing beside her, and bending assiduously, "Miss Flanagan, will you please take a look now, and tell us--if you ever saw this man before, if he is the man who--"
Wearily, slowly, the old woman raised her blue eyelids; and then she shuddered, started, seemed to have a sudden access of strength, got to her feet and cried out:
"Oh, my poor sister! my poor sister! You kilt her! You kilt her!"
Then she sank to her knees and collapsed on the floor. Bentley ran across the room, brought a glass of water, and stood uncertainly, awkwardly about, while the others bore the old woman to a couch, stretched her out, threw up a window, began to fan her with newspapers, with hats, anything. Some one took the water from the sheriff, pressed the glass to the old woman's lips; it clicked against her teeth.
Then Cleary, Quinn, Bentley, the policemen, the detectives, the reporters, looked at one another and smiled, Cleary bent over the old woman.
"That's all, Miss Flanagan. You needn't worry any more. We're sorry we had to trouble you, but the law, you know, and our duty--"
He repeated the words "law" and "duty" several times. Meanwhile Archie stood there, between the two policemen. He looked about him, at the men in the room, at the old woman stretched on the lounge; finally his gaze fastened on Cleary, and his lips slowly curled in a sneer, and his face hardened into an expression of utter scorn.
"Take him down!" shouted Cleary angrily.
The reporters rushed out. An hour later the extras were on the streets, announcing the complete and positive identification of Archie Koerner by Bridget Flanagan.
"The hardened prisoner," the reports said, "stood and sneered while the old woman confronted him. The police have not known so desperate a character in years."
VIII
Marriott had attended to all of Archie's commissions, save one--that of telling Gusta to go to him. He had not done this because he did not know where to find her. But Gusta went herself, just as she seemed to do most things in life, because she could not help doing them, because something impelled, forced her to do them,--some power that made sport of her, using a dozen agencies, forces hereditary, economic, social, moral, all sorts--driving her this way and that. She had read of the murder, and then, with horror, of Archie's arrest. She did not know he was out of prison until she heard that he was in prison again. She began to calculate the time that had flowed by so swiftly, making such changes in her life. Her first impulse was to go to him, but now she feared the police. She recalled her former visits, that first Sunday at the workhouse, on which she had thought herself so sad, whereas she had not begun to learn what sorrow was. She recalled the day in the police station a year before, and remembered the policeman who had held her arm so suggestively. She read the newspapers eagerly, absorbed every detail, her heart sinking lower than it had ever gone before. When she read that Marriott was to defend Archie, she allowed herself to hope.
The next day she read an account of the identification of Archie by the surviving Flanagan sister, and then, when hope was gone, she could resist no longer the impulse to go to him.
She paused again at the door of the sergeant's room, her heart beating painfully with the fear that showed itself in little white spots on each side of her nostrils; then the timid parleying with the officers, the delay, the suspicion, the opposition, the reluctance, until an officer in uniform took her in charge, led her down the iron stairway to the basement, and had the turnkey open the prison doors. Archie came to the bars, and peered purblindly into the gloom. And Gusta went close now, closer than she had ever gone before; the bars had no longer the old meaning for her, they had no longer their old repulsion, and she looked at Archie no more with the old feeling of reproach and moral superiority. In fact, she judged no more; sin had healed her of such faults as self-satisfaction and moral complacency; it had softened and instructed her, and in its great kindness revealed to her her own relation to all who sin, so that she came now with nothing but compassion, sympathy and love. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.
"Oh, Archie!" she said. "Oh, Archie!"
Archie looked at her and at the officers. Gusta was oblivious; she put her face to the greasy bars, and pressed her lips mutely between them.
Archie, who did not like to cry before an officer and before the other prisoners, struggled hard. Then he kissed her, coldly.
"Oh, Archie, Archie!" was all she could say, putting all her anguish, her distress, her sorrow, her impotent desire to help into the varying inflections of her tone.
"Oh, Archie! Archie! _Archie!_"
She spoke his name this last time as if she must find relief by wringing her whole soul into it. Then she stood, biting her lip as if to stop its quivering. Archie, on his part, looked at her a moment, then at the floor.
"Say you didn't do it, Archie."
"Do what?"
"You know--"
"You mean Kouka?"
"Oh, no," she said, impatient with the question.
"That Flanagan job?"
She nodded rapidly.