"Don't let me keep you from your supper," said Marriott.
Archie smiled a wan smile.
"That's all right," he said. "It isn't much of a supper, and I ain't exactly hungry."
Archie grasped the bars above his head and leaned his breast against the door.
"Well, what do you think of it, Mr. Marriott?"
"I don't know, Archie."
"Looks as if I was the fall guy all right."
Marriott bit his lip.
"We have to put in our evidence in the morning, you know."
"Yes."
"And we must decide whether you're going on the stand or not."
"I'll leave it to you, Mr. Marriott."
Marriott thought a moment.
"What do you think about it?" he asked presently.
"I don't know. You see, I've got a record."
"Yes, but they already know you've been in prison."
"Sure, but my taking the stand would make the rap harder. That fellow Eades would tear me to pieces."
Marriott was silent.
"And then that old hixer on the jury, that wise guy up there in the corner." Archie shook his head in despair. "Every time he pikes me off, I know he's ready to hand it all to me."
"You mean Broadwell?"
"Yes. He's one of those church-members. That's a bad sign, a bad sign." Archie shook his head sadly. "No, it's a kangaroo all right, they're going to job me." Archie hung his head. "Of course, Mr.
Marriott, I know you've done your best. You're the only friend I got, and I wish--I wish there was some way for me to pay you. I can't promise you, like some of these guys, that I'll work and pay you when I get--" He looked up with a sadly humorous and appreciative smile. "Of course, I--"
"Don't, Archie!" said Marriott. "Don't talk that way. That part of it's all right. Cheer up, my boy, cheer up!" Marriott was trying so hard to cheer up himself. "We haven't played our hand yet; we'll give 'em a fight. There are higher courts, and there's always the governor."
Archie shook his head.
"Maybe you won't believe me, Mr. Marriott, but I'd rather go to the chair than take life down there. You don't know what that place is, Mr.
Marriott."
"No," said Marriott, "but I can imagine."
Then he changed his tone.
"We've plenty of time to talk about all that," he went on. "Now we must talk about to-morrow. Look here, Archie. Why can't you go on the stand and tell your whole story--just as you've told it to me a hundred times?
It convinced me the first time I heard it; maybe it would convince the jury. They'd see that you had cause to kill Kouka!"
"Cause!" exclaimed the boy. "Great God! After the way he hounded me--I should say so! Why, Mr. Marriott, he made me do it, he made me what I am. Don't you see that?"
"Of course I do. And why can't you tell them so?" Marriott was enthusiastic with his new hope.
"Oh, well," said Archie with no enthusiasm at all, "with you it's different. You look at things different; you can see things; you know there's some good in me, don't you?"
It was an appeal that touched Marriott, and yet he felt powerless to make the boy see how deeply it touched him.
"And then," Archie went on--he talked with an intense earnestness and he leaned so close that Marriott could smell the odor of coffee on his breath--"when I talk to you, I know somehow that--well--you believe me, and we're sitting down, just talking together with no one else around.
But there in that court-room, with all those people ready to tear my heart out and eat it, and the beak--Glassford, I mean--and the blokes in the box, and Eades ready to twist everything I say; well, what show have I got? You can see for yourself, Mr. Marriott."
Archie spread his hands wide to show the hopelessness of it all.
"Well, I think you'd better try, anyhow. Will you think it over?"
XVIII
Marriott heard the commotion as he entered the elevator the next morning, and as the cage ascended, the noise increased. He heard the click of heels, the scuff of damp soles on the marble, and then the growl of many men, angry, beside themselves, possessed by their lower natures. The chorus of rough voices had lost its human note and sunk to the ugly register of the brutish. Drawing nearer, he distinguished curses and desperate cries. And there in the half-light at the end of the long corridor, the crowd swayed this way and that, struggling, scrambling, fighting. Hats were knocked off and spun in the air; now and then an arm was lifted out of the mass; now and then a white fist was shaken above the huddle of heads. Two deputy sheriffs, Hersch and Cumrow, were flattened against the doors of the criminal court, their faces trickling with sweat, their waistcoats torn open; and they strained mightily. The crowd surged against them, threatening to press the breath out of their bodies. They paused, panting from their efforts, then tried again to force back the crowd, shouting:
"Get back there, damn you! Get back!"
Marriott slipped through a side door into the judge's chamber. The room was filled. Glassford, Eades, Lamborn, all the attaches of the court were there. Bentley, the sheriff, had flung up a window, and stood there fanning himself with his broad-brimmed hat, disregarding exposure, his breath floating in vapor out of the window. On the low leather lounge where Glassford took his naps sat Archie close beside Danner. When he saw Marriott a wan smile came to his white face.
"They tried to get at me!" The phrase seemed sufficient to him to explain it all, and at the same time to express his own surprise and consternation in it all.
"They tried to get at me!" Archie repeated in another tone, expressing another meaning, another sensation, a wholly different thought. The boy's lips were drawn tightly across his teeth; he shook with fear.
"They tried to get at me!" he repeated, in yet another tone.
Old Doctor Bitner, the jail physician, had come with a tumbler half-full of whisky and water.
"Here, Archie," he said, "try a sip of this. You'll be all right in a minute."
"He's collapsed," the physician whispered to Marriott, as Archie snatched the glass and gulped down the whisky, making a wry face, and shuddering as if the stuff sickened him.
"I'm all in, Mr. Marriott," said Archie. "I've gone to pieces. I'm down and out. It's no use." He hung his head, as if ashamed of his weakness.
"Well, you know, my boy, that we must begin. It's up to us now. Can you take the stand?"