The image returned. He was in the jail. They had him. Two huge dicks with rubber truncheons. He bent over, and they delivered the blows. He took all the blows, on his shoulders, on his ass. But he kept silent. They could never prove anything on him. He was the master criminal and they knew they had him, but they could never prove it on him! What a guy! At last they had to let him go. They followed him, the stupes, as though he would lead them to his gang. He gave them the slip. He got to his headquarters, in the basement hideout, and now he would take care of that rat, Judd. A couple of his strong-arm men brought in Judd and hurled him on the floor. Leaving his goddam glasses!
Artie threw the bow and arrow on Billy’s bed. He shook Billy’s piggy-bank—the hell with it—and flung it down. From Billy’s secret store of marbles he selected a couple of aggies, prize ones, milky, translucent, slipping them into his pants pocket.
With Judd lying prostrate at his feet, in the hidden cellar headquarters, Artie arose to give judgment. He stretched out his arm. The surge of power was in him. He pointed his finger downward at the quivering traitor. It is my will that you cease to exist. And the power passed like unseen lightning through the form of Judd, and life was gone from him.
Or else, take him with the pistol in his back to the pier, maybe late tonight. You see, Judd, this makes everything perfect. You have to agree, this is the perfect solution and therefore I am obliged to carry it out. That would be slick, using Judd’s own crappo philosophy on him. Judd would agree—they had found his glasses, they would find his body floating in the lake, a suicide. Q.E.D.
Suddenly Artie felt the fear. The fear, the heebie-jeebies, the unbearable shrieking thing coming up in him—he’d snap! Someone—to be with someone, to keep him from— Not Judd. He tried to call Willie Weiss, but Willie wasn’t home. Piling out of the house, Artie strode across the street, passed right against the Kessler place. The lawn was clear; all the reporters were gone. But police cars were still there. How would it be to ride in one of those Marmons, the siren blowing, a big cop on each side of you, while already you had the feeling of their truncheons across your naked back?
Artie forced himself away, circled back to his own house. His brother Lewis’s Franklin was in the driveway. Go screw yourself, Lewis! Behind the wheel, Artie felt somewhat easier. He swung the car down Hyde Park Boulevard. Not to Myra’s house—screw Myra . . . string bean with her long stringy fingers, she gave you the jitters. Halfway across the Ingleside intersection, he swung the car violently into a left turn, barely missing a flivver and causing a couple of old ladies who were crossing the street to squawk and scramble exactly like hens. Artie laughed out loud, feeling better as he braked in front of Ruth’s house.
She was exactly the one. He hadn’t called her in a month. But she was the one, with her round face, milky and smooth as an aggie. Have Ruthie sitting here beside him as he coasted out by the lake. Tell her a big story. She swallowed everything. Like the bootlegger act. The time he shot a hole in a shirt and wore it, showing her the hole, telling how he went bootlegging for the kick of it, and had to shoot it out with some hijackers. As if to prove she never believed the story, she would always ask how his bootlegging was getting along. But she was one of those who swallowed it. He’d tell her now that it was he who had kidnaped the Kessler kid! “Oh, yes, uh-huh,” she would say, with her serious eyes fixed on his, while keeping a you-can’t-fool-me-again note in her voice.
Looking in, through the window of her father’s drugstore, Artie could see that Ruth wasn’t downstairs. Their flat was on the second floor. He sounded the horn. Three, four times. Finally her mother appeared at the window over the store. The old lady went away, and then Ruth appeared. Artie blew again.
She pulled up the window. “Artie, is that nice?” she said, not too reproachfully. “Are you too lazy to get out and ring the bell?”
“Hey, come on down,” he said. “I’ve got something to tell you.”
“Well, you may come up if you wish.”
“Come on down.”
People were beginning to get interested. Ruth closed the window, and a moment later came out of the hallway, with an air of pique.
She looked good enough to eat. Her round, soft face had a glow, and her reddish hair glowed, drawn back from her forehead under a green velvet band, and fluffed out behind.
“Hey, come on for a ride,” Artie said.
“Artie, you’re cuckoo. I can’t go now.”
“Sure. Come on.” He gave her the boyish grin. “I feel lonesome.”
“What’s happened to all your girls?”
“Oh, I got sick of the whole bunch of them. I thought of you.”
“Well, that’s not very complimentary. The bottom of the list.”
He blew the horn. “Come on.”
“I can’t. I’m helping Mother. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Sure you can. Come on. I’ll buy you a beer.”
“No, really I can’t just now,” she said in that way girls have, when you know damn well they can. He let his face fall, moody, serious. It worked. She asked, “Is anything wrong, Artie?”
It was the shock of that thing in his block, he said, that horrible thing. Right across from his house. It could have been his own kid brother Billy!
“I know,” Ruth sympathized. “It’s ghastly. Such an incredible, fiendish thing.” For a moment, he had her. But then she shook her head and said, “I really do have to go upstairs. But another day, if you like, Artie. Only you should give a girl more notice.”
Hell with her. She was a wet rag. He slammed the car into gear and drove away, glad of the surprised, almost dismayed look on her face as he left her there on the sidewalk.
Artie pulled up at the frat, ran in, told the big news, talking a mile a minute about the crime, his brother, the ransom, then suddenly, in that way he had, shifting his attention to a bridge game.
LEAVING TOM DALY, I decided to stop at the frat for supper before I went over to see Ruth; I suppose I wanted to display myself and collect glory for my scoop. A bridge game was in progress in the lounge, and Artie was pulling his usual act of jumping from one side to another, handing out advice.
I tossed the paper onto the bridge table. “Hear about the big story? Kid got murdered.” And to Artie: “Say, he lived right near your house.”
“They’ve got my whole street blocked off!” Artie cried. “You never saw so many cops! I was just telling everybody—”
“Blocked off? I was just there,” I said, irked by his habit of exaggeration. “Didn’t run into any street blocks.”
The fellows were exclaiming over the news. “You on this story, Sid?” Milt Lewis asked with awe.
“. . . identified by a Globe reporter,” Raphael Goetz read out loud.
I admitted I was the reporter who had identified the boy. They whistled.
“Say! Some scoop!” Artie stared at me, mouth agape. Then he flung his arm around me, patting my back. “Sonnyboy Silver, the hot-shot reporter! Fellows! We have a star reporter in our midst! The Alpha Beta is really getting there!” He seized the paper, glanced at it, waved it. “Hey! If not for Sid’s identifying him, it says they were just going to pay the ransom! Boy!”
He gazed at me so intently, his expression so strange that I clearly remembered the moment. “It was beginner’s luck,” I said. “I just happened to get sent out—”
Artie was avid with questions. How had the poor kid looked? Any marks on him? Any clues? Sometimes the cops made the papers hold back certain information, to trap the criminals. What was the inside story?
His excitement over the case seemed perfectly natural. Artie was a notorious detective-story addict. It