Calamity Town

“Jim.” Jim glanced at him and then away. ”Did you really plan to poison Nora?”

Jim did not even indicate that he had heard the question.

“You know, Jim, often when a man is guilty of a crime, he’s much better off telling the truth to his lawyer and friends than keeping quiet. And when he’s not guilty, it’s actually criminal to keep quiet. It’s a crime against himself.”

Jim said nothing.

“How do you expect your family and friends to help you when you won’t help yourself?”

Jim’s lips moved.

“What did you say, Jim?”

“Nothing.”

“As a matter of fact, in this case,” said Ellery briskly, “your crime of silence isn’t directed half so much against yourself as it is against your wife and the child that’s coming. How can you be so far gone in stupidity or listlessness that you’d drag them down with you, too?”

“Don’t say that!” said Jim hoarsely. ”Get out of here! I didn’t ask you to come! I didn’t ask Judge Martin to defend me! I didn’t ask for anything! I just want to be let alone!”

“Is that,” asked Ellery, “what you want me to tell Nora?”

There was such misery in Jim’s eyes as he sat, panting, on the edge of his cell bunk that Ellery went to the door and called Planetsky.

All the signs. Cowardice. Shame. Self-pity . . . But that other thing, the stubbornness, the refusal to talk about anything, as if in the mere act of self-expression there were danger . . . 

As Ellery followed the guard down the eye-studded corridor, a cell exploded in his brain with a great and disproportionate burst of light. He actually stopped walking, causing old Planetsky to turn and look at him in surprise. But then he shook his head and strode on again. He’d almost had it that time?by sheer divination. Maybe the next time . . .

* * *

Pat drew a deep breath outside the frosted-glass door on the second floor of the County Courthouse, tried to see her reflection, poked nervously at her mink hat, tried out a smile or two, not too successfully, and then went in.

Miss Billcox looked as if she were seeing a ghost.

“Is the Prosecutor in, Billy?” murmured Pat.

“I’ll . . . see, Miss Wright,” said Miss Billcox, and fled.

Carter Bradford came out to her himself, in a hurry.

“Come in, Pat.” He looked tired and astonished. He stood aside to let her pass, and as she passed, she heard his uneven breathing. O Lord, she thought. Maybe. Maybe it isn’t too late.

“Working?” His desk was covered with legal papers.

“Yes, Pat.” He went around his desk to stand behind it. One sheaf of bound papers lay open?he closed it surreptitiously and kept his hand on it as he nodded toward a leather chair. Pat sat down and crossed her knees.

“Well,” said Pat, looking around, “the old office?I mean the new office?doesn’t seem to have changed, Cart.”

“About the only thing that hasn’t.”

“You needn’t be so careful about that legal paper,” smiled Pat. ”I haven’t got X-ray eyes.”

He flushed and removed his hand.

“There isn’t a shred of Mata Hari in my makeup.”

“I’m nor?” Cart began angrily. Then he pushed his fingers through his hair in the old, old gesture. ”Here we are, scrapping again. Pat, you look simply delicious.”

“It’s nice of you to say so,” sighed Pat, “when I really am beginning to look my age.”

“Look your age! Why, you’re?” Cart swallowed hard. Then he said, as angrily as before: “I’ve missed you like hell.”

Pat said rigidly: “I suppose I’ve missed you, too.” Oh, dear! That wasn’t what she had meant to say at all. But it was hard, facing him this way, alone in a room together for the first time in so long?hard to keep from feeling . . . feelings.

“I dream about you,” said Cart with a self-conscious laugh. ”Isn’t that silly?”

“Now, Cart, you know perfectly well you’re just saying that to be polite. People don’t dream about people. I mean in the way you mean. They dream about animals with long noses.”

“Maybe it’s just before I drop off.” He shook his head. ”Dreaming or not dreaming, it’s always the same. Your face. I don’t know why. It’s not such a wonderful face. The nose is wrong, and your mouth’s wider than Carmel’s, and you’ve got that ridiculous way of looking at people side-wise, like a parrot?”

And she was in his arms, and it was just like a spy drama, except that she hadn’t planned the script exactly this way. This was to come after?as a reward to Cart for being a sweet, obliging, self- sacrificing boy. She hadn’t thought of herself at all, assuming regal stardom. Certainly this pounding of her heart wasn’t in the plot?not with Jim caged in a cell six stories above her head and Nora lying in bed across town trying to hold on to something.

His lips were on hers, and he was pressing, pressing.

“Cart. No. Not yet.” She pushed. ”Darling. Please?”

“You called me darling! Damn it, Pat, how could you play around with me all these months, shoving that Smith fellow in my face?”

“Cart,” moaned Pat, “I want to talk to you . . . first.”

“I’m sick of talk! Pat, I want you so blamed much?” He kissed her mouth; he kissed the tip of her nose.

“I want to talk to you about Jim, Cart!” cried Pat desperately.

She felt him go cold in one spasm.

He let her go and walked to the wall with the windows that overlooked the Courthouse plaza, to stare out without seeing anything?cars or people or trees or Wrightsville’s gray-wash sky.

“What about Jim?” he asked in a flat voice.

“Cart, look at me!” Pat begged.

He turned around. ”I can’t do it.”

“Can’t look at me? You are!”

“Can’t withdraw from the case. That’s why you came here today, isn’t it?to ask me?”

Pat sat down again, fumbling for her lipstick. Her lips. Blobbed. Kiss. Her hands were shaking, so she snapped the bag shut. ”Yes,” she said, very low. ”More than that. I wanted you to resign the Prosecutor’s office and come over to Jim’s defense. Like Judge Eli Martin.”

Cart was silent for so long that Pat had to look up at him. He was staring at her with an intense bitterness.

But when he spoke, it was with gentleness. ”You can’t be serious. The Judge is an old man, your father’s closest friend. And he wouldn’t have been able to sit on this case, anyway. But I was elected to this office only a short time ago. I took an oath that means something to me. I hate to sound like some stuffed shirt of a politician looking for votes?”

“Oh, but you do!” flared Pat.

“If Jim’s innocent, he’ll go free. If he’s guilty?You wouldn’t want him to go free if he’s guilty, would you?”

“He’s not guilty!”

“That’s something the jury will have to decide.”

“You’ve decided already! In your own mind, you’ve condemned him to death!”

“Dakin and I have had to collect the facts, Pat. We’ve had to. Don’t you understand that? Our personal feelings can’t interfere. We both feel awful about this thing . . . ”

Pat was near tears now and angry with herself for showing it. ”Doesn’t it mean anything to you that Nora’s whole life is tied up in this ‘thing,’ as you call it? That there’s a baby coming? I know the trial can’t be stopped, but I