“Not necessarily. I think we’re overreaching ourselves anyway with a plea of not guilty. If we lose out, it’ll mean the gas chamber for him. But if we change the plea to guilty in a lesser degree, we can maybe get him off with five or ten years.”
“And after we paid out two thousand?”
“Rolfe paid that. And he can afford to.”
“Nuts, Gil. You’re not going ethical on me, are you?”
“Hardly. But it’s not safe. She can’t be trusted. She might go on strike for more yet. She might even sell out to the prosecution and arrange to break down on her cross-examination. She might blackmail us by threatening to confess to the Bar Association.”
“Maybe you’re right at that. When you put it that way— Here, let’s have a snort on it. What else do you know?”
“Nothing much. Oh, I did pick up a choice little item on Judge Shackford. Do you know that in the privacy of his chambers—”
Gilbert Iles felt the cool balm of relief. He wasn’t becoming one of these prigs who prate about ethics. God, no. But it was one thing to sin casually against yourself, and quite another to be reminded of it—to know consciously that you had sinned and thereby saved your neck.
Talking Rolfe into the change of plea was another matter. It was only accomplished after lies had built an exceedingly vivid picture of the dear sweet old lady selling out on the witness stand and delivering Rolfe straight to the Death Row. Then there were officers to see and papers to file and the whole new strategy to go over minutely with Tom Andrews.
He phoned Linda that he wouldn’t be home, dined on sandwiches and spiked coffee in the office, and finally got home at eleven too tired to do more than hang up his clothes, brush his teeth, and bestow one half-conscious kiss on his wife before his eyes closed.
He woke up the next morning feeling badly puzzled, and wondered what he was puzzled about. It wasn’t until about 10:30, in the midst of a conference with a client, that the worry struck him clearly. He hadn’t had time to do a thing yesterday except the surely quite unsinful business of abandoning the perjured witness. And yet no silvery tail had coiled about his throat at midnight.
He got rid of the client as soon as he decently could. Then, alone in his office, he cleared his throat and said, “Sriberdegibit!”
The wavering outline of the demon sat tailor-wise on his desk and said, “Hi!”
“You,” said Gilbert Iles, “are a fake. You and your curse and your tail. Poo, sir, to you!”
Sriberdegibit twanged at his tusk. His tail twitched hungrily. “You don’t believe I’m really going to attend to you? Ha!”
“I certainly don’t. The whole thing’s a fraud. I didn’t have time yesterday to work in a single sin. And here I am, safe and sound.”
“You just underrate yourself,” said the demon not unkindly. “Remember spreading scandal about Judge Shackford? That’s getting around nicely, and it’s going to cost him the next election. That’ll do for one day.”
“Oh. I hadn’t thought of it as— Oh— But look, Srib. We’ve got to get this clear. What constitutes—” He broke off and answered the buzzer.
It was Miss Krumpig. “Mr. Andrews wants you to go over the brief on appeal in the Irving case. Shall I bring it in now, or do you have a conference? I thought I heard voices.”
“Bring it in. I was just . . . ah . . . just rehearsing a speech.” He clicked off.
“Well now,” said Sriberdegibit. “As to what constitutes—”
“Begone,” lies interrupted hastily as the door opened.
Miss Krumpig listened and frowned as she entered. “That’s a funny noise. Sort of a plaintive twanging like. It’s dying away now—”
She put the rough draft of the brief on his desk. As usual, she leaned over more and nearer than there was any good reason to. She had changed to a subtler scent and had discovered a blouse with the maximum combination of respectability and visibility.
Anyone employing Miss Krumpig should have had no trouble at all in contriving a sin a day.
“Will that be all now, Mr. lies?”
He thought of Linda and of the curse of a monogamous temperament. “No,” he said firmly. “I’ll think of something else.” Miss Krumpig left the room trying to figure that one out.
For a week the curse took care of itself, with very little help from Gilbert Iles. He thought of a few sins for himself; but it is not easy to sin when your love for your wife and your stimulated professional conscience block the two simplest avenues. Saturday night he did manage to cheat undetected in the usual poker game and wound up with thirty-one ill-gotten dollars—which once the deadline was passed he proceeded to spend on a magnificent binge for the bunch of them. Another night he visited a curious dive that he had often heard rumors of, something in the nature of the more infamous spots for tourists in Havana. It was the one way of committing a sensual sin without infidelity to Linda. It was also a painful bore.
The other days, the days when he was too busy or too uninventive to achieve what he thought a sin, turned out all right, too. Like the day when the girl in the restaurant gave him change for a ten out of his five. He noticed the mistake and accepted the money as a gift from the gods, thinking nothing more of it. But Sriberdegibit was sinfully delighted when the girl had to make up the difference, couldn’t do it, and lost her job.
Then there was the pedestrian that he playfully scared, causing a heart attack. There was the boon companion whom he encouraged in a night’s carousing, knowing subconsciously that it meant starvation rations for his children. There was the perfectly casual lie with which he got out of jury duty—a sin, Sriberdegibit explained, against the State as representing his fellow man.
But these
