The Just And The Unjust Read online

  'O.K.,' said Abner grudgingly. 'I'll come.'

  There could be no arguing with the need to work fast; for, of course, Marty exceeded his powers when he held up a complaint that should go to a J.P. Marty would do such a thing only for the most compelling reasons and it was possible to guess that the business was bad and concerned someone of local importance — Abner tried to think who could come under that heading and yet be better known to him than to Marty. He went out on the porch and said to Bonnie, 'I'm sorry, that was Marty. Something's up. I don't know what, but it must be pretty important. He wants to see me right away.'

  'Oh,' said Bonnie. 'Well, that's all right, Ab.'

  'I don't know how long it's going to take. It can't take very long. We can probably go swimming all right. Will you mind waiting? He's at the office, and I'll have to just leave you in the car.'

  'Well, I'd rather do that than go home,' she said. 'If you'll let me off at the school, Mr. Rawle left some things he wanted me to see about. I think I've got my key. Yes.'

  They were twenty minutes in reaching the dark oblong of the high school in the trees at the end of Academy Street. Abner swung up the loop of the drive. 'I'd better see you get in,' he said.

  'Silly,' she said, 'I've got in plenty of times. I could find my way around there blindfolded.'

  Abner got out and went across to the side door with her. It was the door by which, thirteen or fourteen years ago, he used himself to enter every morning going to the boys' locker-room. Through the glass covered with a strong crisscross iron netting a light could be seen burning down the hall.

  'Someone there?' Abner said.

  'I don't know. It's Mr. Field's conference room.' She put the key in the lock and Abner pushed the heavy door open. 'I'll see,' she said.

  Abner walked down the echoing cool passage with her. 'The lights are right there by the stairs,' she said.

  Abner snapped them on. 'Smells just the same,' he said, sniffing. 'What's Sam Field confer about?'

  'Oh, mental aptitude, or something.'

  On the door beyond was a sign that said: Department of Audio-Visual Education, and Abner laughed. He said, 'We never got any of that in my day.'

  The room, a small office with filing cases and a series of complicated charts posted on the walls, was empty. 'That's funny,' Bonnie said. 'It looks as if somebody had been here. Maybe he's upstairs.'

  'Or maybe he's in the washroom. What's that?'

  'It's a closet. I think he uses it for a dark room, to develop films.'

  'Well, maybe the corpse is in it,' Abner said, opening the door. 'Nope.'

  'I guess he just forgot to put the light out.'

  Abner said, 'We'll go upstairs and look around, anyway.'

  'There's no need to, Ab. Mr. Field must have come in for something -'

  'Or somebody else. Somebody might know that school was over Saturday, and think he'd just look around. There have been quite a few places broken into during the past month.'

  'I'm not timid,' Bonnie said.

  'Just the same, I'll have a look.' He went upstairs with her to the principal's office and put the lights on. Bonnie went through to the little room beyond and sat down at her desk.

  'Ab, open the window for me, will you? It's stifling.' When he had pushed up the broad window, Abner went down the hall, snapping the lights on in the classrooms and in the big auditorium. When he came back he said, 'All right. I don't see anyone. Not even Sammy.'

  'Ab, you've been hours! If they wanted to see you right away —'

  'They can keep their shirts on. I'll be back pretty soon.'

  Outside, Walking through the moonlight and tree shadows to his car, Abner remembered that this matter of her job was one thing they had not really settled. A great weariness came over him; for how could he settle that? If Bonnie knew his new circumstances she would certainly not give her job up, she really couldn't — that depressing, distinctive school smell seemed to be still in his nostrils. He drove down to the Childerstown National Bank building. The bank was locked and silent, a light burning behind the plate-glass windows over the gleaming multiple knobs and dials of the vault doors. Street light fell on the bronze plaque: Martin M. Bunting, District Attorney, affixed to the jamb of the doorway on the left. Abner went through the narrow hall faced with polished stone and ran upstairs.

  The door to the district attorney's office was open, and, to Abner's surprise, there was no one in the outer room but Marty. He sat with his coat off at his secretary's desk, by a shaded light, slowly typewriting with two fingers. He looked at Abner, for a moment abstracted or deep in thought. Then he drew a breath and leaned back.

  Abner said, 'Sorry, Marty. I couldn't get here any sooner.' It occurred to him that if the affair had been settled so quickly it could not have been a very important one. 'I got held up a minute,' he said. "Bonnie wanted to stop at the high school. We thought somebody had been in there; and I thought I'd better look around.'

  'It's all right,' Bunting said. 'Got a cigarette?' Abner gave him one, and Bunting added,'I was at the school, among others.'

  'You were?' said Abner. 'There was a light on down in some office Sam Field uses —'

  'John must have forgotten it. That's where we went.'

  'Say, what goes on?' said Abner. He struck a match and held it out, cupped in his hand. Bunting bent forward, bringing the cigarette end to it. 'Yeah, Field,' he said, exhaling smoke. Abner lit a cigarette himself and sat on the edge of the desk. Bunting said, 'They left about fifteen minutes ago. I sent him over to Delp's with Bill and John Costigan. He's waiving hearing; but we have to have a J.P.'s transcript.'

  'What is it?'

  Bunting gestured with the cigarette. 'Two indictments there,' he said. 'I'm doing another. Reason I called you was — you knew him at school, or something, didn't you?'

  'He was in my class,' Abner said.

  'I thought maybe you knew him well enough to have a talk with him. But he didn't stand up very long. About ten minutes after I called you he must have seen it wasn't any use.'

  Abner picked up the not yet folded sheet of the first bill of indictment, his eye skipping down the printed form and fiiled-in blanks. '... at the County aforesaid, and within the jurisdiction of this Court, with force and arms ... then and there did to the great damage of the said Mary Beach ...'

  'For God's sake!' Abner said.

  'There were at least eleven,' Bunting said. 'The Beach girl told her mother, and so her father went to Bill Ortt. He came around to see me about six o'clock. We've been rounding them up all evening.'

  'What did Sam say?'

  'He said at first that they were making it up. It's true that the Beach girl, and some of the others, don't have a very good reputation. But I guess he picked the ones he thought wouldn't be likely to raise a row—' Bunting shrugged and began to typewrite again.

  Taking up the second sheet, Abner read: '... did induce Nina Friedman —'

  'What Friedman? Leon Friedman?'

  'Yes. Runs the auto supply store.'

  Abner read on: '... to enter his private office situate in the Childerstown High School, did engage in conversation with her as to sexual matters and did put his hands upon her person during such conversation. ...'

  'There's something else,' Bunting said. The ash flew off his cigarette as he waved it and fell on a pile of photographs.

  Brushing off the ash, Abner turned them over. 'For God's sake!' he repeated. 'These some of the school kids?'

  'Uh-huh. The blonde one's Mary Beach. I don't think we need to identify them. It seems he told them he was entering photographs in a contest — you know, art; and if he won, they'd be given a screen test, or something. That's how he got them to pose.'

  'Well, if it got that far, are you sure it stopped?' Abner turned the photographs face down and put them back.

  'Pretty sure. Miss Wheeler talked to the girls and she's satisfied that he never did any more than that.' Bunting took the sheet out of the typewriter. 'Matter of fact, I think
there's something wrong with him.'

  'Now you mention it, it does look a little that way,' Abner said, taking up the new sheet. The terms were the same as the last..

  'I mean, physically. I'm sending him up to jail to-night. I wanted Doctor Janvier to look him over. The way I think we'll handle it is, we'll arraign him before Irwin upstairs in Number Two to-morrow morning. He'll waive submission and plead guilty. The three girls will have to testify but no one else except Field. The judge can sentence him, and we'll have it all polished off quick.' He paused. 'In a way, it's a break, the other trial. With that going on downstairs, it won't attract much attention. Do you know him so well you don't want to take it?'

  'I know him, all right,' Abner said. "But, no, not well enough to mind. I feel sorry for him —'

  "Well, I would myself, except for those photographs. Or I might, because some of those little floozies aren't too young to ask for all they get. But a man in his position —'

  Steps sounded in the hall downstairs. 'That's probably Maynard Longstreet,' Bunting said. 'I asked him to come over so we could work out what the Examiner had better say. There's going to be an unholy stink. I think it will finish Rawle.'

  'I don't see how it's his fault.'

  'There's plenty of school board politics in it; but anyone would have a right to ask why, as principal, he never checked up on what was going on for six months or more down in Field's office. Hello, Maynard! Come on in. Did you get over to Delp's?'

  'I got over,' said Maynard Longstreet. His heavy black brows were drawn together, his eyes narrow. 'Why, that dirty little son of a bitch!' he said. 'Somebody ought to take him and beat the living daylights out of him! Why —'

  'Well, we don't want to start any of that,' Bunting said. 'You don't, huh?' said Longstreet. 'How'd you like it if your two little girls were up there at high school and some teacher did that to them? Why, he ought to be sterilized! What are you going to do to him?'

  'Send him to the reformatory.'

  'Yes, and they'll let him out in a year or two and he'll do it again somewhere. Another thing. How did he get away with it all that time? Doesn't Rawle know what goes on in his school? The board ought to fire him.'

  Bunting looked at Abner, and then back at Maynard Longstreet. 'Come on, Maynard!' he said. 'It isn't the first time in history a man gave some girls a going-over. Let's get it down to normal. The thing is, what you'd better print about it.'

  'What I'd better print about it is the facts. And I'm certainly going to ask in an editorial for Rawle's dismissal and a shake-up in the school board. What else?' If Mr. Rawle were dismissed, or forced to resign, the matter of whether Bonnie kept her job or not was settled. A new principal, a man from outside, would want that job for someone he knew. Abner felt an immediate relief — the callousness of feeling relief over what would be a real disaster for Mr. Rawle was apparent to him; but what he felt, he felt — for, if Bonnie lost her position, she lost the basis for the argument. Abner would have to find a way to make his income meet the expenses; and if he had to, it seemed somehow foregone that he could.

  Bunting said, 'Print anything you like; but I think it can be phrased so as not to be any juicier than necessary. We don't need a lot of city tabloids on our neck. Will you write it and let me see it?'

  'Why should I?' said Longstreet.

  Bunting said, 'For the damned good reason that you wouldn't have known anything about it until to-morrow if I hadn't been decent enough to tell you. The next time something comes up, do you want to know about it, or do you want to have to find it out?'

  'Say, if you think you're doing me any favours —' Maynard Longstreet began, his black eyes blazing higher. At that moment, the telephone rang. Catching it up, Abner said, 'District attorney's office.'

  'Oh, Ab,' said Bonnie. 'You aren't through yet, are you?'

  'I'm afraid, not quite.'

  'Well, I think I'll go home.'

  'How are you going to get there?'

  'I'm going to walk, naturally. I do it every day during the winter. I guess I can manage it now.'

  'Wait a few minutes. I'll come up.'

  'No, don't. I'm leaving now.'

  'You sound displeased,' Abner said.

  'No. I'm not. I'm sorry if I do. Are there other people where they can hear you?'

  'Yes. But-'

  'I'll call you to-morrow. Please, Ab. Thanks for dinner.' She hung up.

  Putting the telephone down, Abner saw that at some point Maynard Longstreet had begun to laugh. He proved to be saying: '... I don't know what there is about you, Marty, that makes a fellow mad. You're so damned dictatorial, I guess. Didn't you ever hear of the freedom of the press? What do you want to act like God Almighty on wheels for?'

  'I know, I know,' Bunting said. 'That's your job, and nobody can cut in on it. Look, Maynard, I'm sorry if I offended you. This Zollicoffer thing dumped on us was bad enough; and now this mess — why don't you co-operate for once in your life?'

  'He's asking me!' Longstreet said to Abner. 'All right. Let me have that typewriter. I'll run it off now and you can see it, if you'll shut up for half an hour.'

  Bunting said, 'I'll go out. I want something to eat. I didn't get any dinner.'

  Maynard Longstreet waved a hand at him. 'Beat it,' he said. 'You, too, Ab. I have to concentrate.'

  'Better lock the safe,' Abner said.

  Longstreet had noticed the photographs. 'Say!' he said, examining them. 'So this is how you spend your spare time! Say!'

  'Put those back when you get through with them,' Bunting said.

  'Say, what are these? That's a nice little number.'

  'Yes,' said Bunting. 'That's what Field must have thought when he posed her. Now, put them away before we have you sterilized.'

  Abner went downstairs with him and out on to the sidewalk in the warm night. Bunting said, 'There's nothing to hang around for, Ab, if you want to go. I'll send the file over to you in the morning, if you don't mind taking it. I'm going to see Irwin at quarter of eleven. He was out to dinner.' He stood still a moment, looking at Abner. His face, though calm and contained, was tired, his expression absent and worried.

  Abner's half-formed idea had been to go along with him and tell him, to get it over, about the interview with Jesse. When Marty did find out it would be hard to explain why Abner hadn't told him when he had a perfectly good opportunity to. Abner did not know whether or not he was excusing his own disinclination, his willingness to put off what was bound to be unpleasant, with the argument that Marty had enough on his mind.

  'See you in the morning,' Bunting said. He turned and walked down past the dark store fronts toward the lighted windows of the Acme Lunch at the corner.

  Abner got into his car and searched for his keys. When he had found them and started the engine, he paused. Bonnie might not have reached home yet; and for an instant be thought of driving over. However, like talking to Marty, it meant a problem in what to say — whether to tell her, since it was likely to concern her, about Field; whether to say nothing. One of the things the business of the law had taught Abner was not to tell all he knew; and the temptation, so urgent to most people, to be the first with news, did not trouble him much any more. He could easily enough say nothing; but to-morrow, when Bonnie, along with everyone else, learned the news, she would think it queer that he hadn't told her.

  Abner decided to go to bed. He let in the clutch and the car began to move. At the corner the traffic light held him up. Through the bright window of the lunch room he could see Marty, the only person in the place, sitting at the counter. There was a mug of coffee in front of him and he was talking to Walter Fowler, who was making him a sandwich. Abner remembered that Walter was out on probation. Walter had stolen — that is, taken without the owner's consent — an automobile because he thought he needed it to get married. He had a girl, whose name, somehow absurd and pathetic when you saw her, was Regina; and it had been advisable for Walter to marry her at once. His idea had been that, if he could get a
car and take her somewhere out of the state, this could be done inconspicuously. He thought they could then say that they had done it long ago, and Regina's condition would be all in order. Unfortunately, going to pick Regina up, he wrecked the car he had 'borrowed'; making one of those miserable situations that seem to illustrate the scriptural principle of taking even that which he hath from him who hath not.

  Marty found Walter the job at the lunch room, so Walter could tell the Judge that he had a job; and Walter was given a suspended sentence. That was not to say that Walter's troubles were over. Walter had married Regina (which Abner was fairly sure Walter didn't want to do); and now he had her and a baby and the payments for the smashed car — all charges on what little he was making as he worked nights at the Acme Lunch. Abner was fairly sure that the courts had not seen the last of Walter, that those slow distracted wits that evolved the original marriage scheme would be driven by circumstance into evolving something equally futile and unfortunate; and when it happened, the fact that the district attorney had been so decent to Walter would be just one more thing against him.

  The light changed and Abner let in the clutch again. He swung around the block and back up to Court Street. On the courthouse tower lifted above the trees the moonlight was faint, for the sky had covered over with thin clouds; but the clock face could be seen with the hands at ten o'clock; and at once, slow and harsh, the hour struck through the quiet night. Abner drove on home out through Court Street.

  4

  Judge Coates had just got to bed. A light was placed so that he could read from a book or magazine leaning on a rack before him, and he sat propped up in the vast old bed; an island of radiance in the dusk of the high-ceilinged, heavily furnished room.