I said I knew.

“I’d believe anything of Judd Steiner, but if Artie is in trouble, I’ll bet that little bastard dragged him into it.”

And suddenly I saw why Artie had held back from admitting he had been with Judd on Wednesday. For if they had been together, they could have been together committing the crime! Judd was capable of anything. Why not even of murder? Artie’s hesitation in placing himself with Judd actually tended to confirm the crime. The story about the picked-up girls was a fake they had agreed upon in advance, but then Artie had held back from telling it, trying to save himself from implication with Judd should the alibi collapse. Artie’s hesitation was actually the proof!

And just then, as if the thought of their guilt in itself caused me to find the conclusive evidence, I noticed Milt Lewis. He was in his tennis clothes, hurrying into the house. I caught up with him. “Listen, Milt,” I said, “the early part of last week, do you remember if Judd Steiner was wearing his glasses?”

“I refuse to answer on the grounds of possible self-incrimination,” Milt cracked. “And who the hell could remember on what day some guy was wearing or not wearing his glasses? All I know is I read in the papers that Judd Steiner lost his glasses in a very inconvenient place.”

We were climbing up to his room. “That’s it,” I said. “He claims he lost them on Sunday. But if he was seen wearing them, between Sunday and Wednesday-”

“Listen,” Milt said, “if you’re trying to hang that conceited bastard, I’m with you.”

“He claims the last time he actually used them was in March.”

“Hell no, I’d say more recently than that. Wait a minute.” Milt Lewis seemed to pick an image out of the air. “At his house, about three weeks ago. A gang of us went there to make some notes on equity. Judd put his glasses on when he opened that portable and started typing. I can just see him sitting there under all those birds, because I kidded him that he looked like one of those owls, with his horn-rimmed glasses.”

A few weeks ago? That still wouldn’t prove anything. But – “You say he was typing on a portable?”

“Yah, we had two machines going. Harry Bass was using a big machine Judd had there, and Judd opened his portable.”

“Did you notice, was it a Corona?”

“How should I know?” He stared at me. “Hey listen, Hawkshaw-” Then he grinned. “All right, I’ve got carbons of that typing, right here, from both machines.”

He began pulling out papers, folded in among his notebooks. There were indeed two kinds of typing. In itself there was nothing startling in the fact that there should be two typewriters in a millionaire’s house. The second machine might have belonged to his brother. Or he might have bought a portable when he went to Ann Arbour.

I stared at the typing, feeling somehow silly to be going so far, and yet headily sure. “Anybody got a Corona in the house?”

Milt was excited now. We ran through a couple of rooms, located a Corona. The style of lettering seemed the same as on one set of notes. But still, there were millions of Coronas.

For real comparison, I needed a copy of the ransom letter. It had been reproduced in the papers, only a few days ago, but while the house was usually littered with old newspapers, we could now find nothing.

I ran along the street, found a cab. The ad-taking counter at the office was just inside the main door. There was a file of papers kept for the public. I found the page, exactly a week ago, with the reproduced ransom letter. Our story, alongside, quoted typewriter experts, pointing out that there was a faulty p, and that the tail printed faintly on the y. The same faults were on Judd’s law notes! I tore the page from the file.

Running the few blocks to the County Building, I felt I was watched by Judd’s eyes, morose, lustrous, unblinking. I stepped into the cigar store, and phoned Tom in the press room. He came down. We huddled in a corner, while I showed him the two samples.

“Kid, if that bird hangs, you did it!” he said, staring at the evidence.

Could we hold this till tomorrow, for our paper? We decided it was too important. We had to inform Horn.

But upstairs, the offices were empty. They had all gone out to dinner, taking the suspects with them. Nobody knew just where.

This was the famous dinner at the Red Star Inn, near Lincoln Park, an old-style eating place, renowned for its huge schnitzels, apfelkuchen, and other German specialities. If there was a moment when Artie and Judd savoured their adventure, I suppose it was at the time of this dinner. For the sense that they had sought to achieve, the sense of power and superiority in knowing what others did not know, was theirs, here, and together, in the presence of baffled authority itself.

This was the thrill, vibrating in the tension of their still undecided fate. They were so far the masters, and yet, like acrobats who might slip before getting off the wire, they were under a delicious suspense.

Until the cars drew up they could not know they would be together. It was a thought of Horn’s, to confront them in this way, and perhaps catch something in an unguarded moment of surprise and pleasure.

Horn’s own car, with Judd, pulled up first, and Judd in a worldly manner expertized about the restaurant, remarking that his family always had a German cook at home. Just then the second car drove up, and Swasey emerged with Artie. Seeing each other, the boys aluted with hand waves, Artie calling, “Hey! When did they let you out?”

“I’m joining the staff!” Judd retorted.

For the large party, two tables were put together at the end of the main room. The boys were only a few seats apart, with Padua and Horn between them. There was beer to be had at the Red Star, and a good deal of jesting took place about protection and payoff, as the State’s Attorney and his men permitted themselves to indulge.

It might, indeed, have been construed as a farewell party, a send off with no hard feelings. The boys had endured twenty-four hours of examination. Since Artie had confessed his drunken afternoon and the pickup ride, and since their stories jibed, what could they be held for?

But Horn, Padua, Czewicki, Swasey, and the squad of detectives might also have been exulting inwardly. For newspapers had been kept from the boys. They did not know that Judd’s intimate letter had become public. They did not know that they were being looked at with the peculiar contemptuous mirthfulness of bull-showy men for a pair of perverts. No one actually had said, “Watch the fun,” but holding that knowledge key was like having a special pair of glasses through which you could see the punks, nude.

Only you couldn’t see anything. These rich kids had smooth manners that carried them through. Judd was perhaps a bit jumpy, hardly taking his eyes off Artie, but if you didn’t know about that letter, you could put it down to apprehensiveness rather than passion.

Judd was giving his order to the waiter in German, with minute instructions about the seasoning, and all listened, admiringly. Czewicki asked how many languages was it that Judd knew, and Judd replied fourteen, although a few were really only dialects.

“You must be a superman,” Padua remarked, and Judd quietly responded, that wouldn’t exactly be the qualification, according to Nietzsche.

Padua had got in a few hours at the library, reading up on Nietzsche. After all, he said, wasn’t the superman definable as someone with extraordinary abilities? No, Judd said, a superman had to be extraordinary in every way.

Well, how was a superman recognized? Did Judd know any supermen? Was Napoleon a superman?

No, Judd replied. Napoleon had been defeated, and that in itself automatically eliminated him, because a superman could never be defeated.