With these words Artie turned, pouring the rest out directly at Judd. “I have been made a fish of right along here. This story – all this alibi, all these women, and being drunk in the Coconut Grove and everything – we planned that definitely. It was definitely decided that that story was not to go after Wednesday noon, which was to be a week after the crime. After that we were just to say we didn’t know what we were doing. We felt that you were safe with your glasses after a week had passed and that your glasses being out there would not necessitate an airtight alibi. And then you came down here Thursday and told the story you had agreed not to tell!” Artie was shrieking now. “I came down to Mr. Horn, I denied being with you, Steiner, and being at the Coconut Grove; I stuck to our agreement! But when they started talking about the Grove and Lincoln Park, I put it together and knew you had told the alibi story you should not have told, so I stepped in to try to help you! And I think it is a damned sight more than you would have done for me. I tried to help you out because I thought that you at least, if the worst came to the worst, would admit what you had done and not try to drag me into it in that manner.”

Artie was staring into his face. It was for Judd like the moment that comes to any man in the discovery that the woman who had glowed for him, whom he loved, is a slut, and there is a bewildering dismay in him, and he thinks to himself, But I knew it all the time; I knew it when she was abandoned with me, when she did all those dirty things with me – they don’t count for dirty only because you yourself are doing them – but I knew she would do the same with other men. And sinkingly the man knows he may have to love her still and be alone for ever in his love.

So at this moment Judd felt eternal solitude coming upon him. The dignity, the consistency, of the deed had been broken; they were no longer wilful gods, but caught boys squirming to throw blame, and he wanted only to detach himself so he might at least retain his own idea of integrity.

Judd turned on Artie. “I am sorry that you were made a fish of and stepped into everything and broke down and all that. I am sorry, but it isn’t my fault.”

Horn broke in. “Now listen, boys. You have both been treated decently by me?”

Judd responded, “Absolutely.”

“No brutality or roughness?”

“No.”

Artie was still silent. “Not one of you has a complaint to make?”

“No,” Judd said.

“Have you?” Horn asked Artie.

“No,” Judd heard Artie mutter.

As they were led out, Artie didn’t look at him.

With unrelenting speed and energy, Horn sought to sew up his hanging case before lawyers could get to the boys and tell them to keep their mouths shut. Horn thought ahead to the defence. An insanity plea, undoubtedly. Some chance, with their brilliant school records! And Horn sent out men to secure depositions from fraternity brothers, from teachers, and from girl friends – had they ever known Judd or Artie to be anything but intelligent and self-possessed?

When we assembled again in Horn’s office, the boys were brought in to us, refreshed, alert, though hostile to each other.

A new phase of the bizarre story was opening.

At once came our questions about remorse. Artie said he was sorry, but only because the adventure had not succeeded. Judd said, “I have examined my reactions and can’t say that I have experienced any such sentiment as remorse.”

Would he do the thing again?

No, Judd said, with deliberation, but only because he now knew that there could be no perfect crime – some error would always be made.

While Artie scarcely spoke, Judd suddenly became torrential. After all, he said, it was not entirely wrong that they had been caught. Now they could fully explain their ideas; even if they paid with their lives, it was in a sense the only way to establish the new concept that had guided them. The failure, the slip-up, was a flaw in the experiment. The magnitude of the idea remained.

He began then to explain his superman philosophy – the freedom from all codes, sentiments, superstitions, even from fear of death itself. He was to go on talking all day, as our cavalcade retraced the path of the crime.

A half-dozen limousines were lined up in the street, but they were already insufficient for all the newsmen, the sob sisters, the photographers, the out-of-town press people who were arriving in droves.

With Sergeant McNamara behind him, Judd came over to where I stood with Tom. “I understand that we owe our predicament in good measure to you gentlemen,” Judd said, “but I want to state that I don’t regard it as anything personal. In fact, I must congratulate you on your accomplishment.”

I looked at him, trying to erase in myself the knowledge that he was a murderer. There had to be something human, something worthy, to draw a girl like Ruth – or was all love a delusion? Or was this worthier quality buried so deeply that only an occasional rare person like Ruth could sense it?

We were herded into the cars. I managed to crowd into Artie’s car with Padua, Mike Prager, and a sob sister from the Herald, a stringy blonde named Rea Knowles.

He was now being serious and penitent. “I don’t see how that cold-blooded fish can sit in that other car and laugh over this thing,” Artie told us. Rea asked if he felt the meaning of what he had done, and Artie said, “The first few days I didn’t feel it; it seemed to me that I could have carried this secret the rest of my life. But now I feel it.”

She immediately got after the girl story. “You went out on dates, during this last week, didn’t you, Artie? Didn’t it bother you when you were out with a girl?”

With his boyish candour, Artie said, “No, just a thought or two at times. But I’m appreciative of the thing now. Every once in a while the whole thing comes up and a realization of the thing we have done comes over my mind.”

He paused, as if it had come just then. “This thing will be the making of me,” Artie declared. “I’ll spend some years in jail, I suppose, and then I’ll be released. I’ll come out to a new life, I’ll go to work and have a career.” We all stared at him. Could it be that it hadn’t really hit him yet? Or did he feel so sure his people could get him off?

Artie turned the questioning on us. Did we think any lawyer could save his life? Inevitably, the name of Jonathan Wilk was mentioned. Artie had already been thinking of him. “But he only defends the poor,” he said. “Do you believe he would take our case?”

There was a silence. Padua, sitting up front, turned his head with a curious smile, and Rea resumed her attack. If he went to jail, did he have any girl in mind who might wait for him? And Artie said remorsefully that he didn’t know if any woman could ever marry him after the thing he had done. Though sometimes he felt as though it were another person who had done it -

Mike Prager leaped on this. Did Artie believe he had been dominated by Judd Steiner, in the crime?

Artie looked at us candidly, including Padua in his open gaze. “What do you think?” As one thought of the swarthy Judd, with his intense dark eyes, there could be only one answer to the boyish Artie: Judd, the master mind.

Was it true that Judd was unpopular, that he didn’t go out with girls? Rea asked Artie.

“Oh, we’ve been on double dates.” Artie eyed me confidentially.

“Well, you know what I mean. Has he ever been in love?”

“Well, I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Artie said.

“Have you ever been in love?”

He smiled winningly for her. “Lots of times.”

“Yes, but I mean just once. The real thing.”

Artie winked. “Now, kid-” I revelled in my private knowledge, in having it all over Rea and Mike Prager.