The cavalcade had halted in front of the Driv-Ur-Self place. The manager, confronted with Judd, gasped, “Yes, I remember him – James Singer. Rented a Willys a couple of times. We made our usual full check-” he started to say, but Horn reassured him, “That’s all right.”

At the next stop an incident occurred. It was the lunch counter where Artie, as the reference for Mr. Singer, had waited for a telephone call.

When the crowd started into the place, a round-faced woman behind the cash register pointed at once to Artie. “That’s him!” Artie half pitched against the wall, fainting. A detective caught him, propping him up.

“The poor weakling.” We all turned our eyes to Judd. His voice had had neither contempt nor pity; there was merely the effect of a statement.

Artie was revived; he made an effort to joke it off, saying he usually required a pint before he passed out. The cavalcade was resumed.

We were following the death ride. From the turnoff lane to Hegewisch, briskly Judd led the group across the prairie, indicating where the body was carried and how he had pushed it into the concrete tube. “A few inches farther and it would never have shown,” he remarked, and his voice had that odd, clacky classroom tone.

Someone in the crowd asked, “Why, particularly, in this place?” And at this, Artie burst out, “This was all Mr. Steiner’s idea. I’m not even familiar with this place. I couldn’t even find it again!”

And vaguely, I think I felt then what Judd may have felt: the cistern, the close snug fit, as when little kids, finding a packing box or a barrel, feel impelled to crawl in and hide.

“Why here?” someone repeated, and Judd looked confused. He turned away. He was in conversation with McNamara about his chances. The big cop had become familiar. “I don’t think I’ve got a chance before a jury, do you?” Judd said. “They’d hang us.” McNamara agreed, professionally, that a jury would be a big risk. Sometimes a judge could be friendlier.

“I suppose our families will secure the best legal talent for us,” Judd said. “Maybe with a smart lawyer before a judge, our lives could be saved. What do you think?” That speculation was to provide a fantastic climax to the trial.

Down the lane, Judd showed where the belt buckle could be dug out, and it was found, and then the shoes. We drove to the beach, where the half-cindered remnants of the lap robe were located, and finally to the lagoon in Jackson Park, where divers sought the remains of the typewriter. Thus it was all proven, exactly, exactly.

When we came downtown again and struck Michigan Boulevard, we encountered a parade, and Judd cried, “Oh, yes, Memorial Day!” And he added, “The annual parade for legalized murder.”

Then it was dinnertime and Horn expansively ordered the entire cavalcade to proceed to Crown’s, near Lincoln Park. Several huge round tables were commandeered. Judd again became discursive, like an instructor following up his laboratory demonstration with a lecture.

And it was then that he made his second irreparable remark. When someone asked if Nietzsche’s superman philosophy justified murder, Judd perversely replied, “It is easy to justify such a death, as easy as to justify an entomologist impaling a butterfly on a pin.”

The room became quiet. Danny Mines of the News said, “We all had a little Nietzsche in college, Steiner, but that doesn’t mean you have to live by it.”

“Why not?” Judd demanded. “A philosophy, if you are convinced it is correct, is something you live by.”

We all studied our menus. “The herring is excellent here,” Judd announced to McNamara, “but I suppose you don’t like herring – you aren’t Jewish.”

Throughout the meal he continued to flash his erudition, and against my will, I was being pushed by the others, set up as the antipode – for I too was a university graduate at eighteen. Repeatedly, Judd seemed to challenge me, with a reference to Anatole France, a reference to Voltaire. On these I could keep up with him, but I had not read Sappho, even in translation. “The Medicis!” he cried. “We all have a time to be born in. I should have lived in the time of Cellini or Aretino, don’t you think? You’ve read Aretino, surely?”

How much Judd was a part of his own century we could not then know.

Only at the end of the meal, as we arose, Judd took an opportunity to talk quietly with me, as two who are publicly opponents but privately have much in common. “Have you seen our friend Ruth?”

“No,” I said. “I haven’t had a chance in the last few days, but I talked to her on the phone. She – she sent you her sympathy.”

He gave me a furtive look. “Make my apologies to her, will you?”

As Horn was hustling the boys away, a reporter called a last question. Did they have any word for their parents?

“Yes,” Judd snapped, “tell my father it’s time he got me a lawyer.”

As it was Saturday night I went to see Ruth.

This should have been my moment of triumph – a young reporter coming to his girl after trapping the most sensational murderers in all history!

As I entered, she came toward me with a forced smile. “No, really, Sid, it was fine what you did, it was brilliant, and I want you to know-” We stood near each other, we almost leaned to kiss, but then only grasped hands, and I knew it was gone.

I gave her Judd’s apology. She whispered, “Poor kid.”

My nerves were all gone. I burst out, “Why keep sympathizing with him? He’s a plain monster! Artie at least has some remorse, but not Judd! He’s even bragging! He throws us all this fancy Nietzsche superman philosophy as if it makes everything excusable!”

She stood listening, silent, and this provoked me to a stumbling, even patronizing, effort at reconciliation. Too bad, I went on, that she had been attracted by Judd for a few days, fooled, but now -

Her eyes had filled with tears. I reached for her, but she drew aside. “Oh, Sid!” was all she said. Then Ruth let her tears flow, and I felt they were not only for Judd, not only for us, but for the whole sick world.

Ruth said, “Let’s go for a walk.”

As we walked to the park, I found myself suddenly talking in a streak about the case, about us. “Ruth, it was when I told you about Judd’s glasses that I saw you believed he had done it. Something in you knew. That was when I went out to find more proof.”

She drew her hand from mine. “Then I did it too,” she said.

“What, what did you do? For God’s sake, how can you blame yourself, how can you blame us for catching them?”

“Oh, no. They had to be caught. Oh, I suppose I’m a coward.” We stood in the park and then, oddly, sat on a bench.

“Sid, I owe it to you – there’s something I have to tell you,” she said. And she told me about going out with Judd that time to the dunes.

I felt sick, sick for myself, then frightened as she talked. Alone, out there. He could have done anything.

“Nothing happened,” Ruth said.

But the sickest part I couldn’t ask in words. Had she felt – as with me?

She sensed that question too and took my hand this time. “It was something different, not like with you. Sid, something drew me to him. Perhaps because he needed someone so much and he keeps everything down deep inside himself.”

How could I feel jealousy for the poor bastard? And yet I blurted, “And after that, on the dunes, you went out with him again?”

“Yes.”

“Why, Ruth? Why?”

“I don’t know… he even spoke of marrying…” Her voice cried for understanding. “I – I think then I loved him. Oh, Sid, it would be wrong not to tell you. Perhaps it was only pity. I knew he was suffering from something terrible he couldn’t tell me. He hides everything in himself. Perhaps” – her voice became small, choked – “perhaps that’s even what made him do it.”

I didn’t quite understand that remark and felt that she would not be able to explain it either. Then she was calmer; Ruth even asked, it seemed to me quite impersonally, if I believed they should be executed.