I could get no more out of him that day.

As I walked the half-empty sunny Sunday streets, the conversation lay on my mind. Whom had they really wanted to kill? And the chisel…

I called Tom. Presently he met me, driving up with his brother Will, who was on the police force. They were in Will’s Ford.

“That chisel-” Will ruminated, after I told them of my interview with Willie Weiss. We drove over to the Hyde Park station and Will talked to a friend of his, Sergeant Lacey.

Come to think of it, Lacey believed he had heard of at least one other chisel wrapped in tape picked up in the neighbourhood. Some months before. One of those private watchmen around the rich homes had found it on a lawn. Looked like something a footpad might have used, but it didn’t check with any crime; so as far as he knew it had been chucked away.

But of course! This was what Willie Weiss had meant. The weapon.

We got into the Ford and went to work again, questioning watchmen and gardeners in the neighbourhood. Yes, one or another had seen a chisel something like that, with tape on the blade. Yet we couldn’t track anything down precisely.

When we returned to the Hyde Park station, Will’s friend Lacey told him on the quiet about a search that had just been made in Artie’s room. In an old trunk in the closet, under some toys, they had found a whole lot of men’s wallets and ladies’ purses. No money in any of them.

When I got to my room there was a note under the door to call Miss Seligman. Though it was after ten, I called. Myra implored me to come directly to her room, which could be entered from the hotel corridor.

The room had a studio effect, and Myra was wearing a Chinesey kind of dressing gown; as she took my hand, her palm was hot and moist.

“Sid,” she said, “Sid, they were here! I don’t know if I did the right thing – I talked to them, I told them things about Artie-”

“Who?” I asked.

Two men from Horn’s office had appeared. Of course she wanted to help Artie, they said to her, and she had said, of course. They had been nice men, very considerate, and they had wanted to know all about Artie, since she had known him from childhood. He had always been of exceptional mentality, hadn’t he? And she had said, of course, he was brilliant! And certainly not abnormal.

Now she sucked in her lower lip, in that naughty-child way she had. “Do you think I said the wrong things, Sid?”

I said they were probably taking depositions from everybody.

She looked guiltily at me. They had asked about the last times she had been out with Artie and she had mentioned our date at the Four Deuces with him and Judd. They had wanted to know if Judd had a girl. She had mentioned his taking out my little friend Ruth.

Ruth would surely have been questioned in any case, I reassured her.

Her voice hoarse, Myra told how once she and Artie had made a suicide pact – she supposed all kids did that, but people only thought of Artie as always happy-go-lucky. And now, today… I didn’t move. After a moment she came and slipped to her knees, going limp against me. “Oh, tell me what to do,” she begged. “I would do anything to help him.”

“There’s nothing you can do,” I said. “You’re not mixed up in it.”

“I am, I am. Everybody who knew him is. Everybody who let him come to a thing like that.”

I tried to say that it was surely a sickness, that there was nothing she could have done. “Oh, I’m worse than a whore,” she cried. “Do you think if I had given myself to him… oh, we’re all such frauds – we pretend we’re so emancipated. Sid, if I had, if I had, then maybe he wouldn’t have got all tangled up with that awful Judd. That’s what got him into it. I feel such a complete failure.”

I believe that even at the time I saw that her obsession, her constantly putting everything in terms of sex, was only because it was the only name then given to love.

Sunday evening, the boys were finally brought to the real jail, the heavy, square building with walls of grey stone, almost black with dirt.

Horn had got all he wanted from them; so he turned them over to the sheriff, to be booked at last, charged with their murder.

There was a narrow connecting bridge, between the administration building and the cells, and Artie went first over it, getting ahead of the turnkey, who snapped, “What’s your hurry? You’ll have plenty of time here.”

He didn’t feel out of place. The closing door, the turning lock had familiarity. Artie looked to his cellmate with an almost mischievous glance, as though they were two kids. But the cellmate was a dull-witted farm lad, who didn’t even seem impressed by who Artie was. After brief exchanges of what they were in for – the cellmate had done a robbery with a gun – Artie stretched on his bunk.

He had seen himself often, lying behind solid dungeon walls. After Miss Nuisance had tucked him in tight and placed his teddy bear beside him and gone out, shutting the door as the lights went off, he would turn to the bear, and it came to his lips now, the magic beginning, “and now, Teddy…” But here the light never really went out.

And now, Teddy, they got us. But the master criminal, the greatest of them all, cannot be held by locks and bars. No, Teddy, this place is easy – you saw that guard, that screw, give me the eye, the one at the main gate. He’s in our pay; he’s part of the master criminal’s gang. And in a few days, as soon as we’re ready, we’ll tip him the wink, and the gate will accidentally be left open and we’ll walk right out of here.

Meanwhile we’ll play the game just like we did with Miss Nuisance. We will be model little boys. They will trust us, and we’ll wander around and get the layout…

But Mumsie hasn’t come to say good night to poor Artie. Only Miss Nuisance. Mumsie is busy with her baby. A new baby must be taken care of by Mumsie. All right for you!

Is Nuisance gone? Safe in her room? Sneak the flashlight from under the mattress. The detective book. The master criminal kidnappers. Snatch the baby right in his own house, and bring him up to the hiding place in the garret; everything works perfectly. That Italian organ grinder outside plays the signal-tune that says the ransom is ready. That means ten grand is ready.

No, we’ll do it differently. We’ll pretend to play cops and robbers with little brother. Yes, Mumsie, I’d love to play a game with Baby.

Shh, Teddy, here’s the plot. That little stupe believes everything you tell him. You pretend you’re on his side, helping him catch the master criminal, and I will be lying in wait at the top of the stairs. You bring the little bastard up, and pow! I’ve got him! It was an accident! Nobody knew the pistol was loaded. Poor baby, oh, my sweet little kid brother!

Then, punishment. They lock you in your room.

Revenge! Do the same to them!… “Now, Artie, this is your new governess, Miss Newsome, and you must be very nice to her.” There she goes into her room! Turn the key on her! Listen to the prisoner pound on the door! “Oh, Artie! Arthur! You naughty -!”

Then Miss Nuisance made him sit on a chair. Mumsie didn’t save him from her. Mumsie said obey Miss Newsome. All right for you, Mumsie, I’ll get even with you. In some dark hallway, pow!

They were leading him to the scaffold and Miss Nuisance was walking behind, reading A Tale of Two Cities out loud to him…

Turning over on his pallet, feeling something crawling under his clothing, Artie sat up. Bugs, lice.

Judd folded his trousers and his coat, placing them on the floor. He said a terse but civil good night to his cellmate, a car thief. The immense loneliness came over him.

He lay down with his hands under his head. And then all at once, in the quiet of the cell, Judd understood how stupid he had been in the last two days. A superman was not bound by the conventions of telling the truth! It was not against him, personally, that Artie had lied, but for his own self, as a god made his own truth.