As word spread that the thrill killers would appear, there were scuttlings from all the corridors; from nowhere, the courtroom filled.

The boys were brought in. It was Artie’s nineteenth birthday, and the sob sisters were ready. Had he received presents from his best girls? From Myra Seligman? From Dorothea Lengel?

Artie smiled teasingly. Other questions came, for both. What was jail life like? Would they prefer hanging to life sentences? And they replied courteously, but like a vaudeville team, “We must respectfully decline to answer upon the advice of counsel,” smirking at their lawyers.

We laughed, and then for an instant they bent their heads together, and Artie came out of the huddle, grinning. “We have a statement, fellows.” We all bit, readying our notepaper. “The sun is shining,” said Artie. “It is a pleasant day.” So we laughed again and noted that they had recovered their friendship and their bravado.

The judge entered. It was the Chief Justice himself. In certain events, chance seems to exert itself to choose the proper persons, as if there were an ordainment to show mankind from time to time a complete symbol. So in this case Judge Matthewson had precisely the bearing for his rôle He had the fullness of years, but with no suggestion of frailty of age.

The clerk called the case.

Horn and his staff had prepared a formidable indictment, for felonious assault, murder by strangulation, kidnapping with intent to kill – everything – as if afraid of some wizardly loophole evasion. But Wilk sat relaxed, loose, with no papers before him. When the time came, he and Ferdinand Feldscher stood, one on each side of the two boys, as they were asked, how did they plead?

“Not guilty,” said Judd, as though answering a classroom question, and Artie said, swallowing his words, “Not guilty.”

Horn was smiling. He would have his chance to take on the great Jonathan Wilk before a jury. The judge set the day, a few weeks ahead.

Wilk pleaded for a delay to prepare a defence. “The defence needs no more time than the prosecution!” Horn cried.

Edgar Feldscher pointed out that complex medical and mental examinations had to be made. The Chief Justice kept gazing at the boys. “The best I can give you is an extra week,” he said.

I phoned the news and hurried in to write my feature. But instead of writing about Artie’s birthday I found myself impelled to write of Judd’s father, sitting there in the courtroom. I’ve come across that story, in the files:

Judah Steiner, Sr., a man with grey hair, sat in Judge Matthewson’s courtroom today for an hour. He did not move. The other men spoke, even smiled, gestured, disputed. Judah Steiner sat quite still…

Occasionally he put his hand to his ear. He was not angry, he was not weeping. He was merely trying to understand this thing. His son had killed someone. For no reason at all, and for the reason of some philosophy that he couldn’t understand. He had always thought his son was brilliant…

People were staring first at him and then at his son, noticing the same cut in the yellowing lips of the father and the firm, red lips of the boy. People were noticing the same contour of forehead, the same balance of cheek.

Then they came to him with questions. What did he think? What did he have to say?

He had only one sentence. “Why do you come to me? I – I have done nothing.”

I have done nothing. Today, the words echo ironically. But even then they set me to wondering.

I would speak to Myra, who knew the families well.

When we met that evening, she greeted me with bravado; her hand, as we went down in the lift, was hot, pulsing. Automatically we started to walk toward the campus, almost deserted at night in the summer.

Myra could tell me only of the Strauses. Her mother was a close friend. Mrs. Straus was indeed ill in Charlevoix, shattered, accusing herself, broken. “You see, she’s such an intelligent woman.” And most of all, Mrs. Straus had prided herself on her advanced knowledge of child care. She headed all sorts of committees for settlement work with children. And she was interested in the latest educational methods.

Why hadn’t she known what was happening with Artie?

The closest to him – Myra swayed, and I sat her on the stone bench in Sleepy Hollow. All those little fibs and lies as children – how was anyone to know that with him these things came to more?

And what of Artie’s father? I asked.

He was a man entirely occupied with his affairs. On festive occasions he would put in an appearance, at Artie’s birthday parties.

I asked, was Mr. Straus a cold person? No, Myra said, not really, and indeed the Straus household hadn’t been cold at all. Mrs. Straus had given it such a warm, open atmosphere. Everyone felt free at the Strauses; it was that kind of a house, with culture, good music. Of course, Mrs. Straus was quite busy – she was the leader of so many activities.

“I always thought,” Myra confessed, “I would have liked her for my own mother; she’s so much more up on things-” And Myra crumpled against me. “I was with Artie on every birthday,” she sobbed. “I wrote a poem for him every year.” She had written one today. She tried to recite it to me, in her gaspy hoarse whisper.

Oh, angry boy

Life’s a broken toy

Which you’d destroy,

No! angry boy -

Her voice choked. “It’s doggerel,” she cried desperately. “Oh, Sid, why can’t I-” I held her until she stopped trembling, and then I walked her home.

In my primitive way I was following the path of the psychiatrists, who began their work with family interviews. Dr. Allwin made a hasty trip to Charlevoix. Artie’s father was still in a state of shock, silent, withdrawn. The mother had begun somehow to encompass the blow. She could sit with Dr. Allwin and attempt to recall…

Of course Artie had been from infancy exceptionally wilful, mischievous, and for that very reason she had felt that a strong personality like Miss Newsome was a good choice as governess. Miss Newsome had her faults, and toward the end there had been quite a struggle with the poor woman who had no other avenue of affection and had become over-attached to Artie, seeking to replace his mother – but such situations frequently arose with governesses, didn’t they?

Then there had been the escapades. Yes, the times he had taken things from stores, they had been quite disturbed… and the dreadful accident here in Charlevoix, when he had taken the car to a dance. An old woman had been in the wagon Artie had run into, and she had lingered in the hospital for several months. Artie himself had suffered a concussion.

Had he changed markedly at that time?

She strengthened herself, to be unflinchingly honest. It had to be admitted that Artie had always been wild. And deceitful. Yes – but how could anyone have imagined…?

No, no, the doctor reassured her, it would have been virtually impossible to suspect homicidal tendencies. And he never confided in anyone?

She had always thought that possibly with James he… Her eyes wavered.

Perhaps, in other ways, Artie might have shown his true feelings? Sudden angers? Hatred? Jealousy within the family?

She recalled one time when his father had been going on a trip East, taking his brother James along, and Artie had wanted so badly to go to New York. He had been fifteen then, and he had screamed, even producing a tantrum quite like he used to have when he was a very little boy.

Tantrums?

Oh, very frequently. Childish tantrums, to get what he wanted. But all children did that, and she usually tried the method of letting the child scream itself out, shutting him in his room, as neither she nor his father of course believed in capital – she caught herself – in corporal punishment.