During those weeks, the defence could only make effort after effort to shorten the proceedings; witnesses were rarely cross-examined, except for an occasional flash question to show the defence was in form.

Then came the coroner’s physician, Dr. Kruger. Despite an air of disgust and impatience on the part of Judge Matthewson, Horn kept the doctor on the stand, describing “signs of sexual abuse”.

The defence objected incessantly. The coroner’s verdict itself stated that no conclusion could be drawn. Surely the prosecutor was attempting deliberately to arouse prejudice!

Horn flared back. “Prejudice! Monsters are monsters!”

Finally, Wilk had the witness. This time there was no perfunctory dismissal. Had Dr. Kruger not stated that no tangible evidence existed? How then could he come to a conclusion? Oh, it was an opinion. Would there not be just as much basis for the opposite opinion? Then it was a guess? Were medical men given to swearing on guesswork?

Dr. Kruger, with each reply, seemed ready to jump out of his seat. But Wilk kept him pinned there with a barrage of medical questions. Wasn’t it true that muscle tension relaxed after death? Particularly during all-night immersion? “Then the condition was really normal, wasn’t it?”

“That’s my opinion and I stick to it!” the coroner’s physician snapped. Wilk shrugged, and waved him from the stand.

The retinue of humdrum witnesses continued.

For Judd, the trial was the last bitter irony. Was this the great trial that was in a sense to have justified his crime by bringing momentous questions before mankind? The question of free will, the question of law and the superman, reduced to routine evidence about a fake signature on a hotel registry. And for Artie, there was no particular disappointment, only boredom; to him the outcome was interesting only as a kind of bet, a long shot on life.

Then came my day to testify.

I had assured myself that testifying on the stand would only be like sitting in front of the typewriter. When I wrote, I gave testimony, making it as true as I knew how. Then what was it that troubled me? Was it some feeling that I would nevertheless that day be deserting my function as an objective bystander, to take the chair and participate?

From Artie and Judd, I was sure I received a special, measuring look, weighing how damaging I might be.

I had gone over the material with Tom. Certain words of Artie’s would be ugly to repeat. But we had long ago put them into print; how could we change them? If you had to pick a kid to kill, he was just the kind of cocky little sonofabitch you’d choose. That sentence, we both knew, was counted on by Horn as a hanging sentence.

The heat was growing in the room, and the people were wiping their brows. The two accused sank low in their chairs, showing their indifference. A Socrates trial, a dance of minds! Then, seemingly in the midst of a sentence, Horn sat down; Wilk shook his head, no questions, and I heard my name called.

As I raised my hand in the oath, I experienced a queer intensification, an archaic fear of the absoluteness of what I would be saying; I am told that all witnesses feel this to some extent and that lawyers play upon it.

Horn advanced, smiling reassuringly, and established my identity, my employment, and that I was a recent graduate of the University of Chicago, as well as a fraternity brother of one of the accused. Then he asked my age.

To graduate at eighteen was pretty unusual, wasn’t it? he asked, and I found myself saying there were others who had graduated at my age.

“Yes.” He stared at the prisoners.

Then he asked if I had been tutored by a governess to speed me through school. Wilk had risen, objecting, “No, no!” Horn withdrew the question, and turned then to my work as a reporter, and the identification of the body of Paulie Kessler. “That was considered quite a scoop, wasn’t it?”

Artie had picked up his head. I muttered, “Well, it was only luck.”

On the day we found the drugstore, wasn’t it Artie who had insisted on making a search? And the inevitable question arrived.

“Did you discuss Artie’s personal acquaintance with the victim?”

“We did.”

“Did you ask him anything about Paulie?”

“My partner, Tom Daly, asked what kind of kid Paulie was.”

“And what was his reply?”

Artie and Judd were staring fixedly at me. I felt sweat break and slide under my arm. “He said, ‘He was just the kind of cocky little -’ and then he used a swear word ‘you would pick if you were going to kidnap someone.’” They had me repeat the word to the stenographer.

Horn glanced challengingly at the defence.

Had the remark aroused any suspicion in me? Not at the time. Then Horn led me through the account of the typewriter, without failing to remark that there seemed to be different kinds of prodigies at the university.

But he was not through. “Tell me, Mr. Silver, would you mind telling the court, have you ever pictured yourself as a king, or a slave, or an ideal college hero?”

The quiet Edgar Feldscher leaped up, shouting objections.

What was the purpose of the line of questioning? the judge asked. Even while they argued, there crowded through my mind my own fantasies: a football hero, a sophisticated star reporter, a great writer receiving the Pulitzer Prize. I felt myself flushing, for quickly, overwhelming these, were sexual images, harem images…

Horn was insisting that the alienists’ reports, pages and pages filled with the boys’ fantasies, had opened up this entire question. But this evidence had not yet been presented in court, Judge Matthewson remarked.

I was turned over to the defence.

I watched Jonathan Wilk, unfolding like a carpenter’s rule; would he now make a fool of me? But from the first stroke of his voice I felt drawn to his side. Wilk did not have many questions to ask of me. I was used to Artie’s way of talking, wasn’t I? I knew him around the fraternity house and on campus, didn’t I? And was Artie in the habit of employing swear words or dirty words in his usual speech?

He was.

In fact – and with a shadow of his sad smile, Wilk turned his head toward Artie – in fact, the boy couldn’t open his mouth without some filthy expression, the way some kids did to show they were grown-up?”

Yes, I agreed. These were habitual expressions with him.

So the swear word Artie had put in there didn’t have any real significance, did it? It didn’t mean anything?

No, I agreed, and found myself relieved to have this pointed out.

Mentally I deleted “sonofabitch”. The rest was still terrible.

Wilk seemed to have done the same thing in his mind. And now he lowered his voice to a more intimate level.

Now, I had seen a great deal of Artie, and of his friend Judd, but particularly of Artie in those days before they were caught, and as I thought back on Artie’s conduct, what had he seemed like to me?

For a moment, I could not answer. There came to me, insistently, the Four Deuces, the dead derelict, Ruth, Artie, Judd dancing with Ruth… If I opened my mouth, I would talk of her -

Wilk prompted me. On the day Artie had insisted on hunting out the drugstore, what had he seemed like to me?

“I would say he was obsessed,” I testified. “I even remarked to my partner that Artie was obsessed with the case because he was so crazy about detective stories.”

“It didn’t bring suspicion upon him?”

“No; he himself had the explanation that his own kid brother might have been the victim.” Willie Weiss was staring at me. Did I really believe Willie’s far-fetched theory? Within myself, I felt an intensification, an acceleration of all processes, as if being a witness indeed helped me to see. It was a peculiar instant of oversensitivity; there was an exquisite shudder in it; and I even thought, Suppose someone were driven to hunt for such augmented perceptions? Suppose someone had to reach out beyond everyday actions, by hurting, by murder…