Meyer Levin - Compulsion

At the university, I tried to find Willie Weiss. For it was he who had been involved in Judd’s wild letter to Artie. And wasn’t it Weiss who had lunched with Judd and Artie on the day of the kidnapping? Perhaps he would tell me what kind of a secret it was, of Artie’s, that Judd was supposed to have betrayed. And also, Willie Weiss might remember whether Judd was wearing his glasses during lunch that Wednesday.

It was hard to find anyone that afternoon – people were going away for Memorial Day. The frat was almost empty. I thought of two fellows I had seen coming out of that law exam with Judd Steiner – Harry Bass and Milt Lewis. Bass had already gone home to the North Shore, but Milt Lewis, one of the brothers said, might still be on the tennis court.

Starting for the court, I ran into our chapter president, Raphael Goetz. God, he said, he was glad about only one thing in this mess – that Judd Steiner had never been let into the frat. It was bad enough with Artie, but if Judd had ever got into the Alpha Beta! The papers would make out we were all a bunch of perverts. Oh, he’d been getting funny questions all morning, from police, from reporters.

Well, I said, he knew he could trust me to handle anything he told me, in a way that would protect the frat as much as possible. But whatever was known about the fellows would have to come out.

Raphael was a huge fellow, a halfback on varsity, a good student, and one of those men who endow any meeting with an atmosphere of earnest good will. So now, putting his arm around my shoulders, he said, “Have they really got something on them?”

I showed hit the story containing Judd’s letter. He already knew the omitted word. “That all happened when they were up in Michigan,” he said. And Goetz told me about the Morty Kornhauser incident. “He caught them at it, and they tried to take him out in a canoe and drown him.” We stopped. We stood facing each other, feeling gravely that the fate of others might be in our hands. “Morty even tried to get Artie thrown out of the frat.” But all the fellows thought it was Judd who was to blame. “Hell, you know Artie – he’ll try anything just for the hell of it. He’s happy-go-lucky, but Judd, there’s something that gives you the shivers about him.”

We talked more. About Artie’s being such a drinker, about his betting high stakes at cards, all that stuff, but you still couldn’t say he was capable of murder. He was just a loose character. Being such a prodigy, he’d been pampered since he was a kid, and with all that dough in the family, naturally the guy was spoiled. But you couldn’t say he was a pervert – why, hell, Artie was playing half the girls on campus.

I said I knew.

“I’d believe anything of Judd Steiner, but if Artie is in trouble, I’ll bet that little bastard dragged him into it.”

And suddenly I saw why Artie had held back from admitting he had been with Judd on Wednesday. For if they had been together, they could have been together committing the crime! Judd was capable of anything . Why not even of murder? Artie’s hesitation in placing himself with Judd actually tended to confirm the crime. The story about the picked-up girls was a fake they had agreed upon in advance, but then Artie had held back from telling it, trying to save himself from implication with Judd should the alibi collapse. Artie’s hesitation was actually the proof!

And just then, as if the thought of their guilt in itself caused me to find the conclusive evidence, I noticed Milt Lewis. He was in his tennis clothes, hurrying into the house. I caught up with him. “Listen, Milt,” I said, “the early part of last week, do you remember if Judd Steiner was wearing his glasses?”

“I refuse to answer on the grounds of possible self-incrimination,” Milt cracked. “And who the hell could remember on what day some guy was wearing or not wearing his glasses? All I know is I read in the papers that Judd Steiner lost his glasses in a very inconvenient place.”

We were climbing up to his room. “That’s it,” I said. “He claims he lost them on Sunday. But if he was seen wearing them, between Sunday and Wednesday-”

“Listen,” Milt said, “if you’re trying to hang that conceited bastard, I’m with you.”

“He claims the last time he actually used them was in March.”

“Hell no, I’d say more recently than that. Wait a minute.” Milt Lewis seemed to pick an image out of the air. “At his house, about three weeks ago. A gang of us went there to make some notes on equity. Judd put his glasses on when he opened that portable and started typing. I can just see him sitting there under all those birds, because I kidded him that he looked like one of those owls, with his horn-rimmed glasses.”

A few weeks ago? That still wouldn’t prove anything. But – “You say he was typing on a portable ?”

“Yah, we had two machines going. Harry Bass was using a big machine Judd had there, and Judd opened his portable.”

“Did you notice, was it a Corona?”

“How should I know?” He stared at me. “Hey listen, Hawkshaw-” Then he grinned. “All right, I’ve got carbons of that typing, right here, from both machines.”

He began pulling out papers, folded in among his notebooks. There were indeed two kinds of typing. In itself there was nothing startling in the fact that there should be two typewriters in a millionaire’s house. The second machine might have belonged to his brother. Or he might have bought a portable when he went to Ann Arbour.

I stared at the typing, feeling somehow silly to be going so far, and yet headily sure. “Anybody got a Corona in the house?”

Milt was excited now. We ran through a couple of rooms, located a Corona. The style of lettering seemed the same as on one set of notes. But still, there were millions of Coronas.

For real comparison, I needed a copy of the ransom letter. It had been reproduced in the papers, only a few days ago, but while the house was usually littered with old newspapers, we could now find nothing.

I ran along the street, found a cab. The ad-taking counter at the office was just inside the main door. There was a file of papers kept for the public. I found the page, exactly a week ago, with the reproduced ransom letter. Our story, alongside, quoted typewriter experts, pointing out that there was a faulty p , and that the tail printed faintly on the y . The same faults were on Judd’s law notes! I tore the page from the file.

Running the few blocks to the County Building, I felt I was watched by Judd’s eyes, morose, lustrous, unblinking. I stepped into the cigar store, and phoned Tom in the press room. He came down. We huddled in a corner, while I showed him the two samples.

“Kid, if that bird hangs, you did it!” he said, staring at the evidence.

Could we hold this till tomorrow, for our paper? We decided it was too important. We had to inform Horn.

But upstairs, the offices were empty. They had all gone out to dinner, taking the suspects with them. Nobody knew just where.

This was the famous dinner at the Red Star Inn, near Lincoln Park, an old-style eating place, renowned for its huge schnitzels, apfelkuchen, and other German specialities. If there was a moment when Artie and Judd savoured their adventure, I suppose it was at the time of this dinner. For the sense that they had sought to achieve, the sense of power and superiority in knowing what others did not know, was theirs, here, and together, in the presence of baffled authority itself.

This was the thrill, vibrating in the tension of their still undecided fate. They were so far the masters, and yet, like acrobats who might slip before getting off the wire, they were under a delicious suspense.

Until the cars drew up they could not know they would be together. It was a thought of Horn’s, to confront them in this way, and perhaps catch something in an unguarded moment of surprise and pleasure.