Stanley Elkin - Searches & Seizures

In the morning a guard shook him gently awake on the bench where he had sacked out, and even offered him coffee. “Nice day for a hanging,” the fellow said by way of small talk.

“Red sky at night, sailor’s delight,” the Phoenician answered. “Say, are there many people around?”

“Outside, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“The town’s packed. You can’t get a room. Everybody’s very excited.”

“What’s their mood? Are they upset, are they likely to turn ugly?”

“No, I don’t think so. They’re leaving this one strictly to the government.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Well,” said the guard, “you ain’t seen what the government can do when it’s worked up.”

On the surface, at least, the arraignment was as proper as the arrest. The judge — the Phoenician, circulating, heard talk that he was a fair man — listened impassively to the charges and then requested that the prisoners, Oyp and Glyp, stand.

The Phoenician was astonished. So accustomed had he become to seeing them in their disguises, to recognizing them under their dyed hair, through their patiently grown mustaches and beards and behind their surgical alterations and new postures (Glyp had even trained himself to be left-handed), to discounting the red herrings of their changed diction and the falsetto of their acquired tenor, that he had not known them in their reverted states. He had to laugh. If they’d been snakes they’d have bit me, he thought. I’ll be a goddamn purloined letter. Of course it had been dark in the tomb, and most of the time he’d been more interested in what they were doing than in them, and of course they’d been under a good deal of pressure so that their speech rhythms had become those he’d never have anticipated — the iambs and dactyls of action and assault being different in kind from those of evasion — but still and all he was amazed that he’d had no clue at all, not the slightest suspicion, and so their identities staggered him. He was so breathless that when the time came for him to speak he was able to do so only with the most supreme effort, and even then only after the tipstaff, seeing his distress, had brought him a glass of water.

“Your Honor,” he said, “I’m Alexander Main, and I wish to go bail for these two.”

“There is no question of bail, Mr. Main,” the judge said gently.

“There’s always a question of bail, Your Honor,” he said respectfully. “I appreciate that in the circumstances the bond will necessarily be a high one, but whatever it is I will pay it. I think I can assure the Court, too, that whatever date is fixed upon for the prisoners’ appearance they will be here.”

“There is no question of bail, Mr. Main.”

“Your Honor,” he pleaded, “look at these men. They aren’t master criminals. They’re ordinary. They’re banal men. The state hasn’t argued in its charges that they’ve conspired with others to do this thing, or that they acted as agents, or even that they had contacts with or commitments from known fences in their misadventure. Fortunately, no one was killed or even hurt in their abortive attempt. Also, all the property’s been recovered; it’s been checked against the catalogs and it’s all there. Luckily, those pieces which were damaged were the least valuable pieces in the tomb, and I’ve been given to understand that even these are subject to restoration. I’m told that the cloth-of-gold is even now being dry-cleaned.” He paused. “In short, sir,” he said slyly, “I think that all we’re faced with here is a case of a couple of second-story blokes in under their heads.”

The spectators laughed appreciatively at the Phoenician’s joke. Even the judge smiled, but when he banged his gavel to restore order all he did was repeat that there was no question of bail.

Main was undeterred. He demanded an explanation of the fair man. He asked if under Egyptian law tomb robbers were excluded from bail.

A guard moved toward him, but the judge waved him off. “Under Egyptian law, no,” he said.

“Are there precedents, then, for such an exclusion?”

“There are no precedents, Mr. Main, because until last night no tomb robbers had ever been apprehended.” Now the judge paused. “But since we’re on the subject of precedents I would remind you that no precedent ever had a precedent, and that all precedents arise from the oily rags and scraps of tinder condition, law’s and experience’s spontaneous combustion.”

The Phoenician didn’t wait for the implication of this to register with the crowd. “Does the State have evidence that Mr. Oyp and Mr. Glyp have been linked with other tomb robberies?” he asked crisply.

“None that has been presented to us.”

His next question was dangerous, for he knew the true state of affairs. Hoping that the Egyptians didn’t, however, he decided to ask it. “Are these men wanted for other offenses?”

“Not to our knowledge.”

“Well then, may we not assume that this is a first offense and that the case is much as I presented it and these two much as I described them — amateurs whose ambitions exceeded their capabilities? I don’t mean to prejudice the prosecution’s case. Indeed, as the police report states, I was there, an eyewitness. I saw it all and fully expect to be subpoenaed by the prosecution to give my evidence. I intend to go even further.” He looked around the hearing room, at the judge, the spectators, and finally directly at Oyp and Glyp themselves. “I shall this day present myself to the police, voluntarily to assist them in their inquiries. I shall do this,” he pronounced softly, “but under sworn testimony I shall also feel compelled to reveal what is already known to your investigators — that these two did not even bother to bring the proper equipment with them, that they had few tools and those they had massively inadequate to their undertaking. Where was their block and tackle? Where were their drills and blasting caps?

“In view of all this — their amateur status, their faulty preparation and makeshift maneuver, the fact that it was a first offense, that no one was physically harmed, that the suspects were unarmed, that they did not resist arrest, the failure of the State to establish agency or even to locate possible receivers, and the fact that the actual damage they caused to property in dollars and cents (I’m reasoning that the artisans who will be responsible for restoring the objets d’art are slaves) barely manages to meet the legal definition of felony, and finally the all-important admission by the court that there is nothing in either Egyptian statute or custom which would justify the withholding of bond in this case — in view of all this, I respectfully request that the court fix an appropriate bond forthwith.”

The judge glared at him, but when he spoke he was as soft-spoken as before. “Mr. Main,” he said patiently, “have you any idea of what bail, if I should agree to set it, would have to be in this case?”

“I have already indicated that I understand it would be high.”

“Yes. It would.”

“I’ll pay it.”

“Will you? Whatever the omissions in our law, there is a statute that is relatively specific in these circumstances.”

“Your Honor?”

“I will give you the exact wording of the statute…Here, this is the pertinent language, I think…blah blah de dum blah de dum…Oh, yes: ‘that the forfeiture be equivalent in value to the value of the intended theft.’ ”

The Phoenician whistled.

“Ignoring the worth of the treasures that were undisturbed in the tomb and fixing a value only on those objects found on the prisoners’ persons or waiting to be picked up by them in the antechamber, that would come to — well, I haven’t the exact figures, but I should think in the neighborhood of, oh, say twenty billion dollars. That’s just a ball park estimate.”