They twisted about in their chairs and looked the emptying courtroom over. Lane was nowhere to be seen. “Must have ducked out,” said Bruno disconsolately. “I saw him here before… Well, Thumm, it’s our own fault. He warned us not to go through with this in the beginning.” He started. “Come to think of it,” he muttered, “he seemed willing enough later on to let us prosecute DeWitt. And he had this defense in his hat all the time. I wonder why…

  “Me, too.”

  “I wonder why he preferred to take chances with DeWitt’s life.”

  “Not much he wasn’t,” said Thumm dryly. “Not with that defense. He knew he could get DeWitt off. I’ll tell you one thing, though.” He rose, stretching his simian arms, shaking himself like a shaggy mastiff. “From now on, friend, little Thummy listens to Drury Lane with respect! Especially when he’s on the subject of Mr. X!”

  ACT III

  Scene 1

  A SUITE AT THE RITZ

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9, 9 P.M.

  Mr. Drury Lane studied the face of his host unobserved. DeWitt stood in a group of his friends, smiling and chattering, making crackling retorts to friendly gibes.

  And Mr. Drury Lane glowed with the warm internal satisfaction of the scientist who probes and probes and finds what he is seeking. For John DeWitt illustrated a character-lesson of provocative outline. Within the space of six hours he had changed from a man enveloped in obdurate armor to a man stripped of sorrow - alive, flashing, a wit, an intellectual companion, an amiable host. From the moment that the foreman of the jury, a gulping old man, had waggled his lantern jaws and ground out the swift release, the sesame of “Not Guilty” that swung open the gates of imprisonment, DeWitt with a surge of his thin chest had cast off the armor of his silence.

  A retiring man? Not tonight! For tonight there must be celebration, laughter, the chink of glasses, the banquet of deliverance…

  The party had congregated in a private suite at the Ritz. In one room a long table loaded with crockery, stemware, and flowers had been set up. Jeanne DeWitt was there, sparkling and rosy; Christopher Lord, and Franklin Ahearn, looming over the frail body of his friend; and Louis Imperiale, the immaculate; and Lyman and Brooks and, by himself, Drury Lane.

  DeWitt murmured an apology and slipped out of the chatting group. In a comer, the two men faced each other; DeWitt alertly humble, Lane pleasant and noncommittal.

  “Mr. Lane. I haven’t had the opportunity… I can’t find words to express my - my profound thanks.”

  Lane chuckled. “I see that even lawyers as hardened as Lyman cannot resist impulsive indiscretion.”

  “Won’t you sit down?… Yes, Frederick Lyman told me, Mr. Lane. He could not accept congratulations, he said, which rightfully belong to you. That was - that was a remarkable alignment of facts, Mr. Lane. Remarkable.” DeWitt’s sharp eyes fluttered.

  “Yet perfectly obvious.”

  “Not so obvious, sir.” DeWitt sighed happily. “You can’t know how honored I am by your presence. I know how little you care for this sort of thing, how few public appearances you make.”

  “True,” smiled Lane, “but after all beside the point, Mr. DeWitt. You see, I am here… I’m afraid, however, that my presence is not entirely induced by the pleasant company and the earnestness of your invitation.” Something dark flitted over DeWitt’s face and was gone in the next instant. “For you see it occurred to me that you might have something,” Lane’s voice became a shadow of its usual robustness, “something to tell me.”

  DeWitt did not answer at once. He looked about, drinking in the sounds of gayety, the supple beauty of his daughter, the quiet laughter of Ahearn across the room. An attendant in evening clothes was opening the sliding- doors of the banquet-room.

  DeWitt turned back and his hand crept to his eyes. He pressed the lids down, remained in an attitude of thought, of calculation. “I - well, sir, you’re uncanny.” He opened his eyes to look directly into the grave face of the actor. “I’ve made up my mind to trust you, Mr. Lane. Yes. It’s the only way.” An iron note pealed. “I have - it’s true - I have something to tell you.”

  “Yes?”

  “But I can’t say anything now.” The broker shook his head firmly. “Not now. It’s a long sordid story, and I don’t want to spoil your evening - or my own.” His grayish hands twitched. “Tonight - well, it’s a special sort of night for me. I’ve escaped a horrible thing. Jeanne - my daughter… and Lane nodded slowly. Behind the mirror of DeWitt’s abstracted eyes there was a vision, he was sure, not of Jeanne DeWitt but of Fern DeWitt. Grief, perhaps: DeWitt’s wife was not present, and knowing what he knew, Lane felt certain that in his quiet uncomplaining way DeWitt still loved the woman who had betrayed him.

  DeWitt slowly rose. “Won’t you come down with the rest of my party tonight, sir? We’re all going out to my place in West Englewood - I’ve arranged a little celebration - if you don’t care to stay for the week-end I’ll make any further arrangements you may please to command. One night will certainly not… Brooks is staying the night, and we can accommodate you as well as him with linen… He added in quite another tone: “Tomorrow morning we can have to ourselves. And then I will tell you - what by some magical quality of intuition you expected me to tell you tonight.”

  Lane got to his feet and placed his hand lightly on the small man’s shoulder. “I quite understand. Forget everything - until tomorrow morning.”

  “There’s always a tomorrow morning, isn’t there?” murmured DeWitt. They moved forward to join the others. A soft sickness attacked the pit of Lane’s stomach. Banalities… He found himself bored all at once. His face smiled at the group, and while the attendant in evening clothes invited the party to enter the banquet-room, a pinpoint glowed in a chamber of his brain and he found himself thinking: “‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow… to the last syllable of recorded time… It sheened and trembled, vibrated clearly in his head… to dusty death.’” He sighed, found Lyman’s arm entwined in his, smiled, and followed the others to the feast.

  BBB

  The party was gay. Apologetically Ahearn ordered a special platter of cooked vegetables; but he had sipped some Tokay and was recounting the details of a strenuous chess-match to Imperiale, who was frankly inattentive, preferring to murmur polished conceits to Jeanne DeWitt across the table. Lionel Brooks’s blond head rolled with the lilt of a soft tune being played by a string orchestra concealed behind palms in a corner of the room. Christopher Lord discussed the prospects of the Harvard eleven, one eye cocked on Jeanne at his side. DeWitt sat quietly, enjoying the hum of conversation, the song of the violins, the room, the table, the food, the warmth; and Drury Lane studied him and watched him and made an occasional jest when Lyman, flushed with wine, urged him into speech.

  Over demi-tasse and cigarettes Lyman suddenly rose, clapping his hands for silence. He raised a glass.

  “As a rule,” he said, “I despise the institution of toasts. It’s an archaic hangover from the day of bustles, crinolines, and stage-door Johnnies. But there’s a good excuse for toasting tonight - toasting a man’s deliverance.” He grinned down at DeWitt. “The best of health, the best of luck, John DeWitt.” They drank. DeWitt struggled to his feet. “I-” His voice broke. Drury Lane smiled, but the sickness deepened in his stomach. “Like Fred, I’m a shy man.” For no reason at all, they laughed. “But I propose to give you one of us who for decades has been the idol of millions of intelligent people, who has faced countless audiences and yet who, I think, is the shyest of us all. Mr. Drury Lane!”

  They drank again, and Lane smiled again and wished he were very far away. He did not rise, said in his thrilling baritone: “I have the profoundest admiration for people who can carry these things off easily. On the stage one learns self-possession; but I have never mastered the art of perfect equanimity in affairs like this…”

  “Let’s have it, Mr. Lane!” shouted Ahearn.

  “I see I must.” He rose and his eyes twinkled out of their boredom. “I suppose I should preach a sermon. And since my stock-in-trade is not the abbé’s trace but the actor’s script, my sermon must of necessity be couched in dramatic terms.” He turned directly to DeWitt, sitting silent and alert at his side, and said: “Mr. DeWitt, you have just passed through one of the most harrowing experiences possible to emotional man. To sit before the bar, waiting through interminable years for a verdict, only too humanly fallible, which will mean life or death, is surely society’s most subtle punishment. To endure such an eternity with dignity merits you the highest praise. I was reminded of the half-humorous, half-tragic remark of the French publicist Sieyès, when he was asked what he had done during the Reign of Tenor.

  He said simply: ‘J’ai vécu,’ ‘I have survived/ a retort impossible to any but a man of spirit and philosophy.” The actor breathed deeply and regarded the company with unmoving features. “There is no virtue greater than the virtue of courage as executed by perseverance. The very triteness of the thought is its guarantee of truth.” They were quite still, but DeWitt was the most motionless of all; he seemed to feel the tide of rich words enter his body and become part of him; he seemed to feel that the words were directed wholly and meaningly and comfortingly to him alone.

  Drury Lane tossed his head and said: “Please bear with me if - since you have insisted on my prattling - I bring a somber note into this gay company by leaning on my inevitable reference for all the wisdom that has ever been uttered.” His voice lilted, grew stronger. “In one of Shakespeare’s not sufficiently appreciated dramas, King Richard III, appears a commentary on the better side of a dark soul which, it seems to me, is confounding in its penetration.” He cocked a slow eye at DeWitt’s bowed head. “Mr. DeWitt,” he said, “your experience of the past few weeks has fortunately stripped suspicion of murder from your name. Yet this does not clarify a greater issue, for somewhere about us, lurking in the mists, is a murderer who has already dispatched two human beings into hell or, for their sakes I hope, heaven. How many of us have reflected on the character of this man-killer, the machinery of his soul? For even if the observation be trite, he has a soul, and if we are to believe our spiritual guides, an immortal one. Too many of us think of a murderer as an inhuman monster without recalling that buried in the depths of ourselves are raw emotional spots which the lightest touch might convert into just such festering foments to manslaughter…”

  There was such silence as to make the atmosphere thick, ponderable. Lane continued evenly: “Whereupon we return to Shakespeare’s observations on one of his most interesting dramatic characters - the misshapen, bloody King Richard, surely an ogre in human form if there ever was one. Yet what does the all-seeing eye observe? In Richard’s own bitter words…”

  And suddenly he altered, his bearing, his expression, his voice. It was done so subtly, so unexpectedly that they stared at him almost with fear. Cunning, acerbity, ravaging viciousness, supreme and aged disappointment obscured the pleasant face with sinister lines and shadows. Mr. Drury Lane was quite swallowed up in a new and terrible personality. His mouth writhed open and strangled sounds issued from that golden orifice. “‘Give me another horse; bind up my wounds. Have mercy, Jesus!’” The voice rose to a pitiful snarl, tom from an anguished throat. It fell flatly, without emotion, without despair, almost without sound. “ ‘Soft! I did but dream…’ They were bewitched, taken out of themselves in a transport of fascination. The voice went on, muttering but clear. “ ‘O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me! The lights bum blue. It is now dead midnight. Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh. What do I fear? myself? there’s none else by; Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I. Is there a murderer here? No… Yes, I am. Then fly… What, from myself? Great reason why: Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself? Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? for any good that I myself have done, unto myself? O, no! alas, I rather hate myself for hateful deeds committed by myself! I am a villain; yet I lie, I am not. Fool, of thyself speak well; fool, do not flatter…’”

  The voice tottered on the brink of something foul, caught itself, surged on in a paean of tragic self-mogrification. “‘My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, and every tongue brings in a several tale, and every tale condemns me for a villain. Perjury, perjury in the high’st degree. All several sins, all used in each degree, throng to the bar, crying all, Guilty! Guilty! I shall despair… There is no creature loves me; and if I die, no soul shall pity me; nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself find in myself no pity to myself?”‘

  Someone sighed.

  Scene 2

  WEEHAWKEN RAILROAD STATION

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9, 11:55 P.M.

  At a few minutes before midnight the DeWitt party entered the West Shore Railroad terminus in Weehawken - the barnlike, gray waiting-room with the naked iron trusses lacing its ceiling, the platform running overhead beside the walls. There were a few people about; in a corner, near one of the doors to the yard, a clerk at the Baggage Room counter drowsed; a man yawned behind the magazine-stand; the long, backed benches were empty.

  They entered in a gust of laughter, a party intact except for Frederick Lyman, who had excused himself at the hotel and returned to his apartment. Jeanne DeWitt and Lord ran to the magazine-stand, Imperiale at their heels, smiling, and Lord purchased a huge box of candy, offering it to Jeanne with an exaggerated bow. Imperiale, not to be outdone in gallantry, purchased an armful of magazines and, clicking his heels together, presented them to the girl; rosy, bundled in furs, eyes shining, she laughed and, putting a hand under an arm of each man, led them to a bench where they sat down, chattering and nibbling at chocolates.

  The four remaining members of the party strolled to the ticket-window. DeWitt looked up at the big clock above the magazine-stand; its hands stood at 12:04.

  “Well,” he said cheerfully, “our train doesn’t leave until twelve-thirteen - we have a few minutes. Excuse me.”

  They had stopped at the window; Lane and Brooks dropped back a step, and Ahearn grasped DeWitt’s arm. “Here, John, let me.” DeWitt chuckled, threw Ahearn’s arm off and said to the clerk: “Six single-trip tickets to West Englewood, please.”

  “There are seven of us, John,” protested Ahearn.

  “I know, but I have my own regular fifty-trip ticket-book.” His face clouded as the clerk shoved six bits of pasteboard through the window. Then he smiled and said dryly: “I suppose I should sue the State for the value of my old trip-book. It expired while I was-” He stopped and said abruptly: “Let me have a new fifty-trip book, too.”

  “Name, sir?”

  “John O. DeWitt, West Englewood.”

  “Yes, Mr. DeWitt.” The clerk tried not to rubber and became extremely busy. A few moments later he pushed under the grating a dated rectangular paper book. As DeWitt took out his wallet and produced a fifty-dollar bill, Jeanne’s clear voice rang out: “Daddy, the train’s in!”

  The clerk made change rapidly and DeWitt, cramming the bills and loose change into his trousers pocket, turned about to his three companions, the six single tickets and the trip-book in his hand.

  “Do we have to run for it?” asked Lionel Brooks. The four men faced each other.

  “No, we have time enough,” replied DeWitt, tucking the tickets and the new book into the upper left pocket of his vest and then rebuttoning his coat.

  They made their way across the waiting-room, joined Jeanne and Lord and Imperiale, and went out into the chilly air of the roofed yard. The 12:13 local was in. They walked through the iron-grilled gateway and down the long concrete platform. A few other passengers were following them, straggling along. The last car was dark, and they walked ahead, boarding the second car from the end.

  Several strangers sat down in the same car.

  Scene 3

  THE WEEHAWKEN-NEWBURGH LOCAL

  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1O, 12:20 A.M.

  They had split into two groups: Jeanne, Lord, and the cavalierly Imperiale sat well forward in the car, chattering; DeWitt, Lane, Brooks, and Ahearn took places nearer the center of the coach, in facing seats.

  The train was still in the Weehawken terminal when the lawyer, who had been staring at DeWitt with frank eyes, turned his head toward Drury Lane, who sat opposite, and said abruptly: “Do you know, something you said tonight, Mr. Lane, interested me very much… You spoke of the ‘interminable years’ that are packed into a single moment - the moment during which a man waits at the bar for the jury verdict which will condemn him to death or send him from the courtroom with a fresh lease on life. Interminable years! Dandy phrase, Mr. Lane…”

  “An accurate phrase,” said DeWitt.

  “You think so?” Brooks stole a look at DeWitt’s composed features. “It reminded me at the time of a story I once read - I think it was by Ambrose Bierce. A very strange story indeed. It was about a man who was being hanged. In the - the, well, molecular instant before his neck snapped this man saw the details of his entire lifetime projected in his brain. There’s your interminable years idea, Mr. Lane, in literature; and I have no doubt it’s been treated by many other writers.”

  “I believe I know the story,” replied Lane. DeWitt, at Brooks’s side, nodded. “This whole problem of time is relative, as our scientists have been telling us for some years. Dreams, for example - dreams which seem on awakening to have occupied the brain through all the silent hours of the night - are said by some psychologists to occupy in actuality only the last, the borderline moment between the subconsciousness of sleep and the consciousness of wakefulness.”

  “I’ve heard that, too,” said Ahearn. He was sitting opposite DeWitt and Brooks, and facing forward.

  “What I was really getting at,” said Brooks - he was looking at DeWitt again - “was the application of this peculiar mental phenomenon to you, John. I couldn’t help wondering - I suppose many of us did - just what your thoughts were in the instant before the verdict was given, today.”