It was a foregone conclusion. Lowry was able to visualize the public defender going through the mere motions of a defense that was no defense, just a hollow mockery of the due process of law. He could see it over and done with, whisked through the courtroom in jig time, quickly but not without pain.

  Lowry lifted his big, well-knit frame out of the chair, snatched his hat from the rack, and went out, alerting his secretary to keep the office under control until he got back. Lowry walked four blocks to a tall office building and went up in the gleaming elevator to the tenth floor.

  There he stopped in front of a frosted office door which said, in commanding gilt letters, PETER J. REYNOLDS, ATTORNEY AT LAW.

  Lowry went in.

  A decorative young receptionist in a tight yellow jersey smiled at him and said, “Yes, please?”

  “I’d like to see Mr. Reynolds.”

  “Do you have an appointment with him, sir?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t. But I think he’ll see me, if he isn’t too busy. The name is Lowry, Ned Lowry. Yes, the one from the newspaper.”

  The girl looked momentarily impressed. Rising, she puffed out her chest in what was probably an attempt to give the famous columnist a good look at her cleavage, and said, “I’ll see if he’s free, Mr. Lowry.”

  “There’s a good girl.”

  She disappeared into an inner office. But she returned in a moment.

  “Mr. Reynolds will be glad to see you, sir.”

  “That’s swell.”

  She ushered him into Reynolds’ private office.

  Reynolds looked fat—though not disfiguringly so—smooth, and competent. He put on a pair of pince-nez glasses when he saw Lowry and smiled.

  “I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Lowry,” he said in a full, resonantly commanding voice that was probably marvelous in the courtroom. “I’ve been reading your column for a long time, you know. It’s an impressive job, I’ve always thought. Very impressive.”

  “Thanks,” Lowry said without warmth. “It’s always good to know that your work is appreciated by someone of some caliber. But I don’t particularly enjoy writing it at the moment, however. It seems pretty useless.”

  “Sorry to hear that. Though I don’t really understand what you mean by your column being useless.”

  “I mean that I try to help the people I write about. And just now I see an opportunity to help someone, but I can’t do a damned thing. That’s why I came to you, Mr. Reynolds. Perhaps you can help me.”

  “Would you explain?”

  Lowry moved forward in his chair and stared levelly at the lawyer. “I came here, Mr. Reynolds,” he said simply, “because you’re supposed to be the best lawyer in town. Are you?”

  Reynolds laughed at the blunt question. “Do you want me to be modest or honest?”

  “Honest.”

  “Honestly, then, I am.”

  “Nothing less will do for what I want,” Lowry said. “Now, to be blunt again—would you pitch in with me to help a poor sucker who is being railroaded into the gas chamber for a crime he didn’t commit? I mean, would you insist on your usual fee?”

  “It depends,” Reynolds said good-humoredly.

  “On what?”

  “Well—if I like the case and if there’s money, I take it—the case and the money— preferably as much of the latter as I can conveniently get. On the other hand, if I like the case a lot and there’s no money, I may still take the case as a test of my professional abilities. But if I don’t like the case at all, it’s no go for me either way.”

  Lowry nodded, “Clear enough and well put.”

  “I assume there’s no money involved here?”

  “You assume right. There’s no money except what I’ll put up for expenses. But you’ll like the case, because it’s a tough one. A real challenge.”

  “I always enjoy a challenge, Mr. Lowry. Give me the details of the case.”

  “It’s Bob McKay. You know about it?”

  “Only what I’ve read in the papers.”

  “Looks bad, doesn’t it?”

  “Pretty bad.”

  “He’s innocent,” Lowry said with firm conviction. “Completely innocent.”

  Reynolds shrugged. “That’s not unlikely. It’s been known to happen.”

  “I don’t want it to happen this time. I like that boy. He doesn’t deserve to end up in the gas chamber on a railroad job.”

  Reynolds leaned back, thrusting his thumbs into his waistband and looking interested. “Well,” he said, “I know the prosecution’s angles. What are yours? Then we’ll see. I don’t want to take on a lost cause.”

  “McKay’s young, about twenty-eight or maybe twenty-nine. He’s a musician, a hell of a good one. He plays the saxophone and clarinet like nobody’s business.”

  “I’m familiar with that.”

  “He started a band of college kids a few years back and raised them right into the big time, right up to the top of the heap. They were good. Too good, as a matter of fact. McKay worked like the devil. Inside of absolutely no time at all, his orchestra was generally rated among the best swing bands in the country. McKay was averaging two thousand and better a week for himself. But it must have been a strain.”

  “I imagine it was.”

  “In that kind of work, you know, the drinks are right at hand with which to relieve the strain. It’s no trick to reach out and take a highball off a tray, when they’re on the house. So McKay drank. Too much. And he began to get into trouble.”

  “What kind?”

  “The night club kind,” Lowry said, shrugging. “You know. Fights with customers, fights with bosses. He hauled off and broke a customer’s nose one night because the guy was drunk and making insulting remarks about the band. Then a couple nights later he took a poke at the owner of the club. That finished him there, and the same thing happened at the next place. He started to lose jobs and the orchestra began to go down with him until one of his boys decided that the best thing for the good of everybody concerned was just to pitch him out on his butt before he wrecked the reputation of the entire group.”

  “And so they pitched him out?”

  “Exactly. That and the drinking did a lot of damage in a short time. It’s the old, old story. You’ve probably seen a hundred clients go to hell the same way. His money was gone inside of six months—naturally he never saved anything, never invested it, put it all into fancy cars and high living—and pretty soon he was down there grubbing on South Main Street with the rest of them. Probably all he needed to be saved from the slopheap was a little break from somebody, but you know the way that works. There’s nothing that the boys and girls love better in the world than to kick a has-been in the teeth.”

  “Agreed.”

  “So he moved into a cheap furnished room someplace, and spent whatever money he had cached on booze in the dives. And, of course, that’s how he got snarled up in this whole stupid murder mess. He knew that girl, sure. But so did I. A lot of people knew her. He was just the easiest one to get at. You couple that with the ridiculous coincidence of the identification by the two witnesses and there he is—walking down the last mile without anybody giving a damn that he’s innocent.”

  “It’s hard to argue against the circumstantial evidence,” Reynolds said thoughtfully. “You’re absolutely convinced that the man is clear?”

  “Positive.”

  “How do you figure it?”

  “Simple. He couldn’t have done it. I know the boy, and it doesn’t figure with his character. For one thing, I’m morally certain that his relationships with Main Street women never went a step beyond a conversation over a drink. He wasn’t the type to get into bed with floozies no matter how low down he sank.”

  “A lot of men have high, moral feelings until they land in the gutter,” Reynolds said. “It’s easy to stay away from cheap dames when you’ve got lots of dough in your pocket. But when you’re down and out, and the girl says she’ll go with you for two or three bucks, it’s hard to resist, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Not for this lad. He was shot through with idealism once, and no matter how much else of his past life went to hell I’m sure that part stuck. There was a girl he simply worshipped, once. A real beauty. Starlet, you know, but not your typical would-be Marilyn who’ll put out for anybody important. She was badly gone on him too, but she let him skid once he started to.” Lowry scowled. “Maybe she tried to help him and it didn’t work. I don’t know. Anyway, she packed in, and I know that hurt him as deep as you can hurt a man. But he didn’t throw that overboard. I know that.”

  “You’re a good judge of character, Mr. Lowry. I’m willing to believe that everything you feel about this McKay fellow is valid. But it’s another thing entirely to make subjective character analysis stand up in court and convince a jury.”

  “I know, but I’m going to try,” Lowry said. “Will you take the case?”

  “I think so,” Reynolds said. “Yes. Yes, I’m with you, Lowry. Goddamn, but I haven’t had as stiff a challenge as this in years. I’ll take it just on your say-so that the boy is innocent.”

  “I knew you would,” Lowry said, extending his hand across the desk. Reynolds took it. There was a power in the fat man’s grip that belied the flabbiness of his big body.

  “Thanks,” Lowry said. “We’ll see him, then, and I think the next thing will be to stall until I can dig up whatever I can.” He moistened his lips anxiously. “If I can’t dig up anything substantial, what would the defense be like?”

  Reynolds shrugged. “We’ll see that after we’ve talked to McKay. I can’t plan in the dark. What are you figuring to look for?”

  “Just hoping I can uncover some snags in what they’ve pinned on him. They’re banking on pretty coincidental evidence, and I ought to be able to poke some holes in it if I work at it.”

  “Let’s hope so, Mr. Lowry.”

  * * *

  In the shadow of Reynolds’ prestige, Lowry, too, was finally able to get to McKay. The imprisoned man was a chilling sight, with his bruised, swollen face and his dully staring, embittered eyes.

  McKay sat on the cot with his back propped against the cold wall. He was haggard and pale, the bruises standing out in livid contrast on his face. He hadn’t shaved or bathed in a long while. It was hard to see in him even the ghost of the once impeccable band leader that had existed.

  At first he was somewhat indifferent to Lowry’s visit. But it soon penetrated his fogbound mind that the two men were friends, and he began to thaw out.

  Reynolds said, “Starting from the beginning, Bob. When you left your place that morning, where did you go?”

  “I had heard that the trucks left early,” McKay replied in a weary, defeated-sounding voice. “I went down to the produce district and stood on the road to wait for a lift.”

  “And you got one?”

  “Eventually.”

  “Who with?”

  “I got picked up by a truck that was going down to El Centro,” McKay said. “Oh, yeah. There was another fellow got the lift with me.”

  “Splendid. It’s vital to prove you were where you say you were. Do you know his name?”

  “Wilson. Mack Wilson.”

  “Did he say where he lived?”

  “Not the exact address. But he did say he wanted to move out of the neighborhood he was in because of his kid.” McKay was silent a moment, trying to force his alcohol-soaked mind to disgorge the memories of that morning which seemed so many hundreds of centuries ago. “Yeah. I remember. I remember him saying it was a block of crummy wooden shacks on the other side of the river.”

  “Good. Now, when you got to El Centro, you didn’t get a job, I suppose?”

  “No.”

  “Did you stand in line at the ranch offices for any length of time?”

  “Sure.”

  “And did you happen to talk with any of the men who were hiring?” Reynolds asked. “Did you leave your name on a waiting list, or anything like that we could use as proof?”

  “No; I never even got to one of them. There was no hiring. And no waiting list to sign. We were just told to stand around and wait in case it turned out that they needed more men than they already had.”

  “But they didn’t?”

  “No.”

  “Did you talk to any of the other hands who were trying to get work that morning?”

  McKay nodded. “Yes.”

  “Were there any you think we might stand a chance of locating?”

  “No. We simply talked about work, about how bad times were when a guy had to apply for a chinchy job like this and just stand around and wait. I don’t know where any of them lived.”

  “I suppose not,” Reynolds said sadly, mentally crossing off that line of approach. Changing the subject, he said, “Bob, did Doris Blair ever tell you anything about herself?”

  “Only that she hated the way she was living, wanted to get out of it.”

  “And that’s all?”

  McKay smiled feebly. “You got to remember that I was very rarely in a condition to remember everything she told me, of course. But I really don’t think she told me more than that. How she hated the way she was living. She knew she should be doing better with herself.”

  “Who were her friends?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Were they the other girls who worked there?” Reynolds wanted to find out.

  “No. I’m quite sure they weren’t. They didn’t like her very much.”

  “That’s the truth,” Lowry put in. “She was rather superior to the rest of the lot and she made them feel their inferiority.”

  “Offensively?” Reynolds asked.

  “No, it was unconscious on her part. She was just a girl with class. She showed them up for the cheap dyed-haired floozies that they were, just the way a Federal bill is going to show up a bunch of lithographed counterfeits if you put them side by side.”

  Reynolds’ lips narrowed.

  McKay said darkly, “They’re gonna put me in the gas chamber, aren’t they?”

  “Not if we can help it,” Lowry said.

  By the time Reynolds and Lowry were ready to leave, McKay was a little buoyed up, although obviously his experiences with the law had left him deeply pessimistic about his chances of ever escaping from their sticky clutches.

  Outside, Reynolds shook his head gravely. “I don’t like it much, Lowry.”

  “You don’t think he’s got a chance?”

  “I didn’t say that. As long as he’s on this side of the gas chamber, he’s still got a chance. But it’ll be hard, Lowry. Damn hard with those two witnesses for the prosecution and the little McKay has to tell. You get an average jury of nincompoops who just want to tell their grandchildren that they sat on a murder trial, and they’ll send him to his death without even biting their nails. Hell, he’s practically convicted in the newspapers as it is. The jurors are going to walk into that courtroom already convinced that they’re only going through the motions of a trial. That’s what I’ll have to fight against, Lowry. And I can’t do it without some solid evidence to back up his story.”

  Lowry shook his head. “El Centro is out,” he said. “That would be a sort of needle in a haystack search, especially the way the men keep moving in and out down there. But I guess this Mack Wilson fellow he mentioned is first on my list, at any rate. A block of crummy wooden shacks on the other side of the river. There are plenty of those but the post office might help.”

  Reynolds nodded. “If you could track down Wilson somehow, that would help. We may have something in that case.”

  “May?”

  “Yes. Because of course he also has to be a reliable witness. You can’t put a safecracker on the witness stand and expect to impress a jury.”

  “I’ll see.”

  Lowry’s next stop was at the post office. After bringing into play some high-pressure tactics that he had perfected in his everyday job as a reporter and columnist, he succeeded in getting the address of the man called Mack Wilson.

  He drove quickly to a part of town which, though it is really nothing but a slum area, manages by virtue of the small ramshackle houses and the sorry-looking trees which grow here and there at the edges of the cracked sidewalks to look like a rundown suburb.

  The address Lowry had gotten proved to be a vacant house. His heart sank. He could practically visualize the Fates, three old crones weaving the fabric of a man’s destiny and refusing to be thwarted once they had mapped it out, laughing mockingly at him from whatever far-off place they inhabited. Their devilish plans to doom an innocent man had been made so carefully that not the slightest scrap in his favor could materialize. Lowry wondered whether his efforts would be of any use. Maybe it was just futile to go to all this time and trouble to save a man who was so obviously marked for the refuse heap of humanity. Even if he saved McKay through some miracle, what guarantee was there that the young man would not immediately go back to his old haunts and rapidly wind up either once again in jail or in some downtown alcoholic ward?

  Then he felt low for having weakened so easily. McKay was a human being, he thought, and his life was at stake. He had no right to judge the way McKay chose to spend his life. But if it was in his power to save that life, he could not abandon the attempt until all hope was definitely lost.

  With a determined step, he went to the door of the next house and knocked briskly.

  A slatternly woman of about forty opened the door halfway. She eyed Lowry with cold suspicion, as though he might be a bill collector or a city marshall.

  “Yes?”

  “I was wondering,” Lowry said, “if you could tell me where the Wilsons moved.”