Might as Well Be Dead Read Online Free Page B

Arthur Holcomb wouldn’t need to pop or slink suddenly from an areaway. There was no profit in guessing, but as I went back down the corridor naturally I wondered whether and how and why he was connected with P.H., and if so, which one.
    As I approached the door of Part XIX I saw activity. People were going in. I got to the elbow of the officer and asked him if the jury was coming, and he said, “Don’t ask me, mister. Word gets around fast here, but not to me. Move along.” I entered the courtroom and stepped aside to be out of the traffic lane, and was surveying the scene when a voice at my shoulder pronounced my name. I turned, and there was Albert Freyer. His expression was not cordial.
    “So you never heard of Peter Hays,” he said through his teeth. “Well, you’re going to hear of me.”
    My having no reply really didn’t matter, for he didn’t wait for one. He walked down the center aisle with a companion, passed through the gate, and took a seat at the counselors’ table. I followed and chose a spot in the third row on the left, the side where the defendant would enter. The clerk and stenographer were at their desks, and Assistant District Attorney Mandelbaum, who had once been given a bigger dose by Wolfe than he could swallow, was at another table in the enclosure, with his briefcase in front of him and a junior at his side. People were straggling down the aisle, and I had my neck twisted for a look at them, with a vague idea of seeing the man in the tan coat who wanted to find Arthur Holcomb, when there was a sudden murmur and faces turned left, and so did mine. The defendant was being escorted in.
    I have good eyes and I used them as he crossed to a chair directly behind Albert Freyer. I only had about four seconds, for when he was seated, with his back to me, my eyes were of no use, since the picture of Paul Herold, in mortarboard and gown, had given nothing to go by but the face. So I shut my eyes to concentrate. He was and he wasn’t. He could be, but. Looking at the two pictures side by side with Wolfe, I would have made it thirty to one that he wasn’t. Now two to one, or maybe even money, and I would take either end. I had to press down with my fanny to keep from bobbing up and marching through the gate for a full-face close-up.
    The jury was filing in, but I hardly noticed. The courtroom preliminaries leading up to the moment when a jury is going to tell a man where he stands on the big one will give any spectator either a tingle in the spine or a lump of lead in his stomach, but not that time for me. My mind was occupied, and I was staring at the back of the defendant’s head, trying to make him turn around. When the officer gave the order to rise for the entrance of the judge, the others were all on their feet before I came to. The judge sat and told us to do likewise, and we obeyed. I could tell you what the clerk said, and the question the judge asked the foreman, since that is court routine, but I didn’t actually hear it. I was back on my target.
    The first words I actually heard came from the foreman. “We find the defendant guilty as charged, of murder in the first degree.”
    A noise went around, a mixture of gasps and murmurs, and a woman behind me tittered, or it sounded like it. I kept on my target, and it was well that I did. He rose and turned square around, all in one quick movement, and sent his eyes around the courtroom—searching, defiant eyes—and they flashed across me. Then the guard had his elbow and he was pulled around and down, and Albert Freyer got up to ask that the jury be polled.
    At such a moment the audience is supposed to keep their seats and make no disturbance, but I had a call. Lowering my head and pressing my palm to my mouth as if I might or might not manage to hold it in. I got up and sidestepped to the aisle, and double-quicked to the rear and on out. Waiting for one of the slow-motion elevators didn’t fit my mood, so I took to the stairs. Out on