“You see, your honor,” Runkle began, “this defendant hasn’t even got a record. He’s being framed—”
Fenton laughed scornfully. “Framed! That’s what Runkle claims about every one of his clients, Your Honor. It’s his stock in trade. He’ll soon be telling us about this man’s poor old mother and father in South Bend, Indiana, or some place!” Fenton gestured eloquently. “Judge, the mere fact that Runkle has been retained here should prove that the defendant has something to worry about. It’s common knowledge in the underworld that Runkle can help a criminal to beat any kind of ‘rap.’ If a defendant can pay Runkle’s fee, he can get away with murder!”
Runkle smiled, not deigning to reply. His eyes were on the judge.
And Judge Rothmere suddenly threw a bombshell into the court room. In his august, judicial voice he announced, “Mr. Runkle, I will grant your motion. The defendant is dismissed!”
Nothing that the judge could conceivably have said or done could have caused greater consternation in the courtroom than those four words.
Men stared at each other as if their hearing had suddenly betrayed them. The bailiff and the guards stood speechless. District Attorney Fenton seemed suddenly to choke, then he waved his hands in the air and rushed up to the bench. “You can’t do that!” he shouted. “This man is a murderer! Are you crazy?” The unexpectedness of the decision had deprived him of all sense of discretion.
The killer at the bar remained unmoved, unspeaking, as if none of this concerned him in the least.
Runkle seized him by the elbow, urged him toward the door. “You’re free, do you understand? Get out of here before they hold you for something else. Beat it!”
Fenton turned from the bench, ran shouting after them. “Stop! Stop! I’ll swear out another warrant for him. He can’t go free. He’s a murderer!”
Judge Rothmere frowned, called out, “Mr. Fenton! Do you forget where you are? This is a courtroom!”
Fenton paid no attention to him, ran after the prisoner, The judge pounded with his gavel. “Bailiff,” he shouted, “Seize Mr. Fenton. I declare him in contempt of court!”
The bailiff stared at him uncomprehendingly, too dazed to act.
The judge half rose in his bench, thundered at the unfortunate bailiff, “Did you hear me?”
That official finally came out of his daze, stammered, “Y-yes, Your Honor,” and sped after the district attorney, gripping him by the arm. “Sorry, sir, it’s the judge’s orders!”
Fenton fumed in the bailiff’s grip, but the delay was enough to allow the robot killer and his attorney to leave the court room. As the door closed behind them, Fenton turned to the bench. There were tears of rage in his eyes. “Do you know what you’ve done, Judge? You’ve released a cold-blooded killer. He’ll kill again, as sure as you’re sitting there. Why did you do it?”
Judge Rothmere rose dignifiedly from the bench, tapped once with the gavel. “Court,” he announced quietly, “is adjourned till ten o’clock tomorrow morning! Till then, Mr. Fenton, I will parole you in your own custody to answer to a charge of contempt of this court!”
And the judge turned, left the bench and went out through the side door, leaving the room in a state of seething excitement.
HE was out in the corridor now, but before crossing to his chambers across the hall, he walked down a few paces and peered around the bend. He could now see the front door of the court room through which Runkle and the killer had gone.
They stood there now, faced by five men in plain clothes who wore on the lapels of their coats badges of the Department of Justice. One of these men was saying to the baby-faced killer, “We want you, bo. We have a warrant for the arrest of one, John Doe, now held by the state authorities, for questioning in a kidnaping investigation. I guess you’re our man.” He turned to the others. “Take him, boys!”
Runkle started to protest, but he suddenly found himself looking into the barrel of a revolver. The officer who had spoken before held that gun, and he said, softly, “We don’t want you — yet, mister. But we’ll take you along if you open your trap once more. Yeah, we’ll take you along — feet first!”
Runkle’s face went pale. Before he could collect himself, the other men had snapped handcuffs on the now struggling killer, and were leading him out of the building with a gun stuck in the small of his back.
Runkle started to shout after them, “You’re no officers—” but he stopped quickly, cowering, as one of them swung around, raised his gun. The man did not fire. He merely laughed, turned around and followed the others. So quickly and quietly had the thing been done that the few people in the corridor had not even noticed it until Runkle began to shout. Then it was too late, for the five men with their prisoner were gone.
Runkle sped after them, stood in the entrance watching the high-powered car into which they had climbed speeding around the corner on two wheels. He cursed, then shrugged, turned to the small crowd that had gathered behind him; “I got my fee, anyway,” he said, grinning. “And nobody can say I’m hiding him from the law, because you all saw him snatched from under my eyes.”
Around the bend in the corridor, Judge Rothmere had watched the drama with interest. He now turned and directed his steps toward the chambers. An attendant who had followed him from the court room approached, asked, “Can I help you, sir?”
“No. I won’t need you any more today. You may go home.”
The judge entered his chambers, using a key, and went into an inner room. Here a man lay on the floor, gagged, glaring up in impotent fury. He was dressed in an ordinary business suit, the judge wore a judicial robe, But there the difference ended. For their faces were exactly alike.
The man in the robe said, “I am sorry, Judge Rothmere, if I caused you inconvenience. It was necessary, in the cause of true justice, that I pose as you for a few minutes. I will leave you bound now, and I will also leave my mark before I go, so that it will be known that it wasn’t you who just sat on the bench. Otherwise you might have some difficult explaining to do.”
Now the man in the judicial robe left the gagged man, stepped into the outer room. Here he doffed the robes, raised long fingers to his face. Swiftly the features of Judge Rothmere disappeared, only to give place in a few moments to the face of A. J. Martin, newspaper man.
The whole transformation took less than six minutes. Now he spoke to the gagged man in the inner room. “If any one asks you who did this, judge, you can tell them I left my card on the table out here.”
As he spoke, he deposited on the small table a card, on which there was the reproduction of a glowing “X.”
Then he silently opened the door and stepped into the corridor.
Chapter XI
WHEN the five men who wore the federal badges sped away in the car with the robot killer in their custody, the large clock on the City Hall building showed the time to be exactly twenty-nine minutes past ten o’clock. The whole thing was over, thirty-one minutes before the scheduled time for the arraignment.
The car swung around the corner and passed out of the sight and ken of the crowd surrounding Runkle and Fenton. But there were others who were interested in that car. Near the corner, a tan-and-gray cab had been parked all morning, with the flag up. The driver smoked cigarette after cigarette, but never took his eyes off the court house. Once in a while he would turn to say a few words to the sole occupant of the cab, or to answer a curt question. The occupant of the cab was a stocky, sullen sort of man, with a long, thin face that contrasted oddly with his squat body.