All through that Tuesday, the citizens of Ballston Spa had continued to stew over what Mr. Moore, true to form, insisted on calling the “moral implications” of the case. They had no choice but to stick with that activity on into the evening, as everyone began to anticipate Libby’s return in irons; in fact, it was starting to feel like brooding would keep the town occupied indefinitely, or at least until somebody came up with an explanation for the killings what would let their society (which, if it hadn’t actually produced Libby Hatch, had certainly believed her lies) off the hook. Of course, if they’d known that one of the only men in the entire country who was capable of coming up with such an explanation was at that point packing his bags in Chicago and getting ready to journey to their town, their mood might’ve been considerably different.
But, fortunately for us, the only person who was as yet aware of the movements of Mr. Clarence Darrow was Marcus; and late on Tuesday afternoon, he returned from Chicago in advance of the mysterious Midwestern lawyer. After exchanging warm greetings with the rest of our group at the depot, Marcus handed me his suitcase (which El Niño immediately grabbed, refusing to allow me to carry it), and then we all started walking up Bath Street toward the court house. We’d been ordered to bring the detective sergeant to said building just as soon as his train got in, being as even though Mr. Picton had many pressing matters to attend to in his office (the trial was slated to open on the following Tuesday, August 3rd), he said there was nothing more important than learning about the background and tactics of the hired legal gun who was being brought in from so far away to face him. I figured that Marcus could’ve done with a hot bath and a good meal, after his long journey, but orders were orders. Besides, the discoveries that Marcus had made about Mr. Darrow were such that he himself was very anxious to share them with the rest of us. Because of this, the Doctor had cut his day with Clara Hatch short (he was still working with her as hard as ever) and joined us at the train station, ready to give Marcus his own version of the third degree: a version what included a box of the Doctor’s best custom-rolled smokes instead of bright lights, and a flask of Mr. Picton’s excellent whiskey in place of brass knuckles.
Once settled into the big old leather chair in Mr. Picton’s office, whiskey in one hand and a cigarette in the other, Marcus began his report.
“The vital statistics were easy enough to lay hands on, or at least most of them were,” he said, taking a drink from the flask, setting it aside, and pulling out a small notebook. “He’s either thirty-nine or forty-I couldn’t get the exact date of birth. Parents: a Unitarian minister who gave up the pulpit to become a furniture maker, and a New England suffragist. He seems to take after the father, for the most part-the old man never lost the crusading spirit. Darrow himself has had a lifelong fascination with Darwin, Spencer, Thomas Huxley-considers himself quite a rationalist. Oh, and he knows about your work, too, Dr. Kreizler.”
“Does he?” the Doctor asked, surprised. “And how did you find that out?”
“I asked him,” Marcus answered simply. “Got in to see him yesterday evening-told him I was a publisher from New York who wanted him to defend an anarchist who’s up for building bombs in New York. The last part of the story’s true, too-you remember Jochen Dietrich, Lucius? That idiot downtown who kept blowing up tenements because he couldn’t get his timing devices to work?”
“Oh, yes,” Lucius said, recalling the name. “The Seventh Precinct boys picked him up just before we left town, didn’t they?”
“That’s right,” Marcus answered, slowly running one of his big hands through his thick black hair and then rubbing his tired brown eyes. “Anyway, one of the Chicago cops I talked to said that Darrow’s got a soft spot for anarchists-fancies himself to be a bit of one, intellectually. So he agreed to see me.” Marcus shook his head and took a big drag off of his cigarette. “He’s a strange sort of character-not at all what you’d expect from a man who’s made a pretty decent living off the corporate payroll. He seems to have a careless attitude toward his appearance-clothes are slightly rumpled, hair’s cut rough and hangs in his face. But there’s something very self-conscious about it all-calculated, even. It’s like he’s trying to play the homespun hero, the plain prairie lawyer. His style of speaking’s the same: he’s got the outward manner of the lonely cynic, but he makes sure you can hear the heart of an idealistic romantic, too. Just how much of it’s genuine, or which parts, I certainly couldn’t tell you.” Marcus flipped a page in his notebook. “There’s some other minor details: he’s a baseball fanatic and an agnostic-”
“Well, of course he’s an agnostic,” Mr. Picton said. “He’s a defense lawyer. There’s only room for one supreme savior in this world, and defense lawyers like to play that role themselves.”
“Now, now, Rupert,” Mr. Moore scolded, “don’t be bitter.”
“He likes Russian literature-poetry and philosophy, too,” Marcus went on. “He has a sort of salon of like-minded souls out there-reads aloud to them at their little gatherings. All in all, a very theatrical and very manipulative character, for all his talk about social justice. Even his own people say so. I talked to a woman who’s a partner in his firm-”
“He’s got a woman in his firm?” Miss Howard said. “An actual partner?”
“That’s right,” Marcus answered.
“Just to show off to his suffragist friends?” Miss Howard continued. “Or does she actually do something?”
“Actually, that’s the interesting part,” Marcus answered. “He’s not much of an advocate of women’s rights himself-doesn’t really consider them an ‘oppressed’ part of society. Not like, say, labor men or blacks.”
“Well,” the Doctor said, “perhaps we’ll be spared the usual lectures on maternal sanctity, then.”
“Oh, I think we will,” Marcus replied quickly. “But I think what he’ll come at us with instead will be more dangerous-much more dangerous.” Taking a pull off the flask, Marcus hissed and turned to our host. “Mr. Picton, how much of a history were you able to compile on Darrow?”
“I found a piece on the Debs trial,” Mr. Picton answered with a shrug. “It mentioned his background with the railway, but there wasn’t much more than that.”
“Nothing on the Prendergast case?” Marcus asked.
“The Prendergast case?” Mr. Picton said, sitting bolt upright. “Great jumping cats, was he involved in that?”
“I’m afraid so,” Marcus answered. “Heavily involved.”
“Well, well, well,” Mr. Picton said. “I assume you remember the affair, Doctor.”
The Doctor was already nodding gloomily. “Indeed. A more ludicrous example of perverting justice to please the public has rarely been seen.”
Marcus laughed a bit. “Oddly enough, Doctor, that’s exactly how Darrow saw it.”
Mr. Moore was trying hard to catch up, knocking a fist against his head. “Prendergast, Prendergast…” His face lit up. “Not the fellow who shot the mayor of Chicago?”
“The same,” Marcus answered. “On the last day of the Exposition of 1893-the first assassination in the city’s history. Eugene Patrick Prendergast turned himself in, along with a four-dollar revolver, and claimed that he’d killed Mayor Carter Harrison because his honor hadn’t lived up to a pledge to put Prendergast in charge of building the city’s new elevated track lines. The claim was a fantasy, of course, and the man was obviously a lunatic. But, well, Harrison had been shot at the Exposition, which made for some very bad international press-”
“And so the state of Illinois,” the Doctor continued bitterly, looking at those of us what didn’t already know the story, “decided to entrust the assessment of his sanity to the chief physician of the Cook County Jail-a man with no special training in mental pathologies. Yet even this handpicked flunky had absolutely no trouble declaring that Prendergast was a raging psychotic.”