The Outsider by Richard Wright
But was it as bad as all that? Did he not have an ironical array of invisible allies on his side? Would not the police have a rather difficult job of proving his guilt in terms of motives? What motives could they impute to him? The police would first have to prove that he had killed Gil and Herndon before they could get near his motive for having killed Hilton…Lacking concrete evidence, the police would have to fall back upon psychological motives. And in that realm he was certain that even Houston, that old outlaw who had trapped himself with the law, that outsider who was privy to the secrets of the moon’s dark side, would find it well-nigh impossible to bring himself to the point of believing him guilty…Even if Houston should actually believe him guilty, would he dare express his theories about it publicly? Houston had a passion for toying with daring ideas, but juggling with possibilities and realistically putting one’s self in a position to say definitely that a man committed a particular crime because of those possibilities were two wholly different things. And especially when the crime stemmed from such a ghostly set of reasons…
Were not the queer motives of his crimes in themselves a kind of ally? Would not Houston, precisely because of his position of public trust, instinctively hesitate to expound an idea that went contrary to the basic tenets of normal and even abnormal actions? (For abnormal actions carried with them an aura of irresponsibility, and Cross considered himself responsible!) Would not his accuser have to place himself, in branding him guilty, in a psychological attitude that would spell the same kind of guilt that resided in the heart of the criminal? There was an inescapable element of contagion here…Who could possibly suspect him of being guilty on the basis of his real motives unless he himself had wrestled fatally with the same serpentine motives in his own heart? And if one had so wrestled, might he not, on finding Cross guilty, feel inclined to cross the line of law and arraign himself on Cross’s side? Was that not the secret of all the revolutionary “front” groups? You flaunted a program that would appeal to a part of the forces of the enemy; you induced a section of the enemy forces to work with you and, while your enemies were standing at your side and seeing the world as you saw it, experiencing life as you lived it, they could decide that yours was as right as the side to which they belonged…Until now Cross had been lucky enough to leave no tangible clues behind, and the only clues open to anybody’s inspection so far were only his motives…
His crimes constituted so decisive a divergence from the plane of ordinary moral considerations, stemmed from so weird an angle of perspective that he who would find him guilty must needs go so far as to place himself at that same point of vision that he had had while committing his crimes; and that person, his accuser, would automatically and of necessity have to become entangled in the very guilt he would denounce! He who would judge him would have to be as much outside of the canons of normal living as he before his guilt would become evident to that judge!
These were the intangible factors that made Cross, deep in his heart, rely upon Houston, the defender of the law, to condone and protect his breaking of the law. That Houston would track him down in time he was certain, but was Houston psychologically free to act upon what he found? Had not Houston admitted that maybe some men had the right to become lawgivers? Was there not, maybe, in Houston’s heart the capacity to respect some forms of forceful crime? Had not men respected the crimes of Napoleon, Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler…?
There was no confusion in Cross’s mind about this. He knew well that laws, on threat of dire punishment, enjoined men against certain specific acts; but did not those laws, by their very act of being laws, by describing the crimes they prohibited, represent negative projections of man’s consciousness to check his own compulsive urge to commit the very crimes which the laws inveighed against? Was not the secret force of law itself really much deeper than the mere negative injunction against certain acts? Did not the positive aspects of law imply a conspiratorial understanding on the part of vast numbers of men to prevent, in terms of action, certain areas of consciousness from thoughtlessly assuming the upper hand in their lives? Was not law a struggle of man against man within man? Men who made and executed laws knew that the specific laws they framed or enforced would be violated, and it was not only to brook these specific violations of the law that they intended when they made and enforced those laws. The real aim of law was to inhibit in the consciousness of man certain kinds of consciousnesses which the law had to evoke clearly and sharply in man’s consciousness, for the law possesses the strange capacity of creating vividly in man’s consciousness a sense of the reality of the crime it seeks to suppress…
Law, then, by inhibiting man’s actions, posits a sense of crime in man; law makes the criminal consciousness of man; law makes crime a sensual object, but it casts about that sensually forbidden object a dark halo of dread…Implied in law is a free choice to each man living under the law; indeed, one could almost say a free challenge is embedded in the law: if you are strong enough, you can do so…But you must know what you are doing…
Cross shrewdly suspected that Houston, a self-confessed outlaw, knew this, felt it; and it was what had made him become an active defender of the law; he had to represent the law in order to protect himself against his own weakness and fear…
He turned off Eighth Street and walked toward home. As he neared Herndon’s apartment building he became aware that a police car was pulling slowly into Charles Street at the opposite end of the block. Did they know already? Tension waxed in him. Yes, he would act natural, keep his wits about him. A confrontation regarding the death of Hilton would be far more serious than the questions he had answered regarding the deaths of Gil and Herndon. The police would now wonder at the coincidence of his being disquietingly near the scenes of two murders in twenty-four hours…
Yes, the occupants of the police car had evidently spotted him, for the car slowed and he arrived at the entrance of Herndon’s building at the same time that the car did. He feigned to pay no attention to the car and turned to mount the steps of the stoop. The door of the car flew open and a cop leaped to the sidewalk, ran, grabbed his arm, and spun him around.
“Just a minute!”
Cross gaped at the cop a moment in simulated surprise.
“What’s the matter? What do you want?”
“We want to talk to you!”
Two more policemen came running from the car and the three of them surrounded him in the growing darkness of the street. Several people paused and stared. One of the cops barked roughly:
“Get going—This is none of your business!”
The passersby moved reluctantly on.
“What do you want?” Cross asked.
“You’re Lionel Lane?”
“That’s right.”
“You’d better come with us.”
“I’ll come willingly, but why?”
“You’ll know why soon enough.”
He allowed himself to be led, looking in alarm from one face to the other. He would pretend to be stunned; he would not talk. As they pushed him into the car, he glanced up at the lighted windows of Eva’s apartment and wondered if she knew. He was sitting jammed between the policemen when the car jerked into motion and the siren rose to a wail as the car picked up speed. Then his breath was knocked out of him as the cops seized him from both left and right and patted his pockets. They found his gun and snatched it.
“Ah, a Colt .38…So you carry a gun, hunh?”
“Of course…”
“What the hell do you mean by ‘Of course’?”
The cop broke the gun and extracted the bullets.
“I’ve a permit to carry a gun,” he told them gently.
There was a moment’s silence. Cross took his wallet from his inside coat pocket and tendered the permit.
“Jesus! It was issued yesterday,” a cop exclaimed.
“Has the gun been fired?”
“Doesn’t look or smell like it…”
Three minutes later the siren died and th
“We picked ’im up in front of where he lives,” a cop reported to the captain. “We grabbed him about two minutes after we got the call. He had this…” The cop put Cross’s gun on the desk. “Here’s his permit.”
The captain quickly examined the gun, then eyed Cross intently. He rose and stood over Cross.
“Frisk ’im,” the captain ordered.
One policeman held him while another swiftly emptied his pockets and piled his package of cigarettes, his ring of keys, his wallet, his lighter, his loose coins, and his folded newspaper upon the desk. He had a moment of wild panic when the policeman pulled the balled handkerchief from his pocket…But the policeman handled it gingerly, as though he was afraid of germs. He had been lucky to have thought of wrapping the bloody handkerchief inside the clean one.
“Okay,” the captain said. “Take your stuff. Where do you live?”
“13 Charles Street.”
“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a student.”
“Where?”
“Well, I haven’t enrolled yet—”
“Where were you going when the officer met you?”
“Home. I was in front of the house where I live.”
“Why do you carry a gun?”
“My life has been threatened.”
“By whom?”
“My landlord who was—”
“When was this?”
“Yesterday. You see—”
“Have you used this gun recently?”
“No. I haven’t fired that gun in over five years.”
“Do you know John Hilton?”
“Of course. I just left his hotel—”
“You had an appointment with him?”
“That’s right. But why are you asking me all this—?”
“We’ll do the questioning. Now, what was the purpose of your visit to Mr. Hilton?”
“He invited me to see him.”
“What did you say to ’im?”
The police had not mentioned that Hilton was dead, and Cross knew that they were trying to trap him into some inadvertent admission that he knew that Hilton was dead or that he had recently seen him.
“Nothing. He wasn’t in.”
“But you saw him?”
“No, I didn’t…What’s wrong?”
“Did you have a quarrel with ’im?”
“No. I’ve never quarreled with him.”
“You were good friends?”
“I wouldn’t quite say that.”
“Why?”
“I just met the man two nights ago—”
“And when you saw him just a few minutes ago—”
“I haven’t seen Mr. Hilton since ten o’clock this morning.”
“Did he give you an appointment to see him another time?”
“What do you mean?” Cross knew that the captain was still trying to trick him into admitting that he had seen Hilton.
“I mean, when you left him this afternoon, when did he tell you that you could see him?”
“But I didn’t see him this afternoon, I tell you.”
“What did he want to see you about?”
“Well,” Cross allowed himself to relax a little. “He wanted to talk politics—Look, you know as well as I that Hilton’s a Communist. But I thought it was legal to talk to him.”
The captain sat down and pulled from the desk drawer the note which he had given to the clerk in the hotel.
“Did you write this?”
Cross affected to be astonished as he examined the note.
“Yes. I wrote this this afternoon, about forty-five minutes ago; or maybe half an hour…But how did you get this? I thought I left it for Mr. Hilton…”
“Did you push it under the door of his room?”
“No. I left it at the desk. But where did you get it?”
“We found it,” the captain said vaguely.
The police were trying in every way possible to drag him into an area where he would make a damaging admission.
“Then Hilton must have dropped it out of his pocket, or something like that. Or maybe the hotel clerk dropped it, lost it…But I could swear I left it at the desk with the clerk,” Cross allowed himself to be confused, bewildered. He looked nonplussed from one face to another. The policemen were puzzled. “What’s this all about? What do you want with me? Did Mr. Hilton say something to you?”
“Mr. Hilton had an accident—”
“Oh,” Cross said in surprise. “Not serious, I hope—An automobile accident?”
“You tried to see Hilton earlier today?” the captain asked, ignoring his question.
“Yes.”
“And he wasn’t in?”
“That’s right.”
“Did you see Hilton at any time today?”
“Yes. It was this morning when he left the apartment where I live. But what’s this all about? What has that got to do with his being hurt? If you told me what you wanted, maybe I could help you,” Cross said.
“When did you see Hilton after he left you this morning?” the captain continued to ignore his request for more information. “You saw him?”
“No.”
“Did Hilton ever threaten you?”
“No; why should he? Look, let me explain…Hilton came last night—”
“We’re doing the questioning. You just answer!” the captain reminded him. “Do you know of anyone who’d want to harm Hilton?”
Cross gaped and let his eyes assume a roundness of understanding. This is the closest the captain had come to saying that some person had hurt Hilton. Now, ought he try to confuse them by telling them about Bob and Sarah? Bob and Sarah had real, ordinary motives for wanting to kill Hilton and the both of them had airtight alibis…So what harm would it do to tell of the row that Bob had had with Gil and Hilton? It would give their literal minds something to chew upon for a few minutes.
“Well, look now…Let me think—”
“Don’t think! Talk! Tell what you know. This is serious.”
“Well, it’s kind of complicated and I’m rather a stranger to all of them, you see. These people, you know, are Communists, all of them. They had a hot argument the other night about Party matters…”
“What people and where was the argument?”
“Bob Hunter and Hilton—It was at Bob’s place—”
“Go on; get to the point!”
His eyes roved from face to face. Yes, they were eager to hear the story. He could turn their minds away from him. Bob was on Ellis Island and had the best of all possible alibis. And no doubt Sarah could prove that she had been with Eva at the time that Hilton was killed. He related to them the tale of Bob’s illegal entry into the country, of how Hilton had—according to Bob’s way of explaining it—threatened to have him deported to Trinidad if he did not obey the Party…
“You see, according to Bob, Hilton was going to tip off the Immigration authorities and have him picked up,” Cross said.
“Where’s this Bob Hunter now?” the captain demanded.
“He was at Ellis Island the last I heard,” Cross said gently. “They picked him up for deportation.”
The faces of the policemen showed keen disappointment.
“And his wife, Sarah? Where’s she now?”
“At my house, maybe. That is, if she’s not gone to her own home by now—”
“Where does she live?”
He gave them the information. He was sure that Sarah could readily account for herself. He was using Sarah to fill out his story, to put his recital in a frame of reference that would make his attitude seem normal and cooperative.
“Lane, did you go up to Hilton’s room?” the captain asked suddenly, softly.
“Did you ever fire a .32?”
“No. I own a .38. You see my gun—”
“Aren’t you associated with Hilton in some way?”
“No. But why do you ask me that?”
“You could have walked up the stairs, you know,” the captain suggested.
“What stairs?” Cross asked.
“The hotel stairs. Didn’t you walk up to Hilton’s room?”
“Good God, no! I told you I didn’t see Hilton!”
There was silence. The captain turned to his desk and wrote something hurriedly upon a pad, tore off the sheet and handed it to a policeman.
“Check at Ellis Island about this Bob Hunter. Make sure he’s still there and hasn’t been out…And send out a radio call for this Sarah, his wife—”
“Say!” Cross exclaimed. “Look, here—” He pretended to be overcome with contrition. “I didn’t mean to get Sarah in trouble…She’s all upset about her husband. I’m sure that she hasn’t done anything to anybody. She’ll hate me for making people think that she’s done something…”
“We’ll take good care and keep what you’ve told us strictly confidential, Mr. Lane,” the captain said. “Now, let me tell you that Hilton was found dead a few minutes ago in his hotel room…”
Cross lifted his head with a jerk and stared at the captain.
“Dead?” he echoed.
“Yeah.”
He kept his eyes intently upon the captain’s face, then took a deep breath; he looked disbelievingly around the room at the faces and leaned weakly forward and rested his hands on the edge of the captain’s desk, as though for support.