Only seven were hanged · OmniClassics

_Only Seven_ WERE HANGED by Stuart Martin _Author of "The Fifteen Cells," etc._ HARPER & BROTHERS _Publishers_ New York and London 1929 ONLY SEVEN WERE HANGED COPYRIGHT, 1929, BY STUART MARTIN PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. G-D _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ BABE JARDINE THE SURF QUEEN PIRATES OF THE MAIN INHERITANCE THE FIFTEEN CELLS ---------- THE MYSTERY OF MORMONISM THE SECRET OF LOURDES CONTENTS I. THE CLUE CLUB DEBATES MURDER II. THE JUDGE STATES HIS FIRST CASE III. THE WAITER STATES HIS FIRST CASE IV. THE JUDGE STATES HIS SECOND CASE V. THE WAITER STATES HIS SECOND CASE VI. THE JUDGE STATES HIS THIRD CASE VII. THE WAITER STATES HIS THIRD CASE VIII. THE JUDGE STATES HIS FOURTH CASE IX. THE WAITER STATES HIS FOURTH CASE X. THE JUDGMENT XI. LEX TALIONIS ONLY SEVEN WERE HANGED CHAPTER I _The Clue Club Debates Murder_ The chairman of the Clue Club called for silence. The repeated tap of his wand of office on the polished table stilled the tongues of the members and caused every eye to be focused on the heavy figure who presided. It was not a large club, barely twenty names being on the subscription list; but it was a very exclusive one. This, their monthly meeting, had fallen on Christmas Eve and the proceedings were entirely formal. The dinner had been consumed and the dishes cleared off; only a few details had to be carried through, and the remainder of the evening was to be spent in seasonable cheerfulness. Snow was falling in a thin whiffling way on the streets outside. The ground was hard with frost. All was cozy indoors. A big fire crackled in the grate. A shaded cluster of electric globes hanging from the center of the ceiling and suspended above the long table thrust a wide circle of brilliant light toward the floor. Beyond this radius the room was in pleasant twilight. Apart from the members very few people were aware that such a club existed. It had been born of the subtle fascination crime has always had for human beings but has only recently been frankly admitted. Wherever men live to govern, or be governed, they have formed clubs. But in a clubland that has become bewildering the Clue Club maintained an originality that was remarkable because of its simplicity. To become a member one had to affect an interest in crime and clues. Such singleness of qualification and purpose was something of an ironical gesture toward the political clubs where politics were rarely mentioned, the professional clubs where there were no professions, the social clubs where everyone was unsociable, the sectarian and non-sectarian clubs where sect treason and dogmatic cliques, respectively, reigned. The members of the Clue Club were convinced that their directness of objective--for all original ideas are copied--was responsible for the Club of Honest Men in Chicago, the Truth-in-Advertising slogan, the British Premier's inspired belief--after he had read the speeches of his Cabinet members--in the many-sidedness of sincerity, the international plan to outlaw war, and the simplicity of Einstein's theory of relativity. The members of the Clue Club were definitely interested in clues and crime. Their interest might be legal, pathological, sociological, professional, even casual, but it existed in every case. Yet, strangely enough, no official or other detective was a member. No murderer, no convict, ever told his experiences of prison or voiced his estimate of the law. The object of the club was simply to talk about crime--which, of course, involved talk about criminals--to analyze it, to classify its manifestations, to examine clues revealed by prosecutions, to suggest clues (within the privacy of the club premises) in cases where no clues existed, and to explain, if possible, the origin and phenomena of crime in the abstract and in the particular. The members were chiefly professional men--that is, outside the criminal profession--from both sides of the Atlantic who could compare crime as America and England knew it. This comparison, let it be admitted, revealed a striking similarity in the objects of criminals; but it also revealed an adroitness and, in many cases, a resurprise, on the part of the American criminal which his English brother lacked. Yet this was proved, after analysis, to be no real cause for congratulation of one another by American evildoers, for the majority of their most brilliant criminals were British born, and Britain was willing to erase their names from her census, while Ellis Island had not woven a net fine enough to prevent their penetration into the United States. The members of the Clue Club, therefore, with sound common sense, came to the conclusion that crime was international in its nature, though it might acquire characteristics from its environment. This conclusion was a sort of compromise that avoided rivalries for notoriety. It has been said that the club membership was mainly composed of professional men. There were lawyers, actors, artists, doctors, surgeons, psychologists, politicians, novelists. There was one clergyman. Each looked at crime from his own viewpoint. They went to criminal trials of national and international interest; they haunted the courts during the hearing of murder cases. All were, humanly enough, profoundly stirred by, and more interested in, murder than any other form of crime. Then, while the cases were "on," and after they were finished and the verdicts announced, the members gathered at the club, where the lawyers discussed the opposing counsel's arguments, the actors considered the facial and bodily agonies of the accused that they might copy them on the stage, the artists showed sketches they had made (by stealth when permission was refused to sketch openly), the doctors and surgeons talked of medico-chirurgical aspects, the psychologists pretended to explain mental reactions, the politicians insisted on the government's duty to the public, the novelists sought for plots. The clergyman quoted Scripture. Only two men in the club maintained attitudes of detachment from the general considerations and conclusions. These two were the chairman who presided at the gatherings and the waiter who filled the glasses of the members. The chairman's reluctance to participate in the discussions was respected, being recognized as based on two good reasons. Firstly, he was a Criminal Court judge, one who wore the scarlet robe--emblem of blood!--and impartially sent men (and women, too) to the scaffold or to prison, according to the law and the findings of juries. Being a judge of eminence, it would have been too much to hope that he should descend to ordinary discussions around a table. Secondly, being an authority on law, he made an ideal president. His heavy, judicial manner was just what was expected of him. His massive face, much longer than it was broad, was made up of features that spoke the legal mind in every particular. From chin to brow there were furrows and lines caused by straining to catch counsel's pleadings in his court; so that speakers never were sure whether he was smiling to them or at them, or whether he was encouraging them or luring them on in order, at a given moment, to crush them with a word. Prisoners had been misled, counsel had been snubbed, juries had been bewildered by misinterpreting this expression which was an excellent mask. The Clue Club regarded him as their greatest asset. As for the waiter, no one expected him to be other than a waiter. But here there was a touch which no member could personally supply. The waiter had had a taste of prison. His presence was an ever-present reminder of the object of the organization. On this evening, however, the ex-prisoner was not present. He had found himself suddenly indisposed and a substitute had come who appeared to be quite as able and as willing to carry out the duties of servant. "Gentlemen," said the president, gravely, "it is time we opened the proceedings." As he spoke he laid aside the curious, knobbed stick with which he had called for silence. The new waiter moved silently out of the shadow behind the presidential chair and lifted the stick, bearing it to the sideboard at the head of the room, where he laid it down on two tiny trestles. This was part of the usual custom, a detail of the ceremony that took place at every meeting. It was a strange stick, black with age and hard as iron. It was in reality a bludgeon, a murderous weapon in the hands of a man who could use it. But few cared to handle it, for it seemed to exude an atmosphere of crime. It had been dug up out of the mud of the Thames during excavations, a relic of a past race when men were fierce and savage. No modern man's hand could grip it as it had been gripped by its original owner, who had burned grooves into the handle for his fingers. Only a primitive hand was competent to wield that weapon, which doubtless had sent many to death. It was said by those who had taken the trouble to make research that it had belonged to Kartarus, the human wolf who came with the Frank and Saxon barbarians on plundering expeditions to England in the distant past. His sign was on the gnarled, heavy head of the bludgeon. The president of the Clue Club had bought it from a dealer in ancient things and had given it to the club as a contribution, an addition to the relics the organization already possessed. These relics were various and worthy of remark. On the walls of the room in which the members were seated were a few old swords, a pike, and a scythe, all of which had been used by the mob during the French Revolution. There was a coat belonging to the late Tsar of Russia, one of the coats he had worn before he was done to death with his family. There was a rosary believed to have belonged to Rasputin. A slugshot had been presented by a member who came from Chicago. On a stand on the mantelpiece was a small model of the electric chair used to terminate prisoners' lives in Sing Sing prison. It had come from a New York member. Beside it was a model of a scaffold in an English prison. It had been given by a man who had narrowly escaped hanging, owing to the cleverness of his counsel, a member of the club. Having laid the black bludgeon of Kartarus on its small oak trestles, the waiter lifted a decanter and proceeded to fill up the glasses of the members, beginning, as was the rule, with those at the bottom of the table and ending with the glass of the president. Into each glass the waiter poured, with a steady hand, a thin, even stream of whiskey. He placed siphons here and there and put down glass jugs of water for those who preferred it that way. Then he stepped back into the shadow, having carried out the duties as if he had been the regular waiter and not a deputy. For a moment there was not a sound in the apartment, but when the president raised his glass every member followed his example. The glasses were put down again, all of them now being half empty. The waiter glided down the table once more, recharging the glasses. The secretary read the minutes of the previous meeting. These minutes contained a unanimous resolution declaring for the retention of the judgment of death in the legal code as a necessary warning to evildoers and a fitting punishment for criminal killers. This was the Clue Club's reply to those who sought to abolish executions. "It was decided," droned the secretary, still reading the minutes, "that a copy of the resolution be sent to the proper authorities to strengthen their hands." The secretary sat down.