The Accused - Harold R. Daniels (best novels for students TXT) 📗

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs. Alvin Morlock. Direct testimony of William Cory.

Out of vast relief and a little shame Louise had been wildly penitent when she and Morlock left the police station to ride back to Warfield. Morlock had been white-faced and silent during the first half of the ride. He had then stopped the car at the side of the road and turned to face her.

“I want you to know,” he said, “that I wouldn’t have come after you if I had had a choice. I can’t afford any more of your escapades, financially or otherwise. I married you and I’ll see that there’s a roof over your head because I think you’d wreck me if I didn’t.”

She reached for his hand and he drew it away. “Al,” she promised, “it won’t happen again. I’ve learned my lesson.”

“Did you see your father while you were in Providence?”

“I know what you want,” she answered. “You’d like me to go back there and live and you’d be rid of me. Al, I don’t blame you. They wouldn’t take me in. Please, Al…”

He was silent as he started up the car and drove the rest of the way home. They met Anna Carofano in the hall. Louise said, “Hello, Anna,” but the other woman stared coldly at her without answering. Because of what had happened at Fagin’s, Louise supposed. Louise wondered if Jimmy the bartender had come to Al for his money, but she could not find the nerve to ask about it.

The penitent mood began to fade on the next day. Bored with the tenement, afraid to go to Fagin’s—she had no money anyway—she began to feel injured. She had, after all, told Al that she was sorry. She was willing to come more than half way toward a reconciliation but he treated her like something dirty. He hadn’t even left her money for cigarettes. By the end of the week she was convinced that most of what had happened was Al’s fault. She had, in that time, not left the tenement.

When she had asked him for money on Friday, “Enough for a movie and cigarettes, Al,” he had said flatly, “I can’t do it, Louise. It will take me months to pay off our bills now.” She had screamed at him then, but he had merely stared briefly at her and gone out. On Sunday she did not dress. Al had left the Sunday paper and gone off somewhere, and she sat in her robe in the parlor halfheartedly looking at the racing results. When she heard the knock on the door she was startled. It had been a week since she had seen any face but Al’s. Anna, probably, she thought, hoping that it was and that she was all through being mad and would tell her what had happened at Fagin’s about the tab.

*

Cory, the professional ex-GI, had determined to force an understanding with Morlock. He couldn’t figure it out. Morlock, one of the easiest to bully and bluff of the whole faculty, had in the last few weeks hardened. He had been ruthlessly failing Cory on paper after paper and Cory was now worried. Driving to Morlock’s place—he had obtained the address from the Bursar’s office—he had planned his approach. He would be open and honest, call Morlock “sir,” admit his errors, and appeal to his sympathy. “I know I’ve been a pretty poor student, sir, but I’d like to ask you as man to man for one more chance.” The advantage of this approach was that if it failed he could switch to bullying and if that didn’t work either he could threaten to go to the Dean and complain that he was being discriminated against. The Dean wouldn’t stand by and see a GI Bill student flunked. It would mean that the V.A. might come snooping around.

He was a little surprised at the sight of. Morlock’s home; he had supposed that teachers were able to afford something a little better. He walked up to the third floor, practicing his approach, looked in vain for a bell and finally knocked. He was further surprised when he saw Louise. If he had pictured Morlock’s wife at all he would have expected some mousy little creature with a thin face and a scrawny shape. This woman standing in the doorway was big and strapping and—built. A little on the full-blown side maybe, but something nevertheless. More than he would have thought Morlock could handle. He gave her the boyish smile. “Mrs. Morlock?” he asked.

Louise, happy to have the monotony broken, returned the smile. “Yes,” she said. “Come in. My husband isn’t home but I’ll be glad to take a message.”

He stepped inside and she closed the door.

“I’m at the college,” he explained. “In one of your husband’s classes. My name’s Bill Cory.”

“Sit down, Bill,” she said. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

He didn’t particularly want the coffee but he was fascinated with the way she moved; the way the robe almost came open. So help him if he didn’t think she didn’t have anything on underneath it. “Sure,” he said. “I’d like it.”

Maybe, the way she was acting, he ought to change to another approach; the rough, surly one. He would delay his decision.

It didn’t take her long to get the coffee. When she put it in front of him he could see right down the front of the robe and she_ didn’t_ have anything on under it. He had heard of situations like this; first time he’d ever run into one. She sat down beside him, so close that he could feel the pressure of her thigh.

Louise had been aware of the way that Cory followed her with his eyes. “A hard up kid,” she thought at first, finding some amusement in it. Studying him, when she brought in the coffee, she changed her mind about his being a kid. Where she had planned to give him something to think about, something to look at and then send him on his way, she suddenly saw in him a means of getting even with Morlock. She saw it with almost blinding clarity.

“It’s too bad we haven’t got something better than coffee,” she said. “Al won’t be home for hours.” She was afraid for a minute that she had been too crude; that he might be scared off. He got quickly to his feet.

He was aroused by the sight of her breasts and the feel of her thigh. By God, he had_ never_ run into anything like this. “I can take care of that,” he blustered. “You leave it to me, Mrs. Morlock.”

“Lolly,” she said, smiling. “Sure you can get it on a Sunday?”

“Sure,” he said. “I know half a dozen places. Leave it to me.”

He was gone for half an hour. In that time she bathed and put on fresh make-up. She did not dress but put on the robe again.

*

Liebman: Cory, how old are you?

Cory: Twenty-three.

Liebman: You say you spent two years in the army. Overseas?

Cory: No.

Liebman: No combat, then.

Cory: No.

Liebman: How long did you say you spent with Mrs. Morlock?

Cory: I already said I don’t know. Maybe it was half an hour.

Liebman: But it could have been a lot more?

Cory: I guess it could.

Liebman: Did you make any plans to see her again?

Cory: She said I could come again on the next Sunday.

Liebman: And did you?

Cory: Yes.

Liebman: That would have been May 13. Were you intimate with her again on that occasion?

Cory: Yes.

Liebman: Weren’t you afraid that her husband might discover you?

Cory: She said that he went off every Sunday… there wasn’t anything to worry about.

Liebman: How many people did you tell about this affair?

Cory: Some of the guys. I don’t know how many.

*

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts vs. Alvin Morlock. Cross-examination of William Cory.

Louise was waiting for Cory when he came back with the whisky. She had several drinks and then matched his eagerness with her own; hers the more satisfying because of the revenge she was getting on Morlock. On the second Sunday he brought the whisky with him. She planned that second tryst in spite of the danger that Morlock might not go out. She was by this time accustomed to his Sunday absences and she was gratified to see him leave early for wherever it was he went, That evening, when Morlock came in, she sat across from him at the supper table and studied him. Where had he been? Her curiosity began to grow.

Cory, on the occasion of his first relations with Louise, kept the affair to himself. Cory, brute of the back seat, had been overwhelmed by a carnality that very nearly frightened him. After the second meeting with Louise, he could not hold the knowledge in. He rolled it over and over in his mind, trying to find some way of using it. It wasn’t every day that a student shacked up with a professor’s wife.

Maybe, he thought, he could use it to blackmail Morlock into giving him passing grades. He considered this and then rejected it. Then, because it was too obscene, too scandalous, and too heroic a thing to keep secret, he began bragging of it. “You guys think you’ve had a piece,” he would say. “You ought to see what I’ve been getting… and from who.” Then he would tell them.

Morlock, on both Sundays, came home to find Louise almost gay. He could smell whisky. If he gave any thought to it he supposed that Anna Carofano had been up to see Louise and had brought a bottle. Until the trial he never knew that she had betrayed him with Cory.