Changeling, and Other Stories

So you are going to bring out a book of your stories, said the Old Poet.

I think I am, sir, said I.

I'm sorry for it, said the Old Poet, for it won't have a friend in the world.

When it comes to the publishing of books, people are always pessimistic, and, in my case, always right. Success, I am sufficient of a heretic to believe, matters little, but friendship a great deal. And I could as little think of sending a story friendless into the world as I would of sending a child, or horse, or dog. So "Changeling" itself I will put under the friendly hand of the Right Honorable the Lord Justice O'Connor, who will find law treated in it in a dégagé manner that will surprise even him. And "The Parliament at Thebes" I dedicate to Addison and Josephine Hanan.

For Bulmer and Clare Hobson, near Three-Rock Mountain, is "Delilah, Now It Was Dusk," and for Brinsley MacNamara, that splendid Irish novelist, "Wisdom Buildeth Her House." And "In Praise of Lady Margery Kyteler" for Arthur Somers Roche, in memory of a chivalrous kindness.

"Reynardine" for Miss OEnone Somerville and in memory of Martin Ross—their pens were one of the lost Irish glories. "Irish" for Jeffrey Farnol—none more than he loves and understands the Ring. And I am sorry there is not a story of war and its intricacies in the collection to dedicate to my friend Lieutenant-General J. J. O'Connell.

I have not by hundreds come to the end of those whom I love to think my friends; but so many of them are sportsmen that to dedicate stories to them would be like giving a two-year-old racer to a maiden and church-going lady, loading her with responsibility and embarrassment, so that--

So that the rest of the stories can go out and make friends for themselves, and if they can't, 't was surely a poor hand that wrote them.

Donn Byrne.

By the Cinque Ports, England. 1923. To outward appearance the whole of the courtroom scene was drab, ordinary. There was the stuffy rectangle of a room, half dark in the January dusk, for all that the electric lights glowed with meager incandescence. There was the judge, in his robe, at the desk of the court. There were the jurymen, solemn as in church. There the court stenographers, bald, active as ants. There the men of the daily journals, more aloof, more judicial than the judge. There the press of morbid spectators, leaning forward like runners on the mark. There the policemen, court attendants, whatnot, relaxed of body, concentrated of eye, jealous of the dignity of the court as a house-dog of its master's home. Through the windows of the court could be seen the bulk of the Tombs, heavy, hopeless, horrible as the things whence it takes its chilly name.

The case of the people versus Anna Janssen for the murder of Alastair de Vries droned on.

The district attorney, youngish, slim, lithe, a little sinister—the impression of a hunting-dog all over him—was examining a witness, a rat-faced man who had something of the old-time bartender or private detective about him.

"It was your business, as attendant at the Oriental Garden, to see that order was kept?"

"Yes, sir."

"There was no semblance of disorder at all until you heard the shot fired?"

"No, sir."

"Mr. De Vries was at a table with a party?"

"Yes, sir."

"You heard the shot and you saw Mr. De Vries fall forward?"

"Yes, sir. Crumpled up, sort of."

"Then you ran to him?"

"Yes, sir."

"You saw the woman Janssen back of the hall with a revolver?"

"Yes, sir."

"What was she doing?"

"She was laughing."

"Was she drunk?"

"The laugh sounded drunk."

"Was she very much under the influence of liquor?"

"She could n't have been, else she would n't have got away."

"You are certain that it was the prisoner?"

All eyes in the court-room were turned to the prisoner in the dock. And there was in the sordid trial chamber a sense of great disturbance in the air, though, from the minds and personalities of all gathered there, there rose in gray tendrils a haze of doubt, of disbelief, of mystery.

She sat in the dock, in the sordid court-room, among the unseemly officers and the public, as a statue in some public square might stand above the rabble. Mature, magnificent, the prisoner seemed almost like some goddess from a Norse mythology.

First, her strange coloring made all catch their breath. Her face was tanned to an absolutely golden hue, and out of this work of delicate bronze there looked, calm and confident, two eyes that were blue as sea-water. Her eyebrows, her hair, were bleached by the sun until her eyebrows were two half-moons of silver, until her hair was the pale, beautiful gold of honey in dark lights and like vivid strands of live silver when the light fell on it. She had the strange, exotic appearance of the women of Saba Isle, the ancient colony of Holland sailors and Carib Indian belles, a small dot in the West Indies where there is a town on the top of a mountain, and life is as in the garden of the Hesperides.

It was not alone her coloring, her splendid face. From her there came such an aura of health, of spiritual strength, it seemed impossible that this woman was the chorus girl Janssen who had been the cast-off mistress of the rake and spendthrift De Vries, who had been drunk, who attended cabarets with wine-merchants and Broadway belles. This woman! Impossible! In her own calm eyes there seemed also a look that said more: "This is ridiculous. I can't have done this. Why am I here? Why don't they get up and let me go?"

Even the rat-faced witness was perturbed.

"The prisoner in the dock?" he said with a sense of puzzled wonder. "The prisoner in the dock?"

"Well, don't mind the prisoner in the dock, then. It was the woman Janssen you saw."

"I am sure of that."

"You were well acquainted with her appearance. You couldn't have been mistaken?"

"No, sir, I could not have been mistaken. She was often at the Oriental with Mr. De Vries. Sometimes every night for a week. I could not have been mistaken. It was she shot Mr. De Vries."

The district attorney sat down, with a gesture of his hand toward Howard Donegan, the prisoner's counsel. With his massive body, with his massive head, with his cruel jurist's face, Howard Donegan was as much a part of the attraction for the public as was the prisoner, the notoriety of the ten-year-old case, the romantic capture of Annette Janssen. The great Irish-American was the foremost criminal lawyer of his day, all but invincible when defending a man or a woman with the slightest chance of escape, and right on his side. As a cross-examiner he was dreaded as the plague. The public would get the thrill of seeing a superbly cruel and magnificent performance when Donegan arose. Even now the rat-faced witness shook as with ague as Donegan turned casually toward him, with hooded eyes. But Donegan shook his head. He did not wish to cross-examine.

Even the judge was surprised.

"Did I hear aright?" He leaned forward, his fine mystic's face in lines of doubt and worry. "The counsel for the prisoner does not wish to cross-examine?"

"Your Honor heard aright. I will not cross-examine."

Through the big chamber there was a buzz of comment, of doubt, of all but horror. Was there nothing to be done for this woman? Even if she did kill De Vries, give her a sporting chance for her life! "What is Donegan doing?" the public, the attendants, the newspaper reporters asked themselves with mistrust. Was he throwing her down?

There was a tensing in court, a tightening, as of drama. Already there was a sense in every one's chilled veins of the horrible harness of the electric chair. But Donegan only drowsed.

"You can step down," the Court told the witness.

The rat-faced man crept from the witness-box, white, shaking still with the fear of Donegan's eye. He tried to get a seat in the benches, but none would make room for him. And though he had only done his duty, and that at command of the law, there was about him, as he slunk from the room, the look there was about him who was surnamed Iscariot, as he crept from the garden on the Mount of Olives, on the world's most tragic dawn... Like a story from some old book there unrolled before the public the history of Anna Janssen of ten, or twelve, or fifteen years before, in a New York we know no longer, so changed is it in that brief space. Then it was a riotous spendthrift, a glorious waster, hell-roaring, somehow lovable, and now it is a burgess of standing, with all the burgess virtues.

And the eyes of the court-room glistened as old names appeared like Falstaffian ghosts. The Poodle Dog, the German Village, the Holland House, the Knickerbocker. Gorgeous, blowsy, out of a dim past they rose for an instant. Baron Wilkins's and Nigger Mike's. And there was the thin clink of glasses across forgotten bars. And at three o'clock of a morning the flying wedge at Pat's was hurling some truculent guest to the sidewalk. And gunmen were gunmen then, not strike-breakers.

Old days, great days, and only a dozen years before. And John Barrymore was not Richard III but the comedian of "Are You a Mason?" And Mr. Chambers had written "The Danger Mark," and Lieutenant Becker still patrolled the streets. And Mannie Chappelle and Diamond Jim were still alive and merry, who are now dust, God rest them! And cops grafted and politics were corrupt, after the old and pleasant tradition. And out of the side door of saloons came the old-fashioned drunkard, who with the old-fashioned ghost-story and the old-fashioned Christmas is laid to rest forevermore. And the voice of Dr. Parkhurst was heard through the land.

Ichabod! Gone is glory!