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"Your story about Murtha's commitment interests me," he remarked, "particularly since you mentioned Dorgan's name in connection with it. I've been thinking about Murtha myself a good deal since I heard about his condition. I want to see him myself." Carton hesitated a minute. "I can break an engagement I had to speak to-night," he said. "Yes, I'll go with you.
It was clever, as he presented it, with scarcely a reference to the name of Murtha, the beneficiary of such tactics as though, perhaps, Murtha's case was in his mind separate and would be attended to later when his turn came. Rapidly, concisely, convincingly, Carton presented the facts. Now and then Kahn would rise to object to something as incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial.
"I've got it now!" Murtha's hand stole into his trousers pocket and fondled something there. "What'll you bet you've got it now?" he demanded gleefully. "What'll you bet?" "I'll bet my life that's all," answered Trencher. "Here, I'll show you!" He stood up. Because his wrists were chained he had to twist his body sidewise before he could slip one hand into his own trousers pocket.
"Just a minute," says I, lookin' her full in the eyes. "I'm playin' you to give Allston a square deal, you know." "You can bank on that," says she. "Connie Murtha's word was always as good as government bonds. And if you can wish back that twenty thousand, I'll put a quick crimp in this prosecution." "What could be fairer than that?" says I. "I'll be back in an hour."
But I hardly think he's capable of that, although I should call him a rather advanced yeggman." "What makes you suspect him?" asked Kennedy eagerly. "Well," temporized Carton, "I haven't anything 'on' him in this connection, it's true. But we've been trying to find him and can't seem to locate him in connection with primary frauds in Murtha's own district.
Dopey Jack is the leader of a gang of gunmen over there and is Murtha's first lieutenant whenever there is a tough political battle of the organization either at the primaries or on Election Day." "Has a record, I suppose?" prompted Kennedy. "Would have if it wasn't for the influence of Murtha," rejoined Carton. I had heard, in knocking about the city, of Dopey Jack Rubano.
I may be beaten I may win. But I will be beaten, if at all, by the old methods. If I win it will be that I win honestly." A half sneer crossed Murtha's face. He neither understood nor cared to understand the kind of game Carton played. "You'll never get anything on that boy," blustered Murtha.
Next he called up the sanitarium to which Murtha had been committed, and after posing as Murtha's personal physician managed to have the rules relaxed to the extent of exchanging a few sentences with him. "How did he seem irrational?" asked Carton with interest, for I don't think the District Attorney had complete confidence in the commonly announced cause of Murtha's enforced retirement.
I was not an expert on study of wounds, such as was Kennedy, who was examining Murtha's body with minute care, now and then muttering under his breath at the rough and careless handling it had received in its various transfers about the city. But there were some terrible wounds and disfigurements on the body, which added even more to the horror of the case. One thing, I felt, was fortunate.
The facts in Murtha's case spoke for themselves. Comparatively little occurred during the day, although the political campaign which had begun with the primaries many weeks before was now drawing nearer its close and the campaigners were getting ready for the final spurt to the finish.
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