Alfred Hitchcock’s A Hangman’s Dozen

The change of tactic puzzled Babcock.

“Ten months,” he said.

“I don’t suppose your salary is anything remarkable.”

“I don’t need much.”

“Still, it’s not comparable to — let us say, an instructor of mathematics and mechanical drawing at Freeman High School, which position you held for fourteen years prior to your employment at the Century Club. Tell me, Mr. Babcock, why does a man of your background work as a porter in a cheap night club? Why are you reduced to pushing a broom and running errands for showgirls? Or does this explain better?”

No one was prepared for Arnold’s next move, least of all Henry Babcock. When Arnold reached out and snatched the glasses from his eyes, Babcock rose from the chair, grasped at empty air, and barely steadied himself against the side of the bench short of falling.

“My glasses—” he gasped.

“Your eyes, Mr. Babcock!” Arnold corrected. “Isn’t it true that you relinquished your profession because you were going blind?”

“No! I had cataracts—”

“Because your vision was eighty-five per cent impaired when you underwent surgery eight months ago? Because you were totally color blind?”

Arnold had won his case. Naomi could sense the feeling of the court even before her ears picked up the murmur. By that time, Henry Babcock was trying to explain that an operation had restored vision to one eye and he was awaiting the required full year before a second operation that would restore the other; but few people heard.

“I’ll be good as new!” he insisted. “I’ll get my teaching job back—”

“But you weren’t ‘good as new’ the night you claim to have seen my client go through a red light!”

“With my glasses, I can see color!”

“Out of which eye?”

“The left eye. The one that had the operation.”

“But the signal is to your right.”

“I turned my head.”

“But you didn’t see Mrs. Thompson.”

“I couldn’t. I can’t see out of the sides — only straight ahead.”

“Only straight ahead!” Arnold pounced on the phrase, as if he had been waiting for it all this time. “And how far straight ahead, Mr. Babcock? As far as from where you are sitting to the defendant — that’s what you said, didn’t you?”

Henry Babcock leaned forward, a grotesque figure of a man trying to peer through a fog.

“With my glasses—” he began.

“Your Honor,” Arnold announced, “I move that the testimony of the witness be stricken from the record. It’s obvious to everyone in this courtroom that he is not capable of giving reliable information on anything of a visual nature. The distance from the witness stand to the defendant, which Mr. Babcock has, under oath, declared to be the same as the distance from the bench on which he was seated at the time of the accident to the point at which the accident occurred, can’t possibly measure in excess of thirty feet. I invite the prosecution to check me on this.” There was no need to check. Naomi, remembering, realized when Arnold had set his trap. He was always dangerous when he smiled. “I have already checked the distance between the bench and the place of the accident,” he added, “and it is, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exactly sixty-two feet! Not only is the witness color blind, not only is he incapable of seeing out of the sides of his eyes; he is also completely unable to estimate simple distances. Unless he’s deliberately lying about everything, unless he did leave the bench and does know some reason why Mrs. Thompson stepped out in front of a fast moving automobile, the most charitable conclusion we can reach is that this poor man’s mind has been enfeebled by the double tragedy of losing his wife and almost losing his sight, and is incompetent to testify in a court of law!”

The prosecution roared a protest. Arnold turned toward him with a gesture of contemptuous dismissal.

“Your witness!” he said.

The jury was out fifteen minutes. After the acquittal, Arnold received congratulations with his customary indifference. The courtroom emptied. Naomi watched a defeated little man make his way toward the corridor: Henry Babcock, ex-good citizen. She caught his eyes, magnified by the lenses of the glasses, as he went by. It had been murder. He went out and she waited alone for Arnold.

“So that’s how you take an objective,” she said. “Did you have to destroy his character as well as his testimony? Do you think he’ll ever get that teaching job back now?”

“If he’s man enough,” Arnold said. “That’s his problem, not mine.”

“Your problem is only how to get rid of a bothersome wife, isn’t it?”

Arnold didn’t seem to consider the question worth answering. They went out together. The sidewalk was deserted now except for a dejected man waiting at the bus stop, a man for whom Arnold didn’t have so much as a glance. At the entrance to the parking lot, he looked up and frowned at the sky. It was starting to rain lightly.