The Case of the Lavender Gripsack Read online

  “Yes, I know,” Elsa admitted lugubriously. “There’s no pos­­sible recovery—after that. And that is something dear Uncle Moffit can easily do. And will do! To his son-in-law. Whose father is a big northwest side build­er.”

  “But—but why, child, did you ever sign a paper—without reading it? As manifestly you did this one.”

  “Oh, I was in love, with a handsome boy; and a homely girl in love with a handsome boy, you know, is very, very dizzy! Anyway, I was hurrying to a dance, and, grabbing up my certified check, I put my John Hancock on Uncle’s paper. Of course, he since avers holily that he only put the clause in there to teach me to read all documents in the future—but he refused, even so late as late this evening, and with a trial like this sitting in my lap!—to sign a revocation—or cancel­lation—of that particular clause; he even said that if I lose this case he may take ‘temporary technical advantage’ of the quit­claim to consolidate our mutual advantages—”

  “Such ‘temporary advantage,’” declared Foshart, “will be more permanent than the Congo River, with Silas Moffit!” He paused. “But see here, child, your best bet, with such a damnable clause existing over your name, would have been to take absolutely no court cases for six months, anyway—so that you couldn’t be accidentally disbarred; and then only such a case as some friendly judge would—”

  “Exactly! A friendly judge, now in India—a brother of my own attorney in civil matters, who happens to he out of town—offered to help us neatly scotch the clause, in that manner. And thus I’ve remained out of court. Starving to death—on consultations with—or darned near—chicken thieves—and whatnots! But lo, this afternoon, Judge Hilford Penworth, who owns this very house—and is imprisoned in it, moreover, by a gouty foot and an arthritic knee to boot—rang me up and rammed the defense of John Doe straight down my throat. And when I tried to—to regurgitate it, he told me cholerically that if I didn’t report to J. Doe as defense attorney before four bells I—I was automatically disbarred. Under new regulations they now have here in Cook County, and which provide, Mr. Foshart, that a judge who’s been sitting a certain number of years can now write a disbar—anyway, Judge Penworth is a so-called ‘senior’ judge—why, he’s been sitting since before Chicago had its famous ‘Secret-6’—yes, the crime commission which used to work out secret ways to trap our public enemies—he was on that. Anyway, he said if I didn’t show up at the District Attorney’s private lock-up by four bells, as attorney for J. Doe, I was disbarred. After which he irately hung up on me. And when I tried and tried to ring him back, he was ‘out.’ If you get the idea!”

  “Of course. And so you had to report—or else see your title to your property forfeited because of that technical disbar­ment. And having reported as Doe’s attorney, you naturally have to report here in court now. Or else—again! You’re in a devilish spot, my girl. For—by why—why was this judge so obdurate in a mere matter of—”

  “Well, Aunt Linda, who works for Uncle Silas Moffit, told me definitely this afternoon that Uncle Silas, amongst the many mortgages he owns in the judiciary field alone, owns one on this ancient mansion of a house. Which maybe is a bit wobbly because Judge Penworth didn’t catch the street widening that was long promised for Prairie Avenue.”

  “But, good Lord, Elsa, I thought that mortgages, as a source of compulsion in human affairs, went out with—”

  “—with the old river-boat dramas? I’m afraid not. The trouble is that the necessity for a little—ahem—’compulsion’ still exists in human affairs. And mort­gages still exist. And mortgage money in Chicago now is damned awfully tight! So tight, Mr. Foshart, that if foreclosure suit on any mortgage older than two years is even filed against one, one is—well—done—finis—out! And so I learned late this evening that Uncle Silas has a decided ‘in’ with Chief Justice Michael Shurely who ladles out the criminal cases here in Chicago, and who could easily enough pull wires for Uncle Silas to stick me with any kind of a case. But I also learned that Uncle holds a mortgage even on the District At­torney’s—yes, Mr. Lou Vann’s—Oak Park home. So there you are! There’s no doubt that Uncle Silas picked up today, in some circle close to Lou Vann—if he wasn’t noticed, by his very own request, direct from Lou Vann himself—that this John Doe—minus money, and minus even a Chinaman’s chance to boot!—was going to bat tonight. And so he pulled wires directly—and without even having to go to Chief Justice Michael Shurely. In short, he hurriedly bargained with Judge Penworth to stick me with Doe’s defense. And not to let me wriggle out of it, moreover, because of ‘stage fright’—or what have you! That’s almost certainly just what happened.”

  “But just the same, Elsa, that’s—that’s the damnedest kind of wire-pulling—and a disgrace to the judge’s profession, and shows—here and now—that the judge himself tonight will be prejud—”

  “No,” Elsa averred quickly. “Judge Penworth is a hundred per cent honest man, Mr. Foshart, in his decisions, and is known everywhere as ‘Ultra-Legal Penworth.’ Which was the exact reason my fool client—so the latter told me this afternoon—asked for him, yes, Penworth—and offered to the District Attorney to take immediate trial—right tonight—in front of Penworth. Even though it natural1y involved a trial in chambers—or ‘in house’ as it will have to be called now—instead of downtown. Penworth being known everywhere to be hors de combat. Be that as it may, though Penworth has obviously bowed to Uncle Silas all right toward handing me my ‘baptism of fire’—as we call it in the courts here—he’s honest—and will be—in all his decisions tonight, on everything and every point.”

  “We-ell—that’s something—anyway. Dear me—dear me! And so you’re stuck with a case that, had you refused it, would have caused you to lose your $100,000 share of your own property—and, if you took it, might cancel—but how about this, Elsa? Is your client—this man Doe—involved very badly?”

  “Is he!” said Elsa, aghast, even herself, at Mr. J. Doe’s involvement. “I’ll say he is! And so, I think, would you, had you read the big story in the Despatch today—written by no less than Hugh Vann, the D. A.’s own brother. Or any of the follow-up stories—which ran in all the other papers from that time on. You see, the District Attorney’s—yes, Mr. Lou Vann’s—safe was broken into last night while he was in St. Louis. The safe, that is, which is in his old private personal office, across the street from his City Hall offices. And the watchman of the old building—a man named Adolph Reibach—was killed by the cracksman. And a skull was taken out of that safe—a skull left there, a couple of days before, wrapped and tied, with Vann’s official seal, by some negro laborer who found it, Mr. Foshart, under the dirt floor of that very brewery which you designed and built. The negro is since dead—in an accident. But a deposition he left covers the skull and its finding, and was safely locked elsewhere. Anyway, my client—the good Lord help me!—was nabbed shortly after noon-time today—on a corner of Old Post-office Block—with a crimson ink-painted shoe-box under his arm. Obviously trying to make a so-called ‘meet’—a criminal expression, but you get it. And inside the box was the skull, tallying, on all points—not less than umpteen in number—with the one set forth in the deposition by the negro who unearthed it. Moreover, my fool client, just before the arrest, when accosted by no less than the Archbishop of Chicago, who, of course, will be the Big No. 1 State’s witness tonight, and who asked him what he had in the box, had to reply—”

  “What?” Foshart asked.

  “He replied: ‘Wah Lee’s skull; I cracked Vann’s pete.’”

  CHAPTER IV

  Alibi None!

  Foshart appeared thunderstruck!

  “Good God!” he exclaimed helplessly. “Criminalese, of course—for breaking into Mr. Vann’s safe. We-ell—but what did he tell you, privately, child, in his cell?”

  “Absolutely nothing! He thought I was a spy out of the District Attorney’s office. And said he’d accept the fact that I was his attorney onl
y when he saw me get up officially in court tonight as such. And because he considered me a spy—or a possible spy, anyway—he dried up completely. He did claim, though, that he’d never even heard of Wah Lee until his arrest. Nor even of Lou Vann—till Vann, or Vann’s assistant, one Leo Kilgallon, called there earlier.”

  “But—but—but—but how, then, does he explain having specifically mentioned Wah Lee and Vann, in his answer to this cleric?”

  “That baby, Mr. Foshart, answers nothin’ to nobody!”

  “He—he will claim, I suppose, that he got the two names from the newspapers. But—”

  “Oh, no, he won’t!” declared Elsa grimly. “For the reason that the first burglary and murder story—the one in the Despatch—the one written by Hugh Vann—didn’t break till 2:30 today—it was Lou Vann himself, you see, who was first to discover the murder, coming in from St. Louis, and he kept it tight under official cover—not even a half-dozen people, I guess, knew of it—and this Doe-bird of mine was nabbed before even the Press itself—even the editor of the Despatch itself—had the facts!”

  “Good heavens! Well what possible defense, then, can he hope to off—but obviously, in a situation like that, he’ll just try to play checkmate with the State, by denying all the charges—and presenting a spurious alibi—”

  “He’ll not get very far by denying the charges, Mr. Fos­hart,” Elsa said glumly, “since his words to the Archbishop were overheard by still another reputable witness. And as for presenting an alibi, he gave me—his attorney—the names of no alibi witnesses to summon—and so, consequently, he’ll have none. He specifically says he has no alibi for the hour of the crime, based on reputable witnesses.”

  “And one based on disreputable witnesses wouldn’t be worth the powder to blow it to hell. Well, presuming that he merely rests on a flat denial of the charges—or perhaps a counter-charge of police conspiracy—has he even a character witness?”

  “Oh yes!” said Elsa. “He has one! Whose name—and even whose address—he blithely wrote out for me on the inside of an unused envelope. Which he sealed up, and entrusted to me for later use—in preparing any defense. And which witness, when I opened the envelope and prepared to call him up, proved to be—well—’John Doe’—address, ‘District Attor­ney’s lock-up, Chicago’!”

  “Himself, eh’ Well, I’d say that, caught as you say he’s been caught, he’d be the poorest of all character witnesses in the whole U.S.A.! Hm? Well, I, of course, am no lawyer, Elsa, but I rather fancy that since your man can’t place him­self elsewhere at the specific hour of this crime, you are going to attack each and every bit of evidence that fixes that hour?”

  “Make an alibi—for the crime itself?” Elsa laughed weari­ly. “That, I fear, can’t be done. For it seems that the District Attorney, the minute he walked in on that crime this morning, promptly summoned one of the best criminological inspec­tors in the city—Inspector Rufus Scott—to cover that office with notebook and camera before Press, or Public, or Police, or anybody else even knew of the crime. So I shan’t even be able to say that the Press messed it up. If only that dizzard who, you know, slipped into the office today after the papers came out, and planted his fingertips on one wall, and then slipped out again, and confessed the crime, had–”

  “Confessed? You mean somebody actually con­fessed it?”

  “Oh yes! Why not? Publicity here in America, you know, is now worth $100 an ounce! However, Mr. Foshart, this bird was working publicity in reverse! It seems he was a writer. For radio. Name P. Wainright—or—yes—Piffington Wain­right. And he does the bedtime animal tales for kids that come in twice a week here in America on the so-called United-Evening chain, narrated by one Uncle Griffy. And—but anyway, it seems this P. Wainright thought he had a yen for doing meller-drammer—crook stuff—G-man stuff—you know—or don’t you get that stuff in Africa? Anyway, this bird was so good as putter of kids to sleep that he was tied up for twenty long years. Or rather a nineteen-years’ balance, yet to run, of a twenty-years’ tie-up. With some firm of hard-hearted Hannahs in Radio City, New York, called Adlai, Collerman and Grimshawster, who wouldn’t release him. And so, as I say, he ‘plant­ed’ a few ‘incriminatin’ clews’ today—and then blithely confessed the crime. And according to the first news story on that angle of things—the one issued just after the confession—Messrs. Adlai, Collerman and Grim­shawster—through one Sam Collerman—busted his contract higher than a kite!”

  “A bad influence, eh,” Foshart replied, “for the young of America Being lulled to sleep by bloody mur­derers! Well, well, Mr. P. Wainright, Esquire, surely must have hated his literary fate! But see here, Elsa, if the police really found clews against him, are they sure, at that, that—”

  “Quite,” said Elsa dolorously. “For it seems, according to the later papers issued after seven, and containing the repudiation of the confession, that Mr. P. Wainright was all night at a Bughouse Square—maybe, to you, Washington Square—party, at which two of the D.A.’s own men were present watching some anarchistic suspects. So Mr. P. Wain­right’s out; and I only mentioned him at all because, if the dizzard had only gotten into that office, and messed it up completely, before Lou Vann got it all covered with candid camera shots—and carefully-taken notes and whatnot—well, I could then assail certain inevitable testimony tonight on clocks and watches fixing the hour of the crime. Thus making, as I take it, an ‘alibi’ for the crime. But—no dice! For Lou Vann keeps well ahead of all contingencies,”

  Foshart sighed deeply and sympathetically. “Well, well, well,” was all he said. “Of all the rotten cases to be saddled with, this, I think, is positively the wor—But—well now, Elsa, I really have no right to ask you this, being a sort of State’s witness, but, my dear child, you are part of my dear past—and so—have you any cards at all to—to play?”

  “In court procedure,” Elsa explained gloomily, “we go on the principle that the game is continually dealt and re-dealt all through the course of a trial. Of course we’re allowed, in that game, to hold cards up our sleeves. And Lou Vann’s sleeves are, I imagine, just dripping with pasteboards. Certainly, at least, he has the wit­nesses! Why, I got a friendly flash late this afternoon, by phone, from a friend on the Detective Bureau, that one of Vann’s witnesses alone is to be no less than Professor Clark S. W. Adgate, head of the Crime-Detection Laboratory at our Mid-West University here. An ace—in the criminology suit—no less! And the Archbishop, an ace on credibility—in the matter of ability to know what he hears when he hears it—speaks a half dozen languages. And—but, of course, Mr. Foshart, you mean by ‘cards to play’—moves to make, as well as witnesses. Well, Lou Vann’s sleeves are, I think—as I just said—simply dripping with paste­boards. While mine—well, I’ve just one card in mind, Mr. Foshart. A joker! And worked out by me only late this evening—and solely thanks to my getting hold of a certain Chinatown doctor who darned near was non est! And if my client were innocent of that crime—as the red-headed imbecile claims to be—the card in question would be werry, werry much to his advantage! At least says I! But, on the other hand, if he’s guilty—well, good night!—’twill lock him that card, so tight in the electric chair that he might just as well reach back and turn on his own juice. No foolin’! So do—do I dare to even try to play a fool card like that—in the case of a man so evidently caught with the goods—and who’s admitted the very crime before two reputable wit­nesses?”

  “No,” said Arthur Gilbert Foshart, “you do not. Unless the District Attorney locks your man so tight in it anyway that—but I give up! Poor child! It seems to be your problem. What—what a stinking baptism! I don’t know what to say. Except that I’d play for a plea to the judge. Though that, at most, could only mitigate sentence against your client, and wouldn’t be acquit­ting him; and so as far as that damnable quitclaim you signed goes, would be every bit as fatal for you as—”

  The sliding door of the room was peremptorily
opened without even a preliminary knock.

  And he of the blue-veined nose thrust his head in. “Sorry to interrupt you, Miss Colby, but court opens in ten more minutes. And your uncle—Mr. Silas Moffit—wants to speak to you.”

  “Oh, he does, eh!” said Elsa wrathfully. “Well, show him in then—before he pushes you down and walks in over your dead body!”

  CHAPTER V

  Uncle Moffit—Who’d Foreclose on a Tuffet!

  The old man from Africa hastily took up his kasawga club and helmet. “I’ll be going, Elsa,” he said in a low voice. “I couldn’t stand Si Moffit twenty-four years ago, and don’t think I can today. Good-by and good luck,” he finished suddenly. A crow-like figure, aged about sixty, clad in fusty black garments, a black string tie hanging over its white shirt front, and a blackish umbrella over one of its arms, stepped within the parlor, moving aside, with a reminiscently puzzled look, as Foshart made his exit.

  “Elsa,” he began sternly, glancing perplexedly after the departing African resident, “I want to say that that was a dirty trick you played on me this evening in your office. Having somebody outside call me up, and tell me the Police Depart­ment had my other lost umbrella, and—”

  “I played you a dirty trick?” Elsa stared at her half-uncle aghast. “Oh, my God!” she bit out. “I played you—Listen, did you think I was going to let you camp there in my office when I was trying to cook up some sort of a defense of my first client in open cour—Listen, I played you—Oh, what’s the use?” she broke off helplessly. “Do you mind telling me just how you learned that my innocent subterfuge was just—”

  “A lie?” he said, righteousness radiating out all over him like quills from a porcupine. “Not at all. I immedi­ately rang the Police Department, who said they had a record of all outgoing calls, and that absolutely none had been made to that number of yours all evening.”