The Man with the Wooden Spectacles Read online

  “Good—good heavens!” ejaculated Penworth again. “A sort of—of blanket erasure, isn’t it? Of—of everything, but the charges, unfortunately. And—but by George—by George, Mr. Moffit!—now this is very odd indeed. For Mr. Mullins was over there at the Revolving Lamp Drugstore—the main one, that is—just the other day, refilling the prescription for my damnable gout, and he mentioned to me that the place didn’t seem like itself without the famous landmark—the revolv—say, Mr. Moffit, get me the number of that store. No, the phone directory isn’t needed. Just get it for me off that bottle of medicine over yonder. Yes.”

  Silas Moffit arose with alacrity, and got the number in question. Which was Van Buren 0999. And rendered it to the Judge.

  Who reached out for the phone, standing atop his old Lionshead safe, and dialed the number in question. And, a second later, he was saying:

  “Let me speak to Mr. Herman von Horn, the proprietor?”

  A pause, and then:

  “Is this Mr. von Horn? Say, Mr. von Horn, an emissary of the speaker, the other day—rather, let me put it this way: was your revolving lamp in operation the other—

  “Oh, you don’t say? Well—well. Well, Mr. von Horn, this is Jud—that is, somebody connected with the Criminal Court. Yes, the Criminal Court. And will you just keep that fact to yourself? In spite of any newspaper stories—and so forth? Unless you are called as a witness—in a certain case—one that is breaking in today’s paper?”

  A pause.

  “Thank you.”

  And Judge Penworth hung up.

  “There was no revolving lamp there that day,” he said, sternly. “Nor was there one today in Mr. von Horn’s smaller store in the City Hall. Mr. von Horn sent both to the factory. The first came back today only, and is running today only in the main store. The other one, in the smaller store, went out yesterday.”

  “Then,” exclaimed Silas Moffit, with a peculiar—and, it is to be admitted, sinister—exultancy, “the fellow’s alibi won’t be worth the powder to blow it to—hrmph!”

  “—to hell, you were about to say, Mr. Moffit? Well I’m constrained to say it won’t! But no lawyer, under these circumstances, will ever permit him even to offer it. No, that particular defense is out! But I wouldn’t be surprised, Mr. Moffit, but that he was merely spoofing the young journalist, For such defense is too ridiculous—on its very face. And—however—hrmph!—I am but the judge, after all, delegated to listen to evidence and not to create it. We shall mutually forget that we know about the matter—but if that defense is offered, I will naturally—judge or no judge, have to call Mr. von Horn as a Court’s witness.”

  A silence fell on the two men.

  “Well, that leaves me,” commented the Judge ruminatively, “just where I was—with respect to estimating the defense’s probable witnesses. So suppose you give me, now, the highlights of the story there, and I will at least estimate Mr. Vann’s layout.”

  “And,” put in Silas Moffit, eagerly, “determine at the same time, no doubt, whether the defense has any chance at all?”

  “Yes,” admitted the judge sadly. “Determine offhand—whether the defense has any chance at all. For even I, the judge in the case, may equitably make that remark! Yes, indeed. So proceed, Mr. Moffit.”

  CHAPTER III

  “Wah Lee’s Skull; I Cracked Vann’s Pete!”

  Silas Moffit unfolded on his knee the paper which he had already officially donated to the Judge. And followed the printed story with his eye as he gave its highlights.

  “Well,” he began, “the story sets forth in brief, Judge, how Mr. Vann came back to Chicago this morning from St. Louis—where he’d been attending some relative’s funeral for a few days—stopped off, on his way to the City Hall, at his old personal office in the old Klondike Building—and found his ancient safe opened—the dials all splintered—obviously a sledge job!—and the murdered body of the building’s night watchman on the floor. A poor fellow named Adolph—yes, Adolph Reibach—who’s been night watchman there—at least so it says here—practically as long as Vann himself has been State’s Attorney. And—”

  “Wait a minute, Mr. Moffit! Reibach, eh? Reibach? Hm? Mr. Vann gave me, of course, only a sketchy synopsis of the unfortunate situation—and didn’t state the victim’s name: Just called him ‘faithful old Adolph.’ But—Reibach? Now I wonder—if that could possibly be the same German—then fifty years old—who used to do odd jobs around here for me ten long years ago? And who had a flock of daughters, all living on the West Side? If it is, by any chance, then the defense—if things should go against it tonight—and if it’s somehow gotten a transcript of Reibach’s life history—could suddenly claim prejudice, and try to call for—”

  “A change of venue? No, Judge, it says definitely here that this Reibach was hired, at the very time he came over from Germany, by the owner of the Klondike Building—one August Kieckhofer—because Reibach came—or at least said he did—from the same province of Germany—Pomerania—that Kieckhofer himself came from. And all of which, moreover, was only four years ago. And it says, furthermore, Judge, that this dead Reibach is not a day older than about 40 years old—right today. And still again, you speak of your Reibach having had a flock of daughters; well, it seems that ’twas because of this Reibach not having any relatives whatsoever of record on his employment card there that Mr. Vann was emboldened to let his body lie right there all morning—while he worked secretly on the case. So, all in all, you’ll be quite free of any possibility of sudden call for change of venue tonight—at least because of any claims of your having previously known the victim.”

  “Very good! I’d hate to get all under way with a trial—and then have things suddenly blow up because of a ridicu­lously—though quite valid, I’ll concede!—technicality like that. Well, my old odd-jobs Reibach would definitely be 60 years old today. And I even met two of his daughters once. So that’s that! And now what does it say Vann then did?”

  “Well, Judge, it goes on to say how Vann quickly drew the door of his office to, stepped down to a phone booth on the stair landing, and had Inspector Rufus Scott over there in a few minutes. All sub rosa, moreover. After which he put Scott in sole charge of examining the premises. And went over to his City Hall offices. And how Scott then made a complete inspection of the site of the double crime.”

  “One of the most unshakable witnesses,” the Judge nodded “on the entire Chicago police force. A real specialist in criminology. And so meticulously accurate that I’ve never yet seen anybody shake him.”

  “I—see,” Silas Moffit nodded, as one whose knowledge of criminal Chicago was limited to judges and lawyers.

  He gazed down at his paper again. “Well, the safe was minus a certain single item. An item which, moreover, Vann had known was in there.”

  “Exactly how,” frowned Judge Penworth, “did Vann know this—for I didn’t catch that angle when he gave me that hasty—so very hasty—survey of the situation? As I understand things, he had only just gotten in from St. Louis—and the item—it was a skull, of course, I know that—had been originally put in, in his absence.”

  “Well it seems,” explained Silas Moffit, “that his office girl—the one, that is, who keeps that particular office for him—a Miss Burlinghame—had met him in the depot this morning on her way to Indianapolis. To attend some wedding. Of a sister or something. And there, in the depot, she’d given him certain facts. Specifically, that a skull had been unearthed sometime before, by a Negro laborer, in the—the old deserted Schlitzheim Brewery, on Goose Island, in the very room—at the very geometrical site, in fact, except deeper—where that headless skeleton was found years ago—and which failed completely as a corpus delicti in the old Wah Lee kidnaping and murder.”

  “Yes,” Penworth nodded, “That skeleton which the underworld worked hard to establish as another body.”

  “And—succeeded!” added Silas Mof
fit meaningfully.

  “Yet would not have done so,” pointed out Penworth, “if the skull had been found with it. In view of the surgical work that had been done so recently in Wah Lee’s head. And—but go ahead, Mr. Moffit. After all, the story you have there deals with one case—homicide and burglary of today. While the Wah Lee Case is, after all, another case—kidnaping and murder—of another day. And the two cases are connected only by virtue of the single item—Wah Lee’s skull. For, patently, this must be Wah Lee’s skull which has at last been unearthed.” He paused.

  “Now as I understand it, the Negro who brought it in, finally, to Mr. Vann’s office—after he surmised, that is, from hearing from some other Negro something about the history of the old Schlitzheim Brewery—”

  “Yes, Judge. He hadn’t been in America at the time of the old Wah Lee Case.”

  “I—see. Well, as I understand things, he brought this skull in, wrapped and tied in paper, and the girl herself never actually viewed it. Is that right?”

  “Yes,” affirmed Silas Moffit. “And which fact, I can see plainly, Judge, intrigues your—your legal sense. Yes, that is exactly the situation. It seems that she put it in that safe without examining it—she checked its identity as a skull, yes, by tearing open a bit of the paper and making certain it was a skull, and not—not—well, not a cantaloupe!—and she took a deposition from the Negro, embodying such vital facts as to how he’d unearthed it; how he’d boiled and scraped and cleaned it; how he’d fixed the lower jaw to the sconce proper with white surgical tape; how he’d put his initials, ‘M. K.’ on the rear of it before bringing it in—his name, it seems, Judge, was Moses Klump; how it had a bullet hole in its back, and a shattered rear wall in its left eye-socket; and how some kind of surgical work, anyway, had been done inside its nose.”

  “Some—kind?” commented the Judge judicially, putting his fingertips reflectively together. “That, too, can make an interesting legal point tonight. For we know, of course, precisely what surgery was done in Wah Lee’s nose. And—but go ahead, Mr. Moffit. For I’m still anxious to approximate the number of witnesses Mr. Vann essentially is bound to have tonight.”

  “Well, there’s one he won’t have, Judge,” commented Silas Moffit. “The Negro! Which you may or may not know. For he was killed yesterday in a warehouse accident.”

  “So I understand—yes. And,” added Penworth, “it is fortunate—that is, for Mr. Vann’s case!—that the girl took that deposition. Which, I’m emboldened to say, will be State’s Exhibit Number One tonight! But here—I’m delaying things. Go ahead, Mr. Moffit.”

  “Yes, Judge.” Silas Moffit glanced at the paper again.

  “Well, the upshot of Inspector Scott’s examination was that the murder of Reibach was done with a sledge—the same sledge, in fact, that was used to crack open the safe—and done brutally, moreover—for the German’s skull had obviously been smashed in after he’d already been knocked unconscious by a prior blow. In fact, Judge, Scott’s derivations in the matter—as given briefly here—seemed to be that it was plainly and patently a one-man job altogether—and that the one man was distinctive enough—red-haired or something!—that he found it best to kill Reibach off after knocking him out, rather than let the watchman recover and broadcast his—the murderer’s—description. And the murder itself, Scott maintains, was done at 10:43 p.m. last night. And is established definitely by four different and distinct time confirmations. First, a smashed watch on Reibach’s wrist—done by a first glancing sledge blow. Second, a tilted glassed-in pendulum wall clock, that was stopped at the same hour, and with some of Reibach’s hairs—obviously from a gash found in his scalp—stuck on one of its lower corners. And showing how he’d reeled backwards from that first blow which smashed his wrist watch. It seems, moreover,” added Silas Moffit, squinting at the paper, “that both watch and clock can be proven—though by factors not given here—to be correct. And that the clock, moreover, couldn’t have been reset by the murderer—because the only key to its glassed-in box—a special Yale key—was in Louis Vann’s own pocket. There are, moreover—so the story says—still two more confirmations of the murder hour, which at the least rivet it to the hour from 10 to 11 last night—and based on the dead watchman’s time sheet and—”

  “If Scott,” Penworth put in, “sets the time of the murder as of 10:43 last night, then 10:43—or closely thereabouts—is the hour. Quite regardless of who did it—or how.”

  “I see,” nodded Silas Moffit. And paused. “One thing is certain anyway, Judge. Namely, Mr. Vann wouldn’t have let the hour of the murder be set forth in this story, as it is, if it hadn’t been that at press time of the story—and long before, in fact—he was 100 per cent convinced he had the man who did the job. And—” But Silas Moffit lowered his gaze to the paper again. “Anyway,” he continued, “it seems that—according to the story here—sometime around noon today, some patrolman named Daniel Kilgallon noticed a reddish-haired man, of about 34 or 35 years of age, standing on Adams Street—at the northeast corner of the Old Post Office, in actuality—waiting for a streetcar—yet not taking any. The fellow had a crimson box under his arm—just a shoebox, it says here, Judge, inked over with crimson fountain pen ink—and was working a newspaper crossword puzzle atop the box, As though putting in time.

  “And,” Silas Moffit went on, tossing his eyes up to the top of another column, “it tells how Kilgallon questioned him casually as to what sort of a pet he might have in the box—for it seems the box, Judge, had holes punched in each end—camouflage, as later appears, yes!—and the fellow just said to him; ‘No spik Inglize.’ And how, halfway up Dearborn Street, Kilgallon—troubled because of the answer, and the fact that the crossword puzzle the fellow was working was one with English words—encountered an old friend of his boyhood—rather, his mother’s earlier days—no less a person, in fact, than Archbishop Stanley Pell of Chicago, who was coming down the post-office steps, in company with a—a—yes—a Professor Andre Mustaire, head of some well-known West Side deaf and dumb school; and how Kilgallon told the Archbishop about the incident in question, and how the Archbishop—because he was a linguist, and also a good fellow—agreed to step around the corner and question the reddish-haired man in various languages. Depending on what Archbishop Pell’s judgment of the fellow’s dialect was.

  “And which,” Silas Moffit went on, “Archbishop Pell did, accompanied by this Mustaire. At a distance, that is.

  For it seems that Mustaire stayed in the Archbishop’s wake—and drew up some distance off—on the curb. At which instant some ex-pupil of his hove up and asked for some directions to some building in the Loop—all in sign language—and which Mustaire gave him—in the same language—”

  “With the result,” Penworth nodded, “that the reddish-haired man, now defendant in this case, must have presumed that Mustaire was a deaf-mute?”

  “That,” admitted Silas Moffit, “is the theory which the story sets forth. And which common sense dictates too, I’d say. But anyway, the Archbishop questioned the reddish-haired man. And—well, as a mere layman in such matters, Judge, I would say that that conversation between them will be the whole pivot of this case tonight.”

  The Judge looked reflective, but rendered no ex-officio comment. Saying instead: “Well, just repro—er—set it forth. The hasty version I got from Mr. Vann on the phone may well have been garbled.”

  “Well,” Silas Moffit declared, “the Archbishop, drawing up to the fellow, said: ‘I’m Archbishop Pell. What have you in the box?”

  The Judge straightened up interestedly on his bed. “And am I correct in assuming,” he asked, “that the fellow did admit having the goods in question—and of having committed the crime? It seems almost too unbeliev—”

  “Well, Judge,” Silas Moffit broke in, “it seems the fellow replied as follows:”

  And licking a lip appreciatively—no doubt for reasons known best to himself!—Sila
s Moffit read off the answer which the paper stated the reddish-haired defendant had given: “‘Wah Lee’s skull; I cracked Vann’s pete!’”

  “Which reply” Silas Moffit commented dryly, “it ought to be interesting to hear him explain—in court!—in view of—” He gazed down at the paper again. “—in view, Judge, of the State’s Attorney’s own statement here—right in quotes!—that even the very fact of his safe having been robbed last night—much less of what had been in it—wasn’t known to anybody—outside, that is, Judge, of the burglar, and perhaps those who put him on the job!—known to anybody,” Silas Moffit repeated, “but Vann himself—Inspector Rufus Scott—Vann’s own brother, Hugh Vann—and Vann’s own personal assistant, Leo Kilgallon; for it seems, Judge, that the fellow with the crimson box was already in position at the Old Post Office corner at the time Patrolman Kilgallon caught part of the facts from his son Leo. Yes, indeed, Judge, it’ll be interesting to hear the defendant explain away that answer!”

  “Well, what,” inquired the Judge, “did he—hrmph—that is, does the paper say—he did, after he gave the Archbishop that answer?”

  “Well the paper says,” declared Silas Moffit, “that after he saw he’d literally floored the Archbishop, he said hurriedly, ‘Pardon me, Your Reverence, I took you for somebody else. Just skip it, will you?’ ”

  And now Silas Moffit laid the paper atop the Judge’s bed. Indicating that the rest of the story was brief, to say the least.

  “The State’s theory of the crime,” he said, “is that the presence of that skull in that old safe leaked to the underworld—in fact, Judge, the story indicates that the State will show in court exactly how!—and that the underworld got this fellow to pull this job, and snitch that skull out; and that he was scheduled to make a criminal ‘meet’ there on that cor­ner with the skull, and turn the goods over, but thought that Archbishop Pell was a criminal, and a confederate, and—”