“Thanks,” said the stranger, catching the gesture. And got in. Into the space between the two officers.
Hoke closed the door. The squad car—without any orders—bowled on westward.
A half block away from the corner, however, Hoke Morgan, looking down curiously at the box, held snugly under the stranger’s arm, asked, genially and pleasantly: “What’s in the box, friend? Kitten? Or a frog?”
“Kitten?” echoed the other. “Why-y—that is—no—no kitten. No. Just something—I was getting for my wife. Some—some slippers.”
“Slippers? Do slippers need holes—for to breathe?”
“Well you see, I foun—”
“Here—gi’ me that box.”
“That’s my property,” said the capped man, fiercely.
Hoke Morgan, with a quick motion, wrested it neatly out from under the captive’s arm.
Who looked as though he would have liked to fight—or to seize his property back. But who—sandwiched tightly in between two officers—did nothing!
The while Hoke Morgan, removing the crossword puzzle, slipped off the rubber band, and pried off the snugly fitting cover.
And whistled!
Whistled so loud that even Heimie, at the wheel, looked clear around. And likewise whistled.
For a grinning skull lay within the pasteboard box.
A skull—and nothing more!
A skull whose jawbone was held to the skull proper by a single length of white adhesive surgical tape.
Already, however, Hoke Morgan was lifting the thing from the box, his left thumb and his left index finger in each of its eye sockets, handling it as though it were a bowling ball. Turning it over, in fact, by merely turning his own wrist.
And there, in back of the skull, was a round dark hole—and near the hole, in black ink, were the initials “M. K.”
“Slippers—heh?” Hoke said sarcastically. And then—suddenly: “All right—Mac!”
And McCarthy, as one who expected the very words, reached out swiftly to the man at his side, even as Hoke, dropping the box to the floor and slipping the skull between himself and the side of the car, reached out likewise with his powerful arms.
And, in a trice, the reddish-haired stranger’s arms were locked to his sides.
And Hoke’s free hand was patting all of the other’s pockets. For a gun. Or a dirk. Or a blackjack.
But there was nothing suggesting any of those things. And Hoke, partly releasing his grip on the other, picked up the skull again with his free hand.
“So-o?” he said. “And Limp’s fakealoo wasn’t fakealoo after all? It—it was th’ McCoy. And this—part o’ the loot from a hack-murdering box-job. All right, Heimie. Drive straight to the City Hall—to the State’s Attorney’s special lockup.” He turned to the man who had had the box.
“Well, buddy boy, it sure looks as though you’re going on a long long ride.”
“A long long ride? To where?”
“To where?” echoed Hoke. “To the electric chair, that’s where.”
“Oh—yeah?” said the fellow, his voice dripping with the most supreme insolence Hoke Morgan had ever heard in his life. “Me—and who else?”
CHAPTER XV
—Said the Supreme Court
Fleming Wiles, famous—rather should it be said, notorious!—criminal attorney, clad in plus-fours and golf shirt, leveled off, with his silver-plated driver, at his golf ball at tee No. 7 on the Edgewater Links. His ordinarily overly red face was even redder today in the light of the midday Autumn sun, and he resembled nothing so much as a well-fed country-estate proprietor.
He ought to hold that shot, he realized, for, tramping. over the green from the north, was his golfing partner who had gone to get a drink of water, Criminal Judge Stanley Klarkover, once member of the Illinois Supreme Bench, and author of two widely quoted books on criminal jurisprudence.
And Wiles did hold his shot, for, across a hillock no more than two hundred feet to the south of him, he saw no other than his new—painfully brand-new!—secretary, Miss Fifi Fanchon, approaching. Miss Fifi, as she hove into view, was as French-looking as her name, with jet-black eyes and neatly coiffeured black hair. Indeed, Wiles always picked his personal secretaries For beauty and legs—and did not bother about mere brains!
“Well, well, Fifi,” he said. “What’s up? Did the office burn up?”
“Oh, no, Mr. Wiles. I—”
“Here—here—I thought I was going to be Fleming to you?”
“Next week maybe,” she said coyly.
“Be it so,” laughed Wiles confidently. “Well, what willst with me?”
“I merely brought Attorney Haldock’s answer to your ultimatum. Which came, registered and special delivery, an hour ago.”
“Ah—good! He’s accepted what I jammed down his throat. Good!”
She was handing him the letter in question. But looked surprised.
“But—but—how do you know—”
“How!” he laughed. “Why if he’d told me to go to hell, he would never have registered his letter.” He broke it open. And nodded. “Fine! Haldock’s client, the complainant in the Tenty Case, will waive prosecution. So our light-fingered thief, Slippery Weems, goes clear.” He handed her the letter. “File this when you go back. And what else is new up in town? Remember, I’ve been golfing all morning.
She tucked the communication somewhere in her bosom.
“We-ell—there’s nothing new, I guess. To interest you, Mr. Wiles. Except—oh yes, Millionaire Bothwell walked out of Joliet Penitentiary an hour ago, a free man.”
Wiles, with mouth slowly opening, faced the girl who had a helpless penchant for giving information with vital links left out.
“Say—surely—listen—you’re not trying to tell me that the Supreme Court of Illinois has ruled on the Filched Attested Evidence case? And ruled, moreover, against the State?”
“Yes, Mr. Wiles, it has. At 9 this morning. The story was in the early issue of the News—out on the street at 10 o’clock—but inside on page 2 only. And in the 11 o’clock edition, out later, was an added bulletin that the States Attorney of LaSalle County admitted the state to be one hundred per cent defeated, and okayed Mr. Bothwell’s leaving the prison a free man.”
“Well—well, I’ll be damned, Fifi,” Wiles ejaculated.
“I’ll say I am interested in that ruling, because of an oblique angle it has on our Colledge Case. Which we’d lose, however, now—on that oblique angle, anyway—in view of the fact that only by a conviction of Sam Lancaster can Colledge be acquitted.”
“Exactly just what, Mr. Wiles,” asked Fifi, “was the issue being ruled on?”
“Well, Fifi,” Wiles said, leaning on his club, and noting that Judge Klarkover was getting nearer, “it was simply this: As to whether a piece of evidence, whose validity as evidence depends upon the circumstances of where and how it was uncovered—and which vital facts are carried in an attestation of a person now dead and unable to specifically identify the evidence in question—is still evidence if it—presumably it, you understand, Fifi!—turns up after having been filched or stolen from some place where it has been deposited for safekeeping. As in the case of Simon Bothwell, that Ottawa, Illinois, retired millionaire.
“Bothwell, you see,” Wiles expatiated, “when in his studio one night, down in Ottawa, Illinois, shot a man in the house adjoining. A man named Amos Hawlwick. A bitter clothesline fight, you know! Bothwell was caught in that very study, and was able to prove moreover, by competent and unimpeachable witnesses, that he’d never been out of it. Yet the police could not find the gun in it. Any gun! After he was arrested, however, the gun turned up. Let me say a gun! For some child found the presumed death gun up on the roof of the next house. Where Bothwell had presumably flung it. The child knew enough to take the gun straight to the LaSalle County’s S
tate’s Attorney’s house. The State’s Attorney, however, was out of town. The child told the State’s Attorney’s wife all the facts anyway. She knew nothing about calibres or anything—let alone guns!—as neither did the child; and so, till her husband could get back, she had the child letter his crude initials on the wooden handle of the gun, in ink, and deposited the gun on a closet shelf in the house. That night, however, the child was struck by a car and died. And burglars got into the State’s Attorney’s home. Whilst the wife was across town. And they robbed it blind. Lifting the gun in the bargain.
“And finally,” Wiles went on, “the gun—or presumably the gun, since it carried a pair of initials on it that tallied with those the child had presumably put on, and since the State’s Attorney’s wife was at least able to say it ‘looked exceedingly like the gun she’d put on the closet shelf!’—turned up in a Peru, Illinois, pawnshop, where some of the jewels, some of the medals, and some of the clothes from that burglary had all been pawned. The ‘recovered’ gun fitted the lethal bullet—ballistically, you understand. It was, in short, the lethal weapon that had killed Hawlwick. And Bothwell was convicted of murder. His conviction was, of course, appealed. And he lost. And went to prison for life. Then it was appealed higher. And the point made by his lawyers, this time, as they ran the case toward the Supreme Court, was that since lettered initials are not legally handwriting, there was no legal proof that the gun which turned up at the pawnshop was the same gun that was found on the roof adjoining Bothwell’s home. And later stolen. For while stolen, it had been, they said, ‘peripatetic’—that is, Fifi, its movements not checkable. The contention made by Bothwell’s attorneys, Fifi, was that the gun, to be evidence, should have been recovered on the person of—or amongst the possessions of—the original thief, and he must, moreover, be convicted in court of that specific robbery. Or should the gun in turn, have been recovered on the person of some known associate of the original thief, the latter must establish its full actual movements from place of deposit to himself, and himself to recipient, by full confession of the theft and transfer. Thus fully and completely establishing—as a legitimate witness—the movements of the evidence. For under the conditions in the Bothwell Case—and any case like it—substitution, Bothwell’s attorneys said, may—could—have occurred. And that, Fifi, is the whole case—and its appeal—boiled down—and in sheer essence.”
“Well, that was exactly what the Supreme Court found,” Fifi remarked. “For their specific ruling was that if a man is found with presumably stolen evidence on his person—evidence that is, Mr. Wiles, of the exact kind such as you’ve described—of value only because of where it has been uncovered—and merely attested to—and the man either confesses the theft or is subsequently successfully convicted of the actual theft in which the said evidence disappeared—then and then only, is it valid evidence. And usable in court as such.”
“That’s telling ’em,” Wiles laughed. “And I’m thinking that a few more people, in jails today here and there about the United States, may eventually get out of limbo on that ruling. Will, of course, if by any chance their cases are parallel to the Bothwell Case.”
“An Illinois Supreme Court ruling must, Mr. Wiles, be awfully—awfully conclusive, when this Mr. Bothwell, already convicted and in prison, would be liberated immediately by local prosecutors and judges.”
“Well, good God, Fifi,” expostulated Wiles, “what further higher ruling can there be? That is, in Illinois? For such a case can’t be sent on higher to the Supreme Court of the United States, you know. That ruling you’ve just cited me is guilt-edged. Law, now, in the State of Illinois! For when the highest tribunal in the state declares that evidence, under certain conditions, is no longer legal evidence, then that’s the last word—in that state, anyway!—the final word—and the ultimate word. It becomes merely a case, then, of opening the jail doors—in that state, anyway!—and letting out such lucky birds as went in on such evidence. I absolutely predict, as I said, several more liberations and quashed indictments, throughout the country—though probably all small fry—on that Illinois ruling alone.”
“The court maintains,” said Fifi, “in its long opinion, part only of which I read, that Evidence is the most sacred thing on earth—and too easily tampered with and modified. They almost came out flat-footedly and said point-blank that in the Bothwell Case it seemed probable that the State didn’t have hanging evidence—that is, it had it in the entirely wrong place for the right conviction!—and so arranged by phone to have its own house robbed, in order to later recapture the evidence in a—a—”
“A more conclusively hanging form?” laughed Wiles.
“Yes—that’s almost their words!”
“Well,” declared Wiles, “they are ruling somewhat ultralegally, of course—with the idea that it’s better to let five guilty gazaboes go free than to send 1 innocent bird to the chair. And it will be another 500 years before all the quirks of jurisprudence are ironed out. Well—” He leveled his eye again on his ball and on his club end. “—it’ll be just too bad, I guess, for any Illinois prosecutor anywhere just now who has evidence—but evidence only because its place of uncovering has been attested to in some wise by somebody demised or vanished—which that prosecutor has temporarily lost and regained. He might just as well discard such defendant as that evidence will convict—before even going to trial on it. For the judge, if not a half-wit, will make him.”
“Why—Mr. Wiles,” said Fifi, shocked and typically feminine, since all of the hard facts, and all of the hard law just discussed, appeared apparently lost on her. “Would any judge let an actually guilty man go—just because of a Supreme Court ruling?”
Wiles’ jaw fell open. He half shook his head. And up, just then, came Judge Klarkover.
“Ah there, Judge,” Wiles said. “You’ve met Fifi, of course, over at our other links. She and I have just been having an argument. So will you give us an ex-officio ruling now? Fifi here is up for—for murder. The evidence that clinches it is evidence because of the place where it’s been uncovered—and its uncovering is set forth in attestation only—attestor, however, demised. And, before being identified by any other person, it’s been swiped out of the State’s Attorney’s assistant’s lockbox by some vault attendant—passed on to the—er—underworld—but subsequently regained by the State’s Attorney. Though from a party, however, who cannot himself be convicted of either stealing the evidence—or even of handling it. Of—of anything, in fact. What will you do now?”
“Hold court, of course,” said Klarkover. “And send Miss Fifi to the electric chair. Call the case, Clerk!”
“Yes, Judge—but wait! I said it was the clinching evidence. And the Supreme Court of Illinois has just, a few hours ago, ruled in the Filched Attested Evidence issue.”
“It—has?” Even Judge Klarkover was surprised.
“How?”
“Negatively.”
“Neg—the devil—you say? Well, I’ll be—but here—we’re holding court. And if I have any regard for opinions as to my own sanity amongst my own confreres—and don’t want to get impeached in the bargain!—there’s only one possible ruling I can give. Fifi, I happen to know you’re guilty—but you’re discharged! And State’s Attorney—you come up here—and catch hell for even coming in this court with evidence you know to be invalidated. And—not another word, sir, or b’God, sir, I’ll fine you $500 for contempt of court! In fact, I declare Court now to be adjourned—and I’m going to play golf!”
Which exactly was what Judge Klarkover did. For with a sudden swing of his club he sent Fleming Wiles’ beautifully poised ball flying over hill and dale!
CHAPTER XVI
“The Criminal Always Returns to the Scene of His Crime!”—Nick Carter
Louis Vann, disgustedly coming up from the basement lockup in the South Chicago Police Station where be had just talked with one “Pinky McHarg, boxman”—finding, however, th
at the cracksman had an alibi so good that it could hold an electron!—wrinkled his nose at the typical police station smell. And wondered why criminals would be criminals! And have to be picked up, and stuck in places like this—and spend half their lives in other places of this general category.
Captain Scuttleman, at the desk, blue-clad and huge with his bulk, spoke in Vann’s direction.
“The operator’s got your party, Mr. Vann—and he’s on the phone in the triple booth over there.”
Vann stepped over some dirty spittoons, and entered the fine telephone booth—finer, indeed, than the police station itself!
“Captain Congreve?” he asked.
“Matt Congreve of the Detective Bureau—speaking,” came a voice.
And now Vann, even before he made his request, felt a surge of red going over his neck.
“How’s chances now, Matt—of getting ‘Portfolio’ Smith—and for the day?”
He grew even redder as he heard Congreve’s half-suppressed guffaw over the phone. Congreve, unfortunately, could afford to be familiar with the State’s Attorney, for chief of the Detective Bureau Congreve always seemingly had been—and probably always would be; while Vann, as State’s Attorney, once was not—and someday again would be exactly such!
“Was that you, Louis,” Congreve asked, “trying to get Portfolio all morning?”
“I tried several times—yes. But it seems he’d moved—wasn’t on duty yet—and nobody could even suggest how to get hold of him.”
Congreve chuckled very audibly. And his next words were obviously a quotation.
“‘The criminal always returns to the scene of his crime’!”
“Yes,” said Vann. “As someday, Matt, you’ll find out. But alas, only Portfolio believes in my theory.”
“Well, he’s here, Louis—and you can have him—though I’ll make a charge against you for his day’s time, and—but here he is. Portfolio?”
And a new voice came on.
The Man with the Crimson Box Page 12