“Yes, Vann, of course I do. And I admit making it, moreover. Even though, to my mind, your bungalow isn’t at all enough security today for that loan. Which fact you’ve probably found out—if you’ve shopped around any in the market for a new mortgage! And so far as my innocent and friendly proposition sounding like something out of the Dixiebelle repertoire, I don’t see myself how life is any different today in essence than is set forth in some old play. Economic conditions are identically the same—people are the same too, aren’t they? And your mortgage, I rather take it, is just as troublesome to you as the one that may have harassed some noble Southern planter—on the Dixiebelle. Yes? No? And—but dropping showboats, and getting back to business—I said all that you just quoted a minute or so back. Yes. And have you such a case—as you just described.
“And—how, Mr. Moffit! And one that can’t blow up like one I enthusiastically called you up about yesterday, by long-distance—clear from St. Louis!—four different times. At 4 o’clock. At 6. At 8. And at 10. Though glad I am now that you were downtown—or wheresoever you were.”
“Well I was ‘downtown’ all right, at all those 4 different hours you name—only the ‘downtown’ in question happens to be Kalamazoo, Michigan’s downtown! For I was in Kalamazoo practically all day sizing up an unusually attractive loan proposition. One with fine security because of a certain absolutely inevitable public improvement—but which improvement lies just far off enough yet, so far as condemnation-money goes, that the owners are sure to have to default the loa—hrmph—anyway, on your first-named call, I was looking the property over, in the estimable presence of the president of the Kalamazoo Board of Local Improvements—on your second, I was making my decision!—on your third, I was getting aboard the Detroit-Chicago Flyer—and on your last, I was stepping forth here, at the LaSalle Street Depot. But you say you had something up my—er—my alley, as it were!—and it—it blew up?”
“Yes, this morning, Mr. Moffit. Though its blowing up has happened a bit too late for the morning papers here. Anyway, Mr. Moffat, it was the case of Slippery McFinnisy, the notorious old pickpocket who’s been successfully working the Madison Street streetcars for years. He was locked up over at the Bureau, caught absolutely dead to rights this time—with his hand squarely in his victim’s pocket!—and no way on earth to ‘beat the rap,’ as we term it, other than perhaps to get a mighty smooth lawyer plus some judge who is notoriously easy on petty criminals. And my own assistant, Leo Kilgallon, told me yesterday on the long-distance wire that Slippery, dead broke, had signed consent for any lawyer to be assigned him providing he could have trial in front of Judge Mason Beldward.”
“And Judge Beldward,” commented Silas Moffit, “in addition to being a senior judge—and having disbarring privileges!—is considerable of a sociologist! Avers—if I’m not mistaken?—that criminals are more or less the products of a false econ—”
“Judge Beldward,” said Vann, “had his wallet, containing $2000, lifted day before yesterday afternoon, on a bus—and it seems that the things he said to my assistant, over the phone, when he—Beldward—consented to hear the case, wouldn’t look good in the—Annual Cook County Judiciary Report! Why—’Slippery’ McFinnisy, taking bench trial before Beldward!—well, it was leading not just with one chin—but with the three chins that Slippery had. Anyway, Mr. Moffit, that was the case I was trying to get through to you on yesterday. But today—”
“Yes?” interrupted Silas Moffit, eagerly. “And today—what?”
“This morning I got a hasty call from Captain Daly—yes, night-Captain of the Detective Bureau—that Slippery succeeded in hanging himself, with his belt, from the ceiling grating of his cell at the Bureau—just before dawn. And, therefore, of course, just after today’s newspaper deadline!”
“Oh, dear me!” was Silas Moffit’s comment. “Why that—that was a classical example of the kind of a case I—well—I—er—had in mind. Because it—but you say you have something even better?—er, that is—more in that category?”
“And how!—as I said once before. The name of the defendant is John Doe. Burglary and murder. I can’t give you the details of the crime—but they’ll be set forth in the first Despatch out today. Anyway, the defendant was caught with the stolen goods on his person. Admitted—to credible and unimpeachable witnesses—the identity of the goods, and even his actual commission of the crime. Has no money to hire a lawyer—and doesn’t ask one. And last but not least, Mr. Moffit, he’s willing to take a trial—tonight—which fits in beautifully with certain vital plans of mine for using his stolen goods in quite another legal matter—a trial, as I was about to say, before Judge Hilford Penworth. And do you know who Penworth is?”
“Know who he is? I know him personally. One of the various mortgages I hold over and about Chicago happens to be on his Prairie Avenue home. And in view of the way that long-scheduled Prairie Avenue improvement fell through, the mortgage is as bad a one today—if you ask me!—as yours is.”
“Oh?” Vann was a bit taken aback. “Well,” he said—for want of a fitting reply, “that—that is coincidental, to say the least. Though on the other hand—if something I heard awhile back were true—it isn’t at all. No!” He paused. “Is it really true, Mr. Moffit,” he queried, “that all you Chicago mortgages are on properties owned by members of the Chicago bar and bench?”
“It is,” replied the other promptly. “The whole 63 of ’em—from a $500 one up to a $22,000 one.”
“If you don’t mind telling me—” asked Vann, who had several times in the past puzzled a bit over this.
“Not at all. Specialization in securities. Rather—in security holders. Far I’m able to look up lawyers and judges from A to Izzard—all their past life histories—and all their future earning powers—through my son-in-law, Manny Levinstein.”
“Oh yes, Mr. Moffit. I see. And I know of Manny Levinstein, too. He’s an attorney specializing, if I’m not mistaken, in personal injury cases.” And Vann made a grimace of distaste in the phone, which fortunately did not travel via television. “But I never dreamed,” he added wonderingly, “that you were Jewish—for—”
“Am I supposed to be—whatever my daughter marries?” asked Silas Moffit testily.
“Well—of course—no, Mr. Moffit,” Vann made great haste to correct himself. “But I realize you could be, in the face of the penchant—of the Jewish race—for Biblical names—and your own son being named Saul—”
“The damned worthless rat!—the filthy—but go on!”
“We-ell—it seems as though I’ve inadvertently trod on a sore spot of yours, Mr. Moffit! However, speaking of Saul, he called up my office this morning—”
“Yes, I know! And without even having been there myself—or even having heard of it. Obviously he heard of the death, night before last, of Holoday, your special assistant prosecutor on rackets, and having once been a rackets assistant-prosecutor himself, he thought you might grab him. Which I only hope you didn’t, Vann—the dirty rat! For he’s not worth powder to blow him to hell—and has long forgotten all law he ever knew—and besides, being disbarred all these years—”
“But of course, Mr. Moffit, the point on which he was disbarred was only appearance, in court, drunk—twice; and now that 10 years have elapsed, he could easily get re-admittance to the bar. And, by pulling a few wires, without even an examination. But the facts are, however, that I have known for some time that Holoday couldn’t pull through—and personally promised Mayor Sweeney that that purely personal appointment of my own office—or rather, reappointment—was to be his alone. For his nephew—to be frank.”
“Well, I only hope you didn’t tell that damned rat any of that, Vann. For then he’d have been annoying Mayor Sweeney.”
“Oh, I—I think not,” Vann said, bewildered as he recalled how equally bitter and hostile Saul Moffit had been, that morning on the wire, towards his own father—and suspecting tha
t the whole family animosity had been created not only by the father having at some time verbally laid out the son—but by the son, in turn, having at some time given the father a beautiful dressing down!—and that neither had been able to “take it.” And all of which, it may be said, was precisely the fact! “For Saul,” Vann continued, “well, Saul, if you ask me, seems to—to have lost his backbone. And so far as his calling up Mayor Sweeney, I think my turndown—which wasn’t at all a turndown—just simply a statement that the appointment belonged solely to Sweeney now—was final with him. I sort of threw the onus of the situation back on him, Mr. Moffit—to ease things up for his ego, don’t you know?—by asking him why on earth he hadn’t called the office yesterday—immediately the morning papers had carried the news of Holoday’s death. For I had, right in front of me, our individual records of all persons who had called up while I was gone—and he hadn’t! And he said he hadn’t been able, because he’d been out of town all day yesterday–”
“Lying drunk with some whore, that’s all—but go on?”
“Oh surely not, Mr. Moffit? He’s surely not that far gone—”
“No? Well, if you ask me, I think the very whore he was lying with is keeping him! For he’s got the soul of a pimp, and the brain of a—”
“Oh, now now, Mr. Moffit, you’re a bit biased, really. I’m sure, when it comes to—”
“Listen,” said Silas Moffit gruffly, “the bastard son-of-a-bitch—so I have it on good authority—manages to dress pretty fair—yet doesn’t work. Oh, I know, he claims—at least according to my informant—to be doing night bookkeeping for some brewery. But of course he isn’t. For he hasn’t guts enough to work. He—he hasn’t guts enough to do anything. He was simply lying right here in Chicago with some dirty whore, drunk when he ought to have been trying to get aboard a saddle that he knows—rather once knew!—something about, and—but go on?”
“Well, all I know is that he was sober anyway, when he called—and said he had been down in Springfield all day, pulling certain wires around the State Capitol Building there, to get his license to practice renewed. But without the formality of examination, of course! And so hadn’t seen the news of Holoday’s death till he stepped off the train in the Polk Street Depot near 11 o’clock, and picked up a morning Tribune that some outgoing passenger had left on one of the waiting room benches.”
“Well give him nothing—” Silas Moffit ordered gruffly, “—ever! On your staff, I mean. Not—not so much as a job sweeping out. And if the next incumbent of office in the rackets-assistantship dies—tell Sweeney to give the job to the filthiest nigger in Chicago rather than to—to Saul. For he’s a goddamned rat, and a whoremonger, and a nogood, and a whelp, and a pissant, and—a—and I’m mighty glad you’re on the wire with me now, Vann, so I can wise you up in case the next incumbent of the racket-assistantship dies off. For that stinking reptile of a Saul Moff—but let’s get back to our business. The matter of this defendant you’ve got.”
“Yes, indeed—let’s,” said Vann fervently. Realizing that he had inadvertantly stepped, with both feet, into a most acrimonious family mess—though glad, at least, that the man he was trying to favor was—for good and plenty reasons!—very much on his side. At least when it came to not dealing out that rackets-assistantship to the much-degenerated Saul Moffit.
“Well now,” Vann resumed, “about this defendant, Mr. Moffit—or rather, speaking now of Judge Penworth!—I don’t need to tell you, I’m sure—though quite confidentially—that Penworth, in addition, of course, to being now a senior judge—and having disbarring privileges and all that—is the hardest man on the bench. He’s known as ‘Lifer Penworth’—and gives about as small a break to any defendant as can legally be given. And so, Mr. Moffit—since this Doe bird is willing to take a trial before Penworth—Penworth, of all persons!—with everything against him, he’s as good as convict—”
“You say,” put in the other with ill-suppressed eagerness, “he has no money? The fellow Doe?”
“Not a lead dime, Mr. Moffit, was on his person. He won’t name any lawyer even to be sent for—because he claims he not only has no ‘mouthpiece’—as his kind call it—but he doesn’t need any. But when I told him he’d legally have to have one, he was quite willing to let the trial judge name one.”
“I see—I see, Good!” Moffit’s satisfaction with all this information was more than puzzling to Vann. But Vann was, after all, interested only in getting the mortgage on that property of his extended—till re-election made new financing a simple and easy matter. “Well, Vann,” went on the man at the other end of the wire, “that—what you’ve just told me—yes—is all I want to know. For I—but are you going to take the defendant up on this! And—can you definitely get his case before Penworth?”
“The answer to your first question is ‘yes.’ And to your second is: ‘Easy.’ Chief Justice of the Criminal Assignment Bench Mike Shurley—who is my good friend, incidentally—will gladly assign the case to Penworth, if I ask him, in order to clear up a certain dirty mess here in Chicago. While Penworth, in turn—to oblige me—and likewise to help clear up this same dirty mess I refer to—will hold the trial tonight. Of that I am as certain as—well—as that my John Hancock reposes on a trust deed in your vault. Yes, Penworth will hold the trial all right. ’Specially with this fellow—yes, Doe—signing up all the necessary releases and so forth. The grand jury will quickly vote a routine indictment between other routine matters, on a ‘docket-clearing’ request. Yes, Mr. Moffit, Penworth will hear the case I am certain. For he’s not confined, you know, to bed at all. Only to his home. Which will necessitate of course his delegating one of his downstairs rooms as official courtroom. But that’s quite within his legal powers as judge. Even his old court clerk—Fred Mullins, I think the fellow’s name is—has stuck with him, as a sort of valet and secretary, during his enforced exile from the bench; so everything is absolutely perfect for the holding of a trial. By tomorrow morning, Mr. Moffit, I assure you positively that friend Doe will be in no less than the death cell out in the County Jail—and I’ll have his stolen goods which I need for another—and far more vital—case.”
“I see. Yes, I see,” said Silas Moffit, hurriedly. “All—all right, Vann. Thank you a lot. I must hurry out now. On something very important. Yes. Well, I think you may consider your mortgage now as extended—I’ll have my son-in-law fix up the papers today, and send them over to your office for your signature. Though it’s extended, you understand, Vann, till just after election only. After that—if you get in due to being renominated—you’ll probably have no trouble in refinancing your place. Let’s hope so anyway.”
“Yes.” And Vann, considerably mystified, hung up. The proposition just consummated still smacked, to him, of the Dixiebelle!—but, whether or no, his mortgage was only too real—and money just now was only too damn tight! So Dixiebelle or no Dixiebelle, he—
He went back to the cell he had left. Standing, however, on the outside this time. The man who called himself ‘Doe’ again sat on the hardwood shelf, in a lugubrious brown study.
“Well,” said Vann dryly, through the grating, “have you thought it over? While I attended to a matter?”
“I don’t need to think it over.” The defendant was over by the grating now. “I told you what I’d do. So—was your matter getting Judge Penworth to hear my case—in his home?”
“No, it wasn’t. But that’s positively assured, I tell you. The ropes to arrange that are as good as pulled. All right, then. I’m going now. And I’ll be sending over a full bunch of papers in a few minutes. For you to sign. They’ll constitute all the necessary waivers and requests by which we can bring you to trial tonight—before Penworth. I’m going to state in each one of them moreover that we—the State—agrees—on our part—to give you this trial before Penworth—and tonight. So that there’ll be no technicalities later for you to squawk for a reversal on—at least on any such p
oint as that we secured the papers by coercion. I’ll be arranging matters with Penworth himself within the next 20 minutes. And he’ll assign you a lawyer. One who will call on you here—and will be admitted. Satisfied!”
“A hundred per cent,” said John Doe. “And thanks—Vann.”
“Don’t thank me,” Vann replied gruffly. “For here and now we begin to play on opposite sides of the fence. For don’t think, Doe, that just because this trial is held inside a judge’s home, it won’t mean—if his verdict is against you—that you won’t sit in the hot seat.”
“That’s my worry, isn’t it?” said John Doe coolly.
“Very, very, very much so,” said Vann unsmilingly.
And left.
CHAPTER XXII
“I’m Your Lawyer!”
Hugh Vann, seated in the incommunicado cell of “John Doe”—in the same chair, in fact, which but ten minutes ago had been vacated by his brother—reiterated the statement he had just made.
“I really am your attorney, Doe,” he said. “Robert Arnley—as you can see from the card in your hands. And selected by the court to defend you tonight. So what is your defen—”
“Hasn’t the Honorable Court acted mighty damn swiftly?” was John Doe’s somewhat dubious query, as he fingered the card which Hugh Vann had just given him, and which did carry the name of one Bob Arnley, Attorney, and which card Hugh Vann had happened, through pure chance, to have on his person.
“Why, of course,” Hugh Vann said blandly. “The State’s Attorney, while out of your cell here a few minutes back, called the Chief Justice of the Criminal Assignment Bench, who in turn rang me—I was right here in the building—and here I am.”
“Lawyers—by pneumatic tube, eh?” said the defendant.
The Man with the Crimson Box Page 17