The Man with the Crimson Box

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  Allstyn broke off himself. A bit embarrassedly. And said no more. Glancing meaningfully at his watch, instead. Then he rose.

  “The only way,” Piffington Wainwright was repeating puzzledly, “for me to get it broken—is to—to what?” But catching the hint that the interview was over, he too arose, though he did not put his hat on his head.

  “Oh—really nothing,” Allstyn replied hastily. “And don’t forget your contract there!”

  “I don’t want the ten I’ve taken back from you,” Piffington Wainwright declared determinedly. “I—I want to know how to break that contract.”

  “Very well,” sighed Allstyn. “Take up your paper, then. But keep your ten. And I’ll finish what I started to say.”

  Piffington Wainwright restored the paper to his breast pocket. And arrested in mid-air his hand which was moving toward the billfold.

  “Well, Piffington,” the lawyer said reluctantly, “no attorney of decent repute ever makes it a practice, don’t you know, to hand out information—or advice—of this nature. And certainly I never have—in all my days in this profession. For it isn’t high ethics—it isn’t, by George, ethics. No! But perhaps in your case—um—there are justifications. Justifications, that is, for at least telling you what some unscrupulous lawyer might tell you. Hrmph! Anyway, the point is this: You have tried a number of mild and—er—genteel expedients towards inducing Adlai, Collerman and Grimshawster to tear up, as it were—and friendly like, as it were—your 20-year paper. Which of course they won’t do. But if you should—ahem!—make yourself the fly in their ointment—the—the arsenic in their morning coffee—they’d mighty soon—” he broke off painfully.

  “Make myself—the arsenic—in their morning coffee? How?”

  “How! Hrmph! Well if you were engaged in one of the many lines of work, Piffington, which I have come to be familiar with, through contract work, I could better explicate exactly what I mean. But I know absolutely nothing about the radio-writing game. While you, on the other hand, know everything about it—from writing to broadcasting. So ought you ask me how?”

  “Well no—I daresay I oughtn’t. No. But the fly—in their ointment? And the arsenic—in their morning coffee! I—” And now a great light suddenly went over Piffington Wainwright’s dainty features. “I get it now, really. Or, a the Germans say: Es gehts mir ein licht auf! Yes, I get it quite, Mr. Allstyn. My stance—my stance has been all wrong! For I have been going about, on my very—er—belly, seeking to get the contract broken. And the more I go about thus—the more the other side wants to retain it unbroken. Yes. I see! My stance has been all wrong! I should make them want to get it broken. And it should be they—yes—who should come crawling to me—on their—er—bellies—yes—begging me to accept back my contract. Even better yet, yelling aloud—for all to hear—that they’ve broken it themselves, hear ye, hear ye, hear ye! Strange, confound it, that I had to come up here, Mr. Allstyn, just to get the gist of a most obvious idea. But isn’t that—just like life? Yes indeed.

  “But I have it all straight in my mind now,” Wainwright continued, nodding. “The arsenic in their coffee! And not only the arsenic in their coffee, but—if you don’t mind my vulgarity, Mr. Allstyn—the bee in their pants—in the pants of Messrs. Adlai, Collerman and Grimshawster. Yes, everything is crystal-clear to me now. So listen in, from now on, Mr. Allstyn, on your various crime-story hours, and before very long you’ll be hearing one of my creations. Since before I’m done now, Adlai, Collerman and Grimshawster shall crawl to me on six knees—well, say four knees, since Adlai always stays in Pittsburgh—asking me to call it a day. Better yet, bruiting it far and wide that I, P. Wainwright, am not their property. Yes, I got it at last. And I’m off now. For I—” He put his hat on his head, “—I positively won’t steal another second of your valuable time. Good day and thanks. And—”

  “Well, how—how,” asked Allstyn troubledly, “will you—er—be going about all this? Which, damn it all, Piffington, I don’t officially—ahem—counsel—or advise. For—”

  “No, I quite understand that, of course. Your ‘suggestions’ are between the two of us only. But how—I think you asked—will I go about this? Well—I wouldn’t know that just now. But I’ll find a way. It’s sufficient, for the second, to know the proper stance. Yes. The fly in the ointment. The arsenic in the coffee. The bee in the pants. How else could—but I’ve plainly far overstayed my welcome—and I am going!” And Piffington Wainwright turned toward the door. “Happy to have met you, Mr. Allstyn. And I’m off now—to concentrate!”

  Allstyn scratched his head. To himself only he said: “This confounded clown would burn up his circus—all the animals—the trapezes—and the sideshows—just to get his chance—to play Hamlet!” Aloud he said: “Well, I’ll be glad, at least—to hear the first broadcast—of your new material.”

  Mr. Wainwright was now at the door. And partly opened it, in fact, and stood with his hand on the knob. “You will,” he replied confidently. “Moreover, I’ll even let you know how I acted on your adv—suggestion. Since, at this second, I don’t know myself. But, as I said, I’ll find a way. Yes—I’ll find a way!”

  And he was gone.

  And a quarter minute later, as Allstyn stood troubledly with his driving gauntlets on, and his bag in one hand, the sound of the elevator gates, in the hall outside the outer reception room, closing on the determined Hamlet-playing clown, filtered in to the lawyer—thanks to the fact that Squires had entered, and had left open the door to the outside reception room.

  “I’m leaving now, Squires—and must run,” Allstyn said hurriedly. “That young man has kept me considerably longer, however, than the five minutes we alloted to him; so I’ll not even try now to go to the Ulysses S. Grant Building and—”

  “Very well, sir. Anyway, the Railway Express Company phoned five minutes ago that that package was the one containing the missing Striebel documents.”

  “Good! Then there’d be no need whatsoever of your having to catch me at Elsa Colby’s. Where now I shan’t be, anyway. Well, it appears we’re all cleaned up then. So good-by—and see you in 3—4 days.”

  “Good-by, sir—and good luck. And oh yes, I didn’t fill out a card at all on that young man—ahem—client, who just called. If you don’t mind, sir, telling me what name I shall set down, I’ll fill same out.”

  “Oh yes. Well, make out one card, Squires, reading ‘Mr. Sentimental Tommy. Address: Land o’ Dreams.’”

  “Mr.—Sentimental Tommy, sir? Surely his name isn’t—”

  “Didn’t you ever, Squires, read Barrie? And didn’t you hear our client, as he went out, say ‘I’ll Find a way!’? Yes, Squires. The name is S. Tommy, Esquire. Good day!”

  CHAPTER XXVI

  Ebon Curls!

  Louis Vann, his list of witnesses for tonight’s trial on his desk, a series of peculiar checkmarks denoting such persons on it as had been called up by himself, and a still more peculiar series showing those that had been called by Miss Jason, contemplated his wife hungrily. Dressed in a chic but inexpensive black shopping dress that exactly matched her big dark eyes, the only note of white on the dress being the ruffs of white at the wrists, Miriam Vann seemed—at least to Louis Vann regarding her now—younger than the day he had married her. Though whether or no, he was quite certain that he loved her more today than on that memorable day. And if he had any doubt of this, the little concrete resultant of that marriage now sat on his knee, her black curls seemingly carved out of ebony, her brown eyes exactly like those of her mother, her two-year-old person a sort of elf.

  “Gosh, darling,” he was saying to Miriam, “but I sure am glad you stopped off. For—wurra, wurra!—I can’t come home tonight—and that after being out of town these few days.”

  “No?” Miriam inquired. “Why not, Louis?”

  “I go to court tonight,” he explained. “The case of that fellow—but did you re
ad the early afternoon papers?”

  “No,” Miriam Vann said.

  “Well,” Vann told her slowly, “a pickup—murder and larceny—has consented to take trial right off the bat; and I’m grabbing advantage of it.”

  She gazed at him intently, as sensing, with the perspicuity of a wife, that this was no just routine affair.

  “Anything unusual—about the case, Louis?”

  “Unusual!” he laughed harshly. “I’ll—say! ’Twas my own office that was robbed. And—”

  “Louis!” She leaned forward, red lips agape. “Not the dear old—”

  “Yes. And that fellow Adolph, who’s been night watchman there almost, within a week, to my being S. A. here, was the one who was killed. I didn’t tell you anything about it when I phoned earlier today for I was busier than—anyway, Darling, it seems that—”

  “No, Louis.” She was manifestly quite shocked. “Don’t you waste precious time by rehearsing the facts now. I’ll get the papers and read them on the way home with Dolly.”

  She was thoughtful.

  “Well—will it be a long trial, Louis?”

  “Daddy!” It was Dolly speaking. Her tiny finger was pointed at Vann’s four telephones. “Thometime when you is talking to four peopleth at the thame time—will you let me watch?”

  “I don’t talk to 4 ‘peoples’, honey, at the same time.”

  “You—don’t?” The little face looked up at him surprised. “Then w’y—w’y you got fo’ telephones?”

  “Why, because, Sweetkins, I—well, you see, certain ones are for certain people to call up on—and others for others. See? Just as you have your sandpile to play in, and Johnny Ebberts has his.”

  The big black eyes studied on that question.

  “But what if peopleth all rusth to telyphones on your birthday, Daddy—and tell you many happy weturns—don’t you then—talk to them all?”

  “Thank heavens, sweetkins, they don’t know my birthday. Now be a good girl—and think up another.” He turned to his wife. “About this trial—no, it shouldn’t take very long. Not as trials go. One night at most. So it’s good night to my coming home. Glad I had a good sleep—coming in last night.”

  “Louis?”

  “Yes, Darling. What?”

  “Did you have any luck—with that Central Investment Corporation?”

  A shadow passed over his face. “No, not from that outfit, no. I—I was practically offered a bribe. A fact! The son of the C. I. Corporation head is, it seems, in jail out there on California Avenue for forgery. His papa told me on the wire our mortgage was too outrageously high—but he’d take it up for two years or so, if I’d nolle prosse the boy’s case.” He paused. And grew serious. “Well, it’s a bit late now to be making money—nolle-prossing. Anyway, I told him I could do nothing.”

  “And what did he say?”

  Vann laughed mirthlessly. “He said he could do nothing, either.”

  “Then, Louis—”

  “Rest easy,” he commanded her. “Silas Moffit has consented to extend the loan till after election. In exchange for an insignificant favor. Which I was able to do for him.”

  “Why—what was it, Louis?”

  “He wanted me to let him know when the State had a case that was—well—in the bag! And before, moreover, some senior judge.”

  “But why on earth, Louis,” Vann’s wife inquired, fixing her eyes directly and unwaveringly on his, “would Mr. Moffit want to know—exactly what he did?”

  “I’m quite sure,” Vann said, gazing straight and reassuringly into her own eyes, “—at least now that I’ve pondered over it once or twice—that he wanted to get the defense assigned to a certain niece of his, recently graduated in law, who’s never had her baptismal fire. Anyway, I was able to tell him of this case. And my simple little favor got us—you and me!—an extension on our mortgage till after election.”

  “But why on earth, Louis,” his wife persisted, “would he want the girl to cut her teeth on a hopeless case?”

  “Oh, what he doubtlessly really wanted, Darling,” Vann told her, “was for the girl to have the $100 fee. And a hopeless case?—well that would make her concentrate her efforts, you see, on a spiel to the judge—or jury. Which is the real baptismal fire, you know, for the striplings!”

  “But do you think, Louis, that Mr. Moffit can swing a thing like that? Who is the lawyer—appointed for the defense?”

  “I haven’t even bothered to look into that yet,” said Louis Vann. And added pridefully: “For it wouldn’t make a particle of difference to me—or the State!—if the ‘great’ Fleming Wiles himself were to conduct this defense! But that, Darling, is the second of your two questions. The first was whether Moffit could swing an appointment to his niece. Yes, it’s my belief he could.”

  “How, Louis?”

  “How? Well, Darlin’, you know—he’s all threaded in, amongst the bench and bar, with his mortgages. I know that he’s had some business of some sort—something involving a quitclaim—with no less than Chief Justice Michael Shurely of the Criminal Assignment Bench. And, if that isn’t enough in this matter, Moffit actually has a mortgage on the home of Judge Penworth who is to try this case—and ultimately make the defense attorney assignment. And who—being not only a senior judge!—but also Chief Commissioner of the Ethical Practices Sub-Division—can make that assignment stick—and how!—since he can disbar any attorney who might fail to show up for the slaughter!”

  “Oh-oh!” she said. “I should say Mr. Moffit is sewed up—with the powers that be! Then—then his poor niece will get a case that’s already lost? And before a judge who can put her out of business with nothing but the scratch of a pen?”

  “And will get a hundred dollars,” Vann cautioned her, “that, laid end to end, buys shoes and food! Yes—if Moffat swings it. And doesn’t muff it!—isn’t that a terrible pun?—by offending Shurely or Penworth. Which I’m certain he won’t. He’s very adroit—when he needs to be! But whether or no, his word’s okay. And our mortgage is extended—till after election!”

  “Then, Louis,” she said, a great note of relief in her voice, “we’re sitting okay again. For with you running again, and in—and only the last two notes of your Dad to clear off, we can easily straighten out the loan by an amortized affair, plus assigning your salary—”

  “Plus some life insurance,” he cautioned her. “In case the salary earner quits earning—and goes to the cemetery!”

  “Well yes, of course. But that kind of insurance—loan life insurance—is easily obtained. And—but Louis—is there any chance at all that you won’t be renominated?” Louis Vann could not help but cast his eyes to the floor. But pretended that some dust on his shoes caught his eye. And leaned over and flicked it off. “No, Darling,” he said. For Miriam had worried much in these last months. And he must not, he knew, worry her further about what Boss Hennerty had said. For after all, the setup on that was all changed now. And—”No, Darling, as far as I know—I’ll be renominated—and if renominated, of course, the election is all a formality.”

  “I’m so glad,” was all she said. Then paused. “This man—you’re to try tonight? Have you an idea what his defense is to be?”

  “He claims amnesia—on the whole period of the crime. On his whole stay in Chicago, in fact.”

  “Amnesia? Would that get very far in court?”

  “My God, Miriam, I don’t see how it could. His defense is so ridiculous that even Judge Penworth will be downright insulted to have it offered in court.” He was lost in his own rejections.

  “Mama!” said Dolly suddenly. “Papa wanth us to go. He’th looking with one eye at hith paperth.”

  “Dolly’s right, Louis.” Miriam rose suddenly. And glanced at the watch on her wrist. “It’s 4:15. And you’ll have witnesses you’ll be wanting to summon to that trial. Such as it will be. Well, we’ll
run on. And we’ll see you—”

  “—when you see me, Darling,” said Vann. And kissed his wife. And conducted her to the door.

  “Confound it!” he said, as he closed it on her, and returned to his desk, “why didn’t I tell her the truth? That I only got an extension till after election—and that the election will depend upon the indubitable conviction of that fellow tonight? However—why worry her? His conviction is in the bag!”

  But there was a troubled note in Vann’s words to himself. For the whole confident demeanor of that insouciant defendant downstairs had been somehow—that his acquittal was “in the bag”!

  CHAPTER XXVII

  Disconcerting News

  Hardly had Vann reseated himself at his desk, and marked with special checkmarks the names of witnesses whose presence tonight at that trial Miss Jason could arrange for him, than one of the four telephones on his desk rang sharply. Then the other.

  Dolly’s hypothetical contretemps was being realized, at least in half.

  He picked up the nearest. “Hold the wire a minute please–” he said into its transmitter, “—two phones ringing at the same time.” And laying it quickly down on its side, he picked up the other phone.

  “Louis Vann speaking,” he said.

  “This is Professor Miranovski, Mr. Vann,” came a voice that sounded faintly, barely familiar to Vann. “Though perhaps you might know me better as Dr. Gregor Miranovski, the hypnotic therapeutist?”

  “Oh, yes, yes, yes,” Vann said. And now he could visualize the little hunchbacked man with the gold spectacles, whose lecture, on Compulsory Neuroses, he had heard, fully 3 years back. A man who was, moreover, no quack, but held a standing in his profession. Vann had been struck that day by the exceeding youthfulness of Miranovski’s voice, coming out of such huge squat shoulders; and again, today, the same feature was prominent. “And what can I do for you, Profess—Say, Professor, could I call you back at your office in a few minutes? I’ve an incoming call on a certain phone here that indicates it’s an important call.”