ELSA COLBY
Attorney-at-Law
(Criminal Law)
Consultation ONLY
Elsa, this day, had just completed a single leaf of those several million green leaves yet to be done, and had climbed off her stool to survey it from a distance—when her phone rang.
She did not answer it immediately, however, for her point of surveyal of her quilt happened to be alongside her one broad window and her surveyal thereof had transferred itself instead fascinatedly to the street far below where some kind of local political parade was going by, the band music coming up almost thread-like through the glass pane of the window, the obviously green-coated musicians seeming, from above, like small green rectangles mathematically spaced apart, and all flowing onward in unison—and a real elephant!—Republican, therefore, that parade!—looking, from above, like some strange grey wobbling paramecium—and scarcely any bigger! From the old-fashioned windows of the 9-story Printography Building across the way, ink-smeared printers’ devils were leaning out and gesticulating to each other—and Elsa, who loved elephants passionately—even when shrunken a hundredfold as was this one!—was assuredly just now torn between love and business!
But the parade suddenly and unexpectedly rounded the corner of VanBuren Street—and the elephant-paramecium, seen thus in perspective, developed two moving cardboard legs—then all was gone. And the phone was still ringing!
And so now, curiously, Elsa answered it—curiously, because Elsa had no clients; though, to be sure—and strange to say—she really desired none—for a while. Unless perchance, they were such as wanted to pay one—two—three dollars for advice.
The voice on the other end of the wire was judicial, dignified, ultra-legal, grave and, so it occurred to Elsa, cold.
“Am I speaking—to Miss Elsa Colby?”
“Why yes—yes. This is Elsa Colby—speaking.”
“Ah—how do you do, Miss Colby? This is Judge Penworth, Miss Colby. Judge Hilford Penworth.”
“Judge—Penworth? Oh yes, yes. Judge Penworth—who has not been actively engaged on the Bench—for some time?”
“Yes, Miss Colby. Yes. But not retired—by no means! Well, Miss Colby, what I’m calling up about—but how are you feeling?”
“How—am I—feeling?” Elsa was surprised at this interest in her health. “Why—I’m feeling fine,” was all she could say.
“And not ailing—hrmph—as is vice-Treasurer Colby of the United States Treasury?”
“Oh—Mr. Fenby Colby? Oh, yes, I did read that he was ill. Why no, Judge Penworth—indeed no. I’m not related to Fenby Colby. And as for ailing—well—I haven’t even a cold.”
“That is excellent, Miss Colby. Well, Miss Colby, I’ll make brief—what I called you up about. There is to be a trial—for murder—larceny included, too—to be held tonight at my home—8 p.m. The details as to the trial you could get from the State’s Attorney’s office—the facts, from the early papers just out—and some, no doubt, from the defendant himself, one John Doe—under arrest since noontime, and now being held by the State’s Attorney in his incommunicado tier. I make the latter statement because I am appointing you to defend Doe tonight.”
“Defend—Doe—tonight?” ejaculated Elsa, utterly aghast. “Defend—but Judge Penworth, I—I am a consulting attorney only. I—I don’t want any court cases. I—”
“Miss Colby, you are an attorney—admitted to the Cook County Bar—are you not?”
“Yes, Judge, I am admitted. But—”
“All right. You are appointed, now and herewith, to defend this fellow Doe. And—”
“But—but Judge Penworth, he—whoever he is—would never go to trial so quickly. It will be a matter of months of preparation. And—”
“No? Well, it may interest you, Miss Colby, to know that he has signed all the necessary waivers by which he can have immediate trial. And is putting his fate before me—without a jury—at 8 o’clock tonight—and getting it over with. And so I have appointed you his defense counsel, and the fee—”
“But Judge—I mean Your Honor—I—I don’t want the fee. I—I don’t need the fee. I—I have an inheritance coming to me in a few ye—I mean I—I just today found a lot of money I’d saved up, in—in an old mattress. And some other lawyer—”
“Miss Colby.” The voice was hard and ultra-judicial. “Did you hear me say—I had appointed you?”
“Yes.” Elsa’s words tumbled desperately forth now. “But Judge, I—I am ill—that is, I’m sure I am, so—which means that—”
“That will do, Miss Colby!” The voice was just a bit wrathful. “You assured me, before this conversation began, that you never felt better in your life. Now I have—at least so I hope—a judicial mind—so far as any defendant’s rights go. But I assuredly trust that you won’t start right off—on the very word ‘go’—by antagonizing me against your client’s case—and before he even comes up before me. I have appointed you herewith to represent him—though, from what little I gather, he might better have pleaded guilty. Be that as it may, the best thing you can do, Miss Colby, is to hop over to the Grand Jury chambers, in the next 30 minutes and get from the clerk a copy of the indictment against the defendant—which indictment the defendant will have petitioned—then over to the State’s Attorney’s lockup—find out all you can from the client—and at least try to clear him. After all, you know, whether you clear him or don’t clear him, the fee comes to you just the same, and—”
“Fee? I—I don’t want the fee,” protested Elsa. “I—you see, I—I don’t take clients for court cases, Judge Penworth. I am a consult—”
“You are taking the case of John Doe,” said Judge Penworth. And never had Elsa heard such quiet, stubborn domination in a human voice. “And now I bid you goodday—”
“Wait, Judge! I refuse—”
And now the voice on the other end, as Elsa knew from considerable experience with persons with high blood pressure, was that of a man clearly close to an apoplectic outburst. For its owner practically shouted into his transmitter.
“That’ll—that’ll do, Miss Colby! I’m calling Sam Gurley, the State’s Attorney’s special lockup keeper, the minute I hang up here, and telling him you’re this man’s lawyer—tentatively, anyway! And if, by heavens, I hear you haven’t reported to Gurley as Doe’s attorney, and properly identified yourself, moreover, as yourself—by 5 o’clock—and to Doe himself as well—yes, I give you till 5 o’clock!—and not one second longer!—I shall forward, under the rights now granted me by the Cook County Bar Association, a disbarment order against yourself from practicing at the bar in Cook County. A disbarment order which I shall fill out immediately this conversation is terminated. And—”
Disbarment!
Elsa caught her breath sharply. And actually paled.
“Dis—disbarment—Judge? But—”
“Yes,” he snapped, still plainly choleric, “that’s—that’s exactly what I said. Disbarment—if you haven’t reported to that client by 5! And just—just you keep this in mind too, Miss Colby: that order will be kept close to my elbow—and if, reporting to that fellow, you fail later to report in court—and I—I have to call in some other attorney the last minute—that order will go straight as an arrow to—to where it will become immediately effective.”
“But—but, Judge,” Elsa almost wailed, “you—you don’t understand! You see, I don’t want any cases, lest I—”
“Five p.m.!” The Judge’s voice was not choleric now, but deadly, quietly ominous. “5 p. m.—or that disbarment order, young lady, dated 5 p.m. today, will go forth by both phone and messenger—to its proper destination. Five p.m.”
“But—but, Judge, I—”
But nothing but the echo of an angry savage click—followed by deep silence—greeted Elsa on the instrument.
The Judge, irately, had hung up!
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br /> CHAPTER VII
A Trip to the Black Belt
Elsa, dismounting hurriedly from the South State Street car in the vicinity of Aunt Linda Cooksey’s home, knew that she was indeed in the Black Belt. For a Negro motion-picture theatre advertising a double-bill of lurid melodramas—admission 5 cents only!—vied with a dingy pawnshop in front of which flapped moth-eaten suits at $2 each. Fried-fish stands, moreover, were much in evidence—each with its two frying pans mounted on a two hole gasoline burner, the one containing the usual hamburgers and greasy intertwined onions, the other, sizzling cadaver-colored perch, and with invariably its black proprietor in a gargantuan cook’s white hat; and black tradesmen looked out of dusty, fly-specked shop windows as Elsa made her way hastily along the block between 23rd and 24th Streets.
But Elsa, now so definitely in the Black Belt, knew something even more than that she was in the Black Belt.
And with even greater assurance! Because it was based on the mathematics of “never-having-failed!” She knew, in short, that before 2 hours should elapse today, she would accidentally meet up with somebody she had not seen—well—for an eternity! For, getting off the streetcar, she had glimpsed a white horse with two black legs. And it had never failed to be a perfect omen. One black leg—one hour. Two black legs—two hours. Quite all she wondered, at most, was just who the party would prove to be.
Not dreaming, in the least, that he would be no less than her drunkard half-cousin, Saul Moffit, only son of her half-uncle, Silas Moffit. And whom she was destined to meet—of all places!—at no less a spot than—
But now reaching a narrow dark passageway between a Negro undertaking parlor, containing a child’s casket in the window, trimmed with lacy frills, and a fruit store with sticky fruit outside, Elsa made her way back through the passageway, the chill of which penetrated her bones even as she traversed it.
In the rear, facing a leaning unpainted cottage which, propped up firmly at one front corner with assorted bricks and stones, nevertheless tilted definitely toward the other side which rested on a huge, rusty, upturned preserving kettle, Elsa knocked at the knobless door which, thanks to its being both knobless and lockless, did not close by one full inch—and yet firmly resisted her knock.
A moment later, a black hand, evidently unwinding yards and yards of wire from a nail somewhere on the inside door casing, was visible, and presently the door, liberated, swung open. And there stood Aunt Linda Cooley who, as part of Elsa’s father’s house, had brought Elsa up from babyhood until she was 16.
A lean, rangy woman, Aunt Linda was—a “skinny ’ooman” as her own kind termed her; a woman who did not show what years might have passed over her head.
Indeed, if it had held any grey, such would have been ever occluded—thanks to the red bandanna which entirely and, always, tightly enshrouded it. From the lobes of her ears, protruding out from under the taut edge of the bandanna, hung heavily great brassy rings such as an African savage might wear, and which were in perfect keeping wig some of her neighbors’ description of her as “dat voodoo ’ooman whut lib a’hind de coffin shop.”
The sleeves of Aunt Linda’s brilliantly and gypsy-like flowered cotton dress were rolled up, and her bony forearms were sudsy—showing that she was managing, in these $4-a-month living-quarters, to scare up a few w’ite folks’ clothes to wash.
“Well, fo’ de lan’ sake, Chil’,” she was saying. “Whut you dain’ obah heah? Ah would t’ink you would be in you’ office studyin’—an’ heppin’ dem w’ite folks to git out ob trubble.”
“No, Aunt Linda—I’m over here—and in trouble myself!”
“You—in trubble, Elsa? Well, Chil’—come in—right to oncet.”
Elsa stepped in. The reception quarters of Aunt Linda’ three-room home—its combined kitchen and living room!—were graced by a rusty kitchen 4-hole range which burned coal and wood, and which, like the house itself, was propped up, at one of its corners, on a small upturned stewing kettle. A huge square of cold linoleum, with patches and holes in it, covered the floor of the room, though its gelidity was more than compensated for by the brilliant scarlet cheesecloth drapes which hung at either side of the long window gazing out on the dingy rear yard. Two chairs, one a swing-seat affair, and lined with carpet, the other, a huge flat-handled rocker with two different rockers glued to it, and hair leaking out of its leather bottom, beckoned to “comp’ny” as even did the gargantuan coal-oil lantern which, in lieu of electric bulb or gas chandelier, stood atop a square plaque of wood suspended by four wires from the crumbling ceiling.
Through a door, partly ajar, could be seen a white iron bed, with paint scaling away, but with one leg broken squarely off and the bed therefore propped up on that corner, exactly as were house and kitchen range, but this time by a wooden soap box. While through another door, also partly ajar, and leading to a room fronting doubtlessly on the rear alley, was visible the bright rim of a zinc wash-tub, giving forth from itself and through the very door aperture the smell of fresh suds—and indicating, thereby, how Aunt Linda kept the business operations of her home separate from the social ones.
“Now you set you’sef’ down, honey chil’,” Aunt Linda was saying. “And tell yo’ Auntie whut is wrong.”
Elsa did sit down, in the big chair made like a swing.
And Aunt Linda, wiping off the suds from her wrists, and hooking her front door to again, with a double turn of her wire, deposited her rangy, toothpick-like self in the capacious, flat-handled, hair-stuffed rocker facing Elsa.
“Whut wrong now, Chil’? Fo’ you mussa come to yo’ aunt fo’ adwice, didn’ you?”
“Well, Aunt Linda, I came to you because I—well—I just didn’t hardly know what to do. I never yet knew advice that you gave me on any subject—even whether you did, or whether you didn’t, know anything about the subject—to be anything but good advice, nor—Anyway—I came straight to you.”
“Da’s de baby! Now whut on yarth is wrong?”
“Well, Aunt Linda, it’s about that big piece of Northwest Side vacant property Father left me. Colby’s Nugget, as I guess even you’ve heard it called? Rather, maybe I should say, my visit to you is about my own 9/10ths ownership in the property!” She paused. “You know, of course, exactly how Father left it to me; how it comes to me only when I’m thirty, and how—”
“Ob co’se, Chil’. An’ he leab it in dat way, I t’ink, so dat it don’ leak away f’um you, w’en you is nothin’ yit but a baby, in rich libbin’, an’ dressin’, an’ traipsin’ down to Floridy, an’ sich like t’ings, an’ so’s no ol’ forchunehuntin’ count or somp’n try to mahhy you.”
“Perhaps yes,” Elsa agreed sadly.
“But ob co’se,” Aunt Linda said frowningly, “it kin leak away wid all de unpaid taxes on it—hebbins, Chil’, dey mus’ be putty much now, ain’t dey?”
“Taxes, Aunt Linda? Why—I thought you knew. Father turned in to the city a judgment he got on the condemnation of another piece he had—a judgment which he couldn’t collect from this darn city!—for taxes in advance. With the result, Aunt, that the property’s absolutely clear today, And will be—till I’m 30. Clear, that is, but for a 10th interest in itself. For you know, at least, how Uncle Silas is in on the ownership of the property by 1/10?”
“Ob co’se, Chil’. An’ he one bad man—if you axe me. Ah wouldn’ trus’ yo’ daddy’s half bruddah fudder dan Ah could th’ow dat kitchen range. Eben if Ah does do cleanin’ now an’ den fo’ him, at dat vehy flat on Clebeland Ab’noo whah he now libbin’ all alone—alone, at leas’, ’ceptin’ fo’ dat ’oomatic ol’ Zeke whut runs things dah fo’ him. He a fah wussah puhson, Elsa, dan dat no-good daughtah Bella of his’n, whut is mahhy to dat Jewishah lawyah. Fo’ Ah don’ wash clothes now an’ den fo’ Bella, lak Ah does, widout luhnin’ dat she des lazy-no-good—but dat all. W’ile yo’ half-uncle—he got snek-pizen in he’ veins!” Despite
the vehemency of her dictum, Aunt Linda rocked peaceably. “Ah ain’ nebah got it cleah in mah min’, do’, Honeh, how yo’ Unc’ Silas ebah shell out fi’ thousum dollahs cash fo’ you to git th’u collige an’ lawying school, w’en he ain’t can eben leg’ly take no mohga’ge o’ nothin’ on yo’ nine-tenfs de way yo’ nine-tenfs was lef’.”
“How, Aunt Linda? Well I’ll tell you how! I simply signed what is known as an assignment of $15,000 of my receipts from the eventual sale of my 9/10ths share. Payable when I sell it.”
“Hm! Ah unnastan’ dat all right. Assignment! Mah brothah Jake long long ago—he daid now—he sign one ob dem t’ings to secuh anoddah niggah’s note—an’ de niggah, he nebah pay—an’ de Law it took fi’ dollahs a week f’m Jake’s wages fo’ 10 long months. But see heah, Chil’, you done got fi’ thousum dollahs. Whut ’ventu’lly got yo’ th’u school. Yit you sign a assignment fo’ fifteen thousum dollahs? Da’s pretty big int’rust, ain’t it?”
“Mighty big, Aunt, yes. When it’s calculated out. But my tied-up share in that tied-up property was the only thing on earth I could raise capital on.”
“Well, da’s true—an’ ain’ no ’ticklah hahm did anyway by de big ’screpancy ’tween fi’ thousum an’ fifteen thousum dollahs. Fo’ w’en you is thutty yeahs ol’ dat Colby’s Nugget is gonna be des dat ma’ much valy’ble dan is w’en you harried de money. Specially sence, as you say now, de taxes ain’ in de pictah nohow!”
The Man with the Wooden Spectacles Page 6