The Man with the Wooden Spectacles

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “And I wish,” Elsa added, “that you’d come up and see me—anytime—and if I’m out, just wait—or something!”

  “I will, Elsa,” he said. “For I don’t go on duty till midnight, remember! Bankers’ hours—mine!” And again, defiantly he gazed at her. “I’ll be in soon, really.”

  Far up the street the trolley of an oncoming car sparked in the grayish air.

  “There comes my car,” Elsa said. “Which means I’m going—and how!” She turned back to him. “Well, all I can say is that I’m darned sorry about your losing out on that rackets-assistantship, for—”

  “Forget it!” he said harshly. “I’m happy. Well dressed. Look at meh! And have 327 odd or historical spectacles, that cost me only a few hungry nights at best. Though never will again. Since, as I told you, the Big Gun back of the brewery—” His eyes danced defiantly at hers. “—advances S. Moffit money which S. Moffit has not yet earned! Why, if I had that rackets-assistantship, I’d only get to worrying about the job, and then lose it by downing a double whiskey—”

  “Yeah. I know! I remember all about that—from old days. You used to take a double to begin, and after that—”

  “The deluge! But you know nothing about repeat-drinks, child.”

  “No? Well at the last party I was at—Bea Kronty’s—a single whiskey made me call out ‘Whoops—another, please!’ Only I never got it, for I wound up under the table, Mel Davis holding my hand. No, I haven’t graduated to double-whiskies yet. That’s for experts.” The streetcar was roaring down the block. “Well, Sau—um—S. Moffit, I’ve enjoyed meeting up with you—but got to go. And you’ll be up—to see me—soon?”

  “Sooner! 1010?—Ulysses S. Grant?—okay.”

  And Elsa ran out and flagged her streetcar. And got on it. And rapidly drew away from Saul Moffit, standing at the curbing, smiling friendlily—with no hint of the insane blaze in his eyes that had been therein a while before.

  “Crazy as a bedbug on the subject of his father,” Elsa said. “Whether inherited from Gran’ther Moffit, or just alcoholic—he’s crazy all right. But not so crazy—when it comes to being all nicely dressed up—even if the clothes are cheap. And I don’t believe that wildcat brewery story at—all! I wonder—I wonder who the woman is?”

  CHAPTER XIII

  “John Doe,” Defendant

  Elsa, admitted by the lockup keeper to the cell of her client—and with no trouble at all, moreover, after she had fully identified herself!—looked her client over appraisingly as the iron grilled door clanged to behind them, and the hollow sound of the lockup keeper’s footsteps, receding up the long, empty cement corridor, came in to them.

  Handsome, the defendant was; brown-eyed—dressed in dark quiet clothing—and with such a red glint to his hair that it placed him practically in the same category as Elsa herself: In age, she judged him to be older than herself by no more than 9—maybe 10 at most—years.

  He had risen, with at least a show of courtesy, as she was admitted, and stood thus—though there was on his lips a bit of a sneer that puzzled her. Having been announced to her as the attorney selected to defend him, she wondered if he were contemptuous of her age—and her sex.

  But having just seen with her own eyes, upstairs in the office of the Criminal Courts Process Recorder, the blanket acceptance this fellow had signed—taking blindly and without question any attorney the court might select for him—she wondered about his attitude.

  She sat down, diffidently, on the single hard wooden chair with which the dark cell was provided, and he in turn dropped down on the outswung wooden bench on which, were he not going to trial tonight, he would have to be sleeping.

  “We-ell—” she began cheerfully, “are you the man who blithely signed all those many papers—without any attorney’s advice—or anybody else’s advice for that matter—bringing you to trial so swiftly that a person hasn’t hardly a chance to cook up a defense for you?”

  “Yes, I’m the man,” he said succinctly, and unsmilingly.

  “Well, what on earth,” she began, “did you do that for, when—but first, my name is Elsa Colby. Practicing attorney—and specializing in criminal law. The court itself has selected me to defend you. And that being the case, do you understand that you now have no further choice in the matter?”

  “Who asked for any further choice?” he inquired, a bit gruffly. “If you’re graduated from a law school, then—”

  He made a peculiar gesture with his shoulders that seemed to say,”—then that’s plenty good enough for me.” He looked her over, however, shrewdly and appraisingly. “I’m glad at least,” he added, “that you haven’t been appointed to defend me in a free-for-all. For if the wind from a single fist alone ever hit you, girlie, it would blow you over hill and dale.”

  “Oh, you think so, do you?” asked Elsa, not at all, however, insulted. “Well, I’m 90 pounds in weight—so I don’t think any wind will blow me down. However—” She grew very serious. “However, defense in court isn’t a matter of brawn, muscle nor weight. It—” She broke off. “However, let’s get over—quickly—the necessary preliminaries to our professional relationship. So first—what is your name?”

  “John Doe,” he said.

  “Oh—I mean your right name. Here—” She fumbled in the pocket of her knit mouse-gray skirt, and drew forth a piece of paper and a pencil. And held them forth to him.

  “You can write your right name—if you fear somebody will overhear—and your family will get into the papers.”

  He waved the paper and pencil away.

  “Sorry,” he said curtly, “but Doe it’ll have to remain. Anyway, Doe is as good as any other.”

  She looked at him. But felt that she understood. “Well, I suppose it is—yes,” she conceded. “And how old are you, Mr.—well—Doe?”

  “What,” he asked—though more curiously, apparently, than combatively, “would that have to do—with defending me?”

  “A lot,” Elsa told him quite truthfully. “If it embraces enough years for you to have piled up a long police record in. For it—but how about that? Have you a police record—here in Chicago?”

  “No,” was his reply. But, she noticed, he did not amplify his statement by saying that he had no record elsewhere.

  “Be honest with me now, Mr.—well, Mr. Doe,” she urged him. “For if the record exists, I can impound all the information in it at the Bureau of Records, myself. In fact, the State’s Attorney will have the actual record-card itself at your trial—if it exists.”

  “He won’t have my record-card,” he said decisively, “at any trial!” And there was a sort of triumph in his voice which made Elsa wonder in what far metropolis of the world that record-card lay buried!

  Which satisfied her, however, as she saw no reason why any criminal case should be decided on anything other than its own merits.

  “Well then,” she assured him, “about your age, the matter isn’t of so much moment; but nevertheless—well—you’re how old?”

  “Old enough to be your father,” he replied, unsmilingly.

  “Oh—come—come,” she said. “You’re 35—within a year or so one way or the other, are you not?”

  “Right,” he returned, “only without the year or so either way. And that’s why I still say that I’m old enough to be your father. For—”

  Elsa, raising her hand peremptorily, put a speedy stop to this useless discussion about ages, the tenor of which held, at best, only the half-contemptuous suggestion that she herself was not out of the doll-playing stage yet.

  “You’re not stating, I suppose, Mr. Doe—where your home is?”

  “Gladly. It’s anywhere in the world where they have a hat hook.”

  “Meaning anywhere you hang your hat?” she nodded. “Well, that’s general enough! Education?”

  “Just what,” he objected, “would that have to do
with defen—”

  “An educated defendant, on the witness stand, can sometimes help his case—where an uneducated one often hangs himself! That’s all. So—what education have you had?”

  He gave a curt, hard laugh. And replied.

  “University. The University of Hard Knocks. All the courses—and a postgraduate course to boot.”

  She smiled very faintly. “Well—your attorney now knows one per cent more about her client than she did when we began this questioning.” She paused. “Well, why now, Mr. Doe—here, of all the ridiculous appellations, ‘Mr. Doe’ is the worst!—suppose I call you John?—for after all, you’re my client—and a client in a matter involving life and death—why on earth, John, did you sign up all those papers letting the State’s Attorney rush you to trial?”

  “Why? Because, Elsa, I—”

  “Elsa? Here—here—my name is Miss—”

  “If we’re getting down to first names around here,” he said testily, “turn about is fair play. All right! Why did I sign up all those papers? So’s I could get to trial, of course. And get it over with. And be on my way. I made it a condition, however, that I’d sign the whole batch only if I got a trial tonight—and before Judge Hilford Penworth.”

  “But why before Penworth—of all judges?”

  “Why? Because I heard—though in another city than this—that he had an ultra-legal mind.”

  “Well,” she frowned, “that I’ve ascertained myself—within the last ten minutes. By a brief phone-talk with an attorney who’s tried cases before every judge in Cook County. But I heard also something else—that Judge Penworth is plenty hard. Why, John—you could have selected a dozen judges on the Chicago Criminal Bench more downright easy than he is, and you could even have—why oh why,” she broke off, “didn’t you at least wait till you had counsel? Even though I haven’t had a—er—a world of experience, I can get info—the low-down—on anything. And I—”She broke off again. “Well, John, I’m your attorney now—and so—are you guilty or not guilty? That is, John, you don’t need to say anything with your lips—just make me a sign. Raise your middle finger, lying there on your knee, if you’re guilty—and your index finger if you’re not guilty—though—” But Elsa didn’t finish what was in her mind. “Which—John?”

  “Not guilty, my dear sweet young infant out of the nursery.” But he held up both middle fingers.

  “Is—that—nice?” she echoed. “To refer to me as being just out of the nursery? Well—whether or no—the infant. out of the nursery, has been appointed to defend you on the ‘toughest rap’ that anyone in this man’s town ever faced.”

  “Looks kind of bad, eh?” he said, his brown eyes fastened queryingly on her.

  “Bad? Bad—plus! The particulars of your arrest are all in the Despatch; and since the State’s Attorney’s own brother wrote the story—and the opposition papers, out since, haven’t apparently altered a single fact!—then the facts must all be practically correct. And when I leave here, moreover, I’m to step upstairs to the Grand Jury Room and pick up a copy—the second carbon imprint!—of your actual indictment, which is elsewhere in the building for the moment—for it seems, John, they indicted you not more than 30 minutes ago. The State’s Attorney, far from bothering in the least to block or harass your attorney—as so often happens—hasn’t even yet, according to something I gathered from the lockup keeper out yonder, phoned down to learn who’s reporting here to represent you. For he’s holding a royal flush in diamonds—and doesn’t mind who plays across the table from him! Anyway,” Elsa added, “I’ll say matters look plenty bad. And—” Elsa paused. “will you take my word, John, that this cell is at the end of a long corridor—and that nobody is in any cell between here and the lockup keeper’s desk? And that I wouldn’t let you discuss your case if what we said were overhearable?”

  “I guess I could take your word, sweet child, on that.”

  “All right. But let’s drop the ‘child’ business, John. And specially the ‘sweet child’ business. All right, then. Now may I ask you first, John, what you were doing today on the corner of Adams and Dearborn Street with—but wait—first of all, how on earth did you happen to give out this beautiful yarn to the Despatch concerning this wonderful ‘amnesia’ alibi?”

  “You sound sarcastic! Moreover, I gave no yarn—to any Despatch. The S.A. sent one of his spies down here to pump me—so I just helped to fill up his pitcher to the brim!”

  “I’ll say you filled it! Only, John, ’twas a newspaperman you handed that yarn out to.”

  “A newspaperman? The son of a lug said he was my attorney—but I knew he was lying. I figured he was—but what was his name?”

  “Hugh Vann.”

  “Hugh Vann? Well—what more can you want? With the S.A. being named Vann too?”

  “Yes, I know, but Hugh Vann was a legitimate newspaper­man—and not spying for his brother.”

  A mirthless smile spread over his lips.

  “And this weird wild alibi—” she began.

  “Weird? Wild? What’s wrong with it?”

  “What’s wrong with it? Oh, quite nothing! Merely that the Revolving Lamp Drugstore didn’t have its revolving lamp in its window three days ago when you first presumably gazed at it—not, in fact, till this morning; while the City Hall store didn’t have its in its window today. That’s all that’s wrong with that alibi!”

  He grinned broadly for at least a second. But his grin quickly faded. “So you looked into that, eh, Miss Attorney?”

  “I—and somebody else! For the owner of those two stores got a phone call—even before I saw him—asking about that very feature—and requesting him to keep quiet.”

  She surveyed him troubledly. “And so that—that was to be your defense, John?”

  “That,” he said contemptuously, “was just a piece of fantastic cotton wool to ram down the throat of a dirty spy from the State’s Attorney’s office who thought he could fool me. And if he used it for a newspaper story—well—no harm done anybody.”

  Elsa was reactively silent.

  “Well, that’s that, then—and I’m glad at least that you’re not figuring to squat atop a soapbubble like that! And so now, getting back to what I started to ask you a minute ago, what, John, were you doing on the corner of Adams and Dearborn Streets today with that Chinese boy’s skull?”

  “I wasn’t—that is, so far as I know—on the corner of Adams and Dearborn Streets today with any Chinese boy’s skull.”

  “Why, John—they found it—in the box under your arm—after the box almost screamed attention you were there.”

  “Screamed attention? Hell—fire! And I’m talking to you as I would to a real attorney now—and not an infant. Why, you could trip up one of these Chicago coppers with one of your shoes—and he wouldn’t know you were there. No, it was the big clergyman—ecclesiastic—that caused me to catch my pickup.”

  “I’ll say it was! And that big ecclesiastic, John, will be one of the principal and main witnesses against you. For he’s head of his particular church here in Chicago. While that deaf-and-dumb man—at least presumably deaf to you!—who stood off on the curb, was his friend—and is director of a deaf-and-dumb school here—and a well-known honored member of society.”

  There could have been no doubt whatsoever to anyone that the reddish-haired John Doe was completely flabbergasted.

  “Well—I’ll be!” he ejaculated. “And—and that gazabo wasn’t deaf himself—at all?”

  “Not by a darn sight, John. And he heard every word of your conversation with the ecclesiastic—as you call him.” John Doe was extremely silent, unsmilingly so. So Elsa took up the cudgel of her questioning.

  “And why, John, when this ecclesiastic—Archbishop Stanley Pell, his name is—though I believe he introduced himself right off as Archbishop Pell—why, when he did so, and asked you what was in the box, did you say
’twas the Chinese boy’s skull—and that you’d successfully broken into the State’s Attorney’s safe?”

  “Suppose I say I didn’t?”

  “You didn’t? Oh, come, come, John. They’ve got two witnesses to swear that you did. Not to omit the skull itself.”

  “But maybe I didn’t say—what you claim I said?”

  “Well,” she replied helplessly, “maybe you’re taking me too literally. They claim you replied specifically—when asked what was in your box—‘Wah Lee’s skull.’ ”

  “Well if so—so what?”

  “If so—so what? Good God, John. You—well, they claim you also said, right after that, and in apparent explanation of your first words, ‘I cracked Vann’s pete.’ Now I may be only a girl, John, but I’ve read up enough millions of words about your world that I don’t need a glossary to know what those terms stand for.”

  “Well,” he sighed, “I suppose if two men say I said that—that settles it, eh? Of course you stated, when you queried me about it, that I said I had the Chinese boy’s skull, and that I’d just broken into the State Attorney’s safe.”

  “Well, verbal analogy only, John. So—why on earth did you say all that? Did you think, when the Archbishop came up to you, that he was another man?”

  “What do you think, Elsa?”

  “Miss Colb—oh, what’s the use,” broke off Elsa. “It’s trouble enough to buck all the counter-questions you pass back—without trying to get you to be decently formal. After all, no use, anyway, of maintaining formality with a man about to be tried for his life. For—listen, John, let me interpose a question quite off the line for a second. If you’re convicted tonight, have you got any money—five hundred dollars or so—to file an appeal bond?”

  “I will answer that one,” he said. “Nary cent!”

  “Then do you know, John, that you can be strapped within the electric chair within ten days from tonight?”

  “Ten days? Well—I knew that the time between sentence and execution has been shortened in all the States, but ten day—“