The Man with the Wooden Spectacles

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “Unfortunately, Keene,” she explained, “all the parties are to call me—and can’t even now be gotten direct by me. The first party—a Chinese—is to be literally ‘captured’ for me tonight—and will almost certainly ring me, on ‘capture’ from the nearest drugstore to learn what it’s all about. The second, a—a—well, small-time manufacturer of sorts—is to ring me from a cafe booth after he gets gorged with a meal and disgorged of a visitor! The third party—a—a chemist, bearing the unchristian name of Cohenstein—well, I’ll jump over details and merely say that there’s no phone in the Cohensteinian home!—but that the party is going into a certain drugstore at 7 p.m., and will be told to ring me. Anyway,” Elsa broke off, defensively, “I—I just don’t want this party—who’s now in my office—to be there. For he’s—he’s out to peddle anything I say or do to the poorest place for it to be peddled to: the State’s Attorney.”

  “Well—if there’s anything I can do, Elsa—just command me. We famous trial lawyers have to stick together, you know. As Lou Vann once said to me—”

  Her face fell.

  “You’re—you’re a personal friend—of Lou Vann’s?”

  “Lou Vann,” Keene Larborough said bitterly, “is writing finis to my little business here—next week. For he’s filed an injunction order against the court clerks preventing them from handing out the calendrical info to anybody but practicing lawyers. And then only on direct personal inquiry across the rail. He maintains that my sheet goes to unauthorized persons. Like crooks. Who use the info for—but the sheet doesn’t go to crooks, Elsa. Well—that’s all.”

  “Oh!” She felt cheered up at this news, even though it saddened her to realize that Keene Larborough was at the end of his leash, so to speak. “I’m sorry, really, about that—”

  “Forget it!” he said brusquely. “I’ll no doubt start a trade journal for circus clowns. Or a—a gazette of disorderly houses. Resourceful—me, I may even start a magazine and call it Rip—a magazine designed to rip the curtain off of hundreds of our pseudo-charities, and likewise thousands of our hypocritical prize contests. Like, for instance—” And his voice grew scornful. “—the so-called ‘Two and a Half Million Dollar Prize Drawing’—allotting the ‘2½ Million Dollars in Prizes’ to be given to the holders of 500 lucky registration numbers amongst the people who attended the International Life Insurance Show last week at the Stadium. Which ‘people’ includes you, of courage, and me, and all Chicago, and the suburbs thrown in. Now there’s a beautiful exam—”

  “But—but that was no racket, Keene? They really are going to draw 500 of the registration numbers on a wheel in front of a disinterested committee. Have already done so, probably—since, after all, today is Wednesday. And having promised in the Press to—well, they’ll have to give each one a $5,000 paid-up policy—and five hundred times $5,000 assuredly is—”

  He raised a hand.

  “Dear infant in matters of life insurance, may I—as one who in his youth studied to be an actuary—call your attention to the fact that those policies are D-8’s—absolutely the lowest form of life insurance that crawls on six legs! To be sure, they’re noncancellable—once issued!—for any cause whatsoever; but that’s merely characteristic of mere mail-order life insurance. The D-8 policies they’re giving are non-negotiable—non-assignable—non-surrenderable for cash—non-borrowable-on—non-everything there is. And don’t forget that the—”

  “Mebbe they are, Keene,” said Elsa spiritedly, “but the companies to whom they’re assigned will have to kick out five thousand smackers to somebody every time the holder of one dies. And five thousand smackers is—”

  Again he raised a hand.

  “Yes,” he admitted, “they will have to kick out 5000 smackers. Yes. But only after the policies—most of them—have been lying dormant for decades. And the so-called reserve in each one—which is the real honest-to-God value—has been in the company’s possession—for decades.

  And investable, under the law—since they are D-8’s!—in better paying securities than regular policies. Don’t forget, child, that a lonely dollar doubles itself in 10 years at 6 per cent compound interest.”

  “Oh-oh—I get it! Then one of those policies—but see here, Keene, many of the winners will be old men, and—

  “Dear child,” he interrupted her, almost impatiently, “don’t forget that every baby in Chicago was registerable in that ‘lottery’ vicariously—through its birth certificate only—without having to come down in that howling mob with presumably wet diapers! And every baby in Chicago was registered. And, by use of the standard life-expectation tables, it has been calculated by no less than Professor Angus Mundell that, based on the average age of registration and the run of the attendance—and terribly pulled down by the vast baby registration—those policies—because they are D-8’s, and also because they’re investable in C-securities—well, the average cost of each one to the Associated Companies Corporation this day in October—is but $1471.59. And that, therefore—for considerably less than seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars—and all of which came out of ‘advertising’ funds, the Associated Companies were enabled to run an actual lottery, with apparently two and a half million dollars in prizes—pah!—and, with all their amazing moving electrical graphs, and horrible pathological exhibits—ugh!—write not less than a fat billion dollars life insurance.” Keene Larborough paused. “Yea bo! ’At would be the headline article, child, in the first issue of Rip! Except that, alas, there won’t be any Rip—since magazine publishing takes hard capital, And I have naught but ye old polygraphing machine. And so—reverting once more to what I’ll do, now that Vann is chopping off this little racketette, I’ll probably start—oh—a polygraphed series of lessons on how to win at penny-ante. Or something. Resourceful, me—I say again. A fact! But here—let’s get back to you. Now what on earth, Elsa girl, are you expecting to even try to work—in a case like that John Doe one, which is plainly in Vann’s bag right now? What on earth do you even expect to do, child? I’m interested, naturally.”

  “Are you, Keene? Well—I’ll tell you, I—but here—I’m going to ask you one. After all, you’re an old trial lawyer. Now exactly what would you do, Keene, in a case of a client who would tell you positively nothing—give you nary a witness—nary item for even a shred of an alibi—even a legitimate excuse for being where he was and as he was—when nabbed?”

  “I’d grab my hundred bucks County-paid fee,” Keene Larborough said, “and to hell with such a lug. He’d deserve the chair for even playing like that with his own lawyer. And to be frank, Elsa, your client does deserve the chair! All right. Now I’ll ask you my question again. All over. What, besides grabbing your fee—and begging Hizzoner to be easy—are you going to do?”

  “Well, Keene, I don’t know that I ought to get confidential—of course, you’re a right guy if ever there war one!—and Lou Vann’s razor is at your windpipe to boot. Hm?” She was a bit dubious.

  “Is yo’ lookin’ fo’ a favuh ‘roun’ heah, gal?” he asked meaningfully.

  “Sho’ is,” she said mockingly.

  “Den git conf’dential, does yo’ wan’ dat favuh!” His tired eyes laughed.

  “Sho’ will hab to,” she agreed, helplessly. And dropped her bantering tone.

  “Well, Keene,” she said slowly, “here goes—for an opinion! A certain young lawyer—ahem!—had a client recently—for consultation only. The client was a Chinese doctor. Very much in love with some Chinese girl living somewhere to the west of the city—wanted to marry her—but was worrying whether he was possibly letting himself in for eventual legal trouble in a certain matter, and threatening his marriage. And he—well anyway, Keene, this doctor had heard of this young lawyer, and had consulted the same to find out whether he—yes, ye doc!—was breaking any law whatsoever—written or unwritten—on the statute books or not—musty or recently passed—in administering to certain patients a p
eculiar neuro-anesthetic against pain which he had invented—but administering it, however, unknown to those patients—”

  She paused undecidedly.

  “And your answer,” Keene Larborough put in, “was that he wasn’t breaking any Illinois law—so long as he had a valid sheepskin?”

  “That was the young lawyer’s answer, yes. Based on the State of Illinois versus Dr. George Allenby, 1939.”

  “But how—how does the chap administer an anesthetic—without the patient in question knowing it? Now a hyperdermic needle is a quite visib—”

  “He administers it by the mouth, Keene. In a cube of Turkish-Paste-like candy.”

  “In a cube of candy? But doesn’t it make the candy smell?—taste?—awfully druggy?”

  “I’ll tell the cockeyed world it does, Keene! Smell druggy, I mean!” And Elsa’s nostrils contracted automatically. “I—ahem—this young lawyer got within a few feet of about a hundredth of a gram of the powder—in her client’s possession—and thought she had fallen head first out of an airplane into a drugstore, and smashed every bottle in the shop! Fortunately, however, for this Chinese doctor’s purpose, the drug doesn’t taste quite as badly as it smells! At least—a slight touch of sweetness, and any good strong flavor, will drown it out. And so what he does exactly is to administer it in a square of Chinese candy that is flavored with bamboo—and therefore drowns the drug out.”

  “Bamboo! Oh my God, Elsa—I’d say that would be worse than the original drug! I’ve tried to drink the muikwuilo cordial the Chinese distill from Bamboo, and have nearly gagged!”

  “But you’re not a Chinaman, Keene, see!” Elsa smiled.

  “Anyway, he administers it in the bamboo candy; but it could, equally well, he says, be incorporated in an ordinary stick of chewing gum. He even had a small-time chicle manufacturer whose place is near his—rather, I should say, a chicle manufacturer who specializes only in putting certain laxatives and other drugs into chewing gums—a man named Band—but the name doesn’t matter, does it?—anyway, this Chinese doctor had this chicle man experiment a bit for him, and find out just how much of this particular drug an average stick of American chewing gum will hold in absorption—and he—yes, the Chinese doctor—found an ordinary stick would hold as much as 3 doses.”

  “And might be chewed,” remarked Larborough, “provided the chewer held his nose with both hands, eh?”

  “Just about—yes. To use it thus would involve flavoring the gum highly, that’s all—so that the ‘esters’—as he described them—constituting the ‘flavor,’ impinging on the nerve endings inside the nose, would drown out the smell of the drug. And—but back to this Chinese doctor! He’s been administering the drug—but to his own patients only—merely to get the thing worked out scientifically—as to dosages, effects, and so forth—rather than to get practical use out of it. And it has worked beautifully, he says—specially in one-tonsil operations on children. And lancing boils. And so forth. But the really peculiar thing about this neuro-anesthetic, Keene, seems to be that during the 15 minutes before it actually induces numbness—though it never induces unconsciousness, it seems, nor even motor paralysis—it starts the patient to talking a blue streak and telling truthful facts about himself. In fact, whenever in that stage, the patient will answer any interrogation truthfully. And if not queried, will bleat out anyway—maybe a hit out of sequence—all sorts off things that he really should not tell. Chinese boys have told this doctor of the windows they have maliciously smashed, and of grocery stores they’ve broken into, of bicycles they’ve stolen, even of unsavory episodes with little girls, of—but maybe you don’t believe my sto—rather, the Chinese doctor’s story?”

  “Why, sure I’d believe it. Since he paid hard money for consultation on the facts in it. Anyway, there are a number of molecular compounds that do things in that precise line. Such as scopalamine, for instance, used originally in painless childbirth. And—but go ahead. I see a more than faint glimmer of something.”

  “I guess you do, now! And you’re right! Well, suppose this young lawyer had—no, now has!—a client who is exactly like this John Doe in today’s papers. And who won’t divulge a single darn fact about himself—even to his own lawyer—and when his very life is at stake, in connection with a certain murder. And suppose this young lawyer has come to the ineluctable conclusion that the only possible explanation—if, that is, Keene, the young lawyer’s client is innocent, as he claims to be!—is that he is protecting the name of some high-up married woman in Chicago whom he was with—the entire night of the murder in question. Oh yes, Keene, such things are happening all the time. And men are men, you know.”

  “But wait—if this client were with a married woman—”

  “Yes, I know. Then why doesn’t he explain a certain skull part of his jam? Well, I—I wouldn’t put it past some married woman with a gangster lover—oh, there are women and women, Keene—some who double-cross men with no compunction—and others who have to have a whole pack of lovers to—to be happy—anyway, I wouldn’t put it past a married woman lying in both categories to shove a man straight into the electric chair. For a job done by one of her other lovers. Who—but anyway, Keene, what would you think of a lawyer who intended—if her whole defense turned sickeningly out, in the courtroom, to be nil—to put her client on the stand to deny the charge, only to slip him first a specially made stick of chewing gum, all dolled up with a fancy colored wrapper, but containing a good triple dose of this truth-telling drug, and disguised with a new synthetic flavor that is not only powerful enough to drown out even valerian, but which to him is exactly like—like fish to a cat; and—”

  “Wait—wait!” Keene Larborough passed a hand weakly over his forehead. “You—you have to get this Chinese doctor actually to let loose, to you, of a stiff dose of the neuro-anesthetic in question?”

  “Yes—speaking quite plainly. To turn it over, that is, to the chicle man—to be quickly fixed up for my purpose.”

  “He’ll—he’ll never do it, Elsa. Never! Client or no client. For your proposed purpose, that is. For he’ll see the gates of the State prison loom—however, skip it! And you have to get the chicle man quickly to cook up some gum and roll you out a stick, loaded with a dose of this drug, and wrap it in colored paper?”

  “Right-o!”

  “And—”

  “—the flavor. The without-which-not to both drown out the vile drug—and to break down the gum-chewing resistance of the client—at the same time? Well it happens, Keene, that he ain’t got no resistance at all—to a certain flavor known—at least off and on!—as ‘Oh God.’ And which a certain Negro drugstore, on the very threshold of Chinatown itself, has been trying out a bit in sodas. At least, up to some time ago—when it got skeered—or something. Anyway, the poor chemist who invented the flavor—and keeps quantities of it on hand for his own more or less fruitless business negotiations—lives up above the drugstore—”

  “I get it. Monsieur Cohenstein?”

  “—and,” Elsa continued, “comes into the said drugstore nightly—as have I ascertained via phone!—at 7 bells sharp—so regularly that he even puts the Wrigley Building clock—and all other clocks—to shame. And, as you may partly have noticed, Keene—and which I’ll herewith confirm completely—drugstore—chemist’s flat—Chinese doctor’s office—and chicle man’s factory—are all grouped together within only a few blocks of each other, and—wait!—all are right to the west of—in fact, practically in the back yard of!—the Penworth mansion where tonight Hizzoner is going to hold cour—”

  “I get it! Everything has fallen together in my mind even more than it falls together spatially! And so Elsa Colby expects to—”

  “—to pick up a certain piece of concocted ‘chewing gum’ on her way to court tonight, and—”

  “Yes, of course. But Elsa Colby figures to—”

  “—figures, Keene, that if all is lost anyw
ay, she might as well go whole hog or none, pass her client a stick of gum radiating ‘Oh God’ for two feet all about itself!—and also up the chewer’s own nose—but ‘Oh God’ only!—a stick with which to moisten his—his doubtlessly by-then-dry whistle before he has to talk to the court for his very life; then slap him on the stand to deny categorically the charges in the indictment, only to—”

  “—only to spill his guts instead,” said Keene Larborough unpoetically. “Before Hizzoner—Court—the Press—and all!”

  “To spill his guts, yes,” acceded Elsa. “Including—” And her little white teeth came together. “—the—the name of the darned married woman in whose boudoir he spent—well,” she qualified, “maybe might possibly have spent—the night. Who knows?” And Elsa sighed. Frankly wishing, for a meeting second, that she was some exotic married woman, instead of a scrubby, red-headed, freckle-faced girl lawyer. “And so what’s the opinion, Keene—of an old vet like yourself—on the foregoing and aforesaid!”

  “Well, Elsa girl,” Larborough said, “I can only say that it’s the wildest stunt ever pulled off in a courtroom. I’ve done many weird and strange things in my day—but this, I’d say, tops my wildest ones. Though what you propose to do—rather, to try to do!—for my belief is that this Chinese doc will refuse absolutely to give you a single milligram of that drug for such pur—”

  “And I’m gambling,” said Elsa quietly, “from my one interview with him, that he’ll do that just to see his drug used in a legalistic sense instead of a medical one. For he has a scientific mind, and—”

  “And I’m telling you I know the Chinese—and they are hellishly skittish of things like that. Puh—lenty! But let that be a question moot. And to answer your specific query: What you propose to do, Elsa, is justified—on the theory that anything that can’t make matters any worse for your client is justified. That baby you got there is all set to catch the chair—on any mere denial, categorical or otherwise, of things. So he might as well—yeah, that’s it: That’s just why your scheme is the wildest ever. For presuming and assuming him to be guilty, with a load of that drug in his veins, he’ll just lock himself right in that old 2200 volt chair. So that he never can be unlock—”