The Case of the Lavender Gripsack

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  But Louis Vann’s words were broken into by the rising to his feet of the gangling Chinese youth, of the tiny gold-rimmed spectacles, who sat at Wah Lung’s right elbow.

  “If—if the Court,” he said embarrassedly, but in per­fect English, “will pardon my interrupting a—a murder trial, I wish to ask permiss—but first,” he amended, “my—my name is—is Harry Seeong. And I am the nephew of—of Mr. Wah Lung here. His guest tonight, like—like the gentleman at his other side. I—I am from San Francisco, and was visiting my uncle this morning—likewise this afternoon when the telephone call came from—from the States Attorney—asking my uncle to be at this trial tonight. And so I—I came with my uncle, believing that the prisoner in the case was going to plead guilty and take sentence for stealing evidence in the case of my poor murdered cousin Wah Lee. But now I see that an entire long-drawn-out trial is in prospect, and—and I am due back in San Francisco tomorrow morning early to attend a certain ceremonial breakfast which—which thirty of us grandchildren are giving to our grandfather, Seeung Cho Wang, and—but indeed, I have my passage already booked and paid for on the 10 o’clock west-bound plane tonight. And—and it is now 8 o’clock—8:10 in fact!—and the airfield is a full hour away. And—and so I will have to ask; that—that I may leave.”

  The Judge frowned.

  “Yes—you may go.” He gazed sternly about the impro­vised courtroom. “Is there anybody else, now that we’re about it, and before we have another interruption, who has come here under a misapprehension that this is but a brief police-court hearing, and due to be over in fifteen minutes? If so, they had better go now, and—”

  He gazed about him. But nobody answered. All the rest were there to the finish, that was plain.

  Judge Penworth turned to Mullins, under his right elbow. “Well, I suppose, Mr. Mullins,” he said grumpi­ly, “you’ll have to cease being clerk and bailiff, and become a—a maidservant. So that this youth here—”

  “Oh—Your Honor,” spoke up Harry Seeong quickly and eagerly, “I will just let myself out. Will be happy to do so. I just didn’t want, you know, to get up and—and march out of court—without permiss—Surely I’ll let myself out. Except—yes—except, that is—I’ll let myself out, of course—but—well—ah—er—you know—well, you see I’d like first—that is—er, rather, if you wouldn’t mi—”

  “What the devil, young man,” broke in Penworth almost irately, “are you trying to say?”

  “Well, it’s—it’s just, you know, Your Honor, the flying-field is an hour away, and—well—you see—that is, well, when you gotta go, you know, you gotta go, and—”

  “Oh—so that’s it, is it? Well, you surely used plenty of words that said almost nothing. Very well. It’s at the head of the stairs out there—just around the second floor landing. Has a solid oak door, painted blue. And a small green light burning right above it. Take your own time—but don’t lose your plane to Frisco, no; and fur­thermore, for heaven’s sake! when you are done—don’t interrupt this trial again to an­nounce what you are, and that you’re going—but come down­stairs very quietly, and let yourself out quietly, and be sure to draw the front door to so that it latches itself.”

  “Oh, yes, Your Honor, gladly. I will take care of all that, don’t fear. And I’ll—” And Harry Seeong edged rapidly out between the second and first rows of chairs, casting, as he did so, only a backward glance at his uncle, and saying, “Good-bye, Uncle Wah—write me everything care of Grandfather Seeung.” And he was out of the room, drawing the door to behind him with the celerity of only a man who has an appointment that grows more urgent with the cube of the time elapsed!

  “And now,” Judge Penworth said sternly, “that a time-waster has been disposed of here tonight, I sug­gest to both the attorneys in this case that we resume this trial.”

  “Yes,” assented Louis Vann eagerly, but this time picking up his odd-looking paper which contained the intricately inter-connected circles, “let us resume! And I have now decided to present my evidential arch in a true chronological direction. Indeed I think now I shall present it practically ac­cording to the evidential pattern which I drew up late today—which pattern will best emphasize the manner in which the elements of the case that is under consideration here tonight mesh inextric­ably together. Yes! And so I shall call first to the stand Mr. Wah Lung himself, the kidnapping of whose son years ago started the events which are terminating here to­night, and who will testify briefly to the facts of how—yes, Mr. Wah—if you will—”

  And Wah Lung, who had half arisen at the sound of his name, rose the rest of the way to his feet, edged his way past the knees in that second row, and trudged sadly toward the witness chair.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The Arch!

  “And now,” the District Attorney of Cook County, Illinois, was saying, in the improvised courtroom of Judge Hilford Penworth’s old Prairie Avenue mansion in Chicago, “the court has heard all of the State’s wit­nesses. Over the course of three straight hours—”

  And almost as though to corroborate him as to time, the great grandfather’s clock in back of the judge’s table, and to one side of the judge himself, commenced chiming forth me­lodiously the hour of eleven o’clock in the evening. Louis Vann waited quietly till it had finished its eleven strokes.

  “Over the course of three straight hours,” he resumed, “the court has seen that congeries of exhibits, now neatly stacked there on the side of Clerk Mullins’ desk, under the very eave of the court’s own desk, pile slowly up.” Vann nodded his head toward Mullins’ desk which now, indeed, at least on one end, did carry a decided medley of heterogeneous objects—a large glassed-in pendulum clock lying on its back, a tiny silver or nickel wrist-watch, papers, a photograph, a blueprint, more papers, a tangled mass of fusty gar­ments loosely tied together—and, on the end of the clock projecting toward the room, and suggesting that it was the last exhibit presented, a grinning human skull with tape-affixed under-jaw now surveying the witnes­ses through its cavernous eyes. “For three straight hours,” Louis Vann drove on, “the court has heard the people who have sat over in that chair to my right build up, at times aided by those exhibits, the most watertight case ever presented against any defendant, in any court in Illinois, in any part of Illinois’ long history—a case so watertight, the State avers, that even its very, very youthful legal opponent yonder could have success­fully prosecuted and convicted this defendant.” He beamed friendlily at Elsa.

  “The court has heard, in short—and in this very order of appearance, which is based partly upon the chronological relationship, and partly upon the logical relationship with each other and each exhibit and the crime and the defendant himself, the following witnes­ses. First, Mr. Wah Lung, who told us, with admirable Celestial brevity, how his son, Wah Lee—his only son—went to Ingleside Hospital thirteen years ago to consult them for certain symptoms; how his son van­ished the day he left the hospital; how he—the father—paid $50,000 ransom money; how his son never materi­alized again except as a headless corpse which even became claimed by others—criminals and swindlers all!

  “In turn we read and surveyed that history card—hand­written by, and signed by, Dr. Hancoast Bradley—who performed the operation on the Chinese youth—detailing not only the reasons for doing the operation but the precise opera­tion which was done. That card lies there now on Clerk Mullins’ desk as State’s Exhibit Number 1 in this case. And, with States Witness Number 1, Mr. Wah Lung, inaugurating the events which—so the State contends it has proved—have ended in this very courtroom tonight.

  “For following Mr. Wah Lung, we jumped ahead—as it were—by three full years to a group of incidents epitomized more or less by the brief testimony of a single witness, States Witness Number 2—that being of course one-time Chicago Coroner Able Krum yonder in the middle part of that third row—” And Vann, with his now improvised pointer, indi­cated gently a man with bus
hy gray-white hair and round silver spectacles “—who told us how he was called ten years ago—shortly after the arrest of one Gus McGurk—to the old Schiltzheim Brewery on Goose Island, to examine—in situ—exactly, in short, where it was being dug up under the floor of the hexagonal, or testing-room—a certain headless lime-eaten body—skeleton, in brief; how he finally delivered that head­less skeleton under compul­sion—under an actual court order, in fact—to one Mrs. Mary Grubbs, putatively the mother of the victim, for cremation. And he finished his testimony by telling us briefly how he watched that cremation in the West Town Crematory—and also the supposed ‘mother,’ being personally convinced that she was no more the mother of that victim than ex-Coroner Krum was mother of a speckled three-legged dinosaur.”

  A ripple of laughter rose at the idea of that dignified, bushy-haired gentleman being the mother of a dinosaur, let alone one such as Vann had detailed. But Vann was driving unswervingly on.

  “That body, as a result of this trial tonight, will be—I think I can safely say—the corpus delicti in the case of the State of Illinois versus one Gus McGurk for murder and kidnapping.”

  He paused a second.

  “For we now jump ahead ten long years to the completion of that body at long last. For at that time a negro laborer, now unfortunately dead—though that doesn’t matter in the least so far as this case goes—unearthed a sku—however, let us set it forth as we tonight heard it from the witness chair. Chrono­logically—yes. For we first heard Mr. E. C. Hedgehill, civil engineer in Chicago of pipe mainte­nance for the People’s Gas Light and Coke Company—” and Vann extended his ruler-pointer toward a ruddy-faced young man of about thirty-five in an expensive lavender flannel shirt “—tell us how he set Moses Klump, a negro laborer, to digging in the hexagonal room of that old deserted brewery to uncover a certain gas-main intersection. He told us how, guided by certain archi­tectural plans he had, and gas company blueprints, he crossed two strings from angles of that room, obtaining its geo­metrical center, and instructed the negro to put in the latter’s day digging down there. At which point we turned over to Clerk Mullins there—who now has it—as a State’s exhibit, an official blueprint of the gas company’s mains on Goose Is­land, showing by one of its lateral sectionings that the inter­section in question lies six feet under the surface of the earth at that point.

  “In turn,” Vann drove on, “we heard—” and he pointed gently to an old man sitting next to the gas company engineer—a man of seventy-five or so, with rimless spectacles, deeply bronzed skin, and a white beard, “—Mr. Arthur Gilbert Foshart, today a resident of Africa, once a practicing industrial architect, and no less than the man who designed the old Schlitzheim Brewery, tell us how there is and was but one hexagonal room in that old brewery. And we saw Mr. Mullins yonder mark, as a State’s exhibit, the original blueprint which Mr. Foshart kindly loaned us, and which shows that there never was but one hexagonal room—and that, moreover, a perfect hexagon!

  “All of which rather geometrical testimony,” ex­plained Vann, “brings out the fact that if that original headless body were unearthed three feet or so deep at the intersection of any two strings stretching from the angles of a perfect hexagon—and Moses Klump un­earthed anything at the intersection of any two strings in that same hexagon, but unearthed it before getting down as far as a certain gas-main intersection—then the thing unearthed was unearthed within six feet of that headless body uncovered years before. In which case—according to the present laws concerning corpi delictorum—should such item be a sku—

  However,” he broke off, “let us simply follow the witnesses as I put them on.

  “For we heard little tow-headed Vadisclov Andverski of Goose Island yonder—now sitting far over in that second row, near the end, with his father, Mr. Nikolai Andverski—tell us in extraordinarily good English, fine little man that he is, how on his own birthday he was watching a Negro dig in that room ‘with the lotsa sides’—telling the Negro all about what he’d that morning received for his birthday—and how he saw the negro unearth a something of bone—with ‘tooths’ in it!—and, after examining it, wrap it hurriedly in an old newspaper. And Vadisclov assured us tonight, when we held up a certain skull—a skull later to become the prime State’s exhibit of this whole case—that the thing the negro unearthed was ‘zakly same like that—on’y with mud sticked to it.’ After which,” Vann finished, “we put Vadisclov’s father on the stand, and found that Vadisclov’s birthday was the same day on which Mr. Hedgehill had Klump dig that hole. Thus we established that a certain skull came from that hole.

  “We then heard,” Vann went on, “Miss Geranium Klump—Moses Klump’s sister yonder—the colored girl now dressed, as rightfully she should be, in black, and sitting in the second row there, next to my own Washington Street office assistant—tell us how Moses told her verbally of how he had unearthed that skull in the Schlitzheim Brewery, of how he had boiled it, cleaned it, taped its jaw to its head with tape, and put it away for a luck ‘jonah.’ Like various other persons who testified tonight, Miss Klump is just young enough not to have perceived, when told by her brother about the matter, the significance of such skull being unearthed in such a place—for, as can be gotten from her testimony, she was only a child herself—and living in the rural regions of Tennessee—when the famous Wah Lee kidnaping case broke in Chicago.

  “And after whose testimony,” Vann went on, “it was most logical that we should hear my own office assis­tant—my old Washington Street office assistant, that is, whom incidentally I brought back to Chicago today, from Indianapolis, by plane—Miss Beryl Burlinghame, the young lady yonder with the fair hair and blue eyes. And who told us how Klump came to my office day be­fore yesterday, convinced, due to a conversation he’d had with some other Negro, that he must have the skull of that Chinese youth, figuring in a case with which he, Klump, was unfamiliar because of having been in South America at both times it broke. And Miss Burlinghame told us how, although the thing Klump brought with him was wrapped in paper, she broke the wrappings at once just to insure at at least that it was a skull, and not—not an alarm clock, or a bomb, or what-have-you!—and found that a skull was precisely what it was! As was obvious from Miss Burlinghame’s initial testimony as to her age and birthplace and so forth, she—exactly like Miss Klump—was too young at the time of the Wah Lee kidnaping—or even its three-year later aftermath, McGurk’s conviction for extortion only—to have any direct knowledge concerning it, or even ideas on it; indeed, Miss Burlinghame even had the added disadvantage of then living in New Zealand, on the other side of the globe! But in her story she told us how, getting an idea of the possible significance of the thing only from what had been related to Klump himself, she made Klump describe to her every possible thing he could think of—or she, either—about how he found the skull, when he found it, what actual conditions characterized it, and what he did with it, and what he finally discovered in it that made him bring it down to my office—rather, that office which appears after my name in the telephone directory. And how she incorporated all of those facts in a deposition which Klump himself read, and signed with a cross.

  “That very deposition, of course, lies there on Mr. Mullins’ desk, marked as State’s Exhibit Number 4. And those two young gentlemen yonder sitting alone in that back row—” and here Vann indicated the two in ques­tion, both nondescript fellows, and one plainly Jewish “—Mr. Artie Peabody, and Mr. Jacob Gelzer, have identified their signatures on that deposition which was signed in their presence by Moses Klump’s crossmark. Indeed, the one on the left there—Mr. Jacob Gelzer—told us briefly how he knew Klump—from a time when he did relief work in the Black Beer house in Chicago, and was once assistant case worker and had Klump’s case under his personal supervision. And that settles, I think, who signed that deposition—with that cross!