The Case of the Lavender Gripsack

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “Oh no, Your Honor. Not yet. No! This ‘Big Shoes’ very life, you know, depended on my being a—a detective who might have barged in on this affair. No, he was then to ask me if by any chance I knew a four-letter verb meaning ‘relieve’—‘relieve,’ Your Honor, ‘from pain, or distress or—’”

  “‘Cure,’ of course,” Penworth almost snorted. “And then what? Another simple word-answer test—or pass the skull?”

  “No, Your Honor. Another word-answer test. For I was then to give, on being asked first, a four-letter word depicting a name by which tough boys of the Bowery frequently address each other.”

  “‘Mugg,’ of course,” Penworth grunted. “And then—”

  “And then, Your Honor, a three-letter word constituting one of the commonest of all Jewish names as commonly shortened.”

  “‘Abe,’ of course. And—”

  “And then, Your Honor, a six-letter word meaning a pro­cess through which a batch of wine, to have been properly made, must have been put in the making.”

  “Ha!” said Penworth with the triumphant definiteness of one who knew his wine-making! “That ‘properly made’ deter­mines that word—and no mistake! The six-letter word in question is, of course, ‘cooled’—for any wine that isn’t sub­jected to a drop in temperature after having been pressed and strained is—well—slop. But go ahead.”

  “Yes, Your Honor. Well, the next, and incidentally last keyword test was my rendition—wrong or right, but fast—of a name, of eight letters, which is that of a famous Dutch painter of landscapes living in the seventh decade of the nine­teenth century.”

  “Oh-oh?” Penworth grasped hard on his white goatee.

  “Seventh decade, eh? Well—hrmph—well, I can’t say that I get that one. But—”

  “Well, in all fairness, Your Honor, neither could I have—and I would have had to depend purely upon the swiftness of an answer alone, to prove my genuineness, if pure chance hadn’t made it possible for me to answer that one correctly as well as swiftly. For when I worked out my last crossword puzzle—which was in Frisco—I had occasion to look up Rembrandt’s life—and there found a mere reference to this little-known painter.”

  “I see. Then I’m not so benighted after all, it seems! Well, whoever he might be, it appears that for some reason, not yet clear to me, the whole terms of the ‘meet” were disre­garded—on both sides, though quite naturally, of course, on Arch­bishop Pell’s side, since he—”

  “But no, Your Honor,” put in the defendant, “the terms weren’t disregarded—so far as my end went. For as I stood there, up came a middle-aged man in ecclesiastical garments—and I should state that the specifications for the ‘meet’ warned me that no attention whatsoever should be paid to the guise in which this ‘Big Shoes’ would come up—that he might be in overalls, as a laborer; or in highlaced boots, like a drover; or ’most anything—the garb would have no signifi­cance. But the specifications did say he would introduce himself, right off the hat, under the pseudonym ‘Archibald Bishop’—”

  “‘Archibald—Bishop’?”

  “Yes, Your Honor. ‘Archibald Bishop.’ And so naturally, when yonder eminent churchman barged up on me—and I noted that he did have fairishly large feet—and half-expected that maybe I’d be hearing something like ‘Hi, buddy, I’m Archibald Bishop’—followed then by ‘most any line of fakealoo, and he did say: ‘I’m Archbishop Pell—what have you in the box?’ I naturally thought he said—”

  “Well?”

  “I thought he said: ‘I’m Arch Bishop, pal; what have you in the box?’”

  A vast silence filled the courtroom.

  “Hm,” said Penworth. And then, suddenly: “But Arch­bishop Pell, not knowing anything about the real scheme for mutual identification, and so forth, why did you—”

  “Why, Your Honor, since it was plain to me that he was the man I was to meet, I just fired—straight across the board at him, and in rapid succession—the correct keyword answers to all the scheduled test questions—to end the agony, as it were. And—”

  “Yes, but it’s been conclusively proven you said, “Wah Lee’s skull; I cracked Vann’s pete.’”

  “We-ell—yes, and no, Your Honor. It—it all depends on how you look at it. What I said was—”

  “Was what!”

  “I said: ‘Wall, ease, cull, Ike, racked, vanSpiet’!”

  CHAPTER XIV

  Witnesses—None!

  At the conclusion of the prisoner’s amazing explana­tion of the strange phonetic coincidence which had, so it seemed, put him temporarily in grave jeopardy so far as his life and his freedom were concerned, the Judge looked helplessly at him.

  “I give up!” was all Penworth said. He surveyed the prisoner with continued helplessness. “Well, it looks in­deed, all right, as though this trial is going to have to be given a twenty-four-hour continuance till we—or, rath­er, your attorney—can get your two witnesses down here from Minneapolis to clear you. Clear you, that is,” Penworth added judicially, “or—or elicit various discrepancies in your story.”

  He sighed heavily, as a man deeply regretting that this whole cumbersome affair had to be resumed tomor­row.

  “Too bad, all right, all right,” he observed dourly, “that the X-ray films of Wah Lee’s head are quite non-est. As of course you heard in your own trial. For in view of the recent Supreme Court decision that skulls are legally identifiable by identifiable tooth-roots and identi­fiable sinal cavities, we’d perhaps never even have been holding this trial at all tonight—in the face, that is, of the truth of your story. What I mean, Doe, is this: Your story contends that yonder skull, with the high cheek­bones of what is putatively a Chinese is, in actuality, that of a Swede—unfortunately likewise a race with high cheekbones. And, like the Chinese, brachy­cephalic—so far as cranial index goes. Though,” Penworth was care­ful to point out, “mere facial plane configuration, or cra­nial index either, means absolutely nothing at all toward identifying skull sources, in any court of law. Since there are more exceptions and anomalies amongst hu­man crania than a dog has fleas. There are pin-heads in every race known to man. And microcephs. And macro­cephs. Anomalous brachy­cephals, and the same—do­licocephals. And—but getting back to the possible non-essentiality of this trial, the trial is in our respective laps now, so—and—well, then, you’ll what, I take it, Doe, a continuance—long enough to bring those two people down here, and—well—for how long?”

  “No, Your Honor—I don’t want any continuance.”

  “You—you don’t want—a continu—But here! Your story will have to be backed up, in its alibi component, by testi­mony confirming your presence in—”

  “I—I thought I made it so clear, Your Honor, in my story, that neither of those men in whose presence I was last night would, or ever could, logically back me up.”

  “But that’s nonsense. You’re on trial for your life. This is life and death. What makes you even think—”

  “It’s what I know, Your Honor. The fact is that I’ve already talked to each on the wire; and both have said, in the presence of a witness—”

  “Both said—what?”

  A sternness, almost a granite hardness, had come into the Judge’s voice.

  “Oh,” retorted the defendant, almost desperately, “I—I might as well come clean about it. For you, Your Hon­or, or my attorney, or Mr. Vann, or Mr. Mullins here, will only be checking the witnesses by phone—and finding the circum­stances. No, Your Honor, both parties said they never even heard of me in their life. And would so testify—if called down here.”

  The Judge stared at John Doe through now partly closed eyes.

  “You called them?” he returned. “But how—when did this happen?”

  “An hour before my trial tonight, Your Honor. The lock-up keeper—McConico Knoke is his name—and I guess he doesn’t like Mr. Vann very we
ll, for—anyway, he took pity on me tonight and asked me if there was anything he could do. So I asked him to ring those two persons—King, at Minneapolis—Steenburg at Buffalo. And he did, in his office, with me there, and himself listening over the desk-speaker. Well, King, when I told him I was about to go on trial for my life and all, and proposed to testify that I was with him in his library last evening, and all that—well, he stormed at me on the phone—said I plainly was insane—and that he’d been in his library, alone, all last evening, work­ing.”

  The Judge’s face had grown darker.

  “All evening, eh?”

  “Yes, Your Honor. And when I pointed out that I had his luck piece skull—to at least confirm I’d been in his library at some time—he said—well, he said, ‘Now I know you’re crazy; for I burned up my damn bad-luck-piece skull in my own furnace, a week ago.’”

  The Judge’s face had grown darker yet.

  “And Steenburg?” he queried gelidly.

  “Same,” said the witness laconically. “Said to get my head examined. That he’d never been within five hun­dred miles of Minneapolis last night, and didn’t know me, whoever I might be. But of course, Your Honor, both men could hardly confirm themselves as being with me, because they figured in a light that’s not very com­pliment—”

  “Stop!” The Judge’s face was black. “Then you in­tend not to call these two men, I take it?”

  “Definitely no.”

  “Miss Colby?” The Judge fastened a critical gaze on Elsa.

  “Hardly,” said Elsa in a low voice. “If both are going to lie my client into the electric ch—”

  “Yes, Mr. Vann?” The Judge had turned to Vann, who had risen up on his feet. “Yes?”

  “The defendant,” pronounced the District Attorney, “has openly stated he will not call further witnesses—and he himself was called as the last. Therefore, the State is finished. As, palpably, is the Defense likewise. For it has failed to put on a single witness to establish the so-called ‘alibi.’ And if, Your Honor, the Defense will waive the matter of final address to the Bench, as I’m sure it will be glad to do, since the attorney representing it is young and not at all weathered in that sort of thing, the State will do likewise. And will humbly await your official verdict upon the guilt of a defend­ant on whom Your Honor will not truly be passing any ver­dict—since the defendant has virtually passed it on himself.” And Vann sat down.

  And by the austere look on Judge Hilford Penworth’s face, as he regarded the defendant studiedly and stern­ly, it was patently evident that he considered, exactly as did the State, that this defendant had convicted himself. And in a simple analysis of the situation, Judge Hilford Penworth proceeded to give his deductions—which deductions forecast but one verdict: Guilty!

  CHAPTER XV

  The “Mathematics” of the Case!

  “John Doe,” Judge Penworth began quietly, “I want to state, here and now, that you have, exactly as Mr. Vann here has declared, convicted yourself here to­night. But I am going to show you precisely how you have, before I officially ren­der and sign that verdict which is the only one a Judge could render when a man is guilty. Guilty—let me say point-blank—of larceny and ruthless, cold-blood murder—other­wise known as ‘first-degree murder.’ And—no—don’t inter­rupt.

  “For you have given here tonight, Doe, as your only defense to the charge against you, a so-called ‘alibi.’ Quite unsupported, moreover. And so thus the Court is thrown back upon the necessity of passing its verdict solely upon the credibility of that alibi—as a thing in itself alone.

  “But credibility, Doe, is to some extent a subjective thing! And—no, don’t interrupt. Your counsel may, when I am done, plead briefly for mitigation of such sentence as, after officially issuing my verdict, I shall feel obligated to pass.

  “Yes, Doe,” Penworth continued judicially, “the science of mathematics—and not I, Judge Hilford Penworth—proclaims your story to be a lie.” He sighed audibly, and then went on. “For it is a matter of known statistics, Doe, that out of all witnesses involved in criminal alibis, only one in twelve—one in twelve, Doe!—are so involved as to have a single motive tending to make them contravert the alibi instead of support it. I refer you—rather, your attorney here—to Bain­bridge’s ‘Statistics of Criminology.’ All right! Well, Doe, every one of the six real persons figuring in your story tonight—the two constituting the actual legal alibi, and the four merely functioning as—well—background!—has a motive—and in some cases, various motives—to disclaim his or her relationship to the facts. Assuming, however, that each had only one, Doe, the mathematical chances of such a thing ever occurring—of six persons, Doe, constituting one ‘alibi story,’ all possessing a distinct motive to disclaim their relationship to same—as one in—” The Judge, donning his pince-nez again, looked sternly down at one of the sheets on which he had made some kind of notations. “—one in twelve to the sixth power, or one in—let’s see—yes—in 2,185,984. A fact.” Penworth looked up sadly, and it was significant that he not only removed his pince-nez, but restored them to the black pocket of his gown. “It simply means, Doe, that such a concatenation of persons, events and motives as you related here tonight virtually cannot take place in actuality.”

  He paused.

  “As long as you had introduced two persons who presum­ably would come into the case and confirm you, I—I let the mathematics of the thing go hang—as an anomaly of events. But since these two persons won’t—well—the story has to rest on itself, and the mathematics of it perforce hits us—myself, anyway—like a—a cyclone.”

  Penworth’s face grew sternly clark. “You are a shrewder player at criminal chess, Doe, than this child whom Fate de­creed must defend you tonight. Just where you got the names you dragged into your tale—whether as a ‘brought guest’ at King’s house—or from Minneapolis newspapers you con­sulted in the Public Library here before the criminal meet—in case you later got apprehended—doesn’t matter a whit. The point is that with those names you greedily overplayed your narrational hand. Sewing them in, one and all, with countless motives to disclaim any relationship to anything in your story. And—yes, the cold science of mathematics, Doe, brands you, Doe, as a liar of the first water.”

  Penworth paused a bare second, his face growing even darker.

  “Why, Doe,” he said, “were I even to have discharged you tonight on a legally unsupported alibi alone—the Cook County inch and Bar, and all lawyers and judges over America, would but deem that I had become senile; and I would be receiving covert suggestions by tomorrow that I resign from the Bench. But on an unsupported alibi, Doe, which in itself possesses virtually no chance of ever even having taken place, there is no longer any question whatsoever.

  “God knows,” Penworth went on impulsively, “that I gave you, Doe, every chance tonight to tell us the real truth—so that at least a mitigation of sentence could be achieved, if not actual acquittal. I let you talk on and talk on and talk on for God knows how long a time—”

  The Judge turned wearily—and, as was evident, dis­gustedly—toward Elsa Colby.

  “Well, Miss Colby, Mr. Vann is, as he says, done, so far as presenting further witness”s goes. As you, patently, likewise are. He is willing to dispense with the matter of final addresses. And I more than presume that you are exceedingly glad to do so. Yet, because you are very young, and this is your first case, I want to at least give you—oh he glanced at the clock “—a minute, yes, to set forth any arguments as to any mitigation of punishment that goes with the sentence which you can perceive in advance I expect to render. Though, frankly, I promise you nothing. Absolutely nothing, Miss Colby. I want your appeal, as such, to be on record—that is all. For your client, Miss Colby, has convicted himself here tonight of being a murderer. And a burglar. God knows what one of ‘Bring-a-Friend’ King’s hundreds and hundreds of guests originally brought him to Mortimer Ki
ng’s house in Minneapolis. Or under what name. But a tool of the old Parson Gang he is today. Brought down, more likely than not, from Minneapolis to do the very job he did do. And here he is. And I am about to render verdict—and pass sentence. And so, if you have any argument you wish as to the merits of a life sentence instead of the elec—hrmph—well, I give you, Miss Colby, one minute before I render and sign the official verdict.”

  Elsa rose. Her heart was sick. She had seen her uncle, in the back row, place his umbrella under his arm and look at his watch. An invariable sign that he expected to be going very soon. And she knew where to! To the first telephone! To instruct his son-in-law, Manny Levinstone, to slap on record, at the night recording-clerk’s offices, various cunning trans­fers of Colby’s Nugget. Then let her, Elsa, become an old gray-haired lady—if not rotting in her grave—before she would ever have carried to the highest courts in the land her first attack on her own quitclaim. And she spoke, hastily.

  “Y-yes, Your Honor, that is—no. What I mean is, I—I have no final speech to make. That is—I don’t waive my rights on that—as—as Mr. Vann there seems to think he has done for me! But I do want, Your Honor, to at least speak to my own client there. For that minute.” And as one who assumed the Bench was inclined to be tolerant with her, she turned to that client.

  “John,” she said, desperation in her voice, “if you have any sense left in your head, you can see that Judge Penworth here is going to give you the electric chair. I—I tried to believe in you today, John, especially when you assured me you had one witness. And even when I learned later that that witness was only yourself—I still somehow believed in you. And I believed in you all the time when you were telling that wild, weird story here on this stand, for I at least took you for a man who wouldn’t throw his own attorney down—much less make an utter fool of himself. Which is what you’ve done, John! For now that all is said and done, I’m not going to stand and pose hypocritically in this courtroom, as other defense lawyers probably might, as believing any longer in that story. For Judge Penworth here has told the absolute truth con­cerning those alibi statistics in Bainbridge’s famous work. Which work I’ve read myself. And I’ve studied mathematics myself, at college. And what Judge Pemworth has brought out here tonight is only too—too absolutely correct. Your story, John, could not have taken place—never!—certainly not as you related it here tonight. And you made a fool of me, who believed—at least half believed—in you; a fool of me, John, before the Bench and the Bar and the Press and—and the Public, and—However,” Elsa broke off bitterly, “what does that matter anyway? The main point now is that you’re about to catch the chair—believe it or not! And you’ve had your beautiful chance, and tossed it straight to the—Oh,” she broke off again, as out of the corner of her eye she saw the newspapermen delightedly making notes, and turned to the Bench. “Your Honor, I ask—no, I—I demand—the right to consult privately with my client. I can’t talk to him across half this courtroom about things I want to talk to him on. I—I demand the right to have—”