The Man with the Wooden Spectacles. Harry Stephen Keeler
went through with—to complete a site for a beautiful estate he’s assembling as a wedding present for his only daughter and her husband-to-be. And we haven’t quite been able to get together on the value of my quitclaim.
Within, that is, a few hundred dollars. And so I could have—”
“Yes I understand, Mr. Moffit. The cantilever lever of business amity can be operated at its very fulcrum! But of course the same thing, I’m sure you realize, would apply to Michael Shurely as applies to me: Namely, nobody can possibly subvert or contravert the actual course of justice.
Nor can anybody—I don’t care who he is!—obtain—But I’m sure you understand that. And I appreciate, also, your coming straight to me directly with whatever it is you want to ask. So what is it? What does this favor concern?”
“Well, Judge, it’s about the trial tonight, here in your house, of that fellow who killed that nightwatchman in the old Klondike Building at 10:43 last night—and opened the State’s Attorney’s safe—and stole the skull of Wah Lee!”
The Judge’s mouth fell open. “How—in heaven’s name, Mr. Moffit—do you know—about that case?”
“How? Well, the entire facts of the crime are all in the first Despatch—just out. And with a fore-story, in boldface type, detailing the fellow’s complete capture and arrest. Except that it doesn’t say where he’s being held. Anyway, the first edition of the Despatch for the day—the one out at 2:30, you know—was tossed on the newsstands as I rounded a corner on my way over here. I caught a flash of the headline, and hopped out and bought one, And read it in the cab while coming the rest of the way here. Like to have it?”
And from under his black coattails, resembling the tail feathers of a crow, Silas Moffit fished the rolled-up paper in question. Or what appeared to be just a thin first section.
“I would indeed like to have it—and thanks!” And the Judge took the paper avidly. “But—” He glanced hastily at its headline. “My impression was that the fact that the trial of this fellow was to be held so quickly was not to be made of public record. Much less, even, than that it would be held here—of very necessity—because of my being semi-invalided. And—”
“Both of those facts, Judge Penworth, came to me—but not from the story here, no! For they’re not in the story. They came to me, let me say, straight from State’s Attorney Louis J. Vann, himself.”
“From Vann? But why would he have occasion to tell you?”
“Why?” Silas Moffit regarded a hangnail on one of his fingers intently. “Well, I was talking to him recently, on the phone, about a mortgage I happen to have on his own place in Oak Park; and begged him—for reasons which I can outline to you only, Judge!—to let me know sometime in the near future when some penniless defendant was to be tried. And whom the court—” Silas Moffit, for some reason known best to himself, broke off. “Anyway, Judge, he was kind enough to ring me today, and tell me that such would take place tonight. The attorney for the defendant, and all that, being arranged for this afternoon.
All in the case of a fellow—his name quite unknown!—involved in a homicide and burglary—and the full story of which was due to fall on the newsstands at 2:30. All I got, at the time, was that the fellow was willing to drive a bargain as to trial—if he could get it immediately—and before you. Which, Mr. Vann said, could and would easily be arranged—so long as it could be held at the house here. And—well—till the story itself came into my hands a couple of minutes or so after ago—I knew no more.”
“And?”
And the icy and ominous inflection which Judge Hilford Penworth gave to that tiny word was one that boded ill for any man who intended to ask what he should not ask—mortgage on Prairie Avenue, or no mortgage on Prairie Avenue!
CHAPTER II
A Judge Demolishes an “Alibi”!
The ominous tone in Judge Penworth’s voice was not, by any means, lost on Silas Moffit.
“Now, Judge,” he put in very hastily, “don’t—don’t get me wrong. I—I didn’t come here to ask a single thing for this defendant. Whom I don’t know from Adam. Certainly—it least so far as I know—since even his picture isn’t in the story. No, Judge, the favor I want of you is—is so trivial—at least so I think—that—that you’ll laugh when you hear it.”
“I get it now, Mr. Moffit,” replied Penworth, unbending markedly. “You want, of course, to hear the trial tonight—but realize that under the limited space available, no general spectators can be there. Yes. Well, I’m quite sure that I can arrange that for you—through Mr. Vann—especially considering that it’s my house that’s to be the courtroom. Yes.”
But Silas Molest did not nod grateful agreement with Judge Penworth’s native supposition, gazing instead moodily at his shoe top as does a man who, in trying to extricate himself from a bog, has only mired himself deeper.
As one, in fact, desperately speculating on how to reopen a difficult subject—and diplomatically!
The Judge, however, now appeared to be manifestly relieved, as one who, after all, did have a mortgage on his crumbling homestead. And who would rather not refuse favors—at least of a sort!—to him who held it. And it was he—not Silas Moffit—who took up the conversation.
“Yes, when Mr. Vann put it up to me earlier this afternoon, I did agree to hold trial here tonight. Since manifestly I couldn’t go elsewhere—with this terrible foot, and equally terrible knee—to facilitate the course of justice. And the defendant, it seems, was willing to take a bench trial tonight. Providing it would be before me only.
“You see,” Judge Penworth explained patiently, “the item stolen in the burglary is, it seems, the one vital item necessary to indict—and likewise to convict—Gus McGurk, now out in Moundsville Penitentiary, of kidnaping and murder. For McGurk, you know is serving time only for extortion. The corpus delicti was not established, you know, at the time. And McGurk, so Mr. Vann tells me, is ready to step forth in a couple of days or so, a free man, having served ten years good behavior time—of the fifteen years he got for his 50,000 dollars extortion. And by sheer intrinsic law—not to omit mention of a certain legal decision rendered so late as today by the Supreme Court in an analogous case, conviction of the burglar and murderer—ahem—alleged burglar and murderer in this case will be necessary to validate the item found on his person as being the specific item that was in Mr. Vann’s safe—and thus make it possible for Mr. Vann to take quick action against McGurk. A truly classical situation in law—and one, I believe, that is destined to be part of Chicago’s more interesting criminological history. So I agreed gladly to hear the case—and determine for Mr. Vann if the defendant is guilty. Which, remember, Mr. Moffit, none of us, at this moment, have the slightest—hrmph—right to presume.
“And thus it comes about,” finished the Judge, “that my good reliable Fred Mullins is even now arranging the big drawing room downstairs completely for the trial tonight. Which heaven knows we could never take care of if it were a jury trial. But we’ll manage all right, I’m sure. Hm?” He was reflective. “I wonder, at that, how many witnesses Mr. Vann—and, of course, this defendant—will have? If, that is, the defendant has any at all! For it seemed to me, from what Mr. Vann said, that—” He broke off. “Mind detailing the story I have here, for me?—no, I can’t read it myself—Mullins took my glasses downstairs to wash them for me, and hasn’t brought them up. Just give me the highspots—if you don’t mind—and I think I can calculate in a minute approximately how many witnesses Mr. Vann will be having. Of course we have no idea as to what the defendant’s defense will be, so—”
“I can give you that, Judge, right off,” declared Silas Moffit eagerly, retrieving the newspaper. “And without even glancing at the newspaper. For there is a forestory—written by Hugh Vann—evidently Louis Vann’s brother—detailing all the circumstances of the arrest of this fellow, and the later interview Hugh Vann had with him in his incommunicado cell. In which, so I gather, Hugh Vann posed