Читать книгу The Man with the Wooden Spectacles - Harry Stephen Keeler - Страница 5

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 as the defendant’s attorney.” The Judge shook his head reprovingly. “Anyway, the defendant—refusing, incidentally, to render his name at all—told Hugh Vann that his defense to all that the police were evidently going to charge against him, was amnesia.”

“Amnesia!” ejaculated Judge Penworth. “Good God in heaven! Amnesia! Why, if that were a valid defense, every criminal in America would be using it. Amnesia doesn’t, moreover, dissipate any charges. Well, on what basis does it appear he’s going to claim this?”

“Well, it seems, Judge—at least so he told Hugh Vann anyway—that he always develops amnesia between two such successive instances wherein he gazes into a lamp revolving within the angle of two inclined mirrors—a lamp exactly, in fact, like that one in the window of our famous Revolving Lamp Drugstore on Van Buren and Dearborn, or the one in its subsidiary, the Little Revolving Lamp Drugstore in the City Hall. A sort of neurotic inheritance, the fellow claimed, from traveling for years in South America with some hypnotist who used this device on him over and over. Anyway, he claims that on the day he struck Chicago—three days ago—he gazed into the revolving lamp in that big drugstore—and, first thing he knew, he was still gazing into it, but in a smaller window—and, evidently, days later—with three detectives hustling him through a door alongside.”

“Good—good heavens!” ejaculated Penworth again. “A sort of—of blanket erasure, isn’t it? Of—of everything, but the charges, unfortunately. And—but by George—by George, Mr. Moffit!—now this is very odd indeed. For Mr. Mullins was over there at the Revolving Lamp Drugstore—the main one, that is—just the other day, refilling the prescription for my damnable gout, and he mentioned to me that the place didn’t seem like itself without the famous landmark—the revolv—say, Mr. Moffit, get me the number of that store. No, the phone directory isn’t needed. Just get it for me off that bottle of medicine over yonder. Yes.”

Silas Moffit arose with alacrity, and got the number in question. Which was Van Buren 0999. And rendered it to the Judge.

Who reached out for the phone, standing atop his old Lionshead safe, and dialed the number in question. And, a second later, he was saying:

“Let me speak to Mr. Herman von Horn, the proprietor?”

A pause, and then:

“Is this Mr. von Horn? Say, Mr. von Horn, an emissary of the speaker, the other day—rather, let me put it this way: was your revolving lamp in operation the other—

“Oh, you don’t say? Well—well. Well, Mr. von Horn, this is Jud—that is, somebody connected with the Criminal Court. Yes, the Criminal Court. And will you just keep that fact to yourself? In spite of any newspaper stories—and so forth? Unless you are called as a witness—in a certain case—one that is breaking in today’s paper?”

A pause.

“Thank you.”

And Judge Penworth hung up.

“There was no revolving lamp there that day,” he said, sternly. “Nor was there one today in Mr. von Horn’s smaller store in the City Hall. Mr. von Horn sent both to the factory. The first came back today only, and is running today only in the main store. The other one, in the smaller store, went out yesterday.”

“Then,” exclaimed Silas Moffit, with a peculiar—and, it is to be admitted, sinister—exultancy, “the fellow’s alibi won’t be worth the powder to blow it to—hrmph!”

“—to hell, you were about to say, Mr. Moffit? Well I’m constrained to say it won’t! But no lawyer, under these circumstances, will ever permit him even to offer it. No, that particular defense is out! But I wouldn’t be surprised, Mr. Moffit, but that he was merely spoofing the young journalist, For such defense is too ridiculous—on its very face. And—however—hrmph!—I am but the judge, after all, delegated to listen to evidence and not to create it. We shall mutually forget that we know about the matter—but if that defense is offered, I will naturally—judge or no judge, have to call Mr. von Horn as a Court’s witness.”

A silence fell on the two men.

“Well, that leaves me,” commented the Judge ruminatively, “just where I was—with respect to estimating the defense’s probable witnesses. So suppose you give me, now, the highlights of the story there, and I will at least estimate Mr. Vann’s layout.”

“And,” put in Silas Moffit, eagerly, “determine at the same time, no doubt, whether the defense has any chance at all?”

“Yes,” admitted the judge sadly. “Determine offhand—whether the defense has any chance at all. For even I, the judge in the case, may equitably make that remark! Yes, indeed. So proceed, Mr. Moffit.”