The Man with the Wooden Spectacles. Harry Stephen Keeler

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      “Hahdly,” said Aunt Linda sardonically. “You can’t claim nuffin’—wid dis disbahment o’der skimmin’ along to reach you in anotha’ houah o’ so. Hahdly!”

      Aunt Linda now asked another question. “But dis heah man whut is to git tried? Whut de case ag’in him? He drunk o’ disohdaly—o’ what?”

      Elsa shook her head. “The case against him is bad, Aunt. Burglary! And murder! Not one—but two charges. I ran out and got a Despatch the minute the Judge hung up on me—and got the details of the man’s crime. Or rather,” Elsa corrected herself punctiliously, “his alleged crime! But since the story was written by a man I personally happen to know is brother to the State’s Attorney himself, one can only assume, Aunt, that its facts are—are 24-karat, when it comes to being facts. But the point is, anyway, that the man was caught dead to rights with the stolen goods in his possession.”

      “Well, dat don’ mean numen’ def’nit’, Chil’. An’ Ah don’ see w’y you mek sich final comclusions ’bout it—at leas’ at dis p’int. Fo’ dey is a t’ousum reasons why men som’times happens to hab on deysevves stolened goods. And it don’, in itself, mean nuffin’.”

      “Sometimes not, maybe,” Elsa admitted ruefully, “but here quite the opposite. For this man, Aunt, admitted, in front of two highly reputable witnesses, that he did have the goods in question—and that he’d cracked the State’s Attorney’s safe, moreover, to get them!”

      CHAPTER VIII

      There Were 15 at Table!

      Louis Vann, State’s Attorney of Cook County, Illinois, seated at his great handcarved mahogany desk in the private office of his official suite in the City Hall, his feet firmly imbedded in the thick green velvet carpet beneath his swivel chair, studied intent1y the foolscap sheet of paper lying on the desk in front of him. The paper being no less than his hastily hand-written roster of State’s witnesses for the forthcoming trial tonight, of one John Doe, identity unknown. Both the paper, and Vann’s thin, keen—and, it is to be admitted, boyish—face were lighted up by the flood of light from the huge windows fronting his big desk—windows which, oddly enough, looked unseeingly out across the busy street towards the ancient building containing Vann’s old office where he had begun practice—and which today, as State’s Attorney, he still retained, out of sentiment—and which had been, moreover, the night just gone, the scene of robbery—and murder!

      But his study of the names of those witnesses who would, he felt, make the State’s case tonight a two-hour affair at most, was interrupted by the entrance into his private sanctum of Miss Jason, the thin-necked and very elderly female who saw to it rigorously that no one was allowed to disturb the State’s Attorney unless he himself first passed upon that matter.

      “Mr. Vann—” she began.

      “Yes?” And he looked up impatiently from his roster of witnesses.

      “Special Investigator August Bardell—of your staff—wishes to see you.”

      “Who? Oh—Bardell? Oh, I’m awfully busy, Miss Jason. Tell him to come by tomorrow, will you?”

      “But he wants only, Mr. Vann, 3 minutes.”

      “But—”

      “And he says it is rather important.”

      “Yes, but I can’t aff—only 3 minutes, eh?—well tell him if he’ll say what he has to say in 2—he can come in!”

      Miss Jason essayed one of those smileless smiles for which she was noted in the City Hall. And melted noiselessly out of the picture.

      Evidently Investigator Bardell—one-time plainclothesman on the Detective Bureau—but now transferred to Vann’s own State-paid staff—was willing to say what he had to say in 2 minutes. For he entered a moment later, a stocky individual in a brown suit, with the thick-soled shoes of the true detective, and wearing a voluminous black Windsor tie indicating some sort of weird disguise.

      “For—for God’s sake, Bardell!” ejaculated Vann. “Since when?” And he made a gesture to his own law-abiding and conservative tie.

      Bardell flushed a brick-red.

      “That’s—that’s what I wanted to see you about.”

      “That tie? Then for Heaven’s sake keep it till tomorrow, and—”

      “But wait, Mr. Vann—it’s not so much the tie, as the matter of how I wore it—and the place. You know?”

      “Oh—the meeting of those bloody fire-eaters? I ought to have guessed!” Vann paused expectantly. “Well—whom did they plot to blow up?”

      Bardell, now standing at Vann’s desk, made answer.

      “Nobody, Mr. Vann. ’Twas a regular legitimate party, from A to Izzard, that meeting off Bughouse Square. All men—no wimmen!—but strict—well—fun.” And Bardell made a grimace as indicating that fun was a thing of many definitions.

      “Fun? Well, that’s odd, to say the least. Considering that Hugo Schletmar, who’s practically known to have been mixed up in bombings in 4 different cities, was to be there. And Andrew Brosnatch, who served time on Alcatraz for assassinating Millionaire Lovewell of San Francisco—the same. Are you dead sure nothing was slipped over on you?”

      “Listen, Mr. Vann, I tell you that even anarchists have to unlax now and then. Koncil and I were present in that big studio room o’ young van der Zook’s, from 7:40 in the evening, right after the first of the invited guests had arrived—till 5 this morning, when the affair broke up, and the last guest—inc’dentally he was the first one, too!—including us—departed. And there wasn’t a word of anarchistic talk. No blowing up of anybody. No—no bumping off the President. Or sowing a pineapple in the First National Bank. Nothing but drink red wine—knock editors—and—”

      “Knock editors?”

      “Yeah, Editors, Mr. Vann. For there were literary lights amongst ’em. A regular Bohemian bunch—no fooling. And a spaghetti dinner served at—what time was it, now?—yes—10 p.m. sharp. With everybody putting on colored tissue-paper hats—pulling snapperjacks—and drinking red wine.”

      “My God! Schletmar and Brosnatch—putting on tissue paper hats! For of course they were there. Otherwise—”

      “Oh yes, Mr. Vann, sure they were there. Otherwise I’d have reported right off the bat that the cover was a fizzle.”

      “Well—that’s that, I guess. From the source and nature of the tip I had, I did think that Schletmar and Brosnatch must be up to something. And which of course is why I wangled invites for you and Koncil out of that very source. As ex-movie actor—and big game hunter—respectively.” Vann gazed down at Bardell’s thick-soled shoes.

      “I hope you didn’t wear those shoes?”

      “God no, Mr. Vann! I wore my—my freak shoes. And I haven’t adjusted Kleig lights in the studios there in Hollywood for two long years without being able to spout the studio lingo. Nor was Koncil found wanting, either, in view of his having gone, with President Kattins, of the Second National Bank, to Africa.”

      “I СКАЧАТЬ