The Man with the Wooden Spectacles. Harry Stephen Keeler

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      “Very good! I’d hate to get all under way with a trial—and then have things suddenly blow up because of a ridicu­lously—though quite valid, I’ll concede!—technicality like that. Well, my old odd-jobs Reibach would definitely be 60 years old today. And I even met two of his daughters once. So that’s that! And now what does it say Vann then did?”

      “Well, Judge, it goes on to say how Vann quickly drew the door of his office to, stepped down to a phone booth on the stair landing, and had Inspector Rufus Scott over there in a few minutes. All sub rosa, moreover. After which he put Scott in sole charge of examining the premises. And went over to his City Hall offices. And how Scott then made a complete inspection of the site of the double crime.”

      “One of the most unshakable witnesses,” the Judge nodded “on the entire Chicago police force. A real specialist in criminology. And so meticulously accurate that I’ve never yet seen anybody shake him.”

      “I—see,” Silas Moffit nodded, as one whose knowledge of criminal Chicago was limited to judges and lawyers.

      He gazed down at his paper again. “Well, the safe was minus a certain single item. An item which, moreover, Vann had known was in there.”

      “Exactly how,” frowned Judge Penworth, “did Vann know this—for I didn’t catch that angle when he gave me that hasty—so very hasty—survey of the situation? As I understand things, he had only just gotten in from St. Louis—and the item—it was a skull, of course, I know that—had been originally put in, in his absence.”

      “Well it seems,” explained Silas Moffit, “that his office girl—the one, that is, who keeps that particular office for him—a Miss Burlinghame—had met him in the depot this morning on her way to Indianapolis. To attend some wedding. Of a sister or something. And there, in the depot, she’d given him certain facts. Specifically, that a skull had been unearthed sometime before, by a Negro laborer, in the—the old deserted Schlitzheim Brewery, on Goose Island, in the very room—at the very geometrical site, in fact, except deeper—where that headless skeleton was found years ago—and which failed completely as a corpus delicti in the old Wah Lee kidnaping and murder.”

      “Yes,” Penworth nodded, “That skeleton which the underworld worked hard to establish as another body.”

      “And—succeeded!” added Silas Moffit meaningfully.

      “Yet would not have done so,” pointed out Penworth, “if the skull had been found with it. In view of the surgical work that had been done so recently in Wah Lee’s head. And—but go ahead, Mr. Moffit. After all, the story you have there deals with one case—homicide and burglary of today. While the Wah Lee Case is, after all, another case—kidnaping and murder—of another day. And the two cases are connected only by virtue of the single item—Wah Lee’s skull. For, patently, this must be Wah Lee’s skull which has at last been unearthed.” He paused.

      “Now as I understand it, the Negro who brought it in, finally, to Mr. Vann’s office—after he surmised, that is, from hearing from some other Negro something about the history of the old Schlitzheim Brewery—”

      “Yes, Judge. He hadn’t been in America at the time of the old Wah Lee Case.”

      “I—see. Well, as I understand things, he brought this skull in, wrapped and tied in paper, and the girl herself never actually viewed it. Is that right?”

      “Yes,” affirmed Silas Moffit. “And which fact, I can see plainly, Judge, intrigues your—your legal sense. Yes, that is exactly the situation. It seems that she put it in that safe without examining it—she checked its identity as a skull, yes, by tearing open a bit of the paper and making certain it was a skull, and not—not—well, not a cantaloupe!—and she took a deposition from the Negro, embodying such vital facts as to how he’d unearthed it; how he’d boiled and scraped and cleaned it; how he’d fixed the lower jaw to the sconce proper with white surgical tape; how he’d put his initials, ‘M. K.’ on the rear of it before bringing it in—his name, it seems, Judge, was Moses Klump; how it had a bullet hole in its back, and a shattered rear wall in its left eye-socket; and how some kind of surgical work, anyway, had been done inside its nose.”

      “Some—kind?” commented the Judge judicially, putting his fingertips reflectively together. “That, too, can make an interesting legal point tonight. For we know, of course, precisely what surgery was done in Wah Lee’s nose. And—but go ahead, Mr. Moffit. For I’m still anxious to approximate the number of witnesses Mr. Vann essentially is bound to have tonight.”

      “Well, there’s one he won’t have, Judge,” commented Silas Moffit. “The Negro! Which you may or may not know. For he was killed yesterday in a warehouse accident.”

      “So I understand—yes. And,” added Penworth, “it is fortunate—that is, for Mr. Vann’s case!—that the girl took that deposition. Which, I’m emboldened to say, will be State’s Exhibit Number One tonight! But here—I’m delaying things. Go ahead, Mr. Moffit.”

      “Yes, Judge.” Silas Moffit glanced at the paper again.

      “Well, the upshot of Inspector Scott’s examination was that the murder of Reibach was done with a sledge—the same sledge, in fact, that was used to crack open the safe—and done brutally, moreover—for the German’s skull had obviously been smashed in after he’d already been knocked unconscious by a prior blow. In fact, Judge, Scott’s derivations in the matter—as given briefly here—seemed to be that it was plainly and patently a one-man job altogether—and that the one man was distinctive enough—red-haired or something!—that he found it best to kill Reibach off after knocking him out, rather than let the watchman recover and broadcast his—the murderer’s—description. And the murder itself, Scott maintains, was done at 10:43 p.m. last night. And is established definitely by four different and distinct time confirmations. First, a smashed watch on Reibach’s wrist—done by a first glancing sledge blow. Second, a tilted glassed-in pendulum wall clock, that was stopped at the same hour, and with some of Reibach’s hairs—obviously from a gash found in his scalp—stuck on one of its lower corners. And showing how he’d reeled backwards from that first blow which smashed his wrist watch. It seems, moreover,” added Silas Moffit, squinting at the paper, “that both watch and clock can be proven—though by factors not given here—to be correct. And that the clock, moreover, couldn’t have been reset by the murderer—because the only key to its glassed-in box—a special Yale key—was in Louis Vann’s own pocket. There are, moreover—so the story says—still two more confirmations of the murder hour, which at the least rivet it to the hour from 10 to 11 last night—and based on the dead watchman’s time sheet and—”

      “If Scott,” Penworth put in, “sets the time of the murder as of 10:43 last night, then 10:43—or closely thereabouts—is the hour. Quite regardless of who did it—or how.”

      “I see,” nodded Silas Moffit. And paused. “One thing is certain anyway, Judge. Namely, Mr. Vann wouldn’t have let the hour of the murder be set forth in this story, as it is, if it hadn’t been that at press time of the story—and long before, in fact—he was 100 per cent convinced he had the man who did the job. And—” But Silas Moffit lowered his gaze to the paper again. “Anyway,” he continued, “it seems that—according to the story here—sometime around noon today, some patrolman named Daniel Kilgallon noticed a reddish-haired man, of about 34 or 35 years of age, standing on Adams Street—at the northeast corner of the Old Post Office, in actuality—waiting for a streetcar—yet not taking any. The fellow had a crimson box under his arm—just a shoebox, it says here, Judge, inked over with crimson fountain pen ink—and was working a newspaper СКАЧАТЬ