“Exactly! And if he even tosses the shortest chapter in it at you—20 years in the pen!—my sister still loses—the hundred grand. And all on account of me. And here I’ve nothing to fight for you on—against sickening facts—and practically a whole battery of reputable witnesses. And—now, John, for the last time, I ask you. My sister—my sister—it isn’t fair—because she—she was young—and involved herself. It—it doesn’t matter—for me. But I—I love my sister. And so out of chivalry, John, to an unknown girl—and because, John, you say I am a ‘sweet kid’ and all that hooie—I ask you for the last time: What—against all this testimony and evidence that will be offered tonight—am I to pit? What line of defense—will you want me to take?”
“Does a patient tell his own surgeon how to sew up a wound?” he returned, a trace of desperation in his tones.
“And as for your sister,” he added, belligerently, “it’s her affair, not mine, Nor even yours—so far as I can see—since you got your share—and used it profitably.”
“Well, even conceding I’m the surgeon in this case is something,” Elsa commented bitterly. “And that much being so, is there anything I can bring you tonight—to—well—sort of improve your appearance in court? Like a fresh white shirt—if so, what size? Or—or a new tie? The cop that’ll have you in charge will let you change—in some anteroom—they always permit that.”
He gazed down at himself critically. “No, I guess not. This shirt’s okay—and so is this tie. No use, you know, for me to prejudice Hizzonner by the old, old gag—of appearing in court all scrubbed up, and rubbed up, and dolled up, like I fell out of a bandbox; every grifter since Kingdom Come has gone up to trial that way. No, bring me nothing. Unless perhaps—and this is on the assumption that you are the McCoy as my attorney—bring me nothing, perhaps, but one stick of chewing gum—which I can chaw on for a few minutes just before you slap me on the stand to deny all the charges, and not be spieling up there like a guilty lug with his dry mouth full of sand, nails, mush and what-have-you.”
“That’s a tall hard order to fill!” said Elsa, a little sarcastically. “One stick o’ gum! Okay. And what flavor, M’Lord Doe?”
“Well now, M’Lady Elsa, you’re barging into the deep waters of—of the psychology of saliva flow!” Elsa started. What a strange bird this criminal was. “For since my highly individual tummy crawls at peppermint, spearmint, pepsin, and all the rest of the standard cuds—and it be a well-known ‘fack’ that the pleasanter the flavor, the more the old saliva flows—the said stick’ll better be ‘Oh God.’ If you can get it, that is!”
“Oh God if I can get it?” repeated Elsa helplessly. “What—what the hell kind of talk is that, John Doe?”
“It does sound screwy, doesn’t it? Well, permit me—” and still seated, he put his hand on his chest and made an ironical bow. “—permit me to illuminate my verbal obfuscations! ‘Oh God’ is a new flavor that—that lives entirely up to its name. For when you first taste it, you invariably say—”
“—Oh God!” filled in Elsa, ironically. “Well, I never heard of it in my life, and I’ve had ice-cream sodas put together for me, containing every combination and nuance of flavors ever known—including violet, licorice—”
“The more,” he said delightedly, “I talk with you, the more I recognize my—my own protoplasmic pattern. A fact! But speaking of flavors, you haven’t, I take it, yet covered the nigger drugstores yet, eh?”
“Of course I haven’t. What do you take me for? But since we’re working here together to give you a moist mouth when you go up on that witness stand to—to—to probably try to lie your fool head off—damn it, I ought not to even put you on—but anyway, I’d like to at least show you I am your attorney. So—where do I get this Oh God gum?”
“Only God himself, I fear, knows,” he said blithely. “You see,” he explained, a little more seriously, “I happened, about a few months ago, to be in a nigger drugstore in K. C. Carrying about one degree of fever from the flu. And craved ice cream. Even a ice-cream sody! Just a—a big sissy, see? And knowing how the niggers go in for weird scents and flavors, I asked the proprietor to toss me together a new kind of sody. And he gave me one—with a single purple syrup right out of a single spigot—which he said was called ‘Oh God’ favor. And by gosh, Elsa, sweet sister connoisseur in flavorology, it had what—well, what never in my life I’ve encountered. Or will again, maybe, God help me. For ‘Oh God’ was its right name. And I asked the proprietor where in hell he got it. And he said he got limited amounts of the syrup from the drugstore of his brother, going as the Afric Drugstore on 24th and State, this town—Chicago.”
“Yes. That’s right in niggertown. And incidentally but a few blocks west of where that trial is to be held tonight. But go on? Since I’ve been saddled with you, darned if I don’t get me a new flavor out of it!”
“Well, you’ve got it, sister-collector! For—but anyway, when I was riding south on State Street yesterday, I saw that store—and having a yen to sip nectar with the gods themselves on Mount Olympus once more before I died, I hopped off and barged in. And asked for a sody—flavor ‘Oh God.’ Just a big sissy again, see? And—well—the black proprietor knew all about it—since he himself had originally made up the very syrup I’d encountered in his brother’s store in the K. C. niggertown, by dissolving in an ordinary sweet syrup base a new synthetic chemical tentatively called, by its inventor, ‘Oh God’—after the ejaculation of some coon on whom the first dose was tried out—in an ice-cream soda. But the black proprietor had none of the syrup at present. Let alone the chemical. ’Twas the invention, that chemical, he told me frankly—suspecting, I guess, that I was some kind of city soda-water spy or inspector—of a Jewish chemist living right above the very store, who invented it originally to disguise noxious drugs. The proprietor said, in fact—seeing I was a intelligent sort o’ bird—that ’twould even completely disguise valerian—”
“Poo!—ickey!” Elsa ejaculated involuntarily. And her freckled nose rose straight up. “Of all the horrible-smelling things—valer—But go on. I’m getting something, damn it, out of you.”
“Yes. Well, he said the inventor had had no luck whatsoever in getting his chemical adopted by the American Pharmaceutical Association, because he had refused its formula to the American Medical Association, and was now about to put it limitedly on the market himself—from right above that very shop—but in the form of chewing gum—with the idea, of course, of getting some big chewing-gum manufacturer like—like Wrigley to take it on. But again, the black proprietor implied that if a big-scale chewing-gum man eventually did take it on—or even a small-time chewing-gum manufacturer —and this Jew continued to stand pat on refusing to divulge the formula of his flavor, as he most certainly would—they might both find themselves right up before the F. and D.—what on earth is that?”
“The Federal Food and Drugs Commission, of course. The ‘Oh God’ could contain some coal-tar derivative, you know, that would make it illegal to circulate practically. ’Twon’t stop me, of course, from eventually having one soda made out of it—one, anyway. But go on?”
“That’s all there is, sweet one—there isn’t any more! Mr. Afric said the Jewish chemist stopped in there each night, for a coke, at exactly 7 o’clock—on his way home from someplace where he worked. And being ‘wan fine feller’—and werry proud of his concoction—would beyond any doubt give me enough for a few ‘sodies.’ And so, quite frustrated in the realm of my gastronomic psyche, I went on. For I was way behind on my afternoon schedule for blowing half a dozen safes—and bumping off half a dozen citizens—as you probably figure anyway. And—but here—we’re wasting a lot of words, I think, just to moisten me up tonight on the stand. Just fetch along a stick of pepsin gum—and we’ll call it a day; to be sure I can’t stomach it, and if it dries me up—and I stand mute up there—saying muh ooh gug gug wooh kugh gug—your case will be up the flue, won’t it?”
“God forbid it be up the flue any further than it is,” Elsa said hastily. “If you were to make an ass of yourself on the stand, that would be the finishing touch. Well, I have your big order. One stick o’ gum. Flavor, ‘Oh God.’ And if it’s manufactured at all—or any gum whatsoever emanating from a number at 24th and State—which would be it—you’ll get it. For between here and my office I pass the stand of a legless Cockney known as Gummy Joe, who specializes in chewing gums. Has a sign on his showcase reading ‘If It’s Made, Joe Has It!’ And he has. For he has chewing gums from India—Czechoslovakia—Japan. Even balls of sweet bark from out the African jungles. Betel nut, from Brazil. When any customer tells him about a new gum—he stocks it. A real artist in chewingumology—”
“As even are you and I—in flavorology, eh?”
“As I am, anyway,” said Elsa curtly. “And so—if Gummy Joe has this divine gum which will change your oog gugs to intelligible language, I suppose you’re all set to deny the charges tonight?”
“Why, of course,” he said in manifest surprise. “Why not?”
“Well, the point is that putting you on to deny ’em—whether with your trap full of Oh God Chewing Gum or not—means laying you right in—in Lou Vann’s mitts!
For then he has the right to cross-examine you. In other words, to tear you to pieces! To bring out—that you have no alibi. To—and that’s the point! However, sufficient to the evening is the evil thereof! And thanks, anyway, to tipping me off to a new flavor. And in connection therewith, now that you and I’ve established the similarity—nay, the identity!—of our—our protoplasmic pattern, as you’ve put it—our mutual connoisseurship in flavorology—our psychical and spiritual en rapportness, as perhaps you’ll let me put it?—have you still nothing to tell me—as to your—that is, our—line of defense?”
And again he visibly froze up.
“No, nothing,” he said curtly. “For all I can say is what I’ve already said. Which is—!” His lips closed in a hard line. “That Skull—at least so far as I personally am in a position to know—wasn’t this fellow Wah Lee’s. Though I can’t establish that by telling you whose it might be. And I didn’t break into Mr. Vann’s safe, and take the skull. Nor knock off the hack. Sure—I know they say I admitted all of that. And it’ll be two birds on the upper stratum establishing that fact. And one bird on the lower stratum—” His voice was bitterly ironical. “—with the sconce in his mitt—to boot! But I’m innocent. Though I haven’t, as I told you, reputable witnesses—” Again she felt he was mimicking her. “—to say I wasn’t right up in Mr. Vann’s office. At 10:43 last night. Nor for hours before. Nor hours after. I’m—I’m innocent of the charges, that’s all. And if you are the McCoy—my lawyer—and I’m not fully convinced of that yet—and you’re decent enough to call my lone witness, I know he’ll—he’ll testify to the fact that I’m a ‘right guy.’ ”
She rose. “A right guy, hey?” she retorted ironically. “A—right—guy? A lot of good that will do you. All right. You can block me, John, a dozen ways running—but you can’t stop me from trying to do something—for you. Though—though God knows what. I—” She did now press the button. “I’m going! And quick!” And indeed Elsa did now want to hop on the job, and get hold of this man’s one lone witness, and try to find out from the latter what on earth she could about her client—or what on earth the man thought he could testify to.
The lockup keeper’s feet were coming from afar.
“Good-bye, John,” she said. “You’ve told me lots today—all of which was nothing! For all this bunkalorum about my being a ‘sweet child’—and something you’d ‘looked for for years’—a hell of a lot of good that, John, will be in a court action. So, all I’ve got to say—” The lockup keeper’s feet were coming closer now. “—is that I won’t walk out on you. For I half believe—well, maybe,” she amended more accurately, “4/9ths believe that maybe you are innocent. In some wild weird way that I can’t grasp. But that doesn’t mean you can be acquitted. No—not by a damn sight—no. And if I lose your case tonight—well, my sister—my sister—she loses—a hundred thousand dollars.”
“And,” said he who called himself John Doe, rising now from his bunk, “if you lose my case tonight, Elsa, I get—probably—the electric chair. So—if I can risk it—maybe you—and your fool sister!—can.”
“Yes, I suppose—we can,” admitted Elsa. And stepped through the narrow gap offered her, as the lockup keeper, now arrived, opened the iron-barred door.
CHAPTER XVII
Expert Testimony Re Demise Wah Lee!
Dr. Purvis Graham, retired nasal surgeon, stepped within the richly carpeted anteroom of the State’s Attorney’s office, Curious about the reason he had been requested to come there, he shifted his silver-headed walking stick from one hand to the other, and glanced at the platinum wristwatch held to his wrist by its very masculine leather wrist-strap. Its hands were at a few minutes past 5. A tall, thin female Cerberus approached him from within an adjoining room, closing the door behind her.
“I am Dr. Purvis Graham,” the surgeon said, smoothing down the silver-tinged hair on one side of his head.
“Mr. Louis Vann, in a brief telephone conversation with me, said that he would like me to—”
“Oh yes, Doctor. Yes. Yes. Mr. Vann said that the moment you came you were to be admitted.”
She threw open the door of the room from which she had just emerged, and beckoned the surgeon in. He stepped within, and the lone occupant of the room, working at a great highly polished desk, under a vast flood of bright and generous daylight—thanks to the continuation this year, over America, of “Daylight Savings Time,”—turned—then rose.
“Dr. Graham—I believe?”
“Yes. And you are Mr. Vann, of course?”
“Yes, Doctor. Be seated, if you will.”
The single door closing the two men together was now shut, and the doctor dropped down in the capacious armchair, next the State’s Attorney’s big desk. The latter, pivoting about, was the first to speak.
“Dr. Graham, I think it very fine of you to be willing to come down here in person. For I was willing, you know, to have my assistant bring out to your place what I wanted an opinion on. But you insisted—”
Graham raised his hand. “Not at all, Mr. Vann. I am a very lonely man since I retired from nose surgery. And I was coming downtown anyway—first to take a look into the nose—and at the retinae—of a patient of a physician friend of mine, the patient in question living close in on Michigan Avenue—after which I expected but to repair to my club to indulge in a solitarily eaten dinner and spend a weary evening reading magazines—all this when your call came. It was a pleasure to stop off here and break the monotony of things.”
“Thank you, Dr. Graham.” The State’s Attorney was silent for a few seconds. “Now let’s see, Doctor. First, you are the author, are you not, of a textbook used in many medical colleges? On nasal surgery?”
“Yes, I am. Graham’s Surgery of the Nasal Accessory Sinuses, it is known as. And while once a regular professor at Chicago U—and I am now an honorary instructor. That is,”—he gave a gentle laugh—“I still give lectures—and the students listen to them!”
The State’s Attorney smiled. But a most satisfied smile.
“And,” he asked, “you practiced—for how many years!”
“How many years? Oh heavens—many! Let’s see? 39!—40?—no, 41. 41 years, Mr. Vann.”
“Ah, that’s fine! You are my man!”
Dr. Graham was politely puzzled but said nothing.
The State’s Attorney spoke again.
“Doctor, did you read the early afternoon papers—out on the stands—from 2:30 on?”
“No, Mr. Vann, I did not. From noonday on I’ve been seated in front of my telephone worriedly waiting a long-distance call from my son-in-law in Los Angeles—you see my daught
er, his wife, has been going through a difficult delivery. However, the baby arrived late this afternoon—a bouncing boy!—my daughter came through the ordeal just—just perfectly—and so, with my suspense relieved, I started down to the club. Catching the request, however, just before leaving—to look in on this—er—patient I spoke of. But coming straight here first, however, as my physician friend, Dr. Oldfield Owens, says there’s no extreme rush. As for reading the afternoon papers—” he chuckled. “—I haven’t yet read my morning paper today, to tell you the truth!”
“Ah, that’s fine!”
Dr. Graham raised his brows, but said nothing. But he creased them into fine wrinkles as the State’s Attorney, swinging open the door of a cabinet in his lower desk, brought forth a skull to which was tightly affixed, by a long strip of white surgical adhesive tape, its lower jawbone. Presenting it to the doctor as he now did—rearwards—Graham was enabled to see four separate pairs of initials written in India ink on its rounded back—all, however, in obviously different hands—and one pair, reading “M. K.,” being printed only, and crudely; in the midst of the entire cluster of pairs of initials, Graham also perceived instantly a small sinister black hole which he realized had something very much to do with matters criminological and legal.
Vann was speaking.
“Doctor, will you take a look at this skull—aided, perhaps, do you so require, by my electric pocket torch in my desk—and tell me the precise and exact nature of the surgical work that has been done on it? Or, shall I say—in it!”
Graham took the skull by its rounded back. And sweeping his gaze over and about it, spoke. “No trefining or trepanning, plainly—so it must be intranasal work. So then—” He raised a hand, as Vann’s hand went toward a drawer. “No, I won’t need your pocket torch, Mr. Vann. If you’ll just draw down the shades—then light and tilt forward your desk light there. Yes, I happen to have in my own pockets the tools of my particular trade—in my breast pocket, the retinoscope to check retinal conditions so often occurring in nose conditions —even in brain conditions too!—and, in my coat pocket, my reflecting mirror. For I brought them both along, of course, to check Mayor Sweeney’s ca—” He stopped short, confused.
The Man with the Wooden Spectacles Page 19
