The Case of the Lavender Gripsack

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER XVI

  CHAPTER XVII

  CHAPTER XVIII

  CHAPTER XIX

  CHAPTER XX

  CHAPTER XXI

  CHAPTER XXII

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CHAPTER XXIV

  CHAPTER XXV

  CHAPTER XXVI

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 1939, 1967 by Harry Stephen Keeler.

  All rights reserved.

  *

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidepress.com

  DEDICATION

  To BRUCE PATTERSON

  May the whites and blacks from his

  Talented drawing pen always combine

  As startlingly as they do today!

  CHAPTER I

  “Name, Please?”

  Elsa Colby, Criminal Attorney, just turning up the high soapstone steps of the dark old mansion where was to be held, within less than thirty minutes now, the first case she should ever defend in actual court—the State of Illinois in re grand larceny and murder in the first degree!—noted that she was at least not going to have to ring the old-fashioned saucer-sized bell at the top to gain entrance! For that precise operation was just being performed by a man who had preceded her up the steps—a man carrying a heavy gnarled cane so thick that it was no less than a bludgeon, and wearing—of all things in Chicago!—a white African pith helmet.

  Was he, she wondered unhappily, some exceedingly impor­tant State’s witness against the penniless, luck­less—and, incidentally, unknown—client whom Fate had decreed she must defend? And defend, moreover, in—of all places—a private home. And—of all times—at night. One more human link, perhaps—that man up ahead of her—in the vicious chain which doubtlessly was to set her client in the electric chair.

  And an insignificant-looking figure she herself—lone attor­ney for the defense—must be, Elsa rejected with a pained sigh as she continued to climb on up the high white steps in the invisible wake left by the man ahead. The latter now leaned on his gnarled bludgeon-like cane, and waited stolidly for his ring to be answered. Elsa’s scant ninety pounds of weight were buttoned into a borrowed and far too large, soiled gray raincoat—for there was a faintish smell of London in the October Chicago air tonight! Her red hair—as brightly red today as it had been on the day she was born, twenty-six years ago—was shoved up into a loosely knitted black tam-o’-shanter cap, her bluegreen eyes were riveted feverishly upon those lighted doors up ahead, and her small freckled hands clutched her two pieces of important court­room lug­gage: her worn paperoid port­folio containing her papers, and that ancient carpet-bag containing—

  And now Elsa was to receive her first surprise—of all those which this memorable night was to offer!—and at the precise moment when the man in the African pith helmet should render his name and identity to the official doorkeeper who opened the front door, even as Elsa reached the second-to-last step from the top. Thereby revealing to Elsa—though she did not then know it—the very individual who was to serve tonight, in the improvised court, as court-clerk and bailiff combined. And who was officially to ticket, for the State, exhibit after exhibit, until—

  Gazing frowningly and blackly out from the open doors, he brought to Elsa, for the first time, the essence of the utter hostility which she—with such a client as she had!—must face tonight. For he was tall, this Cerberus, and had a forelock hanging down his forehead as black as the alpaca coat he wore. His nose was large and blue-veined, and cold blue eyes gazed past it and proclaimed that, while doorkeeper only, no mere curiosity-seekers were going to enter this house tonight. Indeed, a very official-looking foolscap sheet in his hand showed that those who had a legal right to be here were duly recorded.

  “Your name?” he was asking peremptorily of the man with the pith helmet.

  “Arthur—Gilbert—Foshart,” the man at the bell was saying. “A—a witness for the State.”

  While Elsa, still six feet in the latter’s rear, could only gasp. And say to herself:

  “Well—I’ll be damned! So the State of Illinois even has to pluck my own dead father’s best friend—out of the jungles—to send my client to the chair! What next? Yoo-hoo—Mr. Foshart?—yoo-hoo!”

  CHAPTER II

  After Twenty-Four Years

  “Okay, Mr. Foshart,” the man with the blue-veined nose was saying. “Step in.” And, to Elsa, who was now on the very threshold: “Hold it, sister! And what sob sheet might you be with, eh?”

  “None,” was Elsa’s plaintive answer. “I’m—I’m just Elsa Colby—the attorney for the defense!”

  “Oh!” The alpaca-coat-clad doorkeeper was plainly taken aback by having publicly branded the defense attorney as a sob-sister. “Step—step in, of course,” he said hastily. While the man with the huge cane and pith helmet, already arrested evidently by Elsa’s excited call—by Elsa’s own answer to the Cerberus—had turned within the high-ceilinged hallway, with its single hatrack, and its ornate carved balustraded stairway going to the upper regions, and was staring at Elsa with mouth wide open.

  And proved to he, thereby, a white-haired yet exceedingly well-preserved old man of at least seventy-five years of age, wearing rimless toric spectacles, and having a short white beard against which his skin shone actually bronze.

  “Elsa—child!” he was exclaiming from within the hallway. “Good heavens!—how—why—”

  “Court’s being held,” blue-nose was coldly instruct­ing them both, in the open doorway, “in the drawing-room—second door back. But the parlor there is empty—and you can draw the sliding door of it to, if you two are old friends and want to talk before going on in—in court. And, by the way, Miss Colby, your uncle, Mr. Silas Moffit, is in the courtroom, and he says he’d like to have a word with you before court op—”

  But Elsa, glowing with the thought of miraculously seeing her own dead father’s best friend—even as a witness against her—felt herself suddenly burn up with wrath.

  “And you—you tell my dear uncle, Silas Moffit,” she half choked, “that I don’t want any words with him—whatso­ever!”

  “Okay,” was blue-nose’s reply, a slight smile on his lips. “I’ll convey that to him, exactly, as soon as I go on in—but I’m quite certain he’ll be out here and buttonhole you just the same. For he wants very much to—your names, please”? This to a black-bearded foreign-looking man, with a young tow-headed shock-headed boy at his side, who had just come up the steps. More State’s witnesses, Elsa knew! For they certainly weren’t hers!

  “Well, Elsa—Elsa,” the sunbrowned elderly man was saying, “do step off, won’t you, please, in the parlor here, a moment? I—I must talk to you. It’s at least twenty minutes, anyway, before court opens. Or—or have you some further important preparations to do—in your case?”

  Elsa laughed mirthlessly. “If only I had!” was all she said, moving off out of the hallway, where one lighted doorway far down did indeed show the location of “court,” and into the gargantuan parlor of the old
man­sion. In the shadow of the doorway Elsa set down her two pieces of luggage, and carefully drew together the single sliding door on herself and the old man who had once been her father’s best friend—the man who, until the last two minutes, she did not even dream was outside of Africa.

  He had, in the meantime, deposited his huge heavy knobbed cane and his pith helmet on the piano, and was surveying her with paternal fondness as she came slowly up under the tall floor-lamp and smilingly faced him—her entire small self illuminated, from her freckled forehead to her toes, because of her own shortness compared to the lamp. “Well, Elsa—Elsa—Elsa,” he said again weakly, “you could have knocked me down with a feather—when I heard your name just now. I couldn’t have been more surprised than if I’d suddenly heard that a new world war—World War No. III this time!—had suddenly started up somewhere.”

  “And I—no less,” Elsa replied. “For don’t forget, Mr. Foshart, I wrote you last—and a few days later sent you my photo—into the very heart of tropical Africa!”

  “You did indeed,” he added. “Though it happens, child, that Leopoldville—while in the tropics, and up the famous Congo River as well—is only twenty-four hours’ ride by steamer from the West Coast. And, un­fortunately, I left Africa just before the promised picture itself arrived. And that was why I stared at you—open-mouthed—just now, when you gave in your name.” Foshart shook his head wonderingly. “Good heav­ens!—you were just a red-headed and—uh—very pert infant girl of two, sitting on your father’s knee, when last I saw you; and that was—was twenty-two years before the close of the late war—therefore twenty-four long years ago!”

  “And as you now see,” Elsa declared, “I’m still the same homely infant—with the same bright red hair”—she removed her tam-o’-shanter and ruled out her crim­son curls—”and lots of freckles—and plenty pert, be­lieve me, when I have anything to be pert about! Which, God knows, I haven’t tonight. For—but I can’t for the life of me understand, Mr. Foshart, what you’re doing here, in this case of the State of Illinois versus John Doe for safe-burglary and murder. I—”

  “Well, Elsa child,” he broke in, “I can quickly settle that! The very day after I got your letter, in response to my own rather wild shot addressed to you just ‘Chicago’—and asking that directory service be used—your letter which told me how you’d just started out in criminal law—I boarded a ship for America. After having lived there in Africa for twenty-three long years with my son who, I think I told you, is Director of the Lower Congo River Ports, I’d been summoned, you see, Elsa, to come here to Chicago to testify as to certain family records in a probate matter necessary to wind up the estate of one of my brothers who died here a year ago. Anyway, I got into New York only this morning, and into Chicago—by air—late this afternoon. My luggage still trailing along after me—that’s why I’m wearing my favorite pith helmet—the only hat I’ve got at present. And–”

  “And that enormous bludgeon,” Elsa inquired innocently, “is for—”

  “Oh, that kasawga club—with which we protect ourselves in Africa, now and then, from ugly blacks? Why, that’s to protect myself from those Chicago thugs and gangsters you—ahem—now maybe your client—ahem—”

  “—is a thug—and a gangster? Yes, maybe he is, Mr. Foshart. Certainly I don’t know! A while ago tonight I thought—sap that I was!—that I did know who and what he was; but, as it happens, I was the victim of a bum steer—or, if our American language isn’t intelligible to you, I—I was getting a runaround—and what a one! Anyway, I can faithfully say that I don’t know who my client is from Adam.”

  The old gentleman stared at her bewilderedly, but went on with his explanation. “Well, anyway, child, I’d no sooner settled down for tea with my one living Chicago brother—the one in Hyde Park—when your District Attorney, Mr. Lou Vann, called him on the phone to see whether by any chance a certain blueprint, desirable in connection with this case against some ‘John Doe,’ could possibly be made available. Which it was, Elsa—in the attic of my brother’s home. And moreover, here was I—who originally made that blueprint! And so Mr. Vann asked me to come here, at this number of Prairie Avenue, tonight. As a witness for the State. A purely technical witness, however, dear girl, for I’m merely to testify that the old Schlitzheim Brewery, which I originally designed, and the remains of which I understand are still on your Goose Island, had but one hexagonally-shaped room.”

  “Oh-oh!” said Elsa. “I catch that, all right! Thus further establishing that a certain skull, found today on my client—heaven help the idiot!—is the skull of Wah Lee, and the corpus delicti for another and bigger murder case. The D. A. is working for big things tonight. First, conviction of my client. Second, conviction of a no­torious and as-yet-uncon­victed kidnaper and mur­derer! And last but far from least—nomination and re-election as the Peepul’s Choice!”

  “But no doubt, child, you know the real circum­stances under which your client was doubtlessly falsely appre­hended—otherwise you wouldn’t, I sup­pose, have ever taken his case; and no doubt you have induced him to go on the stand, tell the truth—” He stopped bewilderedly.

  Elsa shook her head wonderingly. This old man, once a famous technological architect, had become very very naïve, she saw, from long residence in Africa.

  “Make him tell the truth?” she said with a rueful smile. “Yes—make him! By feeding him in court, maybe, a piece of chewing-gum, impregnated with some newly-invented truth-telling drug! As I outlined tonight to an ex-lawyer in the old ancient Ulysses S. Grant Building—where my own two by four office is!”

  “You—you are going to do that?”

  “Heavens no, Mr. Foshart. I only wish I did have a dose of some fantastic drug like that—even if I had to jab it into my confounded client with—with a hypo­dermic needle. No; drugs and truth-telling chewing gums have I none—and all that folderol was merely told to a too-nosy confrere in my building tonight to keep him from inquiring too extensively about what I did expect to do—or try, to save my legal face!”

  “I see—I see. But, of course, the mere losing or winning of this inconsequential case won’t mean any­thing to you, child? For my brother tells me, Elsa, that you’re pretty wealthy—”

  “Wealthy?” echoed Elsa, aghast. “Well, all I can say is that th’ gorg’is dress that just now is completely shrouded by this here raincoat—and the raincoat, inci­dentally, is borried from a poor commercial artist who has a cubicle on the floor beneath mine—well, that just-now-completely-occluded dress is a gift from the negress who attended me as a child. Yes, old Aunt Linda—if you remember her. One of her fortune-telling clients owns a dress shop. Aunt recently gave her a lucky reading! And so the client gave Aunt Linda an order for a dress—any dress in the shop! And Aunt Linda gave me the order today—so’s I wouldn’t have to go into court in—in the knit cotton rag I was wearing when she took pity on me!” Elsa shook her red head again. “Wealthy!”

  “Well,” Foshart qualified, “wealthy then, when you’re thirty, and you get your nine-tenths share of Colby’s Nugget which your father left you. For my brother told me this evening, Elsa, that that big piece of northwest side vacant is not only paid up for years to come—so far as its taxes go—through some kind of uncollectible condemnation-judgment which your father turned in on it years ago in lieu of tax-payments, but is worth fully $130,000 today. So the winning or losing of this case, I take it, means quite nothing to the weal—well, potentially wealthy—Miss Elsa Colby?”

  Elsa gazed sadly and silently at the old man out of Africa. And then replied to him: “The winning—or the losing—of this case tonight, Mr. Foshart, definitely de­termines whether the potentially wealthy Miss E. Colby remains the potentially wealthy Miss E. Colby! For it just so happens that if the judge brings in a verdict against my client—it means that Elsa Colby has lost every jot and tittle of her ownership in Colby’s Nugget. That she’s a pauper, with nothin
g in the world but $142.51 in debts—and a $100 fee for her first court appearance. That, Mr. Foshart, is what it means if Hizzoner tonight says ‘Guilty’!”

  CHAPTER III

  Quitclaim!

  The old man from Africa stared at Elsa in the lamplight.

  “Why—I don’t understand—”

  “Well, it’s merely,” she said dryly, “that to get through college I borrowed $5,000 from Father’s half-brother, Uncle Silas Moffit—and, incidentally, the owner of that other one-tenth interest in Colby’s Nug­get. I borrowed it against my own nine-tenths share; but since no mortgage was possible under the precise conditions in which Father bequeathed it, I gave Uncle an assignment against the receipts from my eventual sale of my nine-tenths share—which sale couldn’t be consummated, of course, until I became thirty. An assign­ment, incidentally, for $15,000—not just $5,000. Oh yes—cutthroat interest all right, but—”

  “But Silas Moffit,” the old man said grimly, “always was a cutthroat. I remember him from even twenty-four long years ago.”

  “And into this assignment,” Elsa went on, “he tucked a neat little clause which specified that if, after I got out of school and entered criminal practice, I failed to acquit my first client—or was disbarred during my first six months of practice—my assignment was a complete quitclaim to all my interest in Colby’s Nugget. And—”

  “Oh, my heavens, child! That—that was terrible. That clause made it a contingential quitclaim. And the Su­preme Court of the United States, as I read recently even in far-off Africa, affirmed the validity of a quitclaim of valuable oil lands in Idaho based on nothing but the amount of rainfall in a given county in a fixed period, in the case of—of—”

  “The Idaho and Wyoming Oil Company versus Harry Barrons—yes.”

  “That’s right! But anyway, Elsa, a quitclaim is—is legal dynamite. In all countries—and lands. For if the grantee re-conveys—”