The Case of the Lavender Gripsack

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “Simply because—they were real! And not unlocatable characters like all my others. And they led Judge Penworth to hear me completely out—thinking they would eventually ap­pear in my story in actual connection with myself. Which—they didn’t, of course. The reason I knew their names—and so much about them—was that they were people whom King hates, for this, that, and the other reason. Hates worse than poison—judging from the way he raved about each and every one in that phone conversation. And—but anyway, Elsa, this afternoon, in my cell, it came to me that my only chance to save my life was to make King want to confirm my Minneapolis alibi, since it created an all-evening alibi for him—over the whole course of the time when he was committing murder; and Steenburg likewise—since I had picked up from King’s conversation that Steenburg was in Minneapolis all evening, and closeted with none other than this ‘Two-Gun’ Polack Eddy, wanted by the police. But Steenburg, as you heard—and as I had to confess later, since otherwise the Court itself would have called him up—wouldn’t play ball at all, at all! Though I subsequently used him as a direct alibi witness, since I was certain, at least, he’d never, never be down here—establishing himself as having been with ‘Two-Gun’ Eddy. But King—ah, King!—now that was different. I was certain he’d play in. But when he learned what I was going to do, he—he just refused to fall. But since by then I’d mapped out a pretty elaborate story, including a more or less non-est Steenburg in it, I decided to go ahead anyway and tell it. For the very story, you see, contained mo­ives which would explain Steenburg not wanting to confirm it; and King the same; and—”

  “Yowsah!” commented Elsa sepulchrally. “And that’s where our bright raconteur overstepped himself.” She sighed. “King,” she observed now mirthlessly, “could hardly afford to back up an alibi of yours that—if it should get ripped to pieces on the stand—would knock it out for him also. And—but see here—about Rozalda, John—” Elsa’s heart felt heavy. “John, did you purposely blacken a woman’s name tonight, describe her as having a married lover, merely to weave her into your story, as this—”

  “You mean Rozalda, Elsa? Elsa, I give you my absolute word that nothing I said on the stand tonight can impugn Rozalda Mardzienski, of Minneapolis, Minnesota.”

  “I am glad,” was all Elsa said, and filled in the remaining facts herself. “You heard King—relating the facts which you related? Yes—I am so glad. But now—about this skull?”

  “King knew the man whose skull it is, Elsa. For he discussed the man and the case frankly and openly. Referred to him as ‘Blinky the Swede’—and even spoke of the rich old ladies ‘Blinky’ had squired around. Though I must admit, Elsa, that it was more than evident that the monicker ‘Blinky’ was merely a contemptuous name by which only King himself personally referred to the fellow, and not any name by which the fellow was regularly known. Anyway, ‘Blinky,’ it seems, used to come into one of King’s books to bet his gigolo wages. He made a huge long-shot killing one night—and one of King’s henchmen, following ‘Blinky’—at King’s orders, incidentally—shot the Swede—through the back of the head and out of his good eye, incidentally—and took all the coin back. Took ‘Blinky’ himself—his dead body, that is—out into the country somewhere—and planted him. A year later, however, King, afraid that the body might get plowed up and the head identified, since there was a glass eye in it, went out himself, and himself—at night—dug it up as far as the head, which he chopped away with a hand-axe, and brought back to his home. Where, down in the cellar, he boiled it down and scraped it—and set it up as a piece of bric-a-brac. In reality, a luck fetish for himself. Since the skull of a murdered man is good luck to a gamber, you know. He told Mrs. King he bought it from some peddler.”

  “Well—had this Swede been operated on, that his skull should have borne in it the signs of—”

  “No. The skull itself had been illicitly operated on—though not by Sciecinskiwicz—as I told it tonight. King loaned it once to some gang doctor who now and then helps to dope horses, and who really is related to that ‘Two-Gun’ Eddy. And who wanted to practice that particular operation. And the skull did come back to King—though, in actuality, via parcel post—carrying the same inked letters ‘M.K.’ near the bullet hole which had been on it when it left. Identifying it definitely as King’s, and which two letters, Elsa, were put on the skull by the very man King was talking to, since the day King prepared it for shipment—as I gathered from the conversa­ion—he had had a burned right hand—and this other fellow had had to help him out with the mechanical details. In my story tonight, of course, I attributed the placing of those initials on the skull to Dr. Sciecinskiwicz. In actuality, I’m not able to name the man who really put them on the skull.”

  “But you filched that skull—”

  “Yes, Elsa.” He seemed eager now to take up the thread of what he was maintaining was the real story. “After King hung up and went downstairs—presumably to wash the blood off his wrist, and probably to burn up his torn shirt, and to make some coffee too—I filched the skull off the mantelpiece near the built-in safe, and sneaked silently out the front door. And came to Chicago with it—on that same Scotchman’s Special.”

  “But why?” And Elsa knew that her face was the picture of hopeless puzzlement.

  “Why? Because, Elsa, King knew about that ‘meet’ that was to be made today in Old Postoffice Block here in Chicago. For while getting his connection there with that party who’d just been on that murder ride with him, he evidently got into a conversation being held on a Minne­apolis wire. Judging, you understand, from all he related to his henchman subsequently. Anyway, it seems obvious, that two Minneapolis crooks already knew—at the hour of eleven last night—that Mr. Vann’s safe here in Chicago had just been successfully opened. And the skull of Wah Lee, that kidnapped Chinese youth, stolen. Learned it, no doubt, by long-distance telephone. And they knew, moreover, that the skull was to be passed today—and under what circumstances, too—from a member of some safe-cracking mob who did the job, to the old Parson Gang. Or rather the remnants thereof! And for a thousand dollars cold. And King, realizing he had a skull that was a perfect replica in nearly all ways of the stolen one, was half inclined to ‘muscle in’ on the ‘meet,’ and cop the thousand berries—but was afraid of a bump-off. Evidently the man he talked to was afraid likewise. But me, Elsa—well, I was broke. I couldn’t afford to be. So I took the chance.”

  “And so all the time, John,” she said wearily, “you knew that Mr. Vann’s safe had been cracked—and Wah Lee’s skull stolen?”

  “Yes, Elsa. But would I dare have told that tonight? By God, Elsa, what I’ve just told you is less confirmable than what I told on the witness stand there. And which had zero con­irmability! For there’s nobody to back all this up but King himself. Who’s failed flatly to rise to my cast. And—but anyway, to get back to my story. The true one. As you know, I made the ‘meet.’ Rather, I ought to say, took up a position for it. Carrying a crimson box that, from King’s conversation, I’d learned he’d learned was to to be used to house the stolen Wah Lee skull. And when Archbishop Pell yonder came up to me, Elsa, I was absolutely certain he was a Parson Gang man—but for one thing, his feet seemed too big to be the McCoy—and, damn fool that I was, I tried to push the ‘sale’ of my phony goods. By airy-fairily claiming to have knocked in the safe that nobody—judging from the early morning Chicago papers—knew had been knocked in; and to have the skull which nobody—judging again from the early morning Chicago papers—even knew had turned up. Nobody, that is, but the underworld and, particularly, the Parson Gang. Yes, God help me, Elsa, I went and actually ‘pushed my sale’ in front of two witnesses who had to both turn out to be on the legit. And—well—” He shrugged his shoulders wearily. “Well, I’ve lost! Hands down! I would have wagered my very life—I did wager it, Elsa!—that King would spring avidly to back me up tonight as to him and me being in each other’s company from nine to twelve last night.
But—” And John Doe gave a helpless gesture with his hands. “But no. He wouldn’t! And didn’t. And were I to have told—should I even try to tell now—how he came into the house all flushed, with blood on his wrist, his shirt torn open, mud on his face; how he emptied a couple of empty shells from his gun, and refilled it; of his conversation about the murder he’d just com­mitted—oh hell!—Judge Penworth here would—”

  “—would disgustedly stop you pronto,” Elsa put in for him. “And tell you to name whoever it was could establish your whereabouts elsewhere at those hours last night. And to make it snappy.” Elsa was silent. “No, there’s quite and absolutely no use of trying to put a man on the stand who, if he confirmed you in the slightest detail, would start the Minneapolis District Attorney out on an investigation which might, more likely than not, put King finally in the electric chair himself. No—no—no use! I’m—I’m not even thinking of that hopeless thing. What I’m thinking of is—John,” she broke off desperately, “you proved tonight on the stand you were the world’s cleverest liar. In the way you wove all those people into a practically nonexistent pattern. Maybe it’s a faculty that’s come to you from playing with that Meccano outfit when you were a boy. Or maybe you’re—you’re just a ‘natural’ at that sort of thing! But the question is now, by God, John, are—are you lying to me even now? Are you really perhaps protecting somebody higher up in the Wah Lee kidnap—” Elsa smoothed back from her forehead a couple of strands of red hair which she knew had slipped across it. “No, John; one sample of your super-lying tonight has made me all-fired skeptical of everything that comes out of your lips. Everything, that is, but one thing, John.”

  “And what’s that?” he asked unhappily.

  “Well, you said tonight, John, that you loved me. And that is the one thing I believe. For being a red-head myself, I know how red-heads know exactly whom they want in life—and immediately they meet ’em. And,” she continued hur­riedly, “you had no motive to lie to me—at least on that. Besides—a woman can always tell when a man is handing out a line. And last, but not least, John, the truth was in your eyes when you said that. That is, I’ve my fingers crossed—” and Elsa now held them up thus “—and your eyes don’t know how to lie, too! But now you, John, you, you—you listen to me! I’m due to lose the valuable property my daddy left me when you catch that chair. To lose it instantly—the very second you catch the very sentence to that chair. And I save that prop­erty—if, by God’s own chance, I prevent you from catching that sentence. And, John, if you’ve told me the truth just now—I can clear you. But only if you have! For if you’ve again lied—well, John, my very ability to clear you otherwise will, in that case, strap you so tight in that chair that Abraham Lincoln, Gabriel Heatter, and Daniel Webster, talking con­tinuously for ten hours, couldn’t even mitigate your sen­tence—and forty appeals couldn’t remand it for new trial. So think hard, you—you John! If you’re telling me the truth—that that skull found on you is the skull of one ‘Blinky, the Swede,’ I will put in some evidence here tonight that will clear you. Oh yes, I know all about how Swedes and China­men both have high cheekbones—and how cranial indices mean nothing. And I’m referring to neither. I—”

  “Wait!” he interrupted. His face was tense. “You—you haven’t gotten hold of the X-ray films that were taken off Wah Lee? If you have, I—I refuse to let you bring them into the case. I—”

  She was laughing scornfully at his first words. So much so that his latter words were slow in percolating into her consciousness.

  “Wah Lee’s X-rays?” she repeated. “In God’s name, how could I have anything in my possession that you yourself heard tonight went up in smoke—and very black smoke too, considering they were celluloid? And that—but I guess I get it now!—you were mentally ironing out the fine points of your forthcoming tale while that testimony was being droned out. I mean, in short, how Wah Lung testified briefly tonight, on recall, and in reply to some query of Vann’s, how he, Wah, sent those X-ray films years ago to some friend who was interested in such things and wanted to see ’em. No, no names given—Penworth instructed Wah, before his testi­mony on that, to omit mention of unnecessary and particu­larly noninvolved persons, since—anyway, Wah mailed the films in a package box on Clark and Madison Streets that got set afire shortly after by some drunk, and all its contents burned up, and even got written up in the papers to boot because some of the contents were patent papers. So-o-o—how could the X-rays show up now, since this friend of Wah Lung’s—whoever the hell he or she is, not that I care anyway—since the friend never got ’em, and being mailed in that particular box just before the fire, they plainly went up in smoke with all the rest of its contents, and—But there’s a l’il fragnent of your own trial for you, John, taking place while you were wool-combing for high spots for your story. However, ’tall means I very much haven’t got the X-rays, and nobody else could have ’em either, thank the—or maybe not thank the Lord, since—But see here, John, did I hear you back there actually refusing to let me put those X-rays in as evidence—if I had ’em? See here, John Doe, why did you make that demand?”

  And her blue eyes fixed him balefully.

  “Why!” he repeated, half stammeringly. “Why, because you—you never can tell, you know, when some sinus cavity in an X-ray picture, accidentally shaped like some other sinus cavity in another picture, might actually convict—”

  “Damn it to hell,” Elsa bit out, “you’re so practically con­victed now you couldn’t be any more convicted.” Her momentary red-headed rage fell. “But cheer up!” she added, not trying to conceal the irony in those three words. “I haven’t those X-rays, more’s the bad luck—that is, if you’re telling the truth at last. But if you’re not—” She surveyed him with strained face. “All right, John Doe. As I said a moment ago, think hard now. Mighty hard! For the point now is: if you really tried to ‘muscle’ in today on a criminal ‘meet’ with ‘Blinky’s’ skull—and really did hear King’s conversation about his past dealings with ‘Blinky the Swede,’ and ‘Blinky’s’ old ladies, and all that—then—and then only—can I clear you. By certain evidence—by certain testi­mon—”

  “Testimony?” he put in dazedly, as one who was not quite able yet to digest the startling information she was trying to give him. “I—I thought you said ’twas evidence? And—but see here, Elsa, we’ve no witnesses to give testimony. So—”

  “Oh yes we have,” she said meaningly. “Very much have we!”

  “Oh! That—that queer-looking elderly duck with the eagle nose and the ring of gray hair about his bald head, who’s been sitting next to Wah Lung all evening?” And intense, half fearsome curiosity lay in his tones.

  She, too, was curious about that well-to-do-looking individual, with his white starched waistcoat and the heavy gold watch-chain swung across it, who had been sitting all evening at Wah Lung’s elbow. But perforce had to deny him as her witness. “No, I don’t know him. At times I’ve had a hunch he’s one of Lou Vann’s surprise witnesses that he hasn’t sprung—somebody who, if we’d actually succeeded in placing you outside of the city of Chicago at the hour of that murder, is supposed to be able to jump on that with both feet, and smash it to atoms. Maybe, again, he is just a guest of Wah Lung’s. Though it seems queer for a Chinese to fetch along a white gues—”

  “Damned queer!” muttered the other. “Not on the up and up, either, for me—believe you me! And—” He shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “But go on, Elsa, will you? Whoever he is—here he is. So that’s that. And—”

  “Listen!” Elsa said confidently. “He doesn’t make any never-mind with me at all. When I get done with what’s in my mind to spring—he can swear you right into Lou Van’s very office last night for all I care. Only he won’t!” He stared at her humbly. “Elsa—for the life of me I can’t see what evidence—or testimony either—you can bring up now that can save me. And—”

  “Well, I can’t save you�
�unless you’re telling the truth. For if you’ve lied again, John, I’ll—I’ll be sending my own client straight to the chair. A most beautiful sight too—for the Press over there. A world-beater of a sight, if you ask me! One that’ll kill Elsa Colby for all time to come—as a criminal lawyer. And kill you too—for I’ll be thereby sending you so straight to that chair that—that I’ll be too damned sick at heart even to try a final address—in fact, by God, John, I—I won’t make one. You can just take it on the chin—in that case.” She paused a second for breath. “But if you’ll confess here and now to me, John, that you’ve again lied—I’ll jettison completely—what I have in mind, and attempt one other thing instead—a thing that in itself alone has a one in ten chance to succeed. That is, a one in ten chance for me—though maybe only one in twenty-five for you. A thing that’s not been entirely out of my mind from the very minute I entered this case. In short, a plea of insanity! A plea, that is, to remand you—for a lunacy hearing. For I’ve read deeply into insanity, John, and plenty—I even worked a half year once as a nurse in the Elgin State Hospital. And I know my stuff on that subject, John; and I happen to know, further­more, that Lou Vann doesn’t—he’s weak on the subject. And if it’s once conceded you’re insane—technically or other­wise—then Penworth has morally got to remand you for a lunacy hear—”

  “Listen,” he put in harshly, “you may be able to convince every gazabo in this room that I’m a nut—but I’m telling you you’ll never convince Penworth of it. And—”

  “Oh, you never can tell,” said Elsa, with the hopelessly native hopefulness of age twenty-six! “It’s a one in ten chance anyway. For, however, God’s sake, be honest with me now! Now—if ever! Is that skull absolutely and unequivocal­ly the skull of ‘Blinky the Swede’?”