“Gentlemen, I can’t conceive that all this should not be enough for you; that you can’t find your verdict in five minutes upon that hidden motive, plus the absolute indisputable fact that it was Archibald Chalmers whom John Carrington met that night a few minutes prior to ten o’clock along those bill boards on Western Avenue where he was just preparing to cross the vacant land and slay his friend. Gentlemen, a double, a man who even partially resembled Archibald Chalmers, could not have talked to John Carrington, safe, sane, sound and seasoned business man of keen intellect and accurate observational power, in the voice of Archibald Chalmers. And no double in this whole wide universe, standing under the arc-light, Carrington’s fountain pen in his hand, could perpetrate a forgery of Archibald Chalmers’ signature, a forgery so clever that the defence’s own experts have testified it is genuine. Gentlemen, I know, you know, that man Chalmers knows that he himself stood on Western Avenue that night, and we know it because he convicted himself with his own signature. And we know that no other person in Chicago was out to get van Slyke in the manner that Chalmers was.
“Now as for the two chief witnesses for the defence’s alibi. I am going to exclude utterly any consideration of the other facts which the defence desperately established. That Chalmers had no car of his own — well, what of it? Or that it takes a man so long to cover a certain distance on the L road. Again, what of it? And let us forget our time that was taken up by the ridiculous testimony of the tailor, Isadore Katzenberger, who allegedly received a damp cheque straight from Chalmers’ pen less than an hour before the murder. The Jew has sold his snivelling soul for a few pairs of trousers to press. And if you still think his soul was worth too much to him to be reckoned in trousers, then consider him a poor fool whose eyes watered so badly that he stood down in the night air waving a perfectly dry cheque that had been written out early that morning.
“Plenty of ways and means, I tell you, for this idler who works neither with his hands nor his brain, to have been out on North Oakley Avenue that night armed with a gun to kill his friend. Don’t let us forget for an instant the dozens of murder cases where perjury has been rampant, where witnesses have been made to establish an alibi. And let us throw out entirely the testimony of Oscar Okerburg, valet and varlet, and God knows what else in Chalmers’ life, taker of perquisites galore in an easy job, looking eagerly forward to a life of ease as valet to a rich man.
“Gentlemen, if you let Archibald Chalmers step from this room a free man, you upset every standard we have to go by in the law courts. Remember that. Gentlemen, you will find this man guilty. Common sense tells us that. And the penalty you will give him will be more than the price of a Mexican postage stamp. It will be commensurate with the crime of murder in the first degree.”
Ballmeier sat down. A spasm of handclapping in one corner of the room followed his fiery speech and its dramatic conclusion. Chalmers winced appreciably at the handclapping. Crosby smiled. Just such a speech had he listened to that day they had tried to convict Stanley Talcott in the bond theft case, and just such an appeal in its general nature had Henry White delivered in the tiny town of Brossville, that memorable day when Lindell Trent had been sentenced to the penitentiary while he, Crosby, sat mutely by and —
But the court was speaking to him.
“How long a time, Mr. Crosby, do you think your address to the jury will consume?” Lockhart glanced at the outer windows. The early spring night had fallen. The clock at the rear of the court-room said twenty minutes to five.
“About ten minutes or even less, your honour,” was Crosby’s reply.
“We will conclude the trial to-day then,” declared Lockhart.
Crosby rose. He fingered the papers on his table a long time before he spoke. The stillness which had first been absent from the court-room now became greater and greater. The jurymen sat in an air of expectancy. At last Crosby spoke.
“Gentlemen of the jury, the State’s attorney has been entertaining you for a little while with what we commonly call oratory. I, personally, do not run very much toward this sort of thing, and I shall therefore talk to you simply as man to man, discussing facts — likewise non-facts! I shall take hardly ten minutes of your time, and at the expiration of that time I shall put my client’s fate in your hands with perfect confidence.
“Joe Smalley witness to a threat. Joe Smalley, the revengeful waiter, vindictive because of the fat pickings of which he had been shorn by Mr. Chalmers’ anti-tipping rule. What a witness! But you say there was a threat. You heard Mr. Rudolph Ballmeier read it out, word by word — the letter from Mr. Chalmers to van Slyke. Well, what of it? How many of us at some time in our life have not said we would kill this or that person? It was for that very reason that I placed on the stand an individual, Mr. Hickey, the genealogist, who himself had received a death threat from Rupert van Slyke. Was Mr. Hickey killed, or any attempt made to kill him? His testimony and his presence in court show only too graphically the weight that need be accorded to such things as threats given in hot blood, and anger. As to that specific threat-letter sent to van Slyke by Mr. Chalmers, the personal differences between Mr. Chalmers and Rupert van Slyke which gave rise to this letter, my client has — as a gentleman — as a man, so my opponent terms him, who works not either with his hand or brain — preferred not to air before the public. This is his right. And in case my opponent’s allegation about working ‘neither with the hand or brain’ has any weight with any man of you, remember that even though we ourselves work and slave in a factory or office for twelve long hours per day, we are not justified in sending 2,200 volts into the body of, or shutting off from the sunlight for years, a human being more fortunately fixed through heredity and chance. Assuredly, we are not going to blame the individual on account of the defective economic system which produced him.
“But, you say, murder is murder. Of course it is. And just as Mr. Ballmeier for the State has dismissed with a few contemptuous words the chief testimony of the defence, testimony which he tried for five or six solid hours to shake, to pierce, to shatter, without the least success, so shall I, as attorney for the defence, dismiss all the stuff brought forward by the prosecution. I dismiss all this testimony without in any way casting doubt or suspicion upon the opinions of our valued handwriting experts, Mr. Norwalk of the State Bank of Chicago, and Mr. Queed. I dismiss it for what it is, worthless, a mass of trash, mistaken identification, hidden feuds, police tricks used by an enraged police department, claptrap spun and moulded into the semblance of a case.
“This man at my left should never have been held even for a night. My confrère across the table has cast much doubt upon the testimony of an old lady, suggesting viciously that she would commit perjury for the sake of a position as housekeeper. What nonsense! He talks also of drilled witnesses. Gentlemen of the jury, if I drilled those two witnesses so that their stories tallied as completely as they did even unto the 50th Ballmeierian question, then my fortune is made.
“We know that amid this mass of claptrap testimony adduced by the other side but one thing stands out clearly: Archibald Chalmers, clad in pyjamas and bathrobe, actually signed a cheque in his own apartment shortly after nine o’clock the night of the murder, in front of two people, a cheque which the prosecution’s own experts have pronounced bore Chalmers’ signature, and that he never left their sight till he turned out the light after eleven o’clock and went to sleep. Does anyone actually believe that he made a long trip across the city to North Oakley Avenue after he finished signing that cheque? How did he make it? Not in his own machine which Mr. Skoggins, the coloured garage-owner, had sold with a profit of 50 dollars to himself. Not by a taxicab, for no taxi record in Chicago, according to the State itself, shows such a trip made that night. Not by the elevated, for with a 61-minute trip to be made on the cars alone he would have arrived a full half-hour too late to commit the murder. What he did do was this: He lost himself in the pages of Anthony Wynn’s The Mystery of the Ashes, unaware that the strands of fate wer
e twining around him as he innocently turned the pages. But thank God, he was not lost to the eyes of Oscar Okerburg and Mrs. Morely.
“Gentlemen, I put this case in your hands as one of the most absurd travesties on justice that ever took up the time of our judges, our bailiffs, our constables, our witnesses, and your own time which has brought you three dollars per day, while your occupations and businesses would have earned you far more. Take the case, gentlemen. And let us all eat our supper at home to-night, and begin to forget the nonsense that has been perpetrated here for the last seven days. The defence is finished.”
A wave of handclapping followed Crosby’s speech, and as he sat down amid the confusion he glanced toward Chalmers, who had leaned over toward him.
“That was just exactly the man-to-man, straight-from-the-shoulder speech that fits the conditions,” the red-haired clubman said in a low voice. “You did splendidly, Crosby, and I am more than satisfied with you.”
Lockhart’s instructions to the jury were brief, definite and entirely untinged by any apparent leanings either one way or the other. Then, with a glance at the clock whose hands pointed to half-past five, and the retreating forms of some veteran court fans who were shuffling out evidently confident that no verdict would be forthcoming for a number of hours, he rose.
“I do not think,” he said from the bench, “that we can expect an immediate decision in this case. Court is therefore adjourned until the jury notifies us it has reached its verdict.”
Crosby, taking his final few words with his client as the deputy prepared to lead the latter back across the corridor to the county jail, attempted to cheer him up.
“Now buck up, old man,” he counselled. “And begin to forget the long weary months. I predict we’ll all be back in here by seven o’clock this evening with twelve men voting ‘Not Guilty.’ Then home to Drexel Boulevard, where there’ll be a tip-top dinner waiting you.”
And out he went, first to his office, then to supper at a restaurant where he could be paged, thence to the rooming-house on Astor Street where he lived. He sat up till late that night, reading a little, writing a letter or two, waiting always to hear his telephone bell ring. Yet not once did the familiar tinkle break the tension under which he moved, to show him that a decision had been reached down in the Criminal Court Building. He went to sleep, and, waking early, got his morning paper from in front of his door. “Jury still out in the Chalmers case,” was the only news. The afternoon dragged by and still no news. And once more he went to bed, this time a thoughtful look on his face. And it was when he was again dressing next morning that his phone bell rang and he received a message from a court attaché that the jury had reached a verdict and would deliver it in court at nine o’clock.
The foreman of the jury, a hawk-faced man, arose as the droning words which opened court were completed. He addressed himself directly to the judge.
“Your honour,” he said clearly, “this jury has been out for thirty-eight hours, but the chances of its arriving at a decision are absolutely nil. The jury is convinced that there is perjury in this case, but opinions are divided equally as to which side the perjury is on. Our last ballot stood six for conviction, and six for acquittal, the first six men being divided in the proportion of two for a sentence of hanging, two for life imprisonment, and two for twenty-five years in the penitentiary. It is, in my estimation, a deadlock that will never be released.”
Crosby leaned forward in his chair and bit his lip. Chalmers let out a faint sigh, whether of relief or dismay no one could probably have told.
Six for acquittal! Six for conviction! As in a daze Crosby heard Lockhart release the jury and set the trial — the second trial — for the third Monday in September.
The Chalmers puzzle was no nearer a solution than at the beginning of the case!
CHAPTER XIII
THE PROBLEM OF THE THREE RATS
CROSBY, turning up the steps of the county jail, could hardly refrain from reflecting what a terrible week it was to be incarcerated in that tomb of granite.
Inside the jail the air seemed suffocating, stagnant, and Crosby shook his head as he rose to the fourth floor in the elevator. A minute later he was with his client. Chalmers sat on the side of his wooden cot, mopping off his white face. His red hair, carelessly cut by the jail barber, was longer now, more ragged around the ears and neck; and his skin seemed more pale than ever it had been before.
“Glad to see you, Crosby,” he said listlessly. “Suppose you wonder why I sent for you?”
“Well, not quite,” returned Crosby, surveying the figure of his client. He tossed his coat on the nearby cheap wooden chair. “Well, I suppose you’re wondering how much longer, eh?”
Chalmers laughed a harsh laugh. “Yes, my mind works on that problem every day. Are your opinions still as they were before on the matter of the jury disagreement?”
Crosby nodded. “Absolutely. I still maintain you would have been acquitted if it hadn’t been for the testimony of John Carrington. He couldn’t fail to impress the jury with his bearing, the inflections of his voice, his attitude; and his ability to stand up under that withering cross-examination I gave him coupled with the handwriting testimony broke the force of our own splendid alibi with the jury. He was the keystone which held up the State’s arch.”
“Have you wondered why I called you down here?”
Crosby shook his head. “No, I haven’t. I surmised that you just wanted to talk over your case with me.”
Chalmers shook his head. “No, except to have you confirm what I have felt — that Carrington’s testimony is the one monkey wrench in the machinery to free me.” He paused. “But Crosby, suppose that somewhere in this big U.S.A. are three crooks, three rats, perhaps by this time separated the full width and length of the country, whose stories together would absolutely break Carrington’s story, and suppose they were produced at the next trial?”
“Then,” was Crosby’s cool reply, “you would walk out of the court-room with an acquittal.” He leaned forward. “You can get hold of these men!”
“I can — like the devil!” snarled Chalmers sullenly. “At least not until I locate ‘em. On top of this, once they come clean with the truth in my case, they’ll be under arrest on an indictment in quite another affair which concerns them only. In other words, I’d have to pay ‘em and pay ‘em well for coming out of hiding straight into the arms of the police.”
Crosby regarded his client curiously. “I must say,” he commented, “that your case is certainly the worst brain teaser I’ve ever met up with. Now I suppose you’re not even willing to explain your last words?”
“No, I am not,” returned the other curtly. “But I am willing to go ahead, if it costs me every cent I’ve got, and bring ‘em out into the open with their story. Now, first, what do you know about a man named Al Lipke?”
“Al Lipke,” repeated Crosby slowly. “Well, about all I can tell you is that he is reputed to be the kingpin of crookdom; it is said that he knows every crook in America and where that crook can be found. Some call him the Big Brains, and others the Booking Agent of the Underworld. Yet, in all fairness, the police have nothing on him although he’s been tried in a big case or two. How I happen to know something about him is that I saw him once or twice in Weidekamp’s offices back in the days when I was just a young cub.” He paused. “You think you can locate your men through Al Lipke?”
“That’s what I think,” pronounced Chalmers, “recalling what I read of Lipke’s peculiar talents in the papers a while back. But I’d have to pay the price.” He paused. “Now about this 51,000 dollars in stocks and bonds which comes to me a week and a day from to-day. It is my intention now, Crosby, to blow the very last dollar of that money, if needs be, to bring out these men I require, and I know of no better man to handle the situation and the cash than this Lipke. In other words, I’ll hire him to ferret ‘em out in the underworld, pay them the money they ask to come into the limelight, and let him get whatever rakeoff he t
hinks is coming to him.”
“I have only this to say then,” cautioned Crosby in the same low voice with which Chalmers discussed his plans, “and that is this: Do not enter into too manifest a relationship yourself with this man Lipke. Remember, you’re under indictment for murder. And he — well — he’s the man for your purpose all right — but he’s got too many fingers down in the rat-holes of crookdom.”
“Precisely,” agreed Chalmers. “Now can you locate this Lipke and give him the commission from me to dig up my men?”
Crosby nodded his head. “Yes, I’m certain I can. There’s a former saloon keeper — and he’s probably still selling the stuff — named Longinelli, out on West Madison Street, with whom Weidekamp used to communicate when he wanted to get hold of this elusive Lipke. I dare say Longinelli can still get in touch with him.”
“Good,” was the other man’s comment. He crossed over to the tiny stand containing his typewriter, and taking from its lone drawer a letter, sealed with red sealing wax, and typed with the initials “A. L.,” closed up the drawer again. He handed the letter to Crosby. “There you are, Crosby. Give this into his hands himself, and whatever answer he gives — yes or no — bring the answer to me yourself. I’ve crossed his palm with a retainer in it, a small cheque made out to cash, and now we’ll see what our friend whose initials are down there can do toward winning our case for us.”
Crosby deposited the sealed letter carefully in the breast pocket of the coat he had been carrying on his arm. Then he arose. “All right then, old man. I’ll lose no time. I’ll communicate with you later.”
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