CHAPTER XX

The Case of the $100,000 Joker

Allstyn smiled faintly at the naive incredulity of his visitor, Mr. Piffington Wainwright, about a person signing a contract without even reading it!

“In the first place,” he said, “let me say that I have of record—in my own legal experiences here alone—1476 cases where contracts were signed without being read. And at least half of those cases, roughly, were special contracts—and not standard printed ones with fine small-type clauses which apparently nobody—but lawyers!—ever do read. A fact! But you’re interested, of course, in this particular case—because one of the contracting parties is a lawyer.

“To be quite honest with you, however,” he continued, “this ‘lawyer’ was only a potential lawyer when all this happened. And was raising money, through the contract I refer to, on which to go to college—and thence later to law school. Raising it on a valuable inheritance. But since she had firmly in her mind to become a lawyer—she should, we will concede, have exercised in her signing of papers all the sagaciousness of a lawyer.”

“She should indeed,” affirmed Mr. Wainwright critically. “And I don’t yet see how—”

“Well this girl, Elsa Co—but here, I should not mention actual names—hardly!—and so—”

“Be assured. I beg of you,” declared Mr. Wainwright, “that I shall forget entirely Miss Coe’s identity.”

“Good!” said Allstyn, with the faintest of smiles. “Well—having accidentally named her, I’ll continue anyway to call her Elsa—yes!—Elsa was only a few months over 18 when she signed this particular contract. For this, you see, was 6 years ago. And because 18 years—plus some months—old, she was of legal age, therefore, to make any contract she signed binding. And she was of sufficient years, moreover, you might say, that she should have known better. Today, of course, she does—and very much so! For she’s one of the cutest and brightest little girls—at least so I think!—ever to shoulder her way into a badly underpaid profession—the law, let alone criminal law, which starve to death 95 per cent of those who practice it exclusively. No raving beauty, Elsa—no! No Hollywood screen vampire, Elsa—hardly! Nor—but anyway, be that as it may, the other contracting party was her uncle, a man named Silas Mof—ahem—what on earth is wrong with me today?—for here I am again giving actual names!”

“The name of Mr. Cyrus Muff,” said Mr. Wainwright with extreme dignity, “I shall proceed to forget as though I never heard it.”

“Good! Well, he—yes, Mr. Cyrus Muff!—slipped a joker in on her. Yes—Elsa. Nothing—as he afterward privately told her—but without witnesses to hear him say it—that he intended—or would even think of—enforcing! No! Something putatively intended—as he hypocritically put it—and also, of course, without witnesses—to teach her a valuable lesson in law—her new proposed profession—that she would never forget. And which, as I think I have said, did prove the lesson supreme. For Elsa. For I am sure that she would not today sign a check in her own checkbook—that is, if she had enough legal business, poor child, to sport a checking account. But as I just started to say, Elsa wouldn’t today sign a check in her own checkbook without first reading every one of the printed words. For her uncle, as I just stated, slipped this joker into that contract. And since the contract had to be recorded against a certain highly valuable piece of real estate—”

“Why?” asked Mr. Wainwright, businesslike. “I ask this for the reason that this joker, I take it, contained perhaps only 50 words or so?—and, at $100,000, that would have made it a piece of writing potentially worth—hm—yes, $2000 per word. So much more than I get per word that—that—that I am interested.”

Allstyn smiled.

“Well, it was just that when Elsa’s father died—when she was 17—he left, as his only estate, a great square block of vacant land on the northwest side, worth conservatively—at least today—around $130,000; and known as Co—ahem—yes—Coe’s Nugget! ‘Nugget’ because, perhaps, the district around it is well built up with modern apartment buildings—and many builders have eyed it covetously; or ‘Nugget’ because Dan Co—um—Dan Coe—had held on to the thing from the time he’d inherited it from his own father. Anyway, he left it, with its taxes paid up for at least 15 full years in advance, to—”

“Pardon me,” said Mr. Wainwright, frowning so terrifically that his eyeglasses tilted precariously forward on his patrician nose, “but if that was all Mr. Coe had to leave, how could he pay the taxes on it up that far ahead? And why should he?”

“Did you ever own a judgment against the City of Chicago?” asked Allstyn. “One gained from, say, the condemnation of a piece of your property?”

“I never did,” pronounced Mr. Wainwright. “And never expect to! I am fortunate in that I own my own typewriter!”

“Well, this man did,” explained Allstyn. “He got it for the condemnation of a small lot on the West Side, the lot lying fortunately in the direct line of some proposed new Chicago thoroughfare. And it—the judgment—was quite non-collectable! And likewise consequently unsalable. So Dan Coe just turned it in to the city against taxes not yet accrued on his—his Nugget. Now is it clear?”

“It is—yes. But I am anxious to know about this joker. Because the very, very few clauses in my contract have turned out to be—all jokers! They have indeed. And—but this gentleman, Mr. Coe, left this property, you say, to Miss Coe—”

“To Miss Coe—yes; and to Mr. Muff—yes. That is, it was left to them jointly, in the proportions of 1/10 interest to her uncle—and 9/10 to her. Dan Coe did not, however, wish the property sold at the frightfully low values then prevailing in the real estate doldrums of the mid-30’s—he wanted it held unsold till around 1945, when it would not only have recovered its rightful value, but would have become, perhaps, considerably aggrandized; and when, moreover, his daughter would have reached enough maturity of mind that a large sum of money, gained through a real estate transaction, wouldn’t trickle through her fingers. And so, in a will which he wrote up himself, and without the help of an attorney, he provided, in a series of ingenious legal restrictions and provisions, into which, Mr. Wainwright, I shall not endeavor to go—since manifestly you are considerable of a layman in real-estate matters—he provided that his property could not be sold, mortgaged, nor partitioned as long as his daughter Elsa was part owner in it—up to, that is, her 30th birthday. After which—but any questions, perhaps!”

“One,” replied Mr. Piffington Wainwright, succinctly. And continued:

“While, truly, I am not legally minded, Mr. Allstyn, I confess that I do not see how, under those particular restrictions you have just stated, she—Miss Coe—could very well have ceased being part owner in the—er—Nugget?”

“How? Why, by her death, of course. And her heir coming in on her share. Or by—but wait—and you shall see.”

“Well, Elsa,” the lawyer continued, after a pause, “decided, shortly after she was 18, that she wanted to go to college and then law school—a project involving tuition and living expenses for 6 long years—or at least $5000. So since she was prevented, through her father’s legal restrictions, from raising the money by mortgaging her interest in her inheritance, she proposed to her uncle that if he would pay her the sum of $5000 cash—which she could put in a bank to use for her education—she would sign a contract assigning to him $15,000 of the receipts of her eventual sale of her 9/10 share of the property, taking place when she was 30, and would agree moreover to join with him, in selling it, within not more than 3 years after that date. Well, he grabbed at the deal, of course, for it constituted a gilt edged loan providing virtually 13 per cent interest per year. And without violating the Illinois usury laws.

“So he drew up the contract. Which, by consummation, would give him his 1/10 interest in the Nugget and a full interest in exactly $15,000 of Elsa’s eventual receipts out of her 9/10 interest—and leave her a round $100,000 or so monetary interest in the Nugget. And she signed the contract, receiving from her uncle a certified check for $5000. And it was thus, you see, that the contract had—of necessity—to be recorded against this piece of real estate; and thus, you see, that the joker in it naturally becomes likewise recorded against the piece. But the joker—alas!—was of such deadly nature that it could have cost Elsa her whole $100,000 ownership in the property. If either of two certain contingencies—either of which were quite possible—even probable—ever arose in the future.”

“And—and she signed it!” Mr. Wainwright half groaned. And passed a small hand over his forehead. “Signing a contract—without reading it—I just can’t underst—”

“Neither can I,” added Allstyn brusquely. “But my 1476 cases of record prove otherwise. And in Elsa’s case there was, perhaps, more justification than in the whole other 1475 cases! For one thing, she had no idea whatsoever that her own dead father’s half-brother would even dream of doing her a legal and monetary harm—particularly since the contract in question was an extremely lucrative one for him. And for the other thing, she was having a love affair with a boy—her first love affair I guess—she was just over 18, you see—and was rushing off to a dance where he was to be. Anyway, her uncle, with whom she was temporarily living, sprung this contract on her just as she was in a mighty pother to be off; she took it in to his bedroom to read while she hurriedly powdered her nose and rouged her—ahem—you know!—fixed herself up—and the contract—well—it got second place—to her petite freckled nose! For when she emerged—to rush off to the dance—she hadn’t bothered to read a word of it. And signed it—lock, stock and barrel—before witnesses.”

“And you set it aside—for her?” asked Mr. Wainwright eagerly. With tense eagerness. “On that very score? For of course I noted, Mr. Allstyn, when you first broached the young lady’s predicament, your use of the word ‘conceivably’ with respect to her eventual loss. And then—just now—your statement that this joker could have cost her $100,000.” He paused. “You set the contract aside—on the score that she had not read it?”

“On the score—that she had not read it?” repeated Allstyn, amusedly. “No, I did not. She came to me later—yes—and after she no longer resided with her uncle—but I did nothing so foolish as you outline. For—for one thing—she had stated, remember, right in front of two witnesses—and in reference to her uncle’s pointed query as to whether she had read the paper faithfully, and knew what she was signing—that she had read it. Poor child—she confided to me later that she was frantic for fear her newly acquired boyfriend would be dancing with some other girl. ‘Some really pretty girl’—as she put it! And—”

“Perhaps,” ventured Mr. Wainwright mildly, “her uncle set the clock ahead on his bureau—or perhaps over his whole house—to throw her into a mad rush?”

“Bravo, Mr. Wainwright! For many years I wondered why Elsa had been in such a pother to get to that dance—only to get there before it had even begun! You’ve solved it!”

“But,” persisted Mr. Wainwright, who manifestly was far more interested in the cryptic “Elsa’s” contract than in “Elsa” herself, “you broke this contract?”

“No,” declared the lawyer, “I did nothing so foolish as that. Rather—let me say—as attempting that. For with this contract she had, as it were—and as we state it in real estate law—‘clouded her title’ to that piece of property. And clouded it in such manner, moreover, that any lawsuit about the contract would have clouded it further. And result in but one thing, to wit: that even if Elsa didn’t eventually lose her 9/10 interest—or her 9/10 interest minus $15,000—in it through the arising of the one or the other of the contingencies outlined by that confounded joker, she would never be able to convey her interest—i. e. to turn it into cash. For builders, you see, don’t put up half million dollar apartment buildings on land that has been technically forfeited by the conveyor! And—”

“But just how,” queried Mr. Wainwright—and somewhat plaintively, “would she have thus—forfeited her interests For the restrictions prevented her from even selling it!”

“How?” repeated the lawyer. “By the exercise of the most devilish dynamite-laden thing in real-estate law: the quitclaim! In this case—the so-called ‘contingential quitclaim.’ For that joker clause, you see, provided that if either of those two certain contingencies arose in Elsa’s life—before, that is, she was 30—the contract was to constitute a quitclaim, to her uncle, for $5000 cash, of all her right, title and interest to the property! And the matter of ‘quitclaiming,’ you see, had been unfortunately overlooked by Elsa’s father in his various restrictive prohibitions. And to quitclaim—straight or contingentially—is something which, under the particular conditions existent, she had the inalienable right to do. Most definitely so—yes!—in the face of last year’s decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of the Idaho and Wyoming Oil Company versus Henry Barrows, owner of an estate partly in trust and partly not—and executor, by golly, of two quitclaims—one direct, and one contingential—and the latter hinging on nothing more than the amount of rainfall in a given county in a given period! Yes, the right of Elsa to quitclaim was one hundred per cent legal And a fully consummated quitclaiming, on her part, is something that would not merely give her uncle full ownership of the Nugget—but would make it possible for him immediately to sell—since her quitclaim, don’t you see, would make her no longer ‘part owner’ in it.” Allstyn paused. “And quitclaim is exactly what she did—if, that is, either of those two aforesaid contingencies ever arose.”

“And I presume,” said Mr. Wainwright, musingly, “that once that property would be reconveyed by Mr. Muff—it would be utterly unrecoverable—by Miss Coe? On any basis—whatsoever? For I once had an aunt who had the possibility of recovery of a lost title, but the piece of real estate became passed, though once only, in the meanwhile, and—”

Rutgers Allstyn raised a hand to indicate that an obvious case need not be rehearsed to him.

“Quite correct. And in this case I might say that should Mr. Muff ever acquire technical ownership of that square block of valuable land, it would immediately be reconveyed by him within a few minutes to a certain rascally son-in-law he possesses—and in turn to the son-in-law’s father, who is a large builder on the Northwest Side. And who covets the site. And it would then be 101-per cent unrecoverable in law on any score whatsoever—even that of temporary insanity!—which young love, at 18, undoubtedly is!”

But Mr. Wainwright’s face showed that he did not grasp passion of that type. Nevertheless, he asked an eager question.

“Well what, Mr. Allstyn were you able to do for this girl then?—if, as you say, you dared not attempt to assail the contract?”

“My advice to her,” stated Allstyn slowly, “had to be—believe it or not, Mr. Wainwright—to let the contract stand as was; but to counteract neatly that dangerous joker in it. In other words, to pull a certain swift one. On that rascally uncle! And I showed her a one hundred percent certain chess move by which to do exactly this. And, later, we made arrangements for the making of this chess move. And so—when it comes time for these possible contingencies to arise—well, they just can’t now; for the cards are all in her hands.”

“But what were the two contingencies?” eagerly asked Mr. Wainwright. “By which she virtually kissed her $100,000 interest in her own property good-by?”

“Well, the joker provided, Mr. Wainwright, that in the event that—” Allstyn stopped, and studied his client.

“Maybe,” he said musingly, “I oughtn’t to tell you this—inasmuch as it’s never been publicized in any newspaper story, thanks to Silas Moff—ahem—Muff’s—having undoubtedly passed something to the recording clerk. However, facts are but facts. And I rather think you’re an individual who can keep his mouth shut.”

“I am, believe it or not,” Wainwright assented.

“I am sure you are,” the lawyer said. “Well—” he paused. “Well, the joker in question provided that in the event this girl failed to gain an acquittal in her first criminal case, or was disbarred during her first three months of practice—then that paper I spoke of was a quitclaim!”

“And how,” Mr. Wainwright asked plaintively, “if you don’t mind telling me—did you effect a sure method of counteracting the joker?”

“Very simply,” pronounced Allstyn, grimly. “I have a brother who is a judge on the Criminal Bench. Just now, however, in India on a trip. And it’s all arranged that when he comes back and ascends the bench again, Elsa is to be given some case due to come up before him, where acquittal of the defendant is all preordained. By ineluctable facts, you see. One of those purely formal trials. And that—that will be her first case.”

“And pending which, Mr. Wainwright countered, “Miss Coe is naturally not chancing matters—by practicing?”

“Oh no! Miss Coe is not chancing matters by going into court as a trial lawyer. But is practicing. Advising, you know—and so forth—on the outside of courtrooms.”

“Well what,” asked Mr. Wainwright, “if she were suddenly appointed, by some judge, to defend some defendant? Right—right off the bat?”

Allstyn raised his brows quizzically. “In such case, she’d have to get in touch with me—and let me pull the wires with the Chief Justice of the Criminal Assignment Bench, who is a friend of mine, and would get her released. That’s all there would be to that. I wouldn’t even have to explain to him.”

“Yet it’s too bad,” Mr. Wainwright now said, “that her contract wasn’t smash—”

“No,” said Allstyn firmly. “I assure you, my dear young man, that the method I just outlined was—and is—the simplest method of sidestepping that dangerous clause. And, thanks to it, she cannot now lose her $100,000 interest in her property. For she has the precise chessman—and the precise move—namely, nonappearance in court just now, and appearance later on, under circumstances arranged by my judiciarial brother—to render her provisional quitclaim quite impotent. I have related the whole case solely to show you how people sometimes can cut their own throats—with their own fountain pens.”

“And all of which narration cheers me up very much,” was Mr. Wainwright’s comment. “For I sure would like to smash my contract and—but here—here is my contract.”

And he handed his single sheet of paper to Allstyn.

Allstyn unfolded it. Its jet-black typewritten lines were in carbon imprint only, but it was signed with many and various names, as undoubtedly was its original counterpart. And tilting back at ease in his swivel chair, Allstyn proceeded, with considerable curiosity, to read the extremely brief document.