CHAPTER XXVI

Ebon Curls!

Louis Vann, his list of witnesses for tonight’s trial on his desk, a series of peculiar checkmarks denoting such persons on it as had been called up by himself, and a still more peculiar series showing those that had been called by Miss Jason, contemplated his wife hungrily. Dressed in a chic but inexpensive black shopping dress that exactly matched her big dark eyes, the only note of white on the dress being the ruffs of white at the wrists, Miriam Vann seemed—at least to Louis Vann regarding her now—younger than the day he had married her. Though whether or no, he was quite certain that he loved her more today than on that memorable day. And if he had any doubt of this, the little concrete resultant of that marriage now sat on his knee, her black curls seemingly carved out of ebony, her brown eyes exactly like those of her mother, her two-year-old person a sort of elf.

“Gosh, darling,” he was saying to Miriam, “but I sure am glad you stopped off. For—wurra, wurra!—I can’t come home tonight—and that after being out of town these few days.”

“No?” Miriam inquired. “Why not, Louis?”

“I go to court tonight,” he explained. “The case of that fellow—but did you read the early afternoon papers?”

“No,” Miriam Vann said.

“Well,” Vann told her slowly, “a pickup—murder and larceny—has consented to take trial right off the bat; and I’m grabbing advantage of it.”

She gazed at him intently, as sensing, with the perspicuity of a wife, that this was no just routine affair.

“Anything unusual—about the case, Louis?”

“Unusual!” he laughed harshly. “I’ll—say! ’Twas my own office that was robbed. And—”

“Louis!” She leaned forward, red lips agape. “Not the dear old—”

“Yes. And that fellow Adolph, who’s been night watchman there almost, within a week, to my being S. A. here, was the one who was killed. I didn’t tell you anything about it when I phoned earlier today for I was busier than—anyway, Darling, it seems that—”

“No, Louis.” She was manifestly quite shocked. “Don’t you waste precious time by rehearsing the facts now. I’ll get the papers and read them on the way home with Dolly.”

She was thoughtful.

“Well—will it be a long trial, Louis?”

“Daddy!” It was Dolly speaking. Her tiny finger was pointed at Vann’s four telephones. “Thometime when you is talking to four peopleth at the thame time—will you let me watch?”

“I don’t talk to 4 ‘peoples’, honey, at the same time.”

“You—don’t?” The little face looked up at him surprised. “Then w’y—w’y you got fo’ telephones?”

“Why, because, Sweetkins, I—well, you see, certain ones are for certain people to call up on—and others for others. See? Just as you have your sandpile to play in, and Johnny Ebberts has his.”

The big black eyes studied on that question.

“But what if peopleth all rusth to telyphones on your birthday, Daddy—and tell you many happy weturns—don’t you then—talk to them all?”

“Thank heavens, sweetkins, they don’t know my birthday. Now be a good girl—and think up another.” He turned to his wife. “About this trial—no, it shouldn’t take very long. Not as trials go. One night at most. So it’s good night to my coming home. Glad I had a good sleep—coming in last night.”

“Louis?”

“Yes, Darling. What?”

“Did you have any luck—with that Central Investment Corporation?”

A shadow passed over his face. “No, not from that outfit, no. I—I was practically offered a bribe. A fact! The son of the C. I. Corporation head is, it seems, in jail out there on California Avenue for forgery. His papa told me on the wire our mortgage was too outrageously high—but he’d take it up for two years or so, if I’d nolle prosse the boy’s case.” He paused. And grew serious. “Well, it’s a bit late now to be making money—nolle-prossing. Anyway, I told him I could do nothing.”

“And what did he say?”

Vann laughed mirthlessly. “He said he could do nothing, either.”

“Then, Louis—”

“Rest easy,” he commanded her. “Silas Moffit has consented to extend the loan till after election. In exchange for an insignificant favor. Which I was able to do for him.”

“Why—what was it, Louis?”

“He wanted me to let him know when the State had a case that was—well—in the bag! And before, moreover, some senior judge.”

“But why on earth, Louis,” Vann’s wife inquired, fixing her eyes directly and unwaveringly on his, “would Mr. Moffit want to know—exactly what he did?”

“I’m quite sure,” Vann said, gazing straight and reassuringly into her own eyes, “—at least now that I’ve pondered over it once or twice—that he wanted to get the defense assigned to a certain niece of his, recently graduated in law, who’s never had her baptismal fire. Anyway, I was able to tell him of this case. And my simple little favor got us—you and me!—an extension on our mortgage till after election.”

“But why on earth, Louis,” his wife persisted, “would he want the girl to cut her teeth on a hopeless case?”

“Oh, what he doubtlessly really wanted, Darling,” Vann told her, “was for the girl to have the $100 fee. And a hopeless case?—well that would make her concentrate her efforts, you see, on a spiel to the judge—or jury. Which is the real baptismal fire, you know, for the striplings!”

“But do you think, Louis, that Mr. Moffit can swing a thing like that? Who is the lawyer—appointed for the defense?”

“I haven’t even bothered to look into that yet,” said Louis Vann. And added pridefully: “For it wouldn’t make a particle of difference to me—or the State!—if the ‘great’ Fleming Wiles himself were to conduct this defense! But that, Darling, is the second of your two questions. The first was whether Moffit could swing an appointment to his niece. Yes, it’s my belief he could.”

“How, Louis?”

“How? Well, Darlin’, you know—he’s all threaded in, amongst the bench and bar, with his mortgages. I know that he’s had some business of some sort—something involving a quitclaim—with no less than Chief Justice Michael Shurely of the Criminal Assignment Bench. And, if that isn’t enough in this matter, Moffit actually has a mortgage on the home of Judge Penworth who is to try this case—and ultimately make the defense attorney assignment. And who—being not only a senior judge!—but also Chief Commissioner of the Ethical Practices Sub-Division—can make that assignment stick—and how!—since he can disbar any attorney who might fail to show up for the slaughter!”

“Oh-oh!” she said. “I should say Mr. Moffit is sewed up—with the powers that be! Then—then his poor niece will get a case that’s already lost? And before a judge who can put her out of business with nothing but the scratch of a pen?”

“And will get a hundred dollars,” Vann cautioned her, “that, laid end to end, buys shoes and food! Yes—if Moffat swings it. And doesn’t muff it!—isn’t that a terrible pun?—by offending Shurely or Penworth. Which I’m certain he won’t. He’s very adroit—when he needs to be! But whether or no, his word’s okay. And our mortgage is extended—till after election!”

“Then, Louis,” she said, a great note of relief in her voice, “we’re sitting okay again. For with you running again, and in—and only the last two notes of your Dad to clear off, we can easily straighten out the loan by an amortized affair, plus assigning your salary—”

“Plus some life insurance,” he cautioned her. “In case the salary earner quits earning—and goes to the cemetery!”

“Well yes, of course. But that kind of insurance—loan life insurance—is easily obtained. And—but Louis—is there any chance at all that you won’t be renominated?” Louis Vann could not help but cast his eyes to the floor. But pretended that some dust on his shoes caught his eye. And leaned over and flicked it off. “No, Darling,” he said. For Miriam had worried much in these last months. And he must not, he knew, worry her further about what Boss Hennerty had said. For after all, the setup on that was all changed now. And—”No, Darling, as far as I know—I’ll be renominated—and if renominated, of course, the election is all a formality.”

“I’m so glad,” was all she said. Then paused. “This man—you’re to try tonight? Have you an idea what his defense is to be?”

“He claims amnesia—on the whole period of the crime. On his whole stay in Chicago, in fact.”

“Amnesia? Would that get very far in court?”

“My God, Miriam, I don’t see how it could. His defense is so ridiculous that even Judge Penworth will be downright insulted to have it offered in court.” He was lost in his own rejections.

“Mama!” said Dolly suddenly. “Papa wanth us to go. He’th looking with one eye at hith paperth.”

“Dolly’s right, Louis.” Miriam rose suddenly. And glanced at the watch on her wrist. “It’s 4:15. And you’ll have witnesses you’ll be wanting to summon to that trial. Such as it will be. Well, we’ll run on. And we’ll see you—”

“—when you see me, Darling,” said Vann. And kissed his wife. And conducted her to the door.

“Confound it!” he said, as he closed it on her, and returned to his desk, “why didn’t I tell her the truth? That I only got an extension till after election—and that the election will depend upon the indubitable conviction of that fellow tonight? However—why worry her? His conviction is in the bag!”

But there was a troubled note in Vann’s words to himself. For the whole confident demeanor of that insouciant defendant downstairs had been somehow—that his acquittal was “in the bag”!