CHAPTER XIII

“John Doe,” Defendant

Elsa, admitted by the lockup keeper to the cell of her client—and with no trouble at all, moreover, after she had fully identified herself!—looked her client over appraisingly as the iron grilled door clanged to behind them, and the hollow sound of the lockup keeper’s footsteps, receding up the long, empty cement corridor, came in to them.

Handsome, the defendant was; brown-eyed—dressed in dark quiet clothing—and with such a red glint to his hair that it placed him practically in the same category as Elsa herself: In age, she judged him to be older than herself by no more than 9—maybe 10 at most—years.

He had risen, with at least a show of courtesy, as she was admitted, and stood thus—though there was on his lips a bit of a sneer that puzzled her. Having been announced to her as the attorney selected to defend him, she wondered if he were contemptuous of her age—and her sex.

But having just seen with her own eyes, upstairs in the office of the Criminal Courts Process Recorder, the blanket acceptance this fellow had signed—taking blindly and without question any attorney the court might select for him—she wondered about his attitude.

She sat down, diffidently, on the single hard wooden chair with which the dark cell was provided, and he in turn dropped down on the outswung wooden bench on which, were he not going to trial tonight, he would have to be sleeping.

“We-ell—” she began cheerfully, “are you the man who blithely signed all those many papers—without any attorney’s advice—or anybody else’s advice for that matter—bringing you to trial so swiftly that a person hasn’t hardly a chance to cook up a defense for you?”

“Yes, I’m the man,” he said succinctly, and unsmilingly.

“Well, what on earth,” she began, “did you do that for, when—but first, my name is Elsa Colby. Practicing attorney—and specializing in criminal law. The court itself has selected me to defend you. And that being the case, do you understand that you now have no further choice in the matter?”

“Who asked for any further choice?” he inquired, a bit gruffly. “If you’re graduated from a law school, then—”

He made a peculiar gesture with his shoulders that seemed to say,”—then that’s plenty good enough for me.” He looked her over, however, shrewdly and appraisingly. “I’m glad at least,” he added, “that you haven’t been appointed to defend me in a free-for-all. For if the wind from a single fist alone ever hit you, girlie, it would blow you over hill and dale.”

“Oh, you think so, do you?” asked Elsa, not at all, however, insulted. “Well, I’m 90 pounds in weight—so I don’t think any wind will blow me down. However—” She grew very serious. “However, defense in court isn’t a matter of brawn, muscle nor weight. It—” She broke off. “However, let’s get over—quickly—the necessary preliminaries to our professional relationship. So first—what is your name?”

“John Doe,” he said.

“Oh—I mean your right name. Here—” She fumbled in the pocket of her knit mouse-gray skirt, and drew forth a piece of paper and a pencil. And held them forth to him.

“You can write your right name—if you fear somebody will overhear—and your family will get into the papers.”

He waved the paper and pencil away.

“Sorry,” he said curtly, “but Doe it’ll have to remain. Anyway, Doe is as good as any other.”

She looked at him. But felt that she understood. “Well, I suppose it is—yes,” she conceded. “And how old are you, Mr.—well—Doe?”

“What,” he asked—though more curiously, apparently, than combatively, “would that have to do—with defending me?”

“A lot,” Elsa told him quite truthfully. “If it embraces enough years for you to have piled up a long police record in. For it—but how about that? Have you a police record—here in Chicago?”

“No,” was his reply. But, she noticed, he did not amplify his statement by saying that he had no record elsewhere.

“Be honest with me now, Mr.—well, Mr. Doe,” she urged him. “For if the record exists, I can impound all the information in it at the Bureau of Records, myself. In fact, the State’s Attorney will have the actual record-card itself at your trial—if it exists.”

“He won’t have my record-card,” he said decisively, “at any trial!” And there was a sort of triumph in his voice which made Elsa wonder in what far metropolis of the world that record-card lay buried!

Which satisfied her, however, as she saw no reason why any criminal case should be decided on anything other than its own merits.

“Well then,” she assured him, “about your age, the matter isn’t of so much moment; but nevertheless—well—you’re how old?”

“Old enough to be your father,” he replied, unsmilingly.

“Oh—come—come,” she said. “You’re 35—within a year or so one way or the other, are you not?”

“Right,” he returned, “only without the year or so either way. And that’s why I still say that I’m old enough to be your father. For—”

Elsa, raising her hand peremptorily, put a speedy stop to this useless discussion about ages, the tenor of which held, at best, only the half-contemptuous suggestion that she herself was not out of the doll-playing stage yet.

“You’re not stating, I suppose, Mr. Doe—where your home is?”

“Gladly. It’s anywhere in the world where they have a hat hook.”

“Meaning anywhere you hang your hat?” she nodded. “Well, that’s general enough! Education?”

“Just what,” he objected, “would that have to do with defen—”

“An educated defendant, on the witness stand, can sometimes help his case—where an uneducated one often hangs himself! That’s all. So—what education have you had?”

He gave a curt, hard laugh. And replied.

“University. The University of Hard Knocks. All the courses—and a postgraduate course to boot.”

She smiled very faintly. “Well—your attorney now knows one per cent more about her client than she did when we began this questioning.” She paused. “Well, why now, Mr. Doe—here, of all the ridiculous appellations, ‘Mr. Doe’ is the worst!—suppose I call you John?—for after all, you’re my client—and a client in a matter involving life and death—why on earth, John, did you sign up all those papers letting the State’s Attorney rush you to trial?”

“Why? Because, Elsa, I—”

“Elsa? Here—here—my name is Miss—”

“If we’re getting down to first names around here,” he said testily, “turn about is fair play. All right! Why did I sign up all those papers? So’s I could get to trial, of course. And get it over with. And be on my way. I made it a condition, however, that I’d sign the whole batch only if I got a trial tonight—and before Judge Hilford Penworth.”

“But why before Penworth—of all judges?”

“Why? Because I heard—though in another city than this—that he had an ultra-legal mind.”

“Well,” she frowned, “that I’ve ascertained myself—within the last ten minutes. By a brief phone-talk with an attorney who’s tried cases before every judge in Cook County. But I heard also something else—that Judge Penworth is plenty hard. Why, John—you could have selected a dozen judges on the Chicago Criminal Bench more downright easy than he is, and you could even have—why oh why,” she broke off, “didn’t you at least wait till you had counsel? Even though I haven’t had a—er—a world of experience, I can get info—the low-down—on anything. And I—”She broke off again. “Well, John, I’m your attorney now—and so—are you guilty or not guilty? That is, John, you don’t need to say anything with your lips—just make me a sign. Raise your middle finger, lying there on your knee, if you’re guilty—and your index finger if you’re not guilty—though—” But Elsa didn’t finish what was in her mind. “Which—John?”

“Not guilty, my dear sweet young infant out of the nursery.” But he held up both middle fingers.

“Is—that—nice?” she echoed. “To refer to me as being just out of the nursery? Well—whether or no—the infant. out of the nursery, has been appointed to defend you on the ‘toughest rap’ that anyone in this man’s town ever faced.”

“Looks kind of bad, eh?” he said, his brown eyes fastened queryingly on her.

“Bad? Bad—plus! The particulars of your arrest are all in the Despatch; and since the State’s Attorney’s own brother wrote the story—and the opposition papers, out since, haven’t apparently altered a single fact!—then the facts must all be practically correct. And when I leave here, moreover, I’m to step upstairs to the Grand Jury Room and pick up a copy—the second carbon imprint!—of your actual indictment, which is elsewhere in the building for the moment—for it seems, John, they indicted you not more than 30 minutes ago. The State’s Attorney, far from bothering in the least to block or harass your attorney—as so often happens—hasn’t even yet, according to something I gathered from the lockup keeper out yonder, phoned down to learn who’s reporting here to represent you. For he’s holding a royal flush in diamonds—and doesn’t mind who plays across the table from him! Anyway,” Elsa added, “I’ll say matters look plenty bad. And—” Elsa paused. “will you take my word, John, that this cell is at the end of a long corridor—and that nobody is in any cell between here and the lockup keeper’s desk? And that I wouldn’t let you discuss your case if what we said were overhearable?”

“I guess I could take your word, sweet child, on that.”

“All right. But let’s drop the ‘child’ business, John. And specially the ‘sweet child’ business. All right, then. Now may I ask you first, John, what you were doing today on the corner of Adams and Dearborn Street with—but wait—first of all, how on earth did you happen to give out this beautiful yarn to the Despatch concerning this wonderful ‘amnesia’ alibi?”

“You sound sarcastic! Moreover, I gave no yarn—to any Despatch. The S.A. sent one of his spies down here to pump me—so I just helped to fill up his pitcher to the brim!”

“I’ll say you filled it! Only, John, ’twas a newspaperman you handed that yarn out to.”

“A newspaperman? The son of a lug said he was my attorney—but I knew he was lying. I figured he was—but what was his name?”

“Hugh Vann.”

“Hugh Vann? Well—what more can you want? With the S.A. being named Vann too?”

“Yes, I know, but Hugh Vann was a legitimate newspaper­man—and not spying for his brother.”

A mirthless smile spread over his lips.

“And this weird wild alibi—” she began.

“Weird? Wild? What’s wrong with it?”

“What’s wrong with it? Oh, quite nothing! Merely that the Revolving Lamp Drugstore didn’t have its revolving lamp in its window three days ago when you first presumably gazed at it—not, in fact, till this morning; while the City Hall store didn’t have its in its window today. That’s all that’s wrong with that alibi!”

He grinned broadly for at least a second. But his grin quickly faded. “So you looked into that, eh, Miss Attorney?”

“I—and somebody else! For the owner of those two stores got a phone call—even before I saw him—asking about that very feature—and requesting him to keep quiet.”

She surveyed him troubledly. “And so that—that was to be your defense, John?”

“That,” he said contemptuously, “was just a piece of fantastic cotton wool to ram down the throat of a dirty spy from the State’s Attorney’s office who thought he could fool me. And if he used it for a newspaper story—well—no harm done anybody.”

Elsa was reactively silent.

“Well, that’s that, then—and I’m glad at least that you’re not figuring to squat atop a soapbubble like that! And so now, getting back to what I started to ask you a minute ago, what, John, were you doing on the corner of Adams and Dearborn Streets today with that Chinese boy’s skull?”

“I wasn’t—that is, so far as I know—on the corner of Adams and Dearborn Streets today with any Chinese boy’s skull.”

“Why, John—they found it—in the box under your arm—after the box almost screamed attention you were there.”

“Screamed attention? Hell—fire! And I’m talking to you as I would to a real attorney now—and not an infant. Why, you could trip up one of these Chicago coppers with one of your shoes—and he wouldn’t know you were there. No, it was the big clergyman—ecclesiastic—that caused me to catch my pickup.”

“I’ll say it was! And that big ecclesiastic, John, will be one of the principal and main witnesses against you. For he’s head of his particular church here in Chicago. While that deaf-and-dumb man—at least presumably deaf to you!—who stood off on the curb, was his friend—and is director of a deaf-and-dumb school here—and a well-known honored member of society.”

There could have been no doubt whatsoever to anyone that the reddish-haired John Doe was completely flabbergasted.

“Well—I’ll be!” he ejaculated. “And—and that gazabo wasn’t deaf himself—at all?”

“Not by a darn sight, John. And he heard every word of your conversation with the ecclesiastic—as you call him.” John Doe was extremely silent, unsmilingly so. So Elsa took up the cudgel of her questioning.

“And why, John, when this ecclesiastic—Archbishop Stanley Pell, his name is—though I believe he introduced himself right off as Archbishop Pell—why, when he did so, and asked you what was in the box, did you say ’twas the Chinese boy’s skull—and that you’d successfully broken into the State’s Attorney’s safe?”

“Suppose I say I didn’t?”

“You didn’t? Oh, come, come, John. They’ve got two witnesses to swear that you did. Not to omit the skull itself.”

“But maybe I didn’t say—what you claim I said?”

“Well,” she replied helplessly, “maybe you’re taking me too literally. They claim you replied specifically—when asked what was in your box—‘Wah Lee’s skull.’ ”

“Well if so—so what?”

“If so—so what? Good God, John. You—well, they claim you also said, right after that, and in apparent explanation of your first words, ‘I cracked Vann’s pete.’ Now I may be only a girl, John, but I’ve read up enough millions of words about your world that I don’t need a glossary to know what those terms stand for.”

“Well,” he sighed, “I suppose if two men say I said that—that settles it, eh? Of course you stated, when you queried me about it, that I said I had the Chinese boy’s skull, and that I’d just broken into the State Attorney’s safe.”

“Well, verbal analogy only, John. So—why on earth did you say all that? Did you think, when the Archbishop came up to you, that he was another man?”

“What do you think, Elsa?”

“Miss Colb—oh, what’s the use,” broke off Elsa. “It’s trouble enough to buck all the counter-questions you pass back—without trying to get you to be decently formal. After all, no use, anyway, of maintaining formality with a man about to be tried for his life. For—listen, John, let me interpose a question quite off the line for a second. If you’re convicted tonight, have you got any money—five hundred dollars or so—to file an appeal bond?”

“I will answer that one,” he said. “Nary cent!”

“Then do you know, John, that you can be strapped within the electric chair within ten days from tonight?”

“Ten days? Well—I knew that the time between sentence and execution has been shortened in all the States, but ten day—“

“Yes, ten days—under the laws of last year. And you can’t stay it unless an appeal bond is filed—covering all the initial costs of transcripts of evidence and all.”

“Rich man’s law, eh?” he said bitterly.

“I didn’t pass it,” she replied hastily. “Well, we’ll get back to cases. You asked me a moment ago whether I thought you thought the Archbishop was another man. Yes, to be frank, I naturally do.”

“All right then. What next?”

“All right, then. Well, did you think he was one of the Parson Gang?”

“The Parson Gang?” His face did not move. Whether it was blank ignorance—or a mask—she simply could not determine.

“Yes, the Parson Gang, a gang which operated here around 13—14—years ago. And up, I guess, to some few years later. Yes, I know I was an infant back in those days; but I’ve picked up—from a source I won’t mention!—a little about the old Chicago criminal history of those days—and about a certain famous local case, as well, which plainly is connected with—with your predicament. So—did you think the Archbishop was a member of that old Parson Gang—or rather, some present existing remnant of it? For they all used to wear, as I understand it—however, what does it matter. You thought, when he approached you in that garb, that you were talking to somebody supposed to contact you that way.”

“Why do you think that?” he asked with, plainly, honest curiosity.

“Because you wouldn’t have drenched a dignified ecclesiastic with, a flood of crook lingo if you hadn’t. But never mind. My business is to try like the devil to ameliorate your position.” Elsa paused flounderingly. “Well, you’ll at least admit to me, John, won’t you—that you knew that Mr. Vann’s safe had been robbed—a man killed—and that the thing taken had been the skull of a certain Chinese boy?”

“I’ll deny on the witness stand that I knew any of that,” he declared arrogantly.

“Well then,” she persisted patiently, “we’ll leave the killing part out of it. You’ll at least admit, then, that you knew that Mr. Vann’s safe had been robbed—and a Chinese boy’s skull taken in that robbery?”

“I’ll deny on the stand that I knew that—likewise,” he retorted.

“You will?” she returned, quite flabbergasted. “Well, how then,” she inquired, a bit caustically, “will you explain to—say—the Court—being able to convey all the facts of that crime—and so early as half-past noon today, which as I understand it, was the approximate hour of your arrest—when the facts themselves weren’t of public record till 2:30 today—in a Despatch story that was a scoop handled by the State’s Attorney’s own brother, its details guarded like nobody’s business?”

“Well, I said,” he retorted, changing his position uneasily, “that I’ll deny knowing those facts altogether. And I take it that my denial would rule out any further question as to how I might have known them.” He nodded sagely. “Yes, of course. For certainly I’ll deny that I knew Mr. Vann’s safe had been robbed, as well as that I knew a Chinese boy’s skull had been taken in the robbery That is—if it was!”

Elsa stared at him.

“So you’ll just deny them, eh’ Just—like that? Good Lord, John, do you think for a single minute that any court in the land will accept it as a coincidence that you just jollily and brightly said you’d cracked a certain man’s pete—when that man’s pete already had been cracked!—and that you had, in your box, the identical thing stolen from that pete?”

“We-ell, no—I suppose no court would just offhand accept a coincidence like that. No.”

“Then why on earth expect me to—” Elsa broke off. “Listen, John, your trial lies less than 4 hours away. Do you realize that the longer you play cats and dogs with me in this cell here, the less time I’ve got to frame any kind of a defense for you? Insanity—or heavens knows what? I—”

“But lady, lady,” he expostulated, “you come at me—slam-bang—asking me what I was doing with thus-and-so in my possession—without even being decent enough to ask me first whether I did have thus-and-so in my possession, So naturally—”

“All right. I get you. It happens, unfortunately, that the skull you had in your possession is that of Wah Lee, a kidnaped Chinese boy. One hundred per cent corroboratable, as such. But, adhering to the technicalities of fair language, whose skull was it—according to your knowledge?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“No. But whoever’s sconce it was, it certainly wasn’t that of any Chink youth—that, I’m willing to wager my life on.”

“Willing? Well, you’re wagering your life in this game—whether you’re ‘willing’ or not! And—well then—who gave you the skull?”

“Nobody gave it—as you put it—to me.”

“Nobody? In heaven’s name, John, how do you suppose I can—” She broke off. And realized that she looked exceedingly downcast at that moment.

And he seemed to sense her oppression, and to want—or at least half-want, anyway—to help her; for he spoke to her—a bit uncertainly, to be sure—and for the first time there was a sort of half-warm kindliness in his tones.

“Girl,” he said, “I’m sorry—because you’ve got your information to get, of course, and I—but I can’t give you any answers to your questions. First, where I got the skull. Wah Lee’s—so you claim it is—nor second, why I told the big churchman—well—what I did tell him, yes, including that I presumably had the skull of a Chinese boy who I certainly didn’t know was figuring in any famous—”

“You—you—you dare to even claim, John,” she said aghast, “that you didn’t even know that Wah Lee was the central figure of a big kidnaping, murder and extortion case?”

“No. I gathered today, when the S.A. was down here—rather, before even that—when a gink who called himself ‘Leo Kilgallon’ and openly admitted he was the S.A.’s assistant, was down here—that all that Wah Lee stuff broke way back 13 and 10 years ago respectively. At times when I was out of touch with the world. For in all of the 13th year back, I was in Brazil. Back in the very jungles. And in the 10th year back, in a South African hospital with a draining abscessed appendix—or place where the appendix had been.”

“Well then,” she said half helpfully, “somebody who got you into all this obviously informed you that the skull was Wah Lee’s. Did they not?”

“What do you think?” he retorted, again falling back to his invariable defense.

Elsa was more than irritated. She was close to being infuri­ated. She had a powerful impulse to rise and stamp her little foot and scream at him to quit his asinine poker-playing. She knew, however, that if she did, he would only smile sar­donically at her exhibition of weakness. But she could not control the vehemence in her tones.

“What do I think?” she almost cried. “I—I think I would like to hit you on the nose—you fool idiot! Here you are, literally standing on the edge of the electric chair—and I your only hope—and to everything I ask you, you answer—’what do I think!”

“Well—why not?” he retorted, with almost genuine sincerity. “I like to know what you think. You’re a damned sweet kid—such a one as I’ve been looking for all my life, and—”

“Lis—ten,” she said, sarcastically, “is—is this, by any chance—a proposal of marriage?”

“What do you—”

“Enough!” she said, raising her hand. “Now listen here, you—you John Doe. You may as well make up your mind. You’re going to have to explain to me, here and now, what you’re going to have to explain to the Court, whether or no. Why you were at that spot. Why you had Wah Lee’s skull in that box. And why oh why oh why oh why you actually told a man you had it—and that you’d cracked the State’s Attorney’s safe to get it. You’ve either got to explain it all here and now, or else—”

“Or else—what?” His voice was implacably cool.

“What? Well, I’ll tell you what! I won’t take your case.”

“Okay then,” he replied quietly, and a bit sardonically.

“It looks as though you won’t take my case. And I really regret that—for you’re a smart kid—and a pretty kid and—”

“So I’m pretty, eh?” she commented, and there was more than mere sarcasm in her tones now—there was downright bitterness. “Now I do know,” she added, “that you’ll baldly swear to any lie.”

“That’s not a lie,” he retorted roughly. “And I’m not being gallant. You are a pretty kid—with the kind of hair I ought to have had, but didn’t get. Swell all-red hair! And a cute freckle on your upturned nose. And—but let it pass. I’ll not answer those questions.”

“All—right!” said Elsa, grimly. “And I’ll be leaving and—” And she rose. And reached for the electric button which would summon the lockup keeper, and which button she knew had been turned on during the while she would be closeted with her client. But, with an uneasy laugh, she sat abruptly down again.

“A reversal like that,” commented her client, “really deserves some sort of an answer. The best it’ll be, however, is that I shan’t claim here—or in court—that anybody ‘gave’ the skull to me—nor told me it was Wah Lee’s. Nor will I even admit here—or in court—that I ever heard of the kidnap case either, nor of the Parson Gang. If, that is,” he qualified, smilingly, “whatever attorney defends me takes the proper stand and insists that such pre-knowledge, or lack of such pre-knowledge, is absolutely irrelevant to the question at issue!”

She faced him helplessly.

“Well, all I can say, you fool John, is that if you won’t—er—can’t claim that somebody passed the skull to you—then you’re guilty yourself of stealing it. In which case—listen—are you, John, protecting somebody else?”

“I’ve nobody to protect. But John Doe.”

“And you’re protecting him,” Elsa commented mirthlessly, “like—like a general who gives the soldiers in his front line trenches felt hats instead of iron hats.”

He smiled. Though not a cheerful smile.

“What made you change your mind, just now,” he asked, “about sticking with me?”

“What? I’ll tell you what! I’ve been informed by the judge that I’m disbarred if I don’t take your case. And try your case. And to which case, I’ll admit, I wasn’t warm when it was offered me.”

“Well, what do you care,” he queried, “if you are disbarred? You’ll be marrying eventually—if not much, much sooner—a swell kid like you never goes unplucked from the garden of life—and so why not check out now?”

“You’re quite a gallant,” she retorted coolly. “And it’s plain to be seen that you’ve had lots to do with many women. But I don’t intend to get disbarred. Because nobody is going to want a dried-up woman lawyer for a wife. And if I wait for that—however, there’s plenty other reasons also why I don’t care to be disbarred.” She paused.

“John, let’s get down to brass tacks. You’re awfully cocky—for a man who may get strapped into the chair. Have you an alibi—corroboratable by people of reputable standing—for the hour of that murder last night?”

“What was the hour of the murder?”

“What was the hour of—” Elsa paused. “Well—since you told the Archbishop you cracked the safe—you ought to know! But it was committed at 10:43. And provable 3 ways, as I understand matters. Practically 4 ways—if we include Inspector Scott’s skilled estimate as to the time the—the victim’s body had been dead.”

“I have no alibi—corroboratable by people of reputable standing—” It was plain he was mimicking her.”—for 10:43 last night. Nor, the same, for many hours before—nor many hours after.”

“Then by God, John—and I’m cussing now, and with no reservations—why don’t you plead guilty—and take 20 years? I—yes—I think I might be able to drive a bargain with the judge in chambers before the trial—and get you that. In which case, no trial, maybe, technically would have been held and—”

“Wait, redhead! That’s out! Serve 20 years—when I’m innocent? What do you take me for? Eat beans and java and stew inside a 2-by-4 cell—for 20 long years? Listen—you have a hot proposition. Nothing—doing, Miss Colby.”

“Well—you are exorcised! For in your own excitement you forgot and actually called me Miss Colby!” She paused.

“Well, am I to understand then, John, that you’re going to tell me quite nothing?”

“Quite,” he said firmly. “Nothing more than what I just have. And which, in essence, is nothing. And which, perhaps, is far more than I should have. For you see, charming child, I realize that you were sent down here by the S.A. to find out everything you could on me, and—”

“Me?” she ejaculated, just getting the drift of his words, and quite aghast. “Sent down here—by the S.A.? Well, I—like—that, John! Must I go upstairs and bring down some credentials? If so, I’ll have to—”

He waved away the credentials which had not yet even been presented to him!

“I wouldn’t believe a bushel basket of alleged credentials which you might bring down,” he said contemptuously.

“And now, Elsa girl, go back to Mr. Vann—and tell him that I’ve enjoyed my visit with his charming messenger—and tell him also that I compliment him on his ability to read human nature—and to know exactly the exact type of sweet girl-child to send down here to do expert fishing in me!—and I really mean that about you, Elsa girl—but tell him I’ve nothing to send up to him. And—”

“John—John—John,” Elsa broke in reprovingly. “I am your lawyer! I positively am. And what can I do—to make you believe that?”

He was studiedly reflective, for a moment, as though he were not one hundred per cent sure of his own surmise.

“Well—I’ll tell you,” he declared briefly. “If—when Court opens tonight, with the clerk rapping for order, and saying ‘Hear ye, hear ye, etcetera’—you’re stationed there at my elbow, named by the clerk as defense counsel—and you get up in court, following the State’s Attorney’s introduction of himself as prosecutor, and introduce yourself officially in the records as defense counsel, then I’ll know at last that you are my lawyer.”

“And that moment,” she said bitterly, “will be a hell of a time to prepare any kind of a defense whatsoever!”