CHAPTER XVI

An Appeal—To J. Doe

“And that moment,” Elsa Colby was saying bitterly to her reddish-haired client, in his incommunicado cell downstairs, “will be a hell of a time to prepare any kind of a defense whatsoever!”

His reply, however, was coolly rebukeful.

“Don’t swear, sweet child! Your dolls may accidentally pick up some of the words.”

“Oh, you’re awfully blithe and gay,” she retorted, “for a man who’s been caught with the goods—and has admitted everything. And has no ali—listen, did you ever see a man get—get—get cooked in the electric chair?”

“No. Did you?”

“No. But I wish you had seen one.”

“Why?”

“Then you’d co-operate with your lawyer.”

“With a sweet girl spy—a girl of the kind I’ve been looking for for years, but never met—sent up by Louis Vann,” he amended. “Unless, of course,” he added, less harshly, “when court opens up, you are sitting there by my side—my protector—my sweet and charming protector.”

“A protector who can’t do a—a damned thing for you,” she protested, “but make a fool of herself and you by trying to shake worth-while and reputable witnesses who will establish the identity of that skull, and what you said, and everything else. In fact, John, it won’t hurt here and now to tell you that I got information a while ago to the effect that this ‘ultra-legal judge’ you’ve been so gosh-darned foolish as to try to get, is so—so darned ultra-legal that he won’t even stand for witnes­ses, who tell straight stories, to be badgered. As an attorney can do, you know—if that attorney wants to. Yes, I under­stand he puts the kibosh to that sort of thing—right off the bat.”

He was studiedly silent.

“Well—then I suppose you—that is, my rightful attorney—can’t badger ’em, then?”

“Though little good it ever does anyway, at least for getting actual acquittal,” commented Elsa bitterly. “The difference between badgering decent straight-forward witnesses against you tonight, and letting them tell their stories with dignity, could easily mean, for you, the difference between the chair and life imprisonment.”

“For me,” he declared unsmilingly, “there is no difference —between the chair and life imprisonment.”

“Nor for me either,” said Elsa, cryptically—and she was referring now to her own circumstances—and not his. “For if you get either—you’re convicted. In which case—My God!” she added, as the realization of things swept over her. “Of all things! And you—you—would have to believe that I’m a State’s Attorney’s spy. And hence tell me nothing. Poor Elsa—her first case! And—”

“Is this your first case?” he asked, frowning.

“Yes,” she returned defiantly, “And what’re you going to do about it? You got yourself into this. But don’t worry. I’ve tried many cases in school—and acquitted myself with honor.”

“I’ll bet you did, at that,” he said. “I even believe you are a graduate lawyer—maybe getting $50 a month from the State’s Attorney.”

She made no retort to that, but surveyed him bitterly.

“Poor—Elsa?” he was repeating puzzledly. “Now if you were on the up-and-up—and your being my lawyer was the McCoy—and this really was your first case—you’d be glowing like the live coal that a Kilkenny Irishman juggles out of the fireplace atop his pipe.”

“Would I?” she said unsmilingly. “Well, I am glowing—only I’m doing it upstairs—in my thatch.” She stared at him. “Poor Elsa,” she went on musingly. “Her first case! A gilt-edge rap—and a fool for a client. For two cents I’d go out of here and—and shoot myself in the leg. And thus—” And she wondered whether, if she did shoot herself through the leg and thus escape service, that granite-miened judge would accept it as an excuse therefore—and rescind disbarment. She doubted it. Besides—she would probably cut an artery and bleed to death!

“If you were to shoot yourself in the leg,” her client was saying dryly, “you’d only make a run in your stocking.”

“Well, there’s two runs there already—on the sides you can’t see,” was her rejoinder. “And there’s—” She broke off. “My oh my—but this is all very gay right now, John, yes—but it won’t seem so gay when you get the chair—and get dumped into one of those death cells out in the County Jail on California Avenue—with no money to file the necessary appeal bond in 3 days—and then commence to tick off those 10 days till they lead you through the little green door.”

He slumped appreciably, at her graphic description of things, on his bench. And looked worried.

“Still nothing to say?” she asked, half hopefully.

“Nothing,” he persisted. “For if I talk to Louis Vann’s minions—I am a goner!”

She didn’t exactly grasp that.

“Well, then here’s one,” she asked desperately. “Have you any witnesses you want called?”

“You and Vann wouldn’t call ’em if I did,” he returned.

“No? Well, you could make plenty squawk on that afterward—and nearly get an order for a new trial from an upper court. Except, to be sure, you haven’t any appeal money—so you’d never get so far as consideration by an upper court. But you could make plenty squawk, just the same.”

“I suppose I could—yes,” he admitted solemnly. “That is—if I could establish I had witnesses—who should have been called. But you see, I—well—would I have to tell you what my witnesses would testify to?”

“I couldn’t make you.”

“Well, would I have to tell you where they were located?” There was a grim smile on his face now.

“I couldn’t make you—but how would I locate them then?”

“Oh, they might miraculously appear,” he said. “Or, again—one I have particularly in mind listens each night on the raddio.” Elsa winced at his gross mispronunciation of the word, yet half suspected it was purposeful and because he despised that vehicle of entertainment or else was a devout Al Smith Democrat. “—to Uncle Griffy’s Bedtime Story,” he continued. “Which comes on in Chicago, I believe, at—let’s see?—it comes on in New York from 8 to 8:15, doesn’t it?—then that would make it in Chi, here, from 7 to 7:15—so you could broadcast a ‘desprit’ raddio appeal for him to appear at such-and-such a courtroom, to help his red-headed friend with the anchor tattooed on his foot!”

“Have you an anchor tattooed on your foot?”

“No.”

“Then why—”

“Skip it!” he said abruptly. “Stranger things there be, you know, on land and sea, than aught you or I wot of.”

“That,” she declared sternly, “is not from Shakespeare. For I know my Shakespeare forward and backward.”

“I didn’t say it was from Shakespeare,” he retorted mildly. “Can’t I put together a few of his phrases—into a new Shakespeareanism?”

“Oh, you can do whatever you want,” she answered weari­ly. “At least—during the coming 10 days or so.” She was silent. “Well, getting back to practical things then, have you that witness? Who could testify to—well, if necessary, you could, I suppose, at the last minute, in the very courtroom, tell me what on earth I’m supposed to elicit from him on the witness stand?”

“So I could at that. Well, I’ve only one. Just—one.”

“Well—” Elsa almost screamed it. “Dish out his name then! What is it? And where will I find him?”

He gazed at the floor reflectively.

“Got an empty envelope on you?” he asked suddenly.

“Yes—for a wonder! It’s stamped and addressed—but not yet used.” And Elsa fumbled in her knit suit pocket, and withdrew the double-folded envelope that was to contain the postal order for her office rent. And which, indeed, had not been used! She held it forth curiously toward him. With a pencil.

He took them both, and opening the envelope out so that it gaped widely, he wrote painstakingly within it, its rear side against the wall at his elbow. Finally he withdrew the pencil, and sealing the envelope, handed them both back to her.

“That’s the only witness,” he said quietly, “that I would wish to be called to the stand.”

“And where,” said Elsa, almost grabbing the envelope, “will I—”

“The inscription inside will indicate clearly the obvious means by which he can be placed upon the stand.”

“I ought to open it now,” she asserted, troubledly. “for—”

“Oh—don’t!” he begged, a bit weary. “I’ve had a busy day, myself. And have given more than I should. It’ll be self-explanatory, anyway.”

“Very well.” She folded the envelope quadruply, this time, and tucked it away. “You’re making it awfully hard for me, John.”

“Yes?” he gazed at her troubledly. “Why? Lawyers don’t get worried because they lose cases. And 70 per cent, I take it, of young lawyers have lost their first case. Not that I want you—rather, let me say, an attorney honestly working far me and not for the S.A.!—to lose this case. Good Chri—er—hell-a’-mighty—no! Because if he—or she—loses, I lose! Not that—let me make it clear to you—I can’t take the hot-squat if I have to—and smile at the newspapermen. For I can! I’ve been through plenty—in the Brazilian jungles. But don’t think I want to sit in that 2200-volt seat. Nor go into the Big House. I’ll say not! And so—taking tentatively that you might be on the up-and-up, and not working in that snake pit upstairs, why—”

“I’ll tell you why,” Elsa interrupted him bitterly. “Many years ago I si—well—” she broke off. Downright angry with herself that she was even essaying to tell this probable murderer and burglar her own private affairs. But he was waiting on her words. And so she went on. But changed her tactics. “I’ve a sister, John. Who—who has a 9/10ths interest—in a big tract of land. Worth—worth over a 100,000 dollars. Oh,” she added, airily, “I inherited too—I—I got the house that was on the land. And sold my share for an education. Anyway, my sister—to raise some money for—for medical care—she signed a paper with an uncle of ours, and it was an assignment, and he slipped a clause in it which provided that if I—my sister’s sister, you understand?—failed to acquit her—” And Elsa, having embarked on a slightly distorted version of her affair, finished the story as she had virtually told it to Aunt Linda a while ago.

He listened in amazement.

“My God—your sister—what—what an idiotic little fool—to sign such a paper? Why, girl, she made that paper practically a quitclaim. If—as—and when! And if this man—your mutual dear uncle—transfers that property one second after the quitclaim becomes legally effective—” He broke off. “We-ell—it’s rather obvious that if the Judge throws the Book at me tonight, your sister loses a hundred grand?”

“Exactly! And if he even tosses the shortest chapter in it at you—20 years in the pen!—my sister still loses—the hundred grand. And all on account of me. And here I’ve nothing to fight for you on—against sickening facts—and practically a whole battery of reputable witnesses. And—now, John, for the last time, I ask you. My sister—my sister—it isn’t fair—because she—she was young—and involved herself. It—it doesn’t matter—for me. But I—I love my sister. And so out of chivalry, John, to an unknown girl—and because, John, you say I am a ‘sweet kid’ and all that hooie—I ask you for the last time: What—against all this testimony and evidence that will be offered tonight—am I to pit? What line of defense—will you want me to take?”

“Does a patient tell his own surgeon how to sew up a wound?” he returned, a trace of desperation in his tones.

“And as for your sister,” he added, belligerently, “it’s her affair, not mine, Nor even yours—so far as I can see—since you got your share—and used it profitably.”

“Well, even conceding I’m the surgeon in this case is something,” Elsa commented bitterly. “And that much being so, is there anything I can bring you tonight—to—well—sort of improve your appearance in court? Like a fresh white shirt—if so, what size? Or—or a new tie? The cop that’ll have you in charge will let you change—in some anteroom—they always permit that.”

He gazed down at himself critically. “No, I guess not. This shirt’s okay—and so is this tie. No use, you know, for me to prejudice Hizzonner by the old, old gag—of appearing in court all scrubbed up, and rubbed up, and dolled up, like I fell out of a bandbox; every grifter since Kingdom Come has gone up to trial that way. No, bring me nothing. Unless perhaps—and this is on the assumption that you are the McCoy as my attorney—bring me nothing, perhaps, but one stick of chewing gum—which I can chaw on for a few minutes just before you slap me on the stand to deny all the charges, and not be spieling up there like a guilty lug with his dry mouth full of sand, nails, mush and what-have-you.”

“That’s a tall hard order to fill!” said Elsa, a little sarcastically. “One stick o’ gum! Okay. And what flavor, M’Lord Doe?”

“Well now, M’Lady Elsa, you’re barging into the deep waters of—of the psychology of saliva flow!” Elsa started. What a strange bird this criminal was. “For since my highly individual tummy crawls at peppermint, spearmint, pepsin, and all the rest of the standard cuds—and it be a well-known ‘fack’ that the pleasanter the flavor, the more the old saliva flows—the said stick’ll better be ‘Oh God.’ If you can get it, that is!”

“Oh God if I can get it?” repeated Elsa helplessly. “What—what the hell kind of talk is that, John Doe?”

“It does sound screwy, doesn’t it? Well, permit me—” and still seated, he put his hand on his chest and made an ironical bow. “—permit me to illuminate my verbal obfuscations! ‘Oh God’ is a new flavor that—that lives entirely up to its name. For when you first taste it, you invariably say—”

“—Oh God!” filled in Elsa, ironically. “Well, I never heard of it in my life, and I’ve had ice-cream sodas put together for me, containing every combination and nuance of flavors ever known—including violet, licorice—”

“The more,” he said delightedly, “I talk with you, the more I recognize my—my own protoplasmic pattern. A fact! But speaking of flavors, you haven’t, I take it, yet covered the nigger drugstores yet, eh?”

“Of course I haven’t. What do you take me for? But since we’re working here together to give you a moist mouth when you go up on that witness stand to—to—to probably try to lie your fool head off—damn it, I ought not to even put you on—but anyway, I’d like to at least show you I am your attorney. So—where do I get this Oh God gum?”

“Only God himself, I fear, knows,” he said blithely. “You see,” he explained, a little more seriously, “I happened, about a few months ago, to be in a nigger drugstore in K. C. Carrying about one degree of fever from the flu. And craved ice cream. Even a ice-cream sody! Just a—a big sissy, see? And knowing how the niggers go in for weird scents and flavors, I asked the proprietor to toss me together a new kind of sody. And he gave me one—with a single purple syrup right out of a single spigot—which he said was called ‘Oh God’ favor. And by gosh, Elsa, sweet sister connoisseur in flavorology, it had what—well, what never in my life I’ve encountered. Or will again, maybe, God help me. For ‘Oh God’ was its right name. And I asked the proprietor where in hell he got it. And he said he got limited amounts of the syrup from the drugstore of his brother, going as the Afric Drugstore on 24th and State, this town—Chicago.”

“Yes. That’s right in niggertown. And incidentally but a few blocks west of where that trial is to be held tonight. But go on? Since I’ve been saddled with you, darned if I don’t get me a new flavor out of it!”

“Well, you’ve got it, sister-collector! For—but anyway, when I was riding south on State Street yesterday, I saw that store—and having a yen to sip nectar with the gods themselves on Mount Olympus once more before I died, I hopped off and barged in. And asked for a sody—flavor ‘Oh God.’ Just a big sissy again, see? And—well—the black proprietor knew all about it—since he himself had originally made up the very syrup I’d encountered in his brother’s store in the K. C. niggertown, by dissolving in an ordinary sweet syrup base a new synthetic chemical tentatively called, by its inventor, ‘Oh God’—after the ejaculation of some coon on whom the first dose was tried out—in an ice-cream soda. But the black proprietor had none of the syrup at present. Let alone the chemical. ’Twas the invention, that chemical, he told me frankly—suspecting, I guess, that I was some kind of city soda-water spy or inspector—of a Jewish chemist living right above the very store, who invented it originally to disguise noxious drugs. The proprietor said, in fact—seeing I was a intelligent sort o’ bird—that ’twould even completely disguise valerian—”

“Poo!—ickey!” Elsa ejaculated involuntarily. And her freckled nose rose straight up. “Of all the horrible-smelling things—valer—But go on. I’m getting something, damn it, out of you.”

“Yes. Well, he said the inventor had had no luck whatso­ever in getting his chemical adopted by the American Pharma­ceutical Association, because he had refused its formula to the American Medical Association, and was now about to put it limitedly on the market himself—from right above that very shop—but in the form of chewing gum—with the idea, of course, of getting some big chewing-gum manufacturer like—like Wrigley to take it on. But again, the black proprietor implied that if a big-scale chewing-gum man eventually did take it on—or even a small-time chewing-gum manufacturer —and this Jew continued to stand pat on refusing to divulge the formula of his flavor, as he most certainly would—they might both find themselves right up before the F. and D.—what on earth is that?”

“The Federal Food and Drugs Commission, of course. The ‘Oh God’ could contain some coal-tar derivative, you know, that would make it illegal to circulate practically. ’Twon’t stop me, of course, from eventually having one soda made out of it—one, anyway. But go on?”

“That’s all there is, sweet one—there isn’t any more! Mr. Afric said the Jewish chemist stopped in there each night, for a coke, at exactly 7 o’clock—on his way home from someplace where he worked. And being ‘wan fine feller’—and werry proud of his concoction—would beyond any doubt give me enough for a few ‘sodies.’ And so, quite frustrated in the realm of my gastronomic psyche, I went on. For I was way behind on my afternoon schedule for blowing half a dozen safes—and bumping off half a dozen citizens—as you probably figure anyway. And—but here—we’re wasting a lot of words, I think, just to moisten me up tonight on the stand. Just fetch along a stick of pepsin gum—and we’ll call it a day; to be sure I can’t stomach it, and if it dries me up—and I stand mute up there—saying muh ooh gug gug wooh kugh gug—your case will be up the flue, won’t it?”

“God forbid it be up the flue any further than it is,” Elsa said hastily. “If you were to make an ass of yourself on the stand, that would be the finishing touch. Well, I have your big order. One stick o’ gum. Flavor, ‘Oh God.’ And if it’s manufactured at all—or any gum whatsoever emanating from a number at 24th and State—which would be it—you’ll get it. For between here and my office I pass the stand of a legless Cockney known as Gummy Joe, who specializes in chewing gums. Has a sign on his showcase reading ‘If It’s Made, Joe Has It!’ And he has. For he has chewing gums from India—Czechoslovakia—Japan. Even balls of sweet bark from out the African jungles. Betel nut, from Brazil. When any customer tells him about a new gum—he stocks it. A real artist in chewingumology—”

“As even are you and I—in flavorology, eh?”

“As I am, anyway,” said Elsa curtly. “And so—if Gummy Joe has this divine gum which will change your oog gugs to intelligible language, I suppose you’re all set to deny the charges tonight?”

“Why, of course,” he said in manifest surprise. “Why not?”

“Well, the point is that putting you on to deny ’em—whether with your trap full of Oh God Chewing Gum or not—means laying you right in—in Lou Vann’s mitts!

For then he has the right to cross-examine you. In other words, to tear you to pieces! To bring out—that you have no alibi. To—and that’s the point! However, sufficient to the evening is the evil thereof! And thanks, anyway, to tipping me off to a new flavor. And in connection therewith, now that you and I’ve established the similarity—nay, the identity!—of our—our protoplasmic pattern, as you’ve put it—our mutual connoisseurship in flavorology—our psychical and spiritual en rapportness, as perhaps you’ll let me put it?—have you still nothing to tell me—as to your—that is, our—line of defense?”

And again he visibly froze up.

“No, nothing,” he said curtly. “For all I can say is what I’ve already said. Which is—!” His lips closed in a hard line. “That Skull—at least so far as I personally am in a position to know—wasn’t this fellow Wah Lee’s. Though I can’t establish that by telling you whose it might be. And I didn’t break into Mr. Vann’s safe, and take the skull. Nor knock off the hack. Sure—I know they say I admitted all of that. And it’ll be two birds on the upper stratum establishing that fact. And one bird on the lower stratum—” His voice was bitterly ironical. “—with the sconce in his mitt—to boot! But I’m innocent. Though I haven’t, as I told you, reputable witnesses—” Again she felt he was mimicking her. “—to say I wasn’t right up in Mr. Vann’s office. At 10:43 last night. Nor for hours before. Nor hours after. I’m—I’m innocent of the charges, that’s all. And if you are the McCoy—my lawyer—and I’m not fully convinced of that yet—and you’re decent enough to call my lone witness, I know he’ll—he’ll testify to the fact that I’m a ‘right guy.’ ”

She rose. “A right guy, hey?” she retorted ironically. “A—right—guy? A lot of good that will do you. All right. You can block me, John, a dozen ways running—but you can’t stop me from trying to do something—for you. Though—though God knows what. I—” She did now press the button. “I’m going! And quick!” And indeed Elsa did now want to hop on the job, and get hold of this man’s one lone witness, and try to find out from the latter what on earth she could about her client—or what on earth the man thought he could testify to.

The lockup keeper’s feet were coming from afar.

“Good-bye, John,” she said. “You’ve told me lots today—all of which was nothing! For all this bunkalorum about my being a ‘sweet child’—and something you’d ‘looked for for years’—a hell of a lot of good that, John, will be in a court action. So, all I’ve got to say—” The lockup keeper’s feet were coming closer now. “—is that I won’t walk out on you. For I half believe—well, maybe,” she amended more accur­ately, “4/9ths believe that maybe you are innocent. In some wild weird way that I can’t grasp. But that doesn’t mean you can be acquitted. No—not by a damn sight—no. And if I lose your case tonight—well, my sister—my sister—she loses—a hundred thousand dollars.”

“And,” said he who called himself John Doe, rising now from his bunk, “if you lose my case tonight, Elsa, I get—probably—the electric chair. So—if I can risk it—maybe you—and your fool sister!—can.”

“Yes, I suppose—we can,” admitted Elsa. And stepped through the narrow gap offered her, as the lockup keeper, now arrived, opened the iron-barred door.