If, that is, the defendant has any at all! For it seemed to me, from what Mr. Vann said, that—” He broke off. “Mind detailing the story I have here, for me?—no, I can’t read it myself—Mullins took my glasses downstairs to wash them for me, and hasn’t brought them up. Just give me the highspots—if you don’t mind—and I think I can calculate in a minute approximately how many witnesses Mr. Vann will be having. Of course we have no idea as to what the defendant’s defense will be, so—”
“I can give you that, Judge, right off,” declared Silas Moffit eagerly, retrieving the newspaper. “And without even glancing at the newspaper. For there is a forestory—written by Hugh Vann—evidently Louis Vann’s brother—detailing all the circumstances of the arrest of this fellow, and the later interview Hugh Vann had with him in his incommunicado cell. In which, so I gather, Hugh Vann posed as the defendant’s attorney.” The Judge shook his head reprovingly. “Anyway, the defendant—refusing, incidentally, to render his name at all—told Hugh Vann that his defense to all that the police were evidently going to charge against him, was amnesia.”
“Amnesia!” ejaculated Judge Penworth. “Good God in heaven! Amnesia! Why, if that were a valid defense, every criminal in America would be using it. Amnesia doesn’t, moreover, dissipate any charges. Well, on what basis does it appear he’s going to claim this?”
“Well, it seems, Judge—at least so he told Hugh Vann anyway—that he always develops amnesia between two such successive instances wherein he gazes into a lamp revolving within the angle of two inclined mirrors—a lamp exactly, in fact, like that one in the window of our famous Revolving Lamp Drugstore on Van Buren and Dearborn, or the one in its subsidiary, the Little Revolving Lamp Drugstore in the City Hall. A sort of neurotic inheritance, the fellow claimed, from traveling for years in South America with some hypnotist who used this device on him over and over. Anyway, he claims that on the day he struck Chicago—three days ago—he gazed into the revolving lamp in that big drugstore—and, first thing he knew, he was still gazing into it, but in a smaller window—and, evidently, days later—with three detectives hustling him through a door alongside.”
“Good—good heavens!” ejaculated Penworth again. “A sort of—of blanket erasure, isn’t it? Of—of everything, but the charges, unfortunately. And—but by George—by George, Mr. Moffit!—now this is very odd indeed. For Mr. Mullins was over there at the Revolving Lamp Drugstore—the main one, that is—just the other day, refilling the prescription for my damnable gout, and he mentioned to me that the place didn’t seem like itself without the famous landmark—the revolv—say, Mr. Moffit, get me the number of that store. No, the phone directory isn’t needed. Just get it for me off that bottle of medicine over yonder. Yes.”
Silas Moffit arose with alacrity, and got the number in question. Which was Van Buren 0999. And rendered it to the Judge.
Who reached out for the phone, standing atop his old Lionshead safe, and dialed the number in question. And, a second later, he was saying:
“Let me speak to Mr. Herman von Horn, the proprietor?”
A pause, and then:
“Is this Mr. von Horn? Say, Mr. von Horn, an emissary of the speaker, the other day—rather, let me put it this way: was your revolving lamp in operation the other—
“Oh, you don’t say? Well—well. Well, Mr. von Horn, this is Jud—that is, somebody connected with the Criminal Court. Yes, the Criminal Court. And will you just keep that fact to yourself? In spite of any newspaper stories—and so forth? Unless you are called as a witness—in a certain case—one that is breaking in today’s paper?”
A pause.
“Thank you.”
And Judge Penworth hung up.
“There was no revolving lamp there that day,” he said, sternly. “Nor was there one today in Mr. von Horn’s smaller store in the City Hall. Mr. von Horn sent both to the factory. The first came back today only, and is running today only in the main store. The other one, in the smaller store, went out yesterday.”
“Then,” exclaimed Silas Moffit, with a peculiar—and, it is to be admitted, sinister—exultancy, “the fellow’s alibi won’t be worth the powder to blow it to—hrmph!”
“—to hell, you were about to say, Mr. Moffit? Well I’m constrained to say it won’t! But no lawyer, under these circumstances, will ever permit him even to offer it. No, that particular defense is out! But I wouldn’t be surprised, Mr. Moffit, but that he was merely spoofing the young journalist, For such defense is too ridiculous—on its very face. And—however—hrmph!—I am but the judge, after all, delegated to listen to evidence and not to create it. We shall mutually forget that we know about the matter—but if that defense is offered, I will naturally—judge or no judge, have to call Mr. von Horn as a Court’s witness.”
A silence fell on the two men.
“Well, that leaves me,” commented the Judge ruminatively, “just where I was—with respect to estimating the defense’s probable witnesses. So suppose you give me, now, the highlights of the story there, and I will at least estimate Mr. Vann’s layout.”
“And,” put in Silas Moffit, eagerly, “determine at the same time, no doubt, whether the defense has any chance at all?”
“Yes,” admitted the judge sadly. “Determine offhand—whether the defense has any chance at all. For even I, the judge in the case, may equitably make that remark! Yes, indeed. So proceed, Mr. Moffit.”
CHAPTER III
“Wah Lee’s Skull; I Cracked Vann’s Pete!”
Silas Moffit unfolded on his knee the paper which he had already officially donated to the Judge. And followed the printed story with his eye as he gave its highlights.
“Well,” he began, “the story sets forth in brief, Judge, how Mr. Vann came back to Chicago this morning from St. Louis—where he’d been attending some relative’s funeral for a few days—stopped off, on his way to the City Hall, at his old personal office in the old Klondike Building—and found his ancient safe opened—the dials all splintered—obviously a sledge job!—and the murdered body of the building’s night watchman on the floor. A poor fellow named Adolph—yes, Adolph Reibach—who’s been night watchman there—at least so it says here—practically as long as Vann himself has been State’s Attorney. And—”
“Wait a minute, Mr. Moffit! Reibach, eh? Reibach? Hm? Mr. Vann gave me, of course, only a sketchy synopsis of the unfortunate situation—and didn’t state the victim’s name: Just called him ‘faithful old Adolph.’ But—Reibach? Now I wonder—if that could possibly be the same German—then fifty years old—who used to do odd jobs around here for me ten long years ago? And who had a flock of daughters, all living on the West Side? If it is, by any chance, then the defense—if things should go against it tonight—and if it’s somehow gotten a transcript of Reibach’s life history—could suddenly claim prejudice, and try to call for—”
“A change of venue? No, Judge, it says definitely here that this Reibach was hired, at the very time he came over from Germany, by the owner of the Klondike Building—one August Kieckhofer—because Reibach came—or at least said he did—from the same province of Germany—Pomerania—that Kieckhofer himself came from. And all of which, moreover, was only four years ago. And it says, furthermore, Judge, that this dead Reibach is not a day older than about 40 years old—right today. And still again, you speak of your Reibach having had a flock of daughters;
