“Well, now, Moffit, since you read me off those facts, involving so many persons, I can see plainly that—huge as my drawing room is, downstairs—there’ll be witnesses a-plenty, of necessity, packed in it tonight; and inasmuch as now I’ve consented—”
“Well, it was just,” interrupted Silas Moffit, “that I would love to see dear Elsa get her baptismal fire, I have no interest in the case itself, rest assured. Only in Elsa. And then, too, it occurred to me at the same time what a nice gesture it would be if, when her name is announced by your clerk in the improvised courtroom as official defender—and she arises to acknowledge herself as defense counsel—I could pass up to you that 5-year renewal on that mortgage. And—”
“I quite understand,” said Penworth, hastily. “Yes—quite. Well, you may attend, Moffit. In fact—you may be John Q. Public himself! Yes. For the public, in general, will not be in attendance at this trial. The Press, yes—but the public, no. But you shall be the official Public! And the hour, let me say, is 8 p.m. sharp. And I’ll see that your name is put down on whatever list of permitable entrants Mr. Mullins receives from Mr. Vann—for Mr. Mullins, before taking up his official position tonight as my court clerk and bailiff combined, will attend to the admitting of all the proper entrants and their disposition in the courtroom. As for Mr. Vann, I’m sure he will later authorize my having put your name down.”
“I’m quite sure he will,” declared Silas Moffit quietly.
And even meaningfully. “And now—I’ll be going.”
And standing not on the order of so doing, Silas Moffit bowed himself to the doorway—only to be called back by Penworth.
“Aren’t you forgetting something, Mr. Moffit?”
Silas Moffit surveyed his person all over, from head to foot. And then a startled look of utter unbelief came over his face: the look of a man who simply can’t believe he has been solicited for a bribe, but who yet has heard—with his very own ears!—no less than—
“We-ell no, Judge,” he stammered. “I’m not. That is—”
“Well, how about your bumbershoot yonder?” And a dry amused smile hovered over the jurist’s lips.
“Good God—yes—of course!” And Silas Moffit hastily retrieved it. “I think I leave my confounded umbrella someplace at least once a day. For—but now, Judge, I note you smiling!—and of course now you’re going to ask me why I carry one—rain or shine! Which practically everybody does ask—sooner or later—and which I’ll wager not less than one person will yet today before the day is out.
“No, I am not,” Judge Penworth said hastily, though with a pronounced show of dignity. “I quite am not going to ask any question about a purely personal eccent—er—um—predilection. Lest,” he added ruefully, “you show me my place by asking me about one of my own. Such as my deplorable habit of—but I’ve nothing to ask,” he finished, smiling dryly back from the bed.
“You’re a real gentleman, Judge!” Anyone could see Silas Moffit was in grand fettle. “And it’s a real pleasure to meet up with breeding around this town. Well, I’ll be going now, so that you can tell my niece—the good news!”
And with a final good-bye, Silas Moffit left the room—this time for good—nodding, after he reached the down stairs front hall, towards Mullins who was now coming up from the basement with two chairs not nearly so fine as the first two he had been carrying.
Silas Moffit let himself out. And hurried down the soapstone steps. Up the block. And around the corner. And into a drugstore. In which, first buying a slug, he stepped into a single triple-glassed phone booth standing alone and isolated up front.
His voice was jubilant as he asked for Chocktaw 8888 and even more jubilant when he recognized the masculine voice of his son-in-law on the other end.
“Manny?” he said hurriedly.
“Yes. This—this is Popp’n’law?”
“Yes.” Silas Moffit made a momentary grimace. “Say Manny, get out the D. C. papers from the lockbox at once so they may be immediately put of record, and—”
“D. C. papers, Popp’n’law? D.—C.? What papers, maybe—do you mean? Now if you mean the ones you signed yesterday—the revised ones we worked out together to disinherit Saul by 101 per cent so’s he won’t have a show in hell to ever get a single penny from your estate, why of course I can get ’em out, and—”
“No, no, no, no, you imbecile!” put in Silas Moffit irritably. “I mean—but since you have introduced the subject, I want to go all over those papers again with you tomorrow—with a still finer-toothed comb—so that we can be 199 per cent sure, instead of just 101 per cent sure, that he hasn’t a chance in—”
“But—but he ain’t got a chance,” the man at the other end practically wailed. “He’s cut out now of even inheriting by way of me—or Bella. And—listen, Popp’n’law, have you just seen Saul?”
“Seen Saul? No I haven’t seen the filthy, lousy, upstart, stinking, dirty son of a bastard bitch—and I don’t want to.”
“Nor do I—but the papers I’m talking about now—and which I want you to get out at once—are the double-conveyance papers.”
“Double—double?” the man on the other end queried, as one actually scratching his head.
“The ‘ring-around-the rosy’ papers, you imbecile. Funny thing you couldn’t keep in mind papers by which you and your father make not less than $10,000 each! The serially numbered papers, in short, constituting the deed from me to you for $110,000—and the deed from you to your father for $2000—and the contract between him and you to pay you $10,000 cash down, and $5,000 a month, assigned back to me—and his $10,000 check to you, endorsed by you back to me.”
“But—but Popp’n’law, we can’t put papers of record that ain’t validated yet by a prior conveyance from Elsa.
And—”
“No? Well, probably not. But the recording office is open all night in the County Building, isn’t it?”
“Yes—sure, Popp’n’law. But—but Elsa ain’t yet forfeited her rights—”
“Well, just to chop off all discussion, Manny, she has! Or rather, will have—by about midnight tonight, more or less. A fact! For she’s appointed, Manny! By the court. On a case. And it’s a case that she can’t possibly win. And if she refuses to take it, Manny—she’s to be disbarred!”
“Oi!” The exclamation from the man on the end was a half-shout—half grunt—of triumph. And with a note of satisfaction in it that was exactly that to be found in a hungry wolf’s pleased growl when surveying a luscious field mouse. “And—and in either one of those two cases—by the contingential quitclaim papers she signed—Colby’s Nugget—is yours?”
“Correct, Manny!” replied Silas Moffit, hungrily. “In either case—her hundred thousand equity is mine. And adds itself to my ten thousand equity! Her part is mine—yes—but minus the $10,000 cut to you—and the same to your father. All right. Get all the papers out, Manny—and see you later!”
CHAPTER V
The Busy Young Man
He was a most odd-looking young man, the young man who stood on the corner of Washington and Clark Streets, reading the sensational murder story that had just been dropped on all the Loop newsstands by the Despatch, in its first issue out for the day. For his cheeks were rouged, and his eyes surveyed the print through dainty rimless eyeglasses held to his vest by a broad, black ribbon; as black, indeed, as was the very lit’ry tie he wore—which