As Elsa begins to consult with Doe, Doe surprises her by declaring his love for her. Elsa explains the situation with Colby's nugget and Doe expresses shame that he brought her into all of this. He explains his story on the stand to Elsa with a metaphor by comparing his story to a construction made of meccano sticks. Just as you can use Meccano sticks to make a bridge, then take them apart and use the same sticks to make a train, all the "sticks"(characters) in John Doe's false story are real people, but he just did not accurately state their real relations and relevance to the story he begins to explain what he now says really happened to Elsa.
According to Doe's new story, he(Doe) was a drifter who planned to break into the house of bookmaker Mortimer King in a plan to overhear the name of a horse fixed to win a race and make money as a result. However, when Doe hid in a closet he was shocked to see King come home covered in blood. Over the course of a phone call King then made to one of his henchman, Doe learned that King had murdered a bookie who he believed would turn state's witness in the upcoming senatorial investigation on race track gambling. Most of the other characters Doe mentioned were in fact people King hated and mentioned over the course of the phone call.
Doe also learned that Saul Steenburg was in Minneapolis at the same time with "Two Gun" Polack Eddy, a gangster, and also learned that the skull on King's desk was that of "Blinky the Swede" who used to come into King's books to bet his gigolo wages, but was murdered after he made a lot of money on a long shot. King, realizing that the skull of Blinky was an exact duplicate of that of Wah Lee, and knowing about the Parson Gang's plan to abscond with the skull, planned to "muscle in" on the deal and steal money from the Parson Gang by passing off the skull of Blinky is that of Wah Lee.
Hearing all this, Doe took the skull to get the money for himself, but mistook Archbishop Pell for a Parson Gang member. He assumed Mortimer King would provide an alibi for him, as by providing Doe the alibi, King would give himself an alibi for the murder he committed that night, but King refused to play ball.
Elsa says she will try to help Doe but he first must look her in the eye and tell her that the skull IS the skull of Blinky and not Wah Lee. Doe confirms this while looking at the floor, but Elsa demands he make eye contact while telling her this, and while making eye contact Doe will only say that the skull is not that of Wah Lee and not the one that was in Vann's safe.
Elsa and Doe rejoin the court and Elsa asks Penworth if he will waive the right for a final address to introduce further testimony and further evidence. The court is shocked to hear her plea.
Elsa asks Pennworth to let her call a witness. Vann asks where the witness is and Elsa says they are already in the crowd. Elsa reassures the court that she can prove that the skull is that of Blinky and not Wah Lee with the help of only two witnesses and a few items of evidence. She begins by calling to the stand Rebecca Cohenstein
Chapter 18: Calling Miss Cohenstein
Vann is shocked by this announcement as Miss Cohenstein was intended to be a state's witness, though the state did not find it necessary to call her, but he allows Colby to call her to the stand.
Rebecca Cohenstein, a powerfully built single black mother of two, begins to tell her story to the court. She explains that she works three jobs, as a scrubwoman for city hall, as a maid for Doctor Sun Chew Moy in Chinatown and as a professional weeper(someone who is paid to go to funerals to weep over the deceased)
Rebecca goes on to explain that today, around a quarter to five she ran into a worried looking Elsa Colby, and asked what she could do to help. Colby responded by saying that the only thing she could do to help would be to take a tooth out of the skull of a Chinese boy that was recovered today in the possession of John Doe.
Rebecca then went to see Vann and asked him for a tooth out of the skull, Vann refuses, but it was at this point that Rebecca put her skill as a professional weeper to work and made such a fuss by lying about having an ailing husband who could only be cured by putting the skull of a murdered Chinese person under his pillow that Vann finally took pity on her and gave her a tooth out of the skull, reasoning that it could be used to tell the skulls apart if the Parson Gang tried to pull another fast one, on the condition that Rebecca be at the trial as a witness for the prosecution
After this, Rebecca calls Elsa and tells her about the tooth, which she has left locked in Dr. Sun's office. Elsa then has her take the tooth to the Associated Laboratories Building containing the National Physical Library and meet a Mister Mankins, who used a machine to grind up the tooth into powder which was then put in a tube, which Rebecca has had on her person ever since.
The witness's testimony completed, the tube of teeth powder is entered into evidence along with two documents Elsa has: One by Dr. Sun Chew Moy attesting that he delivered the tooth of a Chinese boy named Kong Lung to a Dr. Dudley Bandolf who powderized the tooth, and another one by Dudley Bandolf, attesting that he did indeed powderize a tooth which he understands will be used as the control in an experiment. Elsa then takes another glass tube out of her lavender gripsack, which is entered into evidence.
After all this, Elsa tales a strange apparatus out of her gripsack and calls as her final witness Professor Clark S.W. Adgate.
Elsa calls Adgate to the stand, who testifies that he is the head of the crime detection laboratory at Midwest University, he further testifies that the wrote a criminological book about the use of UV in which he says that under UV light, the ground up tooth of a Caucasian glows green, that of an Asian person glows yellow, and that of a black person glows red.
Elsa begins and turns off the light and begins to use a UV light on the tooth of Kong Lung, which indeed glows yellow in the UV light. She then uses it on the tooth taken from the skull and the entire court is shocked to see that the tooth glows not yellow, not green, but red indicating that the skull is not that of Wah Lee, not that of Blinky, but the skull of an unknown black man!
Elsa, while as shocked as everyone else, begins to make her case if the tooth pulled out of the skull glowed red instead of yellow, it is proof it is not the skull of Wah Lee. Because Doe's indictment states that he is being tried for stealing the skull of Wah Lee, if the skull is proven to not be that of a Chinese person, then he cannot be convicted of stealing the skull of Wah Lee and the murder of Adolph Reibach while trying to steal the skull of the same. Because of double jeopardy laws, the state will then be unable to try Doe again for the theft of the skull of Wah Lee.
Penworth, conceding Elsa's point gives the verdict of not guilty, and asks Doe why he lied about the skull in the first place. Doe agrees to finally tell the truth.
Chapter 21: "As to Who I am," Said the Defendant, "I am-"
Doe requests that his shackles be unlocked now that he is freed from the charges, and Penworth obliges. Penworth threatens Doe with a year in jail plus a 1000 dollar fine if he lies again for contempt of the court, and Doe begins to tell his story.
Doe reveals that he had himself arrested today because he knew doing so would be the only way he could catch the real criminal in the Wah Lee crime. He explains that he is in fact, P. Wainwright(or Parks Wainwright to his friends) the brother of Piffington Wainwright. The reason Piffington had himself arrested for the crime was as part of a scheme to get his brother out of a bad contract where he was forced to write a radio program called Uncle Griffy's Bedtime Animal Tales For Tiny Tots(see book 2, the Man With The Crimson Box). It's at this point that a journalist in the room reveals that the plan failed due to sudden corporate restructuring in the firm of Adlai, Collerman, and Grimshawster, the firm that produces Uncle Griffy's Bedtime Animal Tales For Tiny Tots. Parks is disappointed but continues his story.
Parks was a wanderer who came to Chicago from Minneapolis to visit with and consult the library of the man who paid his way through his senior year of college, due to Parks being friends with the man's son. Parks then reveals that the man he is speaking of is none other than Wah Lung, and the friend was none other than Wah Lee!
Penworth begins to put the pieces together: he thinks that Parks must have gotten himself arrested to draw out the "inside wire" of the Parson Gang who must be one of the witnesses at the trial. Parks explains that the reason he chose Penworth as the judge was that he needed the trial to be at the specific location it is. The skull that was found on him was the skull of a black man which was used as a practice operation as a prop to show Wah Lee how the surgery would go. Parks drilled a hole in the back and inked the initials MK into the skull to make it identical to the Wah Lee skull. Parks further reveals that part of the reason he had to have the trial in this house as it was a place where he could have a local electricity superintendent, Albert Domaire, another friend of Wah Lung, into temporarily turning off the lights.
Penworth asks why Parks believed that the fingerman in the Wah Lee case was also the inside wire for the Parson Gang. Parks explains that Wah Lung had realized that on the day Wah Lee talked to his father for the last time, a party rung Lee's room directly claiming to be an expatient inquiring about getting the room back, and who thus learned that Wah lee was checking out the next day. But while Wah Lee has been talking to the man, Central came in on the connection and said to the calling party "Drop your nickel, please, Ivy 199-" and the rest of the number was obliterated by the dropping of the nickel in question.
Wah Lung then investigated the "Ivy" exchange and learned that it was a temporary exchange classification that was never even listed in the telephone directory, Lung befriended a young Chinese clerk in the telephone company named Dong Fu. Fu was able to give Lung the identities of seven of the numbers, but died in a car crash before figuring out the identity of the owners of Ivy 1991, 1995, and 1999.
Penworth asks why Lung never got the police involved. Lung responds that he only had a theory, and he knew that the inside wire of the Parson Gang was a man of power, who if threatened without sufficient evidence by a Chinese man, would be able to bring down a storm of racist violence against the Chinese-American inhabitants of Chicago. Lung was willing to risk his own life and livelihood, but he was not willing to risk that of his fellow Chinese-Americans.
Penworth deduces that Lung must have found one of the seven numbers and realizing that the person would not only have functioned as the gang "fingerman" but would assuredly be a witness in any case involving the Wah Lee kidnapping. Parks says that this is correct, and that he also knew the skull would be in the guilty party's house while he was busy at the trial.
Penworth further deduces that Parks brought the suspect here to have his premises searched, and that the person searching the house would signal a success to Parks by flickering the lights.
Parks says he needed to stall the trial for six hours, and after Vann spent three hours prosecuting the case, he filled two hours with a fantastic story that he created by putting together people from a newspaper he read and combining them all into one story. At this point Elsa jumps in to complain about him blackening the name of Rozalda Mardzienski, the maid who was having an affair but Doe objects and says that in fact "Rozalda" does not exist but is in fact a male government agent undercover as a Polish maid gathering evidence for the upcoming senatorial investigation into race-track booking.
Parks was prepared to stall for another hour, but thankfully Elsa's intervention tied up that time for him. At this point Minton Blaine the coroner stands up and tries to leave, but Penworth refuses his request. Penworth then threatens to indict Parks for conspiracy to commit burglary.
Chapter 24: The Man With the Magic Eardrums
Parks explains that they had to work in such a manner that if their suspicions proved to be false, not a sign would be left of what they had done and tried. For this reason they got a safe expert who was a friend of Wah Lung's to do the job. The safe of the suspect possessed 57,600 combinations which, if individually set and tried at an average of three seconds each, would take 36 hours to break into at maximum. Thankfully however, the safe expert invented a pair of tiny cone-like eardrums not unlike those in the story Parks told that allowed him to notice certain minute sounds, which, combined with his knowledge of the make and model of the safe, would let him narrow down the number of combinations to be tried to 7,200, which would only take SIX hours at the most.
Penworth says that he must not have gotten through the safe, but Parks insists he did: earlier when the lights were turned off for Elsa's demonstration, the lights dimmed slightly before Inspector Scott flipped the switch. An increasingly incredulous and angry Penworth refuses to believe that Parks's man succeeded, and continues to threaten Parks with an indictment, he begins to adjourn the court, but Parks asks the judge to wait until they determine that the evidence was found. Penworth demands to know how they could know this, as the person who would have found the skull is in the perpetrator's house. At this, Parks asks Inspector Park to open the locked door, and in walks Harry Seeong, the Chinese youth who walked out of the trial earlier... HOLDING THE SKULL OF WAH LEE!
Seeong reveals that he also found a revolver in the safe, along with 1,400 of the ransom money, along with x-ray films of Wah Lee. At this point he is interrupted by the sound of gunfire, and the court turns to see Judge Penworth slumped over his judge's chair, having shot himself in the head for the "inside wire" of the Parson Gang was none other than Judge Hilford Penworth!
Seeong reveals that the safe also contained the hammer which was used to murder Adolph Reibach, but is again interrupted by Fred Mullins, the court clerk, who has grabbed a hidden sub-machine gun and is threatening the court with it He threatens the court with another St. Valentine's Massacre but before he can start shooting, he himself is shot in the forehead by Harry Seeong, using the same gun used to kill Wah Lee. As Mullins falls his toupee falls off revealing a shiny bald head with a nude Venus tattoo on it indicating that Mullins was none other than Venus Baldy, one of the last surviving members of the Parson Gang.
Chapter 26: As Cameramen Departed
As Elsa and Parks leave the courtroom, Elsa thanks Parks for saving her fortune by making her the winner of the trail, which means she will not forfeit Colby's Nugget.
Parks reveals that Wah Lung has been convinced for the past 12 years that Penworth was both the inside wire and the fingerman in the Wah Lee case, as Penworth had Ivy 1995 on the day Wah Lee was rung in the hospital. Parks also says that Vann mentioned to him that as a lawyer he(Penworth) once went to Australia in connection with a gold mine he'd bought in order to locate some miners whose signatures were necessary to clear the titles and employed Venus Baldy, a forger to forge the signatures. Later when Venus was in Chicago, he introduced Penworth to Gus McGurk, and they, together formed the Parson Gang.
According to Parks, Wah Lung was unable to prove that Penworth was the inside wire, and knew that bringing a case against an eminent jurist would have brought on a libel suit that would have eliminated his livelihood and induced racist whites to harm Chinese-Americans. But when Wah Lee's skull was recovered, and then stolen, Lung knew Penworth must be involved and hatched the scheme with Parks Wainwright to finally bring the Judge to justice.
Elsa mentions that the court almost certainly thought Parks was guilty after his story, because his story was too perfect and brilliant a piece of dramatic webwork, a story that hung together too ingeniously to ever be real.
Penworth's plan, meanwhile, was to convict Parks and make it the case that the skull was legally the skull of Wah Lee, and then have it revealed during McGurk's trial that the skull was actually not that of Lee which would have blown the state's case sky high. He did not bargain however, on Elsa Colby the rookie lawyer being one step ahead of everyone else criminologically and being able to prove that the skull was not that of Wah Lee. Parks thanks her, but Elsa said she could never have done it if he hadn't confessed his love to her that gave her the spirit to win the trial.
At this point Wah Lung appears with Mr. Adlai, Park's boss, who also attended the trial unbeknownst to the latter. Adlai tells Parks that he heard the story he told tonight, and was so blown away by Park's brilliant story with its many threads in gangland, policedom, London, Minneapolis, San Francisco, with brilliant characters, and dramatic dialogue that he'll give Parks a new job as a writer who can write what he wishes to write, instead of writing the kids stuff Parks was formerly resigned to.
Parks tells Elsa that his confession was not just a scheme to get her motivated, but a genuine confession. Silas Moffit comes down to reluctantly concede defeat, and Elsa tells her she plans to marry Parks, and sire a brood of red-headed children who will grow up in Colby's Nugget. The novel ends as Elsa and Parks kiss.
Next time:
The Mystery of the Fiddling Cracksman
Wild, fantastic, yet overwhelmingly logical, this yarn could come only from Chicago's own Sherlock Holmes and that favorite of American mystery fans, Harry Stephen Keeler. Here he gives us a brand-new webwork of mysteries -- a cracksman who uses not dynamite, but a violin; a second-hand safe with amazing secrets inside; a volcanic island in the Pacific; a fantastic kingdom in Europe; and a pair of lovers caught in the very center of this whirlwind of danger and detection. As usual, this breathless yarn is filled with facts and incidents undreamed of in the usual mystery story. Keeler fans will find it a special treat.
Comments