“Harmfully is right!” Hatton’s voice was sharp. “Your client embezzled those bonds, and I can prove it.”
“Twenty-five thousand in credits, it comes to, eh? That’s a lot for Dugan & Sons to lose. What about that hypothetical case I posed? Suppose twenty thousand were recovered—”
“Is this a private beam? No recordings?”
“Naturally. Here’s the cut-off.” Vanning held up a metal-tipped cord. “This is strictly sub rosa.”
“Good,” Counsel Hatton said. “Then I call you a lousy shyster.”
“Tch!”
“Your gag’s too old. It’s moth-eaten. Macllson swiped five grand in bonds, negotiable into credits. The auditors start checking up. Macllson comes to you. You tell him to take twenty grand more, and offer to return that twenty if Dugan & Sons refuse to prosecute. Macllson splits with you on the five thousand, and on the plat standard, that ain’t hay.”
“I don’t admit to anything like that.”
“Naturally you don’t, not even on a closed beam. But it’s tacit. However, the gag’s moth-eaten, and my clients won’t play ball with you. They’re going to prosecute.”
“You called me up just to tell me that?”
“No, I want to settle the jury question. Will you agree to let ’em use scop on the panel?”
“O.K.,” Vanning said. He wasn’t depending on a fixed jury tomorrow. His battle would be based on legal technicalities. With scop-tested talesmen, the odds would be even. And such an arrangement would save days or weeks of argument and challenge.
“Good,” Hatton grunted. “You’re going to get your pants kicked off.”
Vanning replied with a mild obscenity and broke the connection. Reminded of the pending court fight, he forced the matter of the fourth-dimensional locker out of his mind and left the office. Later—
Later would be time enough to investigate the possibilities of the remarkable cabinet more thoroughly. Just now, he didn’t want his brain cluttered with nonessentials. He went to his apartment, had the servant mix him a short highball, and dropped into bed.
And, the next day, Vanning won the case. He based it on complicated technicalities and obscure legal precedents. The crux of the matter was that the bonds had not been converted into government credits. Abstruse economic charts proved that point for Vanning. Conversion of even five thousand credits would have caused a fluctuation in the graph line, and no such break existed. Vanning’s experts went into monstrous detail.
In order to prove guilt, it would have been necessary to show, either actually or by interference, that the bonds had been in existence since last December 20th, the date of their most recent check-and-recording. The case of Donovan vs. Jones stood as a precedent.
Hatton jumped to his feet. “Jones later confessed to his defalcation, your honor!”
“Which does not affect the original decision,” Vanning said smoothly. “Retroaction is not admissible here. The verdict was not proven.”
“Counsel for the defense will continue.” Counsel for the defense continued, building up a beautifully intricate edifice of casuistic logic.
Hatton writhed. “Your honor! I—”
“If my learned opponent can produce one bond — just one of the bonds in question — I will concede the case.”
The presiding judged looked sardonic. “Indeed! If such a piece of evidence could be produced, the defendant would be jailed as fast as I could pronounce sentence. You know that very well, Mr. Vanning. Proceed.”
“Very well. My contention, then, is that the bonds never existed. They were the result of a clerical error in notation.”
“A clerical error in a Pederson Calculator?”
“Such errors have occurred, as I shall prove. If I may call my next witness—” Unchallenged, the witness, a math technician, explained how a Pederson Calculator can go haywire. He cited cases.
Hatton caught him up on one point. “I protest this proof. Rhodesia, as everyone knows, is the location of certain important experimental industry. Witness has refrained from stating the nature of the work performed in this particular Rhodesian factory. Is it not a fact that the Henderson United Company deals largely in radioactive ores?”
“Witness will answer.”
“I can’t. My records don’t include that information.”
“A significant omission,” Hatton snapped. “Radioactivity damages the intricate mechanisms of a Pederson Calculator. There is no radium nor radium by-product in the offices of Dugan & Sons.”
Vanning stood up. “May I ask if those offices have been fumigated lately?”
“They have. It is legally required.”
“A type of chlorine gas was used?”
“Yes.”
“I wish to call my next witness.”
The next witness, a physicist and official in the Ultra Radium Institute, explained that gamma radiations affect chlorine strongly, causing ionization. Living organisms could assimilate by-products of radium and transmit them in turn. Certain clients of Dugan & Sons had been in contact with radioactivity—
“This is ridiculous, your honor! Pure theorization—”
Vanning looked hurt. “I cite the case of Dangerfield vs.Austro Products, California, 19 63. Ruling states that the uncertainty factor is prime admissible evidence. My point is simply that the Pederson Calculator which recorded the bonds could have been in error. If this is true, there were no bonds, and my client is guiltless.”
“Counsel will continue,” said the judge, wishing he were Jeffrey so he could send the whole damned bunch to the scaffold. Jurisprudence should be founded on justice, and not be a three-dimensional chess game. But, of course, it was the natural development of the complicated political and economic factors of modern civilization. It was already evident that Vanning would win his case.
And he did. The jury was directed to find for the defendant. On a last, desperate hope, Hatton raised a point of order and demanded scop, but his petition was denied. Vanning winked at his opponent and closed his briefcase.
That was that.
Vanning returned to his office. At four-thirty that afternoon trouble started to break. The secretary announced a Mr. Macllson, and was pushed aside by a thin, dark, middle-aged man lugging a gigantic suedette suitcase. “Vanning! I’ve got to see you—”
The attorney’s eyes hooded. He rose from behind his desk, dismissing the secretary with a jerk of his head. As the door closed, Vanning said brusquely, “What are you doing here? I told you to stay away from me. What’s in that bag?”
“The bonds,” Macllson explained, his voice unsteady. “Something’s gone wrong—”
“You crazy fool! Bringing the bonds here—” With a leap Vanning was at the door, locking it. “Don’t you realize that if Hatton gets his hands on that paper, you’ll be yanked back to jail? And I’ll be disbarred! Get ’em out of here.”
“Listen a minute, will you? I took the bonds to Finance Unity, as you told me but…but there was an officer there, waiting for me. I saw him just in time. If he’d caught me—”
Vanning took a deep breath. “You were supposed to leave the bonds in that subway locker for two months.”
MacIlson pulled a news sheet from his pocket. “But the government’s declared a freeze on ore stocks and bonds. It’ll go into effect in a week. I couldn’t wait — the money would have been tied up indefinitely.”
“Let’s see this paper.” Vanning examined it and cursed softly. “Where’d you get this?”
“Bought it from a boy outside the jail. I wanted to check the current ore quotations.”
“Uh-huh. I see. Did it occur to you that this sheet might be faked?”
Macllson’s jaw dropped. “Fake?”