By Advice of Counsel
by
Arthur Train
Part 4 out of 5
"--And to him," added Mr. Tutt solemnly. "The fact that this wish is not
expressed in such a way as to be legally obligatory makes it all the
more binding. In a way, I suppose, that is your hard luck. You might,
perhaps, fight a provision in the will. You can't fight this--or
disregard it, either."
"I don't exactly see why this is any _more_ binding than a provision in
the will itself!" protested Payson.
Mr. Tutt threw his stogy into the fire and fumbled for another in the
long box on the library table.
"Maybe it isn't," he conceded, "but I've always liked that specious
anecdote attributed to Sheridan who paid his gambling debts and let his
tailor wait. You remember it, of course? When the tailor demanded the
reason for this Sheridan told him that a gambling debt was a debt of
honor and a tailor's bill was not, since his fortunate adversary at the
card table had only his promise to pay, whereas the tailor possessed an
action for an account which he could prosecute in the courts.
"'In that case!' declared the tailor, 'I'll tear up my bill!' which he
did, and Sheridan thereupon promptly paid him. Have another nip of
brandy?"
"No, thank you!" answered Payson. "It's getting late and I must be
going. I've--I've had a perfectly--er--ripping time!"
"You must come again soon!" said Mr. Tutt warmly, from the top of the
steps outside.
As Payson reached the sidewalk he looked back somewhat shamefacedly and
said:
"Do you think it makes any difference what sort of a person this Sadie
Burch is?"
In the yellow light of the street lamp it seemed to the collegian as if
the face of the old man bore for an instant a fleeting resemblance to
that of his father.
"Not one particle!" he answered. "Good night, my boy!"
But Payson Clifford did not have a good night by any manner of means.
Instead of returning to his hotel he wandered aimless and miserable
along the river front. He no longer had any doubt as to his duty. Mr.
Tutt had demolished Tutt in a breath,--and put the whole proposition
clearly. Tutt had given, as it were, and Mr. Tutt had taken away.
However, he told himself, that wasn't all there was to it; the money was
his in law and no one could deprive him of it. Why not sit tight and let
Mr. Tutt go to the devil? He need never see him again! And no one else
would ever know! Twenty-five thousand dollars? It would take him years
to earn such a staggering sum! Besides, there were two distinct sides to
the question. Wasn't Tutt just as good a lawyer as Mr. Tutt? Couldn't he
properly decide in favor of himself when the court was equally divided?
And Tutt had said emphatically that he would be a fool to surrender the
money. As Payson Clifford trudged along the shadows of the docks he
became obsessed with a curious feeling that Tutt and Mr. Tutt were both
there before him; Mr. Tutt--a tall, benevolent figure carrying a torch
in the shape of a huge, black, blazing stogy that beckoned him onward
through the darkness; and behind him Tutt--a little paunchy red devil
with horns and a tail--who tweaked him by the coat and twittered, "Don't
throw away twenty-five thousand dollars! The best way is to leave
matters as they are and let the law settle everything. Then you take no
chances!"
But in the end--along about a quarter to seven A.M.--Mr. Tutt won.
Exhausted, but at peace with himself, Payson Clifford stumbled into the
Harvard Club on Forty-fourth Street, ordered three fried eggs done on
one side, two orders of bacon and a pot of coffee, and then wrote a
letter which he dispatched by a messenger to Tutt & Tutt.
"Gentlemen," it read: "Will you kindly take immediate steps to find Miss
Sarah Burch and pay over to her twenty-five thousand dollars from my
father's residuary estate. I am entirely satisfied that this was his
wish. I am returning to Cambridge to-day. If necessary you can
communicate with me there.
"Yours very truly,
"PAYSON CLIFFORD."
* * * * *
One might suppose that a legatee to twenty-five thousand dollars could
be readily found; but Miss Sadie Burch proved a most elusive person. No
Burches grew in Hoboken--according to either the telephone or the
business directory--and Mr. Tutt's repeated advertisements in the
newspapers of that city elicited no response. Three months went by and
it began to look as if the lady had either died or permanently absented
herself--and that Payson Clifford might be able to keep his twenty-five
thousand with a clear conscience. Then one day in May came a letter from
a small town in the central part of New Jersey from Sadie Burch. She
had, she said, only just learned entirely by accident that she was an
object of interest to Messrs. Tutt & Tutt. Unfortunately, it was not
convenient for her to come to New York City, but if she could be of any
service to them she would be pleased, etc.
"I think I'll give the lady the once-over!" remarked Mr. Tutt, as he
looked across the glittering bay to the shadowy hills of New Jersey.
"It's a wonderful day, and there isn't much to do here...."
* * * * *
"Sadie Burch? Sadie Burch? Sure, I know her!" answered the lanky man
driving the flivver tractor nearby, as he inspected the motor carrying
Mr. Tutt. "She lives in the second house beyond the big elm--" and he
started plowing again with a great clatter.
The road glared white in the late afternoon sun. On either side
stretched miles of carefully cultivated fields, the country drowsed, the
air hot, but sweet with magnolia, lilac and apple blossoms. Miss Burch
had obviously determined that when she retired from the world of men she
would make a thorough job of it and expose herself to no temptation to
return--eight miles from the nearest railroad. Just beyond the elms they
slowed up alongside a white picket fence enclosing an old-fashioned
garden whence came to Mr. Tutt the busy murmur of bees. Then they came
to a gate that opened upon a red-tiled, box-bordered, moss-grown walk,
leading to a small white house with blue and white striped awnings. A
green and gold lizard poked its head out of the hedge and eyed Mr. Tutt
rather with curiosity than hostility.
"Does Miss Sadie Burch live here?" asked Mr. Tutt of the lizard.
"Yes!" answered a cheerful female voice from the veranda. "Won't you
come up on the piazza?"
The voice was not the kind of voice Mr. Tutt had imagined as belonging
to Sadie Burch. But neither was the lady on the piazza that kind of
lady. In the shadow of the awning in a comfortable rocking chair sat a
white-haired, kindly-faced woman, knitting a baby jacket. She looked up
at him with a friendly smile.
"I'm Miss Burch," she said. "I suppose you're that lawyer I wrote to?
Won't you come up and sit down?"
"Thanks," he replied, drawing nearer with an answering smile. "I can
only stay a few moments and I've been sitting in the motor most of the
day. I might as well come to the point at once. You have doubtless heard
of the death of Mr. Payson Clifford, Senior?"
Miss Burch laid down the baby-jacket and her lips quivered. Then the
tears welled in her faded blue eyes and she fumbled hastily in her bosom
for her handkerchief.
"You must excuse me!" she said in a choked voice. "--Yes, I read about
it. He was the best friend I had in the world,--except my brother John.
The kindest, truest friend that ever lived!"
She looked out across the little garden and wiped her eyes again.
Mr. Tutt sat down upon the moss-covered door-step beside her.
"I always thought he was a good man," he returned quietly. "He was an
old client of mine--although I didn't know him very well."
"I owe this house to him," continued Miss Burch tenderly. "If it hadn't
been for Mr. Clifford I don't know what would have become of me. Now
that John is dead and I'm all alone in the world this little
place--with the flowers and the bees--is all I've got."
They were silent for several moments. Then Mr. Tutt said:
"No, it isn't all. Mr. Clifford left a letter with his will in which he
instructed his son to pay you twenty-five thousand dollars. I'm here to
give it to you."
A puzzled look came over her face, and then she smiled again and shook
her head.
"That was just like him!" she remarked. "But it's all a mistake. He paid
me back that money five years ago. You see he persuaded John to go into
some kind of a business scheme with him and they lost all they put into
it--twenty-five thousand apiece. It was all we had. It wasn't his fault,
but after John died Mr. Clifford made me--simply made me--let him give
the money back. He must have written the letter before that and
forgotten all about it!"
You're Another!
"We have strict statutes, and most biting laws."
Measure for Measure, Act I, Scene 4.
"I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no
laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have."
Montaigne. Of Experience, Chapter XIII.
Mrs. Pierpont Pumpelly, lawful spouse of Vice President Pumpelly, of
Cuban Crucible, erstwhile of Athens, Ohio, was fully conscious that even
if she wasn't the smartest thing on Fifth Avenue, her snappy little car
was. It was, as she said, a "perfec' beejew!" The two robes of silver
fox alone had cost eighty-five hundred dollars, but that was nothing;
Mrs. Pumpelly--in her stockings--cost Pierpont at least ten times that
every year. But he could afford it with Cruce at 791. So, having moved
from Athens to the metropolis, they had a glorious time. Out home the
Pierpont had been simply a P. and no questions asked as to what it stood
for; P. Pumpelly. But whatever its past the P. had now blossomed
definitely into Pierpont.
Though the said Pierpont produced the wherewithal, it was his wife,
Edna, who attended to the disbursing of it. She loved her husband, but
regarded him socially as somewhat of a liability, and Society was now,
as she informed everybody, her "meal yure."
She had eaten her way straight through the meal--opera box, pew at St.
Simeon Stylites, Crystal Room, musicales, Carusals, hospital
entertainments, Malted Milk for Freezing France, Inns for Indigent
Italians, Biscuits for Bereft Belgians, dinner parties, lunch parties,
supper parties, the whole thing; and a lot of the right people had come,
too.
The fly in the ointment of her social happiness--and unfortunately it
happened to be an extremely gaudy butterfly indeed--was her next-door
neighbor, Mrs. Rutherford Wells, who obstinately refused to recognize
her existence.
At home, in Athens, Edna would have resorted to the simple expedient of
sending over the hired girl to borrow something. But here there was
nothing doing. Mrs. Rutherford had probably never seen her own chef and
Mrs. Pumpelly was afraid of hers. Besides, even Edna recognized the
lamentable fact that it was up to Mrs. Wells to call first, which she
didn't. Once when the ladies had emerged simultaneously from their
domiciles Mrs. Pumpelly had smilingly waddled forward a few steps with
an ingratiating bow, but Mrs. Wells had looked over her head and hadn't
seen her.
Thereupon the iron had entered into Mrs. Pumpelly's soul and her life
had become wormwood and gall, ashes in her mouth and all the rest of it.
She proposed to get even with the cat at the very first chance, but
somehow the chance never seemed to come. She hated to be living on the
same street with that kind of nasty person. And who was this Wells
woman? Her husband never did a thing except play croquet or something at
a club! He probably was a drunkard--and a roo-ay. Mrs. Pumpelly soon
convinced herself that Mrs. Wells also must be a very undesirable, if
not hopelessly immoral lady. Anyhow, she made up her mind that she would
certainly take nothing further from her. Even if Mrs. Wells should have
a change of heart and see fit to call, she just wouldn't return it! So
when she rolled up in the diminutive car and found Mrs. Wells' lumbering
limousine blocking the doorway she was simply furious.
"Make that man move along!" she directed, and Jules honked and honked,
but the limousine did not budge.
Then Mrs. Pumpelly gave way to a fit of indignation that would have done
her proud even in Athens, Ohio. Fire-breathing, she descended from her
car and, approaching the limousine, told the imperturbable chauffeur
that even if he did work for Mrs. Rutherford Wells, Mrs. Rutherford
Wells was no better than anybody else, and that gave him no right to
block up the whole street. She spoke loudly, emphatically, angrily, and
right in the middle of it the chauffeur, who had not deigned to look in
her direction, slyly pressed the electric button of his horn and caused
it to emit a low scornful grunt. Then a footman opened the door of the
Wells mansion and Mrs. Rutherford Wells herself came down the steps, and
Mrs. Pumpelly told her to her face exactly what she thought of her and
ordered her to move her car along so her own could get in front of the
vestibule.
Mrs. Wells ignored her. Deliberately--and as if there were no such
person as Mrs. Pumpelly upon the sidewalk--she stepped into her motor
and, the chauffeur having adjusted the robe, she remarked in a casual,
almost indifferent manner that nevertheless made Mrs. Pumpelly squirm,
"Go to Mr. Hepplewhite's, William. Pay no attention to that woman. If
she makes any further disturbance call a policeman."
And the limousine rolled away with a sneer at Mrs. Pumpelly from the
exhaust. More than one king has been dethroned for far less cause!
* * * * *
"You telephone Mr. Edgerton," she almost shrieked at Simmons, the
butler, "that he should come right up here as fast as he can. I've got
to see him at once!"
"Very good, madam," answered Simmons obsequiously.
And without more ado, in less than forty minutes, the distinguished Mr.
Wilfred Edgerton, of Edgerton & Edgerton, attorneys for Cuban Crucible
and hence alert to obey the behests of the wives of the officers
thereof, had deposited his tall silk hat on the marble Renaissance table
in the front hall and was entering Mrs. Pumpelly's Louis Quinze
drawing-room with the air of a Sir Walter Raleigh approaching his Queen
Elizabeth.
"Sit down, Mr. Edgerton!" directed the lady impressively. "No, you'll
find that other chair more comfortable; the one you're in's got a hump
in the seat. As I was saying to the butler before you came, I've been
insulted and I propose to teach that woman she can't make small of me no
matter what it costs--and Pierpont says you're no slouch of a charger at
that."
"My dear madam!" stammered the embarrassed attorney. "Of course, there
are lawyers and lawyers. But if you wish the best I feel sure my firm
charges no more than others of equal standing. In any event you can be
assured of our devotion to your interests. Now what, may I ask, are the
circumstances of the case?"
"Mr. Edgerton," she began, "I just want you should listen carefully to
what I have to say. This woman next door to me here has--"
At this point, as paper is precious and the lady voluble, we will drop
the curtain upon the first act of our legal comedy.
* * * * *
"I suppose we'll have to do it for her!" growled Mr. Wilfred Edgerton to
his brother on his return to their office. "She's a crazy idiot and I'm
very much afraid we'll all get involved in a good deal of undesirable
publicity. Still, she's the wife of the vice president of our best
paying client!"
"What does she want us to do?" asked Mr. Winfred, the other Edgerton.
"We can't afford to be made ridiculous--for anybody."
This was quite true since dignity was Edgerton & Edgerton's long suit,
they being the variety of Wall Street lawyers who are said to sleep in
their tall hats and cutaways.
"If you can imagine it," replied his brother irritably, "she insists on
our having Mrs. Wells arrested for obstructing the street in front of
her house. She asked me if it wasn't against the law, and I took a
chance and told her it was. Then she wanted to start for the police
court at once, but as I'd never been in one I said we'd have to prepare
the papers; I didn't know what papers."
"But we can't arrest Mrs. Wells!" expostulated Mr. Winfred Edgerton.
"She's socially one of our most prominent people. I dined with her only
last week!"
"That's why Mrs. Pumpelly wants to have her arrested, I fancy!" replied
Mr. Wilfred gloomily. "Mrs. Wells has given her the cold shoulder. It's
no use; I tried to argue the old girl out of it, but I couldn't. She
knows what she wants and she jolly well intends to have it."
"I wish you joy of her!" mournfully rejoined the younger Edgerton. "But
it's your funeral. I can't help you. I never got anybody arrested and I
haven't the least idea how to go about it."
"Neither have I," admitted his brother. "Luckily my practise has not
been of that sort. However, it can't be a difficult matter. The main
thing is to know exactly what we are trying to arrest Mrs. Wells for."
"Why don't you retain Tutt & Tutt to do it for us?" suggested Winfred.
"Criminal attorneys are used to all that sort of rotten business."
"Oh, it wouldn't do to let Pumpelly suspect we couldn't handle it
ourselves. Besides, the lady wants distinguished counsel to represent
her. No, for once we've got to lay dignity aside. I think I'll send
Maddox up to the Criminal Courts Building and have him find out just
what to do."
It may seem remarkable that neither of the members of a high-class law
firm in New York City should ever have been in a police court, but such
a situation is by no means infrequent. The county or small-town attorney
knows his business from the ground up. He starts with assault and
battery, petty larceny and collection cases and gradually works his way
up, so to speak, to murder and corporate reorganizations. But in Wall
Street the young student whose ambition is to appear before the Supreme
Court of the United States in some constitutional matter as soon as
possible is apt to spend his early years in brief writing and then
become a specialist in real estate, corporation, admiralty or probate
law and perhaps never see the inside of a trial court at all, much less
a police court, which, to the poor and ignorant, at any rate, is the
most important court of any of them, since it is here that the citizen
must go to enforce his everyday rights.
Mr. Wilfred Edgerton suspected that a magistrate's court was a dirty
sort of hole, full of brawling shyster lawyers, and he didn't want to
know any more about such places than he could help. Theoretically he was
aware that on a proper complaint sworn to by a person supposing himself
or herself criminally aggrieved the judge would issue a warrant to an
officer, who would execute it on the person of the criminal and hale him
or her to jail. The idea of Mrs. Wells being dragged shrieking down
Fifth Avenue or being carted away from her house in a Black Maria filled
him with dismay.
Yet that was what Mrs. Pumpelly proposed to have done, and unfortunately
he had to do exactly what Mrs. Pumpelly said; quickly too.
"Maddox," he called to a timid youth in a green eye-shade sitting in
lonely grandeur in the spacious library, "just run up to
the--er--magistrate's court on Blank Street and ascertain the proper
procedure for punishing a person for obstructing the highway. If you
find an appropriate statute or ordinance you may lay an information
against Mrs. Rutherford Wells for violating it this afternoon in front
of the residence next to hers; and see that the proper process issues in
the regular way."
To hear him one would have thought he did things like that daily before
breakfast--such is the effect of legal jargon.
"Yes, sir," answered Maddox respectfully, making a note. "Do you wish to
have the warrant held or executed?"
Mr. Wilfred Edgerton bit his mustache doubtfully.
"We-ell," he answered at length, perceiving that he stood upon the brink
of a legal Rubicon, "you may do whatever seems advisable under all the
circumstances."
In his nervous condition he did not recall what, had he stopped calmly
to consider the matter, he must have known very well--namely, that no
warrant could possibly issue unless Mrs. Pumpelly, as complainant,
signed and swore to the information herself.
"Very well, sir," answered Maddox, in the same tone and manner that he
would have used had he been a second footman at Mrs. Pumpelly's.
Thereafter both Edgertons, but particularly Wilfred, passed a miserable
hour. They realized that they had started something and they had no idea
of where, how or when what they had started would stop. Indeed they had
terrifying visions of Mrs. Wells being beaten into insensibility, if not
into a pulp, by a cohort of brutal police officers, and of their being
held personally responsible. But before anything of that sort actually
happened Maddox returned.
"Well," inquired Wilfred with an assumption of nonchalance, "what did
you find out?"
"The magistrate said that we would have to apply at the court in the
district where the offense occurred and that Mrs. Pumpelly would have to
appear there in person. Obstructing a highway is a violation of Section
Two of Article Two of the Police Department Regulations for Street
Traffic, which reads: 'A vehicle waiting at the curb shall promptly give
way to a vehicle arriving to take up or set down passengers.' It is not
usual to issue a warrant in such cases, but a summons merely."
"Ah!" sighed both Edgertons in great relief.
"Upon which the defendant must appear in default of fine or
imprisonment," continued Maddox.
The two lawyers looked at one another inquiringly.
"Did they treat you--er--with politeness?" asked Wilfred curiously.
"Oh, well enough," answered the clerk. "I can't say it's a place I
hanker to have much to do with. It's not like an afternoon tea party.
But it's all right. Do you wish me to do anything further?"
"Yes!" replied Wilfred with emphasis, "I do. I wish you would go right
up to Mrs. Pumpelly's house, conduct that lady to the nearest police
court and have her swear out the summons for Mrs. Wells herself. I'll
telephone her that you are coming."
Which was a wise conclusion, in view of the fact that Edna Pumpelly, nee
Haskins, was much better equipped by nature to take care of Mr. Wilfred
Edgerton in the hectic environs of a police court than he was qualified
to take care of her. And so it was that just as Mrs. Rutherford Wells
was about to sit down to tea with several fashionable friends her butler
entered, bearing upon a salver a printed paper, which he presented to
her, in manner and form the following:
CITY MAGISTRATE'S COURT, CITY OF NEW YORK
In the name of the people of the State of New York To "Jane" Wells,
the name "Jane" being fictitious:
You are hereby summoned to appear before the ------ District
Magistrate's Court, Borough of Manhattan, City of New York, on the
eighth day of May, 1920, at ten o'clock in the forenoon, to answer
the charge made against you by Edna Pumpelly for violation of
Section Two, Article Two of the Traffic Regulations providing that a
vehicle waiting at the curb shall promptly give way to a vehicle
arriving to take up or set down passengers, and upon your failure to
appear at the time and place herein mentioned you are liable to a
fine of not exceeding fifty dollars or to imprisonment of not
exceeding ten days or both.
Dated 6th day of May, 1920.
JAMES CUDDAHEY, Police Officer,
Police Precinct ------, New York City.
Attest: JOHN J. JONES, Chief City Magistrate.
"Heavens!" cried Mrs. Wells as she read this formidable document. "What
a horrible woman! What shall I do?"
Mr. John De Puyster Hepplewhite, one of the nicest men in New York, who
had himself once had a somewhat interesting experience in the criminal
courts in connection with the arrest of a tramp who had gone to sleep in
a pink silk bed in the Hepplewhite mansion on Fifth Avenue, smiled
deprecatingly, set down his Dresden-china cup and dabbed his mustache
decorously with a filigree napkin.
"Dear lady," he remarked with conviction, "in such distressing
circumstances I have no hesitation whatever in advising you to consult
Mr. Ephraim Tutt."
* * * * *
"I have been thinking over what you said the other day regarding the
relationship of crime to progress, Mr. Tutt, and I'm rather of the
opinion that it's rot," announced Tutt as he strolled across from his
own office to that of his senior partner for a cup of tea at practically
the very moment when Mr. Hepplewhite was advising Mrs. Wells. "In the
vernacular--bunk."
"What did he say?" asked Miss Wiggin, rinsing out with hot water Tutt's
special blue-china cup, in the bottom of which had accumulated some
reddish-brown dust from Mason & Welsby's Admiralty and Divorce Reports
upon the adjacent shelf.
"He made the point," answered Tutt, helping himself to a piece of toast,
"that crime was--if I may be permitted to use the figure--part of the
onward urge of humanity toward a new and perhaps better social order; a
natural impulse to rebel against existing abuses; and he made the claim
that though an unsuccessful revolutionary was of course regarded as a
criminal, on the other hand, if successful he at once became a patriot,
a hero, a statesman or a saint."
"A very dangerous general doctrine, I should say," remarked Miss Wiggin.
"I should think it all depended on what sort of laws he was rebelling
against. I don't see how a murderer could ever be regarded as assisting
in the onward urge toward sweetness and light, exactly."
"Wouldn't it depend somewhat on whom you were murdering?" inquired Mr.
Tutt, finally succeeding in his attempt to make a damp stogy continue
in a state of combustion. "If you murdered a tyrant wouldn't you be
contributing toward progress?"
"No," retorted Miss Wiggin, "you wouldn't; and you know it. In certain
cases where the laws are manifestly unjust, antiquated or perhaps do not
really represent the moral sense of the community their violation may
occasionally call attention to their absurdity, like the famous blue
laws of Connecticut, for example; but as the laws as a whole do
crystallize the general opinion of what is right and desirable in
matters of conduct a movement toward progress would be exhibited not by
breaking laws but by making laws."
"But," argued Mr. Tutt, abandoning his stogy, "isn't the making of a new
law the same thing as changing an old law? And isn't changing a law
essentially the same thing as breaking it?"
"It isn't," replied Miss Wiggin tartly. "For the obvious and simple
reason that the legislators who change the laws have the right to do so,
while the man who breaks them has not."
"All the same," admitted Tutt, slightly wavering, "I see what Mr. Tutt
means."
"Oh, I see what he means!" sniffed Miss Wiggin. "I was only combating
what he said!"
"But the making of laws does not demonstrate progress," perversely
insisted Mr. Tutt. "The more statutes you pass the more it indicates
that you need 'em. An ideal community would have no laws at all."
"There's a thought!" interjected Tutt. "And there wouldn't be any
lawyers either!"
"As King Hal said: 'The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers,'"
commented Mr. Tutt.
"Awful vision!" ejaculated Miss Wiggin. "Luckily for us, that day has
not yet dawned. However, Mr. Tutt's argument is blatantly fallacious. Of
course, the making of new laws indicates an impulse toward social
betterment--and therefore toward progress."
"It seems to me," ventured Tutt, "that this conversation is more than
usually theoretical--not to say specious! The fact of the matter is that
the law is a part of our civilization and the state of the law marks the
stage of our development--more or less."
Mr. Tutt smiled sardonically.
"You have enunciated two great truths," said he. "First, that it is a
'part'; and second, 'more or less.' The law is a very small part of our
protection against what is harmful to us. It is only one of our
sanctions of conduct, and a very crude one at that. Did you ever stop to
think that compared with religion the efficacy of the law was almost
_nil_? The law deals with conduct, but only at a certain point. We are
apt to find fault with it because it makes what appear to us to be
arbitrary and unreasonable distinctions. That in large measure is
because law is only supplementary."
"How do you mean--supplementary?" queried Tutt.
"Why," answered his partner, "as James C. Carter pointed out,
ninety-nine per cent of all law is unwritten. What keeps most people
straight is not criminal statutes but their own sense of decency,
conscience or whatever you may choose to call it. Doubtless you recall
the famous saying of Diogenes Laertius: 'There is a written and an
unwritten law. The one by which we regulate our constitutions in our
cities is the written law; that which arises from custom is the
unwritten law.' I see that, of course you do! As I was saying only the
other day, infractions of good taste and of manners, civil wrongs, sins,
crimes--are in essence one and the same, differing only in degree. Thus
the man who goes out to dinner without a collar violates the laws of
social usage; if he takes all his clothes off and walks the streets he
commits a crime. In a measure it simply depends on how many clothes he
has on what grade of offense he commits. From that point of view the man
who is not a gentleman is in a sense a criminal. But the law can't make
a man a gentleman."
"I should say not!" murmured Miss Wiggin.
"Well," continued Mr. Tutt, "we have various ways of dealing with these
outlaws. The man who violates our ideas of good taste or good manners is
sent to Coventry; the man who does you a wrong is mulcted in damages;
the sinner is held under the town pump and ridden out of town on a rail,
or the church takes a hand and threatens him with the hereafter; but if
he crosses a certain line we arrest him and lock him up--either from
public spirit or for our own private ends."
"Hear! Hear!" cried Tutt admiringly.
"Fundamentally there is only an arbitrary distinction between wrongs,
sins and crimes. The meanest and most detestable of men, beside whom an
honest burglar is a sympathetic human being, may yet never violate a
criminal statute."
"That's so!" said Tutt. "Take Badger, for instance."
"How often we defend cases," ruminated his partner, "where the
complainant is just as bad as the prisoner at the bar--if not worse."
"And of course," added Tutt, "you must admit there are a lot of
criminals who are criminals from perfectly good motives. Take the man,
for instance, who thrashes a bystander who insults his wife--the man's
wife, I mean, naturally."
"Only in those cases where we elect to take the law into our own hands
we ought to be willing to accept the consequences like gentlemen and
sportsmen," commented the senior partner.
"This is all very interesting, no doubt," remarked Miss Wiggin, "but as
a matter of general information I should like to know why the criminal
law doesn't punish the sinners--as well as the criminals."
"I guess one reason," replied Tutt, "is that people don't wish to be
kept from sinning."
"Thou hast spoken!" agreed Mr. Tutt. "And another reason is that the
criminal law was not originally devised for the purpose of eradicating
sin--which, after all, is the state into which it is said man was
born--but was only intended to prevent certain kinds of physical
violence and lawlessness--murder, highway robbery, assault, and so on.
The church was supposed to take care of sin, and there was an elaborate
system of ecclesiastical courts. In point of fact, though there is a
great deal of misconception on the subject, the criminal law does not
deal with sin as sin at all, or even with wrongs merely as wrongs. It
has a precise and limited purpose--namely, to prevent certain kinds of
acts and to compel the performance of other acts.
"The state relies on the good taste and sense of decency, duty and
justice of the individual citizen to keep him in order most of the time.
It doesn't, or anyhow it shouldn't, attempt to deal with trifling
peccadillos; it generally couldn't. It merely says that if a man's
conscience and idea of fair play aren't enough to make him behave
himself, why, then, when he gets too obstreperous we'll lock him up. And
different generations have had entirely different ideas about what was
too obstreperous to be overlooked. In the early days the law only
punished bloodshed and violence. Later on, its scope was increased,
until thousands of acts and omissions are now made criminal by statute.
But that explains why the fact that something is a sin doesn't
necessarily mean that it is a crime. The law is artificial and not
founded on any general attempt to prohibit what is unethical, but simply
to prevent what is immediately dangerous to life, limb and property."
"Which, after all, is a good thing--for it leaves us free to do as we
choose so long as we don't harm anybody else," said Miss Wiggin.
"Yet," her employer continued, "unfortunately--or perhaps fortunately
from our professional point of view--our lawmakers from time to time get
rather hysterical and pass such a multiplicity of statutes that nobody
knows whether he is committing crime or not."
"In this enlightened state," interposed Tutt, "it's a crime to advertise
as a divorce lawyer; to attach a corpse for payment of debt; to board a
train while it is in motion; to plant oysters without permission; or
without authority wear the badge of the Patrons of Husbandry."
"Really, one would have to be a student to avoid becoming a criminal,"
commented Miss Wiggin.
Mr. Tutt rose and, looking along one of the shelves, took down a volume
which he opened at a point marked by a burned match thrust between the
leaves.
"My old friend Joseph H. Choate," he remarked, "in his memorial of his
partner, Charles H. Southmayde, who was generally regarded as one of the
greatest lawyers of our own or any other generation, says, 'The
ever-growing list of misdemeanors, created by statute, disturbed him,
and he even employed counsel to watch for such statutes introduced into
the legislature--mantraps, as he called them--lest he might, without
knowing it, commit offenses which might involve the penalty of
imprisonment.'"
"We certainly riot in the printed word," said Miss Wiggin. "Do you know
that last year alone to interpret all those statutes and decide the
respective rights of our citizens the Supreme Court of this state wrote
five thousand eight hundred pages of opinion?"
"Good Lord!" ejaculated Tutt. "Is that really so?"
"Of course it is!" she answered.
"But who reads the stuff?" demanded the junior partner. "I don't!"
"The real lawyers," replied Miss Wiggin innocently.
"The judges who write them probably read them," declared Mr. Tutt. "And
the defeated litigants; the successful ones merely read the final
paragraphs."
"But coming back to crime for a moment," said Miss Wiggin, pouring
herself out a second cup of tea; "I had almost forgotten that the
criminal law was originally intended only to keep down violence. That
explains a lot of things. I confess to being one of those who
unconsciously assumed that the law is a sort of official Mrs. Grundy."
"Not at all! Not at all!" corrected Mr. Tutt. "The law makes no pretense
of being an arbiter of morals. Even where justice is concerned it
expects the mere sentiment of the community to be capable of dealing
with trifling offenses. The laws of etiquette and manners, devised for
'the purpose of keeping fools at a distance,' are reasonably adapted to
enforcing the dictates of good taste and to dealing with minor offenses
against our ideas of propriety."
"I wonder," hazarded Miss Wiggin thoughtfully, "if there isn't some
sociological law about crimes, like the law of diminishing returns in
physics?"
"The law of what?"
"Why, the law that the greater the force or effort applied to anything,"
she explained a little vaguely, "the greater the resistance becomes,
until the effort doesn't accomplish anything; increased speed in a
warship, for instance."
"What's that got to do with crime?"
"Why, the more statutes you pass and more new crimes you create the
harder it becomes to enforce obedience to them, until finally you can't
enforce them at all."
"That is rather a profound analogy," observed Mr. Tutt. "It might well
repay study."
"Miss Wiggin has no corner on analogies," chirped Tutt. "Passing
statutes creating new crimes is like printing paper money without
anything back of it; in the one case there isn't really any more money
than there was before and in the other there isn't really any more crime
either."
"Only it makes more business for us."
"I've got another idea," continued Tutt airily, "and that is that crime
is a good thing. Not because it means progress or any bunk like that,
but because unless you had a certain amount of crime, and also criminal
lawyers to attack the law, the state would never find out the weaknesses
in its statutes. Therefore the more crime there is the more the
protective power of the state is built up, just as the fever engendered
by vaccine renders the human body immune from smallpox! Eh, what?"
"I never heard such nonsense!" exclaimed Miss Wiggin. "Do let me give
you some more tea! Eh, what?"
But at that moment Willie announced that Mr. Rutherford Wells was
calling to see Mr. Tutt and tea was hastily adjourned. Half an hour
later the old lawyer rang for Bonnie Doon.
"Bonnie," he said, "one of our clients has been complained against by
her next-door neighbor, a got-rich-quick lady, for obstructing the
street with her motor. It's obviously a case of social envy, hatred and
malice. Just take a run up there in the morning, give Mrs. Pierpont
Pumpelly and her premises the once-over and let me know of any
violations you happen to observe. I don't care how technical they are,
either."
"All right, Mr. Tutt," answered Bonnie. "I get you. Isn't there a new
ordinance governing the filling of garbage cans?"
"I think there is," nodded Mr. Tutt. "And meantime I think I'll drop
over and see Judge O'Hare."
* * * * *
"I'll settle her hash for her, the hussy!" declared Mrs. Pumpelly to
her husband at dinner the following evening. "I'll teach her to insult
decent people and violate the law. Just because her husband belongs to a
swell club she thinks she can do as she likes! But I'll show her! Wait
till I get her in court to-morrow!"
"Well, of course, Edna, I'll stand back of you and all that," Pierpont
assured her. "No, thank you, Simmons, I don't wish any more 'voly vong.'
But I'd hate to see you get all messed up in a police court!"
"Me--messed up!" she exclaimed haughtily. "I guess I can take care of
myself most anywheres--good and plenty!"
"Of course you can, dearie!" he protested in a soothing tone. "But these
shyster lawyers who hang around those places--you 'member Jim O'Leary
out home to Athens? Well, they don't know a lady when they see one, and
they wouldn't care if they did; and they'll try and pry into your past
life--"
"I haven't got any past life, and you know it too, Pierpont Pumpelly!"
she retorted hotly. "I'm a respectable, law-abidin' woman, I am. I never
broke a law in all my days--"
"Excuse me, madam," interposed Simmons, with whom the second footman had
just held a whispered conference behind the screen, "but James informs
me that there is a police hofficer awaiting to see you in the front
'all."
"To see me?" ejaculated Mrs. Pumpelly.
"Yes, madam."
"I suppose it's about to-morrow. Tell him to call round about nine
o'clock in the morning."
"'E says 'e must see you to-night, ma'am," annotated James excitedly.
"And 'e acted most hobnoxious to me!"
"Oh, he acted obnoxious, did he?" remarked Mrs. Pumpelly airily. "What
was he obnoxious about?"
"'E 'as a paper 'e says 'e wants to serve on you personal," answered
James in agitation. "'E says if you will hallow 'm to step into the
dining-room 'e won't take a minute."
"Perhaps we'd better let him come in," mildly suggested Pierpont. "It's
always best to keep on good terms with the police."
"But I haven't broken any law," repeated Mrs. Pumpelly blankly.
"Maybe you have without knowin' it," commented her husband.
"Why, Pierpont Pumpelly, you know I never did such a thing!" she
retorted.
"Well, let's have him in, anyway," he urged. "I can't digest my food
with him sitting out there in the hall."
Mrs. Pumpelly took control of the situation.
"Have the man in, Simmons!" she directed grandly.
And thereupon entered Officer Patrick Roony. Politely Officer Roony
removed his cap, politely he unbuttoned several yards of blue overcoat
and fumbled in the caverns beneath. Eventually he brought forth a square
sheet of paper--it had a certain familiarity of aspect for Mrs.
Pumpelly--and handed it to her.
"Sorry to disturb you, ma'am," he apologized, "but I was instructed to
make sure and serve you personal."
"That's all right! That's all right!" said Pierpont with an effort at
bonhomie. "The--er--butler will give you a highball if you say so."
"Oh, boy, lead me to it!" murmured Roony in the most approved manner of
East Fourteenth Street. "Which way?"
"Come with me!" intoned Simmons with the exalted gesture of an
archbishop conducting an ecclesiastical ceremonial.
"What does it say?" asked her husband hurriedly as the butler led the
cop to it.
"Sh-h!" warned Mrs. Pumpelly. "James, kindly retire!"
James retired, and the lady examined the paper by the tempered light of
the shaded candles surrounding what was left of the "voly vong."
"Who ever heard of such a thing?" she cried. "Just listen here,
Pierpont!"
"CITY MAGISTRATE'S COURT, CITY OF NEW YORK
"In the name of the people of the State of New York
"To 'Maggie' Pumpelly, the name 'Maggie' being fictitious:
"You are hereby summoned to appear before the ------ District
Magistrate's Court, Borough of Manhattan, City of New York, on the tenth
day of May, 1920, at ten o'clock in the forenoon, to answer to the
charge made against you by William Mulcahy for violation of Section One,
Article Two, of the Police Traffic Regulations in that on May 7, 1920,
you permitted a vehicle owned or controlled by you to stop with its left
side to the curb on a street other than a one-way traffic street; and
also for violation of Section Seventeen, Article Two of Chapter
Twenty-four of the Code of Ordinances of the City of New York in that on
the date aforesaid, being the owner of a vehicle subject to Subdivision
One of said section and riding therein, you caused or permitted the same
to proceed at a rate of speed greater than four miles an hour in turning
corner of intersecting highways, to wit, Park Avenue and Seventy-third
Street; and upon your failure to appear at the time and place herein
mentioned you are liable to a fine of not exceeding fifty dollars or to
imprisonment of not exceeding ten days or both.
"Dated 7th day of May, 1920.
"PATRICK ROONY, Police Officer,
"Police Precinct ----,
"New York City.
"Attest: JOHN J. JONES,
"Chief City Magistrate."
"Well, I never!" she exploded. "What rubbish! Four miles an hour! And
'Maggie'--as if everybody didn't know my name was Edna!"
"The whole thing looks a bit phony to me!" muttered Pierpont, worried
over the possibility of having wasted a slug of the real thing on an
unreal police officer. "Perhaps that feller wasn't a cop at all!"
"And who's William Mul-kay-hay?" she continued. "I don't know any such
person! You better call up Mr. Edgerton right away and see what the law
is."
"I hope he knows!" countered Mr. Pumpelly. "Four miles an hour--that's a
joke! A baby carriage goes faster than four miles an hour. You wouldn't
arrest a baby!"
"Well, call him up!" directed Mrs. Pumpelly. "Tell him he should come
right round over here."
The summons from his client interrupted Mr. Edgerton in the middle of an
expensive dinner at his club and he left it in no good humor. He didn't
like being ordered round like a servant the way Mrs. Pumpelly was
ordering him. It wasn't dignified. Moreover, a lawyer out of his office
was like a snail out of its shell--at a distinct disadvantage. You
couldn't just make an excuse to step into the next office for a moment
and ask somebody what the law was. The Edgertons always kept somebody in
an adjoining office who knew the law--many lawyers do.
On the Pumpelly stoop the attorney found standing an evil-looking and
very shabby person holding a paper in his hand, but he ignored him until
the grilled iron _cinquecento_ door swung open, revealing James, the
retiring second man.
Then, before he could enter, the shabby person pushed past him and asked
in a loud, vulgar tone: "Does Edna Pumpelly live here?"
James stiffened in the approved style of erect vertebrata.
"This is Madame Pierpont Pumpelly's residence," he replied with hauteur.
"Madam or no madam, just slip this to her," said the shabby one. "Happy
days!"
Mr. Wilfred Edgerton beneath the medieval tapestry of the Pumpelly
marble hall glanced at the dirty sheet in James' hand and, though
unfamiliar with the form of the document, perceived it to be a summons
issued on the application of one Henry J. Goldsmith and returnable next
day, for violating Section Two Hundred and Fifteen of Article Twelve of
Chapter Twenty of the Municipal Ordinances for keeping and maintaining a
certain bird, to wit, a cockatoo, which by its noise did disturb the
quiet and repose of a certain person in the vicinity to the detriment
of the health of such person, to wit, Henry J. Goldsmith, aforesaid, and
upon her failure to appear, and so on.
Wilfred had some sort of vague idea of a law about keeping birds, but he
couldn't exactly recall what it was. There was something incongruous
about Mrs. Pierpont Pumpelly keeping a cockatoo. What did anybody want
of a cockatoo? He concluded that it must be an ancestral hereditament
from Athens, Ohio. Nervously he ascended the stairs to what Edna called
the saloon.
"So you've come at last!" cried she. "Well, what have you got to say to
this? Is it against the law to go round a corner at more than four miles
an hour?"
Now, whereas Mr. Wilfred Edgerton could have told Mrs. Pumpelly the
"rule in Shelly's case" or explained the doctrine of _cy pres_, he had
never read the building code or the health ordinances or the traffic
regulations, and in the present instance the latter were to the point
while the former were not. Thus he was confronted with the disagreeable
alternative of admitting his ignorance or bluffing it through. He chose
the latter, unwisely.
"Of course not! Utter nonsense!" replied he blithely. "The lawful rate
of speed is at least fifteen miles an hour."
"Excuse me, madam," said James, appearing once more in the doorway. "A
man has just left this--er--paper at the area doorway."
Mrs. Pumpelly snatched it out of his hand.
"Well, of all things!" she gasped.
"To 'Bridget' Pumpelly," it began, "said first name 'Bridget' being
fictitious:
"You are hereby summoned to appear ... for violating Section Two
Hundred and Forty-eight of Article Twelve of Chapter Twenty of the
Health Ordinances in that you did upon the seventh day of May, 1920,
fail to keep a certain tin receptacle used for swill or garbage, in
shape and form a barrel, within the building occupied and owned by you
until proper time for its removal and failed to securely bundle, tie up
and pack the newspapers and other light refuse and rubbish contained
therein, and, further, that you caused and permitted certain tin
receptacles, in the shape and form of barrels, containing such swill or
garbage, to be filled to a greater height with such swill or garbage
than a line within such receptacle four inches from the top thereof."
"Now what do you know about that?" remarked the vice president of Cuban
Crucible to the senior partner of Edgerton & Edgerton.
"I don't know anything about it!" answered the elegant Wilfred
miserably. "I don't know the law of garbage, and there's no use
pretending that I do. You'd better get a garbage lawyer."
"I thought all lawyers were supposed to know the law!" sniffed Mrs.
Pumpelly. "What's that you got in your hand?"
"It's another summons, for keeping a bird," answered the attorney.
"A bird? You don't suppose it's Moses?" she exclaimed indignantly.
"The name of the bird isn't mentioned," said Wilfred. "But very likely
it is Moses if Moses belongs to you."
"But I've had Moses ever since I was a little girl!" she protested.
"And no one ever complained of him before."
"Beg pardon, madam," interposed Simmons, parting the Flemish arras, upon
which was depicted the sinking of the Spanish Armada. "Officer Roony is
back again with two more papers. 'E says it isn't necessary for him to
see you again, as once is enough, but 'e was wondering whether being as
it was rather chilly--"
"Lead him to it!" hastily directed Pierpont, who was beginning to get a
certain amount of enjoyment out of the situation. "But tell him he
needn't call again."
"Give 'em here!" snapped Mrs. Pumpelly, grasping the documents. "This is
a little too much! 'Lulu' this time. Fictitious as usual. Who's Julius
Aberthaw? He says I caused a certain rug to be shaken in such place and
manner that certain particles of dust passed therefrom into the public
street or highway, to wit, East Seventy-third Street, contrary to
Section Two Hundred and Fifty-three of Article Twelve of Chapter Twenty
of the Municipal Ordinances. Huh!"
"What's the other one?" inquired her husband with a show of sympathy.
"For violating Section Fifteen of Article Two of Chapter Twenty, in that
on May 7, 1920, I permitted a certain unmuzzled dog, to wit, a Pekingese
brown spaniel dog, to be on a public highway, to wit, East Seventy-third
Street in the City of New York. But that was Randolph!"
"Was Randolph muzzled?" inquired Mr. Edgerton maliciously.
"Of course not! He only weighs two pounds and a quarter!" protested Mrs.
Pumpelly.
"He can bite all right, just the same!" interpolated Pierpont.
"But what shall I do?" wailed Mrs. Pumpelly, now thoroughly upset.
"Guess you'll have to take your medicine, same's other violators of the
law," commented her husband.
"I never heard of such ridiculous laws!"
"Ignorance of the law excuses no one!" murmured Wilfred.
"It don't excuse a lawyer!" she snorted. "I have an idea you don't know
much more about the law--this kind of law, anyway--than I do. I bet it
is against the law to go round a corner at more than four miles! Do you
want to bet me?"
"No, I don't!" snapped Edgerton. "What you want is a police-court
lawyer--if you're goin' in for this sort of thing."
"My Lord! What's this now, Simmons?" she raved as the butler
deprecatingly made his appearance again with another paper.
"I think, madam," he answered soothingly, "that it's a summons for
allowing the house man to use the hose on the sidewalk after eight A.M.
Roony just brought it."
"H'm!" remarked Mr. Pumpelly. "Don't lead him to it again!"
"But I wouldn't have disturbed you if it hadn't been for a young
gentleman who 'as called with another one regardin' the window boxes."
"What about window boxes?" moaned Mrs. Pumpelly.
"'E says," explained Simmons, "'e 'as a summons for you regardin' the
window boxes, but that if you'd care to speak to him perhaps the matter
might be adjusted--"
"Let's see the summons!" exclaimed Wilfred, coming to life.
"'To Edna Pumpelly,'" he read.
"They're gettin' more polite," she commented ironically.
"'For violating Section Two Hundred and Fifty of Article Eighteen of
Chapter Twenty-three in that you did place, keep and maintain upon a
certain window sill of the premises now being occupied by you in the
City of New York a window box for the cultivation or retention of
flowers, shrubs, vines or other articles or things without the same
being firmly protected by iron railings--'"
"Heavens," ejaculated Mr. Pumpelly, "there'll be somebody here in a
minute complaining that I don't use the right length of shaving stick."
"I understand," remarked Mr. Edgerton, "that in a certain Western state
they regulate the length of bed sheets!"
"What's that for?" asked Edna with sudden interest.
"About seeing this feller?" hurriedly continued Mr. Pumpelly. "Seems to
me they've rather got you, Edna!"
"But what's the use seein' him?" she asked. "I'm summoned, ain't I?"
"Why not see the man?" advised Mr. Edgerton, gladly seizing this
possibility of a diversion. "It cannot do any harm."
"What is his name?"
"Mr. Bonright Doon," answered Simmons encouragingly. "And he is a very
pleasant-spoken young man."
"Very well," yielded Mrs. Pumpelly.
Two minutes later, "Mr. Doon!" announced Simmons.
Though the friends of Tutt & Tutt have made the acquaintance of Bonnie
Doon only casually, they yet have seen enough of him to realize that he
is an up-and-coming sort of young person with an elastic conscience and
an ingratiating smile. Indeed the Pumpellys were rather taken with his
breezy "Well, here we all are again!" manner as well as impressed by the
fact that he was arrayed in immaculate evening costume.
"I represent Mr. Ephraim Tutt, who has been retained by your neighbor,
Mrs. Rutherford Wells, in connection with the summons which you caused
to be issued against her yesterday," he announced pleasantly by way of
introduction. "Mrs. Wells, you see, was a little annoyed by being
referred to in the papers as Jane when her proper name is Beatrix.
Besides, she felt that the offense charged against her was--so to
speak--rather trifling. However--be that as it may--she and her friends
in the block are not inclined to be severe with you if you are disposed
to let the matter drop."
"Inclined to be severe with me!" ejaculated Mrs. Pumpelly, bristling.
"Edna!" cautioned her husband. "Mr. Doon is not responsible."
"Exactly. I find after a somewhat casual investigation that you have
been consistently violating a large number of city ordinances--keeping
parrots, beating rugs, allowing unmuzzled dogs at large, overfilling
your garbage cans, disregarding the speed laws and traffic regulations,
using improperly secured window boxes--"
"Anything else?" inquired Pierpont jocularly. "Don't mind us."
Bonnie carelessly removed from the pocket of his dress coat a sheaf of
papers.
"One for neglecting to have your chauffeur display his metal badge on
the outside of his coat--Section Ninety-four of Article Eight of Chapter
Fourteen.
"One for allowing your drop awnings to extend more than six feet from
the house line--Section Forty-two of Article Five of Chapter Twenty-two.
"One for failing to keep your curbstone at a proper level--Section One
Hundred and Sixty-four of Article Fourteen of Chapter Twenty-three.
"One for maintaining an ornamental projection on your house--a statue, I
believe, of the Goddess Venus--to project more than five feet beyond the
building line--Section One Hundred and Eighty-one of Article Fifteen of
Chapter Twenty-three.
"One for having your area gate open outwardly instead of
inwardly--Section One Hundred and Sixty-four of Article Fourteen of
Chapter Twenty-three.
"And one for failing to affix to the fanlight or door the street number
of your house--Section One Hundred and Ten of Article Ten of Chapter
Twenty-three.
"I dare say there are others."
"I'd trust you to find 'em!" agreed Mr. Pumpelly. "Now what's your
proposition? What does it cost?"
"It doesn't cost anything at all! Drop your proceedings and we'll drop
ours," answered Bonnie genially.
"What do you say, Edgerton?" said Pumpelly, turning to the disgruntled
Wilfred and for the first time in years assuming charge of his own
domestic affairs.
"I should say that it was an excellent compromise!" answered the lawyer
soulfully. "There's something in the Bible, isn't there, about pulling
the mote out of your own eye before attempting to remove the beam from
anybody's else?"
"I believe there is," assented Bonnie politely. "'You're another'
certainly isn't a statutory legal plea, but as a practical defense--"
"Tit for tat!" said Mr. Edgerton playfully. "Ha, ha! Ha!"
"Ha, ha! Ha!" mocked Mrs. Pumpelly, her nose high in air. "A lot of good
you did me!"
"By the way, young man," asked Mr. Pumpelly, "whom do you say you
represent?"
"Tutt & Tutt," cooed Bonnie, instantly flashing one of the firm's cards.
"Thanks," said Pumpelly, putting it carefully into his pocket. "I may
need you sometime--perhaps even sooner. Now, if by any chance you'd care
for a highball--"
"Lead me right to it!" sighed Bonnie ecstatically.
"Me, too!" echoed Wilfred, to the great astonishment of those assembled.
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
"For twelve honest men have decided the cause,
Who are judges alike of the fact and the laws."
--The Honest Jury.
"Lastly," says Stevenson in his Letter to a Young Gentleman Who Proposes
to Embrace the Career of Art, "we come to those vocations which are at
once decisive and precise; to the men who are born with the love of
pigments, the passion of drawing, the gift of music, or the impulse to
create with words, just as other and perhaps the same men are born with
the love of hunting, or the sea, or horses, or the turning lathe. These
are predestined; if a man love the labor of any trade, apart from any
question of success or fame, the gods have called him."
Had anybody told Danny Lowry that the gods had called him he would have
stigmatized his informant as a liar--yet they had. For apart from any
question of success or fame he had loved horses from the day when as a
baby he had first sprawled in the straw of his Uncle Mike Aherne's
livery and hitching stable in Dublin City. He had grown up to the scrape
and whiffle of the currycomb, breathing ammonia, cracking the skin of
his infantile knuckles with harness soap. Out of the love that he bore
for the beautiful dumb brutes grew an understanding that in time became
almost uncanny. All the jockeys and hostlers said there was magic in
the lad's hands. He could ride anything on hoofs with a slack rein; and
the worst biter in the stable would take a bridle from him as it were an
apple.
"Oft, now, I hear him talkin' to 'em, so I do." Mike Aherne was wont to
say between spits. "An' they know what he says, I'm tellin' ye. He's a
charmer, he is; like the Whisperin' Blacksmith. You've heard tell of
him, belike? Well, Danny can spake to 'em widout even a whisper, so he
can that!"
That was near seventy years agone, and now Danny was a shrunken little
white-haired old wastrel who haunted Mulqueen's Livery over on
Twenty-fourth Street near Tenth Avenue, disappearing in and out of the
cellar and loft and stalls like a leprechaun haunts a hollow tree.
Nobody knew where he had come from or where he lived except that he
could always be found wherever there was a suffering animal, be it dog,
cat or squirrel, and the rest of the time at Mulqueen's, with whom he
had an understanding about the telephone. He was short, wiry, unshaven,
with the legs of a jockey; and when he could get it he drank. That,
however, was not why he had left Ireland, which had had something to do
with Phoenix Park; nor was it the cause of the decline of his fortunes,
which had been the coming of the motor.
Some day a story must be written called The Hitching Post, about those
thousands of little cast-iron negro boys who stand so patiently on the
green grass strips along village streets waiting to hold long-forgotten
bridle reins. They lost their usefulness a decade or more ago, and so,
by the same token and at the same time, did all that army of people who
lived and moved and had their being by ministering to the needs of the
horse. The gas engine was to them what the mechanical bobbin was to the
spinners of Liverpool and Belfast. With the coming of the motor the race
of coachmen, grooms and veterinaries began to perish from the earth.
Among the last was Danny Lowry, at the very zenith of his fortunes an
unofficial vet to most of the swell stables belonging to the carriage
people of Fifth Avenue. One by one these stables had been converted into
garages, and the broughams and C-spring victorias, the landaus and
basket phaetons had been dragged to the auction room or shoved into dim
corners to make room for snappy motors; and the horses Danny knew and
loved so well had been sold or turned out to grass.
But there was nobody to turn Danny out to grass. He had to keep going.
So he had drifted lower and lower, passing from the private stable to
the trucking stable, and from the trucking stable to the last remaining
decrepit boarding and liveries of the remote West Side. The tragedy of
the horse is the tragedy of all who loved them. Danny was one of these
tragedies, but he still picked up a precarious living by doing odd jobs
at Mulqueen's and acting as a veterinary when called upon, and he could
generally be found either loafing in the smelly little office or smoking
his T D pipe on the steps outside.
He and Mr. Ephraim Tutt, the lawyer, who lived in the rickety old house
with the tall windows and piazzas protected by railings of open ironwork
round which twisted the stems of extinct wistarias, had long been
friends. Many a summer evening the two old men had sat together and
discoursed of famous jockeys and still more famous horses, of Epsom and
Ascot, until Mr. Tutt's cellaret was empty and never a stogy left in the
box at all. Probably no one save the odd lanky old attorney, who himself
seemed to belong to a bygone era, knew the story of Danny's glorious
past--how he had risen from his Uncle Aherne's livery in Dublin first to
being paddock groom to Lord Ashburnham and then to jockey, finally to
ride the Derby under the Farringdon gold and crimson, and to carry away
Katherine Brady, the second housemaid, as Mrs. Lowry when he went back
to Dublin with a goodly pile of money to take over his uncle's business;
and how thereafter had come babies, and fever, and the epizootic, and
hard times; and Danny, a heartbroken man, had fled from bereavement and
pauperism and possibly from prison to seek his fortune in America. And
then the motor! Lastly, now, a hand-to-mouth, furtive, ignorant old age,
a struggle for bare existence and to keep the tiny flat going for his
seventeen-year-old granddaughter, Katie, who kept house for him and of
whose existence few, even of Danny's friends, were aware excepting Mr.
Tutt.
There was, in fact, a striking parallel between these two old men, the
one so ignorant, the other so essentially a man of culture, in that they
were both humanitarians in a high sense. It is improbable that Ephraim
Tutt was conscious of what drew him to Danny Lowry, but drawn he was;
and the reason for it was that the fundamental mainspring of the life of
each was love--in the case of the man of law for those of his fellow men
who suffered through foolishness or poverty or weaknesses or misfortune;
and in that of his more humble counterpart, whose limitations precluded
his understanding of more endowed human beings, for the dumb animals,
who must mutely suffer through the foolishness or poverty or weakness or
misfortune of their owners and masters.
Danny had sat up all night with only a horse blanket drawn over his
legs, taking care of a roan mare with the croup. The helpless thing had
lain flat on her side in the straw struggling for breath, and Danny, his
heart racked with pity, had sat in the stall beside her, every hour
giving her steam and gently pouring his own secret mixture down her
throat. Nobody but Danny cared what became of the mare, left there two
weeks before by a stranger who had not returned for it; stolen,
probably. Cramped, stiff with rheumatism, half dead from fatigue and
suffering from a bad cough himself, he left the stable at eight o'clock
next morning, hopeful that the miserable beast would pull through, and
stepped round to Salvatore's lunch cart for a bowl of coffee and a hot
dog. He was just lighting his pipe preparatory to going back to the
stable when a stranger pulled up to the curb in a mud-splashed depot
wagon.
"'Morning," he remarked pleasantly. "Can you tell me if Mulqueen's
livery stable is anywhere about here?"
Danny removed his pipe and spat politely.
"Sure," he replied, taking in the horse, which besides being lame and
having a glaring spavin on its off hind leg was a mere bone bag fit only
for the soap factory. "'Tis just forninst the corner. I'm after goin'
there meself."
The stranger, a heavy-faced man with a thick neck, nodded.
"All right. You go along and I'll follow."
Mulqueen was not yet at the stable and Danny helped unharness the
animal, which, as soon as relieved of the shafts, hung its head between
its legs, evidently all in. The stranger handed Danny a cigar.
"I'm lookin' for a vet," said he. "My horse ought to have something done
for him."
"I can well see that!" agreed Danny. "He needs a poultice and hot
bandages. A bit of rest wouldn't do him no harm, neither."
"Well, I'm no vet," returned the stranger with an apologetic grin, "but
it don't take much to know that he's a sick horse. I'm a doctor, myself,
but not a horse doctor. Have you got one here?"
"Some calls me a horse doctor," modestly answered Danny. "I can treat a
spavin and wind a bandage as well as the next. How long will you be
leavin' him?"
"Oh, a day or two, I guess. Well, if you're a veterinary I leave him in
your care. My name's Simon--Dr. Joseph R. Simon, of Hempstead, Long
Island."
Danny worked all the morning over the horse, doing his best to make it
comfortable. Indeed, before he had concluded his treatment the animal
was probably more comfortable than he, for the night in the cold stall
had given him a chill and when he left the stable to go home for lunch
he was in a high fever. Doctor Simon was outside on the sidewalk talking
to Mulqueen.
"Well, doctor," said he, "what did you find was the matter with my
horse?"
"Spavin, lame in three legs, sore eyes, underfed," replied Danny,
shivering. "Sure an' he's a sick animal."
"How much do I owe you?" inquired Doctor Simon.
Danny was about to answer that a couple of dollars would be all right
when the thought occurred to him that here was an opportunity to secure
medical treatment for himself.
"If you'll give me something to stop a fever we'll call it even," he
suggested.
"That's easy!" returned Doctor Simon heartily. "Come into the office and
I'll take your temperature and write you out a prescription."
So they sat down by the stove and the doctor took Danny's pulse and put
a thermometer under his tongue, chatting amicably meanwhile, and when he
had completed his examination he wrote something on a piece of paper.
"How long have you been practicing veterinary medicine?" he inquired.
"All my life," answered Danny truthfully. "But I don't get near so much
to do as I used. These be hard times for those as have to do with
horses."
He got up painfully.
"Well, now," said Doctor Simon, "I'd feel better if I paid you for
treating my horse. Just put this five-dollar bill in your pocket. I
guess you need it more than I do."
Danny shook his head. "That's all right!" he said weakly, for he was
feeling very ill. "It's a stand-off."
"Oh, go ahead, take it!" urged Doctor Simon, shoving the bill into the
pocket of Danny's overcoat. "By the way, have you got your card? I might
be able to send a little business your way."
When his magic skill with horses was matter of common knowledge among
the upper circle of Long Island grooms and coachmen Danny had had a few
cards struck off by a friendly printer. A couple of fly-blown specimens
still lingered in the drawer of Mulqueen's desk. Danny searched until he
found one:
DANIEL LOWRY
VETERINARY
212 WEST 53D STREET
NEW YORK CITY
"Here, sor," said he, his head swimming, "that's my name, but the
address is wrong."
Doctor Simon put it in his pocketbook.
"Thanks," he remarked. "Much obliged for fixing up my horse." Then in a
businesslike manner, he threw back his coat and displayed a glittering
badge. "Now," he added brusquely, "I must arrest you for practising
veterinary medicine without a license. Just come along with me to the
nearest police station."
* * * * *
When Mr. Tutt returned home that evening after attending one of the
weekly sessions at the Colophon Club, where he had reluctantly
contributed the sum of fifty-seven dollars to relieve the immediate
needs of certain impecunious persons gathered there about a
green-baize-covered table in a remote corner of the card room, he
perceived by the light of an adjacent street lamp that someone was
sitting upon the top of the steps leading to his front door.
"Are you Mr. Tutt?" inquired Katie Lowry, getting up and making a timid
curtsy. "The great lawyer?"
"That is my name, child," he answered. "What do you want of me?"
She was but a wisp of a girl and her eyes shone like a cat's from under
a gray shawl gathered over a pair of narrow, pinched shoulders.
"They've taken grandfather away to prison," she replied with a catch in
her throat. "He didn't come in to lunch nor to supper, and when I went
to the stable Mr. Mulqueen said a detective had arrested grandfather for
doctoring horses without a license and he had pleaded guilty and they'd
locked him up. I went to the police station, but they said he wasn't
there any more, but that he was in the Tombs."
"Who is your grandfather?" demanded Mr. Tutt as he unlocked the door.
"Danny Lowry," she replied. "Oh, sir, won't you try to do something for
him, sir? He thinks so much of you! He often has told me what a grand
man you were and so kind, besides being such a clever lawyer and all the
judges afraid of you!"
"Danny Lowry in the Tombs!" cried Mr. Tutt. "What an outrage! Of course
I'll do what I can for him. But first come inside and warm yourself.
Miranda!" he shouted to the colored maid of all work. "Make us some hot
toast and tea and bring it up to the library. Now, my dear, take off
your shawl and sit down and tell me all about it."
So with her frayed kid shoes upturned on the fender, little Katie Lowry,
confident that she had found an all-powerful friend in this queer long
man who smoked such queer long cigars, sipping her tea only when she had
to pause for breath, poured out the story of her grandfather's fight
with poverty and misfortune, while her auditor's wrinkled face grew soft
and hard by turns as he watched her through the gray clouds from his
stogy. An hour later he left her at the door of her flat, happy and
encouraged, with a twenty-dollar bill crumpled in her hand.
* * * * *
"But what do you expect me to do about it?" retorted District Attorney
Peckham in his office next morning when Mr. Tutt had explained to him
the perversion of justice to accomplish which the law had been invoked.
"I'm sorry! No doubt he's a good feller. But he's guilty, isn't he?
Admitted it in the police court, didn't he?"
"I expect you to temper justice with mercy," replied Mr. Tutt earnestly.
"This old man's whole life has been devoted to relieving the sufferings
of animals. He's a genuine Samaritan."
"That's like saying that a thief has done good with his plunder, isn't
it?" commented Peckham. "Look here, Tutt, of course I hope you get your
man off and all that, but if I personally threw the case out I'd have
all the vets in the city on my neck. You see the motors have pretty
nearly put 'em all out of business. There aren't enough sick horses to
go round, so they've been conducting a sort of crusade. Tough luck--but
the law is the law. And I have to enforce it--ostensibly, anyway."
"Very well," answered the old lawyer amiably but defiantly. "Then if
you've got to enforce the law against a fine old chap like that I've got
to do my darnedest to smash that law higher than a kite. And I'll tell
you something, Peckham--which is that the human heart is a damn sight
bigger than the human conscience."
* * * * *
Danny Lowry had lived for years in fear of the blow which had so
suddenly struck him down, for there had never been any blinking of the
obvious fact that in acting as an unlicensed veterinary he was brazenly
violating the law. On the other hand, not being able to read or write,
and having no technical knowledge of medicine, all his experience, all
his skill, all his love of animals could avail him nothing so far as
securing a license was concerned. He could not read an examination
paper, but he could interpret the symptoms seen in a trembling neck and
a lack-luster eye. Danny had no choice but to break the law or abandon
the only career for which he had an aptitude, or by which he could hope
to earn a living at his age. His crime was _malum prohibitum_, not
_malum in se_, but it was, nevertheless, a violation of a most necessary
law. Certainly none of us wish to be doctored by tyros or humbugs, or to
have our animals treated by them. Only Danny was neither a tyro nor a
humbug, and had he not been a lawbreaker the world would have been to
some extent the loser.
Yet by all the canons of ethics and justice it was most improper for Mr.
Tutt to hurry off to the Tombs and bail out old Danny Lowry, a
self-confessed lawbreaker, giving his own bond and the house on
Twenty-third Street as security. Still more so, as more unblushingly
ostentatious, was his taking the criminal over to Pont's and giving him
the very best dinner that Signor Faccini, proprietor of that celebrated
hostelry, could purvey.
Hard cases are said to make bad law; I wonder if they make bad people.
If "conscience makes cowards of us all" does human sympathy play ducks
and drakes with conscience? Does it blind the eye of reason? Rather,
does it not illumine and expose the fallacies of logic and the falsities
of the syllogism? Do two and two make four in human polity as in
mathematics? Sometimes it would not seem so.
Certainly you would have picked Mr. Bently Gibson, of The Gibson Woolen
Mills, as a model juror. One look at him as a prospective talesman in a
murder case and you would have unhesitatingly murmured, "The defense
challenges peremptorily!" His broad forehead, large well-shaped nose,
firm chin and clear calm eye evidenced his common sense, his
conscientiousness and his uncompromising adherence to principle. His
customs declarations were complete to the smallest item, his income-tax
returns models of self-sacrifice, he was patriotic and civic, he
belonged to the Welfare League and the Citizens' Union, and--I hesitate
to confess it--he subscribed to the annual deficit of the Society for
the Suppression of Sin. On the face of it, he was the kind of man the
district attorney tries to select as foreman of a jury when he has to
prosecute a woman who had kidnaped her own child out of a foundling
asylum.
The heelers and hangers-on of the criminal courts would have described
him as a highbrow and as a holier-than-thou; perhaps he might in a
moment of jocularity have even so described himself--for he had his
human--perhaps I should have said, his weaker--side. Surely he seemed
human enough when he kissed Eleanor good-by at the door of their country
place on the Sound the morning he had been subpoenaed to serve as a
juryman in Part Five of the General Sessions. He had planned to take a
week's holiday that spring, and he had gone to infinite trouble to
arrange his business in order to have it, for they had become engaged
eleven years before at the moment when the apple blossoms and the
dogwoods were at the height of their glory, even as they were now.
When, however, he found the brown subpoena at his office directing him
to present himself for service the following Monday he simply gave a
half sigh, half grunt of disgust, and let the longed-for vacation go;
for one of his pet theories was that the jury system was the chief
bulwark of the Constitution, the cornerstone of liberty. Had he only
been disingenuous enough he need never have served on any jury, for no
lawyer for the defense hearing him enlarge on what he considered the
duties of a juryman to be, would ever have allowed him in the box. But
when other chaps on the panel presented their excuses to the judge and
managed to persuade him of the imperative needs of family or business,
and slipped--grinning discreetly--out of the court room, he merely
inaudibly called them welshers and pikers. No, he regarded jury service
as a duty and a privilege, one not to be lightly avoided--the one common
garden governmental function in which Uncle Sam expected every citizen
to do his duty.
"I won't let any of the rogues get by me!" he shouted gaily to his wife
over the back of the motor. "And anyhow I shan't be locked up all night.
There aren't any murder cases on the calendar. I'll be out on the
five-fifteen as usual."
Alas, poor Bently! Alas for human frailty and all those splendid
visions in which he pictured himself as the anchor of the ship of
justice, a prop and stay of the structure of democracy.
His train was a trifle late and the roll of the jury had already been
called, and the perennial excuses heard, when he entered the court room;
but the clerk, who knew him, nodded in a welcoming manner, checked him
off as present and dropped his name card in the revolving wheel. It was
a well-known scene to Bently, a veteran of fifteen years' service. Even
the actors were familiar friends--the pink-faced judge with his
snow-white whiskers, who at times suggested to Bently an octogenarian
angel, and, at others, a certain ancient baboon once observed in the
Primates cage at the Bronz Zoo; the harried, anxious little clerk with
his paradoxically grandiloquent intonation; the comedy assistant
district attorney with his wheezy voice emanating from a Falstaffian
body, who suffered from a soporific malady and was accustomed to open a
case and then let it take care of itself while he slumbered audibly
beneath the dais; even Ephraim Tutt, the gaunt, benignly
whimsical-looking attorney, in his rusty-black frock coat and
loose-hanging tie; his rotund partner, whose birdlike briskness and fat
paunch inevitably brought to mind a distended robin in specs; and the
_degage_ Bonnie Doon in his cut-in-at-the-waist checked suit--he knew
them all of old.
"Well, call your first case, Mister District Attorney!" directed the
judge, nodding encouragingly at Bently, well knowing that in him he had
a staunch upholder of the law-as-it-is, who could be depended upon to
bolster up his weaker or more sentimental brother talesmen into the
proper convicting attitude of mind.
Then--as per the schedule in force for at least an epoch--good-natured,
pot-bellied Tom Hingman, the oldest A.D.A. in the office, rose heavily,
fumbled with his stubby fingers among the blue indictments on the table,
drew one forth, panted a few times, gasped out "People against Daniel
Lowry," and looked round in a pseudo-helpless way as if not knowing
exactly what to do.
There was a slight stir, and from the back of the court room came
forward a funny little bow-legged old man, carrying in both hands a
funny little flat-topped derby hat, and took his seat timidly at the bar
of justice beside Mr. Tutt, who smiled down at him affectionately and
put his arm about the threadbare shoulders as if to protect him from the
evils of the world. They made a quaint and far from unpleasing picture,
thought Bently Gibson, the ideal juror, and he wondered what the poor
old devil could be up for.
A jury was impaneled, Bently among them; the balance of the panel was
excused until two o'clock; the court room was cleared of loafers; the
judge perused the indictment with a practised eye; Tom Hingman rose
again, wheezed and grinned at the embattled jury; and the mill of
justice began to grind.
Now the mill of justice, at least in the General Sessions of New York
County, grinds exceeding fine, so far as the number of convictions is
concerned. Of those brought to the bar for trial few escape; for modern
talesmen, being hard-headed men, regard the whole thing as a matter of
business and try to get through with it as quickly and as efficiently as
possible. The bombastic spread-eagle orator, the grandiloquent gas bag,
the highfaluting stump speaker gain few verdicts and win small applause
except from their clients. And district attorneys who ape the bloodhound
in their mien and tactics win scant approval and less acquiescence from
the bored gentlemen who are forced to listen to them. Nowadays--whatever
may have been the case two generations ago--each side briefly states its
claims and tries to win on points.
People were apt to wonder why each succeeding administration inevitably
retained stuffy old Tom Hingman at seventy-five hundred dollars a year
to handle the calendar in Part Five. Yet those on the inside knew why
very well. It was because Tom long ago, in his prehistoric youth, had
learned that the way to secure verdicts was to appear not to care a
tinker's dam whether the jury found the defendant guilty or not. He
pretended never to know anything about any case in advance, to be in
complete ignorance as to who the witnesses might be and to what they
were going to testify, and to be terribly sorry to have to prosecute the
unfortunate at the bar, though he wasn't to blame for that any more than
the jury were for having to find him guilty if proven to be so, which,
it seemed to him, he had been clearly proven to be. I say Tom pretended
all this, yet it was more than half true, for Tom was a kind-hearted old
bird. But the point was that, whether true or not, it got convictions.
The jury sucking it all up in its entirety felt sorrier for the
simple-minded old softy of a Tom, which they believed him to be, than
they did for the defendant, who they concluded was a good deal cleverer
than the assistant district attorney.
In a word, it put them on their honor as public officers not to let the
administration of justice suffer merely because the A.D.A. was too old
and easy-going and generally slab-sided to be really on his job. Thus,
they became prosecuting attorneys themselves--in all, thirteen to one.
So Tom, having thus delegated his functions to the jury, calmly left it
all to them and went to sleep, which was the best thing that he did.
Worth seventy-five hundred a year? Rather, seventy-five thousand!
"Gentlemen of the jury," he began haltingly, "this defendant seems to
have been indicted for the crime of practising medicine without a
license--a misdemeanor. I don't see exactly how he gets into this court,
which is supposed to try only felony cases, but I assume my old friend
Tutt made a motion to transfer the case from the Special to the General
Sessions on the theory that he would stand more chance with a jury than
three--er--hardened judges. Well, maybe he will--I don't know! I gather
from the papers that Mr. Lowry here, after holding himself out to be a
properly licensed veterinary, treated a horse belonging to the
complainant. It is not a very serious offense, and you and I have no
great interest in the case, but of course the public has got to be
protected from charlatans, and the only way to do it is to brand as
guilty those who pretend they are duly licensed to practise medicine
when they are not. If you had a sick baby, Mr. Foreman, and you saw a
sign 'A.S. Smith, M.D., Children's Specialist,' you would want to be
sure you were not going to hire a plumber, eh? You see! That's all there
is to this case!"
"All there is to this case!" murmured Mr. Tutt audibly, raising his eyes
ceilingward.
"Step up here, Mr. Brown."
Mr. Brown, the supposed Doctor Simon whose horse Danny had attended,
seated himself complacently in the witness chair and bowed to the jury
in a professional manner. He had, he told them, been a detective
employed by the state board of health for over sixteen years. It was his
duty to go round and arrest people who pretended to be licensed
practitioners of medicine and assumed to doctor other people and
animals. There were a lot of 'em, too; the jury would be surprised--
Mr. Tutt objected to their surprise and it was stricken out by order of
the court.
"I'll strike out 'and there are a lot of 'em, too,' if you say so, Mr.
Tutt," offered the court, smiling, but Mr. Tutt shook his head.
"No; let it stand!" said he significantly. "Let it stand!"
"Well, anyway," continued Mr. Brown, "this here defendant Lowry, as he
calls himself, is well known--"
Objected to and struck out.
"Well, this here defendant makes a practise--"
"Strike it out! What did he do?" snapped the octogenarian baboon on the
bench.
"I'm tellin' you, judge," protested Brown vigorously. "This here
defendant--"
"You've said that three times!" retorted the baboon. "Get along, can't
you? What did he do?"
"He treated my horse for spavin here in New York at 500 West 24th Street
at my request on the twentieth of last March and I paid him five
dollars. He said he was a licensed veterinary and he gave me his card.
Here it is."
"Well, why didn't you say so before?" remarked the judge more amiably.
"Let me see the card. All right! Anything more, Mr. Hingman?"
But Mr. Hingman had long before this subsided into his chair and was
emitting sounds like those from a saxophone.
"That is plain, simple testimony, Mr. Tutt," remarked the judge. "Go
ahead and cross-examine."
Ephraim Tutt slowly unjointed himself, the quintessence of affability,
though Mr. Brown clearly held him under suspicion.
"How long have you earned your living, my dear sir, by going round
arresting people?"
"Sixteen years."
"Under what name--your own?"
"I use any name I feel like."
Mr. Tutt nodded appreciatively.
"Let us see, then. You go about pretending to be somebody you are not?"
"Put it that way, if you choose."
"And pretending to be what you are not?"
Mr. Brown eyed Mr. Tutt savagely. "What do you mean by that?"
"Didn't you tell this old gentleman beside me that you were a doctor of
medicine but not a doctor of veterinary medicine--and beg him to treat
your horse for that reason?"
"Sure I did. Certainly."
"Well, are you a licensed medical practitioner?"
"Look here! What's that got to do with it?" snarled Mr. Brown, looking
about for aid from the sleeping Hingman.
"The question is a proper one. Answer it," directed the judge.
"No, I'm not a licensed doctor."
"Well, didn't you treat Mr. Lowry?"
The jury by this time had caught the drift of the examination and were
listening with intent appreciation.
Mr. Brown leaned forward, a sickening smile of sneering superiority
curling about his yellow molars.
"Ah!" he cried. "That's where I have you, sir! I only pretended to treat
him. I didn't really. I only scribbled something on a piece of paper."
"You knew he couldn't read, of course?"
"Sure."
Mr. Tutt turned to the uplifted faces of the twelve. "So," he retorted,
pursing his wrinkled lips and placing his fingers together in that
attitude of piety which we frequently observe upon effigies of defunct
ecclesiastics--"so you did the very thing for which you threw this old
man at my side into jail--and for which he is now on trial! You lied to
him about being a doctor! You deceived him about giving him the medical
treatment he so much needed! And you arrested him after he had worked
for hours to relieve the sufferings of a sick animal. By the way, it was
a sick animal, wasn't it?"
"The sickest I could find," replied Brown airily.
"And he did relieve its sufferings, did he not?" continued Mr. Tutt
gently.
"Very likely. I wasn't particularly interested in that end of it."
Mr. Tutt's meager frame seemed suddenly to expand until he hung over the
witness chair like the genii who mushroomed so unexpectedly out of the
fisherman's bottle in the Arabian Nights Entertainments.
"You were not interested in ministering to a poor horse, so sick it
could hardly stand! You were only interested in imprisoning and
depriving of his only form of livelihood this old man whose heart was
not hardened like yours! May I ask at whose instance you went and lied
to him?"
"Mr. Tutt! Mr. Tutt!" interjected the octogenarian angel. "Your
examination is exceeding the bounds of judicial propriety."
Ephraim Tutt bowed low.
"A thousand pardons, Your Honor! My emotions swept me away! I most
humbly apologize! But when this witness so unblushingly confesses how he
played the scoundrel's part, aged case hardened practitioner as I am, my
heart cries out against such infamous treachery--"
Bang! went the judge's gavel.
"You are only making it worse!" declared the court severely. "Proceed
with your examination."
"Very well, Your Honor!" replied Mr. Tutt, his lips trembling with
well-simulated indignation. "Now, sir, who instigated this miserable
deception--I beg Your Honor's pardon! Who put you up to this game--I
mean, this course of conduct?"
"Nobody," replied Brown in a surly tone.
"Did you ever hear of the United Association of Veterinaries of the
Greater City of New York--sometimes referred to as The Horse Leeches'
Union?" asked Mr. Tutt insinuatingly.
Mr. Brown hesitated.
"I've heard of some such organization," he admitted. "But I never heard
it was called a Horse Leeches' Union."
"Didn't one of its officers come to you and say that unless something
was done to reduce competition they'd have to go out of business--owing
to the decrease in horses in New York?"
"I don't remember," answered Brown slowly. "One of 'em may have said
something of the sort to me. But that's my business!"
"Yes!" roared Mr. Tutt suddenly. "It's your business to pretend you're a
doctor when you're not, and you walk the streets a free man; and you
want to send my client to Sing Sing for the same offense! That is all! I
am done with you! Get down off the stand! Do not let me detain you from
the practise of your unlicensed profession!"
"Mr. Tutt!" again admonished His Honor as the lawyer threw himself
angrily into his chair. "This really won't do at all!"
"I beg Your Honor's pardon--a thousand times!" said Mr. Tutt in tones so
humble and sincere that he almost made the angel-faced baboon believe
him.
I should like to go on and describe the whole course of Danny Lowry's
trial item by item, witness by witness, and tell what Mr. Tutt did to
each. But I can't; there isn't room. I can only dwell upon the tactics
of Mr. Tutt long enough to state that at the conclusion of the case
against Daniel Lowry, wherein it was clearly, definitely and
convincingly established that Danny had been practising veterinary
medicine for a long time without the faintest legal right, the lawyer
rose and declared emphatically to the jury that his client was
absolutely, totally and unquestionably innocent, as they would see by
giving proper attention to the evidence he would produce--so that he
would not take up any more of their valuable time in talk.
And having made this opening statement with all the earnestness and
solemnity of which he was capable Mr. Tutt called to prove the
defendant's good reputation, first, Father Plunkett, the priest to whom
Danny made his monthly confession and who told the jury that he knew no
better man in all his parish; second, Mulqueen, who described Danny's
love of horses, his knowledge of them, his mysterious intuition
concerning their hidden ailments, which, being as they could not speak,
it was given to few to know, and how night after night he would sit up
with a sick or dying animal to relieve its pain without thought of
himself or of any earthly reward; then, man after man and woman after
woman from the neighborhood of West Twenty-third Street who gave Danny
the best of characters, including policemen, firemen, delicatessens,
hotel keepers, and Salvatore, the proprietor of the night lunch
frequented by Mr. Tutt.
And last of all little Katie Lowry. It was she who found the crack in
Bently's moral armor. For Eleanor his wife was of Irish ancestry and of
the colleen type, like Katie; and Bently had always played up to her
Irish side when courting her as a humorous short cut to a quasi
familiarity, for you may call a girl "acushla" and "Ellin darlint" when
otherwise you are fully aware, but for the Irish of it, she would have
to be referred to as Miss Dodworth. And this wisp of a girl with her big
black-fringed gray eyes peering up and out over her gray knitted shawl,
but for the holes in her white stockings and the fact that the alabaster
of her neck was a shade off color--faith, an' it might have been
Eleanor hersilf! It is obvious that any juryman who allows his mind to
be influenced by the mere fact that one of the witnesses for the defense
is a pretty woman--even if she recalls to him his wife or
sweet-heart--is a poor weakling, a silly ass.
Otherwise all a crook need do would be to hire a half dozen of
Ziegfeld's midnight beauties to testify for him by day; and the slender
darlings could work in double shifts and be whisked in auto busses from
roof garden to court room. Bently was no weakling, but Katie--perhaps
because it was the moment of apple blossoms and dogwood and the
anniversary of his wedding day--Katie got him. Kathleen Mavourneen, and
all! No man could have brought up a fatherless and motherless girl like
that and keep her so simple, frank and innocent unless there was
something fine about him. You see, highbrows and lowbrows are all alike
below the collar bone.
And here's the catch in it. Bently had told Eleanor that very morning
that none of the rogues would get by him, and he had meant it. None of
them ever had--in all his years of jury service. Time and again he had
been the one stubborn man to hang out all night for a verdict of guilty
against eleven outraged and indignant fellow talesmen who wanted to
acquit. But quite unconsciously he found himself saying that this old
fellow at the bar wasn't a rogue at all. If he was a criminal he was so
at most only in a Pickwickian sense. All the previous cases in which he
had sat had been for murder or arson, robbery or theft, burglary,
blackmail or some other outrageous offense against common morals or
decency. But here was a man who had never done anything but good in his
life, and was at the bar of justice charged with crime merely because
some cold-blooded mercenaries thought he was interfering with their
business! Bently was in a recalcitrant and indignant frame of mind
against the prosecution long before the defense began. The whole
proceeding seemed to him an outrageous farce. That wasn't what they were
there for at all! So swiftly does the acid of sympathy corrode and
weaken the stoutest conscience, the most logical of minds!
Mr. Tutt did not put Danny on the stand--why should he?--and the
octogenarian judge declared the case closed on both sides. Then
everybody made a speech, in which he told the jury to disregard
everything everybody else said.
Mr. Tutt spoke first. He thanked the gaping jury for their attention and
courtesy and kindness and intelligence and for taking the trouble to
listen to him. He told them what a wise and upright judge the old baboon
on the bench was; and what a sterling, honest, kindly chap the fat
assistant district attorney really was. They were the highest type of
public officers--but paid--he accentuated the "paid" very slightly--to
do their duty as they interpreted it. Now, Mr. Hingman would have to
claim that Danny Lowry was a criminal; whereas, thank heaven! they all
of them--every man of them--knew he was nothing of the kind!
Criminal--that old man? Mr. Tutt raised his eyes and his arms to heaven
in protest. Why, one look at him would create a reasonable doubt! But
the case against him failed absolutely for the following reasons:
Daniel Lowry had not practised veterinary medicine without a license in
taking care of Brown's sick horse, because he had not claimed to be a
veterinary; he had not been paid for his services; and because all he
had done was to help a suffering animal, as any man who called himself a
Christian and had a heart would have done, and as it was his duty to do.
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