Part I of the General Sessions yesterday, when upon the motion of

Ephraim Tutt, of the firm of Tutt & Tutt, Judge Simeon Watkins,

sitting as a committing magistrate, held for the action of the grand

jury Raphael B. Hogan and Joseph P. Simpkins, his assistant, for the

crime of extortion, and directed that their case be referred to the

Grievance Committee of the County Lawyers' Association for the

necessary action for their disbarment.

Earlier in the trial a police officer named Delany, the supposed

chief witness for the prosecution, fainted and fell from the witness

chair. Upon his recovery he was then and there committed for

perjury, in default of ten thousand dollars bail. It is understood

that he has signified his willingness to turn state's evidence, but

that his offer has not been accepted. So far as can be ascertained

this is the first time either Hogan or Simpkins has been accused of

a criminal offense. District Attorney Peckham stated that in

addition to separate indictments for extortion and perjury he would

ask for another, charging all three defendants with the crime of

conspiracy to obstruct the due administration of the law.

At the conclusion of the proceedings Judge Watkins permitted a

voluntary collection to be taken up by Mr. Tutt on behalf of the

accused among the jury, the court attendants and the spectators,

which amounted to eleven hundred and eighty-nine dollars. In this

connection the judge expressed the opinion that it was unfortunate

that persons falsely accused of crime and unjustly imprisoned should

have no financial redress other than by a special act of the

legislature. The defendant in the case at bar had been locked up for

six weeks. Among the contributions was found a new

one-thousand-dollar bill.

"Talk about crime!" quoth the Deacon savagely to Charlie Still, of the

_Sun_. "That feckless fool at the city desk committed assault, mayhem

and murder on that story of mine!" Then he added pensively: "If I

thought old man Tutt would slip me a thousand to soothe my injured

feelings I'd go down and retain his firm myself!"

The Kid and the Camel

Breathes there the man with soul so dead

Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land!

--LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL.

The shortest street in the world, Edgar Street, connects New York's

financial center with the Levant. It is less than fifty feet through

this tiny thoroughfare from the back doors of the great Broadway office

buildings to Greenwich Street, where the letters on the window signs

resemble contorted angleworms and where one is as likely to stumble into

a man from Bagdad as from Boston. One can stand in the middle of it and

with his westerly ear catch the argot of Gotham and with his easterly

all the dialects of Damascus. And if through some unexpected convulsion

of Nature 51 Broadway should topple over, Mr. Zimmerman, the

stockbroker, whose office is on the sixth story, might easily fall clear

of the Greek restaurant in the corner of Greenwich Street, roll

twenty-five yards more down Morris Street, and find himself on

Washington Street reading a copy of Al-Hoda and making his luncheon off

_baha gannouge_, _majaddarah_ and _milookeiah_, which, after all, are

only eggplant salad, lentils and rice, and the popular favorite known as

Egyptian Combination.

To most New Yorkers this is a section of the city totally unknown and

unsuspected, yet existing as in a fourth dimension within a stone's

throw--and nearer--of our busiest metropolitan artery--and there within

one hundred yards of the aforesaid Mr. Zimmerman's office above the

electric cars of Broadway, and within earshot of the hoots of many a

multimillionaire's motor, on a certain evening something of an Oriental

character was doing in the hallway of a house on Washington Street that

subsequently played a part in the professional lives of Tutt & Tutt.

Out of the literally Egyptian darkness of the tenement owned by

Abadallah Shanin Khaldi issued curious smothered sounds, together with

an unmistakable, pungent, circuslike odor.

"Whack!"

There came an indignant grunt, followed by a flabby groan and a

straining and squeaking of the jerry-built staircase as Kasheed Hassoun

vigorously applied a lath to the horny backsides of Eset el Gazzar.

"Ascend, dog of a dog!" panted Kasheed. "Move thy accursed feet, O

wizened hump! Daughter of Satan, give me room! Thou art squeezing out my

life! Only go on, child of my heart! It is but a step upward, O Queen of

the Nile. Hold the rope tight, Kalil!"

The camel obediently surged forward, breaking off a section of banister.

Through the racket from the hallway above faintly came the voice of

Kalil Majdalain.

"Her head is free of the ceiling. Quick, Kasheed! Turn her, thou, upon

the landing!"

"Whack!" responded the lath in the hand of Kasheed Hassoun.

Step by step the gentle shaggy brute felt her way with feet, knees and

nozzle up the narrow staircase. What was this but another of those

bizarre experiences which any camel-of-the-world must expect in a land

where the water wells squirted through a tube and men rode in chariots

driven by fire?

"Whack!"

"Go on, darling of my soul!" whispered Kasheed. "Curses upon thy father

and upon the mother that bore thee! Wilt thou not move?"

"Whack!"

"Ouch! She devil! Thou hast trod upon my foot!"

Outside, that the Western world might not suspect what was going on,

Shaheen Mahfous and Shanin Saba unloaded with as much noise as possible

a dray of paper for Meraat-ul-Gharb, the Daily Mirror. By and by a

window on the fourth floor opened and the head of Kalil Majdalain

appeared.

"_Mahabitcum!"_ he grinned; which, being interpreted, means "Good

fellowship to all!"

Then presently he and Kasheed joined the others upon the sidewalk, and,

the rolls of paper having been delivered inside the pressroom, the four

Syrians climbed upon the truck and drove to the restaurant of Ghabryel &

Assad two blocks farther north, where they had a bit of _awamat_, coffee

and cigarettes, and then played a game of cards, while in the attic of

the tenement house Eset el Gazzar munched a mouthful of hay and tapped

her interior reservoir for a drink of clear water, as she sighed through

her valvelike nostrils and pouted with her cushioned lips, pondering

upon the vagaries of quadrupedal existence.

Willie Toothaker, the office boy of Tutt & Tutt, had perfected a

catapult along the lines of those used in the Siege of Carthage--form

derived from the appendix of Allen and Greenough's Latin Grammar--which

boded ill for the truck drivers of lower Gotham.

Since his translation from Pottsville Center, Willie's inventive genius

had worked something of a transformation in the Tutt & Tutt offices, for

he had devised several labor-saving expedients, such as a complicated

series of pulleys for opening windows and automatically closing doors

without getting up; which, since they actually worked, Mr. Tutt, being a

pragmatist, silently, patiently and good-naturedly endured. To-day both

partners were away in court and Willie had the office to himself with

the exception of old Scraggs.

"Bet it'll shoot a block!" asserted Willie, replacing his gum, which he

had removed temporarily to avert the danger of swallowing it in his

excitement. "Caesar used one just like this--only bigger, of course. See

that scuttle over on Washington Street? Bet I can hit it!"

"Bet you can't come within two hundred feet of it!" retorted the

watery-eyed scrivener. "It's a lot further'n you think."

"'Tain't neither!" declared Willie. "I know how far it is! What can we

shoot?"

Scraggs' eye wandered aimlessly round the room.

"Oh, I don't know."

"Got to be something with heft to it," said Willie. "'S got to overcome

the resistance of the atmosphere."

"How about that paperweight?"

"'S too heavy."

"Well--"

"I know!" exclaimed William suddenly. "Gimme that little bottle of red

ink. 'S just about right. And when it strikes it'll make a mark so's we

can tell where we hit--like a regular target."

Scraggs hesitated.

"Ink costs money," he protested.

"But it's just the thing!" insisted Willie. "Besides, you can charge me

for it in the cash account. Give it here!"

Conscience being thus satisfied the two eagerly placed the ink bottle in

the proper receptacle, which Willie had fashioned out of a stogy box,

twisted back the bow and aimed the apparatus at the slanting scuttle,

which projected from a sort of penthouse upon the roof of the tenement

house across the street.

"Now!" he exclaimed ecstatically. "Stand from under, Scraggs!"

He pressed a lever. There was a whang, a whistle--and the ink bottle

hurtled in a beautiful parabola over Greenwich Street.

"Gee! look at her go!" cried Willie in triumph. "Straight's a string."

At exactly that instant--and just as the bottle was about to descend

upon the penthouse--the scuttle opened and there was thrust forth a huge

yellow face with enormous sooty lips wreathed in an unmistakable smile.

On the long undulating neck the head resembled one of the grotesque

manikins carried in circus parades. Eset el Gazzar in a search for air

had discovered that the attic scuttle was slightly ajar.

"Gosh! A camel!" gasped Willie.

"Lord of love!" ejaculated Scraggs. "It sure is a camel!"

There was a faint crash and a tinkle of glass as the bottle of red ink

struck the penthouse roof just over the beast's head and deluged it with

its vermilion contents. Eset reared, shook her neck, gave a defiant

grunt and swiftly withdrew her head into the attic.

Sophie Hassoun, the wife of Kasheed, seeing the violent change in Eset's

complexion, wrung her hands.

"What hast thou done, O daughter of devils? Thou art bleeding! Thou hast

cut thyself! Alack, mayhap thou wilt die, and then we shall be ruined!

Improvident! Careless one! Cursed be thy folly! Hast thou no regard? And

I dare not send for Doctor Koury, the veterinary, for then thy presence

would be discovered and the gendarmes would come and take thee away.

Would that we had left thee at Coney Island! O, great-granddaughter of

Al Adha--sacred camel of the Prophet--why hast thou done this? Why hast

thou brought misery upon us? _Awar! Awar!_"

She cast herself upon the improvised divan in the corner, while Eset,

blinking, licked her big yellow hind hump, and tumbled forward upon her

knees preparatory to sitting down herself.

"A camel!" repeated Willie, round-eyed. He counted the roofs dividing

the penthouse from where Morris Street bisected the block. "Whoop!" he

cried and dashed out of the office.

In less than four minutes Patrolman Dennis Patrick Murphy, who was

standing on post on Washington Street in front of Nasheen Zereik's

Embroidery Bazaar talking to Sardi Babu, saw a red-headed, pug-nosed

urchin come flying round the corner.

"One--two--three--four--five. That's the house!" cried Willie Toothaker.

"That's it!"

"What yer talkin' 'bout?" drawled Murphy.

"There's a camel in there!" shouted Willie, dancing up and down.

"Camel--yer aunt!" sneered the cop. "They couldn't get no camel in

there!"

"There is! I seen it stick its head out of the roof!"

Sardi Babu, the oily-faced little dealer in pillow shams, smiled slyly.

He had thick black ringlets, parted exactly down the middle of his

scalp, hanging to his shoulders, and a luxuriant black curly beard

reaching to his middle; in addition to which he wore a blue blouse and

carpet slippers. He was a Maronite from Lebanon, and he and his had a

feud with Hassoun, Majdalain, and all others who belonged to the sect

headed by the Patriarch of Antioch.

"_Belki!"_ he remarked significantly. "Perhaps his words are true! I

have heard it whispered already by Lillie Nadowar, now the wife of

Butros the confectioner. Moreover, I myself have seen hay on the

stairs."

"Huh?" exclaimed Murphy. "We'll soon find out. Come along you, Babu!

Show me where you was seein' the hay."

By this time those who had been lounging upon the adjacent doorstep had

come running to see what was the matter, and a crowd had gathered.

"It is false--what he says!" declared Gadas Maloof the shoemaker. "I

have sat opposite the house day and night for ten--fifteen years--and no

camel has gone in. Camel! How could a camel be got up such narrow

stairs?"

"But thou art a friend of Hassoun's!" retorted Fajala Mokarzel the

grocer. "And," he added in a lower tone, "of Sophie Tadros, his wife."

There was a subdued snicker from the crowd, and Murphy inferred that

they were laughing at him.

"But this man," he shouted wrathfully, pointing at Sardi Babu, "says you

all know there's a camel up there. An' this kid's seen it! Come along

now, both of you!"

There was an angry murmur from the crowd. Sardi Babu turned white.

"I said nothing!" he declared, trembling. "I made no complaint. The

gendarme will corroborate me. What care I where Kasheed Hassoun stables

his camel?"

Maloof shouldered his way up to him, and grasping the Maronite by the

beard muttered in Arabic: "Thou dog! Go confess thy sins! For by the

Holy Cross thou assuredly hast not long to live!"

Murphy seized Babu by the arm.

"Come on!" he ordered threateningly. "Make good now!" And he led him up

the steps, the throng pressing close upon his heels.

* * * * *

"What's all this?" inquired Magistrate Burke bewilderedly an hour later

as Officer Murphy entered the police court leading a tall Syrian in a

heavy overcoat and green Fedora hat, and followed by several hundred

black-haired, olive-skinned Levantines. "Don't let all those Dagos in

here! Keep 'em out! This ain't a moving-picture palace!"

"Them ain't Dagos, judge," whispered Roony the clerk. "Them's Turks."

"They ain't neither Turks!" contradicted the stenographer, whose

grammar was almost sublimated by comparison with Roony's. "They're

Armenians--you can tell by their complexions."

"Well, I won't have 'em in here, whatever they are!" announced Burke. "I

don't like 'em. What have you got, Murphy?"

"Shoo! Get out of here!" ordered the officer on duty.

The crowd, however, not understanding, only grinned.

"_Avanti! Alley! Mouch_! Beat it!" continued the officer, waving his

arms and hustling those nearest toward the door.

The throng obediently fell back. They were a gentle, simple-minded lot,

used in the old country to oppression, blackmail and tyranny, and

burning with a religious fervor unknown to the pale heterodoxy of the

Occident.

"This here," began Murphy, "is a complaint by Sardi Babu"--he swung the

cowering little man with a twist before the bench--"against one Kasheed

Hassoun for violating the health ordinances."

"No, no! I do not complain! I am not one who complains. It is nothing

whatever to me if Kasheed Hassoun keeps a camel! I care not," cried Babu

in Arabic.

"What's he talkin' about?" interrupted Burke. "I don't understand that

sort of gibberish."

"He makes the complaint that this here Hassoun"--he indicated the tall

man in the overcoat--"is violating Section 1093d of the regulations by

keeping a camel in his attic."

"Camel!" ejaculated the magistrate. "In his attic!"

Murphy nodded.

"It's there all right, judge!" he remarked. "I've seen it."

"Is that straight?" demanded His Honor. "How'd he get it up there? I

didn't suppose--"

Suddenly Sardi Babu threw himself fawning upon Hassoun.

"Oh, Kasheed Hassoun, I swear to thee that I made no complaint. It is a

falsification of the gendarme! And there was a boy--a red and yellow

boy--who said he had seen thy camel's head above the roofs! I am thy

friend!"

He twisted his writhing snakelike fingers together. Hassoun regarded him

coldly.

"Thou knowest the fate of informers and provocateurs--of spies--thou

infamous Turk!" he answered through his teeth.

"A Turk! A Turk!" shrieked Sardi Babu frantically, beating the breast of

his blue blouse. "Thou callest me a Turk! Me, the godson of Sarkis Babu

and of Elias Stephan--whose fathers and grandfathers were Christians

when thy family were worshipers of Mohammed. Blasphemy! Me, the godson

of a bishop!"

"I also am godson of a bishop!" sneered Kasheed. "A properly anointed

bishop! Without Tartar blood."

Sardi Babu grew purple.

"Ptha! I would spit upon the beard of such a bishop!" he shrieked,

beside himself.

Hassoun slightly raised his eyebrows.

"Spit, then, infamous one--while thou art able!"

"Here, here!" growled Burke in disgust. "Keep 'em still, can't you?

Now, what's all this about a camel?"

* * * * *

"That's the very scuttle, sir," asseverated Scraggs to the firm, as Tutt

& Tutt, including Miss Wiggin, gazed down curiously out of their office

windows at the penthouse upon the Washington Street roof which had been

Willie's target of the day before. "I don't say," he continued by way of

explanation, "that the camel stuck his head out because Willie hit the

roof with the bottle--it was probably just a circumstance--but it looked

that way. 'Bing!' went the ink bottle on the scuttle; and

then--pop!--out came the camel like a jack-in-the-box."

"What became of the camel?" inquired Miss Wiggin, cherishing a faint

hope that--pop!--it might suddenly appear again in the same way.

"The police took it away last night--lowered it out of the window with a

block and tackle," answered the scrivener. "A sort of breeches buoy."

"I've heard of camel's-hair shawls but not of camel's-hair breeches!"

murmured Tutt. "I suppose if a camel wore pants--well, my imagination

refuses to contemplate the spectacle! Where's Willie?"

"He hasn't been in at all this morning!" said Miss Wiggin. "I'll

warrant--"

"What?" demanded Mr. Tutt suspiciously.

"--he's somewhere with that camel," she concluded.

* * * * *

Now, Miss Minerva, as her name connoted, was a wise woman; and she had

reached an unerring conclusion by two different and devious routes, to

wit, intuition and logic, the same being the high road and low road of

reason--high or low in either case as you may prefer. Thus logic:

Camel--small boy. Intuition: Small boy--camel. But there was here an

additional element--a direct personal relationship between this

particular small boy and this particular camel, rising out of the

incident of the ink bottle. She realized that that camel must have

acquired for William a peculiar quality--almost that of a possession--in

view of the fact that he had put his mark upon it. She knew that Willie

could no more stay away from the environs of that camel than said camel

could remain in that attic. Indeed we might go on at some length

expounding further this profound law of human nature that where there

are camels there will be small boys; that, as it were, under such

circumstances Nature abhors an infantile vacuum.

"If I know him, he is!" agreed Mr. Tutt, referring to William's probable

proximity to Eset el Gazzar.

"Speaking of camels," said Tutt as he lit a cigarette, "makes me think

of brass beds."

"Yes," nodded his partner. "Of course it would, naturally. What on earth

do you mean?"

"I mean this," began Tutt, clearing his throat as if he were addressing

twelve good and true men--"a camel is obviously an unusual--not to say

peculiar--animal to be roosting over there in that attic. It is an

exotic--if I may use that term. It is as exotic as a brass bed from

Connecticut would be, or is, in Damascus or Lebanon. Now, therefore, a

camel will as assuredly give cause for trouble in New York as a brass

bed in Bagdad!"

"The right thing often makes trouble if put in the wrong place,"

pondered Mr. Tutt.

"Or the wrong thing in the right place!" assented Tutt. "Now all these

unassimilated foreigners--"

"What have they got to do with brass beds in Lebanon?" challenged Miss

Wiggin.

"Why," continued Tutt, "I am credibly informed that the American brass

bed--particularly the double bed--owing to its importation into Asia

Minor was the direct cause of the Armenian massacres."

"Tosh!" said Miss Wiggin.

"For a fact!" asserted Tutt. "It's this way--an ambassador told me so

himself--the Turks, you know, are nuts on beds--and they think a great

big brass family bed such as--you know--they're in all the

department-store windows. Well, every Turk in every village throughout

Asia Minor saves up his money to buy a brass bed--like a nigger buys a

cathedral clock. Sign of superiority. You get me? And it becomes his

most cherished household possession. If he meets a friend on the street

he says to him naturally and easily, without too much conscious egotism,

just as an American might say, 'By the way, have you seen my new

limousine?'--he says to the other Turk, 'Oh, I say, old chap, do you

happen to have noticed my new brass bed from Connecticut? They just put

it off the steamer last week at Aleppo. Fatima's taking a nap in it now,

but when she wakes up--'"

"What nonsense!" sniffed Miss Wiggin.

"It's not nonsense!" protested the junior partner. "Now listen to what

happens. Some Armenian--the Armenians are the pawnbrokers of Asia

Minor--moves into that village and in three months he has a mortgage on

everything in it, including that brass bed. Then the Turkish Government,

which regards him as an undesirable citizen, tells him to move along;

and Mister Armenian piles all the stuff the inhabitants have mortgaged

to him into an oxcart and starts on his way, escorted by the Sultan's

troops. On top of the load is Yusuf Bulbul Ameer's brass bed. Yusuf

looks out of his doorway and sees the bed moving off and rushes after it

to protect his property.

"'Look here!' he shouts. 'Where are you going with my brass bed?'

"'It isn't yours!' retorts Mister Pawnbroker. 'It's mine. I loaned you

eighty-seven piasters on it!'

"'But I've got an equity in it! You can't take it away!'

"'Of course I can!' replies the Armenian. 'Where I goeth it will go. The

Turkish Government is responsible.'

"'Not much,' says Yusuf, grabbing hold of it, trying to pull it off the

cart.

"'Hands off there!' yells the Armenian.

"Then there is a mix-up and everybody piles in--and there is a

massacre!"

"That's a grand yarn!" remarked Mr. Tutt. "Still, it may be--"

"Bunk!" declared Miss Wiggin. "And what has that got to do with camels?"

"My point is," affirmed Tutt, waving his index finger--"my point is that

just as a Yankee brass bed in Turkey will make certain trouble, so a

Turkish camel in New York is bound to do the same thing."

A door slammed behind them and Willie's voice interrupted the

conversation.

"Mr. Tutt! Mr. Tutt!" he cried hysterically. "There's been a murder

down there--and we--I'm--partly responsible. I spent the night with the

camel and he's--she's--all right--in Regan's Boarding Stable. But

Kasheed is in the Tombs, and I told them you'd defend him. You will,

won't you?"

Mr. Tutt looked at the excited boy.

"Who killed whom?" he asked correctly. "And where does the camel come

in?"

"Somebody killed Sardi Babu," explained Willie. "I don't know exactly

who did it--but they've arrested Kasheed Hassoun, the owner of Eset el

Gazzar."

"Who?" roared Tutt.

"The camel. You see, nobody knew she was in the attic until I saw her

stick her head out of the hole in the roof. Then I told Murphy and he

went up and found her there. But Kasheed thought Sardi had told on him,

you see, and nobody would believe him when he said he hadn't. The judge

fined Kasheed twenty-five dollars, and he--Kasheed--accused Sardi of

being a Turk and they had a big row right there in court. Nothing

happened until the cops had got Eset out of the window and she was over

at Regan's. I stayed there. Her head is bright red from the ink, you

know. Then somebody went over to the restaurant where Sardi was and

killed him. So you see, in a way, I'm to blame, and I didn't think you'd

mind defending Kasheed, because he's a corker and if they electrocute

him Eset will starve to death."

"I see," said. Mr. Tutt thoughtfully. "You think that by rights if

anybody was going to get killed it ought to have been you?"

Willie nodded.

"Yes, sir," he assented.

And that is how a camel was the moving cause of the celebrated firm of

Tutt & Tutt appearing as counsel in the case of The People against

Kasheed Hassoun, charged with the crime of murder in the first degree

for having taken the life of Sardi Babu with deliberation and

premeditation and malice aforethought and against the peace of the

People of the State of New York.

* * * * *

"And then there's this here Syrian murder case," groaned the chief clerk

of the district attorney's office plaintively to his chief. "I don't

know what to do with it. The defendant's been six months in the Tombs,

with all the Syrian newspapers hollering like mad for a trial. He killed

him all right, but you know what these foreign-language murder cases

are, boss! They're lemons, every one of 'em!"

"What's the matter with it?" inquired the D.A. "It's a regular

knock-down-and-drag-out case, isn't it? Killed him right in a

restaurant, didn't he?"

"Sure! That part of it's all right," assented the chief clerk. "He

killed him--yes! But how are you going to get an American jury to choose

between witnesses who are quite capable of swearing that the corpse

killed the defendant. How in hell can you tell what they're talking

about, anyway?"

"You can't!" said the D.A. "Send the papers in to Pepperill and tell him

on the side it'll make him famous. He'll believe you."

"But it'll take ten weeks to try it!" wailed the chief clerk.

"Well, send it down to old Wetherell, in Part Thirteen. He's got the

sleeping sickness and it will be sort of soothing for him to listen to."

"Might wake him up?" suggested the other.

"You couldn't!" retorted the D.A. "What's the case about, anyhow?"

"It's about a camel," explained the subordinate hesitatingly.

The D.A. grinned. Said he: "It is easier for a camel to go through the

eye of a needle than for a just prosecutor to convict a Syrian of

murder. Well, old top, send for a couple of dozen Korans and hire rooms

for the jury over Kaydoub, Salone & Dabut's and turn 'em loose on

_kibbah arnabeiah, kashtah_ and _halawee_."

Mr. William Montague Pepperill was a very intense young person,

twenty-six years old, out of Boston by Harvard College. He had been born

beneath the golden dome of the State House on Beacon Street, and from

the windows of the Pepperill mansion his infant eyes had gazed smugly

down upon the Mall and Frog Pond of the historic Common. There had been

an aloof serenity about his life within the bulging front of the

paternal residence with its ancient glass window panes--faintly tinged

with blue, just as the blood in the Pepperill veins was also faintly

tinged with the same color--his unimpeachable social position at Hoppy's

and later on at Harvard--which he pronounced Haavaad--and the profound

respect in which he was held at the law school in Cambridge, that gave

Mr. W. Montague Pepperill a certain confidence in the impeccability of

himself, his family, his relatives, his friends, his college, his

habiliments and haberdashery, his deportment, and his opinions,

political, religious and otherwise.

For W.M.P. the only real Americans lived on Beacon Hill, though a few

perhaps might be found accidentally across Charles Street upon the made

land of the Back Bay. A real American must necessarily also be a

graduate of Harvard, a Unitarian, an allopath, belong to the Somerset

Club and date back ancestrally at least to King Philip's War. W.

Montague had, however, decided early in life that Boston was too small

for him and that he owed a duty to the rest of the country.

So he had condescended to New York, where through his real American

connections in law, finance and business he had landed a job in a

political office where the aristocrats were all either Irish, Jews or

Italians, who regarded him as an outlandish animal. It had been a

strange experience for him. So had the discovery that graft, blackmail,

corruption, vice and crime were not mere literary conventions, existing

only for the theoretical purposes of novelists and playwrights, but were

actualities frequently dealt with in metropolitan society. He had

secured his appointment from a reform administration and he had been

retained as a holdover by Peckham, the new district attorney, by reason

of the fact that his uncle by marriage was a Wall Street banker who

contributed liberally without prejudice to both political parties. This,

however, W.M.P. did not know, and assumed that he was allowed to keep

his four-thousand-dollar salary because the county could not get on

without him. He was slender, wore a mouse-colored waistcoat, fawn tie

and spats, and plastered his hair neatly down on each side of a glossy

cranium that was an almost perfect sphere.

"Ah! Mr. William Montague Pepperill, I believe?" inquired Mr. Tutt with

profound politeness from the doorway of W.M.P.'s cubicle, which looked

into the gloomy light shaft of the Criminal Courts Building.

Mr. Pepperill finished what he was writing and then looked up.

"Yes," he replied. "What can I do for you?"

He did not ask Mr. Tutt his name or invite him to sit down.

The old lawyer smiled. He liked young men, even conceited young men;

they were so enthusiastic, so confident, so uncompromising. Besides,

W.M.P. was at heart, as Mr. Tutt perceived, a high-class sort of chap.

So he smiled.

"My name is Tutt," said he. "I am counsel for a man named Hassoun, whom

you are going to try for murder. You are, of course, perfectly familiar

with the facts."

He fumbled in his waistcoat, produced two withered stogies and cast his

eye along the wall.

"Would you--mind--if I sat down? And could I offer you a stogy?"

"Sit down--by all means," answered W.M.P. "No, thanks!"--to the stogy.

Mr. Tutt sat down, carefully placed his old chimney pot upside down on

the window ledge, and stacked in it the bundle of papers he was

carrying.

"I thought you might forgive me if I came to talk over the case a little

with you. You see, there are so many things that a prosecutor has to

consider--and which it is right that he should consider." He paused to

light a match. "Now in this case, though in all probability my client is

guilty there is practically no possibility of his being convicted of

anything higher than manslaughter in the first degree. The defense will

produce many witnesses--probably as many as the prosecution. Both sides

will tell their stories in a language unintelligible to the jury, who

must try to ascertain the true inwardness of the situation through an

interpreter. They will realize that they are not getting the real

truth--I mean the Syrian truth. As decent-minded men they won't dare to

send a fellow to the chair whose defense they cannot hear and whose

motives they do not either know or understand. They will feel, as I do

and perhaps you do, that the only persons to do justice among Syrians

are Syrians."

"Well," replied Mr. Pepperill politely, "what have you to propose?"

"That you recommend the acceptance of a plea of manslaughter in the

second degree."

Deputy Assistant District Attorney William Montague Pepperill drew

himself up haughtily. He regarded all criminal practitioners as

semicrooks, ignorant, illiterate, rather dirty men--not in the real

American class.

"I can do nothing of the kind," he answered sternly and very distinctly.

"If these men seek the hospitality of our shores they must be prepared

to be judged by our laws and by our standards of morality. I do not

agree with you that our juridical processes are not adequate to that

purpose. Moreover, I regard it as unethical--un-eth-i-cal--to accept a

plea for a lesser degree of crime than that which the defendant has

presumptively committed."

Mr. Tutt regarded him with undisguised admiration.

"Your sentiments do you honor, Mr. Pepperill!" he returned. "You are

sure you do not mind my smoke? But of course my client is presumed

innocent. I am very hopeful--almost confident--of getting him off

entirely. But rather than take the very slight chance of a conviction

for murder I am letting discretion take the place of valor and offer to

have him admit his guilt of manslaughter."

"I guess," answered Pepperill laconically, indulging in his only

frequent solecism, "that you wouldn't offer to plead to manslaughter

unless you felt pretty sure your client was going to the chair! Now--"

Mr. Tutt suddenly rose.

"My young friend," he interrupted, "when Ephraim Tutt says a thing man

to man--as I have been speaking to you--he means what he says. I have

told you that I expected to acquit my client. My only reason for

offering a plea is the very slight--and it is a very slight--chance that

an Arabian quarrel can be made the basis of a conviction for murder.

When you know me better you will not feel so free to impugn my

sincerity. Are you prepared to entertain my suggestion or not?"

"Most certainly not!" retorted W.M.P. with the shadow of a sneer.

"Then I will bid you good-day," said Mr. Tutt, taking his hat from the

window ledge and turning to the door. "And--you young whippersnapper,"

he added when once it had closed behind him and he had turned to shake

his lean old fist at the place where W.M.P. presumably was still

sitting, "I'll show you how to treat a reputable member of the bar old

enough to be your grandfather! I'll take the starch out of your darned

Puritan collar! I'll harry you and fluster you and heckle you and make a

fool of you, and I'll roll you up in a ball and blow you out the window,

and turn old Hassoun loose for an Egyptian holiday that will make old

Rome look like thirty piasters! You pinheaded, pretentious, pompous,

egotistical, niminy-piminy--"

"Well, well, Mr. Tutt, what's the matter?" inquired Peckham, laying his

hand on the old lawyer's shoulder. "What's Peppy been doing to you?"

"It isn't what he's been doing to me; it's what I'm going to do to him!"

returned Mr. Tutt grimly. "Just wait and see!"

"Go to it!" laughed the D.A. "Eat him alive! We're throwing him to the

lions!"

"No decent lion would want him!" retorted Mr. Tutt. "He might maul him a

little, but I won't. I'm just going to give him a full opportunity to

test his little proposition that the institutions of these jolly old

United States are perfectly adapted to settle quarrels among all the

polyglot prevaricators of the world and administer justice among people

who are still in a barbarous or at least in a patriarchal state. He's

young, and he don't understand that a New York merchant is entirely too

conscientious to find a man guilty on testimony that he would discount

heavily in his own business."

"Go as far as you like," laughed Peckham.

"Oh, I'm only going as far as Bagdad," answered Mr. Tutt.

Deputy Assistant District Attorney Pepperill complacently set about the

preparation of his case, utterly unconscious of the dangers with which

his legal path was beset. As he sat at his shiny oaken desk and pressed

the button that summoned the stenographer it seemed to him the simplest

thing in the world to satisfy any jury of what had taken place and the

summit of impudent audacity on the part of Mr. Tutt to have suggested

that Hassoun should be dealt with otherwise than a first-degree

murderer. And it should be added parenthetically that W.M.P., in spite

of his New England temperament, had a burning ambition to send somebody

to the electric chair.

In truth, on its face the story as related by Fajala Mokarzel and the

other friends of Sardi Babu the deceased pillow-sham vender was

simplicity itself. Besides Sardi Babu and Mokarzel there had been Nicola

Abbu, the confectioner; Menheem Shikrie, the ice-cream vendor; Habu

Kahoots, the showman; and David Elias, a pedler. All six of them, as

they claimed, had been sitting peacefully in Ghabryel & Assad's

restaurant, eating _kibbah arnabeiah_ and _mamoul_. Sardi had ordered

_sheesh kabab_. It was about nine o'clock in the evening, and they were

talking politics and drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.

Suddenly Kasheed Hassoun, accompanied by a smaller and much darker man,

had entered and striding up to the table exclaimed in a threatening

manner: "Where is he who did say that he would spit upon the beard of my

bishop?"

Thereupon Sardi Babu had risen and answered: "Behold, I am he."

Immediately Kasheed Hassoun, and while his accomplice held them at bay

with a revolver, had leaned across the table and grabbing Sardi by the

throat had broken his neck. Then the smaller man had fired off his

pistol and both of them had run away. The simplest story ever told.

There was everything the law required to send any murderer to the chair,

and little Mr. Pepperill had a diagram made of the inside of the

restaurant and a photograph of the outside of it, and stamped the

indictment in purple ink: Ready for Trial.

Contemporaneously Mr. Tutt was giving his final instructions to Mr.

Bonnie Doon, his stage manager, director of rehearsals and general

superintendent of arrangements in all cases requiring an extra-artistic

touch.

"It's too bad we can't cart a few hundred cubic feet of the Sahara into

the court room and divert the Nile down Center Street, but I guess you

can produce sufficient atmosphere," he said.

"I could all right--if I had a camel," remarked Bonnie.

"Atmosphere is necessary," continued Mr. Tutt. "Real atmosphere! Have

'em in native costume--beads, red slippers, hookahs, hoochi-koochis."

"I get you," replied Mr. Doon. "You want a regular Turkish village.

Well, we'll have it all right. I'll engage the entire Streets of Cairo

production from Coney and have Franklin Street crowded with goats, asses

and dromedaries. I might even have a caravan pitch its tents alongside

the Tombs."

"You can't lay it on too strong," declared Mr. Tutt. "But you don't need

to go off Washington Street. And, Bonnie, remember--I want every blessed

Turk, Greek, Armenian, Jew, Arab, Egyptian and Syrian that saw Sardi

Babu kill Kasheed Hassoun."

"You mean who saw Kasheed Hassoun kill Sardi Babu," corrected Bonnie.

"Well--whichever way it was," agreed Mr. Tutt.

When at length the great day of the trial arrived Judge Wetherell,

ascending the bench in Part Thirteen, was immediately conscious of a

subtle Oriental smell that emanated from no one could say where, but

which none the less permeated the entire court room. It seemed to be a

curious compound of incense, cabbage, garlic and eau de cologne, with a

suggestion of camel. The room was entirely filled with Syrians. One row

of benches was occupied by a solemn group of white-bearded patriarchs

who looked as if they had momentarily paused on a pilgrimage to Mecca.

All over the room rose the murmur of purring Arabic. The stenographer

was examining a copy of Meraat-ul-Gharb, the clerk a copy of El Zeman,

and in front of the judge's chair had been laid a copy of Al-Hoda.

His honor gave a single sniff, cast his eye over the picturesque throng,

and said: "Pst! Captain! Open that window!" Then he picked up the

calendar and read: "'People versus Kasheed Hassoun--Murder.'"

The stenographer was humming to himself:

_Bagdad is a town in Turkey

On a camel tall and jerky_.

"Are both sides ready to try this case?" inquired Judge Wetherell,

choking a yawn. He was a very stout judge and he could not help yawning.

Deputy Assistant District Attorney Pepperill and Mr. Tutt rose in

unison, declaring that they were. At or about this same moment the

small door in the rear of the room opened and an officer appeared,

leading in Kasheed Hassoun. He was an imposing man, over six feet in

height, of dignified carriage, serious mien, and finely chiseled

features. Though he was dressed as a European there was nevertheless

something indefinably suggestive of the East in the cut of his clothes;

he wore no waistcoat and round his waist was wound a strip of crimson

cloth. His black eyes glinted through lowering brows, wildly, almost

fiercely, and he strode haughtily beside his guard like some unbroken

stallion of the desert.

"Well, you may as well proceed to select a jury," directed the court,

putting on his glasses and studying his copy of Al-Hoda with interest.

Presently he beckoned to Pepperill.

"Have you seen this?" he asked.

"No, Your Honor. What is it?"

"It's a newspaper published by these people," explained His Honor.

"Rather amusing, isn't it?"

"I didn't know they had any special newspaper of their own," admitted

Pepperill.

"They've got eight right in New York," interjected the stenographer.

"I notice that this paper is largely composed of advertisements,"

commented Wetherell. "But the advertisers are apparently scattered all

over the world--Chicago; Pittsburgh; Canton; Winnipeg; Albuquerque;

Brooklyn; Tripoli; Greenville, Texas; Pueblo; Lawrence, Massachusetts;

Providence, Rhode Island; Fall River; Detroit--"

"Here's one from Roxbury, Massachusetts, and another from Mexico City,"

remarked the clerk delightedly.

"And here's one from Paris, France," added the stenographer. "Say! Some

travelers!"

"Well, go on getting the jury," said the judge, yawning again and

handing the paper to the clerk.

At that moment Mr. Salim Zahoul, the interpreter procured by Mr.

Pepperill, approached, bowed and, twisting his purple mustache,

addressed the court: "Your Excellence: I haf to zay dat dees papaire eet

haf articles on zis affair--ze _memkaha_--zat are not diplomatique."

Judge Wetherell blinked at him.

"Who's this man?" he demanded.

"That's the interpreter," explained W.M.P.

"Interpreter!" answered the court. "I can't understand a word he says!"

"He was the best I could get," apologized Pepperill, while the

countenance of Mr. Zahoul blazed with wrath and humiliation. "It's very

difficult to get a fluent interpreter in Arabic."

"Well, just interpret what _he_ says to _me_, will you?" kindly

requested His Honor.

"I zay," suddenly exploded Zahoul--"dees papaire eet half contemptuous

article on ze _menkaha_ zat dees Kasheed Hassoun not kill dees Sardi

Babu!"

"He says," translated Pepperill, "that the newspaper contains an

indiscreet article in favor of the defense. I had no idea there would be

any improper attempt to influence the jury."

"What difference does it make, anyway?" inquired His Honor. "You don't

expect any juryman is going to read that thing, do you? Why, it looks as

if a bumblebee had fallen into an ink bottle and then had a fit all

over the front page."

"I don't suppose--" began Pepperill.

"Go on and get your jury!" admonished the court.

So the lion and the lamb in the shape of Mr. Tutt and Pepperill

proceeded to select twelve gentlemen to pass upon the issue who had

never been nearer to Syria than the Boardwalk at Atlantic City and who

only with the utmost attention could make head or tail of what Mr. Salim

Zahoul averred that the witnesses were trying to say. Moreover, most of

the talesmen evinced a profound distrust of their own ability to do

justice between the People and the defendant and a curious desire to be

relieved from service. However, at last the dozen had been chosen and

sworn, the congestion of the court room slightly relieved, Mr. Zahoul

somewhat appeased, and Mr. William Montague Pepperill rose to outline

his very simple case to the jury.

There was, he explained, no more difficulty in administering justice in

the case of a foreigner than of anyone else. All were equal in the eyes

of the law--equally presumed to be innocent, equally responsible when

proved guilty. And he would prove Kasheed Hassoun absolutely

guilty--guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, beyond any doubt. He would

produce five--five reputable witnesses who would swear that Hassoun had

murdered Sardi Babu; and he prophesied that he would unhesitatingly

demand at the end of the trial such an unequivocal, fearless, honest

expression of their collective opinion as would permanently fix Mr.

Kasheed Hassoun so that he could do no more harm. He expressed it more

elegantly but that was the gist of it. He himself was as sincere and

honest in his belief in his ability to establish the truth of his claim

as he was in the justice of his cause. Alas, he was far too young to

realize that there is a vast difference between knowing the truth and

being able to demonstrate what it is!

In proper order he called the photographer who had taken the picture of

the restaurant, the draftsman who had made the diagram of the interior,

the policeman who had arrested Hassoun, the doctor who had performed the

official autopsy upon the unfortunate Babu, and the five Syrians who had

been present when the crime was perpetrated. Each swore by all that was

holy that Kasheed Hassoun had done exactly as outlined by Assistant

District Attorney Pepperill--and swore it word for word, _verbatim et

literatim, in iisdem verbis, sic_, and yet again exactly. Their

testimony mortised and tenoned in a way to rejoice a cabinet-maker's

heart. And at first to the surprise and later to the dismay of Mr.

Pepperill, old man Tutt asked not one of them a single question about

the murder. Instead he merely inquired in a casual way where they came

from, how they got there, what they did for a living, and whether they

had ever made any contradictory statement as to what had occurred, and

as his cross-examination of Mr. Habu Kahoots was typical of all the rest

it may perhaps be set forth as an example, particularly as Mr. Kahoots

spoke English, which the others did not.

"And den," asserted Mr. Kahoots stolidly, "Kasheed Hassoun, he grab heem

by ze troat and break hees neck."

He was a short, barrel-shaped man with curly ringlets, fat, bulging

cheeks, heavy double chin and enormous paunch, and he wore a green

worsted waistcoat and his fingers were laden with golden rings.

"Ah!" said Mr. Tutt complaisantly. "You saw all that exactly as you have

described it?"

"Yes, sair!"

"Where were you born?"

"Acre, Syria."

"How long have you been in the United States?"

"Tirty years."

"Where do you live?"

"Augusta, Georgia."

"What's your business?"

Mr. Kahoots visibly expanded.

"I have street fair and carnival of my own. I have electric theater, old

plantation, Oriental show, snake exhibit and merry-go-round."

"Well, well!" exclaimed Mr. Tutt. "You are certainly a capitalist! I

hope you are not financially overextended!"

Mr. Pepperill looked pained, not knowing just how to prevent such

jocoseness on the part of his adversary.

"I object," he muttered feebly.

"Quite properly!" agreed Mr. Tutt. "Now, Mr. Kahoots, are you a citizen

of the United States?"

Mr. Kahoots looked aggrieved.

"Me? No! Me no citizen. I go back sometime Acre and build moving-picture

garden and ice-cream palace."

"I thought so," commented Mr. Tutt. "Now what, pray, were you doing in

the Washington Street restaurant?"

"Eating _kibbah arnabeiah_ and _mamoul_."

"I mean if you live in Augusta how did you happen to be in New York at

precisely that time?"

"Eh?"

"How you come in New York?" translated Mr. Tutt, while the jury laughed.

"Just come."

"But why?"

"Just come."

"Yes, yes; but you didn't come on just to be present at the murder, did

you?"

Kahoots grinned.

"I just come to walk up and down."

"Where--walk up and down?"

"On Washington Street. I spend the winter. I do nothing. I rich man."

"How long did you stay when you just came on?"

"Tree days. Then I go back."

"Why did you go back?"

"I dunno. Just go back."

Mr. Tutt sighed. The jury gave signs of impatience.

"Look here!" he demanded. "How many times have you gone over your story

with the district attorney?"

"Nevvair."

"What?"

"I nevvair see heem."

"Never see whom?"

"Dees man--judge."

"I'm not talking about the judge."

"I nevvair see no one."

"Didn't you tell the Grand Jury that Hassoun stabbed Babu with a long

knife?"

"I dunno heem!"

"Who?"

"Gran' Jury."

"Didn't you go into a big room and put your hand on a book and swear?"

"I no swear--ever!"

"And tell what you saw?"

"I tell what I saw."

"What did you see?"

"I saw Hassoun break heem hees neck."

"Didn't you say first that Hassoun stabbed Babu?"

"No--nevvair!"

"Then didn't you come back and say he shot him?"

"No--nevvair!"

"And finally, didn't you say he strangled him--after you had heard that

the coroner's physician had decided that that was how he was killed?"

"Yes--he break heem hees neck."

Mr. Kahoots was apparently very much bored, but he was not bored in

quite the same way as the judge, who, suddenly rousing himself, asked

Mr. Tutt if he had any basis for asking such questions.

"Why, certainly," answered the old lawyer quietly. "I shall prove that

this witness made three absolutely contradictory statements before the

Grand Jury."

"Is that so, Mister District Attorney?"

"I don't know," replied Pepperill faintly. "I had nothing to do with the

proceedings before the Grand Jury."

Judge Wetherell frowned.

"It would seem to me," he began, "as if a proper preparation of the case

would have involved some slight attention to--Well, never mind! Proceed,

Mr. Tutt."

"Kahoots!" cried the lawyer sternly. "Isn't it a fact that you have

been convicted of crime yourself?"

The proprietor of the merry-go-round drew himself up indignantly.

"Me? No!"

"Weren't you convicted of assault on a man named Rafoul Rabyaz?"

"Me? Look here, sir! I tell you 'bout dat! This Rafoul Rabyaz he my

partner, see, in pool, billiard and cigar business on Greenwich Street.

This long time ago. Years ago. We split up. I sell heem my shares, see.

I open next door--pool table, café and all. But I not get full half the

stock. I not get the tablecloth, see. I was of the tablecloth you know

short. It don't be there. I go back there that time. I see heem. I say,

'We don't count those tablecloth.' He say, 'Yes.' I say,'No.' He

say,'Yes.' I say 'No.' He say, 'Yes.' I say, 'No'--"

"For heaven's sake," exclaimed Judge Wetherell, "don't say that again!"

"Yes, sair," agreed the showman. "All right. I say, 'No.' I say, 'You

look in the book.' He say, 'No.' We each take hold of the cloth. I have

a knife. I cut cloth in two. I give heem half. I take half. I say, 'You

take half; I take half.' He say, 'Go to hell!'"

He waved his hand definitively.

"Well?" inquired Mr. Tutt anxiously.

"Dat's all!" answered Mr. Kahoots.

One of the jurymen suddenly coughed and thrust his handkerchief into his

mouth.

"Then you stuck your knife into him, didn't you?" suggested Mr. Tutt.

"Me? No!"

Mr. Tutt shrugged his shoulders and pursed his lips.

"You were convicted, weren't you?"

"I call twenty witness!" announced Mr. Kahoots with a grand air.

"You don't need to!" retorted Mr. Tutt. "Now tell us why you had to

leave Syria?"

"I go in camel business at Coney Island," answered the witness demurely.

"What!" shouted the lawyer. "Didn't you run away from home because you

were convicted of the murder of Fatima, the daughter of Abbas?"

"Me? No!" Mr. Kahoots looked shocked.

Mr. Tutt bent over and spoke to Bonnie Doon, who produced from a leather

bag a formidable document on parchment-like paper covered with

inscriptions in Arabic and adorned with seals and ribbons.

"I have here, Your Honor," said he, "the record of this man's conviction

in the Criminal Court in Beirut, properly exemplified by our consuls and

the embassy at Constantinople. I have had it translated, but if Mr.

Pepperill prefers to have the interpreter read it--"

"Show it to the district attorney!" directed His Honor.

Pepperill looked at it helplessly.

"You may read your own translation," said the court drowsily.

Mr. Tutt bowed, took up the paper and faced the jury.

"This is the official record," he announced. "I will read it.

"'In the name of God.

"'On a charge of the murder of the gendarmes Nejib Telhoon and

Abdurrahman and Ibrahim Aisha and Fatima, daughter of Hason Abbas, of

the attack on certain nomads, of having fired on them with the intent of

murder, of participation and assistance in the act of murder, of having

shot on the regular troops, of assisting in the escape of some offenders

and of having drawn arms on the regular troops, during an uprising on

Sunday, January 24, 1303--Mohammedan style--between the inhabitants of

the Mezreatil-Arab quarter in Beirut and the nomads who had pitched

their tents near by, the following arrested persons, namely--Metri son

of Habib Eljemal and Habib son of Mikael Nakash and Hanna son of

Abdallah Elbaitar and Elias Esad Shihada and Tanous son of Jerji Khedr

and Habib son of Aboud Shab and Elias son of Metri Nasir and Khalil son

of Mansour Maoud and Nakhle son of Elias Elhaj and Nakhle son of Berkat

Minari and Antoon son of Berkat Minari and Lutfallah son of

Jerji-Kefouri and Jabran Habib Bishara and Kholil son of Lutf Dahir and

Nakhle Yousif Eldefoumi, all residents of the said quarter and Turkish

subjects, and their companions, sixty-five fugitives, namely--Isbir

Bedoon son of Abdallah Zerik and Elias son of Kanan Zerik and Amin Matar

and Jerji Ferhan alias Baldelibas and Habu son of Hanna Kahoots and--'"

Deputy Assistant District Attorney Pepperill started doubtfully to his

feet.

"If the court please," he murmured in a sickly voice, "I object. In the

first place I don't know anything about this record--and I object to it

on that ground; and in the second place a trial and conviction in the

absence of a defendant under our law is no conviction at all."

"But this man is a Turkish subject and it's a good conviction in

Turkey," argued Mr. Tutt.

"Well, it isn't here!" protested Pepperill.

"You're a little late, aren't you?" inquired His Honor. "It has all been

read to the jury. However, I'll entertain a motion to strike out--"

"I should like to be heard on the question," said Mr. Tutt quickly.

"This is an important matter."

Unexpectedly a disgruntled-looking talesman in the back row held up his

hand.

"I'd like to ask a question myself," he announced defiantly, almost

arrogantly, after the manner of one with a grievance. "I'm a

hard-working business man. I've been dragged here against my will to

serve on this jury and decide if this defendant murdered somebody or

other. I don't see what difference it makes whether or not this witness

cut a tablecloth in two or murdered Fatima, the daughter of What's his

Name. I want to go home--sometime. If it is in order I'd like to suggest

that we get along."

Judge Wetherell started and peered with a puzzled air at this bold

shatterer of established procedure.

"Mister Juryman," said he severely, "these matters relate directly to

the credibility of the witness. They are quite proper.

I--I--am--surprised--"

"But, Your Honor," expostulated the iconoclast upon the back row, "I

guess nobody is going to waste much time over this Turkish snake

charmer! Ain't there a policeman or somebody we can believe who saw what

happened?"

"Bang!" went the judicial gavel.

"The juryman will please be silent!" shouted Judge Wetherell. "This is

entirely out of order!" Then he quickly covered his face with his

handkerchief. "Proceed!" he directed in a muffled tone.

"Where were we?" asked Mr. Tutt dreamily.

"Fatima, the daughter of Abbas," assisted the foreman, sotto voce.

"And I objected to Fatima, the daughter of Abbas!" snapped Pepperill.

"Well, well!" conceded Mr. Tutt. "She's dead, poor thing! Let her be.

That is all, Mr. Kahoots."

It is difficult to describe the intense excitement these digressions

from the direct testimony occasioned among the audience. The reference

to the billiard-table cover and the murder of the unfortunate Fatima

apparently roused long-smoldering fires. A group of Syrians by the

window broke into an unexpected altercation, which had to be quelled by

a court officer, and when quiet was restored the jury seemed but

slightly attentive to the precisely similar yarns of Nicola Abbu,

Menheem Shikrie, Fajal Mokarzel and David Elias, especially as the

minutes of the Grand Jury showed that they had sworn to three entirely

different sets of facts regarding the cause of Babu's death. Yet when

the People rested it remained true that five witnesses, whatever the

jury may have thought of them, had testified that Hassoun strangled

Sardi Babu. The jury turned expectantly to Mr. Tutt to hear what he had

to say.

"Gentlemen," he said quietly, "the defense is very simple. None of the

witnesses who have appeared here was in fact present at the scene of the

homicide at all. I shall call some ten or twelve reputable Syrian

citizens who will prove to you that Kasheed Hassoun, my client, with a

large party of friends was sitting quietly in the restaurant when Sardi

Babu came in with a revolver in his hand, which he fired at Hassoun, and

that then, and only then, a small dark man whose identity cannot be

established--evidently a stranger--seized Babu before he could fire

again, and killed him--in self-defense."

Mr. William Montague Pepperill's jaw dropped as if he had seen the ghost

of one of his colonial ancestors. He could not believe that he had heard

Mr. Tutt correctly. Why, the old lawyer had the thing completely turned

round! Sardi Babu hadn't gone to the restaurant. He had been in the

restaurant, and it had been Kasheed Hassoun who had gone there.

Yet, one by one, placidly, imperturbably, the dozen witnesses foretold

by Mr. Tutt, and gathered in by Bonnie Doon, marched to the chair and

swore upon the Holy Bible that it was even as Mr. Tutt had said, and

that no such persons as Mokarzel, Kahoots, Abbu, Shikrie and Elias had

been in the restaurant at any time that evening, but on the contrary

that they, the friends of Hassoun, had been there eating Turkish pie--a

few might have had mashed beans with _taheenak_--when Sardi Babu,

apparently with suicidal intent, entered alone to take vengeance upon

the camel owner.

"That is all. That is our case," said Mr. Tutt as the last Syrian left

the stand.

But there was no response from the bench. Judge Wetherell had been

dozing peacefully for several hours. Even Pepperill could not avoid a

decorous smile. Then the clerk pulled out the copy of Al-Hoda and

rustled it, and His Honor, who had been dreaming that he was riding

through the narrow streets of Bagdad upon a jerky white dromedary so

tall that he could peek through the latticed balconies at the plump,

black-eyed odalisques within the harems, slowly came back from Turkey to

New York.

"Gentlemen of the jury," said he, pulling himself together, "the

defendant here is charged by the Grand Jury with having murdered Fatima

the daughter of Abbas--I beg your pardon! I mean--who was it?--one Sardi

Babu. I will first define to you the degrees of homicide--"

* * * * *

One day three months later, after Kasheed Hassoun had been twice tried

upon the same testimony and the jury had disagreed--six to six, each

time--Mr. Tutt, who had overstayed his lunch hour at the office, put on

his stovepipe hat and strolled along Washington Street, looking for a

place to pick up a bite to eat. It was in the middle of the afternoon

and most of the stores were empty, which was all the more to his liking.

He had always wanted to try some of that Turkish pie that they had all

talked so much about at the trial. Presently a familiar juxtaposition of

names caught his eye--Ghabryel & Assad. The very restaurant which had

been the scene of the crime! Curiously, he turned in there. Like all the

other places it was deserted, but at the sound of his footsteps a little

Syrian boy not more than ten years old came from behind the screen at

the end of the room and stood bashfully awaiting his order.

Mr. Tutt smiled one of his genial weather-beaten smiles at the youngster

and glancing idly over the bill of fare ordered _biklama_ and coffee.

Then he lit a stogy and stretched his long legs comfortably out under

the narrow table. Yes, this was the very spot where either Sardi Babu

and his friends had been sitting the night of the murder or Kasheed

Hassoun and his friends--one or the other; he wondered if anybody would

ever know which. Was it possible that in this humdrum little place human

passions had been roused to the taking of life on account of some mere

difference in religious dogma? Was this New York? Was it possible to

Americanize these people? A door clattered in the rear, and from behind

the screen again emerged the boy carrying a tray of pastry and coffee.

"Well, my little man," said Mr. Tutt, "do you work here?"

"Oh, yes," answered the embryonic citizen. "My father, he owns half the

store. I go to school every day, but I work here afterward. I got a

prize last week."

"What sort of a prize?"

"I got the English prize."

The lawyer took the child's hand and pulled him over between his knees.

He was an attractive lad, clean, responsive, frank, and his eyes looked

straight into Mr. Tutt's.

"Sonny," he inquired his new friend, "are you an American?"

"Me? Sure! You bet I'm an American! The old folks--no! You couldn't

change 'em in fifty years. They're just what they always were. They

don't want anything different. They think they're in Syria yet. But

me--say, what do you think? Of course I'm an American!"

"That's right!" answered Mr. Tutt, offering him a piece of pastry. "And

what is your name?"

"George Nasheen Assad," answered the boy, showing a set of white teeth.

"Well, George," continued the attorney, "what has become of Kasheed

Hassoun?"

"Oh, he's down at Coney Island. He runs a caravan. He has six camels. I

go there sometimes and he lets me ride for nothing. I know who you are,"

said the little Syrian confidently, as he took the cake. "You're the

great lawyer who defended Kasheed Hassoun."

"That's right. How did you know that, now?"

"I was to the trial."

"Do you think he ought to have been let off?" asked Mr. Tutt

whimsically.

"I don't know," returned the child. "I guess you did right not to call

me as a witness."

Mr. Tutt wrinkled his brows.

"Eh? What? You weren't a witness, were you?"

"Of course I was!" laughed George. "I was here behind the screen. I saw

the whole thing. I saw Kasheed Hassoun come in and speak to Sardi Babu,

and I saw Sardi draw his revolver, and I saw Kasheed tear it out of his

hand and strangle him."

Mr. Tutt turned cold.

"You saw that?" he challenged.

"Sure."

"How many other people were there in the restaurant?" inquired Mr. Tutt.

"Nobody at all," answered George in a matter-of-fact tone. "Only Kasheed

and Sardi. Nobody else was in the restaurant."

Contempt of Court

The court can't determine what is honor.--Chief Baron Bowes, 1743.

I know what my code of honor is, my lord, and I intend to adhere to

it.--John O'Conner, M.P., in Parnell Commission's Proceedings, 103d

Day; Times Rep. pt. 28, pp. 19 _ff_.

Well, honor is the subject of my story.--Julius Caesar, Act I, Sc 2.

"What has become of Katie--the second waitress?" asked Miss Althea

Beekman of Dawkins, her housekeeper, as she sat at her satinwood desk

after breakfast. "I didn't see her either last night or this morning."

Dawkins, who was a mid-Victorian, flushed awkwardly.

"I really had to let the girl go, ma'am!" she explained with an outraged

air. "I hardly know how to tell you--such a thing in this house! I

couldn't possibly have her round. I was afraid she might corrupt the

other girls, ma'am--and they are such a self-respecting lot--almost

quite ladylike, ma'am. So I simply paid her and told her to take herself

off."

Miss Beekman looked pained.

"You shouldn't have turned her out into the street like that, Dawkins!"

she expostulated. "Where has she gone?"

Dawkins gazed at her large feet in embarrassment.

"I don't know, ma'am," she admitted. "I didn't suppose you'd want her

here so I sent her away. It was quite inconvenient, too--with the

servant problem what it is. But I'm hoping to get another this afternoon

from Miss Healey's."

Miss Beekman was genuinely annoyed.

"I am seriously displeased with you, Dawkins!" she returned severely.

"Of course, I am shocked at any girl in my household misbehaving

herself, but--I--wouldn't want her to be sent away--under such

circumstances. It would be quite heartless. Yes, I am very much

disturbed!"

"I'm sorry, ma'am," answered the housekeeper penitently. "But I was only

thinking of the other girls."

"Well, it's too late to do anything about it now," repeated her

mistress. "But I'm sorry, Dawkins; very sorry, indeed. We have

responsibilities toward these people! However--this is Thursday, isn't

it?--we'll have veal for lunch as usual--and she was so pretty!" she

added inconsequently.

"H'm. That was the trouble!" sniffed the housekeeper. "We're well rid of

her. You'd think a girl would have some consideration for her

employer--if nothing else. In a sense she is a guest in the house and

should behave herself as such!"

"Yes, that is quite true!" agreed her employer. "Still--yes, Brown Betty

is very well for dessert. That will do, Dawkins."

Behind the curtain of this casual conversation had been enacted a

melodrama as intensely vital and elemental as any of Shakespeare's

tragedies, for the day Dawkins had fired Katie O'Connell--"for reasons,"

as she said--and told her to go back where she came from or anywhere she

liked for that matter, so long as she got out of her sight, Katie's

brother Shane in the back room of McManus' gin palace gave Red

McGurk--for the same "reasons"--a certain option and, the latter having

scornfully declined to avail himself of it, had then and there put a

bullet through his neck. But this, naturally, Miss Beekman did not know.

As may have been already surmised Miss Althea was a gracious, gentle and

tender-hearted lady who never knowingly would have done a wrong to

anybody and who did not believe that simply because God had been pleased

to call her into a state of life at least three stories higher than her

kitchen she was thereby relieved from her duty toward those who occupied

it. Nevertheless, from the altitude of those three stories she viewed

them as essentially different from herself, for she came of what is

known as "a long line of ancestors." As, however, Katie O'Connell and

Althea Beekman were practically contemporaries, it is somewhat difficult

to understand how one of them could have had a succession of ancestors

that was any longer than that of the other. Indeed, Miss Beekman's

friend, Prof. Abelard Samothrace, of Columbia University, probably would

have admitted that just as the two had lived in the same house--albeit

at different levels--on Fifth Avenue, so their forebears at some

prehistoric period had, likely as not, occupied the same cave and had in

company waded on frosty mornings the ice-skimmed swamps of Mittel Europa

in pursuit of the cave bear, the mastodon and the woolly rhinoceros, and

for afternoon relaxation had made up twosomes for hunting wives with

stone clubs instead of mashies in their hairy prehensile hands.

It would seem, therefore, that--whatever of tradition might have

originated in the epoch in question--glimmerings of sportsmanship, of

personal pride, of tribal duty or of conscience ought to have been the

common heritage of them both. For it was assuredly true that while Miss

Katie's historic ancestors had been Celtiberians, clad on occasion only

in a thin coating of blue paint, Miss Althea's had dwelt in the dank

marshes of the Elbe and had been unmistakably Teutonic, though this

curse had been largely removed by racial intermarriage during subsequent

thousands of years. Indeed, it may well have been that in the dimmer

past some Beekman serf on bended knee had handed a gilded harp to some

King O'Connell on his throne. If the O'Connells were foreigners the

Beekmans, from the point of view of the aboriginal American, were no

less so simply because they had preceded them by a couple of hundred

years.

Tradition is not a matter of centuries but of ages. If Katie inherited

some of hers from the peat bogs adjacent to Tara's Halls in that remote

period when there were still snakes in Ireland, Miss Althea had

vicariously acquired others from the fur-clad barbarians described by

Tacitus who spent their leisure time in drinking, gambling or splitting

each other's skulls with stone mallets. On this subject see Spencer's

"Data of Ethics" and Lecky's "History of European Morals." But all this

entirely escaped Miss Althea, who suffered from the erroneous impression

that because she was a Beekman and lived in a stone mansion facing

Central Park she differed fundamentally not only from the O'Connells but

from the Smiths, the Pasquales, the Ivanovitches and the Ginsbergs, all

of whom really come of very old families. Upon this supposed difference

she prided herself.

Because she was, in fact, mistaken and because the O'Connells shared

with the Beekmans and the Ginsbergs a tradition reaching back to a

period when revenge was justice, and custom of kinsfolk the only law,

Shane O'Connell had sought out Red McGurk and had sent him unshriven to

his God. The only reason why this everyday Bowery occurrence excited any

particular attention was not that Shane was an O'Connell but that McGurk

was the son of a political boss of much influence and himself one of the

leaders of a notorious cohort of young ruffians who when necessary could

be relied upon to stuff a ballot box or otherwise to influence public

opinion. As Red was a mighty man in Gideon, so his taking off was an

event of moment, and he was waked with an elegance unsurpassed in the

annals of Cherry Hill.

"An' if ye don't put the son-of-a----- who kilt me b'y in th' chair, ye

name's mud--see?" the elder McGurk had informed District Attorney

Peckham the next morning. "I've told the cops who done it. Now you do

the rest--understand?"

Peckham understood very well. No one seeing the expression on McGurk's

purple countenance could have failed to do so.

"We'll get him! Don't you worry!" Peckham had assured the desolated

father with a manner subtly suggesting both the profoundest sympathy and

the prophetic glories of a juridical revenge in which the name of McGurk

would be upon every lip and the picture of the deceased, his family, and

the home in which they dwelt would be featured on the front page of

every journal. "We'll get him, all right!"

"See to it that ye do!" commented his visitor meaningly.

Therefore, though no one had seen him commit the crime, word was passed

along the line to pick up Shane O'Connell for the murder of Red McGurk.

It mattered not there was no evidence except the report of a muttered

threat or two and the lie passed openly the week before.

Everybody knew that Shane had done it, and why; though no one could tell

how he knew it. And because everybody knew, it became a political

necessity for Peckham to put him under arrest with a great fanfare of

trumpets and a grandiose announcement of the celerity with which the

current would be turned through his body.

The only fly in the ointment was the fact that O'Connell had walked into

the district attorney's office as soon as the rumor reached him and

quietly submitted to being arrested, saying merely: "I heard you wanted

me. Well, here I am!"

But though they badgered him for hours, lured him by every pretext to

confess, put a stool pigeon in the same cell with him, and resorted to

every trick, device and expedient known to the prosecutor's office to

trap him into some sort of an admission, they got nothing for their

pains. It was just one of those cases where the evidence simply wasn't

forthcoming. And yet Peckham was aware that unless he convicted

O'Connell his name would indeed be mud--or worse. This story, however,

is concerned less with the family honor of the O'Connells than with that

of the Beekmans.

Miss Althea was the last surviving member of her branch of the family.

Though she would probably have regarded it as slightly vulgar to have

been referred to as "one hundred per cent American" she was so nearly

so--except for a reminiscent affection for "the late dear Queen"--that

the phrase in her case would have been substantially correct. Her mother

had been the daughter of a distinguished Revolutionary statesman who had

been a signer of the Declaration of Independence, an ambassador and

justice of the Supreme Court as well; her father a celebrated newspaper

editor.

She had been born in the Prue and I period in Gramercy Park near what is

now The Players' Club, and the old colonial house with its white

trimmings and ornamental ironwork had been the scene of many a modest

gayety at a time when Emerson, Lowell, and George William Curtis were

viewed less as citizens than as high priests of Culture, sharing equally

in sanctity with the goddess thereof. She could just remember those

benign old gentlemen, as well as the many veterans of the Civil War who

dined at her father's decorous mahogany and talked of the preservation

of the Constitution and those other institutions to found which it is

generally assumed the first settlers landed on the Atlantic seaboard and

self-sacrificingly accepted real estate from the wily native in return

for whisky and glass beads. She was forty-seven years of age, a Colonial

Dame, a Daughter of the American Revolution, a member of the board of

directors of several charitable institutions, and she was worth a couple

of million dollars in railroad securities. On Sundays she always

attended the church in Stuyvesant Square frequented by her family, and

as late as 1907 did so in the famous Beekman C-spring victoria driven

by an aged negro coachman.

But besides being full of rectitude and good works--which of themselves

so often fail of attraction--Miss Althea was possessed of a face so

charming even in its slightly faded prettiness that one wondered how it

was possible that she could successfully have withstood the suitors who

must have crowded about her. Her house on Fifth Avenue was full of old

engravings of American patriots, and the library inherited from her

editorial parent was replete with volumes upon subjects which would have

filled a Bolshevik with disgust. Briefly, if ever Trotzky had become

Commissar of the Soviet of Manhattan, Miss Althea and those like her

would have been the first candidates for a drumhead court-martial.

She prided herself equally upon her adherence to religious principle and

the Acts of Congress. For the law, merely as law, she had the

profoundest veneration, viewing the heterogeneous statutes passed from

time to time by desultory legislators much as if they had in some

mysterious way been handed down from Mount Sinai along with the Ten

Commandments.

For any violator of the law she had the uttermost abhorrence, and the

only weakness in her ethics arose out of her failure to discriminate

between relative importances, for she undoubtedly regarded the sale of a

glass of beer after the closing hour as being quite as reprehensible as

grand larceny or the bearing of false witness. To her every judge must

be a learned, wise and honorable man because he stood for the

enforcement of the law of the land, and she never questioned whether or

not that law was wise or otherwise, which latter often--it must be

confessed--it was not.

In a word, though there was nothing progressive about Miss Althea she

was one of those delightful, cultivated, loyal and enthusiastic female

citizens who are rightfully regarded as vertebrae in the backbone of a

country which, after it has got its back up, can undoubtedly lick any

other nation on earth. It was characteristic of her that carefully

folded inside the will drawn for her by her family solicitor was a slip

of paper addressed to her heirs and next of kin requesting that at her

funeral the national anthem should be played and that her coffin should

be draped with the American flag.

But there was a somewhat curious if not uncommon inconsistency in Miss

Beekman's attitude toward lawbreakers in that once they were in prison

they instantly became objects of her gentlest solicitude. Thus she was a

frequent visitor at the Tombs, where she brought spiritual, and more

often, it must be frankly admitted, bodily comfort to those of the

inmates who were recommended by the district attorney and prison

authorities as worthy of her attention; and Prosecutor Peckham being not

unmindful of the possible political advantage that might accrue from

being on friendly terms with so well-known a member of the distinguished

family of Beekman, lost no opportunity to ingratiate himself with her

and gave orders, to his subordinates to make her path as easy as

possible. Thus quite naturally she had heard of Tutt & Tutt, and had a

casual acquaintance with the senior partner himself.

"That O'Connell is a regular clam--won't tell me anything at all!"

remarked Mr. Tutt severely, hanging up his hat on the office tree with

one hand while he felt for a match in his waistcoat pocket with the

other, upon the afternoon of the day that Miss Beekman had had the

conversation with Dawkins with which this story opens.

"National temperament," answered Bonnie Doon, producing the desired

match. "It's just like an Irishman to refuse point-blank to talk to the

lawyer who has been assigned to defend him. He's probably afraid he'll

make some admission from which you will infer he's guilty. No Irishman

ever yet admitted that he was guilty of anything!"

"Well, I've never met a defendant of any other nationality who would,

either," replied Mr. Tutt, pulling vigorously at his stogy. "Even so,

this chap O'Connell is a puzzle to me. 'Go ahead and defend me,' said he

today, 'but don't ask me to talk about the case, because I won't.' I

give it up. He wouldn't even tell me where he was on the day of the

murder."

Bonnie grunted dubiously.

"There may be a very good reason for that!" he retorted. "If what rumor

says is true he simply hunted for McGurk until he found him and put a

lead pellet back of his ear."

"And also, if what rumor says is true," supplemented Tutt, who entered

at this moment, "a good job it was, too. McGurk was a treacherous, dirty

blackguard, the leader of a gang of criminals, even if he was, as they

all agree, a handsome rascal who had every woman in the district on

tenterhooks. Any girl in this case?"

Bonnie shrugged his shoulders.

"They claim so; only there's nothing definite. The O'Connells are well

spoken of."

"If there was, that would explain why he wouldn't talk," commented Mr.

Tutt. "That's the devil of it. You can't put in a defense under the

unwritten law without besmirching the very reputation you are trying to

protect."

The senior partner of Tutt & Tutt wheeled his swivel chair to the window

and crossing his congress boots upon the sill gazed contemplatively down

upon the shipping.

"Unwritten law!" sarcastically exclaimed Tutt from the doorway. "There

ain't no such animal in these parts!"

"You're quite wrong!" retorted his elder partner. "Most of our

law--ninety-nine per cent of it, in fact--is unwritten."

"Excuse me!" interjected Bonnie Doon, abandoning his usual flippancy.

"What is that you said, Mr. Tutt?"

"That ninety-nine per cent of the laws by which we are governed are

unwritten laws, just as binding as the printed ones upon our statute

books, which after all are only the crystallization of the sentiments

and opinions of the community based upon its traditions, manners,

customs and religious beliefs. For every statute in print there are a

hundred that have no tangible existence, based on our sense of decency,

of duty and of honor, which are equally controlling and which it has

never been found necessary to reduce to writing, since their infraction

usually brings its own penalty or infringes the more delicate domain of

private conscience where the crude processes of the criminal law cannot

follow. The laws of etiquette and fair play are just as obligatory as

legislative enactments--the Ten Commandments as efficacious as the Penal

Code."

"Don't you agree with that, Tutt?" demanded Bonnie. "Every man's

conscience is his own private unwritten law."

Tutt looked skeptical.

"Did you say every man had a conscience?" he inquired.

"And it makes a lot of trouble sometimes," continued Mr. Tutt, ignoring

him. "You remember when old Cogswell was on the bench and a man was

brought before him for breaking his umbrella over the head of a fellow

who had insulted the defendant's wife, he said to the jury: 'Gentlemen,

if this plaintiff had called my wife a name like that I'd have smashed

my umbrella over his head pretty quick. However, that's not the law!

Take the case, gentlemen!'"

"Well, I guess I was wrong," admitted Tutt. "Of course, that is

unwritten law. People don't like to punish a man for resenting a slur

upon his wife's reputation."

"But you see where that leads you?" remarked his partner. "The so-called

unwritten law is based on our inherited idea of chivalry. A lady's honor

and reputation were sacred, and her knight was prepared instantly to

defend it with the last drop of his blood. A reflection on her honesty

was almost as unbearable as one upon her virtue. Logically, the

unwritten law ought to permit women to break their contracts and do

practically anything they see fit."

"They do, don't they--the dear things!" sighed Bonnie.

"I remember," interjected Tutt brightly, "when it was the unwritten law

of Cook County, Illinois--that's Chicago, you know--that any woman could

kill her husband for the life-insurance money. Seriously!"

"There's no point of chivalry that I can see involved in that--it's

merely good business," remarked Mr. Doon, lighting another cigarette.

"All the same it's obvious that the unwritten law might be stretched a

long way. It's a great convenience, though, on occasion!"

"We should be in an awful stew if nowadays we substituted ideas of

chivalry for those of justice," declared Mr. Tutt. "Fortunately the

danger is past. As someone has said, 'The women, once our superiors,

have become our equals!'"

"We don't even give 'em our seats in the Subway," commented Tutt

complacently. "No, we needn't worry about the return of chivalry--in New

York at any rate."

"I should say not!" exclaimed Miss Wiggin, entering at that moment with

a pile of papers, as nobody rose.

"But," insisted Bonnie, "all the same there are certainly plenty of

cases where if he had to choose between them any man would obey his

conscience rather than the law."

"Of course, there are such cases," admitted Mr. Tutt. "But we ought to

discourage the idea as much as possible."

"Discourage a sense of honor?" exclaimed Miss Wiggin. "Why, Mr. Tutt!"

"It depends on what you mean by honor," he retorted. "I don't take much

stock in the kind of honor that makes an heir apparent 'perjure himself

like a gentleman' about a card game at a country house."

"Neither do I," she returned, "any more than I do in the kind of honor

that compels a man to pay a gambling debt before he pays his tailor, but

I do believe that there may be situations where, though it would not be

permissible to perjure oneself, honor would require one to refuse to

obey the law."

"That's a pretty dangerous doctrine," reflected Mr. Tutt. "For everybody

would be free to make himself the judge of when he ought to respect the

law and when he oughtn't. We can easily imagine that the law would come

out at the small end of the horn."

"In matters of conscience--which, I take it, is the same thing as one's

sense of honor--one has got to be one's own judge," declared Miss Wiggin

firmly.

"The simplest way," announced Tutt, "is to take the position that the

law should always be obeyed and that the most honorable man is he who

respects it the most."

"Yes, the safest and also the most cowardly!" retorted Miss Wiggin.

"Supposing the law required you to do something which you personally

regarded not only as morally wrong but detestable, would you do it?"

"It wouldn't!" protested Tutt with a grimace. "The law is the perfection

of reason."

"But I am entitled, am I not, to suppose, for purposes of argument, that

it might?" she inquired caustically. "And I say that our sense of honor

is the most precious thing we've got. It's our duty to respect our

institutions and obey the law whether we like it or not, unless it

conflicts with our conscience, in which case we ought to defy it and

take the consequences!"

"Dear me!" mocked Tutt. "And be burned at the stake?"

"If necessary; yes!"

"I don't rightly get all this!" remarked Bonnie. "Me for the lee side of

the law, every time!"

"It's highly theoretical," commented Tutt. "As usual with our

discussions."

"Not so theoretical as you might think!" interrupted his senior,

hastening to reenforce Miss Wiggin. "Nobody can deny that to be true to

oneself is the highest principle of human conduct, and that ''tis man's

perdition to be safe when for the truth he ought to die.' That's why we

reverence the early Christian martyrs. But when it comes to choosing

between what we loosely call honor and what the law requires--"

"But I thought the law embodied our ideas of honor!" replied Tutt.

"Didn't you say so--a few hours earlier in this conversation? As our

highest duty is to the state, it is a mere play on words, in my humble

opinion, to speak of honor as distinguished from law or the obligation

of one's oath in a court of justice. I bet I can find plenty of

authorities to that effect in the library!"

"Of course you can," countered Miss Wiggin. "You can find an authority

on any side of any proposition you want to look for. That's why one's

own sense of honor is so much more reliable than the law. What is the

law, anyhow? It's what some judge says is the law--until he's reversed.

Do you suppose I'd surrender my own private ideas of honor to a casual

ruling from a judge who very likely hadn't the remotest idea of what I

think is honorable?"

"You'll be jailed for contempt before you get through!" Tutt warned her.

"The fact of the matter is," concluded Mr. Tutt, "that honor and law

haven't anything to do with one another. The courts have constantly

pointed that out from the earliest days, though judges like, when they

can, to make the two seem one and the same. Chief Baron Bowes, I

remember, said in some case in 1743, 'The court can't determine what is

honor.' No, no; the two are different, and that difference will always

make trouble. Isn't it nearly tea time?"

* * * * *

Miss Beekman was just stepping off the elevator on the first floor of

the Tombs the next afternoon on one of her weekly visits when she came

face to face with Mr. Tutt.

She greeted him cordially, for she had taken rather a fancy to the

shabby old man, drawn to him, in spite of her natural aversion to all

members of the criminal bar, by the gentle refinement of his

weather-beaten face. "I hope you have had a successful day."

The lawyer shook his head in a pseudo-melancholy manner.

"Unfortunately, I have not," he answered whimsically. "My only client

refuses to speak to me! Perhaps you could get something out of him for

me."

"Oh, they all talk to me readily enough!" she replied. "I fancy they

know I'm harmless. What is his name?"

"Shane O'Connell."

"What is his offense?"

"He is charged with murder."

"Oh!"

Miss Althea recoiled. Her charitable impulses did not extend to

defendants charged with homicide. There was too much notoriety connected

with them, for one thing; there was nothing she hated so much as

notoriety.

"Seriously," he went on with earnestness, "I wish you'd have a word with

him. It's pretty hard to have to defend a man and not to know a thing

about his side of the case. It's almost your duty, don't you think?"

Miss Althea hesitated, and was lost.

"Very well," she answered reluctantly, "I'll see what I can do. Perhaps

he needs some medicine or letter paper or something. I'll get an order

from the warden and go right back and see him."

Twenty minutes later Shane O'Connell faced Miss Beekman sullenly across

the deal table of the counsel room. A ray of late sunshine fell through

the high grating of the heavily barred window upon a face quite

different from those which Miss Althea was accustomed to encounter in

these surroundings, for it showed no touch of depravity or evil habits,

and confinement had not yet deprived its cheeks of their rugged mantle

of crimson or its eyes of their bold gleam.

He was little more than a boy, this murderer, as handsome a lad as ever

swaggered out of County Kerry.

"An' what may it be that leads you to send for such as me, Miss

Beekman!" he demanded, glowering at her.

She felt suddenly unnerved, startled and rather shocked at his use of

her name. Where could he have discovered it? From the keeper, probably,

she decided. All her usual composure, her quiet self-possession, her

aloof and slightly condescending sweetness--had deserted her.

"I thought," she stammered--"I might--possibly--be of help to you."

"'Tis too late to make up for the harm ye've done!" His coal-black eyes

reached into her shrinking body as if to tear out her heart.

"I!" she gasped. "I--do harm! What do you mean?"

"Did not my sister Katie work for yez?" he asked, and his words leaped

and curled about her like hissing flames. "Did you see after her or

watch her comings and goings, as she saw after you--she a mere lass of

sixteen? Arrah! No!"

With a sensation of horror Miss Althea realized that at last she was in

a murder case in spite of herself! This lad, the brother of Katie, the

waitress whom she had discharged! How curious! And how unfortunate! His

charge was preposterous; nevertheless a faint blush stole to her cheek

and she looked away.

"How ridiculous!" she managed to say. "It was no part of my obligation

to look after her! How could I?"

His hawk's eyes watched her every tremor.

"Did ye not lock her out the night of the ball when she went wid

McGurk?"

"I--how absurd!"

Suddenly she faltered. An indistinct accusing recollection turned her

faint--of the housekeeper having told her that one of the girls insisted

on going to a dance on an evening not hers by arrangement, and how she

had given orders that the house should be closed the same as usual at

ten o'clock for the night. If the girl couldn't abide by the rules of

the Beekman ménage she could sleep somewhere else. What of it? Supposing

she had done so? She could not be held responsible for remote,

unreasonable and discreditable consequences!

And then by chance Shane O'Connell made use of a phrase that indirectly

saved his life, a phrase curiously like the one used on a former

occasion by Dawkins to Miss Althea:

"Katie was a member of your household; ye might have had a bit of

thought for her!" he asserted bitterly.

Dawkins had said: "You'd think a girl would have some consideration for

her employer, if nothing else. In a sense she is a guest in the house

and should behave herself as such."

There was no sense in it! There was no parallel, no analogy. There was

no obligation to treat the girl as a guest, even though the girl should

have acted like one. Miss Beekman knew it. And yet there was--something!

Didn't she owe some sort of duty at any rate toward those in her

employment--those who slept under her roof?

"'Twould have been better to have been kind to her then than to be kind

to me now!" said he with sad conviction.

The proud Miss Althea Beekman, the dignified descendant of a long line

of ancestors, turned red. Heretofore serenely confident of her own

personal virtue and her own artificial standards of democracy, she now

found herself humiliated and chagrined before this rough young criminal.

"You--are--quite right!" she confessed, her eyes smarting with sudden

tears. "My position is quite--quite illogical. But of course I had no

idea! Please, please let me try to help you--if I can--and Katie,

too--if it isn't too late."

Shane O'Connell experienced contrition. After all it was not seemly that

the likes of him should be dictating to the likes of her. And he could

never abide seeing a woman--particularly a pretty woman--cry.

"Forgive me, madam!" he begged, lowering his head.

"You were quite justified in all you said!" she assured him. "Please

tell me everything that has happened. I have influence with the district

attorney and--in other places. No doubt I can be of assistance to you.

Of course, you can absolutely trust me!"

Shane O'Connell, looking into her honest gray eyes, knew that he could

trust her. Slowly--brokenly--tensely, he told her how he had killed Red

McGurk, and why.

The corridors were full of shadows when Althea Beekman put her hands on

Shane O'Connell's shoulders and bade him good night. Though she

abominated his crime and loathed him for having committed it she felt in

some way partially responsible, and she also perceived that, by the code

of the O'Connells, Shane had done what he believed to be right. He had

taken the law into his own hands and he was ready to pay the necessary

penalty. He would have done the same thing all over again. To this

extent at least he had her respect.

She found Mr. Tutt waiting for her on the bench by the warden's office.

"Well?" he asked with a smile, rising to greet her and tossing away his

stogy.

"I haven't very good news for you," she answered regretfully. "He's

confessed to me--told me everything--why he shot him and where he bought

the pistol. He's a brave boy, though! It's a sad case! But what can you

do with people who believe themselves justified in doing things like

that?"

She did not notice Detective Eddie Conroy, of the D.A.'s office,

standing behind an adjacent pillar, ostentatiously lighting a cigar; nor

see him smile as he slowly walked away.

* * * * *

"Talk about luck!" exulted O'Brien, the yellow dog of the district

attorney's office, an hour later to his chief. "What do you think, boss?

Eddie Conroy heard Miss Beekman telling old man Tutt over in the Tombs

that O'Connell had confessed to her! Say, how's that? Some

evidence--what?"

"What good will that do us?" asked Peckham, glancing up with a scowl

from his desk. "She won't testify for us."

"But she'll have to testify if we call her, won't she?" demanded his

assistant.

The district attorney drummed on the polished surface before him.

"We--ell, I suppose so," he admitted hesitatingly. "But you can't just

subpoena a woman like that without any warning and put her on the stand

and make her testify. It would be too rough!"

"It's the only way to do it!" retorted O'Brien with a sly grin. "If she

knew in advance that we were thinking of calling her she'd beat it out

of town."

"That's true," agreed his chief. "That's as far as she'd go, too, in

defying the law. But I don't much like it. Those Beekmans have a lot of

influence, and if she got sore she could make us a heap of trouble!

Besides it's sort of a scaly trick making her give up on him like that."

O'Brien raised his brows.

"Scaly trick! He's a murderer, isn't he? And he'll get off if we don't

call her. It's a matter of duty, as I see it."

"All the same, my son, your suggestion has a rotten smell to it. We may

have to do it--I don't say we won't--but it's risky business!" replied

Peckham dubiously.

"It's a good deal less risky than not doing it, so far as your candidacy

next autumn is concerned!" retorted his assistant. "We won't let her

suspect what we're goin' to do; and the last minute I'll call her to the

stand and cinch the case! She won't even know who called her! Perhaps I

can arrange with Judge Babson to call her on some other point and then

pretend to sort of stumble onto the fact of the confession and examine

her himself. That would let us out. I can smear it over somehow."

"You'd better," commented Peckham, "unless you want a howl from the

papers! It would make quite a story if Miss Althea Beekman got on the

rampage. She could have your scalp, my boy, if she wanted it!"

"And McGurk could have yours!" retorted O'Brien with the impudence born

of knowledge.

The prosecution of Shane O'Connell, which otherwise might have slowly

languished and languishing died, took on new life owing to the evidence

thus innocently delivered into the hands of the district attorney; in

fact it became a _cause célèbre_. The essential elements to convict were

now all there--the _corpus delicti_, evidence of threats on the part of

the defendant, of motive, of opportunity, and--his confession. The law

which provides that the statement of an accused "is not sufficient to

warrant his conviction without additional proof that the crime charged

has been committed" would be abundantly satisfied--though without his

confession there would have been no proof whatever that the crime

charged had been committed by him.

Thus, without her knowing it, Miss Beekman was an essential witness and,

in fact, the pivot upon which the entire case turned.

The day of the great sporting event came. With it arrived in full

panoply the McGurks, their relatives and followers. All Cherry Hill

seemed to have packed itself into Part I of the Supreme Court. There was

an atmosphere somehow suggestive of the races or a prize fight. But it

was a sporting event which savored of a sure thing--really more like a

hanging. They were there to make holiday over the law's revenge for the

killing of the darling of the Pearl Button Kids. Peckham personally

assured McGurk that everything was copper-fastened.

"He's halfway up the river already!" he said jocularly.

And McGurk, swelling with importance and emotion, pulled a couple of

cigars from his pocket and the two smoked the pipe of peace.

But the reader is not particularly concerned with the progress of the

trial, for he has already attended many. It is enough to say that a jury

with undershot jaws, who had proved by previous experience their

indifference to capital punishment and to all human sympathy, were

finally selected and that the witnesses were duly called, and testified

to the usual facts, while the Pearl Button Kids and the rest, spitting

surreptitiously beneath the benches, eagerly drank in every word. There

was nothing for Mr. Tutt to do; nothing for him to deny. The case built

itself up, brick by brick. And Shane O'Connell sat there unemotionally,

hardly listening. There was nothing in the evidence to reflect in any

way upon the honor of the O'Connells in general or in particular. He had

done that which that honor demanded and he was ready to pay the

penalty--if the law could get him. He assumed that it would get him. So

did the Tutts.

But when toward the end of the third day nothing had yet been brought

forward to connect him with the crime Tutt leaned over and whispered to

Mr. Tutt, "D'ye know, I'm beginning to have a hunch there isn't any

case!"

Mr. Tutt made an imperceptible gesture of assent.

"Looks that way," he answered out of the corner of his mouth. "Probably

they'll spring the connecting evidence at the end and give us the _coup

de grâce_."

At that moment a police witness was released from the stand and O'Brien

stepped to the bench and whispered something to the judge, who glanced

at the clock and nodded. It was twenty minutes of four, and the jury

were already getting restless, for the trial had developed into a

humdrum, cut-and-dried affair.

Miss Beekman sitting far back in the rear of the court room suddenly

heard O'Brien call her name, and a quiver of apprehension passed through

her body. She had never testified in any legal proceeding, and the idea

of getting up before such a crowd of people and answering questions

filled her with dismay. It was so public! Still, if it was going to help

O'Connell--

"Althea Beekman," bellowed Cap. Phelan, "to the witness chair!"

Althea Beekman! The gentle lady felt as if she had been rudely stripped

of all her protective clothing. Althea! Did not the law do her the

courtesy of calling her even "Miss"? Nerving herself to the performance

of her duty she falteringly made her way between the crowded benches,

past the reporters' table, and round back of the jury box. The judge,

apparently a pleasant-faced, rather elderly man, bowed gravely to her,

indicated where she should sit and administered the oath to her himself,

subtly dwelling upon the phrase "the whole truth," and raising his eyes

heavenward as he solemnly pronounced the words "so help you God!"

"I do!" declared Miss Beekman primly but decidedly.

Behind her upon the court-room wall towered in its flowing draperies the

majestic figure of the Goddess of the Law, blindfolded and holding aloft

the scales of justice. Beside her sat in the silken robes of his sacred

office a judge who cleverly administered that law to advance his own

interests and those of his political associates. In front of her,

treacherously smiling, stood the cynical, bullet-headed O'Brien. At a

great distance Mr. Tutt leaned on his elbows at a table beside Shane

O'Connell. To them she directed her gaze and faintly smiled.

"Miss Beekman," began O'Brien as courteously as he knew how, "you

reside, do you not, at Number 1000 Fifth Avenue, in this city and

county?"

"I do," she answered with resolution.

"Your family have always lived in New York, have they not?"

"Since 1630," she replied deprecatingly and with more confidence.

"You are prominent in various philanthropic, religious and civic

activities?"

"Not prominent; interested," she corrected him.

"And you make a practise of visiting prisoners in the Tombs?"

She hesitated. What could this be leading to?

"Occasionally," she admitted.

"Do you know this defendant, Shane O'Connell?"

"Yes."

"Did you see him on the twenty-third day of last month?"

"I think so--if that was the day."

"What day do you refer to?"

"The day I had the talk with him."

"Oh, you had a talk with him?"

"Yes."

"Where did you have that talk with him?"

"In the counsel room of the Tombs."

O'Brien paused. Even his miserable soul revolted at what he was about to

do.

"What did he say?" he asked, nervously looking away.

Something in his hangdog look warned Miss Beekman that she was being

betrayed, but before she could answer Mr. Tutt was on his feet.

"One moment!" he cried. "May I ask a preliminary question?"

The court signified acquiescence.

"Was that conversation which you had with the defendant a confidential

one?"

"I object to the question!" snapped O'Brien. "The law recognizes no

confidential communications as privileged except those made to a priest,

a physician or an attorney. The witness is none of these. The question

is immaterial and irrelevant."

"That is the law," announced the judge, "but under all the circumstances

I will permit the witness to answer."

Miss Beekman paused.

"Why," she began, "of course it was confidential, Mr. Tutt. O'Connell

wouldn't have told me anything if he had supposed for one moment I was

going to repeat what he said. Besides, I suggested that I might be able

to help him. Yes, certainly our talk was confidential."

"I am sorry," gloated O'Brien, "but I shall have to ask you what it

was."

"That is not a question," said Mr. Tutt calmly.

"What did the defendant say to you in the counsel room of the Tombs on

the twenty-third of last month?" cautiously revised O'Brien.

"I object!" thundered Mr. Tutt, his form towering until seemingly it

matched that of the blind goddess in height. "I object to the answer as

requiring a breach of confidence which the law could not tolerate."

Judge Babson turned politely to Miss Beekman.

"I regret very much that I shall be obliged to ask you to state what

the defendant said to you. You will recall that you yourself volunteered

the information that you had had the talk in question. Otherwise"--he

coughed and put up his hand--"we might possibly never have learned of

it. A defendant cannot deprive the people of the right to prove what he

may have divulged respecting his offense merely by claiming that it was

in confidence. Public policy could never allow that. It may be

unpleasant for you to answer the question but I must ask you to do so."

"But," she protested, "you certainly cannot expect me to betray a

confidence! I asked O'Connell to tell me what he had done so that I

could help him--and he trusted me!"

"But you are not responsible for the law! He took his chance!"

admonished the judge.

Slowly Miss Althea's indignation rose as she perceived the dastardly

trick which O'Brien had played upon her. Already she suspected that the

judge was only masquerading in the clothing of a gentleman. With a white

face she turned to Mr. Tutt.

"Does the law require me to answer, Mr. Tutt?" she inquired.

"Do not ask questions--answer them," ordered Babson brusquely, feeling

the change in her manner. "You are a witness for the people--not the

defendant."

"I am not a witness against O'Connell!" she declared. "This

man"--indicating O'Brien scornfully--"has in some way found out that

I--Oh, surely the law doesn't demand anything so base as that!"

There was silence. The wheels of justice hung on a dead center.

"Answer the question," remarked His Honor tartly.

All Miss Beekman's long line of ancestors turned in their graves. In her

Beekman blood the chief justice, the ambassador, the great editor, the

signer of the Declaration of Independence, stirred, awoke, rubbed their

eyes and sternly reared themselves. And that blood--blue though it was

instead of scarlet like the O'Connells'--boiled in her veins and burned

through the delicate tissue of her cheeks.

"My conscience will not permit me to betray a confidence!" she cried

angrily.

"I direct you to answer!" ordered the judge.

"I object to the court's threatening the witness!" interjected Mr. Tutt.

"I wish it to appear upon the record that the manner of the court is

most unjudicial and damaging to the defendant."

"Take your seat, sir!" barked Babson, his features swelling with anger.

"Your language is contemptuous!"

The jury were leaning forward intently. Trained militiamen of the

gibbet, they nevertheless admired this little woman's fearlessness and

the old lawyer's pugnacity. On the rear wall the yellow face of the old

self-regulating clock, that had gayly ticked so many men into the

electric chair, leered shamelessly across at the blind goddess.

"Answer the question, madam! If, as you claim, you are a patriotic

citizen of this commonwealth, having due respect for its institutions

and for the statutes, you will not set up your own ideas of what the law

ought to be in defiance of the law as it stands. I order you to answer!

If you do not I shall be obliged to take steps to compel you to do so."

In the dead silence that followed, the stones in the edifice of Miss

Beekman's inherited complacency, with each beat of the clock, fell one

by one to the ground until it was entirely demolished. Vainly she

struggled to test her conscience by her loyalty to her country's laws.

But the task was beyond her.

Tightly compressing her lips she sat silent in the chair, while the

delighted reporters scribbled furious messages to their city editors

that Miss Althea Beekman, one of the Four Hundred, was defying Judge

Babson, and to rush up a camera man right off in a taxi, and to look her

up in the morgue for a front-page story. O'Brien glanced uneasily at

Babson. Possible defiance on the part of this usually unassuming lady

had not entered into his calculations. The judge took a new tack.

"You probably do not fully understand the situation in which you are

placed," he explained. "You are not responsible for the law. Neither are

you responsible in any way for the consequences to this defendant,

whatever they may be. The matter is entirely out of your hands. You are

compelled to do as the court orders. As a law-abiding citizen you have

no choice in the matter."

Miss Althea's modest intellect reeled, but she stood her ground, the

ghost of the Signer at her elbow.

"I am sorry," she replied, "but my own self-respect will not allow me to

answer."

"In that case," declared Babson, playing his trump card, "it will be my

unpleasant duty to commit you for contempt."

There was a bustle of excitement about the reporters' table. Here was a

story!

"Very well," answered Miss Beekman proudly. "Do as you see fit, and as

your own duty and conscience demand."

The judge could not conceal his annoyance. The last thing in the world

that he wished to do was to send Miss Althea to jail. But having

threatened her he must carry out his threat or forever lose face.

"I will give the witness until tomorrow morning at half after ten

o'clock to make up her mind what she will do," he announced after a

hurried conference with O'Brien. "Adjourn court!"

Miss Beekman did not go to bed at all that night. Until a late hour she

conferred in the secrecy of her Fifth Avenue library with her

gray-haired solicitor, who, in some mysterious way, merely over the

telephone, managed to induce the newspapers to omit any reference to his

client's contemptuous conduct in their morning editions.

"There's no way out of it, my dear," he said finally as he took his

leave--he was her father's cousin and very fond of her--"this judge has

the power to send you to jail if he wants to--and dares to! It's an even

chance whether he will dare to or not. It depends on whether he prefers

to stand well with the McGurks or with the general public. Of course I

respect your attitude, but really I think you are a little quixotic.

Points of honor are too ephemeral to be debated in courts of justice. To

do so would be to open the door to all kinds of abuses. Dishonest

witnesses would constantly avail themselves of the opportunity to avoid

giving evidence."

"Dishonest witnesses would probably lie in the first place!" she

quavered.

"True! I quite overlooked that!" he smiled, gazing down at her in an

avuncular manner. "But to-day the question isn't open. It is settled,

whether we like it or not. No pledge of privacy, no oath of secrecy--can

avail against demand in a court of justice. Even confessions obtained by

fraud are admissible--though we might wish otherwise."

Miss Beekman shrugged her shoulders.

"Nothing you have said seems to me to alter the situation."

"Very well," he replied. "I guess that settles it. Knowing you and the

Beekman breed! There's one thing I must say," he added as he stood in

the doorway after bidding her good night--"that old fellow Tutt has

behaved pretty well, leaving you entirely alone this way. I always had

an idea he was a sort of shyster. Most attorneys of that class would

have been sitting on your doorstep all the evening trying to persuade

you to stick to your resolution not to give their client away, and to do

the square thing. But he's done nothing of the sort. Rather decent on

the whole!"

"Perhaps he recognizes a woman of honor when he sees one!" she retorted.

"Honor!" he muttered as he closed the door. "What crimes are sometimes

committed in thy name!"

But on the steps he stopped and looked back affectionately at the

library window.

"After all, Althea's a good sport!" he remarked to himself.

* * * * *

At or about the same moment a quite dissimilar conference was being held

between Judge Babson and Assistant District Attorney O'Brien in the

café of the Passamaquoddy Club.

"She'll cave!" declared O'Brien, draining his glass. "Holy Mike! No

woman like her is going to stay in jail! Besides, if you don't commit

her everybody will say that you were scared to--yielded to influence.

You're in the right and it will be a big card for you to show that you

aren't afraid of anybody!"

Babson pulled nervously on his cigar.

"Maybe that's so," he said, "but I don't much fancy an appellate court

sustaining me on the law and at the same time roasting hell out of me as

a man!"

"Oh, they won't do that!" protested O'Brien. "How could they? All

they're interested in is the law!"

"I've known those fellows to do queer things sometimes," answered the

learned judge. "And the Beekmans are pretty powerful people."

"Well, so are the McGurks!" warned O'Brien.

* * * * *

"Now, Miss Beekman," said Judge Babson most genially the next morning,

after that lady had taken her seat in the witness chair and the jury had

answered to their names, "I hope you feel differently to-day about

giving your testimony. Don't you think that after all it would be more

fitting if you answered the question?"

Miss Althea firmly compressed her lips.

"At least let me read you some of the law on the subject," continued His

Honor patiently. "Originally many people, like yourself, had the

mistaken idea that what they called their honor should be allowed to

intervene between them and their duty. And even the courts sometimes so

held. But that was long ago--in the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries. To-day the law wisely recognizes no such thing. Let me read

you what Baron Hotham said, in Hill's Trial in 1777, respecting the

testimony of a witness who very properly told the court what the accused

had said to him. It is very clearly put:

"'The defendant certainly thought him his friend, and he'--the

defendant--'therefore did disclose all this to him. Gentlemen, one has

only to say further that if this point of honor was to be so sacred as

that a man who comes by knowledge of this sort from an offender was not

to be at liberty to disclose it the most atrocious criminals would every

day escape punishment; and therefore it is that the wisdom of the law

knows nothing of that point of honor.'"

Miss Beekman listened politely.

"I am sorry," she replied with dignity. "I shall not change my mind. I

refuse to answer the question, and--and you can do whatever you like

with me."

"Do you understand that you are in contempt of this court? Do you intend

to show contempt for this court?" he demanded wrathfully.

"I do," answered Miss Althea. "I have contempt for this court."

A titter danced along the benches and some fool in the back of the room

clapped his hands.

Judge Babson's face grew hard and his eyes narrowed to steel points.

"The witness stands committed for contempt," he announced bitingly. "I

direct that she be confined in the city prison for thirty days and pay a

fine of two hundred and fifty dollars. Madam, you will go with the

officer."

Miss Althea rose while the ghost of the Signer encircled her with his

arm.

Mr. Tutt was already upon his feet. He knew that the ghost of the Signer

was there.

"May I ask the court if the witness, having been committed for the

contemptuous conduct of which she is obviously guilty, may remain in

your chambers until adjournment, in order that she may arrange her

private affairs?"

"I will grant her that privilege," agreed Judge Babson with internal

relief. "The request is quite reasonable. Captain Phelan, you may take

the witness into my robing room and keep her there for the present."

With her small head erect, her narrow shoulders thrown back, and with a

resolute step as befitted the descendant of a long line of ancestors

Miss Althea passed behind the jury box and disappeared.

The twelve looked at one another dubiously. Both Babson and O'Brien

seemed nervous and undecided.

"Well, call your next witness," remarked the judge finally.

"But I haven't any more witnesses!" growled O'Brien. "And you know it

almighty well, you idiot!" he muttered under his breath.

"If that is the people's case I move for the defendant's immediate

discharge," cried Mr. Tutt, jumping to his feet. "There is no evidence

connecting him with the crime."

McGurk, furious, sprang toward the bar.

"See here! Wait a minute! Hold on, judge! I can get a hundred

witnesses--"

"Sit down!" shouted one of the officers, thrusting him back. "Keep

quiet!"

Babson looked at O'Brien and elevated his forehead. Then as O'Brien

gave a shrug the judge turned to the expectant jury and said in

apologetic tones:

"Gentlemen of the jury, where the people have failed to prove the

defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt it is the duty of the court

to direct a verdict. In this case, though by inference the testimony

points strongly toward the prisoner, there is no direct proof against

him and I am accordingly constrained--much as I regret it--to instruct

you to return a verdict of not guilty."

In the confusion which followed the rendition of the verdict a messenger

entered breathlessly and forcing his way through the crowd delivered a

folded paper to Mr. Tutt, who immediately rose and handed it to the

clerk; and that official, having hurriedly perused it and pursed his

lips in surprise, passed it over the top of the bench to the judge.

"What's this?" demanded Babson. "Don't bother me now with trifles!"

"But it's a writ of habeas corpus, Your Honor, signed by Judge Winthrop,

requiring the warden to produce Miss Beekman in Part I of the Supreme

Court, and returnable forthwith," whispered Mr. McGuire in an

awe-stricken voice. "I can't disregard that, you know!"

"What!" cried Babson. "How on earth could he have issued a writ in this

space of time? The thing's impossible!"

"If Your Honor please," urbanely explained Mr. Tutt, "as--having known

Miss Beekman's father--I anticipated that the witness would pursue the

course of conduct which, in fact, she has, I prepared the necessary

papers early this morning and as soon as you ordered her into custody my

partner, who was waiting in Judge Winthrop's chambers, presented them to

His Honor, secured his signature and brought the writ here in a

taxicab."

Nobody seemed to be any longer interested in O'Connell. The reporters

had left their places and pushed their way into the inclosure before the

dais. In the rear of the room O'Brien was vainly engaged in trying to

placate the Pearl Button Kids, who were loudly swearing vengeance upon

both him and Peckham. It was a scene as nearly turbulent as the old

yellow clock had ever witnessed. Even the court officers abandoned any

effort to maintain order and joined the excited group about Mr. Tutt

before the bench.

"Does Your Honor desire that this matter be argued before the Supreme

Court?" inquired Mr. Tutt suavely. "If so I will ask that the prisoner

be paroled in my custody. Judge Winthrop is waiting."

Babson had turned pale. Facing a dozen newspapermen, pencils in hand, he

quailed. To hell with "face." Why, if he went on any longer with the

farce the papers would roast the life out of him. With an apology for a

smile that was, in fact, a ghastly grin, he addressed himself to the

waiting group of jurymen, lawyers and reporters.

"Of course, gentlemen," he said, "I never had any real intention of

dealing harshly with Miss Beekman. Undoubtedly she acted quite honestly

and according to her best lights. She is a very estimable member of

society. It will be unnecessary, Mr. Tutt, for you to argue the writ

before Judge Winthrop. The relator, Althea Beekman, is discharged."

"Thank you, Your Honor!" returned Mr. Tutt, bowing profoundly, and

lowering an eyelid in the direction of the gentlemen of the press. "You

are indeed a wise and upright judge!"

The wise and upright judge rose grandly and gathered his robes about the

judicial legs.

"Good morning, gentlemen," he remarked from his altitude to the

reporters.

"Good morning, judge," they replied in chorus. "May we say anything

about the writ?"

Judge Babson paused momentarily in his flight.

"Oh! Perhaps you might as well let the whole thing go," he answered

carelessly. "On the whole I think it better that you should."

As they fought their way out of the doorway Charley Still, of the _Sun_,

grinned at "Deacon" Terry, of the _Tribune_, and jocosely inquired:

"Say, Deac., did you ever think why one calls a judge 'Your Honor'?"

The Deacon momentarily removed his elbow from the abdomen of the

gentleman beside him and replied sincerely though breathlessly, "No! You

can search me!"

And "Cap." Phelan, who happened to be setting his watch at just that

instant, affirms that he will make affidavit that the old yellow clock

winked across the room at the Goddess of Justice, and that beneath her

bandages she unmistakably smiled.

By Advice of Counsel

"Kotow! Kotow! To the great Yen-How,

And wish him the longest of lives!

With his one-little, two-little, three-little, four-little,

Five-little, six-little wives!"

"The fact is I've been arrested for bigamy," said Mr. Higgleby in a

pained and slightly resentful manner. He was an ample flabby person,

built like an isosceles triangle with a smallish head for the apex,

slightly expanded in the gangliar region just above the nape of the

neck--medical students and phrenologists please note--and habitually

wearing an expression of helpless pathos. Instinctively you felt that

you wanted to do something for Mr. Higgleby--to mother him, maybe.

"Then you should see my partner, Mr. Tutt," said Mr. Tutt severely.

"He's the matrimonial specialist."

"I want to see Mr. Tutt, the celebrated divorce lawyer," explained Mr.

Higgleby.

"You mean my partner, Mr. Tutt," said Mr. Tutt. "Willie, show the

gentleman in to Mr. Tutt."

"Thank you, sir," said Mr. Higgleby, and followed Willie.

"Is this Mr. Higgleby?" chirped Tutt as Higgleby entered the adjoining

office. "Delighted to see you, sir! What can we--I--do for you?"

"The fact is, I've been arrested for bigamy," repeated Mr. Higgleby.

Now the Tutt system--demonstrated effective by years of experience--for

putting a client in a properly grateful and hence liberal frame of mind

was, like the method of some physicians, first to scare said client, or

patient, out of his seven senses; second, to admit reluctantly, upon

reflection, that in view of the fact that he had wisely come to Tutt &

Tutt there might still be some hope for him; and third, to exculpate him

with such a flourish of congratulation upon his escape that he was glad

to pay the modest little fee of which he was then and there relieved.

Tutt & Tutt had only two classes of clients: those who paid as they came

in, and those who paid as they went out.

Therefore upon hearing Mr. Higgleby's announcement as to the nature of

his trouble Tutt registered horror.

"What? What did you say?" he demanded.

"I said," repeated Mr. Higgleby with a shade of annoyance, "'the fact

is, I've been arrested for bigamy.' I don't see any reason for making

such a touse about it," he added plaintively.

"Who's making a--a--a touse about it?" inquired Tutt, perceiving that he

had taken the wrong tack. "I'm not. I was just a little surprised at a

man of your genteel appearance--"

"Oh, rot!" expostulated Mr. Higgleby weakly. "You're just like all of

'em! I suppose you were going to say I didn't look like a bigamist--and

all that. Well, cut it! Let's start fair. I _am_ a bigamist!"

Tutt regarded him with obvious curiosity. "You don't say!" he

ejaculated, much as if he wished to add: "How does it feel?"

"I do say!" retorted Mr. Higgleby.

"Well," exclaimed Tutt cheerily, passing into the second phase of the

Tutt-Tutt treatment, "after all, bigamy isn't so bad! It's only five

years at the worst. Generally it's not more than six months."

"Get wise!" snapped Mr. Higgleby. "I didn't come here to have you throw

cold chills into me. I came here to find out how to beat it!"

"Why, certainly! Of course!" protested Tutt hastily.

"I was--"

"And I expect you to get me off!"

"Yes, yes!" murmured Tutt, his usual style completely cramped.

"No matter what!"

"Yes," faintly tuttered Tutt.

"Well," continued Higgleby, taking out a cigar that in shape and

looseness of wrapping closely resembled its owner, "now that's settled,

let's get down to brass tacks. Here's a copy of the indictment."

He produced a document bearing a large gold seal.

"Those robbers made me pay a dollar-sixty for certification!" he

remarked peevishly, indicating the ornament. "What good is certification

to me? As if I wanted to pay to make sure I was accused in exact

language! Anybody can draw an indictment for bigamy!"

COURT OF GENERAL SESSIONS OF THE PEACE IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF NEW

YORK

The People of the State of New York against

THEOPHILUS HIGGLEBY

The Grand Jury of the County of New York, by this indictment,

accuse Theophilus Higgleby of the crime of bigamy, committed as

follows:

The said Theophilus Higgleby, late of the borough of Manhattan of

the city of New York in the county of New York, aforesaid, on the

eleventh day of May in the year of our Lord one thousand nine

hundred and nineteen, at Cook County and the city of Chicago in the

state of Illinois, did marry one Tomascene Startup, and her, the

said Tomascene Startup, did then and there have for his wife;

And afterward, to wit, on the seventeenth day of December in the

year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and nineteen, at the

borough of Manhattan of the city of New York in the county of New

York aforesaid, did feloniously marry and take as his wife one

Alvina Woodcock, and to the said Alvina Woodcock was then and there

married, the said Tomascene Startup being then and there living and

in full life, against the form of the statute in such case made and

provided, and against the peace of the people of the state of New

York and their dignity.

JEREMIAH PECKHAM,

District Attorney.

Such was the precise accusation against the isosceles-triangular client,

who now sat so limply and disjointedly on the opposite side of Tutt's

desk with a certain peculiar air of assurance all his own, as if, though

surprised and somewhat annoyed at the grand jury's interference with his

private affairs, he was nevertheless--being captain of his own soul--not

particularly disturbed about the matter.

"And--er--did you marry these two ladies?" inquired Tutt

apologetically.

"Sure!" responded Higgleby without hesitation.

"May I ask why?"

"Why not?" returned Higgleby. "I'm a traveling man."

"Look here," suddenly demanded Tutt. "Were you ever a lawyer?"

"Sure I was!" responded Mr. Higgleby. "I was a member of the bar of

Osceola County, Florida."

"You don't say!" gasped Tutt.

"And what, may I ask, are you now?"

"Now I'm a bigamist!" answered Mr. Higgleby.

We forget precisely who it was that so observantly said to another,

"Much learning doth make thee mad." At any rate the point to be noted is

that overindulgence in erudition has always been known to have an

unfortunate effect upon the intellectual faculty. Too much wine--though

it must have required an inordinate quantity in certain mendacious

periods--was regarded as provocative of truth; and too many books as

clearly put bats in a man's belfry. The explanation is of course simple

enough. If one overweights the head the whole structure is apt to become

unbalanced. This is the reason why we hold scholars in such light

esteem. They are an unbalanced lot. And after all, why should they get

paid more than half the wage of plumbers or locomotive firemen? What is

easier than sitting before a comfortable steam radiator and reading an

etymological dictionary or the Laws of Hammurabi? They toil not even if

their heads spin. Only in Germany has the pedagogue ever received full

meed of gold and of honor--and look at Germany!

Pedants have never been much considered by men of action. They never

will be. Experience is the only teacher, which, in the language of Amos

Eno, who left two millions to the Institute of Mechanics and Tradesmen,

is "worth a damn." We Americans abhor any affectation of learning; hence

our weakness for slang. I should apologize for the word "weakness." On

the contrary it is a token of our virile independence, our scorn for the

delicatessen of education, mere dilettanteism. And this has its

practical side, for if we don't know how to pronounce the words

"evanescent persiflage" we can call it "bunk" or "rot." We suspect all

college graduates. We don't want them in our business. They slink

through our lives like pickpockets fearful of detection.

What has all this to do with anything? It has to do, dear reader, with

Mr. Caput Magnus, the assistant of the district attorney of the county

of New York, whose duty it was to present the evidence in all criminal

cases to the grand jury and make ready the instruments of torture known

as bills of indictment for that august body's action thereon.

For by all the lights of the Five Points, Chinatown--Mulberry, Canal,

Franklin, Lafayette and Centre streets--Pontin's Restaurant, Moe Levy's

One Price Tailoring Establishment, and even by those of the glorious

days of Howe & Hummel, by the Nine Gods of Law--and more--Caput Magnus

was a learned savant. He and he alone of all the members of the bar on

the pay roll of the prosecutor's office, housed in their smoke-hung

cubicles in the Criminal Courts Building, knew how to draw up those

complicated and awful things with their barbed-wire entanglements of

"saids," "then and there beings," "with intents," "dids," "to wits," and

"aforesaids" in all the verbal chaos with which the law requires those

accused of crime to be "simply, clearly and directly" informed of the

nature of the offense charged against them, in order that they may know

what to do about it and prepare their defense.

And while we are on it--and in order that the reader may be fully

instructed and qualified to pursue Tutt & Tutt through their various

adventures hereafter--we may as well add that herein lies one of the

pitfalls of crime; for the simple-minded burglar or embezzler may

blithely make way with a silver service or bundle of bank notes only to

find himself floundering, horse, foot and dragoons, in a quagmire of

phraseology from which he cannot escape, wriggle as he will. Many such a

one has thrown up his hands--and with them silver service, bank notes

and all--in horror at what the grand jury has alleged against him.

Indeed there is a well-authenticated tradition that a certain gentleman

of color who had inadvertently acquired some poultry belonging to

another, when brought to the bar and informed that he theretofore, to

wit, in a specified year of our Lord in the night time of the day

aforesaid, the outhouse of one Jones then and there situate,

feloniously, burglariously did break into and enter with intent to

commit a crime therein, to wit, the goods, chattels and personal

property of the said Jones then and there being found, then and there

feloniously and burglariously by force of arms and against the peace of

the people to seize, appropriate and carry away, raised his voice in

anguish and cried:

"Fo de Lawd sake, jedge, Ah didn't do none ob dem tings--all Ah done was

to take a couple ob chickens!"

Thus to annihilate a man by pad and pencil is indeed an art worthy of

admiration. The pen of an indictment clerk is oft mightier than the

sword of a Lionheart, the brain behind the subtle quill far defter than

said swordsman's skill. Moreover, the ingenuity necessary to draft one

of these documents is not confined to its mere successful composition,

for having achieved the miraculous feat of alleging in fourteen ways

without punctuation that the defendant did something, and with a final

fanfare of "saids" and "to wits" inserted his verb where no one will

ever find it, the indicter must then be able to unwind himself, rolling

in and out among the "dids" and "thens" and "theres" until he is once

more safely upon the terra firma of foolscap at the head of the first

page.

Mr. Caput Magnus could do it--with the aid of a volume of printed forms

devised in the days of Jeremy Bentham. In fact, like a camel who smells

water afar off, he could in a desert of verbal sand unerringly find an

oasis of meaning. Therefore was Caput Magnus held in high honor among

the pack of human hounds who bayed at the call of Huntsman Peckham's

horn. Others might lose the scent of what it was all about in the

tropical jungle of an indictment eleven pages long, but not he. Like the

old dog in Masefield's "Reynard the Fox," Mr. Magnus would work through

ditches full of legal slime, nose through thorn thickets of confusion,

dash through copses and spinneys of words and phrases, until he snapped

close at the heels of intelligibility. The Honorable Peckham couldn't

have drawn an indictment to save his legal life. Neither could any of

the rest. Neither could Caput without his book of ancient forms--though

he didn't let anybody know it.

Shrouded in mystery on a salary of five thousand dollars a year, Caput

sat in the shrine of his inner office producing literature of a clarity

equaled only by that of George Meredith or Mr. Henry James. He was the

Great Accuser. He could call a man a thief in more different ways than

any deputy assistant district attorney known to memory--with the aid of

his little book. He could lasso and throw any galloping criminal,

however fierce, with a gracefully uncoiling rope of deadly adjectives.

On all of which he properly prided himself until he became unendurable

to his fellows and insufferable to Peckham, who would have cheerfully

fired him months gone by had he had a reason or had there been any other

legal esoteric to take his place.

Yet pride goeth before a fall. And I am glad of it, for Magnus was a

conceited little ass. This yarn is about the fall of Caput Magnus almost

as much as it is about the uxorious Higgleby, though the two are

inextricably entwined together.

* * * * *

"Mr. Tutt," remarked Tutt after Higgleby's departure, "that new client

of ours is certainly _sui generis_."

"That's no crime," smiled the senior partner, reaching for the

malt-extract bottle.

"His knowledge of matrimony and the laws governing the domestic

relations is certainly exhaustive--not to say exhausting. I look like a

piker beside him."

"For which," replied Mr. Tutt, "you may well be thankful."

"I am," replied Tutt devoutly. "But you could put what I know about

bigamy in that malt-extract bottle."

"I prefer the present contents!" retorted Mr. Tutt. "Bigamy is a

fascinating crime, involving as it does such complicated subjects as the

history of the institution of marriage, the ecclesiastical or canonical

law governing divorce and annulment, the interesting doctrines of

affinity and consanguinity, suits for alienation of affection and

criminal conversation, the conflict of laws, the White Slave Act--"

"Interstate commerce, so to speak?" suggested Tutt mischievously.

"Condonation, collusion and connivance," continued Mr. Tutt, brushing

him aside, "reinstitution of conjugal rights, the law of feme sole, The

Married Woman's Act, separation _a mensa et thoro_, abandonment,

jurisdiction, alimony, custody of children, precontract--"

"Help! You're breaking my heart!" cried Tutt. "No little lawyer could

know all about such things. It would take a big lawyer."

"Not at all! Not at all!" soothed Mr. Tutt, sipping his eleven-o'clock

nourishment and fingering for a stogy. "When it comes to divorce one

lawyer knows as much about the law as another. Not even the Supreme

Court is able to tell whether a man and woman are really married or not

without calling in outside assistance."

"Well, who can?" asked Tutt anxiously.

"Nobody," replied his partner with gravity, biting off the end of a

last year's stogy salvaged from the bottom of the letter basket. "Once a

man's married his troubles not only begin but never end."

"By the way," said Tutt, "speaking of this sort of thing, I see that

that Frenchman whom we referred to our Paris correspondent has just been

granted a divorce from his American wife."

"You mean the French diplomat who married the Yankee vaudeville artist

in China?"

"Yes," answered Tutt. "You recall they met in Shanghai and took a flying

trip to Mongolia, where they were married by a Belgian missionary. The

court held that the marriage was invalid, as the French statutes require

a native of that country marrying abroad to have the ceremony performed

either before a French diplomatic official or 'according to the usages

of the country in which the marriage is performed.'"

"Wasn't the Belgian missionary a diplomatic official?" asked Mr. Tutt.

"Evidently not sufficiently so," replied his partner. "Anyhow, in

Mongolia there are only two methods sanctified by tradition by which a

man may secure a wife--capture or purchase."

"Well, didn't our client capture the actress?"

"Only with her consent--which I assume would be collusion under the

French law," said Tutt. "And he certainly didn't buy her--though he

might have. It appears that in that happy land a wife costs from five

camels up; five camels for a flapper and so on up to thirty or forty

camels for an old widow, who invariably brings the highest quotation."

"In Mongolia age evidently ripens and mellows women as it does wine in

other countries," reflected Mr. Tutt.

"But you can buy some women for five pounds of rice," added Tutt. "Queer

country, isn't it?"

"Not at all!" declared his senior. "Even in America every man pays and

pays and pays for his wife--through the nose!"

Tutt grinned appreciatively.

"However that may be," he ventured, "a man who enters into a marriage

contract--"

"Marriage isn't a contract," interrupted Mr. Tutt.

"What is it?"

"It's a status--something entirely different--like slavery."

"It's like slavery all right!" agreed Tutt. "But we always speak of a

contract of marriage, don't we?"

"Quite inaccurately. The only contract in a marriage is what we commonly

refer to as the engagement; that is a real contract and is governed by

the laws of contracts. The marriage itself is an entirely different

thing. When a marriage is performed and consummated the parties have

changed their condition; they bear an entirely new relationship to

society, which, as represented by the state, acquires an interest in the

transaction, and all you can say about it is that whereas they were both

single before, they are married now, and that in the eyes of the law

their status has been altered to one as distinct and clearly defined as

that which exists between father and son, guardian and ward or master

and slave."

"Hear! Hear!" remarked Tutt. "But I don't see why it isn't a

contract--or very much like one," he persisted.

"It is like one in that its validity, like that of civil contracts

generally, is determined by the law governing the place where it was

entered into," went on Mr. Tutt oracularly, as if addressing the court

of appeals. "But it differs from a contract for the reason that the

parties are not free to fix its terms, which are determined for them by

the state; that they cannot modify or rescind it by mutual consent; that

the nature of the marriage status changes with the state and the laws of

the state where the parties happen to be domiciled; and that damages

cannot be recovered for a breach of marital duty."

"Do you know I never thought of that before," admitted Tutt. "But it's

perfectly true."

"It is to the interest of society to have the relationship orderly and

permanent," continued his partner. "That is why the state is so alert

with regard to divorce proceedings and vigilant to prevent fraud or

collusion. You may say that the state is always a party to every

matrimonial action--even if it is not actually interpleaded--and that

such proceedings are triangular and minus many of the characteristics of

the ordinary civil suit."

"I suppose another reason for that is that originally marriage and

divorce were entirely in the hands of the church, weren't they?"

ruminated Tutt.

"Exactly. From very early days in England the church claimed

jurisdiction of all matters pertaining to marriage, on the ground that

it was a sacrament."

"Did the ecclesiastical courts take the position that all marriages were

made in heaven?"

Mr. Tutt shrugged his shoulders.

"'Once married, always married,' was their doctrine."

"Then how did people who were unhappily married get rid of one another?"

"They didn't--if the courts ruled that they had actually been

married--but that left a loophole. When was a marriage not a marriage?

Answer: When the parties were closely enough related by blood or

marriage, or either of them was mentally incapable, under age, victims

of duress, fraud, mistake, previously contracted for, or--already

married."

"Ah!" breathed Tutt, thinking of Mr. Higgleby.

"The ecclesiastical law remained without any particular variation until

after the American Revolution and the colonies separated from Great

Britain, and as there was no union of church and state on this side of

the water, and so no church to take control of the subject or

ecclesiastical courts to put its doctrines into effect, for a while

there was no divorce law at all over here, and then one by one the

states took the matter up and began to make such laws about it as each

saw fit. Hence the jolly old mess we are in now!"

"Jolly for us," commented Tutt. "It means dollars per year to us. Well,"

he remarked, stretching his legs and yawning, "divorce is sure an evil."

"That's no news," countered Mr. Tutt. "It was just as much of an evil in

the time of Moses, of Julius Caesar, and of Edward the Confessor as it

is now. There hasn't been anything approaching the flagrancy of Roman

divorce in modern history."

"Thank heaven there's still enough to pay our office rent--anyhow!" said

Tutt contentedly. "I hope they won't do anything so foolish as to pass

a national divorce law."

"They won't," Mr. Tutt assured him. "Most Congressmen are lawyers and

are not going to take the bread out of their children's mouths. Besides,

the power to regulate the domestic relations of the United States, not

being delegated under the Constitution to the Federal Government, is

expressly retained by the states themselves."

"You've given me a whole lot of ideas," admitted Tutt. "If I get you

rightly, as each state is governed by its own independent laws, the

status of married persons must be governed by the law of the state where

they are; otherwise if every couple on some theory of exterritoriality

carried the law of the state where they happened to have been joined

together round with them we would have the spectacle of every state in

the union interpreting the divorce laws of every other state--confusion

worse confounded."

"On the other hand," returned Mr. Tutt, "the law is settled that a

marriage valid when made is valid everywhere; and conversely, if invalid

where made is invalid everywhere--like our Mongolian case. If that were

not so every couple in order to continue legally married would have to

go through a new ceremony in every state through which they traveled."

"Right-o!" whistled Tutt. "A parson on every Pullman!"

"It follows," continued Mr. Tutt, lighting a fresh stogy and warming to

his subject, "that as each state has the right to regulate the status of

its own citizens it has jurisdiction to act in a divorce proceeding

provided one of the parties is actually domiciled within its borders.

Naturally this action must be determined by its own laws and not by

those of any other state. The great divergence of these laws makes

extraordinary complications."

"Hallelujah!" cried Tutt. "Now, in the words of the psalmist, you've

said a mouthful! I know a man who at one and the same time is legally

married to one woman in England, to another in Nevada, is a bigamist in

New York, and--"

"What else could he be except a widower in Pittsburgh?" pondered the

elder Tutt. "But it's quite possible. There's a case going on now where

a woman in New York City is suing her ex-husband for a divorce on the

usual statutory ground, and naming his present wife as co-respondent,

though the plaintiff herself divorced him ten years ago in Reno, and he

married again immediately after on the strength of it."

"I'm feeling stronger every minute!" exclaimed Tutt. "Surely in all this

bedlam we ought to be able to acquit our new client Mr. Higgleby of the

charge of bigamy. At least _you_ ought to be able to. I couldn't."

"What's the difficulty?" queried Mr. Tutt.

"The difficulty simply is that he married the present Mrs. Higgleby on

the seventeenth of last December here in the city of New York, when he

had a perfectly good wife, whom he had married on the eleventh of the

preceding May, living in Chicago."

"What on earth is the matter with him?" inquired Mr. Tutt.

"He simply says he's a traveling man," replied his partner, "and--he

happened to be in New York."

"Well, the next time he calls, you send him in to see me," directed Mr.

Tutt. "What was the present lady's name?"

"Woodcock," answered Tutt. "Alvina Woodcock."

"And she wanted to change to Higgleby?" muttered his partner. "I wonder

why."

"Oh, there's something sort of appealing about him," acknowledged Tutt.

"But he don't look like a bigamist," he concluded. "What does a bigamist

look like?" meditated Mr. Tutt as he lit another stogy.

* * * * *

"Good morning, Mr. Tutt," muttered the Honorable Peckham from behind the

imitation rubber plant in his office, where he was engaged in

surreptitiously consuming an apple. "Um--be with you in a minute. What's

on your mind?"

Mr. Tutt simultaneously removed his stogy with one hand and his

stovepipe with the other.

"I thought we might as well run over my list of cases," he replied. "I

can offer you a plea or two if you wish."

"Do I!" ejaculated the D.A., rolling his eyes heavenward. "Let's hear

the Roll of Honor."

Mr. Tutt placed his hat, bottom side up, on the carpet and lowered

himself into a huge leather armchair, furnished to the county by a

political friend of Mr. Peckham and billed at four hundred per cent of

the regular retail price. Then he reinserted the stogy between his lips

and produced from his inside pocket a typewritten sheet.

"There's Watkins--murdered his stepmother--indicted seven months ago.

Give you murder in the second?"

"I'll take it," assented Peckham, lighting a cigar in a businesslike

manner. "What else you got?"

"Joseph Goldstein--burglary. Will you give him grand larceny in the

second?"

The Honorable Peckham shook his head.

"Sorry I can't oblige you, old top," he said regretfully. "He's called

the King of the Fences. If I did, the papers would holler like hell.

I'll make it any degree of burglary, though."

"Very well. Burglary in the third," agreed Mr. Tutt, jotting it down.

"Then here's a whole bunch--five--indicted together for assault on a

bartender."

"What degree?"

"Second--brass knuckles."

"You can have third degree for the lot," grunted Peckham laconically.

"All right," said Mr. Tutt. "Now for the ones that are going to trial.

Here's Jennie Smith, indicted for stealing a mandarin chain valued at

sixty-five dollars up at Monahaka's. The chain's only worth about

six-fifty and I can prove it. Monahaka don't want to go to trial because

he knows I'll show him up for the Oriental flimflammer that he is. But

of course she took it. What do you say? I'll plead her to petty and you

give her a suspended sentence? That's a fair trade."

Peckham pondered.

"Sure," he said finally. "I'm agreeable. Only tell Jennie that next time

I'll have her run out of town."

Mr. Tutt nodded.

"I'll whisper it to her. Now then, here's Higgleby--"

"Higgle who?" inquired Peckham dreamily.

"Bee--by--Higgleby," explained Mr. Tutt. "For bigamy. I want you to

dismiss the indictment for me."

"What for?"

"You'll never convict him."

"Why not?"

"Just because you never will!" Mr. Tutt assured him with earnestness.

"And you might as well wipe him off the list."

"Anything the matter with the indictment?" asked the D.A. "Caput Magnus

drew it. He's a good man, you know."

Mr. Tutt drew sententiously on his stogy.

"I would like to tell you all my secrets," he replied after a pause,

"but I can't afford to. The indictment is in the usual form. But just

between you and me, you'll never convict Higgleby as long as you live."

"Didn't he marry two joint and several ladies?"

"He did."

"And one of 'em right here in New York County?"

"He did."

"Well, how in hell can I dismiss the indictment?"

"Oh, easily enough. Lack of proof as to the first marriage in Chicago,

for instance. How are you going to prove he wasn't divorced?"

"That's matter of defense," retorted Peckham.

"What's a little bigamy between friends, anyway?" ruminated the old

lawyer. "It's a kind of sumptuary offense. People will marry. And it's

good policy to have 'em. If they happen to overdo it a little--"

"Well, if I do chuck the darn thing out what will you give me in

return?" asked Peckham. "Of course, bigamy isn't my favorite crime or

anything like that. I'm no bloodhound on matrimonial offenses. How'll

you trade?"

"If you'll throw out Higgleby I'll plead Angelo Ferrero to

manslaughter," announced Mr. Tutt with a grand air of bestowing largess

upon an unworthy recipient.

"Cock-a-doodle-do!" chortled Peckham. "A lot you will! Angelo's halfway

to the chair already yet!"

"That's the best I'll do," replied Mr. Tutt, feeling for his hat.

Peckham hesitated. Mr. Tutt was a fair dealer. And he wanted to get rid

of Angelo.

"Give you murder in the second," he urged.

"Manslaughter."

"Nothing doing," answered the D.A. definitely. "Your Mr. Higglebigamy'll

have to stand trial."

"Oh, very well!" replied Mr. Tutt, unjointing himself. "We're

ready--whenever you are."

The old lawyer's lank figure had hardly disappeared out of the front

office when Peckham rang for Caput Magnus.

"Look here, Caput," he remarked suspiciously to the indictment clerk,

"is there anything wrong with that Higgledy indictment?"

"Higgleby, you mean, I guess," replied Mr. Magnus, regarding the D.A. in

a superior manner over the tops of his horn-rimmed spectacles. "Nothing

is the matter with the indictment. I have followed my customary form. It

has stood every test over and over again. Why do you ask?"

The Honorable Peckham turned away impatiently.

"Oh--nothing. Look here," he added unexpectedly, "I think I'll have you

try that indictment yourself."

"Me!" ejaculated Caput in horror. "Why, I never tried a case in my

life!"

"Well, 's time you began!" growled the D.A.

"I--I--shouldn't know what to do!" protested Mr. Magnus in agony at the

mere suggestion.

"Where the devil would we be if everybody felt like that?" demanded his

master. "You're supposed to be a lawyer, aren't you?"

"But I--I--can't! I--don't know how!"

"Hang it all," cried Peckham furiously, "you go ahead and do as I say.

You indicted Higgledy; now you can try Higgledy!"

He was utterly unreasonable, but his anger was genuine if baseless.

"Oh, very well, sir," stammered Mr. Magnus. "Of course I'll--I must--do

whatever you say."

"You better!" shouted Peckham after his retreating figure. "You little

blathering shrimp!"

Then he threw himself down in his swivel chair with a bang.

"Judas H. Priest!" he roared at the rubber plant. "I'd give a good deal

for a decent excuse to fire that blooming nincompoop!"

Meantime, as the object of his ire slunk down the corridor darkness

descended upon the soul of Caput Magnus. For Caput was what is known as

an office lawyer and had never gone into court save as an onlooker

or--as he would have phrased it--an _amicus curiae_. He was a perfect

pundit--"a hellion on law," according to the Honorable Peckham--a

strutting little cock on his own particular dunghill, but, stripped of

his goggles, books, forms and foolscap, as far as his equanimity was

concerned he might as well have been in face, figure and general

objectionability. No longer could he be heard roaring for his

stenographer. Instead, those of his colleagues who paused stealthily

outside his door on their way over to Pont's for "five-o'clock tea"

heard dulcet tones floating forth from the transom in varying

fluctuations:

"Ahem! H'm! Gentlemen of the jury--h'm! The defendant is indicted for

the outrageous crime of bigamy! No, that won't do! Gentlemen of the

jury, the defendant is indicted for the crime of bigamy! H'm! The crime

of bigamy is one of those atrocious offenses against the moral law--"

"Oh! Oh!" choked the legal assistants as they embraced themselves

wildly. "Oh! Oh! Caput's practisin'! Just listen to 'im! Ain't he the

little cuckoo! Bet he's takin' lessons in elocution! But won't old Tutt

just eat him alive!"

And in the stilly hours of the early dawn those sleeping in tenements

and extensions adjacent to the hall bedroom occupied by Caput were

roused by a trembling voice that sought vainly to imitate the

nonchalance of experience, declaiming: "Gentlemen of the jury, the

defendant is indicted for the crime of bigamy! This offense is one

repugnant to the instincts of civilization and odious to the tenets of

religion!" And thereafter they tossed until breakfast time, bigamy

becoming more and more odious to them every minute.

No form of diet, no physical exercise, no "reducicle" could have

achieved the extraordinary alteration in Mr. Magnus' appearance that was

in fact induced by his anxiety over his prospective prosecution of

Higgleby. Whereas erstwhile he had been smug and condescending,

complacent, lethargic and ponderous, he now became drawn, nervous,

apprehensive and obsequious. Moreover, he was markedly thinner. He was

obviously on a decline, caused by sheer funk. Speak sharply to him and

he would shy like a frightened pony. The Honorable Peckham was

enraptured, claiming now to have a system of getting even with people

that beat the invention of Torquemada. When it was represented to him

that Caput might die, fade away entirely, in which case the office would

be left without any indictment clerk, the Honorable Peckham profanely

declared that he didn't care a damn. Caput Magnus was going to try

Higgleby, that was all there was to it! And at last the day came.

Gathered in Judge Russell's courtroom were as many of the office

assistants as could escape from their duties, anxious to officiate at

the legal demise of Caput Magnus. Even the Honorable Peckham could not

refrain from having business there at the call of the calendar. It

resembled a regular monthly conference of the D.A.'s professional staff,

which for some reason Tutt and Mr. Tutt had also been invited to attend.

Yea, the spectators were all there in the legal colosseum waiting

eagerly to see Caput Magnus enter the arena to be gobbled up by Tutt &

Tutt. They thirsted for his blood, having been for years bored by his

brains. They would rather see Caput Magnus made mincemeat of than

ninety-nine criminals convicted, even were they guilty of bigamy.

But as yet Caput Magnus was not there. It was ten-twenty-nine. The clerk

was there; Mr. Higgleby, isosceles, flabby and acephalous as ever, was

there; Tutt and Mr. Tutt were there; and Bonnie Doon, and the

stenographer and the jury. And on the front bench the two wives of

Higgleby sat, side by side, so frigidly that had that gentleman

possessed the gift of prevision he would never have married either of

them; Mrs. Tomascene Startup Higgleby and Mrs.--or Miss--Alvina Woodcock

(Higgleby)--depending upon the action of the jury. The entire cast in

the eternal matrimonial triangular drama was there except the judge and

the prosecutor in the form of Caput Magnus.

And then, preceding the judge by half a minute only, his entrance timed

histrionically to the second, he came, like Eudoxia, like a flame out of

the east. In swept Caput Magnus with all the dignity and grace of an

Irving playing Cardinal Wolsey. Haggard, yes; pale, yes; tremulous,

perhaps; but nevertheless glorious in a new cutaway coat, patent-leather

shoes, green tie, a rosebud blushing from his lapel, his hair newly cut

and laid down in beautiful little wavelets with pomatum, his figure

erect, his chin in air, a book beneath his arm, his right hand waving in

a delicate gesture of greeting; for Caput had taken O'Leary's suggestion

seriously, and had purchased that widely known and authoritative work to

which so many eminent barristers owe their entire success--"How to Try a

Case"--and in it he had learned that in order to win the hearts of the

jury one should make oneself beautiful.

"What in hell's he done to himself?" gasped O'Leary to O'Brien.

"He'll make a wonderful corpse!" whispered the latter in response.

"Order in the court! His Honor the Judge of General Sessions!" bellowed

an officer at this moment, and the judge came in.

Everybody got up. He bowed. Everybody bowed. Everybody sat down again.

A few, deeply affected, blew their noses. Then His Honor smiled genially

and asked what business there was before the court, and the clerk told

him that they were all there to try a man named Higgleby for bigamy, and

the judge, nodding at Caput, said to go ahead and try him.

In the bottom of his peritoneum Mr. Magnus felt that he carried a cold

stone the size of a grapefruit. His hands were ice, his lips bloodless.

And there was a Niagara where his hearing should have been. But he rose,

just as the book told him to do, in all his beauty, and enunciated in

the crystal tones he had learned during the last few weeks at Madam

Winterbottom's school of acting and elocution--in syllables chiseled

from the stone of eloquence by the lapidary of culture:

"If Your Honor please, I move the cause of the People of the state of

New York against Theophilus Higgleby, indicted for bigamy."

Peckham and the rest couldn't believe their ears. It wasn't possible!

That perfect specimen of tonsorial and sartorial art, warbling like a

legal Caruso, conducting himself so naturally, easily and casually,

couldn't be old Caput Magnus! They pinched themselves.

"Say!" ejaculated Peckham. "What's happened to him? When did Sir Henry

sign up with us?"

Mr. Tutt across the inclosure in front of the jury box raised his bushy

eyebrows and looked whimsically at the D. A. over his spectacles.

"Are you ready, Mr. Tutt?" inquired the judge.

"Entirely so, Your Honor," responded the lawyer.

"Then impanel a jury."

The jury was impaneled, Mr. Caput Magnus passing through that trying

ordeal with great éclat.

"You may proceed to open your case," directed the judge.

The staff saw a very white Caput Magnus rise and bow in the direction of

the bench. Then he stepped to the jury box and cleared his throat. His

official associates held their breath expectantly. Would he--or wouldn't

he? There was a pause.

Then: "Mister Foreman and gentlemen of the jury," declaimed Caput in

flutelike tones: "The defendant is indicted for the crime of bigamy, an

offense alike repugnant to religion, civilization and to the law."

The words flowed from him like a rippling sunlit stream; encircled him

like a necklace of verbal jewels, a rosary, each word a pearl or a bead

or whatever it is. With perfect articulation, enunciation and

gesticulation Mr. Caput Magnus went on to inform his hearers that Mr.

Higgleby was a bigamist of the deepest dye, that he had feloniously,

wilfully and knowingly married two several females, and by every

standard of conduct was utterly and entirely detestable.

Mr. Higgleby, flanked by Tutt and Mr. Tutt, listened calmly. Caput

warmed to his task.

The said Higgleby, said he, had as aforesaid in the indictment committed

the act of bigamy, to wit, of marriage when he had one legal wife

already, in New York City on the seventeenth of last December, by

marrying in Grace Church Chantry the lady whom they saw sitting by the

other lady--he meant the one with the red feather in her bonnet--that is

to say, her hat, whereas the other lady, as he had said aforesaid, had

been lawfully and properly married to the defendant the preceding May,

to wit, in Chicago as aforesaid--

"Pardon me!" interrupted the foreman petulantly. "Which is the lady you

mean was married to the defendant in New York? You said she was sitting

by the other lady and that you meant the one with the red feather, but

you didn't say whether the one with the red feather was the other lady

or the one you were talking about."

Caput gagged and turned pink.

"I--I--" he stammered. "The lady in the red bonnet is--the--New York

lady."

"You mean she isn't his wife although the defendant went through the

form of marriage with her, because he was already married to another,"

suggested His Honor. "You might, I think, put things a little more

simply. However, do it your own way."

"Ye-es, Your Honor."

"Go on."

But Caput was lost--hopelessly. Every vestige of the composure so

laboriously acquired at Madam Winterbottom's salon had evaporated. He

felt as if he were swinging in midair hitched to a scudding aeroplane by

a rope about his middle. The mucous membranes of his throat were as dry

and as full of dust as the entrails of a carpet sweeper. His vision was

blurred and he had no control over his muscles. Weakly he leaned against

the table in front of the jury, the room swaying about him. The pains of

hell gat hold upon him. He was dying. Even the staff felt

compunction--all but the Honorable Peckham.

Judge Russell quickly sensed the situation. He was a kindly man, who had

pulled many an ass out of the mire of confusion. So with a glance at

Mr. Tutt he came to Caput's rescue.

"Let us see, Mr. Magnus," he remarked pleasantly; "suppose you prove the

Illinois marriage first. Is Mrs. Higgleby in court?"

Both ladies started from their seats.

"Mrs. Tomascene Higgleby," corrected His Honor. "Step this way, please,

madam!"

The former Miss Startup made her way diffidently to the witness chair

and in a faint voice answered the questions relative to her marriage of

the preceding spring as put to her by the judge. Mr. Tutt waved her

aside and Caput Magnus felt returning strength. He had expected and

prepared for a highly technical assault upon the legality of the

ceremony performed in Cook County. He had anticipated every variety and

form of question. But Mr. Tutt put none. He merely smiled benignly upon

Caput in an avuncular fashion.

"Have you no questions, Mr. Tutt?" inquired His Honor.

"None," answered the lawyer.

"Then prove the bigamous marriage," directed Judge Russell.

Then rose at the call of justice, militantly and with a curious air of

proprietorship in the overmarried defendant, the wife or maiden who in

earlier days had answered to the name of Alvina Woodcock. Though she was

the injured party and though the blame for her unfortunate state rested

entirely upon Higgleby, her resentment seemed less directed toward the

offending male than toward the Chicago lady who was his lawful wife.

There was no question as to the circumstances to which she so definitely

and aggressively testified. No one could gainsay the deplorable fact

that she had, as she supposed, been linked in lawful wedlock to Mr.

Tutt's isosceles client. But there was that in her manner which

suggested that she felt that being the last she should be first, that

finding was keeping, and that possession was nine points of matrimonial

law.

And, as before, Mr. Tutt said nothing. Neither he nor Tutt nor Bonnie

Doon nor yet Higgleby showed any the least sign of concern. Caput's

momentarily returning self-possession forsook him. What portended his

ominous silence? Had he made some horrible mistake? Had he overlooked

some important jurisdictional fact? Was he now to be hoist for some

unknown reason by his own petard? He was, poor innocent--he was!

"That is the case," he announced faintly. "The People rest."

Judge Russell looked down curiously at Mr. Tutt.

"Well," he remarked, "how about it, Mr. Tutt?"

But the old lawyer only smiled.

"Come here a minute," directed His Honor.

And when Mr. Tutt reached the bench the judge said: "Have you any

defense in this case? If not, why don't you plead guilty and let me

dispose of the matter?"

"But, Your Honor," protested Mr. Tutt, "of course I have a defense--and

a most excellent one!"

"You have?"

"Certainly."

The judged elevated his forehead.

"Very well," he remarked; "if you really have one you had better go on

with it. And," he added beneath his breath, but in a tone clearly

audible to the clerk, "the Lord have mercy on your soul!"

The assistants saw Caput subside into his chair and simultaneously Mr.

Tutt slowly raise his lank form toward the ceiling.

"Gentlemen of the jury," said he benignly: "My client, Mr. Higgleby, is

charged in this indictment with the crime of bigamy committed here in

New York, in marrying Alvina Woodcock--the strong-minded lady on the

front row of benches there--when he already had a lawful wife living in

Chicago. The indictment alleges no other offense and the district

attorney has not sought to prove any, my learned and eloquent adversary,

Mr. Magnus, having a proper regard for the constitutional rights of

every unfortunate whom he brings to the bar of justice. If therefore I

can prove to you that Mr. Higgleby was never lawfully married to

Tomascene Startup in Chicago on the eleventh of last May or at any other

time, the allegation of bigamy falls to the ground; at any rate so far

as this indictment is concerned. For unless the indictment sets forth a

valid prior marriage it is obvious that the subsequent marriage cannot

be bigamous. Am I clear? I perceive by your very intelligent facial

expressions that I am. Well, my friends, Mr. Higgleby never was lawfully

married to Tomascene Startup last May in Chicago, and you will therefore

be obliged to acquit him! Come here, Mr. Smithers."

Caput Magnus suddenly experienced the throes of dissolution. Who was

Smithers? What could old Tutt be driving at? But Smithers--evidently the

Reverend Sanctimonious Smithers--was already placidly seated in the

witness chair, his limp hands folded across his stomach and his thin

nose looking interrogatively toward Mr. Tutt.

"What is your name?" asked the lawyer dramatically.

"My name is Oswald Garrison Smithers," replied the reverend gentleman in

Canton-flannel accents, "and I reside in Pantuck, Iowa, where I am

pastor of the Reformed Lutheran Church."

"Do you know the defendant?"

"Indeed I do," sighed the Reverend Smithers. "I remember him very well.

I solemnized his marriage to a widow of my congregation on July 4, 1917;

in fact to the relict of our late senior warden, Deacon Pellatiah

Higgins. Sarah Maria Higgins was the lady's name, and she is alive and

well at the present time."

He gazed deprecatingly at the jury. If meekness had efficacy he would

have inherited the earth.

"What?" ejaculated the foreman. "You say this man is married to _three_

women?"

"Trigamy--not bigamy!" muttered the clerk, _sotto voce_.

"You have put your finger upon the precise point, Mister Foreman!"

exclaimed Mr. Tutt admiringly. "If Mr. Higgleby was already lawfully

married to a lady in Iowa when he married Miss--or Mrs.--Startup in

Chicago last May, his marriage to the latter was not a legal marriage;

it was in fact no marriage at all. You can't charge a man with bigamy

unless you recite a legal marriage followed by an illegal one.

Therefore, since the indictment fails to set forth a legal marriage

anywhere followed by a marriage, legal or otherwise, in New York County,

it recites no crime, and my client must be acquitted. Is not that the

law, Your Honor?"

Judge Russell quickly hid a smile and turned to the moribund Caput.

"Mr. Magnus, have you anything to say in reply to Mr. Tutt's argument?"

he asked. "If not--"

But no response came from Caput Magnus. He was past all hearing,

understanding or answering. He was ready to be carried out and buried.

"Well, all I have got to say is--" began the foreman disgustedly.

"You do not have to say anything!" admonished the judge severely. "I

will do whatever talking is necessary. A little more care in the

preparation of the indictment might have rendered this rather absurd

situation impossible. As it is, I must direct an acquittal. The

defendant is discharged upon this indictment. But I will hold him in

bail for the action of another grand jury."

"In which event we shall have another equally good defense, Your Honor,"

Mr. Tutt assured him.

"I don't doubt it, Mr. Tutt," returned the judge good-naturedly. "Your

client seems to have loved not wisely but too well." And they all poured

out happily into the corridor--that is, all of them except Caput and the

two ladies, who remained seated upon their bench gazing fiercely and

disdainfully at each other like two tabby cats on a fence.

"So you're not married to him, either!" sneered Miss Woodcock.

"Well, I'm as much married to him as you are!" retorted Miss Startup

with her nose in the air.

Then instinctively they both turned and with one accord looked

malevolently at Caput, who, seeing in their glance something which he

did not like, slipped stealthily from his chair and out of the room,

leaving ignominiously behind him upon the floor his precious volume

entitled "How to Try a Case"!

"That Sort of Woman"

"Judge not according to the appearance."--John VII: 24.

"Tutt," said Mr. Tutt, entering the offices of Tutt & Tutt and hanging

his antediluvian stovepipe on the hat-tree in the corner, "I see by the

morning paper that Payson Clifford has departed this life."

"You don't say!" replied the junior Tutt, glancing up from the letter he

was writing. "Which one,--Payson, Senior, or Payson, Junior?"

"Payson, Senior," answered Mr. Tutt as he snipped off the end of a stogy

with the pair of nail scissors which he always carried in his vest

pocket.

"In that case, it's too bad," remarked Tutt regretfully.

"Why 'in that case'?" queried his partner.

"Oh, the son isn't so much of a much!" replied the smaller Tutt. "I

don't say the father was so much of a much, either. Payson Clifford was

a good fellow--even if he wasn't our First Citizen--or likely to be a

candidate for that position in the Hereafter. But that boy--"

"Shh!" reproved Mr. Tutt, slowly shaking his head so that the smoke from

his rat-tailed cigar wove a gray scroll in the air before his face.

"Remember that there's one thing worse than to speak ill of the dead,

and that's to speak ill of a client!"

Mr. Payson Clifford, the client in question, was a commonplace young

man who had been carefully prepared for the changes and chances of this

mortal life first at a Fifth Avenue day school in New York City,

afterwards at a select boarding school among the rock-ribbed hills of

the Granite State, and finally at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the

cultured atmosphere of Harvard College, through whose precincts, in the

dim, almost forgotten past, we are urged to believe that the good and

the great trod musingly in their beautiful prime. He emerged with a

perhaps almost prudish distaste for the ugly, the vulgar, and the

unclean,--and with distinct delusions of grandeur. He was still in that

state not badly described by the old saw--"You can always tell a Harvard

man,--but you can't tell him much."

His mother had died when he was still a child and he preserved her

memory as the most sacred treasure of his inner shrine. He could just

recall her as a gentle and dignified presence, in contrast with whom his

burly, loud-voiced father had always seemed crass and ordinary. And

although it was that same father who had, for as long as he could

remember, supplied him with a substantial check upon the first day of

every month and thus enabled him to achieve that exalted state of

intellectual and spiritual superiority which he had in fact attained,

nevertheless, putting it frankly in the vernacular, Payson rather looked

down on the old man, who palpably suffered from lack of the advantages

which he had furnished to his son.

Payson, Sr., had never taken any particular pains to alter his son's

opinion of himself. On the whole he was more proud of him than

otherwise, recognizing that while he obviously suffered from an

overdevelopment of the ego and an excessive fastidiousness in dress, he

was, at bottom, clearly all right and a good sort. Still, he was forced

to confess that there wasn't much between them. His son expressed the

same thought by regretting that his father "did not speak his language."

So, in the winter vacation when Payson, Sr., fagged from his long day at

the office sought the "Frolics" or the "Folies," Payson, Jr., might be

seen at a concert for the harpsichord and viola, or at an evening of

Palestrina or the Earlier Gregorian Chants. Had he been less

supercilious about it this story would never have been written--and

doubtless no great loss at that. But it is the prerogative of youth to

be arrogantly merciless in its judgment of the old. Its bright lexicon

has no verdict "with mitigating circumstances." Youth is just when it is

right; it is cruel when it is wrong; and it is inexorable in any case.

If we are ever to be tried for our crimes let us have juries of white

whiskered old boys who like tobacco, crab flakes, light wines and

musical comedy.

All of which leads up to the sad admission upon our part that Payson,

Jr., was a prig. And in the very middle of his son's priggishness

Payson, Sr., up and died, and Tutt and Mr. Tutt were called upon to

administer his estate.

There may be concealed somewhere a few rare human beings who can look

back upon their treatment of their parents with honest satisfaction. I

have never met any. It is the fate of those who bring others into the

world to be chided for their manners, abused for their mistakes, and

pilloried for their faults. Twenty years difference in age turns many

an elegance into a barbarism; many a virtue into a vice-versa. I do not

perform at breakfast for the edification of my offspring upon the

mustache cup, but I chew my strawberry seeds, which they claim is worse.

My grandpapa and grandmama used to pour the coffee from their cups and

drink it from their saucers and they were--nevertheless--rated AA1 in

Boston's Back Bay Blue Book. And now my daughters, who smoke cigarettes,

object loudly to my pipe smoke! _Autre temps autres manières_. And no

man is a hero to his children. He has a hanged-sight more chance with

his valet--if in these days he can afford to keep one.

His father's death was a shock to Payson, Jr., because he had not

supposed that people in active business like that ever did die,--they

"retired" instead, and after a discreet period of semi-seclusion

gradually disintegrated by appropriate stages. But Payson, Sr., simply

died right in the middle of everything--without any chance of a

spiritual understanding--"reconciliation" would be inaccurate--with his

son. So, Payson, Jr., protestingly acquired by part cash and balance

credit a complete suit of what he scathingly described as "the barbarous

panoply of death" and, turning himself into what he similarly called a

"human catafalque," followed Payson, Sr., to the grave.

Perhaps, after all, we have been a bit hard on Payson, Jr. He was

fundamentally, as his father had perceived, good stuff, and wanted to do

the right thing. But what is the right thing? Really it isn't half as

hard to be good as to know how.

As the orphaned Payson, ensconced in lonely state in one of the funeral

hacks, was carried at a fast trot down Broadway towards the offices of

Tutt & Tutt, he consoled himself for his loss with the reflection that

this was, probably, the last time he would ever have to see any of his

relatives. Never in his short life had he been face to face with such a

gathering of unattractive human beings. He hadn't imagined that such

people existed. They oughtn't to exist. The earth should be a lovely

place, its real estate occupied only by cultured and lovely people.

These aesthetic considerations reminded him with a shock that, just as

he had been an utter stranger to them, so he had been a stranger to his

father--his poor, old, widowed father. What did he really know about

him?--not one thing! And he had never tried to find out anything about

him,--about his friends, his thoughts, his manner of life,--content

merely to cash his checks, under the unconscious assumption that the man

who drew them ought to be equally content to be the father of such a

youth as himself. But those rusty relatives! They must have been his

father's! Certainly his mother's wouldn't have been like that,--and he

felt confident he took after his mother. Still, those relatives worried

him! Up at Harvard he had stood rather grandly on his name--"Payson

Clifford, Jr.,"--with no questions asked about the "Senior" or anybody

else. He now perceived that he was to be thrown out into the world of

fact where who and what his father had been might make a lot of

difference. Rather anxiously he hoped the old gentleman would turn out

to have been all right;--and would have left enough of an estate so that

he could still go on cashing checks upon the first day of every month!

It was one of the unwritten laws of the office of Tutt & Tutt that Mr.

Tutt was never to be bothered about the details of a probate matter, and

it is more than doubtful whether, even if he had tried, he could have

correctly made out the inventory of an estate for filing in the

Surrogate's Court. For be it known that, while the senior member of the

firm was long on the philosophy of the law and the subtleties of

"restraints on alienation," "powers," "perpetuities" and the mysteries

of "the next eventual estate," he was frankly short on the patience to

add and subtract. So while Mr. Tutt drew their clients' wills, it was

Tutt who attempted to probate and execute them. Then, if by any chance,

there was any trouble or some ungrateful relative thought he hadn't got

enough, it was Mr. Tutt who reluctantly tossed away his stogy, strolled

over to court and defended the will which he had drawn,--usually with

success.

So it was the lesser Tutt who wrung the hand of Payson Clifford and gave

him the leathern armchair by the window.

"And now about the will!" chirped Tutt, as after a labored encomium upon

the virtues of Payson, Senior, deceased, he took the liberty of lighting

a cigarette before he commenced to read the instrument which lay in a

brown envelope upon the desk before him. "And now about the will! I

suppose you are already aware that your father has made you his executor

and, after a few minor legacies, the residuary legatee of his entire

estate?"

Payson shook his head mutely. He felt it more becoming to pretend to be

ignorant of these things under the circumstances.

"Yes," continued Tutt cheerfully, taking up the envelope, "Mr. Tutt

drew the will--nearly fifteen years ago--and your father never thought

necessary to change it. It's lain right there in our 'Will Box' without

being disturbed more than once,--and that was seven or eight years ago

when he came in one day and asked to be allowed to look at it,--I think

he put an envelope containing a letter in with it. I found one there the

other day."

Payson languidly took the will in his hand.

"How large an estate did he leave?" he inquired.

"As near as I can figure out about seventy thousand dollars," answered

Tutt. "But the transfer tax will not be heavy, and the legacies do not

aggregate more than ten thousand."

The instrument was a short one,--drawn with all Mr. Tutt's ability for

compression--and filling only a single sheet. Payson's father had

bequeathed seventy-six hundred dollars to his three cousins and their

children, and everything else he had left to his son. Payson rapidly

computed that after settling the bills against the estate, including

that of Tutt & Tutt, he would probably get at least sixty thousand out

of it. At the current rate he would continue to be quite

comfortable,--more so in fact than heretofore. Still, it was less than

he had expected. Perhaps his father had had expensive habits.

"Here's the letter," went on Tutt, handing it to Payson who took out his

pen-knife to open it the more neatly. "Probably a suggestion as to the

disposal of personal effects--remembrances or something of the sort.

It's often done."

The envelope was a cheap one, ornamented in the upper left hand corner

with a wood cut showing a stout goddess in a night dress, evidently

meant for Proserpina--pouring a Niagara of grain out of a cornucopia of

plenty over a farmland stacked high with apples, corn, and pumpkins, and

flooded by the beams of a rising sun with a real face. Beneath were the

words:

"If not delivered in five days return to

Clifford, Cobb & Weng,

Grain Dealers and Produce

597 Water Street,

N.Y. City,

N.Y."

Even as his eye fell upon it Payson was conscious of its coarse

vulgarity. And "Weng"! Whoever heard of such a name? He certainly had

not,--hadn't even known that his father had a partner with such an

absurd cognomen! "--& Weng!" There was something terribly plebeian about

it. As well as about the obvious desire for symmetry which had led to

the addition of that superfluous "N.Y." below the entirely adequate

"N.Y. City." But, of course, he'd be glad to do anything his father

requested in a letter.

He forced the edge of the blade through the tough fiber of the envelope,

drew forth the enclosed sheet and unfolded it. In the middle of the top

was a replica of the wood cut upon the outside, only minus the "If not

delivered in five days return to." Then Payson read in his father's

customary bold scrawl the simple inscription, doomed to haunt him

sleeping and waking for many moons:--

"In case of my sudden death I wish my executor to give twenty-five

thousand dollars to my very dear friend Sadie Burch, of Hoboken,

N.J.

"PAYSON CLIFFORD."

For a brief--very brief--moment, a mist gathered over the letter in the

son's hand. "My dear friend Sadie Burch!" He choked back the exclamation

of surprise that rose unconsciously to his lips and endeavored to

suppress any facial evidence of his inner feelings. "Twenty-five

thousand!" Then he held out the letter more or less casually to Tutt.

"Wee-e-ll!" whistled the lawyer softly, with a quick glance from under

his eyebrows.

"Oh, it isn't the money!" remarked Payson in a sickly tone--although of

course he was lying. It _was_ the money.

The idea of surrendering nearly half his father's estate to a stranger

staggered him; yet to his eternal credit, in that first instant of

bewildered agony no thought of disregarding his father's wishes entered

his mind. It was a hard wallop, but he'd got to stand it.

"Oh, that's nothing!" remarked Tutt. "It's not binding. You don't need

to pay any attention to it."

"Do you really mean that that paper hasn't any legal effect?" exclaimed

the boy with such a reaction of relief that for the moment the ethical

aspect of the case was entirely obscured by the legal.

"None whatever!" returned Tutt definitely.

"But it's part of the will!" protested Payson. "It's in my father's own

handwriting."

"That doesn't make any difference," declared the lawyer. "Not being

witnessed in the manner required by law it's not of the slightest

significance."

"Not even if it is put right in with the will?"

"Not a particle."

"But I've often heard of letters being put with wills."

"No doubt. But I'll wager you never heard of any one of them being

probated."

Payson's legal experience in fact did not reach to this technical point.

"Look here!" he returned obstinately. "I'll be hanged if I understand.

You say this paper has no legal value and yet it is in my father's own

hand and practically attached to his will. Now, apart from

any--er--moral question involved, just why isn't this letter binding on

me?"

Tutt smiled leniently.

"Have a cigarette?" he asked, and when Payson took one, he added

sympathetically as he held a match for him, "Your attitude, my dear sir,

does you credit. It is wholly right and natural that you should

instinctively desire to uphold that which on its face appears to be a

wish of your father. But all the same that letter isn't worth the paper

it's written on--as matter of law."

"But why not?" demanded Payson. "What better evidence could the courts

desire of the wishes of a testator than such a letter?"

"The reason is simple enough!" replied Tutt, settling himself in a

comfortable position. "In the eye of the law no property is ever without

an owner. It is always owned by somebody, although the ownership may be

in dispute. When a man dies his real property instantly passes to his

heirs and his personal property descends in accordance to the local

statute of distributions or, if there isn't any, to his next of kin; but

if he leaves a will, to the extent to which it is valid, it diverts the

property from its natural legal destination. Thus, in effect, the real

purpose of a will is to prevent the laws operating on one's estate after

death. If your father had died intestate, you would have instantly

become, in contemplation of law, the owner of all his property. His

will--his legal will--deprives you of a small part of it for the benefit

of others. But the law is exceedingly careful about recognizing such an

intention of a testator to prevent the operation of the statutes and

requires him to demonstrate the sincerity and fixity of that intention

by going through various established formalities, such as putting his

intention in due form in a written instrument which he must sign and

declare to be his last will before a certain number of competent

witnesses whom he requests to sign as such and who actually do sign as

such in his presence and in the presence of each other. Your father

obviously did none of these things when he placed this letter with his

will."

"But isn't a letter ever enough--under any circumstances?" inquired

Payson.

"Well," said Tutt. "It is true that under certain exceptional

circumstances a man may make what is known as a nuncupative will."

"What is a--a--nuncupative will?" asked his client.

"Technically it is an oral will, operating on personality only, made in

extremis--that is, actually in fear of death--and under our statutes

limited to soldiers in active military service or to mariners at sea.

Under the old common law it was just as effective to pass personal

estate as a written instrument."

"But father wasn't either a soldier or a sailor," commented Payson, "and

anyhow a letter isn't an oral will; if it's anything at all, it's a

written one, isn't it?"

"That is the attitude the law takes," nodded Tutt. "Of course, one could

argue that it made no difference whether a man uttered his wishes orally

in the presence of witnesses or reduced them to writing and signed them,

but the law is very technical in such matters and it has been held that

a will reduced to writing and signed by the testator, or a memorandum of

instructions for making a will, cannot be treated as a nuncupative will;

nor is a written will, drawn up by an attorney, but not signed, owing to

the sickness of the testator to be treated as a nuncupative will; but

upon requisite proof--in a proper case--a paper, not perfected as a

written will, may be established as a nuncupative will when its

completion is prevented by act of God, or any other cause than an

intention to abandon or postpone its consummation. The presumption of

the law is against validity of a testamentary paper not completed. There

must be in the testator the _animus testandi_, which is sometimes

presumed from circumstances in such cases and in such places as

nuncupative wills are recognized. Now, your father being as you point

out, neither a soldier nor a sailor, couldn't have made a nuncupative

will under any circumstances, even if a letter would legally be treated

as such a will instead of as an ineffectual attempt to make a written

one--upon which point I confess myself ignorant. Therefore"--and he

tossed away his cigarette butt with an air of finality--"this letter

bequeathing twenty-five thousand dollars to Sadie Burch--whoever and

whatever she may be--is either an attempt to make a will or a codicil to

a will in a way not recognized by the statute, or it is an attempt to

add to, alter or vary a will already properly executed and witnessed by

arbitrarily affixing to or placing within it an extraneous written

paper."

"Well," commented Payson, "I understand what you've said about

nun--nuncupative wills, all right,--that is, I think I do. But leaving

them out of consideration I still don't see why this letter can't be

regarded as _part_ of the original will."

"For the reason that when your father executed the original document he

went through every form required by the statute for making a will. If he

hadn't, it wouldn't have been a will at all. If this paper, which never

was witnessed by a single person, could be treated as a supplement or

addition to the will, there would have been no use requiring the

original will to be witnessed, either."

"That seems logical," agreed Payson. "But isn't it often customary to

incorporate other papers by referring to them in a will?"

"It is sometimes done, and usually results in nothing but litigation.

You see for yourself how absurd it would be to treat a paper drawn or

executed after a will was made as part of it, for that would render the

requirements of the statute nugatory."

"But suppose the letter was already in existence or was written at the

same time as the will,--wouldn't that make a difference?" hesitated

Payson.

"Not a bit! Not one bit!" chirped Tutt. "The law is settled that such a

paper writing can be given effect only under certain very special

conditions and only to a limited extent. Anyhow that question doesn't

arise here."

"Why not?" queried the residuary legatee. "How do you know this letter

wasn't written and placed inside the will when it was made?--And that my

father supposed that of course it would be given effect?"

"In that case why shouldn't he have incorporated the legacy in the

will?" countered Tutt sharply.

"He--er--may not have wished Mr. Tutt to know about it," murmured

Payson, dropping his eyes.

"Oh,--hardly!" protested Tutt. "We can be morally certain that this

letter was written and placed with the will that time your father came

in here and asked to be allowed to see it, seven odd years ago. Mr. Tutt

would have noticed it if your father had placed it with the will in the

first instance and would have warned him that nothing of the sort could

possibly be effective."

"But," insisted Payson, "assuming for argument's sake that this letter

was in fact written at the time the will was originally executed, what

is the reason the law won't recognize it as a valid bequest?"

Tutt smiled and fumbled in an open box for another cigarette.

"My dear sir," he replied, "no paper could possibly be treated as part

of a will--even if extant at the time the will was executed--unless

distinctly referred to in the will itself. In a word, there must be a

clear and unmistakable intention on the part of the testator to attempt

to incorporate the extraneous paper by reference. Now, here, there is no

reference to the paper in the will at all."

"That is true!" admitted Payson. "But--"

"But even if there were," went on Tutt, eagerly, "the law is settled in

this state that where a testator--either through carelessness or a

desire to economize space or effort, has referred in his will to

extraneous papers or memoranda, either as fixing the names of

beneficiaries of particular devises or bequests, or as fixing the amount

or the manner in which the amount of such devises or bequests is to be

ascertained, such a paper must not contain any testamentary disposition

of property. In a word the testator having willed something can

_identify_ it by means of an extraneous paper if properly designated,

but he cannot _will_ the thing away by an extraneous paper no matter how

referred to. For example, if A wills to B 'all the stock covered by my

agreement of May 1, with X' it merely describes and identifies the thing

bequeathed,--and that is all right. The law will give effect to the

identifying agreement, although it is separate from the will and

unattested. But, if A's will read 'and I give such further bequests as

appear in a paper filed herewith' and the paper contained a bequest to B

of 'all the stock covered by my agreement of May 1, with X' it would be

an attempted bequest outside of the will and so have no legal effect."

"Thanks," said Payson. "I understand. So in no event whatever could this

letter have any legal effect?"

"Absolutely none whatever!--You're perfectly safe!" And Tutt leaned back

with a comfortable smile.

But Payson did not smile in return. Neither was he comfortable. Be it

said for him that, however many kinds of a fool he may have been, while

momentarily relieved at knowing that he had no legal obligation to

carry out his father's wishes so far as Sadie Burch was concerned, his

conscience was by no means easy and he had not liked at all the tone in

which the paunchy little lawyer had used the phrase "you're perfectly

safe."

"What do you mean by 'perfectly safe'," he inquired rather coldly.

"Why, that Sadie Burch could never make you pay her the legacy--because

it isn't a legal legacy. You can safely keep it. It's yours, legally and

morally."

"Well, is it?" asked Payson slowly. "Morally, isn't it my duty to pay

over the money, no matter who she is?"

Tutt, who had tilted backward in his swivel chair, brought both his feet

to the floor with a bang.

"Of course it isn't!" he cried. "You'd be crazy to pay the slightest

attention to any such vague and unexplained scrawl. Listen, young man!

In the first place you haven't any idea when your father wrote that

paper--except that it was at least seven years ago. He may have changed

his mind a dozen times since he wrote it. It may have been a mere

passing whim or fancy, done in a moment of weakness or emotion or

temporary irrationality. Indeed, it may have been made under duress.

Nobody but a lawyer who has the most intimate knowledge of his clients'

daily life and affairs has the remotest suspicion of--Oh, well, we won't

go into that! But, the first proposition is that in no event is it

possible for you to say that the request in that letter was the actual

wish of your father at the time of his death. All you can say is that at

some time or other it may have been his wish."

"I see!" agreed Payson. "Well, what other points are there?"

"Secondly," continued Tutt, "it must be presumed that if your father

took the trouble to retain a lawyer to have his will properly drawn and

executed he must have known first, that it was necessary to do so in

order to have his wishes carried out, and second, that no wish not

properly incorporated in the will itself could have any legal effect. In

other words, inferentially, he knew that this paper had no force and

therefore it must be assumed that if he made it that way he intended

that it should have no legal effect and did not intend that it should be

carried out. Get me?"

"Why, yes, I think I do. Your point is that if a man knows the law and

does a thing so it has no legal effect he should be assumed to intend

that it have no legal effect."

"Exactly," Tutt nodded with satisfaction. "The law is wise, based on

generations of experience. It realizes the uncertainties, vagaries, and

vacillations of the human mind--and the opportunities afforded to

designing people to take advantage of the momentary weaknesses of

others--and hence to prevent fraud and insure that only the actual final

wishes of a man shall be carried out it requires that those wishes shall

be expressed in a particular, definite and formal way--in writing,

signed and published before witnesses."

"You certainly make it very clear!" assented Payson. "What do executors

usually do under such circumstances?"

"If they have sense they leave matters alone and let the law take its

course," answered Tutt with conviction. "I've known of more trouble--!

Several instances right here in this office. A widow found a paper with

her husband's will expressing a wish that a certain amount of money

should be given to a married woman living out in Duluth. There was

nothing to indicate when the paper was written, although the will was

executed only a month before he died. Apparently the deceased hadn't

seen the lady in question for years. I told her to forget it, but

nothing would suit her but that she should send the woman a money order

for the full amount--ten thousand dollars. She kept it, all right! Well,

the widow found out afterwards that her husband had written that paper

thirty years before at a time when he was engaged to be married to that

woman, that they had changed their minds and each had married happily

and that the paper with some old love letters had, as usually happens,

got mixed up with the will instead of having been destroyed as it should

have been. You know, it's astonishing, the junk people keep in their

safe deposit boxes! I'll bet that ninety-nine out of a hundred are half

full of valueless and useless stuff, like old watches, grandpa's jet

cuff buttons, the letters Uncle William wrote from the Holy Land,

outlawed fire insurance and correspondence that nobody will ever

read,--everything always gets mixed up together,--and yet every paper a

man leaves after his death is a possible source of confusion or trouble.

And one can't tell how or why a person at a particular time may come to

express a wish in writing. It would be most dangerous to pay attention

to it. Suppose it was _not_ in writing. Morally, a wish is just as

binding if spoken as if incorporated in a letter. Would you waste any

time on Sadie Burch if she came in here and told you that your father

had expressed the desire that she should have twenty-five thousand

dollars? Not much!"

"I don't suppose so!" admitted Payson.

"Another thing!" said Tutt. "Remember this, the law would not _permit_

you as executor of your father's will to pay over this money, if any

other than yourself were the residuary legatee. You'd have no right to

take twenty-five thousand dollars out of the estate and give it to Miss

Burch at the expense of anybody else!"

"Then you say the law won't let me pay this money to Sadie Burch whether

I am willing to or not?" asked Payson.

"Not as executor. As executor you're absolutely obliged to carry out the

terms of the will and disregard anything else. You must preserve the

estate intact and turn it over unimpaired to the residuary legatee!"

repeated Tutt.

"But I am the residuary legatee!" said Payson.

"As executor you've got to pay it over in full to yourself as residuary

legatee!" repeated Tutt stubbornly, evading the issue.

"Well, where does that leave me?" asked his client.

"It gets you out of your difficulty, doesn't it?" asked Tutt. "Don't

borrow trouble! Don't--if you'll pardon my saying so--be an idiot!"

There was silence for several minutes, finally broken by the lawyer who

came back again to the charge with renewed vigor.

"Why, this sort of thing comes up all the time. Take this sort of a

case, for instance. The law only lets a man will away a certain

proportion of his property to charity--says it isn't right for him to do

so, if he leaves a family. Now suppose your father had given all his

property to charity, would you feel obliged to impoverish yourself for

the benefit of a Home for Aged Mariners?"

"Really," replied the bewildered Payson. "I don't know. But anyway I'm

satisfied you're quite right and I'm tremendously obliged. However," he

added musingly, "I'd rather like to know who this Sadie Burch is!"

"If I were you, young man," advised the lawyer sagely, "I wouldn't try

to find out!"

Mr. Payson Clifford left the offices of Tutt & Tutt more recalcitrant

against fate and irritated with his family than when he had entered

them. He had found himself much less comfortably provided for than he

had expected, and the unpleasant impression created by the supposed

paternal relatives at his father's funeral had been heightened by the

letter regarding Sadie Burch. There was something even more offensively

plebeian about them than that of the vulgar Weng. It would have been bad

enough to have had to consider the propriety of paying over a large sum

to a lady calling herself by an elegant or at least debonair name like

Claire Desmond or Lillian Lamar,--but Sadie! And Burch! Ye gods! It was

ignoble, sordid. That was a fine discovery to make about one's father!

As he walked slowly up Fifth Avenue to his hotel it must be confessed

that his reflections upon that father's memory were far from filial. He

told himself that he'd always suspected something furtive about the old

man, who must have been under most unusual and extraordinary obligations

to a woman to whom he desired his son to turn over twenty-five thousand

dollars. It was pretty nearly half of his entire fortune! Would cut down

his income from around four thousand to nearly two thousand! The more he

pondered upon the matter the more the lawyer's arguments seemed

absolutely convincing. Lawyers knew more than other people about such

things, anyway. You paid them for their advice, and he would doubtless

have to pay Tutt for his upon this very subject, which, somehow, seemed

to be rather a good reason for following it. No, he would dismiss Sadie

Burch and the letter forever from his mind. Very likely she was dead

anyway, whoever she was. Four thousand a year! Not a bad income for a

bachelor!

And while our innocent young Launcelot trudging uptown hardened his

heart against Sadie Burch, by chance that lady figured in a short but

poignant conversation between Mr. Ephraim Tutt and Miss Minerva Wiggin

on the threshold of the room from which he had just departed.

Miss Wiggin never trusted anybody but herself to lock up the offices,

not even Mr. Tutt, and upon this particular evening she had made this an

excuse to linger on after the others had gone home and waylay him. Such

encounters were by no means infrequent and usually had a bearing upon

the ethical aspect of some proposed course of legal procedure on the

part of the firm.

Miss Minerva regarded Samuel Tutt as morally an abandoned and hopeless

creature. Mr. Ephraim Tutt she loved with a devotion rare among a sex

with whom devotion is happily a common trait, but there was a maternal

quality in her affection accounted for by the fact that although Mr.

Tutt was, to be sure, an old man in years, he had occasionally an

elfin, Puck-like perversity which was singularly boyish, at which times

she felt it obligatory for her own self-respect to call him to order.

Thus, whenever Tutt seemed to be incubating some evasion of law which

seemed more subtly plausible than ordinary she made it a point to call

it to Mr. Tutt's attention. Also, whenever, as in the present case, she

felt that by following the advice given by the junior member of the firm

a client was about to embark upon some dubious enterprise or

questionable course of conduct she endeavored to counteract his

influence by appealing to the head of the firm.

During the interview between Tutt and Payson Clifford the door had been

open and she had heard all of it; moreover, after Payson had gone away

Tutt had called her in and gone over the situation with her. And she

regarded Tutt's advice to his client,--not the purely legal aspect of

it, but the personal and persuasive part of it,--as an interference with

that young gentleman's freedom of conscience.

"Dear me!--I didn't know you were still here, Minerva!" exclaimed her

employer as she confronted him in the outer office. "Is anything

worrying you?"

"Not dangerously!" she replied with a smile. "And perhaps it's none of

my business--"

"My business is thy business, my dear!" he answered. "Without you Tutt &

Tutt would not be Tutt & Tutt. My junior partner may be the eyes and

legs of the firm and I may be some other portion of its anatomy, but you

are its heart and its conscience. Out with it! What rascality portends?

What bird of evil omen hovers above the offices of Tutt & Tutt? Spare

not an old man bowed down with the sorrows of this world! Has my shrewd

associate counseled the robbing of a bank or the kidnapping from a

widowed mother of her orphaned child?"

"Nothing quite so bad as that!" she retorted. "It's merely that Mr.

Samuel Tutt used his influence this afternoon to try to persuade a young

man not to carry out his father's wishes--expressed in a legally

ineffective way--and I think he succeeded--although I'm not quite sure."

"That must have been Payson Clifford," answered Mr. Tutt. "What were the

paternal wishes?"

"Mr. Tutt found a letter with the will in which the father asked the son

to give twenty-five thousand dollars to a Miss Sadie Burch."

"Miss Sadie Burch!" repeated Mr. Tutt. "And who is she?"

"Nobody knows," said Miss Wiggin. "But whoever she is, our

responsibility stops with advising Mr. Payson Clifford that the letter

has no legal effect. Mr. Tutt went further and tried to induce Mr.

Clifford not to respect the request contained in it. That, it seems to

me, is going too far. Don't you think so?"

"Are you certain you never heard of this Miss Burch?" suddenly asked Mr.

Tutt, peering at her sharply from beneath his shaggy eyebrows.

"Never," she replied.

"H'm!" ejaculated Mr. Tutt. "A woman in the case!"

"What sort of a young fellow is this Payson Clifford?" inquired Miss

Wiggin after a moment.

"Oh, not so much of a much!" answered Mr. Tutt whimsically.

"And what was the father like?" she continued with a woman's curiosity.

"He wasn't so much of a much, either, evidently," answered Mr. Tutt.

We have previously had occasion to comment upon the fact that no client,

male or female, consults a lawyer with regard to what he ought to do.

Women, often having decided to do that which they ought not to do,

attempt to secure counsel's approval of the contemplated sin; but while

a lawyer is sometimes called upon to bolster up a guilty conscience,

rarely is he sincerely invited to act as spiritual adviser. Most men

being worse than their lawyers, prefer not to have the latter find them

out. If they have made up their minds to do a mean thing they do not

wish to run the chance of having their lawyer shame them out of it. That

is their own business. And it should be! The law presents sufficiently

perplexing problems for the lawyer without his seeking trouble in the

dubious complexities of his client's morals! Anyhow, that is the

regulation way a lawyer looks at it and that is the way to hold one's

clients. Do what you are instructed to do--so long as it isn't too raw!

Question the propriety of his course and while your client may follow

your advice in this single instance he probably will not return again.

The paradoxical aspect of the matter with Mr. Tutt was that while he was

known as a criminal lawyer whenever he was asked for advice he concerned

himself quite as much with his client's moral as his legal duty. The

rather subtle reason for this was probably to be found in the fact that

since he found the law so easy to circumvent he preferred to disregard

it entirely as a sanction of conduct and merely to ask himself "Now is

this what a sportsman and a gentleman would do?" The fact that a man was

a technical criminal meant nothing to him at all; what interested him

was whether the man was or was not a "mean" man. If he was, to hell with

him! In a word, he applied to any given situation the law as it ought to

be and not the law as it was. A very easy and flexible test! say you,

sarcastically. Do you really think so? There may be forty different laws

upon the same subject in as many different states of our political

union, but how many differing points of view upon any single moral

question would you find among as many citizens? The moral code of decent

people is practically the same all over the terrestrial ball, and

fundamentally it has not changed since the days of Hammurabi. The ideas

of gentlemen and sportsmen as to what "is done" and "isn't done" haven't

changed since Fabius Tullius caught snipe in the Pontine marshes.

Mr. Tutt was a crank on this general subject and he carried his

enthusiasm so far that he was always tilting like Don Quixote at some

imaginary windmill, dragging a very unwilling Sancho Panza after him in

the form of his reluctant partner. Moreover, he had a very keen sympathy

for all kinds of outcasts, deeming most of them victims of the sins of

their own or somebody's else fathers. So when he learned from Miss

Wiggin that Tutt had presumed to interfere with the financial prospects

of the unknown Miss Sadie Burch he was distinctly aggrieved, less on her

account to be sure than upon that of his client's whom he regarded more

or less in his keeping. And, as luck would have it, the object of his

grievance, having forgotten something, at that moment unexpectedly

reentered the office to retrieve it.

"Hello, Mr. Tutt!" he exclaimed. "Not gone yet!"

His senior partner glanced at him sharply, while Miss Wiggin hastily

sidestepped into the corridor.

"Look here, Tutt!" said Mr. Tutt. "I don't know just what you've been

telling young Clifford, or how you've been interfering in his private

affairs, but if you've been persuading him to disregard any wish of his

father plainly expressed in his own handwriting and incorporated with

his will you've gone further than you've any right to go."

"But," expostulated Tutt, "you know how dangerous it is to meddle with

things like that. Our experience certainly shows that it's far wiser to

let the law settle all doubtful questions than to try to guess what the

final testamentary intention of a dead testator really was. Don't you

remember the Dodworth case? A hypersensitive conscience cost our widowed

client ten thousand dollars! I say, leave well enough alone."

"'Well enough'! 'Well enough'!" snarled Mr. Tutt. "Are you going to

constitute yourself the judge of what is well enough for a young man's

soul? I give you fair warning, Tutt: he's heard your side of it, but

before he gets through he's going to hear mine as well!"

Samuel Tutt turned a faint pink in the region of his collar.

"Why, certainly, Mr. Tutt!" he stammered. "Do so, by all means!"

"You jolly well bet I will!" replied Mr. Tutt, jamming on his stovepipe.

Several days passed, however, without the subject being mentioned

further, while the proper steps to probate the will were taken as usual.

Payson Clifford's dilemma had no legal reaction. He had made up his mind

and he was going to stick to it. He had taken the opinion of counsel and

was fully satisfied with what he had done. Nobody was going to know

anything about it, anyway. When the proper time came he would burn the

Sadie Burch letter and forget Sadie Burch. That is, he thought he was

going to and that he could. But--as Plautus says: "_Nihil est miserius

quam animus hominis conscius_."

You see, Payson Clifford, having been sent to a decent school and a

decent college, irrespective of whether his father was a rotter or not,

had imbibed something of a sense of honor. Struggle as he would against

it, the shadow of Sadie Burch kept creeping athwart his mind. There were

so many possibilities! Suppose she was in desperate straits? Hadn't he

better look her up, anyhow? No, he most definitely didn't want to know

anything about her! Supposing she really had rendered some service to

his father for which she ought to be repaid as he had sought to repay

her? These thoughts obtruded themselves upon Payson's attention when he

least desired it, but they did not cause him to alter his intention to

get his hooks into his father's whole residuary estate and keep it for

himself. He had, you observe, a conscience, but it couldn't stand up

against twenty-five thousand dollars reinforced by perfectly sound legal

arguments.

No, he had a good excuse for not being a gentleman and a sportsman and

he did not purpose to look for any reasons for doing differently. Then

unexpectedly he was invited to dinner by Mr. Ephraim Tutt in a funny

old ramshackle house on West Twenty-third Street with ornamented iron

piazza railings all covered with the withered stalks of long dead

wistarias, and something happened to him. "Payson Clifford's Twenty-five

Thousand Dollar Dinner." He had no suspicion, of course, what was coming

to him when he went there,--went, merely because Mr. Tutt was one of the

very few friends of his father that he knew. And he held towards the old

lawyer rather the same sort of patronizing attitude that he had had

towards the old man. It would be a rotten dinner probably followed by a

deadly dull evening with a snuffy old fossil who would tell him

long-winded, rambling anecdotes of what New York had been like when

there were wild goats in Central Park.

The snuffy old fossil, however, made no reference whatever to either old

New York or wild goats,--the nearest he came to it being wild oats.

Instead he began the dreary evening by opening a cupboard on his library

wall and disclosing three long bottles, from which he partially filled a

shining silver receptacle containing cracked ice. This he shook with

astonishing skill and vigor, meantime uttering loud outcries of

"Miranda! Fetch up the mint!" Then a buxom colored lady in calico--with

a grin like that which made Aunt Sallie famous--having appeared,

panting, with two large glasses and a bundle of green herbage upon a

silver salver, the old fossil poured out a seething decoction--of which

like only the memory remains--performed an incantation over each glass

with the odoriferous greens, smiled fondly upon the work of his hands

and remarked with amiable hospitality, "Well, my son! Glad to see

you!--Here's how!"

Almost immediately a benign animal magnetism pervaded the bosom of

Payson Clifford, and from his bosom reached out through his arteries and

veins, his arterioles and venioles, to the uttermost ends of his being.

He perceived in an instant that Mr. Tutt was no ordinary man and his

house no ordinary house; and this impression was intensified when,

seated at his host's shining mahogany table with its heavy cut glass and

queer old silver, he discovered that Miranda was no ordinary cook. He

began to be inflated over having discovered this Mr. Tutt, who pressed

succulent oysters and terrapin stew upon him, accompanied by a foaming

bottle of Krug '98. He found himself possessed of an astounding appetite

and a prodigious thirst. The gas lights in the old bronze chandelier

shone like a galaxy of radiant suns above his head and warmed him

through and through. And after the terrapin Miranda brought in a smoking

wild turkey with two quail roasted inside of it, and served with currant

jelly, rice cakes, and sweet potatoes fried in melted sugar. Then, as in

a dream, he heard a soul-satisfying pop and Miranda placed a tall, amber

glass at his wrist and filled it with the creaming redrose wine of

ancient Burgundy. He heard himself telling Mr. Tutt all about

himself,--the most intimate secrets of his heart,--and saw Mr. Tutt

listening attentively, almost reverently. He perceived that he was

making an astonishing impression upon Mr. Tutt who obviously thought him

a great man; and after keeping him in reasonable doubt about it for

awhile he modestly admitted to Mr. Tutt that this was so. Then he drank

several more glasses of Burgundy and ate an enormous pile of waffles

covered with maple syrup. "I'se in town, honey!" Mr. Tutt had grown

several sizes larger--the whole room was full of him. Lastly he had

black coffee and some port. It was an occasion, he asserted,--er--always

goo' weather,--or somethin'--when goo' fellows got together! He declared

with an emphasis which was quite unnecessary, but which, however, did

not disturb him, that there were too few men like themselves in the

world,--men with the advantage of education,--men of ideals. He told Mr.

Tutt that he loved him. He no longer had a father, and, evidently

relying on further similar entertainments, he wanted Mr. Tutt for one.

Mr. Tutt generously assented to act in that capacity and as the first

step assisted his guest upstairs to the library where he opened the

window a few inches.

Presently, Payson did not know how exactly, they got talking all about

life,--and Mr. Tutt said ruminatively that after all the only things

that really counted were loyalty and courage and kindness,--and that a

little human sympathy extended even in what sometimes seemed at first

glance the wrong direction often did more good--made more for real

happiness--than the most efficient organized charity. He spoke of the

loneliness of age--the inevitable loneliness of the human soul,--the

thirst for daily affection. And then they drifted off to college, and

Mr. Tutt inquired casually if Payson had seen much of his father, who,

he took occasion to remark, had been a good type of straightforward,

honest, hard-working business man.

Payson, smoking his third cigar, and taking now and then a dash of

cognac, began to think better of his old dad. He really hadn't paid him

quite the proper attention. He admitted it to Mr. Tutt--with the first

genuine tears in his eyes since he had left Cambridge;--perhaps, if he

had been more to him--. But Mr. Tutt veered off again--this time on

university education; the invaluable function of the university being,

he said, to preserve intact and untarnished in a materialistic age the

spiritual ideals inherited from the past.

In this rather commonplace sentiment Payson agreed with him

passionately. He further agreed with equal enthusiasm when his host

advanced the doctrine that after all to preserve one's honor stainless

was the only thing that much mattered. Absolutely! declared Payson, as

he allowed Mr. Tutt to press another glass of port upon him.

Payson, in spite of the slight beading of his forehead and the blurr

about the gas jets, began to feel very much the man of the world,--not a

"six bottle man" perhaps, but--and he laughed complacently--a "two

bottle man." If he'd lived back in the good old sporting days very

likely he could have done better. But he's taken care of two full

bottles, hadn't he? Mr. Tutt replied that he'd taken care of them very

well indeed. And with this opening the old lawyer launched into his

favorite topic,--to wit, that there were only two sorts of men in the

world--gentlemen, and those who were not. What made a man a gentleman

was gallantry and loyalty,--the readiness to sacrifice everything--even

life--to an ideal. The hero was the chap who never counted the cost to

himself. That was why people revered the saints, acclaimed the cavalier,

and admired the big-hearted gambler who was ready to stake his fortune

on the turn of a card. There was even, he averred, an element of

spirituality in the gambler's carelessness about money.

This theory greatly interested Payson, who held strongly with it, having

always had a secret, sneaking fondness for gamblers. On the strength of

it he mentioned Charles James Fox--there was a true gentleman and

sportsman for you! No mollycoddle--but a roaring, six bottle

fellow--with a big brain and a scrupulous sense of honor. Yes, sir!

Charley Fox was the right sort! He managed to intimate successfully that

Charley and he were very much the same breed of pup. At this point Mr.

Tutt, having carefully committed his guest to an ethical standard as far

removed as possible from one based upon self-interest, opened the window

a few more inches, sauntered over to the mantel, lit a fresh stogy and

spread his long legs in front of the sea-coal fire like an elongated

Colossus of Rhodes. He commenced his dastardly countermining of his

partner's advice by complimenting Payson on being a man whose words,

manner and appearance proclaimed him to the world a true sport and a

regular fellow. From which flattering prologue he slid naturally into

said regular fellow's prospects and aims in life. He trusted that Payson

Clifford, Senior, had left a sufficient estate to enable Payson, Junior,

to complete his education at Harvard?--He forgot, he confessed just what

the residue amounted to. Then he turned to the fire, kicked it, knocked

the ash off the end of his stogy and waited--in order to give his guest

a chance to come to himself,--for Mr. Payson Clifford had suddenly

turned a curious color, due to the fact that he was unexpectedly

confronted with the necessity of definitely deciding then and there

whether he was going to line up with the regular fellows or the second

raters, the gentlemen or the cads, the C.J. Foxes or the Benedict

Arnolds of mankind. He wasn't wholly the real thing, a conceited young

ass, if you choose, but on the other hand he wasn't by any means a bad

sort. In short, he was very much like all the rest of us. And he wasn't

ready to sign the pledge just yet. He realized that he had put himself

at a disadvantage, but he wasn't going to commit himself until he had

had a good chance to think it all over carefully. In thirty seconds he

was sober as a judge--and a sober judge at that.

"Mr. Tutt," he said in quite a different tone of voice. "I've been

talking pretty big, I guess,--bigger than I really am. The fact is I've

got a problem of my own that's bothering me a lot."

Mr. Tutt nodded understandingly.

"You mean Sadie Burch."

"Yes."

"Well, what's the problem? Your father wanted you to give her the money,

didn't he?"

Payson hesitated. What he was about to say seemed so disingenuous, even

though it had originated with Tutt & Tutt.

"How do I know really what he wanted? He may have changed his mind a

dozen times since he put it with his will."

"If he had he wouldn't have left it there, would he?" asked Mr. Tutt

with a smile.

"But perhaps he forgot all about it,--didn't remember that it was

there," persisted the youth, still clinging desperately to the lesser

Tutt. "And, if he hadn't would have torn it up."

"That might be equally true of the provisions of his will, might it

not?" countered the lawyer.

"But," squirmed Payson, struggling to recall Tutt's arguments,

previously so convincing, "he knew how a will ought to be executed and

as he deliberately neglected to execute the paper in a legal fashion,

isn't it fair to presume that he did not intend it to have any legal

force?"

"Yes," replied Mr. Tutt with entire equanimity, "I agree with you that

it is fair to assume that he did not intend it to have any legal

effect."

"Well, then!" exclaimed Payson exultantly.

"But," continued the lawyer, "that does not prove that he did not intend

it to have a moral effect,--and expect you to honor and respect his

wishes, just as if he had whispered them to you with his dying breath."

There was something in his demeanor which, while courteous, had a touch

of severity, that made Payson feel abashed. He perceived that he could

not afford to let Mr. Tutt think him a cad,--when he was really a C.J.

Fox. And in his mental floundering his brain came into contact with the

only logical straw in the entire controversy.

"Ah!" he said with an assumption of candor. "In that case I should know

positively that they were in fact my father's wishes."

"Exactly!" replied Mr. Tutt. "And you'd carry them out without a

moment's hesitation."

"Of course!" yielded Payson.

"Then the whole question is whether or not this paper does express a

wish of his. That problem is a real problem, and it is for you alone to

solve,--and, of course, you're under the disadvantage of having a

financial interest in the result, which makes it doubly hard."

"All the same," maintained the boy, "I want to be fair to myself."

"--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, née

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

_dégagé_ 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.

Who "shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit"? and so on. It was in

Holy Writ! The highest law!

There was no evidence against Danny at all, because Brown was an

accomplice and his testimony was not corroborated; at any rate he was a

procurer and instigator of crime, an _agent provocateur_, a despicable

liar, hypocrite and violator of the very law he was paid to uphold; and

as he had held himself out as a physician to Danny Lowry everything that

passed between them was privileged as a confidential communication and

must be disregarded as if it had never been said.

Daniel Lowry was a man of the highest reputation, of such character that

he never had been guilty of an unkind or selfish act in his entire life,

much less commit crime; which alone, taken by itself, was quite enough

to interject and raise a reasonable doubt--upon which they must acquit.

Then Tom Hingman got up and grimaced and said he had known Mr. Tutt all

his professional life and he was a peach, but they mustn't believe what

he said or let him put anythin' over on 'em, for he was pretty slick

even if he was a fine old feller. Now the plain fact was, as they all

knew perfectly well, that this old boy had been caught with the goods.

It might be tough luck, but the law was the law and they were all there

to enforce it--much as they hated to do so--and there was nothing to it

but to convict and let the judge deal with the defendant with that mercy

and leniency and forbearance for which he was so justly famous. He

panted a few times and sat down.

Then the judge took his crack. He told the jury, in so many words, to

pay no attention to either the A.D.A. or to Mr. Tutt, and to listen only

to him, because he was the whole thing. The question was: Had the

defendant assumed to give medical treatment to Brown's horse, for any

kind of valuable consideration? In determining this they should consider

all the evidence, including the fact that the prisoner had claimed to be

a veterinary, had been paid for treating Brown's horse as such, had

pleaded guilty in the police court, and that none of the alleged facts

upon which the charge was based had been denied before them in present

trial.

As he said this the pink-and-white baboon looked at them steadily and

significantly for several seconds over his eyeglasses. They should

consider the business card which the defendant had given to the

complaining witness and in which he held himself out as a veterinary.

The testimony of the complainant stood uncontradicted. The complainant

was not an accomplice and his testimony did not have to be corroborated.

A decoy wasn't an accomplice. That was the law. Neither was what had

passed between the complainant and defendant privileged as a

confidential communication, because the complainant was not a physician.

That was all there was to that!

They should ask themselves what in fact the defendant had done if not

practise veterinary medicine without a license? It was not controverted

but that he had said he was a veterinary, administered medicine to a

sick horse, offered to compound payment for medical treatment for

himself, finally taken five dollars, and admitted his guilt before the

magistrate. If they had any reasonable doubt--and such a doubt might of

course be raised by evidence of previous good character--they would of

course give it to the defendant and acquit him, but such a doubt must be

no mere whim, guess or conjecture that the defendant might not after all

be guilty even if the evidence seemed so to demonstrate; it must be a

substantial doubt based on the evidence and such a one as would

influence them in the important matters of their own daily, domestic and

business lives. That was all there was to it! Let them take the case and

decide it! It should not take 'em very long. The question of how the

defendant should be punished, if at all, did not concern them. He would

take care of that. They might safely leave it to him! He bowed and

turned to his papers. The jury gathered up their coats and straggled

after Cap Phelan out of the court room.

"Y'd be all right, counselor," remarked the second court officer,

suspending momentarily the delights of mastication, "if 'twasn't fer

that son of a gun on the back row, Gibson! He's a bad one! I've known

him for years! He'd convict his own mother of petit larceny!"

"So? So?" murmured Mr. Tutt, producing a leather case the size of a

doctor's instrument bag from his inside pocket and removing a couple of

stogies therefrom. "Well, it's too late now to do anything about it. I'm

going out to stretch my legs and have a smoke."

Mr. Tutt loitered into the corridor, stepped unostentatiously behind a

pillar, slipped into the adjoining court room--which happened to be

empty--and thence back into the passage upon which the jury rooms

opened. He found Cap Phelan standing before one of these with a finger

to his lips.

"Pst! They're at it a-ready!" whispered Phelan as Mr. Tutt slipped him a

stogy.

The transom above was open and through it drifted out a faint blue

cloud. A great hubbub was going on inside. Suddenly above it a harsh

voice rang out: "That ain't a reasonable doubt! I tell you, that ain't a

reasonable doubt! Aw, you give me a pain, you do!"

"I've got 'em!" grinned Mr. Tutt contentedly. "Phelan, bring me a

chair!"

Now right here is where this story begins--only here.

"Vell, gen'l'muns," said the foreman, who was a glove merchant and

looked like Sam Bernard, as they took their seats round the battered oak

table. "Vot you say? Shall we disguss or take a vote?"

"Let's take a smoke!" amended a real-estate broker. "No use goin' back

right off and getting stuck onto another damn case! Where's that

cuspidor?"

"Speakin' of veterinaries," chuckled a man with three rolls of fat on

his neck, "did y'ever hear the story of the negro and the mule with the

cough?"

None of them apparently ever had, so the stout brother told all about

how--ha, ha!--the mule coughed first.

"I remember that story now," remarked one of the jury reminiscently

while the fat man glared at him. "If I had my way all these veterinaries

would be in jail! They're a dangerous lot. I had a second cousin once

who'd paid a hundred dollars--a hundred dollars!--for a horse and it

got the colic. So he called in a veterinary and it died."

"Well, the vet didn't kill it, did he?" inquired the fat man scornfully.

"My cousin always claimed he did!" replied the other solemnly. "There

was some mistake about what he gave the horse--wood alcohol or

something--I forget what it was. Anyhow, I think they're all a dangerous

lot. They all ought to be locked up. I move to convict!"

"But neither of these fellers is a veterinary!" retorted a sad-looking

gentleman in black. "The charge is that one of 'em pretended to be--but

wasn't. So if he wasn't how could you convict him of being a

veterinary?"

"Well, if he had been I'd have convicted him all right," asserted the

first. "They're dangerous--like all these clairvoyants and soothsayers."

"Will somebody tell me?" requested a tall man who had been looking

intently out of the window, "whether a veterinary is the same thing as a

veterinarian? I always supposed a veterinarian was a sort of religion,

like a Unitarian. Veteran means old--I thought it was some old form of

religion; or a feller who didn't believe in eatin' meat."

"Lead that nut out!" shouted somebody. "Let's get busy. The question is:

Did this old guy pretend he was a horse doctor when he wasn't? I say he

did."

"Let's take a vote," suggested Bently.

"Vell, let's understand vat we're doin'," admonished the foreman. "Do

you gen'l'muns all understand that we're tryin' to convict this feller

for doctoring a horse without a prescription?"

"You mean a license, don't you?" inquired Bently.

"Sure--a license. All right! Let's get a vote."

The first ballot resulted in seven for acquittal, four for conviction,

and one blank--Bently's.

"I don't know who the fellers are that voted for acquittal!" suddenly

announced a juror with a red face. "But I know this Brown personally,

and he's all right. You can rely on him absolutely. He goes to the same

place as me in the summer--Cottage Point. If any of you gentlemen want a

good quiet place--"

"Any mosquitoes?" inquired an unknown irreverently.

"No more'n anywheres else near New York."

They took another ballot and found that the juryman who knew Brown had

brought over two others to conviction, so that the jury was now evenly

divided, Bently voting irresponsibly for acquittal.

"Look here!" proposed the man in black. "Let's argue this out. Suppose I

put the various propositions and you vote on 'em each separately."

"Shoot ahead!" adjured somebody.

"Now, first, all who think this defendant claimed to be a veterinary say

aye."

"Wait a minute!" interposed the tall man, who was still standing by the

window. "Maybe I am a nut. But I wish someone would explain to me which

is the defender. I thought Mr. Tutt was the defender."

"Oh, my Lord!" groaned a flabby salesman in a pink tie.

"Defend-ant--a-n-t--remember your ant! He's the man we're trying! The

other one is the complainant!"

"The only one that had any complaint was the horse", protested the tall

man. "But I understand now--we're tryin' the defendant. I've never

served on a jury before. Now, what's the question?"

"Did the defendant--ant--claim to be a licensed veterinary--when he

wasn't?"

"Now wait a second," objected the tall man again. "I want to get this

straight. Is it the point that if this old man pretended he was a horse

doctor when he wasn't he has to go to jail?"

"Sure."

"But the other man pretended he was a doctor."

"But he was trying to trick the defendant."

"But the first feller wasn't a doctor any more than the other feller.

Why not convict the first feller?"

There was a chorus of groans from about the table.

"You ought not to be here at all!" remarked the salesman acidly. "You're

simple-minded, you are! You keep still now and vote with the majority,

or we'll tell the judge on you!"

The tall man subsided.

"Vell," suddenly interjected the foreman, "he admitted he was guilty in

the bolice gourt."

"Sure!" "That's so!" "Pass the box again!" came from all hands.

When the foreman had counted the ballots Bently was horrified to

discover that ten jurors now thought the defendant guilty, and only two

believed him innocent.

"May I suggest," said he earnestly, "that perhaps this old man did not

understand in the magistrate's court the elements that went to make up

the offense charged against him? He merely stood ready to admit freely

whatever the facts were. His opinion on the purely legal question of his

own guilt was not of much value. Anyhow, his subsequent plea of not

guilty to the indictment neutralizes the significance of the original

plea."

There was a murmur of surprise and admiration from Bently's companions.

"That's true, too!" declared the salesman. "I never thought of that!

You're some talker--you are, I must say! But how about that business

card?"

"It seems to me," argued Bently, "that the card plays no particular part

in this case. In the first place the question before us is not whether

Lowry ever did--in the past--hold himself out as a veterinary, but

whether he did so on the day alleged in the indictment. The fact that he

gave the detective a card which he had had printed perhaps years before

only tends to show that at some time or other he may have pretended to

be a licensed veterinary. And you will recall, gentlemen, that the

testimony is merely that he said to the detective in reference to the

card: 'That is my name.' He did not say anything to him about being a

veterinary."

This somewhat disingenuous argument created a profound impression.

"Say, now you've said something!" declared the salesman. "You'd oughta

been a lawyer yourself. Let's take another vote."

Curiously enough Bently's argument seemed to have had a revolutionary

effect, for the jury now stood ten to two for acquittal. He began to

feel encouraged. If ever there was a case-- Then he heard an altercation

going on fiercely between the salesman and Brown's summer friend, the

latter insisting loudly that the detective was a perfect gentleman and

entirely all right.

"Nobody questions Mr. Brown's entire honesty," interposed Bently

hastily, in a friendly way. "The question before us is the sufficiency

of the evidence. Upon this, it seems to me, there is what might fairly

be called a reasonable doubt."

"And you have to give that to the defendant--it's the law!" shouted the

salesman in fury.

It was at this point that Mr. Tutt and Phelan had taken up their

positions outside the door, and the friend of Brown had told the

salesman that he gave him a pain; that his doubt wasn't a reasonable

doubt.

"Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" protested Bently. "Let us discuss this matter

calmly."

"But I'm a reasonable man!" shouted the salesman. "And so, if I have any

doubt, my doubt is bound to be reasonable."

"You--a reasonable man?" sneered Brown's friend. "You're nothin' but a

damn fool!"

"I am, am I?" yelled the salesman, starting to remove his coat. "I'll

show you--"

"Oh, cut it out!" expostulated the fat man complacently. "Settle all

that afterward! We ain't interested."

"Vell, take annoder vote," mildly suggested the foreman.

This time it stood eleven to one for acquittal. All concentrated upon

the friend of Brown, over whose face had settled a look of grim

determination. But a similar expression occupied the features of Mr.

Bently Gibson, erstwhile the exponent of the-law-as-it-is, the bulwark

of the jury system, now adrift upon the ship of justice, blindly

determined that no matter what--law or no law, principles or no

principles--that old man was going to be acquitted.

"My friend," he remarked solemnly, taking the floor, "of course you want

to do justice in this case. We have nothing against Mr. Brown at all. He

is doubtless a very honest and efficient officer. But surely the good

character of this defendant may well create a reasonable doubt--and the

rest of us feel that it does."

"Sure! 'Course it does!" came from all sides. Mr. Brown's red-faced

friend having escaped the salesman's wrath began to show somewhat less

aggressiveness.

"I don't care a damn about Brown!" he assured them. "He can go to hell

for all of me! But I don't see how you can acquit this feller when the

evidence is uncontradicted that he told Brown he was a veterinary and

treated his horse. I'd be violating my oath if I voted for acquittal

after that testimony. I ain't going to commit perjury for nobody! I'd

like to oblige you gentlemen, too, and vote your way, but I just can't

with that evidence stickin' in my crop. If it wasn't for that--"

"He could 'a' treated the horse without doing it as a veterinary, just

as Mr. Tutt said!" interjected the tall man.

"Good for you!" said the salesman, fully restored to equanimity. "You're

gettin' intelligent. Serve on a few more juries--"

"But he said he was a veterinary," insisted Brown's friend. "How could

he have treated the horse as anything else but as a veterinary when he

said he was treating him as a veterinary?"

"Maybe he just thought he was doing it as a veterinary", commented the

gloom in black. "He may have tried to do it as a veterinary and failed.

In that case he didn't do it as a veterinary but just as a plain man.

Get me?"

"No, I don't!" snorted the red-faced one. "That's all bull. He said he

was a vet and he treated the horse as a vet and got five dollars for

it."

"How do you know he did?" unexpectedly asked Bently.

"Because he said so himself. That was part of the conversation between

Brown and Lowry," declared the obstinate summer friend of Brown. "If it

wasn't for that--"

"If it wasn't for that you'd acquit?" demanded Bently sharply.

"Yes. Sure I would!"

"Then I say you should disregard all that conversation because it was a

privileged communication between a doctor--Brown--and his

patient--Lowry!" declared Bently heatedly.

"But the judge said it wasn't privileged!" retorted the other.

"Mr. Tutt said it was, though," shot back the salesman.

"Well, the judge said--"

"Let's go in and find out who said what," proposed the tall man. "I'd

like to know myself. I don't remember who said anything any longer."

So they filed back into court.

"Your Honor," stuttered the foreman, licking his lips in embarrassment,

"some of the gen'l'muns vant to inguire veder the gonversation between

Mr. Brown and Mr. Lowry is privileged or veder we haf to belief it?"

The judge, who had evidently expected that the return of the jury was

for the purpose of declaring the defendant guilty, scowled.

"The rule is," said he wearily, "that conversations between a doctor and

his patient are privileged and cannot be testified to without the

consent of the patient. If Brown had been a doctor--which he is not--it

is possible that I might have sustained Mr. Tutt's objection on the

ground and struck out the conversation. But he only pretended to be a

doctor, and no privilege exists under those circumstances even if in

some cases it seems to work a hardship upon the one who is deceived. The

conversation in this instance is part of the record. You may retire."

But Bently, with a light upon his countenance such as theretofore had

ne'er been seen on sea or land, suddenly held up his hand.

"One question, Your Honor. If Brown had been a doctor you would have

excluded the testimony?"

The aged angel raised his eyebrows deprecatingly.

"Perhaps; I might have considered the suggestion."

"Thank you," said Bently, and they all traipsed out.

"That cooks him!" whispered Phelan to Mr. Tutt at the keyhole.

"Wait and see! Wait and see!" muttered the lawyer. "We're not dead yet."

Once back in their room the jury took another vote. Eleven to one again.

Then Bently rose.

"Gentlemen," he cried, "I think I have the key to this case."

They all gazed at him expectantly.

"We are obliged by law to give every reasonable doubt to the defendant.

Now the only obstacle to our acquitting this poor old man is the fact

that there is in evidence a conversation in which Lowry is claimed to

have said that he was a veterinary and had been acting as such all his

life. Mr. Tutt says that that conversation is privileged and should be

disregarded because it was a confidential communication between a doctor

and a patient. The judge says it is not privileged for the reason that

Mr. Brown was not in fact a doctor--but he says further that if Brown

were a doctor we should have to disregard that part of the

evidence--which would, as we all agree, leave us free to acquit.

"Now then, how do we know Brown is _not_ a doctor? He says he isn't; but

he lied about everything else he told Lowry, and he may have been lying

about that too. And if he lied to Lowry he may have been lying to us

here to-day. I say that there is a reasonable doubt right there as to

whether Brown is really a doctor or not. Such a doubt belongs to the

defendant. He is entitled to it and it is our duty to acquit him!"

"Hear! Hear!" "That's so!" "Bully for you!" "What yer got to say now,

eh?" "Take a vote!" "Pass the box!" resounded through the transom amid a

tremendous scuffling of feet and scraping of chairs.

"Phelan!" gasped Mr. Tutt. "Who shall ever again have the temerity to

suggest that the jury system is not the greatest of our institutions?"

"Pst!" answered Cap. "Listen! Sh-h. By God! They've acquitted him!"

* * * * *

"So you caught the five-fifteen after all!" was Eleanor's greeting as

the model juror jumped off the train. "I was terribly afraid you

wouldn't! I hope you didn't let any rascal get away from you?"

"No!" He laughed as he leaped into the motor beside her. "Not a rascal!

And I've got a surprise for you! I'm going to have my vacation after

all!"

"Really!" she cried, delighted. "You clever boy! How did you manage it?"

"Well," he answered a little shamefacedly as he lit a cigarette, "the

fact is that when the jury I was on returned their verdict this

afternoon the judge said he wouldn't require our services any longer."

* * * * *

It was at about the same moment that two other good and true friends

stood at the foot of the steps leading up to Mr. Tutt's ramshackle front

door.

"Sorr!" Danny was saying in a trembling voice, the tears in his faded

eyes. "Sorr! I would go to jail a hundred years and more, so I would,

could I but hear again what they all said of me! Sure, I niver knew I

was any account at all, at all! And them sayin' what a fine man I was,

an' all! God bless ye, sorr! And whin ye stand, sorr, at the bar of

heaven before God, the Judge, and the jury of all his holy angels, if

there be none else to defend ye, sure old Danny Lowry'll be there to do

that same."