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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10440 ***
+
+TUTT AND MR. TUTT
+
+By Arthur Train
+
+1919
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE HUMAN ELEMENT
+
+MOCK HEN AND MOCK TURTLE
+
+SAMUEL AND DELILAH
+
+THE DOG ANDREW
+
+WILE _Versus_ GUILE
+
+HEPPLEWHITE TRAMP
+
+LALLAPALOOSA LIMITED
+
+
+
+
+The Human Element
+
+
+
+  Although men flatter themselves with their great actions,
+  they are not so often the result of great design as of chance.
+                                     --LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
+
+"He says he killed him, and that's all there is about it!" said Tutt to
+Mr. Tutt. "What are you going to do with a fellow like that?" The junior
+partner of the celebrated firm of Tutt & Tutt, attorneys and counselors
+at law, thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his yellow checked
+breeches and, balancing himself upon the heels of his patent-leather
+boots, gazed in a distressed, respectfully inquiring manner at his
+distinguished associate.
+
+"Yes," he repeated plaintively. "He don't make any bones about it at
+all. 'Sure, I killed him!' says he. 'And I'd kill him again, the ----!'
+I prefer not to quote his exact language. I've just come from the Tombs
+and had quite a talk with Serafino in the counsel room, with a
+gum-chewing keeper sitting in the corner watching me for fear I'd slip
+his prisoner a saw file or a shotgun or a barrel of poison. I'm all in!
+These murder cases drive me to drink, Mr. Tutt. I don't mind grand
+larceny, forgery, assault or even manslaughter--but murder gets my goat!
+And when you have a crazy Italian for a client who says he's glad he did
+it and would like to do it again--please excuse me! It isn't law; it's
+suicide!"
+
+He drew out a silk handkerchief ornamented with the colors of the
+Allies, and wiped his forehead despairingly.
+
+"Oh," remarked Mr. Tutt with entire good nature. "He's glad he did it
+and he's quite willing to be hanged!"
+
+"That's it in a nutshell!" replied Tutt.
+
+The senior partner of Tutt & Tutt ran his bony fingers through the lank
+gray locks over his left eye and tilted ceilingward the stogy between
+his thin lips. Then he leaned back in his antique swivel chair, locked
+his hands behind his head, elevated his long legs luxuriously, and
+crossed his feet upon the fourth volume of the American and English
+Encyclopedia of Law, which lay open upon the desk at Champerty and
+Maintenance. Even in this inelegant and relaxed posture he somehow
+managed to maintain the air of picturesque dignity which always made his
+tall, ungainly figure noticeable in any courtroom. Indubitably Mr.
+Ephraim Tutt suggested a past generation, the suggestion being
+accentuated by a slight pedantry of diction a trifle out of character
+with the rushing age in which he saw fit to practise his time-honored
+profession. "Cheer up, Tutt," said he, pushing a box of stogies toward
+his partner with the toe of his congress boot. "Have a weed?"
+
+Since in the office of Tutt & Tutt such an invitation like those of
+royalty, was equivalent to a command, Tutt acquiesced.
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Tutt," said Tutt, looking about vaguely for a match.
+
+"That conscienceless brat of a Willie steals 'em all," growled Mr. Tutt.
+"Ring the bell."
+
+Tutt obeyed. He was a short, brisk little man with a pronounced
+abdominal convexity, and he maintained toward his superior, though but a
+few years his junior, a mingled attitude of awe, admiration and
+affection such as a dickey bird might adopt toward a distinguished owl.
+
+This attitude was shared by the entire office force. Inside the ground
+glass of the outer door Ephraim Tutt was king. To Tutt the opinion of
+Mr. Tutt upon any subject whatsoever was law, even if the courts might
+have held to the contrary. To Tutt he was the eternal fount of wisdom,
+culture and morality. Yet until Mr. Tutt finally elucidated his views
+Tutt did not hesitate to hold conditional if temporary opinions of his
+own. Briefly their relations were symbolized by the circumstance that
+while Tutt always addressed his senior partner as "Mr. Tutt," the latter
+accosted him simply as "Tutt." In a word there was only one Mr. Tutt in
+the firm of Tutt & Tutt.
+
+But so far as that went there was only one Tutt. On the theory that a
+lily cannot be painted, the estate of one seemingly was as dignified as
+that of the other. At any rate there never was and never had been any
+confusion or ambiguity arising out of the matter since the day, twenty
+years before, when Tutt had visited Mr. Tutt's law office in search of
+employment. Mr. Tutt was just rising into fame as a police-court lawyer.
+Tutt had only recently been admitted to the bar, having abandoned his
+native city of Bangor, Maine, for the metropolis.
+
+"And may I ask why you should come to me?" Mr. Tutt had demanded
+severely from behind the stogy, which even at that early date had been
+as much a part of his facial anatomy as his long ruminative nose. "Why
+the devil should you come to me? I am nobody, sir--nobody! In this great
+city certainly there are thousands far more qualified than I to further
+your professional and financial advancement."
+
+"Because," answered the inspired Tutt with modesty, "I feel that with
+you I should be associated with a good name."
+
+That had settled the matter. They bore no relationship to one another,
+but they were the only Tutts in the city and there seemed to be a
+certain propriety in their hanging together. Neither had regretted it
+for a moment, and as the years passed they became indispensable to each
+other. They were the necessary component parts of a harmonious legal
+whole. Mr. Tutt was the brains and the voice, while Tutt was the eyes
+and legs of a combination that at intervals--rare ones, it must be
+confessed--made the law tremble, sometimes in fear and more often with
+joy.
+
+At first, speaking figuratively, Tutt merely carried Mr. Tutt's
+bag--rode on his coat tails, as it were; but as time went on his
+activity, ingenuity and industry made him indispensable and led to a
+junior partnership. Tutt prepared the cases for Mr. Tutt to try. Both
+were well versed in the law if they were not profound lawyers, but as
+the origin of the firm was humble, their practise was of a miscellaneous
+character.
+
+"Never turn down a case," was Tutt's motto.
+
+"Our duty as sworn officers of the judicial branch of the Government
+renders it incumbent upon us to perform whatever services our clients'
+exigencies demand," was Mr. Tutt's way of putting it.
+
+In the end it amounted to exactly the same thing. As a result, in
+addition to their own clientele, other members of the bar who found
+themselves encumbered with matters which for one reason or another they
+preferred not to handle formed the habit of turning them over to Tutt &
+Tutt. A never-ending stream of peculiar cases flowed through the office,
+each leaving behind it some residuum of golden dust, however small. The
+stately or, as an unkind observer might have put it, the ramshackly form
+of the senior partner was a constant figure in all the courts, from that
+of the coroner on the one hand to the appellate tribunals upon the
+other. It was immaterial to him what the case was about--whether it
+dealt with the "next eventual estate" or the damages for a dog bite--so
+long as he was paid and Tutt prepared it. Hence Tutt & Tutt prospered.
+And as the law, like any other profession requires jacks-of-all-trades,
+the firm acquired a certain peculiar professional standing of its own,
+and enjoyed the good will of the bar as a whole.
+
+They had the reputation of being sound lawyers if not overafflicted with
+a sense of professional dignity, whose word was better than their bond,
+yet who, faithful to their clients' interests knew no mercy and gave no
+quarter. They took and pressed cases which other lawyers dared not touch
+lest they should be defiled--and nobody seemed to think any the less of
+them for so doing. They raised points that made the refinements of the
+ancient schoolmen seem blunt in comparison. No respecters of persons,
+they harried the rich and taunted the powerful, and would have as soon
+jailed a bishop or a judge as a pickpocket if he deserved it. Between
+them they knew more kinds of law than most of their professional
+brethren, and as Mr. Tutt was a bookworm and a seeker after legal and
+other lore their dusty old library was full of hidden treasures, which
+on frequent occasions were unearthed to entertain the jury or delight
+the bench. They were loyal friends, fearsome enemies, high chargers, and
+maintained their unique position in spite of the fact that at one time
+or another they had run close to the shadowy line which divides the
+ethical from that which is not. Yet Mr. Tutt had brought disbarment
+proceedings against many lawyers in his time and--what is more--had them
+disbarred.
+
+"Leave old Tutt alone," was held sage advice, and when other lawyers
+desired to entertain the judiciary they were apt to invite Mr. Tutt to
+be of the party. And Tutt gloried in the glories of Mr. Tutt.
+
+"That's it!" repeated Tutt as he lit his stogy, which flared up like a
+burning bush, the cub of a Willie having foraged successfully in the
+outer office for a match. "He's willing to be hanged or damned or
+anything else just for the sake of putting a bullet through the other
+fellow!"
+
+"What was the name of the unfortunate deceased?"
+
+"Tomasso Crocedoro--a barber."
+
+"That is almost a defense in itself," mused Mr. Tutt. "Anyhow, if I've
+got to defend Angelo for shooting Tomasso you might as well give me a
+short scenario of the melodrama. By the way, are we retained or assigned
+by the court?"
+
+"Assigned," chirped Tutt.
+
+"So that all we'll get out of it is about enough to keep me in stogies
+for a couple of months!"
+
+"And--if he's convicted, as of course he will be--a good chance of
+losing our reputation as successful trial counsel. Why not beg off?"
+
+"Let me hear the story first," answered Mr. Tutt. "Angelo sounds like a
+good sport. I have a mild affection for him already."
+
+He reached into the lower compartment of his desk and lifted out a
+tumbler and a bottle of malt extract, which he placed carefully at his
+elbow. Then he leaned back again expectantly.
+
+"It is a simple and naive story," began Tutt, seating himself in the
+chair reserved for paying clients--that is to say, one which did not
+have the two front legs sawed off an inch or so in order to make
+lingering uncomfortable. "A plain, unvarnished tale. Our client is one
+who makes an honest living by blacking shoes near the entrance to the
+Brooklyn Bridge. He is one of several hundred original Tonys who conduct
+shoe-shining emporiums."
+
+"Emporia," corrected his partner, pouring out a tumbler of malt extract.
+
+"He formed an attachment for a certain young lady," went on Tutt,
+undisturbed, "who had previously had some sort of love affair with
+Crocedoro, as a result of which her social standing had become slightly
+impaired. In a word Tomasso jilted her. Angelo saw, pitied and loved
+her, took her for better or for worse, and married her."
+
+"For which," interjected Mr. Tutt, "he is entitled to everyone's
+respect."
+
+"Quite so!" agreed Tutt. "Now Tomasso, though not willing to marry the
+girl himself, seems to have resented the idea of having anyone else do
+so, and accordingly seized every opportunity which presented itself to
+twit Angelo about the matter."
+
+"Dog in the manger, so to speak," nodded Mr. Tutt.
+
+"He not only jeered at Angelo for marrying Rosalina but he began to
+hang about his discarded mistress again and scoff at her choice of a
+husband. But Rosalina gave him the cold shoulder, with the result that
+he became more and more insulting to Angelo. Finally one day our client
+made up his mind not to stand it any longer, secured a revolver, sought
+out Tomasso in his barber shop and put a bullet through his head. Now
+however much you may sympathize with Angelo as a man and a husband there
+isn't the slightest doubt that he killed Tomasso with every kind of
+deliberation and premeditation."
+
+"If the case is as you say," replied Mr. Tutt, replacing the bottle and
+tumbler within the lower drawer and flicking a stogy ash from his
+waistcoat, "the honorable justice who handed it to us is no friend of
+ours."
+
+"He isn't," assented his partner. "It was Babson and he hates Italians.
+Moreover, he stated in open court that he proposed to try the case
+himself next Monday and that we must be ready without fail."
+
+"So Babson did that to us!" growled Mr. Tutt. "Just like him. He'll pack
+the jury and charge our innocent Angelo into the middle of hades."
+
+"And O'Brien is the assistant district attorney in charge of the
+prosecution," mildly added Tutt. "But what can we do? We're assigned,
+we've got a guilty client, and we've got to defend him."
+
+"Have you set Bonnie Doon looking up witnesses?" asked Mr. Tutt. "I
+thought I saw him outside during the forenoon."
+
+"Yes," replied Tutt. "But Bonnie says it's the toughest case he ever had
+to handle in which to find any witnesses for the defense. There aren't
+any. Besides, the girl bought the gun and gave it to Angelo the same
+day."
+
+"How do you know that?" demanded Mr. Tutt, frowning.
+
+"Because she told me so herself," said Tutt. "She's outside if you want
+to see her."
+
+"I might as well give her what you call 'the once over,'" replied the
+senior partner.
+
+Tutt retired and presently returned half leading, half pushing a
+shrinking young Italian woman, shabbily dressed but with the features of
+one of Raphael's madonnas. She wore no hat and her hands and finger
+nails were far from clean, but from the folds of her black shawl her
+neck rose like a column of slightly discolored Carrara marble, upon
+which her head with its coils of heavy hair was poised with the grace of
+a sulky empress.
+
+"Come in, my child, and sit down," said Mr. Tutt kindly. "No, not in
+that one; in that one." He indicated the chair previously occupied by
+his junior. "You can leave us, Tutt. I want to talk to this young lady
+alone."
+
+The girl sat sullenly with averted face, showing in her attitude her
+instinctive feeling that all officers of the law, no matter upon which
+side they were supposed to be, were one and all engaged in a mysterious
+conspiracy of which she and her unfortunate Angelo were the victims. A
+few words from the old lawyer and she began to feel more confidence,
+however. No one, in fact, could help but realize at first glance Mr.
+Tutt's warmth of heart. The lines of his sunken cheeks if left to
+themselves automatically tended to draw together into a whimsical smile,
+and it required a positive act of will upon his part to adopt the stern
+and relentless look with which he was wont to glower down upon some
+unfortunate witness in cross-examination.
+
+Inside Mr. Tutt was a benign and rather mellow old fellow, with a dry
+sense of humor and a very keen knowledge of his fellow men. He made a
+good deal of money, but not having any wife or child upon which to
+lavish it he spent it all either on books or surreptitiously in quixotic
+gifts to friends or strangers whom he either secretly admired or whom he
+believed to be in need of money. There were vague traditions in the
+office of presents of bizarre and quite impossible clothes made to
+office boys and stenographers; of ex-convicts reoutfitted and sent
+rejoicing to foreign parts; of tramps gorged to repletion and then
+pumped dry of their adventures in Mr. Tutt's comfortable, dingy old
+library; of a fur coat suddenly clapped upon the rounded shoulders of
+old Scraggs, the antiquated scrivener in the accountant's cage in the
+outer office, whose alcoholic career, his employer alleged, was marked
+by a trail of empty rum kegs, each one flying the white flag of
+surrender.
+
+And yet old Ephraim Tutt could on occasion be cold as chiseled steel,
+and as hard. Any appeal from a child, a woman or an outcast always met
+with his ready response; but for the rich, successful and those in power
+he seemed to entertain a deep and enduring grudge. He would burn the
+midnight oil with equal zest to block a crooked deal on the part of a
+wealthy corporation or to devise a means to extricate some no less
+crooked rascal from the clutches of the law, provided that the rascal
+seemed the victim of hard luck, inheritance or environment. His
+weather-beaten conscience was as elastic as his heart. Indeed when under
+the expansive influence of a sufficient quantity of malt extract or
+ancient brandy from the cellaret on his library desk he had sometimes
+been heard to enunciate the theory that there was very little difference
+between the people in jail and those who were not.
+
+He would work weeks without compensation to argue the case of some
+guilty rogue before the Court of Appeals, in order, as he said, to
+"settle the law," when his only real object was to get the miserable
+fellow out of jail and send him back to his wife and children. He went
+through life with a twinkling eye and a quizzical smile, and when he did
+wrong he did it--if such a thing is possible--in a way to make people
+better. He was a dangerous adversary and judges were afraid of him, not
+because he ever tricked or deceived them but because of the audacity and
+novelty of his arguments which left them speechless. He had the
+assurance that usually comes with age and with a lifelong knowledge of
+human nature, yet apparently he had always been possessed of it.
+
+Once a judge having assigned him to look out for the interests of a
+lawyerless prisoner suggested that he take his new client into the
+adjoining jury room and give him the best advice he could. Mr. Tutt was
+gone so long that the judge became weary, and to find out what had
+become of him sent an officer, who found the lawyer reading a newspaper
+beside an open window, but no sign of the prisoner. In great excitement
+the officer reported the situation to the judge, who ordered Mr. Tutt to
+the bar.
+
+"What has become of the prisoner?" demanded His Honor.
+
+"I do not know," replied the lawyer calmly. "The window was open and I
+suspect that he used it as a means of exit."
+
+"Are you not aware that you are a party to an escape--a crime?" hotly
+challenged the judge.
+
+"I most respectfully deny the charge," returned Mr. Tutt.
+
+"I told you to take the prisoner into that room and give him the best
+advice you could."
+
+"I did!" interjected the lawyer.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed the judge. "You admit it! What advice did you give him?"
+
+"The law does not permit me to state that," answered Mr. Tutt in his
+most dignified tones. "That is a privileged communication from the
+inviolate obligation to preserve which only my client can release me--I
+cannot betray a sacred trust. Yet I might quote Cervantes and remind
+Your Honor that 'Fortune leaves always some door open to come at a
+remedy!'"
+
+Now as he gazed at the tear-stained cheeks of the girl-wife whose
+husband had committed murder in defense of her self-respect, he vowed
+that so far as he was able he would fight to save him. The more
+desperate the case the more desperate her need of him--the greater the
+duty and the greater his honor if successful.
+
+"Believe that I am your friend, my dear!" he assured her. "You and I
+must work together to set Angelo free."
+
+"It's no use," she returned less defiantly. "He done it. He won't deny
+it."
+
+"But he is entitled to his defense," urged Mr. Tutt quietly.
+
+"He won't make no defense."
+
+"We must make one for him."
+
+"There ain't none. He just went and killed him."
+
+Mr. Tutt shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"There is always a defense," he answered with conviction. "Anyhow we
+can't let him be convicted without making an effort. Will they be able
+to prove where he got the pistol?"
+
+"He didn't get the pistol," retorted the girl with a glint in her black
+eyes. "I got it. I'd ha' shot him myself if he hadn't. I said I was
+goin' to, but he wouldn't let me."
+
+"Dear, dear!" sighed Mr. Tutt. "What a case! Both of you trying to see
+which could get hanged first!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The inevitable day of Angelo's trial came. Upon the bench the Honorable
+Mr. Justice Babson glowered down upon the cowering defendant flanked by
+his distinguished counsel, Tutt & Tutt, and upon the two hundred good
+and true talesmen who, "all other business laid aside," had been dragged
+from the comfort of their homes and the important affairs of their
+various livelihoods to pass upon the merits of the issue duly joined
+between The People of the State of New York and Angelo Serafino,
+charged with murder.
+
+One by one as his name was called each took his seat in the witness
+chair upon the _voir dire_ and perjured himself like a gentleman in
+order to escape from service, shyly confessing to an ineradicable
+prejudice against the entire Italian race and this defendant in
+particular, and to an antipathy against capital punishment which, so
+each unhesitatingly averred, would render him utterly incapable of
+satisfactorily performing his functions if selected as a juryman. Hardly
+one, however, but was routed by the Machiavellian Babson. Hardly one,
+however ingenious his excuse--whether about to be married or immediately
+become a father, whether engaged in a business deal involving millions
+which required his instant and personal attention whether in the last
+stages of illness or obligated to be present at the bedside of a dying
+wife--but was browbeaten into helplessness and ordered back to take his
+place amidst the waiting throng of recalcitrant citizens so disinclined
+to do their part in elevating that system of trial by jury the failure
+of which at other times they so loudly condemned.
+
+This trifling preliminary having been concluded, the few jurymen who had
+managed to wriggle through the judicial sieve were allowed to withdraw,
+the balance of the calendar was adjourned, those spectators who were
+standing up were ordered to sit down and those already sitting down were
+ordered to sit somewhere else, the prisoners in the rear of the room
+were sent back to the Tombs to await their fate upon some later day, the
+reporters gathered rapaciously about the table just behind the
+defendant, a corpulent Ganymede in the person of an aged court officer
+bore tremblingly an opaque glass of yellow drinking water to the bench,
+O'Brien the prosecutor blew his nose with a fanfare of trumpets, Mr.
+Tutt smiled an ingratiating smile which seemed to clasp the whole world
+to his bosom--and the real battle commenced; a game in which every card
+in the pack had been stacked against the prisoner by an unscrupulous
+pair of officials whose only aim was to maintain their record of
+convictions of "murder in the first" and who laid their plans with
+ingenuity and carried them out with skill and enthusiasm to habitual
+success.
+
+They were a grand little pair of convictors, were Babson and O'Brien,
+and woe unto that man who was brought before them. It was even alleged
+by the impious that when Babson was in doubt what to do or what O'Brien
+wanted him to do the latter communicated the information to his
+conspirator upon the bench by a system of preconcerted signals. But
+indeed no such system was necessary, for the judge's part in the drama
+was merely to sustain his colleague's objections and overrule those of
+his opponent, after which he himself delivered the _coup de grace_ with
+unerring insight and accuracy. When Babson got through charging a jury
+the latter had always in fact been instructed in brutal and sneering
+tones to convict the defendant or forever after to regard themselves as
+disloyal citizens, oath violators and outcasts though the stenographic
+record of his remarks would have led the reader thereof to suppose that
+this same judge was a conscientious, tender-hearted merciful lover of
+humanity, whose sensitive soul quivered at the mere thought of a prison
+cell, and who meticulously sought to surround the defendant with every
+protection the law could interpose against the imputation of guilt.
+
+He was, as Tutt put it, "a dangerous old cuss." O'Brien was even worse.
+He was a bull-necked, bullet-headed, pugnosed young ruffian with beery
+eyes, who had an insatiable ambition and a still greater conceit, but
+who had devised a blundering, innocent, helpless way of conducting
+himself before a jury that deceived them into believing that his
+inexperience required their help and his disinterestedness their loyal
+support. Both of them were apparently fair-minded, honest public
+servants; both in reality were subtly disingenuous to a degree beyond
+ordinary comprehension, for years of practise had made them sensitive to
+every whimsy of emotion and taught them how to play upon the psychology
+of the jury as the careless zephyr softly draws its melody from the
+aeolian harp. In a word they were a precious pair of crooks, who for
+their own petty selfish ends played fast and loose with liberty, life
+and death.
+
+Both of them hated Mr. Tutt, who had more than once made them ridiculous
+before the jury and shown them up before the Court of Appeals, and the
+old lawyer recognized well the fact that these two legal wolves were in
+revenge planning to tear him and his helpless client to pieces, having
+first deliberately selected him as a victim and assigned him to
+officiate at a ceremony which, however just so far as its consummation
+might be concerned, was nothing less in its conduct than judicial
+murder. Now they were laughing at him in their sleeves, for Mr. Tutt
+enjoyed the reputation of never having defended a client who had been
+convicted of murder, and that spotless reputation was about to be
+annihilated forever.
+
+Though the defense had thirty peremptory challenges Mr. Tutt well knew
+that Babson would sustain the prosecutor's objections for bias until the
+jury box would contain the twelve automata personally selected by
+O'Brien in advance from what Tutt called "the army of the gibbet." Yet
+the old war horse outwardly maintained a calm and genial exterior,
+betraying none of the apprehension which in fact existed beneath his
+mask of professional composure. The court officer rapped sharply for
+silence.
+
+"Are you quite ready to proceed with the case?" inquired the judge with
+a courtesy in which was ill concealed a leer of triumph.
+
+"Yes, Your Honor," responded Mr. Tutt in velvet tones.
+
+"Call the first talesman!"
+
+The fight was on, the professional duel between traditional enemies, in
+which the stake--a human life--was in truth the thing of least concern,
+had begun. Yet no casual observer would have suspected the actual
+significance of what was going on or the part that envy, malice,
+uncharitableness, greed, selfishness and ambition were playing in it. He
+would have seen merely a partially filled courtroom flooded with
+sunshine from high windows, an attentive and dignified judge in a black
+silk robe sitting upon a dais below which a white-haired clerk drew
+little slips of paper from a wheel and summoned jurymen to a service
+which outwardly bore no suggestion of a tragedy.
+
+He would have seen a somewhat unprepossessing assistant district
+attorney lounging in front of the jury box, taking apparently no great
+interest in the proceedings, and a worried-looking young Italian sitting
+at the prisoner's table between a rubicund little man with a round red
+face and a tall, grave, longish-haired lawyer with a frame not unlike
+that of Abraham Lincoln, over whose wrinkled face played from time to
+time the suggestion of a smile. Behind a balustrade were the reporters,
+scribbling on rough sheets of yellow paper. Then came rows of benches,
+upon the first of which, as near the jury box as possible, sat Rosalina
+in a new bombazine dress and wearing a large imitation gold cross
+furnished for the occasion out of the legal property room of Tutt &
+Tutt. Occasionally she sobbed softly. The bulk of the spectators
+consisted of rejected talesmen, witnesses, law clerks, professional
+court loafers and women seeking emotional sensations which they had not
+the courage or the means to satisfy otherwise. The courtroom was
+comparatively quiet, the silence broken only by the droning voice of the
+clerk and the lazy interplay of question and answer between talesman and
+lawyer.
+
+Yet beneath the humdrum, casual, almost indifferent manner in which the
+proceedings seemed to be conducted each side was watching every move
+made by the other with the tension of a tiger ready to spring upon its
+prey. Babson and O'Brien were engaged in forcing upon the defense a jury
+composed entirely of case-hardened convictors, while Tutt & Tutt were
+fighting desperately to secure one so heterogeneous in character that
+they could hope for a disagreement.
+
+By recess thirty-seven talesmen had been examined without a foreman
+having been selected, and Mr. Tutt had exhausted twenty-nine of his
+thirty challenges, as against three for the prosecution. The court
+reconvened and a new talesman was called, resembling in appearance a
+professional hangman who for relaxation leaned toward the execution of
+Italians. Mr. Tutt examined him for bias and every known form of
+incompetency, but in vain--then challenged peremptorily. Thirty
+challenges! He looked on Tutt with slightly raised eyebrows.
+
+"Patrick Henry Walsh--to the witness chair, please, Mr. Walsh!" called
+the clerk, drawing another slip from the box.
+
+Mr. Walsh rose and came forward heavily, while Tutt & Tutt trembled. He
+was the one man they were afraid of--an old-timer celebrated as a
+bulwark of the prosecution, who could always be safely counted upon to
+uphold the arms of the law, who regarded with reverence all officials
+connected with the administration of justice, and from whose
+composition all human emotions had been carefully excluded by the
+Creator. He was a square-jawed, severe, heavily built person, with a
+long relentless upper lip, cheeks ruddy from the open air; engaged in
+the contracting business; and he had a brogue that would have charmed a
+mavis off a tree. Mr. Tutt looked hopelessly at Tutt.
+
+Babson and O'Brien had won.
+
+Once more Mr. Tutt struggled against his fate. Was Mr. Walsh sure he had
+no prejudices against Italians or foreigners generally? Quite. Did he
+know anyone connected with the case? No. Had he any objection to the
+infliction of capital punishment? None whatever. The defense had
+exhausted all its challenges. Mr. Tutt turned to the prospective foreman
+with an endearing smile.
+
+"Mr. Walsh," said he in caressing tones, "you are precisely the type of
+man in whom I feel the utmost confidence in submitting the fate of my
+client. I believe that you will make an ideal foreman I hardly need to
+ask you whether you will accord the defendant the benefit of every
+reasonable doubt, and if you have such a doubt will acquit him."
+
+Mr. Walsh gazed suspiciously at Mr. Tutt.
+
+"Sure," he responded dryly, "Oi'll give him the benefit o' the doubt,
+but if Oi think he's guilty Oi'll convict him."
+
+Mr. Tutt shivered.
+
+"Of course! Of course! That would be your duty! You are entirely
+satisfactory, Mr. Walsh!"
+
+"Mr. Walsh is more than satisfactory to the prosecution!" intoned
+O'Brien.
+
+"Be sworn, Mr. Walsh," directed the clerk; and the filling of the jury
+box in the memorable case of People versus Serafino was begun.
+
+"That chap doesn't like us," whispered Mr. Tutt to Tutt. "I laid it on a
+bit too thick."
+
+In fact, Mr. Walsh had already entered upon friendly relations with Mr.
+O'Brien, and as the latter helped him arrange a place for his hat and
+coat the foreman cast a look tinged with malevolence at the defendant
+and his counsel, as if to say "You can't fool me. I know the kind of
+tricks you fellows are all up to."
+
+O'Brien could not repress a grin. The clerk drew forth another name.
+
+"Mr. Tompkins--will you take the chair?"
+
+Swiftly the jury was impaneled. O'Brien challenged everybody who did not
+suit his fancy, while Tutt & Tutt sat helpless.
+
+Ten minutes and the clerk called the roll, beginning with Mr. Walsh, and
+they were solemnly sworn a true verdict to find, and settled themselves
+to the task.
+
+The mills of the gods had begun to grind, and Angelo was being dragged
+to his fate as inexorably and as surely, with about as much chance of
+escape, as a log that is being drawn slowly toward a buzz saw.
+
+"You may open the case, Mr. O'Brien," announced Judge Babson, leaning
+back and wiping his glasses.
+
+Then surreptitiously he began to read his mail as his fellow conspirator
+undertook to tell the jury what it was all about. One by one the
+witnesses were called--the coroner's physician, the policeman who had
+arrested Angelo outside the barber shop with the smoking pistol in his
+hand, the assistant barber who had seen the shooting, the customer who
+was being shaved. Each drove a spike into poor Angelo's legal coffin.
+Mr. Tutt could not shake them. This evidence was plain. He had come into
+the shop, accused Crocedoro of making his wife's life unbearable
+and--shot him.
+
+Yet Mr. Tutt did not lose any of his equanimity. With the tips of his
+long fingers held lightly together in front of him, and swaying slightly
+backward and forward upon the balls of his feet, he smiled benignly down
+upon the customer and the barber's assistant as if these witnesses were
+merely unfortunate in not being able to disclose to the jury all the
+facts. His manner indicated that a mysterious and untold tragedy lay
+behind what they had heard, a tragedy pregnant with primordial vital
+passions, involving the most sacred of human relationships, which when
+known would rouse the spirit of chivalry of the entire panel.
+
+On cross-examination the barber testified that Angelo had said: "You
+maka small of my wife long enough!"
+
+"Ah!" murmured Mr. Tutt, waving an arm in the direction of Rosalina. Did
+the witness recognize the defendant's young wife? The jury showed
+interest and examined the sobbing Rosalina with approval. Yes, the
+witness recognized her. Did the witness know to what incident or
+incidents the defendant had referred by his remark--what the deceased
+Crocedoro had done to Rosalina--if anything? No, the witness did not.
+Mr. Tutt looked significantly at the row of faces in the jury box.
+
+Then leaning forward he asked significantly: "Did you see Crocedoro
+threaten the defendant with his razor?"
+
+"I object!" shouted O'Brien, springing to his feet. "The question is
+improper. There is no suggestion that Crocedoro did anything. The
+defendant can testify to that if he wants to!"
+
+"Oh, let him answer!" drawled the judge.
+
+"No--" began the witness.
+
+"Ah!" cried Mr. Tutt. "You did not see Crocedoro threaten the defendant
+with his razor! That will do!"
+
+But forewarned by this trifling experience, Mr. O'Brien induced the
+customer, the next witness, to swear that Crocedoro had not in fact made
+any move whatever with his razor toward Angelo, who had deliberately
+raised his pistol and shot him.
+
+Mr. Tutt rose to the cross-examination with the same urbanity as before.
+Where was the witness standing? The witness said he wasn't standing.
+Well, where was he sitting, then? In the chair.
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Mr. Tutt triumphantly. "Then you had your back to the
+shooting!"
+
+In a moment O'Brien had the witness practically rescued by the
+explanation that he had seen the whole thing in the glass in front of
+him. The firm of Tutt & Tutt uttered in chorus a groan of outraged
+incredulity. Several jurymen were seen to wrinkle their foreheads in
+meditation. Mr. Tutt had sown a tiny--infinitesimally tiny, to be
+sure--seed of doubt, not as to the killing at all but as to the complete
+veracity of the witness.
+
+And then O'Brien made his coup.
+
+"Rosalina Serafino--take the witness stand!" he ordered.
+
+He would get from her own lips the admission that she bought the pistol
+and gave it to Angelo!
+
+But with an outburst of indignation that would have done credit to the
+elder Booth Mr. Tutt was immediately on his feet protesting against the
+outrage, the barbarity, the heartlessness, the illegality of making a
+wife testify against her husband! His eyes flashed, his disordered locks
+waved in picturesque synchronization with his impassioned gestures
+Rosalina, her beautiful golden cross rising and falling hysterically
+upon her bosom, took her seat in the witness chair like a frightened,
+furtive creature of the woods, gazed for one brief instant upon the
+twelve men in the jury box with those great black eyes of hers, and then
+with burning cheeks buried her face in her handkerchief.
+
+"I protest against this piece of cruelty!" cried Mr. Tutt in a voice
+vibrating with indignation. "This is worthy of the Inquisition. Will not
+even the cross upon her breast protect her from being compelled to
+reveal those secrets that are sacred to wife and motherhood? Can the law
+thus indirectly tear the seal of confidence from the Confessional? Mr.
+O'Brien, you go too far! There are some things that even you--brilliant
+as you are--may not trifle with."
+
+A juryman nodded. The eleven others, being more intelligent, failed to
+understand what he was talking about.
+
+"Mr. Tutt's objection is sound--if he wishes to press it," remarked the
+judge satirically. "You may step down, madam. The law will not compel a
+wife to testify against her husband. Have you any more witnesses, Mister
+District Attorney?"
+
+"The People rest," said Mr. O'Brien. "The case is with the defense."
+
+Mr. Tutt rose with solemnity.
+
+"The court will, I suppose, grant me a moment or two to confer with my
+client?" he inquired. Babson bowed and the jury saw the lawyer lean
+across the defendant and engage his partner in what seemed to be a
+weighty deliberation.
+
+"I killa him! I say so!" muttered Angelo feebly to Mr. Tutt.
+
+"Shut up, you fool!" hissed Tutt, grabbing him by the leg. "Keep still
+or I'll wring your neck."
+
+"If I could reach that old crook up on the bench I would twist his
+nose," remarked Mr. Tutt to Tutt with an air of consulting him about the
+Year Books. "And as for that criminal O'Brien, I'll get him yet!"
+
+With great dignity Mr. Tutt then rose and again addressed the court:
+
+"We have decided under all the circumstances of this most extraordinary
+case, Your Honor, not to put in any defense. I shall not call the
+defendant--"
+
+"I killa him--" began Angelo, breaking loose from Tutt and struggling
+to his feet. It was a horrible movement. But Tutt clapped his hand over
+Angelo's mouth and forced him back into his seat.
+
+"The defense rests," said Mr. Tutt, ignoring the interruption. "So far
+as we are concerned the case is closed."
+
+"Both sides rest!" snapped Babson. "How long do you want to sum up?"
+
+Mr. Tutt looked at the clock, which pointed to three. The regular hour
+of adjournment was at four. Delay was everything in a case like this. A
+juryman might die suddenly overnight or fall grievously ill; or some
+legal accident might occur which would necessitate declaring a mistrial.
+There is, always hope in a criminal case so long as the verdict has not
+actually been returned and the jury polled and discharged. If possible
+he must drag his summing up over until the following day. Something
+might happen.
+
+"About two hours, Your Honor," he replied.
+
+The jury stirred impatiently. It was clear that they regarded a two-hour
+speech from him under the circumstances as an imposition. But Babson
+wished to preserve the fiction of impartiality.
+
+"Very well," said he. "You may sum up until four-thirty, and have half
+an hour more to-morrow morning. See that the doors are closed, Captain
+Phelan. We do not want any interruption while the summations are going
+on."
+
+"All out that's goin' out! Everybody out that's got no business, with
+the court!" bellowed Captain Phelan.
+
+Mr. Tutt with an ominous heightening of the pulse realized that the real
+ordeal was at last at hand, for the closing of the case had wrought in
+the old lawyer an instant metamorphosis. With the words "The defense
+rests" every suggestion of the mountebank, the actor or the shyster had
+vanished. The awful responsibility under which he labored; the
+overwhelming and damning evidence against his client; the terrible
+consequences of the least mistake that he might make; the fact that only
+the sword of his ability, and his alone, stood between Angelo and a
+hideous death by fire in the electric chair--sobered and chastened him.
+Had he been a praying man in that moment he would have prayed--but he
+was not.
+
+For his client was foredoomed--foredoomed not only by justice but also
+by trickery and guile--and was being driven slowly but surely towards
+the judicial shambles. For what had he succeeded in adducing in his
+behalf? Nothing but the purely apocryphal speculation that the dead
+barber might have threatened Angelo with his razor and that the
+witnesses might possibly have drawn somewhat upon their imaginations in
+giving the details of their testimony. A sorry defense! Indeed, no
+defense at all. All the sorrier in that he had not even been able to get
+before the jury the purely sentimental excuses for the homicide, for he
+could only do this by calling Rosalina to the stand, which would have
+enabled the prosecution to cross-examine her in regard to the purchase
+of the pistol and the delivery of it to her husband--the strongest
+evidence of premeditation. Yet he must find some argument, some plea,
+some thread of reason upon which the jury might hang a disagreement or a
+verdict in a lesser degree.
+
+With a shuffling of feet the last of the crowd pushed through the big
+oak doors and they were closed and locked. An officer brought a corroded
+tumbler of brackish water and placed it in front of Mr. Tutt. The judge
+leaned forward with malicious courtesy. The jury settled themselves and
+turned toward the lawyer attentively yet defiantly, hardening their
+hearts already against his expected appeals to sentiment. O'Brien,
+ostentatiously producing a cigarette, lounged out through the side door
+leading to the jury room and prison cells. The clerk began copying his
+records. The clock ticked loudly.
+
+And Mr. Tutt rose and began going through the empty formality of
+attempting to discuss the evidence in such a way as to excuse or
+palliate Angelo's crime. For Angelo's guilt of murder in the first
+degree was so plain that it had never for one moment been in the
+slightest doubt. Whatever might be said for his act from the point of
+view of human emotion only made his motive and responsibility under the
+statues all the clearer. There was not even the unwritten law to appeal
+to. Yet there was fundamentally a genuine defense, a defense that could
+not be urged even by innuendo: the defense that no accused ought to be
+convicted upon any evidence whatever, no matter how conclusive in a
+trial conducted with essential though wholly concealed unfairness.
+
+Such was the case of Angelo. No one could demonstrate it, no one could
+with safety even hint at it; any charge that the court was anything but
+impartial would prove a boomerang to the defense; and yet the facts
+remained that the whole proceeding from start to finish had been
+conducted unfairly and with illegality, that the jury had been duped and
+deceived, and that the pretense that the guilty Angelo had been given an
+impartial trial was a farce. Every word of the court had been an
+accusation, a sneer, an acceptance of the defendant's guilt as a matter
+of course, an abuse far more subversive of our theory of government than
+the mere acquittal of a single criminal, for it struck at the very
+foundations of that liberty which the fathers had sought the shores of
+the unknown continent to gain.
+
+Unmistakably the proceedings had been conducted throughout upon the
+theory that the defendant must prove his innocence and that presumably
+he was a guilty man; and this as well as his own impression that the
+evidence was conclusive the judge had subtly conveyed to the jury in his
+tone of speaking, his ironical manner and his facial expression. Guilty
+or not Angelo was being railroaded. That was the real defense--the
+defense that could never be established even in any higher court, except
+perhaps in the highest court of all, which is not of earth.
+
+And so Mr. Tutt, boiling with suppressed indignation weighed down with
+the sense of his responsibility, fully realizing his inability to say
+anything based on the evidence in behalf of his client, feeling twenty
+years older than he had during the verbal duel of the actual
+cross-examination, rose with a genial smile upon his puckered old face
+and with a careless air almost of gaiety, which seemed to indicate the
+utmost confidence and determination, and with a graceful compliment to
+his arch enemy upon the bench and the yellow dog who had hunted with
+him, assured the jury that the defendant had had the fairest of fair
+trials and that he, Mr. Tutt, would now proceed to demonstrate to their
+satisfaction his client's entire innocence; nay, would show them that he
+was a man not only guiltless of any wrong-doing but worthy of their
+hearty commendation.
+
+With jokes not too unseemly for the occasion he overcame their
+preliminary distrust and put them in a good humor. He gave a historical
+dissertation upon the law governing homicide, on the constitutional
+rights of American citizens, on the laws of naturalization, marriage,
+and the domestic relations; waxed eloquent over Italy and the Italian
+character, mentioned Cavour, Garibaldi and Mazzini in a way to imply
+that Angelo was their lineal descendant; and quoted from D'Annunzio back
+to Horace, Cicero and Plautus.
+
+"Bunk! Nothing but bunk!" muttered Tutt, studying the twelve faces
+before him. "And they all know it!"
+
+But Mr. Tutt was nothing if not interesting. These prosaic citizens of
+New York County, these saloon and hotel keepers, these contractors,
+insurance agents and salesmen were learning something of history, of
+philosophy, of art and beauty. They liked it. They felt they were
+hearing something worth while, as indeed they were, and they forgot all
+about Angelo and the unfortunate Crocedoro in their admiration for Mr.
+Tutt, who had lifted them out of the dingy sordid courtroom into the
+sunlight of the Golden Age. And as he led them through Greek and Roman
+literature, through the early English poets, through Shakespeare and the
+King James version, down to John Galsworthy and Rupert Brooke, he
+brought something that was noble, fine and sweet into their grubby
+materialistic lives; and at the same time the hand of the clock crept
+steadily on until he and it reached Château-Thierry and half past four
+together.
+
+"Bang!" went Babson's gavel just as Mr. Tutt was leading Mr. Walsh, Mr.
+Tompkins and the others through the winding paths of the Argonne forests
+with tin helmets on their heads in the struggle for liberty.
+
+"You may conclude your address in the morning, Mr. Tutt," said the judge
+with supreme unction. "Adjourn court!"
+
+Gray depression weighed down Mr. Tutt's soul as he trudged homeward. He
+had made a good speech, but it had had absolutely nothing to do with the
+case, which the jury would perceive as soon as they thought it over. It
+was a confession of defeat. Angelo would be convicted of murder in the
+first degree and electrocuted, Rosalina would be a widow, and somehow he
+would be in a measure responsible for it. The tragedy of human life
+appalled him. He felt very old, as old as the dead-and-gone authors from
+whom he had quoted with such remarkable facility. He belonged with them;
+he was too old to practise his profession.
+
+"Law, Mis' Tutt," expostulated Miranda, his ancient negro handmaiden, as
+he pushed away the chop and mashed potato, and even his glass of claret,
+untasted, in his old-fashioned dining room on West Twenty-third Street,
+"you ain't got no appetite at all! You's sick, Mis' Tutt."
+
+"No, no, Miranda!" he replied weakly. "I'm just getting old."
+
+"You's mighty spry for an old man yit," she protested. "You kin make dem
+lawyer men hop mighty high when you tries. Heh, heh! I reckon dey ain't
+got nuffin' on my Mistah Tutt!"
+
+Upstairs in his library Mr. Tutt strode up and down before the empty
+grate, smoking stogy after stogy, trying to collect his thoughts and
+devise something to say upon the morrow, but all his ideas had flown.
+There wasn't anything to say. Yet he swore Angelo should not be offered
+up as a victim upon the altar of unscrupulous ambition. The hours passed
+and the old banjo clock above the mantel wheezed eleven, twelve; then
+one, two. Still he paced up and down, up and down in a sort of trance.
+The air of the library, blue with the smoke of countless stogies,
+stifled and suffocated him. Moreover he discovered that he was hungry.
+He descended to the pantry and salvaged a piece of pie, then unchained
+the front door and stepped forth into the soft October night.
+
+A full moon hung over the deserted streets of the sleeping city. In
+divers places, widely scattered, the twelve good and true men were
+snoring snugly in bed. To-morrow they would send Angelo to his death
+without a quiver. He shuddered, striding on, he knew not whither, into
+the night. His brain no longer worked. He had become a peripatetic
+automaton self-dedicated to nocturnal perambulation.
+
+With his pockets bulging with stogies and one glowing like a headlight
+in advance of him he wandered in a sort of coma up Tenth Avenue, crossed
+to the Riverside Drive, mounted Morningside Heights, descended again
+through the rustling alleys of Central Park, and found himself at Fifth
+Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street just as the dawn was paling the electric
+lamps to a sickly yellow and the trees were casting strange unwonted
+shadows in the wrong direction. He was utterly exhausted. He looked
+eagerly for some place to sit down, but the doors of the hotels were
+dark and tightly closed and it was too cold to remain without moving in
+the open air.
+
+Down Fifth Avenue he trudged, intending to go home and snatch a few
+hours' sleep before court should open, but each block seemed miles in
+length. Presently he approached the cathedral, whose twin spires were
+tinted with reddish gold. The sky had become a bright blue. Suddenly all
+the street lamps went out. He told himself that he had never realized
+before the beauty of those two towers reaching up toward eternity,
+typifying man's aspiration for the spiritual. He remembered having heard
+that a cathedral was never closed, and looking toward the door he
+perceived that it was open. With utmost difficulty he climbed the steps
+and entered its dark shadows. A faint light emanated from the tops of
+the stained-glass windows. Down below a candle burned on either side of
+the altar while a flickering gleam shone from the red cup in the
+sanctuary lamp. Worn out, drugged for lack of sleep, faint for want of
+food, old Mr. Tutt sank down upon one of the rear seats by the door, and
+resting his head upon his arms on the back of the bench in front of him
+fell fast asleep.
+
+He dreamed of a legal heaven, of a great wooden throne upon which sat
+Babson in a black robe and below him twelve red-faced angels in a double
+row with harps in their hands, chanting: "Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!" An
+organ was playing somewhere, and there was a great noise of footsteps.
+Then a bell twinkled and he raised his head and saw that the chancel was
+full of lights and white-robed priests. It was broad daylight. Horrified
+he looked at his watch, to find that it was ten minutes after ten. His
+joints creaked as he pulled himself to his feet and his eyes were half
+closed as he staggered down the steps and hailed a taxi.
+
+"Criminal Courts Building--side door. And drive like hell!" he muttered
+to the driver.
+
+He reached it just as Judge Babson and his attendant were coming into
+the courtroom and the crowd were making obeisance. Everybody else was in
+his proper place.
+
+"You may proceed, Mr. Tutt," said the judge after the roll of the jury
+had been called.
+
+But Mr. Tutt was in a daze, in no condition to think or speak. There was
+a curious rustling in his ears and his sight was somewhat blurred. The
+atmosphere of the courtroom seemed to him cold and hostile; the jury sat
+with averted faces. He rose feebly and cleared his throat.
+
+"Gentlemen of the jury," he began, "I--I think I covered everything I
+had to say yesterday afternoon. I can only beseech you to realize the
+full extent of your great responsibility and remind you that if you
+entertain a reasonable doubt upon the evidence you are sworn to give the
+benefit of it to the defendant."
+
+He sank back in his chair and covered his eyes with his hands, while a
+murmur ran along the benches of the courtroom. The old man had
+collapsed--tough luck--the defendant was cooked! Swiftly O'Brien leaped
+to his feet. There had been no defense. The case was as plain as a
+pike-staff. There was only one thing for the jury to do--return a
+verdict of murder in the first. It would not be pleasant, but that made
+no difference! He read them the statute, applied it to the facts, and
+shook his fist in their faces. They must convict--and convict of only
+one thing--and nothing else--murder in the first degree. They gazed at
+him like silly sheep, nodding their heads, doing everything but bleat.
+
+Then Babson cleared his decks and rising in dignity expounded the law to
+the sheep in a rich mellow voice, in which he impressed upon them the
+necessity of preserving the integrity of the jury system and the
+sanctity of human life. He pronounced an obituary of great beauty upon
+the deceased barber--who could not, as he pointed out, speak for
+himself, owing to the fact that he was in his grave. He venomously
+excoriated the defendant who had deliberately planned to kill an
+unarmed man peacefully conducting himself in his place of business, and
+expressed the utmost confidence that he could rely upon the jury, whose
+character he well knew, to perform their full duty no matter how
+disagreeable that duty might be. The sheep nodded.
+
+"You may retire, gentlemen."
+
+Babson looked down at Mr. Tutt with a significant gleam in his eye. He
+had driven in the knife to the hilt and twisted it round and round.
+Angelo had almost as much chance as the proverbial celluloid cat. Mr.
+Tutt felt actually sick. He did not look at the jury as they went out.
+They would not be long--and he could hardly face the thought of their
+return. Never in his long experience had he found himself in such a
+desperate situation. Heretofore there had always been some argument,
+some construction of the facts upon which he could make an appeal,
+however fallacious or illogical.
+
+He leaned back and closed his eyes. The judge was chatting with O'Brien,
+the court officers were betting with the reporters as to the length of
+time in which it would take the twelve to agree upon a verdict of murder
+in the first. The funeral rites were all concluded except for the final
+commitment of the corpse to mother earth.
+
+And then without warning Angelo suddenly rose and addressed the court in
+a defiant shriek.
+
+"I killa that man!" he cried wildly. "He maka small of my wife! He no
+good! He bad egg! I killa him once--I killa him again!"
+
+"So!" exclaimed Babson with biting sarcasm. "You want to make a
+confession? You hope for mercy, do you? Well, Mr. Tutt, what do you wish
+to do under the circumstances? Shall I recall the jury and reopen the
+case by consent?"
+
+Mr. Tutt rose trembling to his feet.
+
+"The case is closed, Your Honor," he replied. "I will consent to a
+mistrial and offer a plea of guilty of manslaughter. I cannot agree to
+reopen the case. I cannot let the defendant go upon the stand."
+
+The spectators and reporters were pressing forward to the bar, anxious
+lest they should lose a single word of the colloquy. Angelo remained
+standing, looking eagerly at O'Brien, who returned his gaze with a grin
+like that of a hyena.
+
+"I killa him!" Angelo repeated. "You killa me if you want."
+
+"Sit down!" thundered the judge. "Enough of this! The law does not
+permit me to accept a plea to murder in the first degree, and my
+conscience and my sense of duty to the public will permit me to accept
+no other. I will go to my chambers to await the verdict of the jury.
+Take the prisoner downstairs to the prison pen."
+
+He swept from the bench in his silken robes. Angelo was led away. The
+crowd in the courtroom slowly dispersed. Mr. Tutt, escorted by Tutt,
+went out in the corridor to smoke.
+
+"Ye got a raw deal, counselor," remarked Captain Phelan, amiably
+accepting a stogy. "Nothing but an act of Providence c'd save that
+Eyetalian from the chair. An' him guilty at that!"
+
+An hour passed; then another. At half after four a rumor flew along the
+corridors that the jury in the Serafino case had reached a verdict and
+were coming in. A messenger scurried to the judge's chambers. Phelan
+descended the iron stairs to bring up the prisoner, while Tutt to
+prevent a scene invented an excuse by which he lured Rosalina to the
+first floor of the building. The crowd suddenly reassembled out of
+nowhere and poured into the courtroom. The reporters gathered
+expectantly round their table. The judge entered, his robes, gathered in
+one hand.
+
+"Bring in the jury," he said sharply. "Arraign the prisoner at the bar."
+
+Mr. Tutt took his place beside his client at the railing, while the
+jury, carrying their coats and hats, filed slowly in. Their faces were
+set and relentless. They looked neither to the right nor to the left.
+O'Brien sauntered over and seated himself nonchalantly with his back to
+the court, studying their faces. Yes, he told himself, they were a
+regular set of hangmen--he couldn't have picked a tougher bunch if he'd
+had his choice of the whole panel.
+
+The clerk called the roll, and Messrs. Walsh, Tompkins, _et al._, stated
+that they were all present.
+
+"Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed upon a verdict?" inquired the
+clerk.
+
+"We have!" replied Mr. Walsh sternly.
+
+"How say you? Do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?"
+
+Mr. Tutt gripped the balustrade in front of him with one hand and put
+his other arm round Angelo. He felt that now in truth murder was being
+done.
+
+"We find the defendant not guilty," said Mr. Walsh defiantly.
+
+There was a momentary silence of incredulity. Then Babson and O'Brien
+shouted simultaneously: "What!"
+
+"We find the defendant not guilty," repeated Mr. Walsh stubbornly.
+
+"I demand that the jury be polled!" cried the crestfallen O'Brien, his
+face crimson.
+
+And then the twelve reiterated severally that that was their verdict and
+that they hearkened unto it as it stood recorded and that they were
+entirely satisfied with it.
+
+"You are discharged!" said Babson in icy tones. "Strike the names of
+these men from the list of jurors--as incompetent. Haven't you any other
+charge on which you can try this defendant?"
+
+"No, Your Honor," answered O'Brien grimly. "He didn't take the stand, so
+we can't try him for perjury; and there isn't any other indictment
+against him."
+
+Judge Babson turned ferociously upon Mr. Tutt:
+
+"This acquittal is a blot upon the administration of criminal justice; a
+disgrace to the city! It is an unconscionable verdict; a reflection upon
+the intelligence of the jury! The defendant is discharged. This court is
+adjourned."
+
+The crowd surged round Angelo and bore him away, bewildered. The judge
+and prosecutor hurried from the room. Alone Mr. Tutt stood at the bar,
+trying to grasp the full meaning of what had occurred.
+
+He no longer felt tired; he experienced an exultation such as he had
+never known before. Some miracle had happened! What was it?
+
+Unexpectedly the lawyer felt a rough warm hand clasped over his own upon
+the rail and heard the voice of Mr. Walsh with its rich brogue saying:
+"At first we couldn't see that there was much to be said for your side
+of the case, Mr. Tutt; but when Oi stepped into the cathedral on me way
+down to court this morning and spied you prayin' there for guidance I
+knew you wouldn't be defendin' him unless he was innocent, and so we
+decided to give him the benefit of the doubt."
+
+
+
+
+Mock Hen and Mock Turtle
+
+
+  "Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the
+  twain shall meet."
+                         --BALLAD OF EAST AND WEST.
+
+
+  "But the law of the jungle is jungle law only, and the
+  law of the pack is only for the pack."
+                         --OTHER SAYINGS OF SHERE KHAN.
+
+A half turn from the clattering hubbub of Chatham Square and you are in
+Chinatown, slipping, within ten feet, through an invisible wall, from
+the glitter of the gin palace and the pawn-shop to the sinister shadows
+of irregular streets and blind alleys, where yellow men pad swiftly
+along greasy asphalt beneath windows glinting with ivory, bronze and
+lacquer; through which float the scents of aloes and of incense and all
+the subtle suggestion of the East.
+
+No one better than the Chink himself realizes the commercial value of
+the taboo, the bizarre and the unclean. Nightly the rubber-neck car
+swinging gayly with lanterns stops before the imitation joss house, the
+spurious opium joint and tortuous passage to the fake fan-tan and faro
+game, with a farewell call at Hong Joy Fah's Oriental restaurant and the
+well-stocked novelty store of Wing, Hen & Co. The visitors see what they
+expect to see, for the Chinaman always gives his public exactly what it
+wants.
+
+But a dollar does not show you Chinatown. To some the ivories will
+always be but crudely carven bone, the jades the potter's sham, the musk
+and aloes the product of a soap factory, the joss but a cigar-store
+Indian, and the Oriental dainties of Hong Fah the scrappings of a Yankee
+grocery store. Yet behind the shoddy tinsel of Doyers and Pell Streets,
+as behind Alice's looking-glass, there is another Chinatown--a strange,
+inhuman, Oriental world, not necessarily of trapdoors and stifled
+screams, but one moved by influences undreamed of in our banal
+philosophies. Hearken then to the story of the avenging of Wah Sing.
+
+  _'Tis a tale was undoubtedly true
+  In the reign of the Emperor Hwang_.
+
+In the murky cellar of a Pell Street tenement seventeen Chinamen sat
+cross-legged in a circle round an octagonal teakwood table. To an
+Occidental they would have appeared to differ in no detail except that
+of a varying degree of fatness. An oil lamp flickered before a joss near
+by, and the place reeked with the odor of starch, sweat, tobacco, rice
+whisky and the incense that rose ceilingward in thin, shaking columns
+from two bowls of Tibetan soapstone. An obese Chinaman with a walnutlike
+countenance in which cunning and melancholy were equally commingled was
+speaking monotonously through long, rat-tailed mustaches, while the
+others listened with impassive decorum. It was a special meeting of the
+Hip Leong Tong, held in their private clubrooms at the Great Shanghai
+Tea Company, and conducted according to rule.
+
+"Therefore," said Wong Get, "as a matter of honor it is necessary that
+our brother be avenged and that no chances be taken. A much too long
+time has already elapsed. I have written the letter and will read it."
+
+He fumbled in his sleeve and drew forth a roll of brown paper covered
+with heavy Chinese characters unwinding it from a strip of bamboo.
+
+
+  _To the Honorable Members of the On Gee Tong:_
+
+  Whereas it has pleased you to take the life of our beloved
+  friend and relative Wah Sing, it is with greatest courtesy
+  and the utmost regret that we inform you that it is
+  necessary for us likewise to remove one of your esteemed
+  society, and that we shall proceed thereto without delay.
+
+  Due warning being thus honorably given I subscribe
+  myself with profound appreciation,
+
+                       For the Hip Leong Tong,
+                                         WONG GET.
+
+He ceased reading and there was a perfunctory grunt of approval from
+round the circle. Then he turned to the official soothsayer and directed
+him to ascertain whether the time were propitious. The latter tossed
+into the air a handful of painted ivory sticks, carefully studied their
+arrangement when fallen, and nodded gravely.
+
+"The omens are favorable, O honorable one!"
+
+"Then there is nothing left but the choice of our representatives,"
+continued Wong Get. "Pass the fateful box, O Fong Hen."
+
+Fong Hen, a slender young Chinaman, the official slipper, or messenger,
+of the society, rose and, lifting a lacquered gold box from the table,
+passed it solemnly to each member.
+
+"This time there will be four," said Wong Get.
+
+Each in turn averted his eyes and removed from the box a small sliver of
+ivory. At the conclusion of the ceremony the four who had drawn red
+tokens rose. Wong Get addressed them.
+
+"Mock Hen, Mock Ding, Long Get, Sui Sing--to you it is confided to
+avenge the murder of our brother Wah Sing. Fail not in your purpose!"
+
+And the four answered unemotionally: "Those to whom it is confided will
+not fail."
+
+Then pivoting silently upon their heels they passed out of the cellar.
+
+Wong Get glanced round the table.
+
+"If there is no further business the society will disperse after the
+customary refreshment."
+
+Fong Hen placed thirteen tiny glasses upon the table and filled them
+with rice whisky scented with aniseed and a dash of powdered ginger. At
+a signal from Wong Get the thirteen Chinamen lifted the glasses and
+drank.
+
+"The meeting is adjourned," said he.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Eighty years before, in a Cantonese rabbit warren two yellow men had
+fought over a white woman, and one had killed the other. They had
+belonged to different societies, or tongs. The associates of the
+murdered man had avenged his death by slitting the throat of one of the
+members of the other organization, and these in turn had retaliated thus
+establishing a vendetta which became part and parcel of the lives of
+certain families, as naturally and unavoidably as birth, love and death.
+As regularly as the solstice they alternated in picking each other off.
+Branches of the Hip Leong and On Gee tongs sprang up in San Francisco
+and New York--and the feud was transferred with them to Chatham Square,
+a feud imposing a sacred obligation rooted in blood, honor and religion
+upon every member, who rather than fail to carry it out would have
+knotted a yellow silken cord under his left ear and swung himself gently
+off a table into eternal sleep.
+
+Young Mock Hen, one of the four avengers, had created a distinct place
+for himself in Chinatown by making a careful study of New York
+psychology. He was a good-looking Chink, smooth-faced, tall and supple;
+he knew very well how to capitalize his attractiveness. By day he
+attended Columbia University as a special student in applied
+electricity, keeping a convenient eye meanwhile on three coolies whom he
+employed to run The College Laundry on Morningside Heights. By night he
+vicariously operated a chop-suey palace on Seventh Avenue, where
+congregated the worst elements of the Tenderloin. But his heart was in
+the gambling den which he maintained in Doyers Street, and where anyone
+who knew the knock could have a shell of hop for the asking, once Mock
+had given him the once-over through the little sliding panel.
+
+Mock was a Christian Chinaman. That is to say, purely for business
+reasons--for what he got out of it and the standing that it gave him--he
+attended the Rising Star Mission and also frequented Hudson House, the
+social settlement where Miss Fanny Duryea taught him to play ping-pong
+and other exciting parlor games, and read to him from books adapted to
+an American child of ten. He was a great favorite at both places, for he
+was sweet-tempered and wore an expression of heaven-born innocence. He
+had even been to church with Miss Duryea, temporarily absenting himself
+for that purpose of a Sunday morning from the steam-heated flat
+where--unknown to her, of course--he lived with his white wife, Emma
+Pratt, a lady of highly miscellaneous antecedents.
+
+Except when engaged in transacting legal or oilier business with the
+municipal, sociologic or religious world--at which times his vocabulary
+consisted only of the most rudimentary pidgin--Mock spoke a fluent and
+even vernacular English learned at night school. Incidentally he was the
+head of the syndicate which controlled and dispensed the loo, faro,
+fan-tan and other gambling privileges of Chinatown.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Detective Mooney, of the Second, detailed to make good District Attorney
+Peckham's boast that there had never been so little trouble with the
+foreign element since the administration--of which he was an
+ornament--came into office, saw Quong Lee emerge from his doorway in
+Doyers Street just before four o'clock the following Thursday and slip
+silently along under the shadow of the eaves toward Ah Fong's
+grocery--and instantly sensed something peculiar in the Chink's walk.
+
+"Hello, Quong!" he called, interposing himself. "Where you goin'?"
+
+Quong paused with a deprecating gesture of widely spread open palms.
+
+"'Lo yourself!" replied blandly. "Me go buy li'l' glocery."
+
+Mooney ran his hands over the rotund body, frisking him for a possible
+forty-four.
+
+"For the love of Mike!" he exclaimed, tearing open Quong's blouse. "What
+sort of an undershirt is that?" Quong grinned broadly as the detective
+lifted the suit of double-chain mail which swayed heavily under his blue
+blouse from his shoulders to his knees.
+
+"So-ho!" continued the plain-clothes man. "Trouble brewin', eh?"
+
+He knew already that something was doing in the tongs from his
+lobby-gow, Wing Foo.
+
+"Must weigh eighty pounds!" he whistled. "I'd like to see the pill that
+would go through that!" It was, in fact, a medieval corselet of finest
+steel mesh, capable of turning an elephant bullet.
+
+"Go'long!" ordered Mooney finally. "I guess you're safe!"
+
+He turned back in the direction of Chatham Square, while Quong resumed
+his tortoiselike perambulation toward Ah Fong's. Pell and Doyers Streets
+were deserted save for an Italian woman carrying a baby, and were
+pervaded by an unnatural and suspicious silence. Most of the shutters on
+the lower windows were down. Ah Fong's subsequent story of what happened
+was simple, and briefly to the effect that Quong, having entered his
+shop and priced various litchi nuts and pickled starfruit, had purchased
+some powdered lizard and, with the package in his left hand, had opened
+the door to go out. As he stood there with his right hand upon the knob
+and facing the afternoon sun four shadows fell aslant the window and a
+man whom he positively identified as Sui Sing emptied a bag of
+powder--afterward proved to be red pepper--upon Quong's face; then
+another, Long Get, made a thrust at him with a knife, the effect of
+which he did not observe, as almost at the same instant Mock Hen felled
+him with a blow upon the head with an iron bar, while a fourth, Mock
+Ding, fired four shots at his crumpling body with a revolver one of
+which glanced off and fractured a very costly Chien Lung vase and ruined
+four boxes of mandarin-blossom tea. In his excitement he ducked behind
+the counter, and when sufficiently revived he crawled forth to find what
+had once been Quong lying across the threshold, the murderers gone, and
+the Italian woman prostrate and shrieking with a hip splintered by a
+stray bullet. On the sidewalk outside the window lay the remnants of the
+bag of pepper, a knife broken short off at the handle, a heavy bar of
+soft iron slightly bent, and a partially emptied forty-four-caliber
+revolver. Quong's suit of mail had effectually protected him from the
+knife thrust and the revolver shots, but his skull was crushed beyond
+repair. Thus was the murder of Wah Sing avenged in due and proper form.
+
+Detective Mooney, distant not more than two hundred feet, rushed back to
+the corner at the sound of the first shot--just in time to catch a side
+glimpse of Mock Hen as he raced across Pell Street and disappeared into
+the cellar of the Great Shanghai Tea Company. The Italian woman was
+filling the air with her outcries, but the detective did not pause in
+his hurtling pursuit. He was too late, however. The cellar door
+withstood all his efforts to break it open.
+
+Bull Neck Burke, the wrestler, who tied Zabisko once on the stage of the
+old Grand Opera House in 1913, had been promenading with Mollie Malone,
+of the Champagne Girls and Gay Burlesquers Company. Both heard the
+fusillade and saw Mock--a streak of flying blue--pass within a few feet
+of them.
+
+"God!" ejaculated Mollie. "Sure as shootin', that's Mock Hen--and he's
+murdered somebody!"
+
+"It's Mock all right!" agreed Bull Neck. "That puts us in as witnesses
+or strike me!" And he looked at his watch--four one.
+
+"Here, Burke, put your shoulder to this!" shouted Mooney from the cellar
+steps. "Now then!"
+
+The two of them threw their combined weight against it, the lock flew
+open and they fell forward into the darkness. Three doors leading in
+different directions met the glare of Mooney's match. But the fugitive
+had a start of at least four minutes, which was three and a half more
+than he required.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mock Hen took the left-hand of the three doors and crept along a passage
+opening into an empty opium parlor back of the Hip Leong clubroom.
+
+Diving beneath one of the bunks he inserted his body between the lower
+planking at the back and the cellar wall, wormed his way some twelve
+feet, raised a trap and emerged into a tunnel by means of which and
+others he eventually reached the end of the block and the rooms of his
+friend Hong Sue.
+
+Here he changed from the Oriental costume according to Chinese etiquette
+necessary to the homicide, into a nobby suit of American clothes, put on
+a false mustache, and walked boldly down Park Row, while just behind
+him Doyers and Pell Streets swarmed with bluecoats and excited
+citizenry.
+
+Hudson House, the social settlement presided over by Miss Fanny and
+affected for business reasons by Mock Hen, was a mile and a half away.
+But Mock took his time. Twenty-five full minutes elapsed before he
+leisurely climbed the steps and slipped into the big reading room. There
+was no one there and Mock deftly turned back the hand of the automatic
+clock over the platform to three-fifty-five. Then he began to whistle.
+Presently Miss Fanny entered from the rear room, her face lighting with
+pleasure at the sight of her pet convert.
+
+"Good afternoon, Mock Hen! You are early to-day."
+
+Mock took her hand and stroked it affectionately.
+
+"I go Fulton Mark' buy li'l' terrapin. Stop in on way to see dear Miss
+Fan'."
+
+They stood thus for a moment, and while they did so the clock struck
+four.
+
+"I go now!" said Mock suddenly. "Four o'clock already."
+
+"It's early," answered Miss Fanny. "Won't you stay a little while?"
+
+"I go now," he repeated with resolution. "Good-by li'l' teacher!"
+
+She watched until his lithe figure passed through the door, and
+presently returned to the back room. Mock waited outside until she had
+disappeared.
+
+Then he changed back the clock.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"We've got you, you blarsted heathen!" cried Mooney hoarsely as he and
+two others from the Central Office threw themselves upon Mock Hen on the
+landing outside the door of his flat. "Look out, Murtha. Pipe that thing
+under his arm!"
+
+"It's a bloody turtle!" gasped Murtha, shuddering
+
+"What's the matter, boys?" inquired Mock. "Leggo my arm, can't yer?
+What'd yer want, anyway?"
+
+"We want you, you yellow skunk!" retorted Mooney. "Open that door!
+Lively now!"
+
+"Sure!" answered Mock amiably. "Come on in! What's bitin' yer?"
+
+He unlocked the door and threw it open.
+
+"Take a chair," he invited them. "Have a cigar? You there, Emma?"
+
+Emma Pratt, clad in a wrapper and lying on the big double brass bedstead
+in the rear room, raised herself on one elbow.
+
+"Yep!" she called through the passage. "Got the bird?"
+
+Mock looked at Murtha, who was carrying the terrapin.
+
+"Sure!" he called back. "Sit down, boys. What'd yer want? Can't yer
+tell a feller?"
+
+"We want you for croaking Quong Lee!" snapped Mooney. "Where have you
+been?"
+
+"Fulton Market--and Hudson House. I left here quarter of four. I haven't
+seen Quong Lee. Where was he killed?"
+
+Mooney laughed sardonically.
+
+"That'll do for you, Mock! Your alibi ain't worth a damn this time. I
+saw you myself."
+
+"You saw someone else," Mock assured him politely. "I haven't been in
+Chinatown."
+
+"Say, what yer doin' wit' my Chink?" demanded Emma, appearing in the
+doorway. "He was sittin' here wit' me all the afternoon, until about
+just before four I sent him over to Fulton Market to buy a bird. Who's
+been croaked, eh?"
+
+"Aw, cut it out, Emma!" replied Mooney. "That old stuff won't go here.
+Your Chink's goin' to the chair. Murtha, look through the place while we
+put Mock in the wagon. Hell!" he added under his breath. "Won't this
+make Peckham sick!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Ephraim Tutt just finished his morning mail when he was informed
+that Mr. Wong Get desired an interview. Though the old lawyer did not
+formally represent the Hip Leong Tong he was frequently retained by its
+individual members, who held him in high esteem, for they had always
+found him loyal to their interests and as much a stickler for honor as
+themselves. Moreover, between him and Wong Get there existed a curious
+sympathy as if in some previous state of existence Wong Get might have
+been Mr. Tutt, and Mr. Tutt Wong Get. Perhaps, however, it was merely
+because both were rather weary, sad and worldly wise.
+
+Wong Get did not come alone. He was accompanied by two other Hip Leongs,
+the three forming the law committee appointed to retain the best
+available counsel to defend Mock Hen. In his expansive frock coat and
+bowler hat Wong might easily have excited mirth had it not been for the
+extreme dignity of his demeanor. They were there, he stated, to request
+Mr. Tutt to protect the interests of Mock Hen, and they were prepared to
+pay a cash retainer and sign a written contract binding themselves to a
+balance--so much if Mock should be convicted; so much if acquitted; so
+much if he should die in the course of the trial without having been
+either convicted or acquitted. It was, said Wong Get gently, a matter of
+grave importance and they would be glad to give Mr. Tutt time to think
+it over and decide upon his terms. Suppose, then, that they should
+return at noon? With this understanding, accordingly, they departed.
+
+"There's no point in skinning a Chink just because he is a Chink," said
+the junior Tutt when his partner had explained the situation to him.
+"But it isn't the highest-class practise and they ought to pay well."
+
+"What do you call well?" inquired Mr. Tutt.
+
+"Oh, a thousand dollars down, a couple more if he's convicted, and five
+altogether if he's acquitted."
+
+"Do you think they can raise that amount of money?"
+
+"I think so," answered Tutt. "It might be a good deal for an individual
+Chink to cough up on his own account, but this is a coöperative affair.
+Mock Hen didn't kill Quong Lee to get anything out of it for himself,
+but to save the face of his society."
+
+"He didn't kill him at all!" declared Mr. Tutt, hardly moving a muscle
+of his face.
+
+"Well, you know what I mean!" said Tutt.
+
+"He wasn't there," insisted Mr. Tutt. "He was way over in Fulton Market
+buying a terrapin."
+
+"That is what, if I were district attorney, I should call a Mock Hen
+with a mockturtle defense!" grunted Tutt.
+
+Mr. Tutt chuckled.
+
+"I shall have to get that off myself at the beginning of the case, or it
+might convict him," he remarked. "But he wasn't there--unless the jury
+find that he was."
+
+"In which case he will--or shall--have been there--whatever the verb
+is," agreed Tutt. "Anyhow they'll tax every laundry and chop-suey palace
+from the Bronx to the Battery to pay us."
+
+"I'd hate to take our fee in bird's-nest soup, shark's fin,
+bamboo-shoots salad and ya ko main," mused Mr. Tutt.
+
+"Or in ivory chopsticks, oolong tea, imitation jade, litchi nuts and
+preserved leeches!" groaned Tutt. "Be sure and get the thousand down; it
+may be all the cash we'll ever see!"
+
+Promptly at twelve the law committee of the Hip Leong Tong returned to
+the office of Tutt & Tutt. With them came a venerable Chinaman in native
+costume, his wrinkled face as inscrutable as that of a snapping turtle.
+The others took chairs, but this high dignitary preferred to sit upon
+his heels on the floor, creating something of the impression of an
+ancient slant-eyed Buddha.
+
+Wong Get translated for his benefit the arrangement proposed by Mr.
+Tutt, after which there was a long pause while His Eminence remained
+immovable, without even the flicker of an eyelid. Then he delivered
+himself in an interminable series of gargles and gurgles, supplemented
+by a few cough-like hisses, while Wong Get translated with rapid
+dexterity, running verbally in and out among his words like a carriage
+dog between the wheels of a vehicle.
+
+It was, declared Buddha, an affair of great moment touching upon and
+appertaining to the private honor of the Duck, the Wong, the Fong, the
+Long, the Sui and various other families, both in America and China. The
+life of one of their members was at stake. Their face required that the
+proceedings should be as dignified as possible. The price named by Mr.
+Tutt was quite inadequate.
+
+Mr. Tutt, repressing a smile, passed a box of stogies. What amount, he
+inquired through Wong Get, would satisfy the face of the Duck family? A
+somewhat lengthy discussion ensued. Then Buddha rendered his decision.
+
+The honor of the Ducks, Longs and Fongs would not be satisfied unless
+Mr. Tutt received five thousand dollars down, five more if Mock Hen was
+convicted, three more if he died before the conclusion of the trial, and
+twenty thousand if he was acquitted.
+
+Mr. Tutt, assuming an equal impassivity, pondered upon the matter for
+about an inch of stogy and then informed the committee that the terms
+were eminently satisfactory. Buddha thereupon removed from the folds of
+his tunic a gigantic roll of soiled bills of all denominations and
+carefully counting out five thousand dollars placed it upon the table.
+
+"H'm!" remarked Tutt when he learned of the proceeding. "_His_ face is
+_our_ fortune!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Look here," expostulated District Attorney Peckham in his office to Mr.
+Tutt a month later. "What's the use of our both wasting a couple of
+weeks trying a Chinaman who is bound to be convicted? Your time's too
+valuable for that sort of thing, and so is mine. We've got three white
+witnesses that saw him do it, and a couple of dozen Chinks besides. He
+doesn't stand a chance; but just because he is a Chink, and to get the
+case out of the way, I'll let you plead him to murder in the second
+degree. What do you say?"
+
+He tried to conceal his anxiety by nervously lighting a cigar. He would
+have given a year's salary to have Mock Hen safely up the river, even on
+a conviction for manslaughter in the third, for the newspapers were
+making his life a burden with their constant references to the seeming
+inability of the police department and district attorney's office to
+prevent the recurrence of feud killings in the Chinatown districts. What
+use was it, they demanded, to maintain the expensive machinery of
+criminal justice if the tongs went gayly on shooting each other up and
+incidentally taking the lives of innocent bystanders? Wasn't the law
+intended to cover Chinamen as much as Italians, Poles, Greeks and
+niggers? And now that one of these murdering Celestials had been caught
+red-handed it was up to the D.A. to go to it, convict him, and send him
+to the chair! They did not express themselves precisely that way, but
+that was the gist of it. But Peckham knew that it was one thing to catch
+a Chinaman, even red-handed, and another to convict him. And so did Mr.
+Tutt.
+
+The old lawyer smiled blandly--after the fashion of the Hip Leong Tong.
+Of course, he admitted, it would be much simpler to dispose of the case
+as Mr. Peckham suggested, but his client was insistent upon his
+innocence and seemed to have an excellent alibi. He regretted,
+therefore, that he had no choice except to go to trial.
+
+"Then," groaned Peckham, "we may as well take the winter for it. After
+this there's going to be a closed season on Chinamen in New York City!"
+
+Now though it was true that Mock Hen insisted upon his innocence, he had
+not insisted upon it to Mr. Tutt, for the latter had not seen him. In
+fact, the old lawyer, recognizing what the law did not, namely that a
+system devised for the trial and punishment of Occidentals is totally
+inadequate to cope with the Oriental, calmly went about his affairs,
+intrusting to Mr. Bonnie Doon of his office the task of interviewing the
+witnesses furnished by Wong Get. There was but one issue for the jury to
+pass upon. Quong Lee was dead and his honorable soul was with his
+illustrious ancestors. He had died from a single blow upon the head,
+delivered with an iron bar, there present, to be in evidence, marked
+"Exhibit A." Mock Hen was alleged to have done the deed. Had he? There
+would be nothing for Mr. Tutt to do but to cross-examine the witnesses
+and then call such as could testify to Mock's alibi. So he made no
+preparation at all and dismissed the case from his mind. He had hardly
+seen a dozen Chinamen in his life--outside of a laundry.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the morning set for the trial Mr. Tutt, having been delayed by an
+accident in the Subway, entered the Criminal Courts Building only a
+moment or two before the call of the calendar. Somewhat preoccupied, he
+did not notice the numerous Chinamen who dawdled about the entrance or
+the half dozen who crowded with him into the elevator, but when Pat the
+elevator man called, "Second floor!--Part One to your right!--Part Two
+to the left!" and he stepped out into the marble-floored corridor that
+ran round the inside of the building, he was confronted with an unusual
+and somewhat ominous spectacle.
+
+The entire hallway on two sides of the building was lined with
+Chinamen! They sat there motionless as blue-coated images, faces front,
+their hands in their laps, their legs crossed beneath them. If anyone
+appeared in the offing a couple of hundred pairs of glinting eyes
+shifted automatically and followed him until he disappeared, but
+otherwise no muscle quivered.
+
+"Say," growled Hogan, Judge Bender's private attendant, who was the
+first to run the gantlet, "those Chinks are enough to give you the
+Willies! Their eyes scared me to death, sticking me through the back!"
+
+Even dignified Judge Bender himself as he stalked along the hall,
+preceded by two police officers, was not immune from a slight feeling of
+uncanniness, and he instinctively drew his robe round his legs that it
+might not come into contact with those curious slippers with felt soles
+that protruded across the marble slabs.
+
+"Eyes right!" They had picked him up the instant he stepped out of the
+private elevator--the four hundred of them. If he turned and looked they
+were seemingly not watching him, but if he dropped his glance they swung
+back in a single moment and focused themselves upon him. And every one
+of them probably had a gun hidden somewhere in his baggy pants! The
+judge confessed to not liking these foreign homicide cases. You never
+could tell what might happen or when somebody was going to get the death
+sign. There was Judge Deasy--he had the whole front of his house blown
+clean out by a bomb! That had been a close call! And these Chinks--with
+their secret oaths and rituals--they'd think nothing at all of jabbing a
+knife into you. He didn't fancy it at all and, as he hurried along,
+supremely conscious of the deadly cumulative effect of those beady eyes,
+he fancied it less and less. What was there to prevent one of them from
+getting right up in court and putting a bullet through you? He shivered,
+recalling the recent assassination of a judge upon the bench by a Hindu
+whom he had sentenced. When he reached his robing room he sent for
+Captain Phelan.
+
+"See here, captain," he directed sharply, "I want you to keep all those
+Chinamen out in the corridor; understand?"
+
+"I've got to let some of 'em in, judge," urged Phelan. "You've got to
+have an interpreter--and there's a Chinese lawyer associated with Tutt &
+Tutt--and of course Mr. O'Brien has to have a couple of 'em so's he'll
+know what's going on. Y' see, judge, the On Gee Tong is helping the
+prosecution against the Hip Leongs, so both sides has to be more or less
+represented."
+
+"Well, make sure none of 'em is armed," ordered Judge Bender. "I don't
+like these cases."
+
+Now the judge, being recently elected and unfamiliar with the situation,
+did not realize that nothing could have been farther from the Oriental
+mind or intention than an attack upon the officers engaged in the
+administration of local justice, whom they regarded merely as nuisances.
+What these Chinamen supremely desired was to be allowed to settle their
+own affairs in their own historic and traditional way--the way of the
+revolver, the silken cord, the knife and the iron bar. Once enmeshed in
+Anglo-Saxon juridical procedure, to be sure, they were not averse to
+letting it run its course on the bare chance that it might automatically
+accomplish their revenge. But they distrusted it, being brought up
+according to a much more effective system--one which when it wanted to
+punish anybody simply reached out, grabbed him by the pigtail, yanked
+him to his knees and sliced off his head. This so-called American
+justice was all talk--words, words, words! From their point of view
+judges, jurymen and prosecutors were useless pawns in life's game of
+chess. Perhaps they are! Who knows!
+
+When Judge Bender entered the court room it was, in spite of his
+injunction, full of blue blouses. A special panel of two hundred
+talesmen filled the first half dozen rows of benches, the others being
+occupied by witnesses both Chinese and white, policemen and the
+miscellaneous human flotsam and jetsam that always manages somehow or
+other to find its way to a murder trial. Inside the rail O'Brien, the
+assistant district attorney, was busy in conversation with three cueless
+Chinamen in American clothes. At the bar sat Mock Hen with Mr. Tutt
+beside him, flanked by Wong Get, Tutt, Bonnie Doon and Buddha.
+
+The judge beckoned Mr. Tutt and O'Brien to the front of the bench.
+
+"Is there any chance of disposing of this case by a plea?" he inquired.
+
+O'Brien looked expectantly at Mr. Tutt, who shook his head. The judge
+shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Well, how long is it going to take?"
+
+"About six weeks," answered the old lawyer quietly.
+
+"What!" ejaculated judge and prosecutor in unison.
+
+"A day or two less, perhaps," affirmed Mr. Tutt, "but, likely as not,
+considerably longer."
+
+"I shall cut it down as much as I can," announced the judge, appalled at
+the prospect. "I shall not permit this trial to be dragged out
+indefinitely."
+
+"Nothing would please me better, Your Honor," said Mr. Tutt with the
+shadow of a smile. "Shall we proceed to select the jury?"
+
+The accuracy of Mr. Tutt's prophecy as to the probable length of the
+trial was partially demonstrated when it developed that most of the
+talesmen had a pronounced antipathy to Chinese murder cases, and a
+deep-rooted prejudice against the race as a whole. In fact, a certain
+subconscious influence affecting most of them was formulated by the
+thirty-ninth talesman to be rejected, who, in a moment of resentment,
+burst forth, "I don't mind trying decent American criminals, but I hold
+it isn't any part of a citizen's duty to try Chinamen!" and was promptly
+struck off the jury list.
+
+"I say, chief," disgustedly declared O'Brien to Peckham at the noon
+recess as they clinked glasses over the bar at Pont's, "you've handed me
+a ripe, juicy Messina all right! I won't be able to get a jury. We've
+been at it since ten o'clock and we haven't lured a single sucker into
+the box!"
+
+"What's the matter?" inquired the D.A. apprehensively.
+
+"I can't quite make out," answered O'Brien. "But most of 'em seem to
+have a sort of idea that to kill a Chinaman ain't a crime but a virtue!"
+
+"Well, don't tell anybody," whispered Peckham, "but I'm somewhat of that
+way of thinking myself. Set 'em up again, John!"
+
+However, by invoking the utmost celerity a jury was at last selected and
+sworn at the end of the nineteenth day of the trial. As a jury O'Brien
+confidentially admitted to Peckham it wasn't much! But what could you
+expect of a bunch who were willing to swear that they hadn't any
+prejudice against a Chink and would as soon acquit him as a white man?
+The truth was that they were all gentlemen who, having lost their jobs,
+were willing to swear to anything that would bring them in two dollars a
+day. The more days the better! And it is historic fact that during the
+sixty-nine days of Mock Hen's prosecution not one of them protested at
+being kept away from his wife and children, his business or his
+pleasure. On the contrary they all slumbered peacefully from ten until
+four--and when the trial ended, on the whole they rather regretted that
+it was over, the only genuine opinion regarding the case being that the
+Chinks were all as funny as hell and that Mr. Tutt was a bully old boy.
+
+The evidence respecting the death of the unfortunate Quong Lee made
+little impression upon them. Seemingly they regarded the story much as
+they did that of Elisha and the bears or Bel and the dragon--as a sort
+of apocryphal narrative which they were required to listen to, but in no
+wise bound to believe. They were much interested in Quong's suit of
+chain mail, however, and from time to time awoke to enjoy the various
+verbal encounters between the judge and Mr. Tutt. As factors in the
+proceedings they did not count, except to receive their two dollars per
+diem, board, lodging and hack fare.
+
+The trial of Mock Hen being conducted in a foreign language, the first
+judicial step was the swearing of an interpreter. The On Gees had
+promptly produced one, whom O'Brien told the court was a very learned
+man; a graduate of the Imperial University at Peking, and a Son of the
+Sacred Dragon. Be that as it may, he was not prepossessing in his
+appearance and Mr. Tutt assured Judge Bender that far from being what
+the district attorney pretended, the man was a well-known gambler, who
+made his living largely by blackmail. He might be a son of a dragon or
+he might not; anyway he was a son of Belial. An interpreter was the
+conduit through which all the evidence must pass. If the official were
+biased or corrupt the testimony would be distorted, colored or
+suppressed.
+
+Now he--Mr. Tutt--had an interpreter, the well-known Dr. Hong Su,
+against whom nothing could be said, and upon whose fat head rested no
+imputation of partiality; a graduate of Harvard, a writer of note, a--
+
+O'Brien sprang to his feet: "My interpreter says your interpreter is an
+opium smuggler, that he murdered his aunt in Hong Kong, that he isn't a
+doctor at all, and that he never graduated from anything except a
+chop-suey joint," he interjected.
+
+"This is outrageous!" cried Mr. Tutt, palpably shocked at such language.
+
+"Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" groaned Judge Bender. "What am I to do? I don't
+know anything about these men. One looks to me about the same as the
+other. The court has no time to inquire into their antecedents. They may
+both be learned scholars or they may each be what the other says he
+is--I don't know. But we've got to begin to try this case sometime."
+
+It was finally agreed that in order that there might be no possible
+question of partiality there should be two interpreters--one for the
+prosecution and one for the defense. Both accordingly were sworn and the
+first witness, Ah Fong, was called.
+
+"Ask him if he understands the nature of an oath," directed O'Brien.
+
+The interpreter for the state turned to Ah Fong and said something
+sweetly to him in multitudinous words.
+
+Instantly Doctor Su rose indignantly. The other interpreter was not
+putting the question at all, but telling the witness what to say.
+Moreover, the other interpreter belonged to the On Gee Tong. He stood
+waving his arms and gobbling like an infuriated turkey while his
+adversary replied in similar fashion.
+
+"This won't do!" snapped the judge. "This trial will degenerate into
+nothing but a cat fight if we are not careful." Then a bright idea
+suggested itself to his Occidental mind. "Suppose I appoint an official
+umpire to say which of the other two interpreters is correct--and let
+them decide who he shall be?"
+
+This proposition was received with grunts of satisfaction by the two
+antagonists, who conferred together with astonishing amiability and
+almost immediately conducted into the court room a tall, emaciated
+Chinaman who they alleged was entirely satisfactory to both of them. He
+was accordingly sworn as a third interpreter, and the trial began again.
+
+It was observed that thereafter there was no dispute whatever regarding
+the accuracy of the testimony, and as each interpreter was paid for his
+services at the rate of ten dollars a day it was rumored that the whole
+affair had been arranged by agreement between the two societies, which
+divided the money, amounting to some eighteen hundred dollars, between
+them. But, as O'Brien afterward asked Peckham, "How in thunder could you
+tell?"
+
+The court's troubles had, however, only begun. Ah Fong was a
+whimsical-looking person, who gave an impression of desiring to make
+himself generally agreeable. He was, of course, the star witness--if a
+Chinaman can ever be a star witness--and presumably had been carefully
+schooled as to the manner in which he should give his testimony. He and
+he alone had seen the whole tragedy from beginning to end. He it was, if
+anybody, who would tuck Mock Hen comfortably into his coffin.
+
+The problem of the interpreters having been solved Fong settled himself
+comfortably in the witness chair, crossed his hands upon his stomach and
+looked complacently at Mock Hen.
+
+"Well, now let's get along," adjured His Honor. "Swear the witness."
+
+Mr. Tutt immediately rose.
+
+"If the court please," said he, "I object to the swearing of the witness
+unless it is made to appear that he will regard himself as bound by the
+oath as administered. Now this man is a Chinaman. I should like to ask
+him a preliminary question or two."
+
+"That seems fair, Mr. O'Brien," agreed the court. "Do you see any reason
+why Mr. Tutt shouldn't interrogate the witness?"
+
+"Oh, let me qualify my own witness!" retorted O'Brien fretfully. "Ah
+Fong, will you respect the oath to testify truthfully, about to be
+administered to you?"
+
+The interpreter delivered a broadside of Chinese at Ah Fong, who
+listened attentively and replied at equal length. Then the interpreter
+went at him again, and again Ah Fong affably responded. It was
+interminable.
+
+The two muttered and chortled at each other until O'Brien, losing
+patience, jumped up and called out: "What's all this? Can't you ask him
+a simple question and get a simple answer? This isn't a debating
+society."
+
+The interpreter held up his hand, indicating that the prosecutor should
+have patience.
+
+"_Ah-ya-ya-oo-aroo-yung-ung-loy-a-a-ya oo-chu-a-oy-ah-ohay-tching_!" he
+concluded.
+
+
+"_A-yah-oy-a-yoo-oy-ah-chuck-uh-ung-loy-oo-ayah-a-yoo-chung-chung-szt-
+oo-aha-oy-ou-ungaroo--yah-yah-yah!_" replied Ah Fong.
+
+"Thank heaven, that's over!" sighed O'Brien.
+
+The interpreter drew himself up to his full height.
+
+"He says yes," he declared dramatically.
+
+"It's the longest yes I ever heard!" audibly remarked the foreman, who
+was feeling his oats.
+
+"Does not that satisfy you?" inquired the court of Mr. Tutt.
+
+"I am sorry to say it does not!" replied the latter. "Mr. O'Brien has
+simply asked whether he will keep his oath. His reply sheds no light on
+whether his religious belief is such that it would obligate him to
+respect an oath."
+
+"Well, ask him yourself!" snorted O'Brien.
+
+"Ah Fong, do you believe in any god?" inquired Mr. Tutt.
+
+"He says yes," answered the interpreter after the usual interchange.
+
+"What god do you believe in?" persisted Mr. Tutt.
+
+Suddenly Ah Fong made answer without the intervention of the
+interpreter.
+
+"When I in this country," he replied complacently in English, "I b'lieve
+Gees Clist; when I in China I b'lieve Chinese god."
+
+"Does Your Honor hold that an obliging acquiescence in local theology
+constitutes such a religious belief as to make this man's oath sacred?"
+inquired Mr. Tutt.
+
+The judge smiled.
+
+"I don't see why not!" he declared. "There isn't any precedent as far as
+I am aware. But he says he believes in the Deity. Isn't that enough?"
+
+"Not unless he believes that the Deity will punish him if he breaks his
+oath," answered Mr. Tutt. "Let me try him on that?"
+
+"Ah Fong, do you think God will punish you if you tell a lie?"
+
+Fong looked blank. The interpreter fired a few salvos.
+
+"He says it makes a difference the kind of oath."
+
+"Suppose it is a promise to tell the truth?"
+
+"He says what kind of a promise?"
+
+"A promise on the Bible," answered Mr. Tutt patiently.
+
+"He says what god you mean!" countered the interpreter.
+
+"Oh, any god!" roared Mr. Tutt.
+
+The interpreter, after a long parley, made reply.
+
+"Ah Fong says there is no binding oath except on a chicken's head."
+
+Judge Bender, O'Brien and Mr. Tutt gazed at one another helplessly.
+
+"Well, there you are!" exclaimed the lawyer. "Mr. O'Brien's oath wasn't
+any oath at all! What kind of a chicken's head?"
+
+"A white rooster."
+
+"Quite so!" nodded Mr. Tutt. "Your Honor, I object to this witness being
+sworn by any oath or in any form except on the head of a white rooster!"
+
+"Well, I don't happen to have a white rooster about me!" remarked
+O'Brien, while the jury rocked with glee. "Ask him if something else
+won't do. A big book for instance?"
+
+The interpreter put the question and then shook his head. According to
+Ah Fong there was no virtue in books whatever, either large or small. On
+some occasions an oath could be properly taken on a broken plate--also
+white--but not in murder cases. It was chicken or nothing.
+
+"Are you not willing to waive the formality of an oath, Mr. Tutt?" asked
+the judge in slight impatience.
+
+"And wave my client into the chair?" demanded the lawyer. "No, sir!"
+
+"I don't see what we can do except to adjourn court until you can
+procure the necessary poultry," announced Judge Bender. "Even then we
+can't slaughter them in court. We'll have to find some suitable place!"
+
+"Why not kill one rooster and swear all the witnesses at once?"
+suggested Mr. Tutt in a moment of inspiration.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"My God, chief!" exclaimed O'Brien at four o'clock. "There ain't a white
+rooster to be had anywhere! Hens, yes! By the hundred! But roosters are
+extinct! Tomorrow will be the twenty-first day of this prosecution and
+not a witness sworn yet."
+
+However, a poultryman was presently discovered who agreed simply for
+what advertising there was in it to furnish a crate of white roosters,
+a hatchet and a headsman's block, and to have them in the basement of
+the building promptly at ten o'clock.
+
+Accordingly, at that hour Judge Bender convened Part IX of the General
+Sessions in the court room and then adjourned downstairs, where all the
+prospective witnesses for the prosecution were lined up in a body and
+told to raise their right hands.
+
+Meantime Clerk McGuire was handed the hatchet, and approached the coop
+with obvious misgivings. Ah Fong had already given a dubious approval to
+the sex and quality of the fowls inside and naught remained but to
+submit the proper oath and remove the head of the unfortunate victim. A
+large crowd of policemen, witnesses, reporters, loafers, truckmen and
+others drawn by the unusual character of the proceedings had assembled
+and now proceeded without regard for the requirements of judicial
+dignity to encourage McGuire in his capacity of executioner, by profane
+shouts and jeers, to do his deadly deed.
+
+But the clerk had had no experience with chickens and in bashfully
+groping for the selected rooster allowed several other occupants of the
+crate to escape. Instantly the air was filled with fluttering, squawking
+fowls while fifty frenzied police officers and Chinamen attempted
+vainly to reduce them to captivity again. In the midst of the mêlée
+McGuire caught his rooster, and fearful lest it should escape him
+managed somehow to decapitate it. The body, however, had been flopping
+around spasmodically several seconds upon the floor before he realized
+that the oath had not been administered, and his voice suddenly rose
+above the pandemonium in an excited brogue.
+
+"Hold up your hands, you! You do solemnly swear that in the case of The
+People against Mock Hen you will tell the truth, the whole truth and
+nothing but the truth so help you God!"
+
+But the interpreter was at that moment engaged in clasping to his bosom
+a struggling rooster and was totally unable to fulfill his functions.
+Meantime the jury, highly edified at this illustration of the
+administration of justice, gazed down upon the spectacle from the
+stairs.
+
+"This farce has gone far enough!" declared Judge Bender disgustedly. "We
+will return to the court room. Put those roosters back where they
+belong!"
+
+Once more the participants ascended to Part IX and Ah Fong took his seat
+in the witness chair. The interpreter's blouse was covered with
+pin-feathers and one of his thumbs was bleeding profusely.
+
+"Ask the witness if the oath that he has now taken will bind his
+conscience?" directed the court.
+
+Again the interpreter and Ah Fong held converse.
+
+"He says," translated that official calmly, "that the chicken oath is
+all right in China, but that it is no good in United States, and that
+anyway the proper form of words was not used."
+
+"Good Lord!" ejaculated O'Brien. "Where am I?"
+
+"Me tell truth, all light," suddenly announced Ah Fong in English. "Go
+ahead! Shoot!" And he smiled an inscrutable age-long Oriental smile.
+
+The jury burst into laughter.
+
+"He's stringing you!" the foreman kindly informed O'Brien, who cursed
+silently.
+
+"Go on, Mister District Attorney, examine the witness," directed the
+judge. "I shall permit no further variations upon the established forms
+of procedure."
+
+Then at last and not until then--on the morning of the twenty-first
+day--did Ah Fong tell his simple story and the jury for the first time
+learn what it was all about. But by then they had entirely ceased to
+care, being engrossed in watching Mr. Tutt at his daily amusement of
+torturing O'Brien into a state of helpless exasperation.
+
+Ah Fong gave his testimony with a clarity of detail that left nothing
+to be desired, and he was corroborated in most respects by the Italian
+woman, who identified Mock Hen as the Chinaman with the iron bar. Their
+evidence was supplemented by that of Bull Neck Burke and Miss Malone,
+who also were positive that they had seen Mock running from the scene of
+the murder at exactly four-one o'clock.
+
+Mr. Tutt hardly cross-examined Fong at all, but with Mr. Burke he
+pursued very different tactics, speedily rousing the wrestler to such a
+condition of fury that he was hardly articulate, for the old lawyer
+gently hinted that Mr. Burke was inventing the whole story for the
+purpose of assisting his friends in the On Gee Tong.
+
+"But I tell yer I don't know no Chinks!" bellowed Burke, looking more
+like a bull than ever. "This here Mock Hen run right by me. My goil saw
+him too. I looked at me ticker to get the time!"
+
+"Ah! Then you expected to be a witness for the On Gee Tong!"
+
+"Naw! I tell yer I was walkin' wit' me goil!"
+
+"What is the lady's name?"
+
+"Miss Malone."
+
+"What is her occupation?"
+
+"She's a gay burlesquer."
+
+"A gay burlesquer?"
+
+"Sure--champagne goil and gay burlesquer."
+
+"A champagne girl!"
+
+"Dat's what I said."
+
+"You mean that she is upon the stage?"
+
+"Sure--dat's it!"
+
+"Oh!" Mr. Tutt looked relieved.
+
+"What had you and Miss Malone been doing that afternoon?"
+
+"I told yer--walkin'."
+
+Mr. Tutt coughed slightly.
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"Say, watcha drivin' at?"
+
+Mr. Tutt elevated his bushy eyebrows.
+
+"How do you earn your living?" he demanded, changing his method of
+attack.
+
+Bull Neck allowed his head to sink still farther into the vast bulk of
+his immense torso, strangely resembling, in this position, the fabled
+anthropophagi whose heads are reputed thus to "grow beneath their
+shoulders."
+
+Then throwing out his jaw he announced proudly between set teeth: "I'm a
+perfessor of physical sculture!"
+
+The jury sniggered. Mr. Tutt appeared politely puzzled.
+
+"A professor of what?"
+
+"A perfessor of physical sculture!" repeated Bull Neck with great
+satisfaction.
+
+"Oh! A professor of physical sculpture!" exclaimed Mr. Tutt, light
+breaking over his wrinkled countenance. "And what may that be?"
+
+Bull Neck looked round disgustedly at the jury as if to say: "What
+ignorance!"
+
+"Trainin' an' developin' prominent people!" he explained.
+
+"Um!" remarked Mr. Tutt. "Who invited you to testify in this case?"
+
+"Mr. Mooney."
+
+"Oh, you're a friend of Mooney's! That is all!"
+
+Now it is apparent from these questions and answers that Mr. Burke had
+testified to nothing to his discredit and had conducted himself as a
+gentleman and a sportsman according to his best lights. Yet owing to the
+subtle suggestions contained in Mr. Tutt's inflections and demeanor the
+jury leaped unhesitatingly to the conclusion that here was a man so
+ignorant and debased that if he were not deliberately lying he was being
+made a cat's-paw by the police in the interest of the On Gee Tong.
+
+Miss Malone fared even worse, for after a preliminary skirmish she
+flatly refused to give Mr. Tutt or the jury any information whatever
+regarding her past life, while Mooney, of course, labored from the
+beginning to the end of his testimony under the curse of being a
+policeman, one of that class whom most jurymen take pride in saying they
+hold in natural distrust. In a word, the white witnesses to the
+dastardly murder of Quong Lee created a general impression of
+unreliability upon the minds of the jury, who wholly failed to realize
+the somewhat obvious truth that the witnesses to a crime in Chinatown
+will naturally if not inevitably be persons who either reside in or
+frequent that locality.
+
+Twenty-four days had now been consumed in the trial, and as yet no
+Chinese witnesses except Ah Fong had been called. Now, however, they
+appeared in cohorts. Though Mooney had sworn that the streets were
+practically empty at the time of the homicide forty-one Chinese
+witnesses swore positively that they had been within easy view, claiming
+variously to have been behind doors, peeking through shutters, at upper
+windows and even on the roofs. All had identified Mock Hen as the
+murderer, and none of them had ever heard of either the On Gee or the
+Hip Leong Tong! Mr. Tutt could not shake them upon cross-examination,
+and O'Brien began to show signs of renewed confidence. Each testified to
+substantially the same story and they occupied seventeen full days in
+the telling, so that when the prosecution rested, forty-two days had
+been consumed since the first talesman had been called. The trial had
+sunk into a dull, unbroken monotony, as Mr. Tutt said, of the "vain
+repetitions of the heathen." Yet the police and the district attorney
+had done all that could reasonably have been expected of them. They were
+simply confronted by the very obvious fact--a condition and not a
+theory--that the legal processes of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence are of
+slight avail in dealing with people of another race.
+
+Now it is possible that even had Mr. Tutt put in no defense whatever the
+jury might have refused to convict, for there was a curious air of
+unreality surrounding the whole affair. It all seemed somehow as
+if--assuming that it had ever taken place at all--it had occurred in
+some other world and in some other age. Perhaps under what might have
+been practically a direction of the court a verdict of conviction might
+have been returned--but it is doubtful. The more witnesses testified to
+exactly the same thing in precisely the same words the less likely it
+appeared to be.
+
+But Mr. Tutt was taking no chances and, upon the forty-third day of the
+trial, at a nod from the bench, he opened his case. Never had he been
+more serious; never more persuasive. Abandoning every suggestion of
+frivolity, he weighed the testimony of each white witness and pointed
+out its obvious lack of probative value. Not one, he said, except the
+Italian woman, had had more than a fleeting glance of the face of the
+man now accused of the crime. Such an identification was useless. The
+Chinamen were patently lying. They had not been there at all! Would any
+member of the jury hang a dog, even a yellow one, on such testimony? Of
+course not! Much less a human being. The people had called forty
+witnesses to prove that Mock Hen had killed Quong Lee. It made no
+difference. The On Gee could have just as easily produced four hundred.
+Moreover, Mr. Tutt did a very daring thing. He pronounced all Chinese
+testimony in an American court of justice as absolutely valueless, and
+boasted that for every Chinaman who swore Mock Hen was guilty he would
+bring forward two who would swear him innocent.
+
+The thing was, as he had carefully explained to Bonnie Doon, to prove
+that Mock was a good Chinaman and, if the jury did not believe that
+there was any such animal, to convince them that it was possible. His
+first task, however, was to polish off the Chinese testimony by calling
+the witnesses who had been secured under the guidance of Wong Get. He
+admitted afterward that in view of the exclusion law he had not supposed
+there were so many Chinamen in the United States, for they crowded the
+corridors and staircases of the Criminal Courts Building, arriving in
+companies--the Wong family, the Mocks, the Fongs, the Lungs, the Sues,
+and others of the sacred Hip Sing Society from near at hand and from
+distant parts--from Brooklyn and Flatbush, from Flushing and Far
+Rockaway, from Hackensack and Hoboken, from Trenton and Scranton, from
+Buffalo and Saratoga, from Chicago and St. Louis, and each and every one
+of them swore positively upon the severed neck of the whitest
+rooster--the broken fragments of the whitest of porcelain plates--the
+holiest of books--that he had been present in person at Fulton Market in
+New York City at precisely four-fifteen o'clock in the afternoon and
+assisted Mock Hen, the defendant, in selecting and purchasing a terrapin
+for stew.
+
+Mr. Tutt grinned at the jury and the jury grinned affectionately back at
+Mr. Tutt. Indeed, after the length of time they had all been together
+they had almost as much respect for him as for the judge upon the bench.
+The whole court seemed to be a sort of Tutt Club, of which even O'Brien
+was a member.
+
+"Now," said Mr. Tutt, "I will call a few witnesses to show you what kind
+of a man this is whom these highbinders accuse of the crime of murder!"
+
+Mock, rolling his eyes heavenward, assumed an expression of infantile
+helplessness and trust.
+
+"Don't overdo it!" growled Tutt. "Just look kind of gentle."
+
+So Mock looked as gentle as a suckling dove while two professors from
+Columbia University, three of his landlords in his more reputable
+business enterprises, the superintendent of the Rising Sun Mission, four
+ex-police officers, a fireman, and an investigator for the Society for
+the Suppression of Sin swore upon Holy Writ and with all sincerity that
+Mock Hen was not only a person of the most excellent character and
+reputation but a Christian and a gentleman.
+
+And then Mr. Tutt played his trump card.
+
+"I will call Miss Frances Duryea, of Hudson House," he announced. "Miss
+Duryea, will you kindly take the witness chair?"
+
+Miss Fanny modestly rose from her seat in the rear of the room and came
+forward. No one could for an instant doubt the honesty and impartiality
+of this devoted middle-aged woman, who, surrendering the comforts and
+luxuries of her home uptown, to which she was well entitled by reason of
+her age, was devoting herself to a life of service. If a woman like
+that, thought the jury, was ready to vouch for Mock's good character,
+why waste any more time on the case? But Miss Fanny was to do much more.
+
+"Miss Duryea," began Mr. Tutt, "do you know the defendant?"
+
+"Yes, sir; I do," she answered quietly.
+
+"How long have you known him?"
+
+"Six years."
+
+"Do you know his reputation for peace and quiet?"
+
+Miss Fanny half turned to the judge and then faced the jury.
+
+"He is one of the sweetest characters I have ever known," she replied,
+"and I have known many--"
+
+"Oh, I object!" interrupted O'Brien. "This lady can't be permitted to
+testify to anything like that. She must be limited by the rules of
+evidence!"
+
+With one movement the jury wheeled and glared at him.
+
+"I guess this lady can say anything she wants!" declared the foreman
+chivalrously.
+
+O'Brien sank down in his seat. What was the use!
+
+"Go on, please," gently directed Mr. Tutt.
+
+"As I was saying, Mr. Mock Hen is a very remarkable character,"
+responded Miss Fanny. "He is devoted to the mission and to us at the
+settlement. I would trust him absolutely in regard to anything."
+
+"Thank you," said Mr. Tutt, smiling benignly. "Now, Miss Duryea, did you
+see Mock Hen at any time on May sixth?"
+
+Instantly the jury showed renewed signs of life. May sixth? That was
+the day of the murder.
+
+"I did," answered Miss Fanny with conviction. "He came to see me at
+Hudson House in the afternoon and while we were talking the clock struck
+four."
+
+The jury looked at one another and nodded.
+
+"Well, I guess that settles this case!" announced the foreman.
+
+"Right!" echoed a talesman behind him.
+
+"I object!" wailed O'Brien. "This is entirely improper!"
+
+"Quite so!" ruled Judge Bender sternly. "The jurymen will not make any
+remarks!"
+
+"But, Your Honor--we all agreed at recess there was nothing in this
+case," announced the foreman. "And now this testimony simply clinches
+it. Why go on with it!"
+
+"That's so!" ejaculated another. "Let us go, judge."
+
+Mr. Tutt's weather-beaten face was wreathed in smiles.
+
+"Easy, gentlemen!" he cautioned.
+
+The judge shrugged his shoulders, frowning.
+
+"This is very irregular!" he said.
+
+Then he beckoned to O'Brien, and the two whispered together for several
+minutes, while all over the court room on the part of those who had sat
+there so patiently for sixty-nine days there was a prolonged and
+ecstatic wriggling of arms and legs. Instinctively they all knew that
+the farce was over.
+
+The assistant district attorney returned to his table but did not sit
+down.
+
+"If the court please," he said rather wearily, "the last witness, Miss
+Duryea, by her testimony, which I personally am quite ready to accept as
+truthful, has interjected a reasonable doubt of the defendant's guilt
+into what otherwise would in my opinion be a case for the jury. If Mock
+Hen was at Hudson House, nearly two miles from Pell and Doyers Streets,
+at four o'clock on the afternoon of the homicide, manifestly he could
+not have been one of the assailants of Quong Lee at one minute past
+four. I am satisfied that no jury would convict--"
+
+"Not on your life!" snorted the foreman airily.
+
+"--and I therefore," went on O'Brien, "ask the court to direct an
+acquittal."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the grand banquet hall of the Shanghai and Hongkong American-Chinese
+Restaurant, Ephraim Tutt, draped in a blue mandarin coat with a tasseled
+pill box rakishly upon his old gray head, sat beside Wong Get and Buddha
+at the head of a long table surrounded by three hundred Chinamen in
+their richest robes of ceremony. Lanterns of party-colored glass
+swaying from gilded rafters shed a strange light upon a silken cloth
+marvelously embroidered and laden with the choicest of Oriental dishes,
+and upon the pale faces of the Hip Leong Tong--the Mocks, the Wongs, the
+Fongs and the rest--both those who had testified and also those who had
+merely been ready if duty called to do so, all of whom were now gathered
+together to pay honor where they felt honor to be due; namely, at the
+shrine of Mr. Tutt.
+
+Deft Chinese waiters slipped silently from guest to guest with
+bird's-nest soup, guy soo main, mon goo guy pan, shark's fin and lung
+har made of shreds of lobster, water chestnuts, rice and the succulent
+shoots of the young bamboo, while three musicians in a corner sang
+through their nose a syncopated dirge. "Wang-ang-ang-ang!" it rose and
+fell as Mr. Tutt, his neck encircled by a wreath of lilies, essayed to
+manipulate a pair of long black chop-sticks. "Wang-ang-ang-ang!" About
+him were golden limes, ginger in syrup, litchi nuts, pickled leeches.
+
+Then he felt a touch upon his shoulder and turned to see Fong Hen, the
+slipper, standing beside him. It was the duty of Fong Hen to drink with
+each guest--more than that, to drink as much as each guest drank! He
+gravely offered Mr. Tutt a pony of rice brandy. It was not the fiery
+lava he had anticipated, but a soft, caressing nectar, fragrant as if
+distilled from celestial flowers of the time of Confucius. The slipper
+swallowed the same quantity at a gulp, bowed and passed along.
+
+Mr. Tutt vainly tried to grasp the fact that he was in his own native
+city of New York. Long sleeves covered with red and purple dragons hid
+his arms and hands, and below the collar a smooth tight surface of silk
+across his breast made access to his pockets quite impossible. In one of
+them reposed twenty one-thousand-dollar bills--his fee for securing the
+acquittal of Mock Hen. Yes, he was in New York!
+
+The monotonous wail of the instruments, the pungency of the incense, the
+subdued light, the humid breath of the roses carried the thoughts of Mr.
+Tutt far away. Before him, against the blue misty sunshine, rose the
+yellow temples of Peking. He could hear the faint tintinnabulation of
+bells. He was wandering in a garden fragrant with jasmine blossoms and
+adorned with ancient graven stones and carved gilt statues. The air was
+sweet. Mr. Tutt was very tired....
+
+"Let him sleep!" nodded Buddha, deftly conveying to his wrinkled lips a
+delicate morsel of guy yemg dun. "Let him sleep! He has earned his
+sleep. He has saved our face!"
+
+It was after midnight when Mr. Tutt, heavily laden with princely gifts
+of ivory and jade and boxes of priceless teas, emerged from the side
+door of the Shanghai and Hongkong American-Chinese Restaurant. The sky
+was brilliant with stars and the sidewalks of Doyers and Pell Streets
+were crowded with pedestrians. Near by a lantern-bedecked rubber-neck
+wagon was in process of unloading its cargo of seekers after the curious
+and unwholesome. On either side of him walked Wong Get and Buddha. They
+had hardly reached the corner when five shots echoed in quick succession
+above the noise of the traffic and the crowd turned with one accord and
+rushed in the direction from which he had just come.
+
+Mr. Tutt, startled, stopped and looked back. Courteously also stopped
+Wong Get and Buddha. A throng was fast gathering in front of the
+Shanghai and Hongkong Restaurant.
+
+Then Murtha appeared, shouldering his way roughly through the mob.
+Catching sight of Mr. Tutt, he paused long enough to whisper hoarsely in
+the lawyer's ear: "Well, they got Mock Hen! Five bullets in him! But if
+they were going to, why in hell couldn't they have done it three months
+ago?"
+
+
+
+
+Samuel and Delilah
+
+
+  "And it came to pass, when she pressed him daily with
+  her words, and urged him, so that his soul was vexed
+  unto death; that he told her all his heart, and said unto
+  her, There hath not come a razor upon mine head; ...
+  if I be shaven, then my strength will go from me, and I
+  shall become weak and be like any other man."
+                                 --JUDGES XVI, 16, 17.
+
+"Have you seen '76 Fed.' anywhere, Mr. Tutt?" inquired Tutt, appearing
+suddenly in the doorway of his partner's office.
+
+Mr. Tutt looked up from Page 364 of the opinion he was perusing in "The
+United States vs. One Hundred and Thirty-two Packages of Spirituous
+Liquors and Wines."
+
+"Got it here in front of me," he answered shortly. "What do you want it
+for?"
+
+Tutt looked over his shoulder.
+
+"That's a grand name for a case, isn't it? 'Packages of Wines!'" he
+chuckled. "I made a note once of a matter entitled 'United States vs.
+Forty-three Cases of Frozen Eggs'; and of another called 'United States
+vs. One Feather Mattress and One Hundred and Fifty Pounds of
+Butter'--along in 197 Federal Reports, if I remember correctly. And you
+recall that accident case we had--Bump against the Railroad?"
+
+"You can't tell me anything about names," remarked Mr. Tutt. "I once
+tried a divorce action. Fuss against Fuss; and another, Love against
+Love. Do you really want this book?"
+
+"Not if you are using it," replied Tutt. "I just wanted to show an
+authority to Mr. Sorg, the president of the Fat and Skinny Club. You
+know our application for a certificate of incorporation was denied
+yesterday by Justice McAlpin."
+
+"No, I didn't know it," returned Mr. Tutt. "Why?"
+
+"Here's his memorandum in the Law Journal," answered his partner. "Read
+it for yourself":
+
+
+  Matter of Fat and Skinny Club, Inc. This is an
+  application for approval of a certificate of incorporation
+  as a membership corporation. The stated purposes are
+  to promote and encourage social intercourse and good
+  fellowship and to advance the interests of the community.
+  The name selected is the Fat and Skinny Club. If this
+  be the most appropriate name descriptive of its membership
+  it is better that it remain unincorporated. Application
+  denied.
+
+"Now who says the law isn't the perfection of common sense?" ruminated
+Mr. Tutt. "Its general principles are magnificent."
+
+"And yet," mused Tutt, "only last week Judge McAlpin granted the
+petition of one Solomon Swackhamer to change his name to Phillips Brooks
+Vanderbilt. Is that right? Is that justice? Is it equity? I ask
+you!--when he turns down the Fat and Skinnies?"
+
+"Oh, yes it is," retorted Mr. Tutt. "When you consider that Mr.
+Swackhamer could have assumed the appellation of P.B. Vanderbilt or any
+other name he chose without asking the court's permission at all."
+
+"What!" protested Tutt incredulously.
+
+"That's the law," returned the senior partner. "A man can call himself
+what he chooses and change his name as often as he likes--so long, of
+course, as he doesn't do it to defraud. The mere fact that a statute
+likewise gives him the right to apply to the courts to accomplish the
+same result makes no difference."
+
+"Of course it might make him feel a little more comfortable about it to
+do it that way," suggested Tutt. "Do you know, as long as I've practised
+law in this town I've always assumed that one had to get permission to
+change one's name."
+
+"You've learned something," said Mr. Tutt suavely. "I hope you will put
+it to good account. Here's '76 Fed.' Take it out and console the Fat and
+Skinny Club with it if you can."
+
+Mr. Tutt surrendered the volume without apparent regret and Tutt retired
+to his own office and to the task of soothing the injured feelings of
+Mr. Sorg.
+
+A simple-minded little man was Tutt, for all his professional shrewdness
+and ingenuity. Like many a hero of the battlefield and of the bar, once
+inside the palings of his own fence he became modest, gentle, even
+timorous. For Abigail, his wife, had no illusions about him and did not
+affect to have any. To her neither Tutt nor Mr. Tutt was any such great
+shakes. Had Tutt dared to let her know of many of the schemes which he
+devised for the profit or safety of his clients she would have thought
+less of him still; in fact, she might have parted with him forever. In a
+sense Mrs. Tutt was an exacting woman. Though she somewhat reluctantly
+consented to view the hours from nine a.m. to five p.m. in her husband's
+day as belonging to the law, she emphatically regarded the rest of the
+twenty-four hours as belonging to her.
+
+The law may be, as Judge Holmes has called it, "a jealous mistress," but
+in the case of Tutt it was not nearly so jealous as his wife. So Tutt
+was compelled to walk the straight-and-narrow path whether he liked it
+or not. On the whole he liked it well enough, but there were
+times--usually in the spring--when without being conscious of what was
+the matter with him he mourned his lost youth. For Tutt was only
+forty-eight and he had had a grandfather who had lived strenuously to
+upward of twice that age. He was vigorous, sprightly, bright-eyed and as
+hard as nails, even if somewhat resembling in his contours the late Mr.
+Pickwick. Mrs. Tutt was tall, spare, capable and sardonic. She made Tutt
+comfortable, but she no longer appealed to his sense of romance. Still
+she held him. As the playwright hath said "It isn't good looks they
+want, but good nature; if a warm welcome won't hold them, cold cream
+won't."
+
+However, Tutt got neither looks nor cold cream. His welcome, in fact,
+was warm only if he stayed out too late, and then the later the warmer.
+His relationship to his wife was prosaic, respectful. In his heart of
+hearts he occasionally thought of her as exceedingly unattractive. In a
+word Mrs. Tutt performed her wifely functions in a purely matter-of-fact
+way. Anything else would have seemed to her unseemly. She dressed in a
+manner that would have been regarded as conservative even on Beacon
+Hill. She had no intention of making an old fool of herself or of
+letting him be one either. When people had been married thirty years
+they could take some things for granted. Few persons therefore had ever
+observed Mr. Tutt in the act of caressing Mrs. Tutt; and there were
+those who said that he never had. Frankly, she was a trifle forbidding:
+superficially not the sort of person to excite a great deal of
+sentiment; and occasionally, as we have hinted, in the spring Tutt
+yearned for a little sentiment.
+
+He did his yearning, however, entirely on the side and within those
+hours consecrated to the law. In his wife's society he yearned not at
+all. In her company he carefully kept his thoughts and his language
+inside the innermost circle of decorum. At home his talk was entirely
+"Yea, yea," and "Nay, nay," and dealt principally with politics and the
+feminist movement, in which Abigail was deeply interested.
+
+And by this we do not mean to suggest that at other times or places Tutt
+was anything but conventionally proper. He was not. He only yearned to
+be, well knowing that he was deficient in courage if not in everything
+else.
+
+But habit or no habit, likely or unlikely, Mrs. Tutt had no intention of
+taking any chances so far as Tutt was concerned. If he did not reach
+home precisely at six explanations were in order, and if he came in half
+an hour later he had to demonstrate his integrity beyond a reasonable
+doubt according to the established rules of evidence.
+
+Perhaps Mrs. Tutt did wisely to hold Tutt thus in leash considering the
+character of many of the firm's clients. For it was quite impossible to
+conceal the nature of the practise of Tutt & Tutt; much of which figured
+flamboyantly in the newspapers. Some women would have taken it for
+granted under like circumstances that their husbands had acquired a
+touch at least of the wisdom of the serpent even if they remained quite
+harmless. Abigail countenanced no thought of any demoralization in her
+spouse. To her he was like the artist who smears himself and his smock
+with paint while in his studio, but appears at dinner in spotless linen
+without even a whiff of benzine about him to suggest his occupation. So
+Tutt, though hand and glove in his office with the most notorious of the
+elite of Longacre Square, came home to supper with the naiveté and
+innocence of a theological student for whom an evening at a picture show
+is the height of dissipation.
+
+Yet Tutt was no more of a Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde than most of us.
+Merely, his daily transition was a little more abrupt. And when all is
+said and done most of the devices invented by his fertile little brain
+to further the interests of his clients were no more worthy of
+condemnation than those put forward by far higher-priced and much more
+celebrated attorneys.
+
+Not that Mrs. Tutt was blind to the dangers to which her husband by
+virtue of his occupation was exposed. Far from it. Indeed she made it
+her business to pay periodical visits to the office, ostensibly to see
+whether or not it was properly cleaned and the windows washed, but in
+reality--or at least so Tutt suspected--to find out whether the
+personnel was entirely suitable for a firm of their standing and
+particularly for a junior partner of his susceptibilities.
+
+But she never discovered anything to give her the slightest cause for
+alarm. The dramatis personae of the offices of Tutt & Tutt were
+characteristic of the firm, none of their employees--except Miss
+Sondheim, the tumultous-haired lady stenographer--and Willie, the office
+boy, being under forty years of age.
+
+When not engaged in running errands or fussing over his postage-stamp
+album, Willie spent most of his time teasing old Scraggs, the scrivener,
+an unsuccessful teetotaler. A faint odor of alcohol emanated from the
+cage in which he performed his labors and lent an atmosphere of
+cheerfulness to what might otherwise have seemed to Broadway clients an
+unsympathetic environment, though there were long annual periods during
+which he was as sober as a Kansas judge. The winds of March were apt,
+however, to take hold of him. Perhaps it was the spring in his case
+also.
+
+The backbone of the establishment was Miss Minerva Wiggin. In every law
+office there is usually some one person who keeps the shop going.
+Sometimes it is a man. If so, he is probably a sublimated stenographer
+or law clerk who, having worked for years to get himself admitted to the
+bar, finds, after achieving that ambition, that he has neither the
+ability nor the inclination to brave the struggle for a livelihood by
+himself. Perchance as a youth he has had visions of himself arguing test
+cases before the Court of Appeals while the leaders of the bar hung upon
+his every word, of an office crowded with millionaire clients and
+servile employees, even as he is servile to the man for whom he labors
+for a miserly ten dollars a week.
+
+His ambition takes him by the hand and leads him to high places, from
+which he gazes down into the land of his future prosperity and
+greatness. The law seems a mysterious, alluring, fascinating profession,
+combining the romance of the drama with the gratifications of the
+intellect. He springs to answer his master's bell; he sits up until all
+hours running down citations and making extracts from opinions; he
+rushes to court and answers the calendar and sometimes carries the
+lawyer's brief case and attends him throughout a trial. Three years go
+by--five--and he finds that he is still doing the same thing. He is now
+a member of the bar, he has become the managing clerk, he attends to
+fairly important matters, engages the office force, superintends
+transfer of title, occasionally argues a motion. Five years more go by
+and perhaps his salary is raised a trifle more. Then one day he awakes
+to the realization that his future is to be only that of a trusted
+servitor.
+
+Perchance he is married and has a baby. The time has come for him to
+choose whether he will go forth and put his fortune to the test "to win
+or lose it all" or settle down into the position of faithful legal hired
+man. He is getting a bit bald, he has had one or two tussles with his
+bank about accidental overdrafts. The world looks pretty bleak outside
+and the big machine of the law goes grinding on heartless, inevitable.
+Who is he to challenge the future? The old job is fairly easy; they
+can't get on without him, they say; here is where he belongs; he knows
+his business--give him his thirty-five hundred a year and let him stay!
+
+That is Binks, or Calkins, or Shivers, or any one of those worried
+gray-haired men who sit in the outer office behind a desk strewn with
+papers and make sure that no mistakes have been made. To them every
+doubtful question of practise is referred and they answer
+instantly--sometimes wrongly, but always instantly. They know the last
+day for serving the demurrer in Bilbank against Terwilliger and whether
+or not you can tax a referee's fee as a disbursement in a bill of costs;
+they are experts on the precise form for orders in matrimonial actions
+and the rule in regard to filing a summons and complaint in Oneida
+County; they stand between the members of the firm and disagreeable
+clients; they hire and discharge the office boys; they do everything
+from writing a brief for the Supreme Court of the United States down to
+making the contract with the window cleaners; they are the only lawyers
+who really know anything and they were once promising young men, who
+have found out at last that life and the Sunday-school books are very
+far apart; but they run the works and make the law a gentleman's
+profession for the rest of us. They are always there. Others come, grow
+older, go away, but they remain. Many of them drink. All of which would
+be irrelevant, incompetent and immaterial if this were not a legal
+story.
+
+Scraggs had been one of these, but he had also been one of those who
+drank, and now he was merely a bookkeeper. Miss Wiggin reigned in his
+stead.
+
+A woman and not a man kept Tutt & Tutt on the map. When this sort of
+thing occurs it is usually because the woman in question is the ablest
+and very likely also the best person in the outfit, and she assumes the
+control of affairs by a process of natural selection. Miss Wiggin was
+the conscience, if Mr. Tutt was the heart, of Tutt & Tutt. Nobody,
+unless it was Mr. Tutt, knew where she had come from or why she was
+working if at all in only a semi-respectable law office. Without her
+something dreadful would have happened to the general morale. Everybody
+recognized that fact.
+
+Her very appearance gave the place tone--neutralized the faint odor of
+alcohol from the cage. For in truth she was a fine-looking woman. Had
+she been costumed by a Fifth Avenue dressmaker and done her coiffure
+differently she would have been pretty. Because she drew her gray hair
+straight back from her low forehead and tied it in a knob on the back of
+her head, wore paper cuffs and a black dress, she looked nearer fifty
+than forty-one, which she was. Two hundred dollars would have taken
+twenty years off her apparent age--a year for every ten dollars; but she
+would not have looked a particle less a lady.
+
+Her duties were ambiguous. She was always the first to arrive at the
+office and was the only person permitted to open the firm mail outside
+of its members. She overlooked the books that Scraggs kept and sent out
+the bills. She kept the key to the cash box and had charge of the safe.
+She made the entries in the docket and performed most of the duties of a
+regular managing clerk. She had been admitted to the bar. She checked up
+the charge accounts and on Saturdays paid off the office force. In
+addition to all these things she occasionally took a hand at a brief,
+drew most of the pleadings, and kept track of everything that was done
+in the various cases.
+
+But her chief function, one which made her invaluable was that of
+receiving clients who came to the office, and in the first instance
+ascertaining just what their troubles were; and she was so sympathetic
+and at the same time so sensible that many a stranger who casually
+drifted in and would otherwise just as casually have drifted out again
+remained a permanent fixture in the firm's clientele. Scraggs and
+William adored her in spite of her being an utter enigma to them. She
+was quiet but businesslike, of few words but with a latent sense of
+humor that not infrequently broke through the surface of her gravity,
+and she proceeded upon the excellent postulate that everyone with whom
+she came in contact was actuated by the highest sense of honor. She
+acted as a spiritual tonic to both Mr. Tutt and Tutt--especially to the
+latter, who was the more in need of it. If they were ever tempted to
+stray across the line of professional rectitude her simple assumption
+that the thing couldn't be done usually settled the matter once and for
+all. On delicate questions Mr. Tutt frankly consulted her. Without her,
+Tutt & Tutt would have been shysters; with her they were almost
+respectable. She received a salary of three thousand dollars a year and
+earned double that amount, for she served where she loved and her first
+thought was of Tutt & Tutt. If you can get a woman like that to run your
+law office do not waste any time or consideration upon a man. Her price
+is indeed above rubies.
+
+Yet even Miss Wiggin could not keep the shadow of the vernal equinox off
+the simple heart of the junior Tutt. She had seen it coming for several
+weeks, had scented danger in the way Tutt's childish eye had lingered
+upon Miss Sondheim's tumultous black hair and in the rather rakish,
+familiar way he had guided the ladies who came to get divorces out to
+the elevator. And then there swam into his life the beautiful Mrs.
+Allison, and for a time Tutt became not only hysterically young again,
+but--well, you shall see.
+
+Yet, curiously enough, though we are a long way from where this story
+opened, it all goes back to Phillips Brooks Vanderbilt and the Fat and
+Skinny Club and the right to call ourselves by what names we please.
+Moreover, as must be apparent, all that happened occurred beyond Miss
+Wiggin's sphere of spiritual influence. Yet, had it not, even she could
+not have harnessed Leviathan or loosed the bands of Orion--to say
+nothing of counteracting the effect of spring.
+
+When Tutt returned with "76 Fed." after the departure of Mr. Sorg he
+found his partner smoking the usual stogy and gazing pensively down upon
+the harbor. The immediate foreground was composed of rectangular roofs
+of divers colors, mostly reddish, ornamented with eccentrically shaped
+chimney pots, pent-houses, skylights and water tanks, in addition to
+various curious whistle-like protuberances from which white wraiths of
+steam whirled and danced in the gay breeze. Beyond, in the middle
+distance, a great highway of sparkling jewels led across the waves to
+the distant faintly green hills of Staten Island. Three tiny aeroplanes
+wove invisible threads against the blue woof of the sky above the New
+Jersey shore. It was not a day to practise law at all. It was a day to
+lie on one's back in the grass and watch the clouds or throw one's
+weight against the tugging helm of a racing sloop and bite the spindrift
+blown across her bows--not a day for lawyers but for lovers!
+
+"Here's '76 Fed.'," said Tutt.
+
+"What's become of Sorg?"
+
+"Gone. Mad. Says the whole point of the Fat and Skinny Club is in the
+name."
+
+"I fancy--from looking at Mr. Sorg--that that is quite true," remarked
+Mr. Tutt. He paused and reaching down into a lower compartment of his
+desk, lifted out a tumbler and his bottle of malt extract, which he
+placed carefully at his elbow and leaned back again contemplatively.
+"Look here, Tutt," he said. "I want to ask you something. Is there
+anything the matter with you?"
+
+Tutt regarded him with the air of a small boy caught peeking through a
+knot hole.
+
+"Why,--no!" he protested lamely. "That is--nothing in particular. I do
+feel a bit restless--sort of vaguely dissatisfied."
+
+Mr. Tutt nodded sympathetically.
+
+"How old are you, Tutt?"
+
+"Forty-eight."
+
+"And you feel just at present as if life were 'flat, stale and
+unprofitable?'"
+
+"Why--yes; you might put it that way. The fact is every day seems just
+like every other day. I don't even get any pleasure out of eating. The
+very sight of a boiled egg beside my plate at breakfast gives me the
+willies. I can't eat boiled eggs any more. They sicken me!"
+
+"Exactly!" Mr. Tutt poured out a glass of the malt extract.
+
+"I feel the same way about a lot of things," Tutt hurried on. "Special
+demurrers, for instance. They bore me horribly. And supplementary
+proceedings get most frightfully upon my nerves."
+
+"Exactly!" repeated Mr. Tutt.
+
+"What do you mean by 'exactly?'" snapped Tutt.
+
+"You're bored," explained his partner.
+
+"Rather!" agreed Tutt. "Bored to death. Not with anything special, you
+understand; just everything. I feel as if I'd like to do something
+devilish."
+
+"When a man feels like that he better go to a doctor," declared Mr.
+Tutt.
+
+"A doctor!" exclaimed Tutt derisively. "What good would a doctor do me?"
+
+"He might keep you from getting into trouble."
+
+"Oh, you needn't be alarmed. I won't get into any trouble."
+
+"It's the dangerous age," said Mr. Tutt. "I've known a lot of
+respectable married men to do the most surprising things round fifty."
+
+Tutt looked interested.
+
+"Have you now?" he inquired. "Well, I've no doubt it did some of 'em a
+world of good. Tell you frankly sometimes I feel as if I'd rather like
+to take a bit of a fling myself!"
+
+"Your professional experience ought to be enough to warn you of the
+dangers of that sort of experiment," answered Mr. Tutt gravely. "It's
+bad enough when it occurs inadvertently, so to speak, but when a man in
+your condition of life deliberately goes out to invite trouble it's a
+sad, sad spectacle."
+
+"Do you mean to imply that I'm not able to take care of myself?"
+demanded Tutt.
+
+"I mean to imply that no man is too wise to be made a fool of by some
+woman."
+
+"That every Samson has his Delilah?"
+
+"If you want to put it that way--yes."
+
+"And that in the end he'll get his hair cut?"
+
+Mr. Tutt took a sip from the tumbler of malt and relit his stogy.
+
+"What do you know about Samson and Delilah, Tutt?" he challenged.
+
+"Oh, about as much as you do, I guess, Mr. Tutt," answered his partner
+modestly.
+
+"Well, who cut Samson's hair?" demanded the senior member.
+
+He emptied the dregs of the malt-extract bottle into his glass and
+holding it to the light examined it critically.
+
+"Delilah, of course!" ejaculated Tutt.
+
+Mr. Tutt shook his head.
+
+"There you go off at half-cock again, Tutt!" he retorted whimsically.
+"You wrong her. She did no such thing."
+
+"Why, I'll bet you a hundred dollars on it!" cried Tutt excitedly.
+
+"Make it a simple dinner at the Claridge Grill and I'll go you."
+
+"Done!"
+
+There were four books on the desk near Mr. Tutt's right hand--the New
+York Code of Civil Procedure, an almanac, a Shakesperean concordance and
+a Bible.
+
+"Look it up for yourself," said Mr. Tutt, waving his arm with a gesture
+of the utmost impartiality. "That is, if you happen to know in what part
+of Holy Writ said Delilah is to be found."
+
+Tutt followed the gesture and sat down at the opposite side of the desk.
+
+"There!" he exclaimed, after fumbling over the leaves for several
+minutes. "What did I tell you? Listen, Mr. Tutt! It's in the sixteenth
+chapter of Judges: 'And it came to pass, when she pressed him daily with
+her words, and urged him, so that his soul was vexed unto death; That he
+told her all his heart, and said unto her, There hath not come a razor
+upon mine head.' Um--um."
+
+"Read on, Tutt!" ordered Mr. Tutt.
+
+"Um. 'And when Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent
+and called for the lords of the Philistines, saying, Come up this once.'
+Um-um."
+
+"Yes, go on!"
+
+"'And she made him sleep upon her knees; and she called for a man, and
+she caused him to shave off the seven locks of his head.' Well, I'll be
+hanged!" exclaimed Tutt. "Now, I would have staked a thousand dollars on
+it. But look here, you don't win! Delilah did cut Samson's hair--through
+her agent. '_Qui facit per alium facit per se!_'"
+
+"Your point is overruled," said Mr. Tutt. "A barber cut Samson's hair.
+Let it be a lesson to you never to take anything on hearsay. Always look
+up your authorities yourself. Moreover"--and he looked severely at
+Tutt--"the cerebral fluid--like malt extract--tends to become cloudy
+with age."
+
+"Well, anyhow, I'm no Samson," protested Tutt. "And I haven't met anyone
+that looked like a Delilah. I guess after the procession of
+adventuresses that have trailed through this office in the last twenty
+years I'm reasonably safe."
+
+"No man is safe," meditated Mr. Tutt. "For the reason that no man knows
+the power of expansion of his heart. He thinks it's reached its
+limit--and then he finds to his horror or his delight that it hasn't. To
+put it another way, a man's capacity to love may be likened to a
+thermometer. At twenty-five or thirty he meets some young person, falls
+in love with her, thinks his amatory thermometer has reached the
+boiling-point and accordingly marries her. In point of fact it
+hasn't--it's only marking summer heat--hasn't even registered the
+temperature of the blood. Well, he goes merrily on life's way and some
+fine day another lady breezes by, and this safe and sane citizen, who
+supposes his capacity for affection was reached in early youth, suddenly
+discovers to his amazement that his mercury is on the jump and presently
+that his old thermometer has blown its top off."
+
+"Very interesting, Mr. Tutt," observed Tutt after a moment's silence.
+"You seem to have made something of a study of these things."
+
+"Only in a business way--only in a business way!" Mr. Tutt assured him.
+"Now, if you're feeling stale--and we all are apt to get that way this
+time of year--why don't you take a run down to Atlantic City?"
+
+Now Tutt would have liked to go to Atlantic City could he have gone by
+himself, but the idea of taking Abigail along robbed the idea of its
+attraction. She had got more than ever on his nerves of late. But his
+reply, whatever it might have been, was interrupted by the announcement
+of Miss Wiggin, who entered at that moment, that a lady wished to see
+him.
+
+"She asked for Mr. Tutt," explained Minerva.
+
+"But I think her case is more in your line," and she nodded to Tutt.
+
+"Good looking?" inquired Tutt roguishly.
+
+"Very," returned Miss Wiggin. "A blonde."
+
+"Thanks," answered Tutt, smoothing his hair; "I'm on my way."
+
+Now this free, almost vulgar manner of speech was in reality foreign to
+both Tutt and Miss Wiggin and it was born of the instant, due doubtless
+to some peculiar juxtaposition of astral bodies in Cupid's horoscope
+unknown to them, but which none the less had its influence. Strange
+things happen on the eve of St. Agnes and on Midsummer Night--even in
+law offices.
+
+Mrs. Allison was sitting by the window in Tutt's office when he came in,
+and for a full minute he paused upon the threshold while she pretended
+she did not know that he was there. The deluge of sunlight that fell
+upon her face betrayed no crack or wrinkle--no flaw of any kind--in the
+white marble of its perfection. It was indeed a lovely face, classic in
+the chiseling of its transparent alabaster; and when she turned, her
+eyes were like misty lakes of blue. Bar none, she was the most beautiful
+creature--and there had been many--that had ever wandered into the
+offices of Tutt & Tutt. He sought for a word. "Wonderful"; that was, it,
+she was "wonderful." His stale spirit soared in ecstasy, and left him
+tongue-tied. In vulgar parlance he was rattled to death, this
+commonplace little lawyer who for a score of years had dealt cynically
+with the loves and lives of the flock of female butterflies who
+fluttered annually in and out of the office. Throughout that period he
+had sat unemotionally behind his desk and listened in an aloof, cold,
+professional manner to the stories of their wrongs as they sobbed or
+hissed them forth. Wise little lawyer that he was, he had regarded them
+all as just what they were and nothing else--specimens of the Cecropia.
+And he had not even patted them upon the shoulder or squeezed their
+hands when he had bade them good-by--maintaining always an impersonal
+and dignified demeanor.
+
+Therefore he was surprised to hear himself say in soothing, almost
+cooing tones:
+
+"Well, my dear, what can I do for you?"
+
+Shades of Abigail! "Well, my dear!" Tutt--Tutt! Tutt!
+
+"I am in great trouble," faltered Mrs. Allison, gazing in misty
+helplessness out of her blue grottoes at him while her beautiful red
+lips trembled.
+
+"I hope I can help you!" he breathed. "Tell me all about it! Take your
+time. May I relieve you of your wrap?"
+
+She wriggled out of it gratefully and he saw for the first time the
+round, slender pillar of her neck. What a head she had--in its nimbus of
+hazy gold. What a figure! His forty-eight-year-old lawyer's heart
+trembled under its heavy layer of half-calf dust. He found difficulty in
+articulating. He stammered, staring at her most shamelessly both of
+which symptoms she did not notice. She was used to them in the other
+sex. Tutt did not know what was the matter with him. He had in fact
+entered upon that phase at which the wise man, be he old or young, turns
+and runs.
+
+But Tutt did not run. In legal phrase he stopped, looked and listened,
+experiencing a curious feeling of expansion. This enchanting creature
+transmuted the dingy office lined with its rows of calfskin bindings
+into a golden grot in which he stood spellbound by the low murmur of her
+voice. A sense of infinite leisure emanated from her--a subtle denial of
+the ordinary responsibilities--very relaxing and delightful to Tutt. But
+what twitched his very heartstrings was the dimple that came and went
+with that pathetic little twisted smile of hers.
+
+"I came to you," said Mrs. Allison, "because I knew you were both kind
+and clever."
+
+Tutt smiled sweetly.
+
+"Kind, perhaps--not clever!" he beamed.
+
+"Why, everyone says you are one of the cleverest lawyers in New York,"
+she protested. Then, raising her innocent China-blue eyes to his she
+murmured, "And I so need kindness!"
+
+Tutt's breast swelled with an emotion which he was forced to admit was
+not altogether avuncular--that curious sentimental mixture that
+middle-aged men feel of paternal pity, Platonic tenderness and
+protectiveness, together with all those other euphemistic synonyms, that
+make them eager to assist the weak and fragile, to try to educate and
+elevate, and particularly to find out just how weak, fragile, uneducated
+and unelevated a helpless lady may be. But in spite of his half century
+of experience Tutt's knowledge of these things was purely vicarious. He
+could have told another man when to run, but he didn't know when to run
+himself. He could have saved another, himself he could not save--at any
+rate from Mrs. Allison.
+
+He had never seen anyone like her. He pulled his chair a little nearer.
+She was so slender, so supple, so--what was it?--svelte! And she had an
+air of childish dignity that appealed to him tremendously. There was
+nothing, he assured himself, of the vamp about her at all.
+
+"I only want to get my rights," she said, tremulously. "I'm nearly out
+of my mind. I don't know what to do or where to turn!"
+
+"Is there"--he forced himself to utter the word with difficulty--"a--a
+man involved?"
+
+She flushed and bowed her head sadly, and instantly a poignant rage
+possessed him.
+
+"A man I trusted absolutely," she replied in a low voice.
+
+"His name?"
+
+"Winthrop Oaklander."
+
+Tutt gasped audibly, for the name was that of one of Manhattan's most
+distinguished families, the founder of which had swapped glass beads and
+red-flannel shirts with the aborigines for what was now the most
+precious water frontage in the world--and moreover, Mrs. Allison
+informed Tutt, he was a clergyman.
+
+"I don't wonder you're surprised!" agreed Mrs. Allison.
+
+"Why--I--I'm--not surprised at all!" prevaricated Tutt, at the same time
+groping for his silk handkerchief. "You don't mean to say you've got a
+case against this man Oaklander!"
+
+"I have indeed!" she retorted with firmly compressed lips. "That is, if
+it is what you call a case for a man to promise to marry a woman and
+then in the end refuse to do so."
+
+"Of course it is!" answered Tutt. "But why on earth wouldn't he?"
+
+"He found out I had been divorced," she explained. "Up to that time
+everything had been lovely. You see he thought I was a widow."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+Mr. Tutt experienced another pang of resentment against mankind in
+general.
+
+"I had a leading part in one of the season's successes on Broadway," she
+continued miserably. "But when Mr. Oaklander promised to marry me I left
+the stage; and now--I have nothing!"
+
+"Poor child!" sighed Tutt.
+
+He would have liked to take her in his arms and comfort her, but he
+always kept the door into the outer office open on principle.
+
+"You know, Mr. Oaklander is the pastor of St. Lukes-Over-the-Way," said
+Mrs. Allison. "I thought that maybe rather than have any publicity he
+might do a little something for me."
+
+"I suppose you've got something in the way of evidence, haven't you?
+Letters or photographs or something?" inquired Tutt, reverting
+absent-mindedly to his more professional manner.
+
+"No," she answered. "We never wrote to one another. And when we went out
+it was usually in the evening. I don't suppose half a dozen people have
+ever seen us together."
+
+"That's awkward!" meditated Tutt, "if he denies it."
+
+"Of course he will deny it!"
+
+"You can't tell. He may not."
+
+"Oh, yes, he will! Why, he even refuses to admit that he ever met me!"
+declared Mrs. Allison indignantly.
+
+Now, to Tutt's credit be it said that neither at this point nor at any
+other did any suspicion of Mrs. Allison's sincerity enter his mind. For
+the first time in his professional existence he accepted what a lady
+client told him at its face value. Indeed he felt that no one, not even
+a clergyman, could help loving so miraculous a woman, or that loving her
+one could refrain from marrying her save for some religious or other
+permanent obstacle He was sublimely, ecstatically happy in the mere
+thought that he, Tutt, might be of help to such a celestial being, and
+he desired no reward other than the privilege of being her willing slave
+and of reading her gratitude in those melting, misty eyes.
+
+Mrs. Allison went away just before lunch time, leaving her telephone
+number, her handkerchief, a pungent odor of violet talc, and a
+disconsolate but highly excited Tutt. Never, at any rate within twenty
+years, had he felt so young. Life seemed tinged with every color of the
+spectrum. The radiant fact was that he would--he simply had to--see her
+again. What he might do for her professionally--all that aspect of the
+affair was shoved far into the background of his mind. His only thought
+was how to get her back into his office at the earliest possible moment.
+
+"Shall I enter the lady's name in the address book?" inquired Miss
+Wiggin coldly as he went out to get a bite of lunch.
+
+Tutt hesitated.
+
+"Mrs. Georgie Allison is her name," he said in a detached sort of way.
+
+"Address?"
+
+Tutt felt in his waistcoat pocket.
+
+"By George!" he muttered, "I didn't take it. But her telephone number is
+Lincoln Square 9187."
+
+To chronicle the details of Tutt's second blooming would be needlessly
+to derogate from the dignity of the history of Tutt & Tutt. There is a
+silly season in the life of everyone--even of every lawyer--who can call
+himself a man, and out of such silliness comes the gravity of knowledge.
+Tutt found it necessary for his new client to come to the office almost
+every day, and as she usually arrived about the noon hour what was more
+natural than that he should invite her out to lunch? Twice he walked
+home with her. The telephone was busy constantly. And the only thorn in
+the rose of Tutt's delirious happiness was the fear lest Abigail might
+discover something. The thought gave him many an anxious hour, cost him
+several sleepless nights. At times this nervousness about his wife
+almost exceeded the delight of having Mrs. Allison for a friend. Yet
+each day he became on more and more cordial terms with her, and the
+lunches became longer and more intimate.
+
+The Reverend Winthrop Oaklander gave no sign of life, however. The
+customary barrage of legal letters had been laid down, but without
+eliciting any response. The Reverend Winthrop must be a wise one, opined
+Tutt, and he began to have a hearty contempt as well as hatred for his
+quarry. The first letter had been the usual vague hint that the
+clergyman might and probably would find it to his advantage to call at
+the offices of Tutt & Tutt, and so on. The Reverend Winthrop, however
+did not seem to care to secure said advantage whatever it might be. The
+second epistle gave the name of the client and proposed a friendly
+discussion of her affairs. No reply. The third hinted at legal
+proceedings. Total silence. The fourth demanded ten thousand dollars
+damages and threatened immediate suit.
+
+In answer to this last appeared the Reverend Winthrop himself. He was a
+fine-looking young chap with a clear eye--almost as blue as
+Georgie's--and a skin even pinker than hers, and he stood six feet five
+in his Oxfords and his fist looked to Tutt as big as a coconut.
+
+"Are you the blackmailer who's been writing me those letters?" he
+demanded, springing into Tutt's office. "If you are, let me tell you
+something. You've got hold of the wrong monkey. I've been dealing with
+fellows of your variety ever since I got out of the seminary. I don't
+know the lady you pretend to represent, and I never heard of her. If I
+get any more letters from you I'll go down and lay the case before the
+district attorney; and if he doesn't put you in jail I'll come up here
+and knock your head off. Understand? Good day!"
+
+At any other period in his existence Tutt could not have failed to be
+impressed with the honesty of this husky exponent of the church
+militant, but he was drugged as by the drowsy mandragora. The blatant
+defiance of this muscular preacher outraged him. This canting hypocrite,
+this wolf in priest's clothing must be brought to book. But how? Mrs.
+Allison had admitted the literal truth when she had told him that there
+were no letters, no photographs. There was no use commencing an action
+for breach of promise if there was no evidence to support it. And once
+the papers were filed their bolt would have been shot. Some way must be
+devised whereby the Reverend Winthrop Oaklander could be made to
+perceive that Tutt & Tutt meant business, and--equally imperative
+--whereby Georgie would be impressed with the fact that not
+for nothing had she come to them--that is, to him--for help.
+
+The fact of the matter was that the whole thing had become rather
+hysterical. Tutt, though having nothing seriously to reproach himself
+with, was constantly haunted by a sense of being rather ridiculous and
+doing something behind his wife's back. He told himself that his
+Platonic regard for Georgie was a noble thing and did him honor, but it
+was an honor which he preferred to wear as an entirely private
+decoration. He was conscious of being laughed at by Willie and Scraggs
+and disapproved of by Miss Wiggin, who was very snippy to him. And in
+addition there was the omnipresent horror of having Abigail unearth his
+philandering. He now not only thought of Mrs. Allison as Georgie but
+addressed her thus, and there was quite a tidy little bill at the
+florist's for flowers that he had sent her. In one respect only did he
+exhibit even the most elementary caution--he wrote and signed all his
+letters to her himself upon the typewriter, and filed copies in the
+safe.
+
+"So there we are!" he sighed as he gave to Mrs. Allison a somewhat
+expurgated, or rather emasculated version of the Reverend Winthrop's
+visit. "We have got to hand him something hot or make up our minds to
+surrender. In a word we have got to scare him--Georgie."
+
+And then it was that, like the apocryphal mosquito, the Fat and Skinny
+Club justified its attempted existence. For the indefatigable Sorg made
+an unheralded reappearance in the outer office and insisted upon seeing
+Tutt, loudly asserting that he had reason to believe that if a new
+application were now made to another judge--whom he knew--it would be
+more favorably received. Tutt went to the doorway and stood there
+barring the entrance and expostulating with him.
+
+"All right!" shouted Sorg. "All right! I hear you! But don't tell me
+that a man named Solomon Swackhamer can change his name to Phillips
+Brooks Vanderbilt and in the same breath a reputable body of citizens be
+denied the right to call themselves what they please!"
+
+"He don't understand!" explained Tutt to Georgie, who had listened with
+wide, dreamy eyes. "He don't appreciate the difference between doing a
+thing as an individual and as a group."
+
+"What thing?"
+
+"Why, taking a name."
+
+"I don't get you," said Georgie.
+
+"Sorg wanted to call his crowd the Fat and Skinny Club, and the court
+wouldn't let him--thought it was silly."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"But he could have called himself Mr. Fat or Mr. Skinny or Mr. Anything
+Else without having to ask anybody--Oh, I say!"
+
+Tutt had stiffened into sculpture.
+
+"What is it?" demanded Georgie fascinated.
+
+"I've got an idea," he cried. "You can call yourself anything you like.
+Why not call yourself Mrs. Winthrop Oaklander?"
+
+"But what good would that do?" she asked vaguely.
+
+"Look here!" directed Tutt. "This is the surest thing you know! Just go
+up to the Biltmore and register as Mrs. Winthrop Oaklander. You have a
+perfect legal right to do it. You could call yourself Mrs. Julius Caesar
+if you wanted to. Take a room and stay there until our young Christian
+soldier offers you a suitable inducement to move along. Even if you're
+violating the law somehow his first attempt to make trouble for you will
+bring about the very publicity he is anxious to avoid. Why, it's
+marvelous--and absolutely safe? They can't touch you. He'll come across
+inside of two hours. If he doesn't a word to the reporters will start
+things in the right direction."
+
+For a moment Mrs. Allison looked puzzled. Then her beautiful face broke
+into an enthusiastic classic smile and she laid her little hand softly
+on his arm.
+
+"What a clever boy you are--Sammy!"
+
+A subdued snigger came from the direction of the desk usually occupied
+by William. Tutt flushed. It was one thing to call Mrs. Allison
+"Georgie" in private and another to have her "Sammy" him within hearing
+of the office force. And just then Miss Wiggin passed by with her nose
+slightly in the air.
+
+"What a perfectly wonderful idea!" went on Mrs. Allison rapturously. "A
+perfectly wonderful idea!"
+
+Then she smiled a strange, mysterious, significant smile that almost
+tore Tutt's heart out by the roots.
+
+"Listen, Sammy," she whispered, with a new light in those beautiful
+eyes. "I want five thousand dollars."
+
+"Five?" repeated Tutt simply. "I thought you wanted ten thousand!"
+
+"Only five from you, Sammy!"
+
+"Me!" he gagged.
+
+"You--dearest!"
+
+Tutt turned blazing hot; then cold, dizzy and sea-sick. His sight was
+slightly blurred. Slowly he groped for the door and closed it
+cautiously.
+
+"What--are--you--talking about?" he choked, though he knew perfectly
+well.
+
+Georgie had thrown herself back in the leather chair by his desk and had
+opened her gold mesh-bag.
+
+"About five thousand dollars," she replied with the careful enunciation
+of a New England school-mistress.
+
+"What five thousand dollars?"
+
+"The five you're going to hand me before I leave this office, Sammy
+darling," she retorted dazzlingly.
+
+Tutt's head swam and he sank weakly into his swivel chair. It was
+incredible that he, a veteran of the criminal bar, should have been so
+tricked. Instantly, as when a reagent is injected into a retort of
+chemicals and a precipitate is formed leaving the previously cloudy
+liquid like crystal, Tutt's addled brain cleared. He was caught! The
+victim of his own asininity. He dared not look at this woman who had
+wound him thus round her finger, innocent as he was of any wrongdoing;
+he was ashamed to think of his wife.
+
+"My Lord!" he murmured, realizing for the first time the depth of his
+weakness.
+
+"Oh, it isn't as bad as that!" she laughed. "Remember you were going to
+charge Oaklander ten thousand. This costs you only five. Special rates
+for physicians and lawyers!"
+
+"And suppose I don't choose to give it to you?" he asked.
+
+"Listen here, you funny little man!" she answered in caressing tones
+that made him writhe. "You'd stand for twenty if I insisted on it. Oh,
+don't jump! I'm not going to. You're getting off easy--too easy. But I
+want to stay on good terms with you. I may need you sometime in my
+business. Your certified check for five thousand dollars--and I leave
+you."
+
+She struck a match and started to light a tiny gold-tipped cigarette.
+
+"Don't!" he gasped. "Not in the office."
+
+"Do I get the five thousand?"
+
+He ground his teeth, not yet willing to concede defeat.
+
+"You silly old bird!" she said. "Do you know how many times you've had
+me down here in your office in the last three weeks? Fifteen. How many
+times you've taken me out to lunch? Ten. How often you've called me on
+the telephone? Eighty-nine How many times you've sent me flowers?
+Twelve. How many letters you've written me? Eleven! Oh, I realize
+they're typewritten, but a photograph enlargement would show they were
+typed in your office. Every typewriter has its own individuality, you
+know. Your clerks and office boy have heard me call you Sammy. Why,
+every time you've moved with me beside you someone has seen you. That's
+enough, isn't it? But now, on top of all that, you go and hand me
+exactly what I need on a gold plate."
+
+He gazed at her stupidly.
+
+"Why, if now you don't give me that check I shall simply go up to the
+Biltmore and register as Mrs. Samuel Tutt. I shall take a room and stay
+there until you offer me a proper inducement to move on." She giggled
+delightedly. "It's marvelous--absolutely safe," she quoted. "They can't
+touch me. You'll come across inside of two hours. If you don't a word to
+the reporters will start things in the right direction."
+
+"Don't!" he groaned. "I must have been crazy. That was simply
+blackmail!"
+
+"That's exactly what it was!" she agreed. "There aren't any letters
+except these typewritten ones, or photographs, or any evidence at all,
+but you're going to give me five thousand dollars just the same. Just so
+that your wife won't know what a silly old fool you've been. Where's
+your check book, Sam?"
+
+Tutt pulled out the bottom drawer of his desk and slowly removed his
+personal check book. With his fountain pen in his hand he paused and
+looked at her.
+
+"Rather than give you another cent I'd stand the gaff," he remarked
+defiantly.
+
+"I know it," she answered. "I looked you up before I came here the first
+time. You are good for exactly five thousand dollars."
+
+Tutt filled out the check to cash and sent Willie across the street to
+the bank to have it certified. The sun was just sinking over the Jersey
+shore beyond the Statue of Liberty and the surface of the harbor
+undulated like iridescent watered silk. The clouds were torn into
+golden-purple rents, and the air was so clear that one could look down
+the Narrows far out to the open sea. Standing there by the window Mrs.
+Allison looked as innocently beautiful as the day Tutt had first beheld
+her. After all, he thought, perhaps the experience had been worth the
+money.
+
+Something of the same thought may have occurred to the lady, for as she
+took the check and carefully examined the certification she remarked
+with a distinct access of cordiality: "Really, Sammy, you're quite a
+nice little man. I rather like you."
+
+Tutt stood after she had gone watching the sunset until the west was
+only a mass of leaden shadows Then, strangely relieved, he took his hat
+and started out of the office. Somewhat to his surprise he found Miss
+Wiggin still at her desk.
+
+"By the way," she remarked casually as he passed her, "what shall I
+charge that check to? The one you just drew to cash for five thousand
+dollars?"
+
+"Charge it to life insurance," he said shortly.
+
+He felt almost gay as he threaded his way through the crowds along
+Broadway. Somehow a tremendous load had been lifted from his shoulders
+He would no longer be obliged to lead a sneaking, surreptitious
+existence. He felt like shouting with joy now that he could look the
+world frankly in the face. The genuine agony he had endured during the
+past three weeks loomed like a sickness behind him. He had been a
+fool--and there was no fool like an old one. Just let him get back to
+his old Abigail and there'd be no more wandering-boy business for him!
+Abigail might not have the figure or the complexion that Georgie had,
+but she was a darn sight more reliable. Henceforth she could have him
+from five p.m. to nine a.m. without reserve. As for kicking over the
+traces, sowing wild oats and that sort of thing, there was nothing in it
+for him. Give him Friend Wife.
+
+He stopped at the florist's and, having paid a bill of thirty-six
+dollars for Georgie's flowers, purchased a double bunch of violets and
+carried them home with him. Abigail was watching for him out of the
+window. Something warm rushed to his heart at the sight of her. Through
+the lace curtains she looked quite trim.
+
+"Hello, old girl!" he cried, as she opened the door. "Waiting for me,
+eh? Here's a bunch of posies for you."
+
+And he kissed her on the cheek.
+
+"That's more than I ever did to Georgie," he said to himself.
+
+"Why, Samuel!" laughed Abigail with a faded blush. "What's ever got into
+you?"
+
+"Dunno!" he retorted gaily. "The spring, I guess. What do you say to a
+little dinner at a restaurant and then going to the play?"
+
+She bridled--being one of the generation who did such things--with
+pleasure.
+
+"Seems to me you're getting rather extravagant." she objected. "Still--"
+
+"Oh, come along!" he bullied her. "One of my clients collected five
+thousand dollars this afternoon."
+
+Tutt summoned a taxi and they drove to the brightest, most glittering of
+Broadway hostelries. Abigail had never been in such a chic place before.
+It half terrified and shocked her, all those women in dresses that
+hardly came up to their armpits. Some of them were handsome though. That
+slim one at the table by the pillar, for instance. She was really quite
+lovely with that mass of yellow-golden hair, that startlingly white
+skin, and those misty China-blue eyes. And the gentleman with her, the
+tall man with the pink cheeks, was very handsome, too.
+
+"Look, Samuel," she said, touching his hand. "See that good-looking
+couple over there."
+
+But Samuel was looking at them already--intently. And just then the
+beautiful woman turned and, catching sight of the Tutts, smiled
+cordially if somewhat roguishly and raised her glass, as did her
+companion. Mechanically Tutt elevated his. The three drank to one
+another.
+
+"Do you know those people, Samuel?" inquired Mrs. Tutt somewhat stiffly.
+"Who are they?"
+
+"Oh, those over there?" he repeated absently. "I don't really know what
+the lady's name is, she's been down to our office a few times. But the
+man is Winthrop Oaklander--and the funny part of it is, I always thought
+he was a clergyman."
+
+Later in the evening he turned to her between the acts and remarked
+inconsequently: "Say, Abbie, do I look as if I'd just had my hair cut?"
+
+
+
+
+The Dog Andrew
+
+
+  "Every dog is entitled to one bite."--UNREPORTED
+  OPINION OF THE APPELLATE DIVISION OF THE NEW
+  YORK SUPREME COURT.
+
+"Now see here!" shouted Mr. Appleboy, coming out of the boathouse, where
+he was cleaning his morning's catch of perch, as his neighbor Mr.
+Tunnygate crashed through the hedge and cut across Appleboy's parched
+lawn to the beach. "See here, Tunnygate, I won't have you trespassing on
+my place! I've told you so at least a dozen times! Look at the hole
+you've made in that hedge, now! Why can't you stay in the path?"
+
+His ordinarily good-natured countenance was suffused with anger and
+perspiration. His irritation with Mr. Tunnygate had reached the point of
+explosion. Tunnygate was a thankless friend and he was a great cross to
+Mr. Appleboy. Aforetime the two had been intimate in the fraternal,
+taciturn intimacy characteristic of fat men, an attraction perhaps akin
+to that exerted for one another by celestial bodies of great mass, for
+it is a fact that stout people do gravitate toward one another--and hang
+or float in placid juxtaposition, perhaps merely as a physical result of
+their avoirdupois. So Appleboy and Tunnygate had swum into each other's
+spheres of influence, either blown by the dallying winds of chance or
+drawn by some mysterious animal magnetism, and, being both addicted to
+the delights of the soporific sport sanctified by Izaak Walton, had
+raised unto themselves portable temples upon the shores of Long Island
+Sound in that part of the geographical limits of the Greater City known
+as Throggs Neck.
+
+Every morn during the heat of the summer months Appleboy would rouse
+Tunnygate or conversely Tunnygate would rouse Appleboy, and each in his
+own wobbly skiff would row out to the spot which seemed most propitious
+to the piscatorial art. There, under two green umbrellas, like two fat
+rajahs in their shaking howdahs upon the backs of two white elephants,
+the friends would sit in solemn equanimity awaiting the evasive cunner,
+the vagrant perch or cod or the occasional flirtatious eel. They rarely
+spoke and when they did the edifice of their conversation--their Tower
+of Babel, so to speak--was monosyllabic. Thus:
+
+"Huh! Ain't had a bite!"
+
+"Huh!"
+
+"Huh!"
+
+Silence for forty minutes. Then: "Huh! Had a bite?"
+
+"Nope!"
+
+"Huh!"
+
+That was generally the sum total of their interchange Yet it satisfied
+them, for their souls were in harmony. To them it was pregnant of
+unutterable meanings, of philosophic mysteries more subtle than those of
+the esoterics, of flowers and poetry, of bird-song and twilight, of all
+the nuances of softly whispered avowals, of the elusive harmonies of
+love's half-fainting ecstasy.
+
+"Huh!"
+
+"Huh!"
+
+And then into this Eden--only not by virtue of the excision of any
+vertebra such as was originally necessary in the case of Adam--burst
+woman. There was silence no longer. The air was rent with clamor; for
+both Appleboy and Tunnygate, within a month of one another, took unto
+themselves wives. Wives after their own image!
+
+For a while things went well enough; it takes ladies a few weeks to find
+out each other's weak points. But then the new Mrs. Tunnygate
+unexpectedly yet undeniably began to exhibit the serpent's tooth, the
+adder's tongue or the cloven hoof--as the reader's literary traditions
+may lead him to prefer. For no obvious reason at all she conceived a
+violent hatred of Mrs. Appleboy, a hatred that waxed all the more
+virulent on account of its object's innocently obstinate refusal to
+comprehend or recognize it. Indeed Mrs. Tunnygate found it so difficult
+to rouse Mrs. Appleboy into a state of belligerency sufficiently
+interesting that she soon transferred her energies to the more worthy
+task of making Appleboy's life a burden to him.
+
+To this end she devoted herself with a truly Machiavellian ingenuity,
+devising all sorts of insults irritations and annoyances, and adding to
+the venom of her tongue the inventive cunning of a Malayan witch doctor.
+The Appleboys' flower-pots mysteriously fell off the piazza, their
+thole-pins disappeared, their milk bottles vanished, Mr. Appleboy's fish
+lines acquired a habit of derangement equaled only by barbed-wire
+entanglements, and his clams went bad! But these things might have been
+borne had it not been for the crowning achievement of her malevolence,
+the invasion of the Appleboys' cherished lawn, upon which they lavished
+all that anxious tenderness which otherwise they might have devoted to a
+child.
+
+It was only about twenty feet by twenty, and it was bordered by a hedge
+of moth-eaten privet, but anyone who has ever attempted to induce a
+blade of grass to grow upon a sand dune will fully appreciate the
+deviltry of Mrs. Tunnygate's malignant mind. Already there was a horrid
+rent where Tunnygate had floundered through at her suggestion in order
+to save going round the pathetic grass plot which the Appleboys had
+struggled to create where Nature had obviously intended a floral vacuum.
+Undoubtedly it had been the sight of Mrs. Appleboy with her small
+watering pot patiently encouraging the recalcitrant blades that had
+suggested the malicious thought to Mrs. Tunnygate that maybe the
+Appleboys didn't own that far up the beach. They didn't--that was the
+mockery of it. Like many others they had built their porch on their
+boundary line, and, as Mrs. Tunnygate pointed out, they were claiming to
+own something that wasn't theirs. So Tunnygate, in daily obedience to
+his spouse, forced his way through the hedge to the beach, and daily the
+wrath of the Appleboys grew until they were driven almost to
+desperation.
+
+Now when the two former friends sat fishing in their skiffs they either
+contemptuously ignored one another or, if they "Huh-Huhed!" at all the
+"Huhs!" resembled the angry growls of infuriated beasts. The worst of it
+was that the Appleboys couldn't properly do anything about it. Tunnygate
+had, as Mrs. Tunnygate sneeringly pointed out, a perfect legal right to
+push his way through the hedge and tramp across the lawn, and she didn't
+propose to allow the Appleboys to gain any rights by proscription,
+either. Not much!
+
+Therefore, when Mr. Appleboy addressed to Mr. Tunnygate the remarks with
+which this story opens, the latter insolently replied in words, form or
+substance that Mr. Appleboy could go to hell. Moreover, as he went by
+Mr. Appleboy he took pains to kick over a clod of transplanted sea
+grass, nurtured by Mrs. Appleboy as the darling of her bosom, and
+designed to give an air of verisimilitude to an otherwise bare and
+unconvincing surface of sand. Mr. Appleboy almost cried with vexation.
+
+"Oh!" he ejaculated, struggling for words to express the full content of
+his feeling. "Gosh, but you're--mean!"
+
+He hit it! Curiously enough, that was exactly the word! Tunnygate was
+mean--and his meanness was second only to that of the fat hippopotama
+his wife.
+
+Then, without knowing why, for he had no formulated ideas as to the
+future, and probably only intended to try to scare Tunnygate with vague
+threats, Appleboy added: "I warn you not to go through that hedge again!
+Understand--I warn you! And if you do I won't be responsible for the
+consequences!"
+
+He really didn't mean a thing by the words, and Tunnygate knew it.
+
+"Huh!" retorted the latter contemptuously. "You!"
+
+Mr. Appleboy went inside the shack and banged the door. Mrs. Appleboy
+was peeling potatoes in the kitchen-living room.
+
+"I can't stand it!" he cried weakly. "He's driving me wild!"
+
+"Poor lamb!" soothed Mrs. Appleboy, peeling an interminable rind. "Ain't
+that just a sweetie? Look! It's most as long as your arm!"
+
+She held it up dangling between her thumb and fore-finger. Then, with a
+groan she dropped it at his feet. "I know it's a real burden to you,
+deary!" she sighed.
+
+Suddenly they both bent forward with startled eyes, hypnotized by the
+peel upon the floor.
+
+Unmistakably it spelt "dog"! They looked at one another significantly.
+
+"It is a symbol!" breathed Mrs. Appleboy in an awed whisper.
+
+"Whatever it is, it's some grand idea!" exclaimed her husband. "Do you
+know anybody who's got one? I mean a--a--"
+
+"I know just what you mean," she agreed. "I wonder we never thought of
+it before! But there wouldn't be any use in getting any dog!"
+
+"Oh, no!" he concurred. "We want a real--dog!"
+
+"One you know about!" she commented.
+
+"The fact is," said he, rubbing his forehead, "if they know about 'em
+they do something to 'em. It ain't so easy to get the right kind."
+
+"Oh, we'll get one!" she encouraged him. "Now Aunt Eliza up to Livornia
+used to have one. It made a lot of trouble and they ordered her--the
+selectmen did--to do away with it. But she only pretended she had--she
+didn't really--and I think she's got him yet."
+
+"Gee!" said Mr. Appleboy tensely. "What sort was it?"
+
+"A bull!" she replied. "With a big white face."
+
+"That's the kind!" he agreed excitedly. "What was its name?"
+
+"Andrew," she answered.
+
+"That's a queer name for a dog!" he commented "Still, I don't care what
+his name is, so long as he's the right kind of dog! Why don't you write
+to Aunt Eliza to-night?"
+
+"Of course Andrew may be dead," she hazarded. "Dogs do die."
+
+"Oh, I guess Andrew isn't dead!" he said hopefully "That tough kind of
+dog lasts a long time. What will you say to Aunt Eliza?"
+
+Mrs. Appleboy went to the dresser and took a pad and pencil from one of
+the shelves.
+
+"Oh, something like this," she answered, poising the pencil over the
+pad in her lap:
+
+"Dear Aunt Eliza: I hope you are quite well. It is sort of lonely living
+down here on the beach and there are a good many rough characters, so we
+are looking for a dog for companionship and protection Almost any kind
+of healthy dog would do and you may be sure he would have a good home.
+Hoping to see you soon. Your affectionate niece, Bashemath."
+
+"I hope she'll send us Andrew," said Appleboy fervently.
+
+"I guess she will!" nodded Bashemath.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What on earth is that sign?" wrathfully demanded Mrs. Tunnygate one
+morning about a week later as she looked across the Appleboys' lawn from
+her kitchen window. "Can you read it, Herman?"
+
+Herman stopped trying to adjust his collar and went out on the piazza.
+
+"Something about 'dog'," he declared finally.
+
+"Dog!" she exclaimed. "They haven't got a dog!"
+
+"Well," he remarked, "that's what the sign says: 'Beware of the dog'!
+And there's something above it. Oh! 'No crossing this property.
+Trespassing forbidden.'"
+
+"What impudence!" avowed Mrs. Tunnygate. "Did you ever know such
+people! First they try and take land that don't belong to them, and then
+they go and lie about having a dog. Where are they, anyway?"
+
+"I haven't seen 'em this morning," he answered. "Maybe they've gone away
+and put up the sign so we won't go over. Think that'll stop us!"
+
+"In that case they've got another think comin'!" she retorted angrily.
+"I've a good mind to have you go over and tear up the whole place!"
+
+"'N pull up the hedge?" he concurred eagerly. "Good chance!"
+
+Indeed, to Mr. Tunnygate it seemed the supreme opportunity both to
+distinguish himself in the eyes of his blushing bride and to gratify
+that perverse instinct inherited from our cave-dwelling ancestors to
+destroy utterly--in order, perhaps, that they may never seek to avenge
+themselves upon us--those whom we have wronged. Accordingly Mr.
+Tunnygate girded himself with his suspenders, and with a gleam of
+fiendish exultation in his eye stealthily descended from his porch and
+crossed to the hole in the hedge. No one was in sight except two
+barefooted searchers after clams a few hundred yards farther up the
+beach and a man working in a field half a mile away. The bay shimmered
+in the broiling August sun and from a distant grove came the rattle and
+wheeze of locusts. Throggs Neck blazed in silence, and utterly silent
+was the house of Appleboy.
+
+With an air of bravado, but with a slightly accelerated heartbeat,
+Tunnygate thrust himself through the hole in the hedge and looked
+scornfully about the Appleboy lawn. A fierce rage worked through his
+veins. A lawn! What effrontery! What business had these condescending
+second-raters to presume to improve a perfectly good beach which was
+satisfactory to other folks? He'd show 'em! He took a step in the
+direction of the transplanted sea grass. Unexpectedly the door of the
+Appleboy kitchen opened.
+
+"I warned you!" enunciated Mr. Appleboy with unnatural calmness, which
+with another background might have struck almost anybody as suspicious.
+
+"Huh!" returned the startled Tunnygate, forced under the circumstances
+to assume a nonchalance that he did not altogether feel. "You!"
+
+"Well," repeated Mr. Appleboy. "Don't ever say I didn't!"
+
+"Pshaw!" ejaculated Mr. Tunnygate disdainfully.
+
+With premeditation and deliberation, and with undeniable malice
+aforethought, he kicked the nearest bunch of sea grass several feet in
+the air. His violence carried his leg high in the air and he partially
+lost his equilibrium. Simultaneously a white streak shot from beneath
+the porch and something like a red-hot poker thrust itself savagely into
+an extremely tender part of his anatomy.
+
+"Ouch! O--o--oh!" he yelled in agony. "Oh!"
+
+"Come here, Andrew!" said Mr. Appleboy mildly. "Good doggy! Come here!"
+
+But Andrew paid no attention. He had firmly affixed himself to the base
+of Mr. Tunnygate's personality without any intention of being
+immediately detached. And he had selected that place, taken aim, and
+discharged himself with an air of confidence and skill begotten of
+lifelong experience.
+
+"Oh! O--o--oh!" screamed Tunnygate, turning wildly and clawing through
+the hedge, dragging Andrew after him. "Oh! O--oh!"
+
+Mrs. Tunnygate rushed to the door in time to see her spouse lumbering up
+the beach with a white object gyrating in the air behind him.
+
+"What's the matter?" she called out languidly. Then perceiving the
+matter she hastily followed. The Appleboys were standing on their lawn
+viewing the whole proceeding with ostentatious indifference.
+
+Up the beach fled Tunnygate, his cries becoming fainter and fainter. The
+two clam diggers watched him curiously, but made no attempt to go to his
+assistance. The man in the field leaned luxuriously upon his hoe and
+surrendered himself to unalloyed delight. Tunnygate was now but a white
+flicker against the distant sand. His wails had a dying fall:
+"O--o--oh!"
+
+"Well, we warned him!" remarked Mr. Appleboy to Bashemath with a smile
+in which, however, lurked a slight trace of apprehension.
+
+"We certainly did!" she replied. Then after a moment she added a trifle
+anxiously: "I wonder what will happen to Andrew!"
+
+Tunnygate did not return. Neither did Andrew. Secluded in their kitchen
+living-room the Appleboys heard a motor arrive and through a crack in
+the door saw it carry Mrs. Tunnygate away bedecked as for some momentous
+ceremonial. At four o'clock, while Appleboy was digging bait, he
+observed another motor making its wriggly way along the dunes. It was
+fitted longitudinally with seats, had a wire grating and was marked
+"N.Y.P.D." Two policemen in uniform sat in front. Instinctively Appleboy
+realized that the gods had called him. His heart sank among the clams.
+Slowly he made his way back to the lawn where the wagon had stopped
+outside the hedge.
+
+"Hey there!" called out the driver. "Is your name Appleboy?"
+
+Appleboy nodded.
+
+"Put your coat on, then, and come along," directed the other. "I've got
+a warrant for you."
+
+"Warrant?" stammered Appleboy dizzily.
+
+"What's that?" cried Bashemath, appearing at the door. "Warrant for
+what?"
+
+The officer slowly descended and handed Appleboy a paper.
+
+"For assault," he replied. "I guess you know what for, all right!"
+
+"We haven't assaulted anybody," protested Mrs. Appleboy heatedly.
+"Andrew--"
+
+"You can explain all that to the judge," retorted the cop. "Meantime put
+on your duds and climb in. If you don't expect to spend the night at the
+station you'd better bring along the deed of your house so you can give
+bail."
+
+"But who's the warrant for?" persisted Mrs. Appleboy.
+
+"For Enoch Appleboy," retorted the cop wearily. "Can't you read?"
+
+"But Enoch didn't do a thing!" she declared. "It was Andrew!"
+
+"Who's Andrew?" inquired the officer of the law mistrustfully.
+
+"Andrew's a dog," she explained.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Mr. Tutt," announced Tutt, leaning against his senior partner's door
+jamb with a formal-looking paper in his hand, "I have landed a case
+that will delight your legal soul."
+
+"Indeed?" queried the elder lawyer. "I have never differentiated between
+my legal soul and any other I may possess. However, I assume from your
+remark that we have been retained in a matter presenting some peculiarly
+absurd, archaic or otherwise interesting doctrine of law?"
+
+"Not directly," responded Tutt. "Though you will doubtless find it
+entertaining enough, but indirectly--atmospherically so to speak--it
+touches upon doctrines of jurisprudence, of religion and of philosophy,
+replete with historic fascination."
+
+"Good!" exclaimed Mr. Tutt, laying down his stogy. "What kind of a case
+is it?"
+
+"It's a dog case!" said the junior partner, waving the paper. "The dog
+bit somebody."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed Mr. Tutt, perceptibly brightening. "Doubtless we shall
+find a precedent in Oliver Goldsmith's famous elegy:
+
+  "And in that town a dog was found,
+    As many dogs there be,
+  Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound,
+    And curs of low degree."
+
+"Only," explained Tutt, "in this case, though the man recovered of the
+bite, the dog refused to die!"
+
+"And so they want to prosecute the dog? It can't be done. An animal
+hasn't been brought to the bar of justice for several centuries."
+
+"No, no!" interrupted Tutt. "They don't--"
+
+"There was a case," went on Mr. Tutt reminiscently "Let me see--at
+Sauvigny, I think it was--about 1457, when they tried a sow and three
+pigs for killing a child. The court assigned a lawyer to defend her, but
+like many assigned counsel he couldn't think of anything to say in her
+behalf. As regards the little pigs he did enter the plea that no animus
+was shown, that they had merely followed the example of their mother,
+and that at worst they were under age and irresponsible. However, the
+court found them all guilty, and the sow was publicly hanged in the
+market place."
+
+"What did they do with the three little pigs?" inquired Tutt with some
+interest.
+
+"They were pardoned on account of their extreme youth," said Mr. Tutt,
+"and turned loose again--with a warning."
+
+"I'm glad of that!" sighed Tutt. "Is that a real case?"
+
+"Absolutely," replied his partner. "I've read it in the Sauvigny
+records."
+
+"I'll be hanged!" exclaimed Tutt. "I never knew that animals were ever
+held personally responsible."
+
+"Why, of course they were!" said Mr. Tutt. "Why shouldn't they be? If
+animals have souls why shouldn't they be responsible for their acts?"
+
+"But they haven't any souls!" protested Tutt.
+
+"Haven't they now?" remarked the elder lawyer. "I've seen many an old
+horse that had a great deal more conscience than his master. And on
+general principles wouldn't it be far more just and humane to have the
+law deal with a vicious animal that had injured somebody than to leave
+its punishment to an irresponsible and arbitrary owner who might be
+guilty of extreme brutality?"
+
+"If the punishment would do any good--yes!" agreed Tutt.
+
+"Well, who knows?" meditated Mr. Tutt. "I wonder if it ever does any
+good? But anybody would have to agree that responsibility for one's acts
+should depend upon the degree of one's intelligence--and from that point
+of view many of our friends are really much less responsible than
+sheep."
+
+"Which, as you so sagely point out, would, however be a poor reason for
+letting their families punish them in case they did wrong. Just think
+how such a privilege might be abused! If Uncle John didn't behave
+himself as his nephews thought proper they could simply set upon him and
+briskly beat him up."
+
+"Yes, of course, the law even to-day recognizes the right to exercise
+physical discipline within the family. Even homicide is excusable, under
+Section 1054 of our code, when committed in lawfully correcting a child
+or servant."
+
+"That's a fine relic of barbarism!" remarked Tutt. "But the child soon
+passes through that dangerous zone and becomes entitled to be tried for
+his offenses by a jury of his peers; the animal never does."
+
+"Well, an animal couldn't be tried by a jury of his peers, anyhow," said
+Mr. Tutt.
+
+"I've seen juries that were more like nanny goats than men!" commentated
+Tutt. "I'd like to see some of our clients tried by juries of geese or
+woodchucks."
+
+"The field of criminal responsibility is the No Man's Land of the law,"
+mused Mr. Tutt. "Roughly, mental capacity to understand the nature of
+one's acts is the test, but it is applied arbitrarily in the case of
+human beings and a mere point of time is taken beyond which,
+irrespective of his actual intelligence, a man is held accountable for
+whatever he does. Of course that is theoretically unsound. The more
+intelligent a person is the more responsible he should be held to be and
+the higher the quality of conduct demanded of him by his fellows. Yet
+after twenty-one all are held equally responsible--unless they're
+actually insane. It isn't equity! In theory no man or animal should be
+subject to the power of discretionary punishment on the part of
+another--even his own father or master. I've often wondered what earthly
+right we have to make the animals work for us--to bind them to slavery
+when we denounce slavery as a crime. It would horrify us to see a human
+being put up and sold at auction. Yet we tear the families of animals
+apart, subject them to lives of toil, and kill them whenever we see fit.
+We say we do this because their intelligence is limited and they cannot
+exercise any discrimination in their conduct, that they are always in
+the zone of irresponsibility and so have no rights. But I've seen
+animals that were shrewder than men, and men who were vastly less
+intelligent than animals."
+
+"Right-o!" assented Tutt. "Take Scraggs, for instance. He's no more
+responsible than a chipmunk."
+
+"Nevertheless, the law has always been consistent," said Mr. Tutt, "and
+has never discriminated between animals any more than it has between men
+on the ground of varying degrees of intelligence. They used to try 'em
+all, big and little, wild and domesticated, mammals and invertebrates."
+
+"Oh, come!" exclaimed Tutt. "I may not know much law, but--"
+
+"Between 1120 and 1740 they prosecuted in France alone no less than
+ninety-two animals. The last one was a cow."
+
+"A cow hasn't much intelligence," observed Tutt.
+
+"And they tried fleas," added Mr. Tutt.
+
+"They have a lot!" commented his junior partner. "I knew a flea once,
+who--"
+
+"They had a regular form of procedure," continued Mr. Tutt, brushing the
+flea aside, "which was adhered to with the utmost technical accuracy.
+You could try an individual animal, either in person or by proxy, or you
+could try a whole family, swarm or herd. If a town was infested by rats,
+for example, they first assigned counsel--an advocate, he was
+called--and then the defendants were summoned three times publicly to
+appear. If they didn't show up on the third and last call they were
+tried _in absentia_, and if convicted were ordered out of the country
+before a certain date under penalty of being exorcised."
+
+"What happened if they were exorcised?" asked Tutt curiously.
+
+"It depended a good deal on the local power of Satan," answered the old
+lawyer dryly. "Sometimes they became even more prolific and destructive
+than they were before, and sometimes they promptly died. All the leeches
+were prosecuted at Lausanne in 1451. A few selected representatives
+were brought into court, tried, convicted and ordered to depart within
+a fixed period. Maybe they didn't fully grasp their obligations or
+perhaps were just acting contemptuously, but they didn't depart and so
+were promptly exorcised. Immediately they began to die off and before
+long there were none left in the country."
+
+"I know some rats and mice I'd like to have exorcised," mused Tutt.
+
+"At Autun in the fifteenth century the rats won their case," said Mr.
+Tutt.
+
+"Who got 'em off?" asked Tutt.
+
+"M. Chassensée, the advocate appointed to defend them. They had been a
+great nuisance and were ordered to appear in court. But none of them
+turned up. M. Chassensée therefore argued that a default should not be
+taken because _all_ the rats had been summoned, and some were either so
+young or so old and decrepit that they needed more time. The court
+thereupon granted him an extension. However, they didn't arrive on the
+day set, and this time their lawyer claimed that they were under duress
+and restrained by bodily fear--of the townspeople's cats. That all these
+cats, therefore should first be bound over to keep the peace! The court
+admitted the reasonableness of this, but the townsfolk refused to be
+responsible for their cats and the judge dismissed the case!"
+
+"What did Chassensée get out of it?" inquired Tutt.
+
+"There is no record of who paid him or what was his fee."
+
+"He was a pretty slick lawyer," observed Tutt. "Did they ever try
+birds?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" answered Mr. Tutt. "They tried a cock at Basel in 1474--for
+the crime of laying an egg."
+
+"Why was that a crime?" asked Tutt. "I should call it a _tour de
+force_."
+
+"Be that as it may," said his partner, "from a cock's egg is hatched the
+cockatrice, or basilisk, the glance of whose eye turns the beholder to
+stone. Therefore they tried the cock, found him guilty and burned him
+and his egg together at the stake. That is why cocks don't lay eggs
+now."
+
+"I'm glad to know that," said Tutt. "When did they give up trying
+animals?"
+
+"Nearly two hundred years ago," answered Mr. Tutt. "But for some time
+after that they continued to try inanimate objects for causing injury to
+people. I've heard they tried one of the first locomotives that ran over
+a man and declared it forfeit to the crown as a deodand."
+
+"I wonder if you couldn't get 'em to try Andrew," hazarded Tutt, "and
+maybe declare him forfeited to somebody as a deodand."
+
+"Deodand means 'given to God,'" explained Mr. Tutt.
+
+"Well, I'd give Andrew to God--if God would take him," declared Tutt
+devoutly.
+
+"But who is Andrew?" asked Mr. Tutt.
+
+"Andrew is a dog," said Tutt, "who bit one Tunnygate, and now the Grand
+Jury have indicted not the dog, as it is clear from your historical
+disquisition they should have done, but the dog's owner, Mr. Enoch
+Appleboy."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Assault in the second degree with a dangerous weapon."
+
+"What was the weapon?" inquired Mr. Tutt simply.
+
+"The dog."
+
+"What are you talking about?" cried Mr. Tutt. "What nonsense!"
+
+"Yes, it is nonsense!" agreed Tutt. "But they've done it all the same.
+Read it for yourself!" And he handed Mr. Tutt the indictment.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"The Grand Jury of the County of New York by this indictment accuse
+Enoch Appleboy of the crime of assault in the second degree, committed
+as follows:
+
+"Said Enoch Appleboy, late of the Borough of Bronx, City and County
+aforesaid, on the 21st day of July, in the year of our Lord one
+thousand nine hundred and fifteen, at the Borough and County aforesaid,
+with force and arms in and upon one Herman Tunnygate, in the peace of
+the State and People then and there being, feloniously did willfully and
+wrongfully make an assault in and upon the legs and body of him the said
+Herman Tunnygate, by means of a certain dangerous weapon, to wit: one
+dog, of the form, style and breed known as 'bull,' being of the name of
+'Andrew,' then and there being within control of the said Enoch
+Appleboy, which said dog, being of the name of 'Andrew,' the said Enoch
+Appleboy did then and there feloniously, willfully and wrongfully
+incite, provoke, and encourage, then and there being, to bite him, the
+said Herman Tunnygate, by means whereof said dog 'Andrew' did then and
+there grievously bite the said Herman Tunnygate in and upon the legs and
+body of him, the said Herman Tunnygate, and the said Enoch Appleboy thus
+then and there feloniously did willfully and wrongfully cut, tear,
+lacerate and bruise, and did then and there by the means of the dog
+'Andrew' aforesaid feloniously, willfully and wrongfully inflict
+grievous bodily harm upon the said Herman Tunnygate, 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."
+
+"That," asserted Mr. Tutt, wiping his spectacles, "is a document worthy
+of preservation in the Congressional Library. Who drew it?"
+
+"Don't know," answered Tutt, "but whoever he was he was a humorist!"
+
+"It's no good. There isn't any allegation of _scienter_ in it," affirmed
+Mr. Tutt.
+
+"What of it? It says he assaulted Tunnygate with a dangerous weapon. You
+don't have to set forth that he knew it was a dangerous weapon if you
+assert that he did it willfully. You don't have to allege in an
+indictment charging an assault with a pistol that the defendant knew it
+was loaded."
+
+"But a dog is different!" reasoned Mr. Tutt. "A dog is not _per se_ a
+dangerous weapon. Saying so doesn't make it so, and that part of the
+indictment is bad on its face--unless, to be sure, it means that he hit
+him with a dead dog, which it is clear from the context that he didn't.
+The other part--that he set the dog on him--lacks the allegation that
+the dog was vicious and that Appleboy knew it; in other words an
+allegation of _scienter_. It ought to read that said Enoch Appleboy
+'well knowing that said dog Andrew was a dangerous and ferocious animal
+and would, if incited, provoked and encouraged, bite the legs and body
+of him the said Herman--did then and there feloniously, willfully and
+wrongfully incite, provoke and encourage the said Andrew, and so
+forth.'"
+
+"I get you!" exclaimed Tutt enthusiastically. "Of course an allegation
+of _scienter_ is necessary! In other words you could demur to the
+indictment for insufficiency?"
+
+Mr. Tutt nodded.
+
+"But in that case they'd merely go before the Grand Jury and find
+another--a good one. It's much better to try and knock the case out on
+the trial once and for all."
+
+"Well, the Appleboys are waiting to see you," said Tutt. "They are in my
+office. Bonnie Doon got the case for us off his local district leader,
+who's a member of the same lodge of the Abyssinian Mysteries--Bonnie's
+been Supreme Exalted Ruler of the Purple Mountain for over a year--and
+he's pulled in quite a lot of good stuff, not all dog cases either!
+Appleboy's an Abyssinian too."
+
+"I'll see them," consented Mr. Tutt, "but I'm going to have you try the
+case. I shall insist upon acting solely in an advisory capacity. Dog
+trials aren't in my line. There are some things which are _infra
+dig_--even for Ephraim Tutt."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Appleboy sat stolidly at the bar of justice, pale but resolute.
+Beside him sat Mrs. Appleboy, also pale but even more resolute. A jury
+had been selected without much manifest attention by Tutt, who had
+nevertheless managed to slip in an Abyssinian brother on the back row,
+and an ex-dog fancier for Number Six. Also among those present were a
+delicatessen man from East Houston Street, a dealer in rubber novelties,
+a plumber and the editor of Baby's World. The foreman was almost as fat
+as Mr. Appleboy, but Tutt regarded this as an even break on account of
+the size of Tunnygate. As Tutt confidently whispered to Mrs. Appleboy,
+it was as rotten a jury as he could get.
+
+Mrs. Appleboy didn't understand why Tutt should want a rotten jury, but
+she nevertheless imbibed some vicarious confidence from this statement
+and squeezed Appleboy's hand encouragingly. For Appleboy, in spite of
+his apparent calm, was a very much frightened man, and under the creases
+of his floppy waistcoat his heart was beating like a tom-tom. The
+penalty for assault in the second degree was ten years in state's
+prison, and life with Bashemath, even in the vicinity of the Tunnygates,
+seemed sweet. The thought of breaking stones under the summer sun--it
+was a peculiarly hot summer--was awful. Ten years! He could never live
+through it! And yet as his glance fell upon the Tunnygates, arrayed in
+their best finery and sitting with an air of importance upon the front
+bench of the court room, he told himself that he would do the whole
+thing all over again--yes, he would! He had only stood up for his
+rights, and Tunnygate's blood was upon his own head--or wherever it was.
+So he squeezed Bashemath's hand tenderly in response.
+
+Upon the bench Judge Witherspoon, assigned from somewhere upstate to
+help keep down the ever-lengthening criminal calendar of the
+Metropolitan District, finished the letter he was writing to his wife in
+Genesee County, sealed it and settled back in his chair. An old war
+horse of the country bar, he had in his time been mixed up in almost
+every kind of litigation, but as he looked over the indictment he with
+difficulty repressed a smile. Thirty years ago he'd had a dog case
+himself; also of the form, style and breed known as bull.
+
+"You may proceed, Mister District Attorney!" he announced, and little
+Pepperill, the youngest of the D.A.'s staff, just out of the law school,
+begoggled and with his hair plastered evenly down on either side of his
+small round head, rose with serious mien, and with a high piping voice
+opened the prosecution.
+
+It was, he told them, a most unusual and hence most important case. The
+defendant Appleboy had maliciously procured a savage dog of the most
+vicious sort and loosed it upon the innocent complainant as he was on
+his way to work, with the result that the latter had nearly been torn to
+shreds. It was a horrible, dastardly, incredible, fiendish crime, he
+would expect them to do their full duty in the premises, and they should
+hear Mr. Tunnygate's story from his own lips.
+
+Mr. Tunnygate limped with difficulty to the stand, and having been sworn
+gingerly sat down--partially. Then turning his broadside to the gaping
+jury he recounted his woes with indignant gasps.
+
+"Have you the trousers which you wore upon that occasion?" inquired
+Pepperill.
+
+Mr. Tunnygate bowed solemnly and lifted from the floor a paper parcel
+which he untied and from which he drew what remained of that now
+historic garment.
+
+"These are they," he announced dramatically.
+
+"I offer them in evidence," exclaimed Pepperill, "and I ask the jury to
+examine them with great care."
+
+They did so.
+
+Tutt waited until the trousers had been passed from hand to hand and
+returned to their owner; then, rotund, chipper and birdlike as ever,
+began his cross-examination much like a woodpecker attacking a stout
+stump. The witness had been an old friend of Mr. Appleboy's, had he not?
+Tunnygate admitted it, and Tutt pecked him again. Never had done him
+any wrong, had he? Nothing in particular. Well, any wrong? Tunnygate
+hesitated. Why, yes, Appleboy had tried to fence in the public beach
+that belonged to everybody. Well, did that do the witness any harm? The
+witness declared that it did; compelled him to go round when he had a
+right to go across. Oh! Tutt put his head on one side and glanced at the
+jury. How many feet? About twenty feet. Then Tutt pecked a little
+harder.
+
+"Didn't you tear a hole in the hedge and stamp down the grass when by
+taking a few extra steps you could have reached the beach without
+difficulty?"
+
+"I--I simply tried to remove an illegal obstruction," declared Tunnygate
+indignantly.
+
+"Didn't Mr. Appleboy ask you to keep off?"
+
+"Sure--yes!"
+
+"Didn't you obstinately refuse to do so?"
+
+Mr. Pepperill objected to "obstinately" and it was stricken out.
+
+"I wasn't going to stay off where I had a right to go," asserted the
+witness.
+
+"And didn't you have warning that the dog was there?"
+
+"Look here!" suddenly burst out Tunnygate. "You can't hector me into
+anything. Appleboy never had a dog before. He got a dog just to sic him
+on me! He put up a sign 'Beware of the dog,' but he knew that I'd think
+it was just a bluff. It was a plant, that's what it was! And just as
+soon as I got inside the hedge that dog went for me and nearly tore me
+to bits. It was a rotten thing to do and you know it!"
+
+He subsided, panting.
+
+Tutt bowed complacently.
+
+"I move that the witness' remarks be stricken out on the grounds first,
+that they are unresponsive; second, that they are irrelevant,
+incompetent and immaterial; third, that they contain expressions of
+opinion and hearsay; and fourth, that they are abusive and generally
+improper."
+
+"Strike them out!" directed Judge Witherspoon. Then he turned to
+Tunnygate. "The essence of your testimony is that the defendant set a
+dog on you, is it not? You had quarreled with the defendant, with whom
+you had formerly been on friendly terms. You entered on premises claimed
+to be owned by him, though a sign warned you to beware of a dog. The dog
+attacked and bit you? That's the case, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes, Your Honor."
+
+"Had you ever seen that dog before?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Do you know where he got it?"
+
+"My wife told me--"
+
+"Never mind what your wife told you. Do you--"
+
+"He don't know where the dog came from, judge!" suddenly called out Mrs.
+Tunnygate in strident tones from where she was sitting. "But I know!"
+she added venomously. "That woman of his got it from--"
+
+Judge Witherspoon fixed her coldly with an impassive and judicial eye.
+
+"Will you kindly be silent, madam? You will no doubt be given an
+opportunity to testify as fully as you wish. That is all, sir, unless
+Mr. Tutt has some more questions."
+
+Tutt waved the witness from the stand contemptuously.
+
+"Well, I'd like a chance to testify!" shrilled Mrs. Tunnygate, rising in
+full panoply.
+
+"This way, madam," said the clerk, motioning her round the back of the
+jury box. And she swept ponderously into the offing like a full-rigged
+bark and came to anchor in the witness chair, her chin rising and
+falling upon her heaving bosom like the figurehead of a vessel upon a
+heavy harbor swell.
+
+Now it has never been satisfactorily explained just why the character of
+an individual should be in any way deducible from such irrelevant
+attributes as facial anatomy, bodily structure or the shape of the
+cranium. Perhaps it is not, and in reality we discern disposition from
+something far more subtle--the tone of the voice, the expression of the
+eyes, the lines of the face or even from an aura unperceived by the
+senses. However that may be, the wisdom of the Constitutional safeguard
+guaranteeing that every person charged with crime shall be confronted by
+the witnesses against him was instantly made apparent when Mrs.
+Tunnygate took the stand, for without hearing a word from her firmly
+compressed lips the jury simultaneously swept her with one comprehensive
+glance and turned away. Students of women, experienced adventurers in
+matrimony, these plumbers, bird merchants "delicatessens" and the rest
+looked, perceived and comprehended that here was the very devil of a
+woman--a virago, a shrew, a termagant, a natural-born trouble-maker; and
+they shivered and thanked God that she was Tunnygate's and not theirs;
+their unformulated sentiment best expressed in Pope's immortal couplet:
+
+  Oh woman, woman! when to ill thy mind
+  Is bent, all hell contains no fouler fiend.
+
+She had said no word. Between the judge and jury nothing had passed, and
+yet through the alpha rays of that mysterious medium of communication
+by which all men as men are united where woman is concerned, the
+thought was directly transmitted and unanimously acknowledged that here
+for sure was a hell cat!
+
+It was as naught to them that she testified to the outrageous illegality
+of the Appleboys' territorial ambitions, the irascibility of the wife,
+the violent threats of the husband; or that Mrs. Appleboy had been
+observed to mail a suspicious letter shortly before the date of the
+canine assault. They disregarded her. Yet when Tutt upon
+cross-examination sought to attack her credibility by asking her various
+pertinent questions they unhesitatingly accepted his implied accusations
+as true, though under the rules of evidence he was bound by her denials.
+
+Peck 1: "Did you not knock Mrs. Appleboy's flower pots off the piazza?"
+he demanded significantly.
+
+"Never! I never did!" she declared passionately
+
+But they knew in their hearts that she had.
+
+Peck 2: "Didn't you steal her milk bottles?"
+
+"What a lie! It's absolutely false!"
+
+Yet they knew that she did.
+
+Peck 3: "Didn't you tangle up their fish lines and take their
+thole-pins?"
+
+"Well, I never! You ought to be ashamed to ask a lady such questions!"
+
+They found her guilty.
+
+"I move to dismiss, Your Honor," chirped Tutt blithely at the conclusion
+of her testimony.
+
+Judge Witherspoon shook his head.
+
+"I want to hear the other side," he remarked. "The mere fact that the
+defendant put up a sign warning the public against the dog may be taken
+as some evidence that he had knowledge of the animal's vicious
+propensities. I shall let the case go to the jury unless this evidence
+is contradicted or explained. Reserve your motion."
+
+"Very well, Your Honor," agreed Tutt, patting himself upon the abdomen.
+"I will follow your suggestion and call the defendant. Mr. Appleboy,
+take the stand."
+
+Mr. Appleboy heavily rose and the heart of every fat man upon the jury,
+and particularly that of the Abyssinian brother upon the back row, went
+out to him. For just as they had known without being told that the new
+Mrs. Tunnygate was a vixen, they realized that Appleboy was a kind,
+good-natured man--a little soft, perhaps, like his clams, but no more
+dangerous. Moreover, it was plain that he had suffered and was, indeed,
+still suffering, and they had pity for him. Appleboy's voice shook and
+so did the rest of his person as he recounted his ancient friendship for
+Tunnygate and their piscatorial association, their common matrimonial
+experiences, the sudden change in the temperature of the society of
+Throggs Neck, the malicious destruction of their property and the
+unexplained aggressions of Tunnygate upon the lawn. And the jury,
+believing, understood.
+
+Then like the sword of Damocles the bessemer voice of Pepperill severed
+the general atmosphere of amiability: "Where did you get that dog?"
+
+Mr. Appleboy looked round helplessly, distress pictured in every
+feature.
+
+"My wife's aunt lent it to us."
+
+"How did she come to lend it to you?"
+
+"Bashemath wrote and asked for it."
+
+"Oh! Did you know anything about the dog before you sent for it?"
+
+"Of your own knowledge?" interjected Tutt sharply.
+
+"Oh, no!" returned Appleboy.
+
+"Didn't you know it was a vicious beast?" sharply challenged Pepperill.
+
+"Of your own knowledge?" again warned Tutt.
+
+"I'd never seen the dog."
+
+"Didn't your wife tell you about it?"
+
+Tutt sprang to his feet, wildly waving his arms: "I object; on the
+ground that what passed between husband and wife upon this subject must
+be regarded as confidential."
+
+"I will so rule," said Judge Witherspoon, smiling. "Excluded."
+
+Pepperill shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"I would like to ask a question," interpolated the editor of Baby's
+World.
+
+"Do!" exclaimed Tutt eagerly.
+
+The editor, who was a fat editor, rose in an embarrassed manner.
+
+"Mr. Appleboy!" he began.
+
+"Yes, sir!" responded Appleboy.
+
+"I want to get this straight. You and your wife had a row with the
+Tunnygates. He tried to tear up your front lawn. You warned him off. He
+kept on doing it. You got a dog and put up a sign and when he
+disregarded it you sicked the dog on him. Is that right?"
+
+He was manifestly friendly, merely a bit cloudy in the cerebellum. The
+Abyssinian brother pulled him sharply by the coat tails.
+
+"Sit down," he whispered hoarsely. "You're gumming it all up."
+
+"I didn't sic Andrew on him!" protested Appleboy.
+
+"But I say, why shouldn't he have?" demanded the baby's editor. "That's
+what anybody would do!"
+
+Pepperill sprang frantically to his feet.
+
+"Oh, I object! This juryman is showing bias. This is entirely improper."
+
+"I am, am I?" sputtered the fat editor angrily. "I'll show you--"
+
+"You want to be fair, don't you?" whined Pepperill. "I've proved that
+the Appleboys had no right to hedge in the beach!"
+
+"Oh, pooh!" sneered the Abyssinian, now also getting to his feet.
+"Supposing they hadn't? Who cares a damn? This man Tunnygate deserved
+all he's got!"
+
+"Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" expostulated the judge firmly. "Take your seats
+or I shall declare a mistrial. Go on, Mr. Tutt. Call your next witness."
+
+"Mrs. Appleboy," called out Tutt, "will you kindly take the chair?" And
+that good lady, looking as if all her adipose existence had been devoted
+to the production of the sort of pies that mother used to make, placidly
+made her way to the witness stand.
+
+"Did you know that Andrew was a vicious dog?" inquired Tutt.
+
+"No!" answered Mrs. Appleboy firmly. "I didn't."
+
+O woman!
+
+"That is all," declared Tutt with a triumphant smile.
+
+"Then," snapped Pepperill, "why did you send for him?"
+
+"I was lonely," answered Bashemath unblushingly.
+
+"Do you mean to tell this jury that you didn't know that that dog was
+one of the worst biters in Livornia?"
+
+"I do!" she replied. "I only knew Aunt Eliza had a dog. I didn't know
+anything about the dog personally."
+
+"What did you say to your aunt in your letter?"
+
+"I said I was lonely and wanted protection."
+
+"Didn't you hope the dog would bite Mr. Tunnygate?"
+
+"Why, no!" she declared. "I didn't want him to bite anybody."
+
+At that the delicatessen man poked the plumber in the ribs and they both
+grinned happily at one another.
+
+Pepperill gave her a last disgusted look and sank back in his seat.
+
+"That is all!" he ejaculated feebly.
+
+"One question, if you please, madam," said Judge Witherspoon. "May I be
+permitted to"--he coughed as a suppressed snicker ran round the
+court--"that is--may I not--er--Oh, look here! How did you happen to
+have the idea of getting a dog?"
+
+Mrs. Appleboy turned the full moon of her homely countenance upon the
+court.
+
+"The potato peel came down that way!" she explained blandly.
+
+"What!" exploded the dealer in rubber novelties.
+
+"The potato peel--it spelled 'dog,'" she repeated artlessly.
+
+"Lord!" deeply suspirated Pepperill. "What a case! Carry me out!"
+
+"Well, Mr. Tutt," said the judge, "now I will hear what you may wish to
+say upon the question of whether this issue should be submitted to the
+jury. However, I shall rule that the indictment is sufficient."
+
+Tutt elegantly rose.
+
+"Having due respect to Your Honor's ruling as to the sufficiency of the
+indictment I shall address myself simply to the question of _scienter_.
+I might, of course, dwell upon the impropriety of charging the defendant
+with criminal responsibility for the act of another free agent even if
+that agent be an animal--but I will leave that, if necessary, for the
+Court of Appeals. If anybody were to be indicted in this case I hold it
+should have been the dog Andrew. Nay, I do not jest! But I can see by
+Your Honor's expression that any argument upon that score would be
+without avail."
+
+"Entirely," remarked Witherspoon. "Kindly go on!"
+
+"Well," continued Tutt, "the law of this matter needs no elucidation. It
+has been settled since the time of Moses."
+
+"Of whom?" inquired Witherspoon. "You don't need to go back farther
+than Chief Justice Marshall so far as I am concerned."
+
+Tutt bowed.
+
+"It is an established doctrine of the common law both of England and
+America that it is wholly proper for one to keep a domestic animal for
+his use, pleasure or protection, until, as Dykeman, J., says in Muller
+vs. McKesson, 10 Hun., 45, 'some vicious propensity is developed and
+brought out to the knowledge of the owner.' Up to that time the man who
+keeps a dog or other animal cannot be charged with liability for his
+acts. This has always been the law.
+
+"In the twenty-first chapter of Exodus at the twenty-eighth verse it is
+written: 'If an ox gore a man or a woman, that they die; then the ox
+shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner
+of the ox shall be quit. But if the ox were wont to push with his horn
+in time past, and it hath been testified to his owner, and he hath not
+kept him in, but that he hath killed a man or a woman; the ox shall be
+stoned, and his owner also shall be put to death.'
+
+"In the old English case of Smith vs. Pehal, 2 Strange, 1264, it was
+said by the court: 'If a dog has once bit a man, and the owner having
+notice thereof keeps the dog, and lets him go about or lie at his door,
+an action will lie against him at the suit of a person who is bit,
+though it happened by such person's treading on the dog's toes; for it
+was owing to his not hanging the dog on the first notice. And the safety
+of the king's subjects ought not afterwards to be endangered.' That is
+sound law; but it is equally good law that 'if a person with full
+knowledge of the evil propensities of an animal wantonly excites him or
+voluntarily and unnecessarily puts himself in the way of such an animal
+he would be adjudged to have brought the injury upon himself, and ought
+not to be entitled to recover. In such a case it cannot be said in a
+legal sense that the keeping of the animal, which is the gravamen of the
+offense, produced the injury.'
+
+"Now in the case at bar, first there is clearly no evidence that this
+defendant knew or ever suspected that the dog Andrew was otherwise than
+of a mild and gentle disposition. That is, there is no evidence whatever
+of _scienter_. In fact, except in this single instance there is no
+evidence that Andrew ever bit anybody. Thus, in the word of Holy Writ
+the defendant Appleboy should be quit, and in the language of our own
+courts he must be held harmless. Secondly, moreover, it appears that the
+complainant deliberately put himself in the way of the dog Andrew, after
+full warning. I move that the jury be directed to return a verdict of
+not guilty."
+
+"Motion granted," nodded Judge Witherspoon, burying his nose in his
+handkerchief. "I hold that every dog is entitled to one bite."
+
+"Gentlemen of the jury," chanted the clerk: "How say you? Do you find
+the defendant guilty or not guilty?"
+
+"Not guilty," returned the foreman eagerly, amid audible evidences of
+satisfaction from the Abyssinian brother, the Baby's World editor and
+the others. Mr. Appleboy clung to Tutt's hand, overcome by emotion.
+
+"Adjourn court!" ordered the judge. Then he beckoned to Mr. Appleboy.
+"Come up here!" he directed.
+
+Timidly Mr. Appleboy approached the dais.
+
+"Don't do it again!" remarked His Honor shortly.
+
+"Eh? Beg pardon, Your Honor, I mean--"
+
+"I said: 'Don't do it again!'" repeated the judge with a twinkle in his
+eye. Then lowering his voice he whispered: "You see I come from
+Livornia, and I've known Andrew for a long time."
+
+As Tutt guided the Appleboys out into the corridor the party came face
+to face with Mr. and Mrs. Tunnygate.
+
+"Huh!" sneered Tunnygate.
+
+"Huh!" retorted Appleboy.
+
+
+
+
+Wile Versus Guile
+
+
+  For 'tis the sport to have the engineer
+  Hoist with his own petar.--HAMLET.
+
+It was a mouse by virtue of which Ephraim Tutt had leaped into fame. It
+is true that other characters famous in song and story--particularly in
+"Mother Goose"--have similarly owed their celebrity in whole or part to
+rodents, but there is, it is submitted, no other case of a mouse, as
+mouse _per se_, reported in the annals of the law, except Tutt's mouse,
+from Doomsday Book down to the present time.
+
+Yet it is doubtful whether without his mouse Ephraim Tutt would ever
+have been heard of at all, and same would equally have been true if when
+pursued by the chef's gray cat the mouse aforesaid had jumped in another
+direction. But as luck would have it, said mouse leaped foolishly into
+an open casserole upon a stove in the kitchen of the Comers Hotel, and
+Mr. Tutt became in his way a leader of the bar.
+
+It is quite true that the tragic end of the mouse in question has
+nothing to do with our present narrative except as a side light upon the
+vagaries of the legal career, but it illustrates how an attorney if he
+expects to succeed in his profession, must be ready for anything that
+comes along--even if it be a mouse.
+
+The two Tutts composing the firm of Tutt & Tutt were both, at the time
+of the mouse case, comparatively young men. Tutt was a native of Bangor,
+Maine, and numbered among his childhood friends one Newbegin, a
+commercial wayfarer in the shingle and clapboard line; and as he hoped
+at some future time to draw Newbegin's will or to incorporate for him
+some business venture Tutt made a practise of entertaining his
+prospective client at dinner upon his various visits to the metropolis,
+first at one New York hostelry and then at another.
+
+Chance led them one night to the Comers, and there amid the imitation
+palms and imitation French waiters of the imitation French restaurant
+Tutt invited his friend Newbegin to select what dish he chose from those
+upon the bill of fare; and Newbegin chose kidney stew. It was at about
+that moment that the adventure which has been referred to occurred in
+the hotel kitchen. The gray cat was cheated of its prey, and in due
+course the casserole containing the stew was borne into the dining room
+and the dish was served.
+
+Suddenly Mr. Newbegin contorted his mouth and exclaimed:
+
+"Heck! A mouse!"
+
+It was. The head waiter was summoned, the manager, the owner. Guests and
+garçons crowded about Tutt and Mr. Newbegin to inspect what had so
+unexpectedly been found. No one could deny that it was, mouse--cooked
+mouse; and Newbegin had ordered kidney stew. Then Tutt had had his
+inspiration.
+
+"You shall pay well for this!" he cried, frowning at the distressed
+proprietor, while Newbegin leaned piteously against a pâpier-maché
+pillar. "This is an outrage! You shall be held liable in heavy damages
+for my client's indigestion!"
+
+And thus Tutt & Tutt got their first case out of Newbegin, for under the
+influence of the eloquence of Mr. Tutt a jury was induced to give him a
+verdict of one thousand dollars against the Comers Hotel, which the
+Court of Appeals sustained in the following words, quoting verbatim from
+the learned brief furnished by Tutt & Tutt, Ephraim Tutt of counsel:
+
+"The only legal question in the case, or so it appears to us, is whether
+there is such a sale of food to a guest on the part of the proprietor
+as will sustain a warranty. If we are not in error, however, the law is
+settled and has been since the reign of Henry the Sixth. In the Ninth
+Year Book of that Monarch's reign there is a case in which it was held
+that 'if I go to a tavern to eat, and the taverner gives and sells me
+meat and it corrupted, whereby I am made very sick, action lies against
+him without any express warranty, for there is a warranty in law'; and
+in the time of Henry the Seventh the learned Justice Keilway said, 'No
+man can justify selling corrupt victual, but an action on the case lies
+against the seller, whether the victual was warranted to be good or
+not.' Now, certainly, whether mouse meat be or be not deleterious to
+health a guest at a hotel who orders a portion of kidney stew has the
+right to expect, and the hotel keeper impliedly warrants, that such dish
+will contain no ingredients beyond those ordinarily placed therein."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"A thousand dollars!" exulted Tutt when the verdict was rendered. "Why,
+anyone would eat mouse for a thousand dollars!"
+
+The Comers Hotel became in due course a client of Tutt & Tutt, and the
+mouse which made Mr. Tutt famous did not die in vain, for the case
+became celebrated throughout the length and breadth of the land, to the
+glory of the firm and a vast improvement in the culinary conditions
+existing in hotels.
+
+"Come in, Mr. Barrows! Come right in! I haven't seen you for--well, how
+long is it?" exclaimed Mr. Tutt, extending a long welcoming arm toward a
+human scarecrow upon the threshold.
+
+"Five years," answered the visitor. "I only got out day before
+yesterday. Fourteen months off for good behavior."
+
+He coughed and put down carefully beside him a large dress-suit case
+marked E.V.B., Pottsville, N.Y.
+
+"Well, well!" sighed Mr. Tutt. "So it is. How time flies!"
+
+"Not in Sing Sing!" replied Mr. Barrows ruefully.
+
+"I suppose not. Still, it must feel good to be out!"
+
+Mr. Barrows made no reply but dusted off his felt hat. He was but the
+shadow of a man, an old man at that, as was attested by his long gray
+beard, his faded blue eyes, and the thin white hair about his fine
+domelike forehead.
+
+"I forget what your trouble was about," said Mr. Tutt gently. "Won't you
+have a stogy?"
+
+Mr. Barrows shook his head.
+
+"I ain't used to it," he answered. "Makes me cough." He gazed about him
+vaguely.
+
+"Something about bonds, wasn't it?" asked Mr. Tutt.
+
+"Yes," replied Mr. Barrows; "Great Lakes and Canadian Southern."
+
+"Of course! Of course!"
+
+"A wonderful property," murmured Mr. Barrows regretfully. "The bonds
+were perfectly good. There was a defect in the foreclosure proceedings
+which made them a permanent underlying security of the reorganized
+company--under The Northern Pacific R.R. Co. vs. Boyd; you know--but the
+court refused to hold that way. They never will hold the way you want,
+will they?" He looked innocently at Mr. Tutt.
+
+"No," agreed the latter with conviction, "they never will!"
+
+"Now those bonds were as good as gold," went on the old man; "and yet
+they said I had to go to prison. You know all about it. You were my
+lawyer."
+
+"Yes," assented Mr. Tutt, "I remember all about it now."
+
+Indeed it had all come back to him with the vividness of a landscape
+seen during a lightning flash--the crowded court, old Doc Barrows upon
+the witness stand, charged with getting money on the strength of
+defaulted and outlawed bonds--picked up heaven knows where--pathetically
+trying to persuade an unsympathetic court that for some reason they
+were still worth their face value, though the mortgage securing the debt
+which they represented had long since been foreclosed and the money
+distributed.
+
+"I'd paid for 'em--actual cash," he rambled on. "Not much, to be
+sure--but real money. If I got 'em cheap that was my good luck, wasn't
+it? It was because my brain was sharper than other folks'! I said they
+had value and I say so now--only nobody will believe it or take the
+trouble to find out. I learned a lot up there in Sing Sing too," he
+continued, warming to his subject. "Do you know, sir, there are fortunes
+lying all about us? Take gold, for instance! There's a fraction of a
+grain in every ton of sea water. But the big people don't want it taken
+out because it would depress the standard of exchange. I say it's a
+conspiracy--and yet they jailed a man for it! There's great mineral
+deposits all about just waiting for the right man to come along and
+develop 'em."
+
+His lifted eye rested upon the engraving of Abraham Lincoln over Mr.
+Tutt's desk. "There was a man!" he exclaimed inconsequently; then
+stopped and ran his transparent, heavily veined old hand over his
+forehead. "Where was I? Let me see. Oh, yes--gold. All those great
+properties could be bought at one time or another for a song. It needed
+a pioneer! That's what I was--a pioneer to find the gold where other
+people couldn't find it. That's not any crime; it's a service to
+humanity! If only they'd have a little faith--instead of locking you up.
+The judge never looked up the law about those Great Lakes bonds! If he
+had he'd have found out I was right! I'd looked it up. I studied law
+once myself."
+
+"I know," said Mr. Tutt, almost moved to tears by the sight of the wreck
+before him. "You practised up state, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes," responded Doc Barrows eagerly. "And in Chicago too. I'm a member
+of the Cook County bar. I'll tell you something! If the Supreme Court of
+Illinois hadn't been wrong in its law I'd be the richest man in the
+world--in the whole world!" He grabbed Mr. Tutt by the arm and stared
+hard into his eyes. "Didn't I show you my papers? I own seven feet of
+water front clean round Lake Michigan all through the city of Chicago I
+got it for a song from the man who found out the flaw in the original
+title deed of 1817; he was dying. 'I'll sell my secret to you,' he says,
+'because I'm passing on. May it bring you luck!' I looked it all up and
+it was just as he said. So I got up a corporation--The Chicago Water
+Front and Terminal Company--and sold bonds to fight my claim in the
+courts. But all the people who had deeds to my land conspired against
+me and had me arrested! They sent me to the penitentiary. There's
+justice for you!"
+
+"That was too bad!" said Mr. Tutt in a soothing voice. "But after all
+what good would all that money have done you?"
+
+"I don't want money!" affirmed Doc plaintively. "I've never needed
+money. I know enough secrets to make me rich a dozen times over. Not
+money but justice is what I want--my legal rights. But I'm tired of
+fighting against 'em. They've beaten me! Yes, they've beaten me! I'm
+going to retire. That's why I came in to see you, Mr. Tutt. I never paid
+you for your services as my attorney. I'm going away. You see my married
+daughter lost her husband the other day and she wants me to come up and
+live with her on the farm to keep her from being lonely. Of course it
+won't be much like life in Wall Street--but I owe her some duty and I'm
+getting on--I am, Mr. Tutt, I really am!"
+
+He smiled.
+
+"And I haven't seen Louisa for three years--my only daughter. I shall
+enjoy being with her. She was such a dear little girl! I'll tell you
+another secret"--his voice dropped to a whisper--"I've found out there's
+a gold mine on her farm, only she doesn't know it. A rich vein runs
+right through her cow pasture. We'll be rich! Wouldn't it be fine, Mr.
+Tutt, to be rich? Then I'm going to pay you in real money for all you've
+done for me--thousands! But until then I'm going to let you have
+these--all my securities; my own, you know, every one of them."
+
+He placed the suitcase in front of Mr. Tutt and opened the clasps with
+his shaking old fingers. It bulged with bonds, and he dumped them forth
+until they covered the top of the desk.
+
+"These are my jewels!" he said. "There's millions represented here!" He
+lifted one tenderly and held it to the light, fresh as it came from the
+engraver's press--a thousand dollar first-mortgage bond of The Chicago
+Water Front and Terminal Company. "Look at that! Good as gold--if the
+courts only knew the law."
+
+He took up a yellow package of valueless obligations upon the top of
+which an old-fashioned locomotive from whose bell-shaped funnel the
+smoke poured in picturesque black clouds, dragging behind it a chain of
+funny little passenger coaches, drove furiously along beside a rushing
+river through fields rich with corn and wheat amid a border of dollar
+signs.
+
+"The Great Lakes and Canadian Southern," he crooned lovingly. "The child
+of my heart! The district attorney kept all the rest--as evidence, he
+claimed, but some day you'll see he'll bring an action against the Lake
+Shore or the New York Central based on these bonds. Yes, sir! They're
+all right!"
+
+He pawed them over, picking out favorites here and there and excitedly
+extolling the merits of the imaginary properties they represented. There
+were the repudiated bonds of Southern states and municipalities of
+railroads upon whose tracks no wheel had ever turned; of factories never
+built except in Doc Barrows' addled brain; of companies which had
+defaulted and given stock for their worthless obligations; certificates
+of oil, mining and land companies; deeds to tracts now covered with sky
+scrapers in Pittsburgh, St. Louis and New York--each and every one of
+them not worth the paper they were printed on except to some crook who
+dealt in high finance. But they were exquisitely engraved, quite lovely
+to look at, and Doc Barrows gloated upon them with scintillating eyes.
+
+"Ain't they beauties?" he sighed. "Some day--yes sir!--some day they'll
+be worth real money. I paid it for some of 'em. But they're yours--all
+yours."
+
+He gathered them up with care and returned them to the suitcase, then
+fastened the clasps and patted the leather cover with his hand.
+
+"They are yours, sir!" he exclaimed dramatically.
+
+"As you say," agreed Mr. Tutt, "there's gold lying round everywhere if
+we only had sense enough to look for it. But I think you're wise to
+retire. After all, you have the satisfaction of knowing that your
+enterprises were sound even if other people disagreed with you."
+
+"If this was 1819 instead of 1919 I'd own Chicago," began Doc, a gleam
+appearing in his eye. "But they don't want to upset the status
+quo--that's why I haven't got a fair chance. But they needn't worry! I'd
+be generous with 'em--give 'em easy terms--long leases and nominal
+rents."
+
+"But you'll like living with your daughter, I'm sure," said Mr. Tutt.
+"It will make a new man of you in no time."
+
+"Healthiest spot in northern New York," exclaimed Doc. "Within two miles
+of a lake--fishing, shooting, outdoor recreation of all kinds, an ideal
+site for a mammoth summer hotel."
+
+Mr. Tutt rose and laid his arms round old Doc Barrows' shoulders.
+
+"Thank you a thousand times," he said gratefully, "for the securities.
+I'll be glad to keep them for you in my vault." His lips puckered in a
+stealthy smile which he tried hard to conceal.
+
+"Louisa may want to repaper the farmhouse some time," he added to
+himself.
+
+"Oh, they're all yours to keep!" insisted Doc. "I want you to have
+them!" His voice trembled.
+
+"Well, well!" answered Mr. Tutt. "Leave it that way; but if you ever
+should want them they'll be here waiting for you."
+
+"I'm no Indian giver!" replied Doc with dignity. "Give, give, give a
+thing--never take it back again."
+
+He laughed rather childishly. He was evidently embarrassed.
+
+"Could--could you let me have the loan of seventy-five cents?" he asked
+shyly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Down below, inside a doorway upon the other side of the street, Sergeant
+Murtha of the Detective Bureau waited for Doc Barrows to come out and be
+arrested again. Murtha had known Doc for fifteen years as a harmless old
+nut who had rarely succeeded in cheating anybody, but who was regarded
+as generally undesirable by the authorities and sent away every few
+years in order to keep him out of mischief. There was no danger that the
+public would accept Doc's version of the nature or value of his
+securities, but there was always the chance that some of his worthless
+bonds--those bastard offsprings of his cracked old brain--would find
+their way into less honest but saner hands. So Doc rattled about from
+penitentiary to prison and from prison to madhouse and out again,
+constantly taking appeals and securing writs of habeas corpus, and
+feeling mildly resentful, but not particularly so, that people should be
+so interfering with his business. Now as from force of long habit he
+peered out of the doorway before making his exit; he looked like one of
+the John Sargent's prophets gone a little madder than usual--a Jeremiah
+or a Habakkuk.
+
+"Hello, Doc!" called Murtha in hearty, friendly tones. "Hie spy! Come on
+out!"
+
+"Oh, how d'ye do, captain!" responded Doc. "How are you? I was just
+interviewing my solicitor."
+
+"Sorry," said Murtha. "The inspector wants to see you."
+
+Doc flinched.
+
+"But they've just let me go!" he protested faintly.
+
+"It's one of those old indictments--Chicago Water Front or something.
+Anyhow--Here! Hold on to yourself!"
+
+He threw his arms around the old man, who seemed on the point of
+falling.
+
+"Oh, captain! That's all over! I served time for that out in Illinois!"
+For some strange reason all the insanity had gone out of his bearing.
+
+"Not in this state," answered Murtha. New pity for this poor old wastrel
+took hold upon him. "What were you going to do?"
+
+"I was going to retire, captain," said Doc faintly. "My daughter's
+husband--he owned a farm up in Cayuga County--well, he died and I was
+planning to go up there and live with her."
+
+"And sting all the boobs?" grinned Murtha not unsympathetically. "How
+much money have you got?"
+
+"Seventy-five cents."
+
+"How much is the ticket?"
+
+"About nine dollars," quavered Doc. "But I know a man down on Chatham
+Square who might buy a block of stock in the Last Chance Gold Mining
+Company; I could get the money that way."
+
+"What's the Last Chance Gold Mining Company?" asked Murtha sharply.
+
+"It's a company I'm going to organize. I'll tell you a secret, Murtha.
+There's a vein of gold runs right through my daughter Louisa's cow
+pasture--she doesn't know anything about it--"
+
+"Oh, hell!" exclaimed Murtha. "Come along to the station. I'll let you
+have the nine bones. And you can put me down for half a million of the
+underwriting."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That same evening Mr. Tutt was toasting his carpet slippers before the
+sea-coal fire in his library, sipping a hot toddy and rereading for the
+eleventh time the "Lives of the Chancellors" when Miranda, who had not
+yet finished washing the few dishes incident to her master's meager
+supper, pushed open the door and announced that a lady was calling.
+
+"She said you'd know her sho' enough, Mis' Tutt," grinned Miranda,
+swinging her dishrag, "'case you and she used to live tergidder when you
+was a young man."
+
+This scandalous announcement did not have the startling effect upon the
+respectable Mr. Tutt which might naturally have been anticipated, since
+he was quite used to Miranda's forms of expression.
+
+"It must be Mrs. Effingham," he remarked, closing the career of Lord
+Eldon and removing his feet from the fender.
+
+"Dat's who it is!" answered Miranda. "She's downstairs waitin' to come
+up."
+
+"Well, let her come," directed Mr. Tutt, wondering what his old
+boarding-house keeper could want of him, for he had not seen Mrs.
+Effingham for more than fifteen years, at which time she was well
+provided with husband, three children and a going business. Indeed, it
+required some mental adjustment on his part to recognize the withered
+little old lady in widow's weeds and rusty black with a gold star on her
+sleeve who so timidly, a moment later, followed Miranda into the room.
+
+"I'm afraid you don't recognize me," she said with a pitiful attempt at
+faded coquetry. "I don't blame you, Mr. Tutt. You don't look a day older
+yourself. But a great deal has happened to me!"
+
+"I should have recognized you anywhere," he protested gallantly. "Do sit
+down, Mrs. Effingham won't you? I am delighted to see you. How would you
+like a glass of toddy? Just to show there's no ill-feeling!"
+
+He forced a glass into her hand and filled it from the teakettle
+standing on the hearth, while Miranda brought a sofa cushion and tucked
+it behind the old lady's back.
+
+Mrs. Effingham sighed, tasted the toddy and leaned back deliciously. She
+was very wrinkled and her hair under the bonnet was startlingly white in
+contrast with the crepe of her veil, but there were still traces of
+beauty in her face.
+
+"I've come to you, Mr. Tutt," she explained apologetically, "because I
+always said that if I ever was in trouble you'd be the one to whom I
+should go to help me out."
+
+"What greater compliment could I receive?"
+
+"Well, in those days I never thought that time would come," she went on.
+"You remember my husband--Jim? Jim died two years ago. And little
+Jimmy--our eldest--he was only fourteen when you boarded with us--he was
+killed at the Front last July." She paused and felt for her
+handkerchief, but could not find it. "I still keep the house; but do you
+know how old I am, Mr. Tutt? I'm seventy-one! And the two older girls
+got married long ago and I'm all alone except for Jessie, the
+youngest--and I haven't told her anything about it."
+
+"Yes?" said Mr. Tutt sympathetically. "What haven't you told her about?"
+
+"My trouble. You see, Jessie's not a well girl--she really ought to live
+out West somewhere, the doctor says--and Jim and I had saved up all
+these years so that after we were gone she would have something to live
+on. We saved twelve thousand dollars--and put it into Government bonds."
+
+"You couldn't have anything safer, at any rate," remarked the lawyer. "I
+think you did exceedingly well."
+
+"Now comes the awful part of it all!" exclaimed Mrs. Effingham, clasping
+her hands. "I'm afraid it's gone--gone forever. I should have consulted
+you first before I did it, but it all seemed so fair and above-board
+that I never thought."
+
+"Have you got rid of your bonds?"
+
+"Yes--no--that is, the bank has them. You see I borrowed ten thousand
+dollars on them and gave it to Mr. Badger to invest in his oil company
+for me."
+
+Mr. Tutt groaned inwardly. Badger was the most celebrated of Wall
+Street's near-financiers.
+
+"Where on earth did you meet Badger?" he demanded.
+
+"Why, he boarded with me--for a long time," she answered. "I've no
+complaint to make of Mr. Badger. He's a very handsome polite gentleman.
+And I don't feel altogether right about coming to you and saying
+anything that might be taken against him--but lately I've heard so many
+things--"
+
+"Don't worry about Badger!" growled Mr. Tutt. "How did you come to
+invest in his oil stock?"
+
+"I was there when he got the telegram telling how they had found oil on
+the property; it came one night at dinner. He was tickled to death. The
+stock had been selling at three cents a share, and, of course, after the
+oil was discovered he said it would go right up to ten dollars. But he
+was real nice about it--he said anybody who had been living there in the
+house could share his good fortune with him, come in on the ground
+floor, and have it just the same for three cents. A week later there
+came a photograph of the gusher and almost all of us decided to buy
+stock."
+
+At this point in the narrative Mr. Tutt kicked the coal hod violently
+and uttered a smothered ejaculation.
+
+"Of course I didn't have any ready money," explained Mrs. Effingham,
+"but I had the bonds--they only paid two per cent and the oil stock was
+going to pay twenty--and so I took them down to the bank and borrowed
+ten thousand dollars on them. I had to sign a note and pay five per cent
+interest. I was making the difference--fifteen hundred dollars every
+year."
+
+"What has it paid?" demanded Mr. Tutt ironically.
+
+"Twenty per cent," replied Mrs. Effingham. "I get Mr. Badger's check
+regularly every six months."
+
+"How many times have you got it?"
+
+"Twice."
+
+"Well, why don't you like your investment?" inquired Mr. Tutt blandly.
+"I'd like something that would pay me twenty per cent a year!"
+
+"Because I'm afraid Mr. Badger isn't quite truthful, and one of the
+ladies--that old Mrs. Channing; you remember her, don't you--the one
+with the curls?--she tried to sell her stock and nobody would make a bid
+on it at all--and when she spoke to Mr. Badger about it he became very
+angry and swore right in front of her. Then somebody told me that Mr.
+Badger had been arrested once for something--and--and--Oh, I wish I
+hadn't given him the money, because if it's lost Jessie won't have
+anything to live on after I'm dead--and she's too sick to work. What do
+you think, Mr. Tutt? Do you suppose Mr. Badger would buy the stock
+back?"
+
+Mr. Tutt smiled grimly.
+
+"Not if I know him! Have you got your stock with you?"
+
+She nodded. Fumbling in her black bag she pulled forth a flaring
+certificate--of the regulation kind, not even engraved--which evidenced
+that Sarah Maria Ann Effingham was the legal owner of three hundred and
+thirty thousand shares of the capital stock of the Great Geyser Texan
+Petroleum and Llano Estacado Land Company.
+
+Mr. Tutt took it gingerly between his thumb and forefinger. It was
+signed ALFRED HAYNES BADGER, Pres., and he had an almost irresistible
+temptation to twist it into a spill and light a stogy with it. But he
+used a match instead, while Mrs. Effingham watched him apprehensively.
+Then he handed the stock back to her and poured out another glass of
+toddy.
+
+"Ever been in Mr. Badger's office?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" she answered. "It's a lovely office. You can see 'way down
+the harbor--and over to New Jersey. It's real elegant."
+
+"Would you mind going there again? That is, are you on friendly terms
+with him?"
+
+Already a strange, rather desperate plan was half formulated in his
+mind.
+
+"Oh, we're perfectly friendly," she smiled. "I generally go down there
+to get my check."
+
+"Whose check is it--his or the company's?"
+
+"I really don't know," she answered simply. "What difference would it
+make?"
+
+"Oh, nothing--except that he might claim that he'd loaned you the
+money."
+
+"Loaned it? To me?"
+
+"Why, yes. One hears of such things."
+
+"But it is my money!" she cried, stiffening.
+
+"You paid that for the stock."
+
+She shook her head helplessly.
+
+"I don't understand these things," she murmured. "If Jim had been alive
+it wouldn't have happened. He was so careful."
+
+"Husbands have some uses occasionally."
+
+Suddenly she put her hands to her face.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Tutt! Please get the money back from him. If you don't
+something terrible will happen to Jessie!"
+
+"I'll do my best," he said gently, laying his hand on her fragile
+shoulder. "But I may not be able to do it--and anyhow I'll need your
+help."
+
+"What can I do?"
+
+"I want you to go down to Mr. Badger's office to-morrow morning and tell
+him that you are so much pleased with your investment that you would
+like to turn all your securities over to him to sell and put the money
+into the Great Geyser Texan Petroleum and Llano Estacado Land Company."
+
+He rolled out the words with unction.
+
+"But I don't!"
+
+"Oh, yes, you do!" he assured her. "You want to do just what I tell
+you, don't you?"
+
+"Of course," she answered. "But I thought you didn't like Mr. Badger's
+oil company."
+
+"Whether I like it or not makes no difference. I want you to say just
+what I tell you."
+
+"Oh, very well, Mr. Tutt."
+
+"Then you must tell him about the note, and that first it will have to
+be paid off."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And then you must hand him a letter which I will dictate to you now."
+
+She flushed slightly, her eyes bright with excitement.
+
+"You're sure it's perfectly honest, Mr. Tutt? I wouldn't want to do
+anything unfair!"
+
+"Would you be honest with a burglar?"
+
+"But Mr. Badger isn't a burglar!"
+
+"No--he's only about a thousand times worse. He's a robber of widows and
+orphans. He isn't man enough to take a chance at housebreaking."
+
+"I don't know what you mean," she sighed. "Where shall I write?"
+
+Mr. Tutt cleared a space upon his desk, handed her a pad and dipped a
+pen in the ink while she took off her gloves.
+
+"Address the note to the bank," he directed.
+
+She did so.
+
+"Now say: 'Kindly deliver to Mr. Badger all the securities I have on
+deposit with you, whenever he pays my note. Very truly yours, Sarah
+Maria Ann Effingham.'"
+
+"But I don't want him to have my securities!" she retorted.
+
+"Oh, you won't mind! You'll be lucky to get Mr. Badger to take back your
+oil stock on any terms. Leave the certificate with me," laughed Mr.
+Tutt, rubbing his long thin hands together almost gleefully. "And now as
+it is getting rather late perhaps you will do me the honor of letting me
+escort you home."
+
+It was midnight before Mr. Tutt went to bed. In the first place he had
+felt himself so neglectful of Mrs. Effingham that after he had taken her
+home he had sat there a long time talking over the old lady's affairs
+and making the acquaintance of the phthisical Jessie, who turned out to
+be a wistful little creature with great liquid eyes and a delicate
+transparent skin that foretold only too clearly what was to be her
+future. There was only one place for her, Mr. Tutt told
+himself--Arizona; and by the grace of God she should go there, Badger or
+no Badger!
+
+As the old lawyer walked slowly home with his hands clasped behind his
+back he pondered upon the seeming mockery and injustice of the law that
+forced a lonely, half-demented old fellow with the fixed delusion that
+he was a financier behind prison bars and left free the sharp slick
+crook who had no bowels or mercies and would snatch away the widow's
+mite and leave her and her consumptive daughter to die in the poorhouse.
+Yet such was the case, and there they all were! Could you blame people
+for being Bolsheviks? And yet old Doc Barrows was as far from a
+Bolshevik as anyone could well be.
+
+Mr. Tutt passed a restless night, dreaming, when he slept at all, of
+mines from which poured myriads of pieces of yellow gold, of gushers
+spouting columns of blood-red oil hundreds of feet into the air, and of
+old-fashioned locomotives dragging picturesque trains of cars across
+bright green prairies studded with cacti in the shape of dollar signs.
+Old Doc Barrows was with him, and from time to time he would lean toward
+him and whisper "Listen, Mr. Tutt, I'll tell you a secret! There's a
+vein of gold runs right through my daughter's cow pasture!"
+
+When Willie next morning at half past eight reached the office he found
+the door already unlocked and Mr. Tutt busy at his desk, up to his
+elbows in a great mass of bonds and stock certificates.
+
+"Gee!" he exclaimed to Miss Sondheim, the stenographer, when she made
+her appearance at a quarter past nine. "Just peek in the old man's door
+if you want to feel rich! Say, he must ha' struck pay dirt! I wonder if
+we'll all get a raise?"
+
+But all the securities on Mr. Tutt's desk would not have justified even
+the modest advance of five dollars in Miss Sondheim's salary, and their
+employer was merely sorting out and making an inventory of Doc Barrows'
+imaginary wealth. By the time Mrs. Effingham arrived by appointment at
+ten o'clock he had them all arranged and labeled; and in a special
+bundle neatly tied with a piece of red tape were what on their face were
+securities worth upward of seventy thousand dollars. There were ten of
+the beautiful bonds of the Great Lakes and Canadian Southern Railroad
+Company with their miniature locomotives and fields of wheat, and ten
+equally lovely bits of engraving belonging to the long-since defunct
+Bluff Creek and Iowa Central, ten more superb lithographs issued by the
+Mohawk and Housatonic in 1867 and paid off in 1882, and a variety of
+gorgeous chromos of Indians and buffaloes, and of factories and
+steamships spouting clouds of soft-coal smoke; and on the top of all was
+a pile of the First Mortgage Gold Six Per Cent obligations of the
+Chicago Water Front and Terminal Company--all of them fresh and crisp,
+with that faintly acrid smell which though not agreeable to the nostrils
+nevertheless delights the banker's soul.
+
+"Ah! Good morning to you, Mrs. Effingham!" Mr. Tutt cried, waving her in
+when that lady was announced. "You are not the only millionaire, you
+see! In fact, I've stumbled into a few barrels of securities
+myself--only I didn't pay anything for them."
+
+"Gracious!" cried Mrs. Effingham, her eyes lighting with astonishment.
+"Wherever did you get them? And such exquisite pictures! Look at that
+lamb!"
+
+"It ought to have been a wolf!" muttered Mr. Tutt. "Well, Mrs.
+Effingham, I've decided to make you a present--just a few pounds of
+Chicago Water Front and Canadian Southern--those over there in that
+pile; and now if you say so we'll just go along to your bank."
+
+"Give them to me!" she protested. "What on earth for? You're joking, Mr.
+Tutt."
+
+"Not a bit of it!" he retorted. "I don't make any pretensions as to the
+value of my gift, but they're yours for whatever they're worth."
+
+He wrapped them carefully in a piece of paper and returned the balance
+to Doc Barrows' dress-suit case.
+
+"Aren't you afraid to leave them that way?" she asked, surprised.
+
+"Not at all! Not at all!" he laughed. "You see there are fortunes lying
+all about us everywhere if we only know where to look. Now the first
+thing to do is to get your bonds back from the bank."
+
+Mr. Thomas McKeever, the popular loan clerk of the Mustardseed National,
+was just getting ready for the annual visit of the state bank examiner
+when Mr. Tutt, followed by Mrs. Effingham, entered the exquisitely
+furnished boudoir where lady clients were induced by all modern
+conveniences except manicures and shower baths to become depositors. Mr.
+Tutt and Mr. McKeever belonged to the same Saturday evening poker game
+at the Colophon Club, familiarly known as The Bible Class.
+
+"Morning, Tom," said Mr. Tutt. "This is my client, Mrs. Effingham. You
+hold her note, I believe, for ten thousand dollars secured by some
+government bonds. She has a use for those bonds and I thought that you
+might be willing to take my indorsement instead. You know I'm good for
+the money."
+
+"Why, I guess we can accommodate her, Mr. Tutt!" answered the
+Chesterfieldian Mr. McKeever. "Certainly we can. Sit down, Mrs.
+Effingham, while I send for your bonds. See the morning paper?"
+
+Mrs. Effingham blushingly acknowledged that she had not seen the paper.
+In fact, she was much too excited to see anything.
+
+"Sign here!" said the loan clerk, placing the note before the lawyer.
+
+Mr. Tutt indorsed it in his strange, humpbacked chirography.
+
+"Here are your bonds," said Mr. McKeever, handing Mrs. Effingham a small
+package in a manila envelope. She took them in a half-frightened way, as
+if she thought she was doing something wrong.
+
+"And now," said Mr. Tutt, "the lady would like a box in your
+safe-deposit vaults; a small one--about five dollars a year--will do.
+She has quite a bundle of securities with her, which I am looking into.
+Most if not all of them are of little or no value, but I have told her
+she might just as well leave them as security for what they are worth,
+in addition to my indorsement. Really it's just a slick game of ours to
+get the bank to look after them for nothing. Isn't it, Mrs. Effingham?"
+
+"Ye-es!" stammered Mrs. Effingham, not understanding what he was talking
+about.
+
+"Well," answered Mr. McKeever, "we never refuse collateral. I'll put the
+bonds with the note--" His eye caught the edges of the bundle. "Great
+Scott, Tutt! What are you leaving all these bonds here for against that
+note? There must be nearly a hundred thousand dol--"
+
+"I thought you never refused collateral, Mr. McKeever!" challenged Mr.
+Tutt sternly.
+
+Twenty minutes later the exquisite blonde that acted as Mr. Badger's
+financial accomplice learned from Mrs. Effingham's faltering lips that
+the widow would like to see the great man in regard to further
+investments.
+
+"How does it look, Mabel?" inquired the financier from behind his
+massive mahogany desk covered with a six by five sheet of plate glass.
+"Is it a squeal or a fall?"
+
+"Easy money," answered Mabel with confidence. "She wants to put a
+mortgage on the farm."
+
+"Keep her about fourteen minutes, tell her the story of my
+philanthropies, and then shoot her in," directed Badger.
+
+So Mrs. Effingham listened politely while Mabel showed her the
+photographs of Mr. Badger's home for consumptives out in Tyrone, New
+Mexico, and of his wife and children, taken on the porch of his summer
+home at Seabright, New Jersey; and then, exactly fourteen minutes having
+elapsed, she was shot in.
+
+"Ah! Mrs. Effingham! Delighted! Do be seated!" Mr. Badger's smile was
+like that of the boa constrictor about to swallow the rabbit.
+
+"About my oil stock," hesitated Mrs. Effingham.
+
+"Well, what about it?" demanded Badger sharply. "Are you dissatisfied
+with your twenty per cent?"
+
+"Oh, no!" stammered the old lady. "Not at all! I just thought if I could
+only get the note paid off at the Mustardseed Bank I might ask you to
+sell the collateral and invest the proceeds in your gusher."
+
+"Oh!" Mr. Badger beamed with pleasure. "Do you really wish to have me
+dispose of your securities for you?"
+
+He did not regard it as necessary to inquire into the nature of the
+collateral. If it was satisfactory to the Mustardseed National it must
+of course exceed considerably the amount of the note.
+
+"Yes," answered Mrs. Effingham timidly; and she handed him the letter
+dictated by Mr. Tutt.
+
+"Well," replied Mr. Badger thoughtfully, after reading it, "what you ask
+is rather unusual--quite unusual, I may say, but I think I may be able
+to attend to the matter for you. Leave it in my hands and think no more
+about it. How have you been, my dear Mrs. Effingham? You're looking
+extraordinarily well!"
+
+Mr. McKeever had about concluded his arrangements for welcoming the
+state bank examiner when the telephone on his desk buzzed, and on taking
+up the receiver he heard the ingratiating voice of Alfred Haynes Badger.
+
+"Is this the Loan Department of the Mustardseed National?"
+
+"It is," he answered shortly.
+
+"I understand you hold a note of a certain Mrs. Effingham for ten
+thousand dollars. May I ask if it is secured?"
+
+"Who is this?" snapped McKeever.
+
+"One of her friends," replied Mr. Badger amicably.
+
+"Well, we don't discuss our clients' affairs over the telephone. You had
+better come in here if you have any inquiries to make."
+
+"But I want to pay the note," expostulated Mr. Badger.
+
+"Oh! Well, anybody can pay the note who wants to."
+
+"And of course in that case you would turn over whatever collateral is
+on deposit to secure the note?"
+
+"If we were so directed."
+
+"May I ask what collateral there is?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"There is some collateral, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, I have an order from Mrs. Effingham directing the bank to turn
+over whatever securities she has on deposit as collateral, on my payment
+of the note."
+
+"In that case you'll get 'em," said Mr. McKeever gruffly. "I'll get
+them out and have 'em ready for you."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Here is my certified check for ten thousand; dollars," announced Alfred
+Haynes Badger a few minutes later. "And here is the order from Mrs.
+Effingham. Now will you kindly turn over to me all the securities?"
+
+Mr. McKeever, knowing something of the reputation of Mr. Badger, first
+called up the bank which had certified the latter's check, and having
+ascertained that the certification was genuine he marked Mrs.
+Effingham's note as paid and then took down from the top of his roll-top
+desk the bundle of beautifully engraved securities given him by Mr.
+Tutt. Badger watched him greedily.
+
+"Thank you," he gurgled, stuffing them into his pocket. "Much obliged
+for your courtesy. Perhaps you would like me to open an account here?"
+
+"Oh, anybody can open an account who wants to," remarked Mr. McKeever
+dryly, turning away from him to something else.
+
+Mr. Badger fairly flew back to his office. The exquisite blonde had
+hardly ever before seen him exhibit so much agitation.
+
+"What have you pulled this time?" she inquired dreamily. "Father's
+daguerreotype and the bracelet of mother's hair?"
+
+"I've grabbed off the whole bag of tricks!" he cried. "Look at 'em!
+We've not seen so much of the real stuff in six months.
+
+"Ten--twenty--thirty--forty--fifty--By gad!--sixty--seventy!"
+
+"What are they?" asked Mabel curiously. "Some bonds--what?"
+
+"I should say so!" he retorted gaily. "Say, girlie, I'll give you the
+swellest meal of your young life to-night! Chicago Water Front and
+Terminal, Great Lakes and Canadian Southern, Mohawk and Housatonic,
+Bluff Creek and Iowa Central. '_Oh, Mabel_!'"
+
+It was at just about this period of the celebration that Mr. Tutt
+entered the outer office and sent in his name; and as Mr. Badger was at
+the height of his good humor he condescended to see him.
+
+"I have called," said Mr. Tutt, "in regard to the bonds belonging to my
+client, Mrs. Effingham. I see you have them on the desk there in front
+of you. Unfortunately she has changed her mind. She has decided not to
+have you dispose of her securities."
+
+Mr. Badger's expression instantly became hostile and defiant.
+
+"It's too late!" he replied. "I have paid off her note and I am going to
+carry out the rest of the arrangement."
+
+"Oh," said Mr. Tutt, "so you are going to sell all her securities and
+put the proceeds into your bogus oil company--whether she wishes it or
+not? If you do the district attorney will get after you."
+
+"I stand on my rights," snarled Badger. "Anyhow I can sell enough of the
+securities to pay myself back my ten thousand dollars."
+
+"And then you'll steal the rest?" inquired Mr. Tutt. "Be careful, my
+dear sir! Remember there is such a thing as equity, and such a place as
+Sing Sing."
+
+Badger gave a cynical laugh.
+
+"You're too late, my friend! I've got a written order--_a written
+order_--from your client, as you call her. She can't go back on it now.
+I've got the bonds and I'm going to dispose of them."
+
+"Very well," said Mr. Tutt tolerantly. "You can do as you see fit.
+But"--and he produced ten genuine one-thousand-dollar bills and
+exhibited them to Mr. Badger at a safe distance--"I now on behalf of
+Mrs. Effingham make you a legal tender of the ten thousand dollars you
+have just paid out to cancel her note, and I demand the return of the
+securities. Incidentally I beg to inform you that they are not worth the
+paper they are printed on."
+
+"Indeed!" sneered Badger. "Well, my dear! old friend, you might have
+saved yourself the trouble of coming round here. You and your client
+can go straight to hell. _You_ can keep the money; _I'll_ keep the
+bonds. See?"
+
+Mr. Tutt sighed and shook his head hopelessly.
+
+Then he put the bills back into his pocket and started slowly for the
+door.
+
+"You absolutely and finally decline to give up the securities?" he asked
+plaintively.
+
+"Absolutely and finally?" mocked Mr. Badger with a sweeping bow.
+
+"Dear! Dear!" almost moaned Mr. Tutt. "I'd heard of you a great many
+times but I never realized before what an unscrupulous man you were!
+Anyhow, I'm glad to have had a look at you. By the way, if you take the
+trouble to dig through all that junk you'll find the certificate of
+stock in the Great Jehoshaphat Oil Company you used to flim flam Mrs.
+Effingham with out of her ten thousand dollars. Maybe you can use it on
+someone else! Anyhow, she's about two thousand dollars to the good. It
+isn't every widow who can get twenty per cent and then get her money
+back in full."
+
+
+
+
+The Hepplewhite Tramp
+
+
+  "No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized
+  or outlawed, or exiled, or in any way harmed--nor will
+  we go upon or send upon him--save by the lawful judgment
+  of his peers or by the law of the land."
+                                  --MAGNA CHARTA, Sec. 39.
+
+  "'Somebody has been lying in my bed--and here she
+  is,' cried the Little, Small, Wee Bear, in his little, small,
+  wee voice."
+                                  --THE THREE BEARS.
+
+One of the nicest men in New York was Mr. John De Puyster Hepplewhite.
+The chief reason for his niceness was his entire satisfaction with
+himself and the padded world in which he dwelt, where he was as
+protected from all shocking, rough or otherwise unpleasant things as a
+shrinking débutante from the coarse universe of fact. Being thus
+shielded from every annoyance and irritation by a host of sycophants he
+lived serenely in an atmosphere of unruffled calm, gazing down benignly
+and with a certain condescension from the rarefied altitude of his
+Fifth Avenue windows, pleased with the prospect of life as it appeared
+to him to be and only slightly conscious of the vileness of his fellow
+man.
+
+Certainly he was not conscious at all of the existence of the celebrated
+law firm of Tutt & Tutt. Such vulgar persons were not of his sphere. His
+own lawyers were gray-headed, dignified, rather smart attorneys who
+moved only in the best social circles and practised their profession
+with an air of elegance. When Mr. Hepplewhite needed advice he sent for
+them and they came, chatted a while in subdued easy accents, and went
+away--like cheerful undertakers. Nobody ever spoke in loud tones near
+Mr. Hepplewhite because Mr. Hepplewhite did not like anything loud--not
+even clothes. He was, as we have said, quite one of the nicest men in
+New York.
+
+At the moment when Mrs. Witherspoon made her appearance he was sitting
+in his library reading a copy of "Sainte-Beuve" and waiting for Bibby,
+the butler, to announce tea. It was eight minutes to five and there was
+still eight minutes to wait; so Mr. Hepplewhite went on reading
+"Sainte-Beuve."
+
+Then "Mrs. Witherspoon!" intoned Bibby, and Mr. Hepplewhite rose
+quickly, adjusted his eye-glass and came punctiliously forward.
+
+"My dear Mrs. Witherspoon!" he exclaimed crisply. "I am really
+delighted to see you. It was quite charming of you to give me this
+week-end."
+
+"Adorable of you to ask me Mr. Hepplewhite!" returned the lady. "I've
+been looking forward to this visit for weeks. What a sweet room? Is that
+a Corot?"
+
+"Yes--yes!" murmured her host modestly. "Rather nice, I think, eh? I'll
+show you my few belongings after tea. Now will you go upstairs first or
+have tea first?"
+
+"Just as you say," beamed Mrs. Witherspoon. "Perhaps I had better run up
+and take off my veil."
+
+"Whichever you prefer," he replied chivalrously. "Do exactly as you
+like. Tea will be ready in a couple of minutes."
+
+"Then I think I'll run up."
+
+"Very well. Bibby, show Mrs. Witherspoon--"
+
+"Very good, sir. This way, please, madam. Stockin', fetch Mrs.
+Witherspoon's bag from the hall."
+
+Mr. Hepplewhite stood rubbing his delicate hands in front of the fire,
+telling himself what a really great pleasure it was to have Mrs.
+Witherspoon staying with him over the week-end. He was having a dinner
+party for her that evening--of forty-eight. All that it had been
+necessary for him to do to have the party was to tell Mr. Sadducee, his
+secretary, that he wished to have it and direct him to send the
+invitations from List Number One and then to tell Bibby the same thing
+and to order the chef to serve Dinner Number Four--only to have
+Johannisberger Cabinet instead of Niersteiner.
+
+All these things were highly important to Mr. Hepplewhite, for upon the
+absolute smoothness with which tea and dinner were served and the
+accuracy with which his valet selected socks to match his tie his entire
+happiness, to say nothing of his peace of mind, depended. His daily life
+consisted of a series of subdued and nicely adjusted social events. They
+were forecast for months ahead. Nothing was ever done on the spur of the
+moment at Mr. Hepplewhite's. He could tell to within a couple of seconds
+just exactly what was going to occur during the balance of the day, the
+remainder of Mrs. Witherspoon's stay and the rest of the month. It would
+have upset him very much not to know exactly what was going to happen,
+for he was a meticulously careful host and being a creature of habit the
+unexpected was apt to agitate him extremely.
+
+So now as he stood rubbing his hands it was in the absolute certainty
+that in just a few more seconds one of the footmen would appear between
+the tapestry portières bearing aloft a silver tray with the tea things,
+and then Bibby would come in with the paper, and presently Mrs.
+Witherspoon would come down and she would make tea for him and they
+would talk about tea, and Aiken, and whether the Abner Fullertons were
+going to get a domestic or foreign divorce, and how his bridge was these
+days. It would be very nice, and he rubbed his hands very gently and
+waited for the Dresden clock to strike five in the subdued and decorous
+way that it had. But he did not hear it strike.
+
+Instead a shriek rang out from the hall above, followed by yells and
+feet pounding down the stairs. Mr. Hepplewhite turned cold and something
+hard rose up in his throat. His sight dimmed. And then Bibby burst in,
+pale and with protruding eyes.
+
+"There was a man in the guest room!" he gasped. "Stockin's got him. What
+shall we do?"
+
+At that moment Mrs. Witherspoon followed.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Hepplewhite! Oh, Mr. Hepplewhite!" she gasped, staggering
+toward him.
+
+Mr. Hepplewhite would have taken her in his arms and attempted to
+comfort her only it was not done in Mr. Hepplewhite's set unless under
+extreme provocation. So he pressed an armchair upon her; or, rather,
+pressed her into an armchair; and leaned against the bookcase feeling
+very faint. He was extremely agitated.
+
+"S-send for the police! S-s-send for B-burk!" he stuttered. Burk was a
+husky watchman who also acted as a personal guard for Mr. Hepplewhite.
+
+An alarm began to beat a deafening staccato in the hall outside the
+library. Bibby rushed gurgling from the room. Several tall men in knee
+breeches and silk stockings dashed excitedly up and down stairs using
+expressions such as had never before been heard by Mr. Hepplewhite, and
+the clanging gong of a police wagon was audible as it clattered up the
+Avenue.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Hepplewhite," whispered Mrs. Witherspoon, unconsciously seeking
+his hand. "I never was so frightened in my life!"
+
+Then the gong stopped and the police poured into the house and up the
+stairs. There were muffled noises and suppressed ejaculations of "Aw,
+come on there, now! I've got him, Mike! No funny business now, you! Come
+along quiet!"
+
+The whole house seemed blue with policemen, and Mr. Hepplewhite became
+aware of a very fat man in a blue cap marked Captain, who removed the
+cap deferentially and otherwise indicated that he was making obeisance.
+Behind the fat man stood three other equally fat men, who held between
+them with grim firmness, by arm, neck and shoulder, a much smaller--in
+fact, quite a small--man shabby, unkempt, and with a desperate look upon
+his unshaven face.
+
+"We've got him, all right, Mr. Hepplewhite!" exulted the captain,
+obviously grateful that God had vouchsafed to deliver the criminal into
+his and not into other hands. "Shall I take him to the house--or do you
+want to examine him?"
+
+"I?" ejaculated Mr. Hepplewhite. "Mercy, no! Take him away as quickly as
+possible!"
+
+"As you say, sir," wheezed the captain. "Come along, boys! Take him over
+to court and arraign him!"
+
+"Yes, do!" urged Mrs. Witherspoon. "And arraign him as hard as you can;
+for he really frightened me nearly to death, the terrible man!"
+
+"Leave him to me, ma'am!" adjured the captain "Will you have your butler
+act as complainant sir?" he asked.
+
+"Why--yes--Bibby will do whatever is proper," agreed Mr. Hepplewhite.
+"It will not be necessary for me to go to court, will it?"
+
+"Oh, no!" answered the captain. "Mr. Bibby will do all right. I suppose
+we had better make the charge burglary, sir?"
+
+"I suppose so," replied Mr. Hepplewhite vaguely.
+
+"Get on, boys," ordered the captain. "Good evening, sir. Good evening,
+ma'am. Step lively, you!"
+
+The blue cloud faded away, bearing with it both Bibby and the burglar.
+Then the third footman brought the belated tea.
+
+"What a frightful thing to have happen!" grieved Mrs. Witherspoon as she
+poured out the tea for Mr. Hepplewhite. "You don't take cream, do you?"
+
+"No, thanks," he answered. "I find too much cream hard to digest. I have
+to be rather careful, you know. By the way, you haven't told me where
+the burglar was or what he was doing when you went into the room."
+
+"He was in the bed," said Mrs. Witherspoon.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"In the 'Decay of Lying,' Mr. Tutt," said Tutt thoughtfully, as he
+dropped in for a moment's chat after lunch, "Oscar Wilde says, 'There is
+no essential incongruity between crime and culture.'"
+
+The senior partner removed his horn-rimmed spectacles and carefully
+polished the lenses with a bit of chamois, which he produced from his
+watch pocket, meanwhile resting the muscles of his forehead by elevating
+his eyebrows until he somewhat resembled an inquiring but good-natured
+owl.
+
+"That's plain enough," he replied. "The most highly cultivated people
+are often the most unscrupulous. I go Oscar one better and declare that
+there is a distinct relationship between crime and progress!"
+
+"You don't say, now!" ejaculated Tutt. "How do you make that out?"
+
+Mr. Tutt readjusted his spectacles and slowly selected a stogy from the
+bundle in the dusty old cigar box.
+
+"Crime," he announced, "is the violation of the will of the majority as
+expressed in the statutes. The law is wholly arbitrary and depends upon
+public opinion. Acts which are crimes in one century or country become
+virtues in another, and vice versa. Moreover, there is no difference,
+except one of degree, between infractions of etiquette and of law, each
+of which expresses the feelings and ideas of society at a given moment.
+Violations of good taste, manners, morals, illegalities, wrongs,
+crimes--they are all fundamentally the same thing, the insistence on
+one's own will in defiance of society as a whole. The man who keeps his
+hat on in a drawing-room is essentially a criminal because he prefers
+his own way of doing things to that adopted by his fellows."
+
+"That's all right," answered Tutt. "But how about progress?"
+
+"Why, that is simple," replied his partner. "The man who refuses to bow
+to habit, tradition, law--who thinks for himself and acts for himself,
+who evolves new theories, who has the courage of his convictions and
+stakes his life and liberty upon them--that man is either a statesman, a
+prophet or a criminal. And in the end he is either hailed as a hero and
+a liberator or is burned, cast into prison or crucified."
+
+Tutt looked interested.
+
+"Well, now," he returned, helping himself from the box, "I never thought
+of it, but, of course, it's true. Your proposition is that progress
+depends on development and development depends on new ideas. If the new
+idea is contrary to those of society it is probably criminal. If its
+inventor puts it across, gets away with it, and persuades society that
+he is right he is a leader in the march of progress. If he fails he goes
+to jail. Hence the relationship between crime and progress. Why not say
+that crime is progress?"
+
+"If successful it is," answered Mr. Tutt. "But the moment it is
+successful it ceases to be crime."
+
+"I get you," nodded Tutt. "Here to-day it is a crime to kill one's
+grandmother; but I recall reading that among certain savage tribes to do
+so is regarded as a highly virtuous act. Now if I convince society that
+to kill one's grandmother is a good thing it ceases to be a crime.
+Society has progressed. I am a public benefactor."
+
+"And if you don't persuade society you go to the chair," remarked Mr.
+Tutt laconically.
+
+"To use another illustration," exclaimed Tutt, warming to the subject,
+"the private ownership of property at the present time is recognized and
+protected by the law, but if we had a Bolshevik government it might be a
+crime to refuse to share one's property with others."
+
+"In that case if you took your share of another's property by force,
+instead of being a thief you would be a Progressive," smiled his
+partner.
+
+Tutt robbed his forehead.
+
+"Looking at it that way, you know," said he, "makes it seem as if
+criminals were rather to be admired."
+
+"Well, some of them are, and a great multitude of them certainly were,"
+answered Mr. Tutt. "All the early Christian martyrs were criminals in
+the sense that they were law-breakers."
+
+"And Martin Luther," suggested Tutt.
+
+"And Garibaldi," added Mr. Tutt.
+
+"And George Washington--maybe?" hazarded the junior partner.
+
+Mr. Tutt shrugged his high shoulders.
+
+"You press the analogy a long way, but--in a sense every successful
+revolutionist was in the beginning a criminal--as every rebel is and
+perforce must be," he replied.
+
+"So," said Tutt, "if you're a big enough criminal you cease to be a
+criminal at all. If you're going to be a crook, don't be a piker--it's
+too risky. Grab everything in sight. Exterminate a whole nation, if
+possible. Don't be a common garden highwayman or pirate; be a Napoleon
+or a Willy Hohenzollern."
+
+"You have the idea," replied Mr. Tutt. "Crime is unsuccessful defiance
+of the existing order of things. Once rebellion rises to the dignity of
+revolution murder becomes execution and the murderers become
+belligerents. Therefore, as all real progress involves a change in or
+defiance of existing law, those who advocate progress are essentially
+criminally minded, and if they attempt to secure progress by openly
+refusing to obey the law they are actual criminals. Then if they
+prevail, and from being in the minority come into power, they are taken
+out of jail, banquets are given in their honor, and they are called
+patriots and heroes. Hence the close connection between crime and
+progress."
+
+Tutt scratched his chin doubtfully.
+
+"That sounds pretty good," he admitted, "but"--and he shook his
+head--"there's something the matter with it. It doesn't work except in
+the case of crimes involving personal rights and liberties. I see your
+point that all progressives are criminals in the sense that they are
+'agin the law' as it is, but--I also see the hole in your argument,
+which is that the fact that all progressives are criminals doesn't make
+all criminals progressive. Your proposition is only a half truth."
+
+"You're quite wrong about my theory being a half truth," retorted Mr.
+Tutt. "It is fundamentally sound. The fellow who steals a razor or a few
+dollars is regarded as a mean thief, but if he loots a trust company or
+takes a million he's a financier. The criminal law, I maintain, is
+administered for the purpose of protecting the strong from the weak, the
+successful from the unsuccessful the rich from the poor. And, sir"--Mr.
+Tutt here shook his fist at an imaginary jury--"the man who wears a red
+necktie in violation of the taste of his community or eats peas with his
+knife is just as much a criminal as a man who spits on the floor when
+there's a law against it. Don't you agree with me?"
+
+"I do not!" replied Tutt. "But that makes no difference. Nevertheless
+what you say about the criminal law being devised to protect the rich
+from the poor interests me very much--very much indeed But I think
+there's a flaw in that argument too, isn't there? Your proposition is
+true only to the extent that the criminal law is invoked to protect
+property rights--and not life and liberty. Naturally the laws that
+protect property are chiefly of benefit to those who have it--the rich."
+
+"However that may be," declared Mr. Tutt fiercely, "I claim that the
+criminal laws are administered, interpreted and construed in favor of
+the rich as against the liberties of the poor, for the simple reason
+that the administrators of the criminal law desire to curry favor with
+the powers that be."
+
+"The moral of which all is," retorted the other, "that the law ought to
+be very careful about locking up people."
+
+"At any rate those who have violated laws upon which there can be a
+legitimate difference of opinion," agreed Mr. Tutt.
+
+"That's where we come in," said Tutt. "We make the difference--even if
+there never was any before."
+
+Mr. Tutt chuckled.
+
+"We perform a dual service to society," he declared. "We prevent the law
+from making mistakes and so keep it from falling into disrepute, and we
+show up its weak points and thus enable it to be improved."
+
+"And incidentally we keep many a future statesman and prophet from going
+to prison," said Tutt. "The name of the last one was Solomon
+Rabinovitch--and he was charged with stealing a second-hand razor from a
+colored person described in the papers as one Morris Cohen."
+
+How long this specious philosophic discussion would have continued is
+problematical had it not been interrupted by the entry of a young
+gentleman dressed with a somewhat ostentatious elegance, whose wizened
+face bore an expression at once of vast good nature and of a deep and
+subtle wisdom.
+
+It was clear that he held an intimate relationship to Tutt & Tutt from
+the familiar way in which he returned their cordial, if casual,
+salutations.
+
+"Well, here we are again," remarked Mr. Doon pleasantly, seating himself
+upon the corner of Mr. Tutt's desk and spinning his bowler hat upon the
+forefinger of his left hand. "The hospitals are empty. The Tombs is as
+dry as a bone. Everybody's good and every day'll be Sunday by and by."
+
+"How about that man who stole a razor?" asked Tutt.
+
+"Discharged on the ground that the fact that he had a full beard created
+a reasonable doubt," replied Doon. "Honestly there's nothing doing in my
+line--unless you want a tramp case."
+
+"A tramp case!" exclaimed Tutt & Tutt.
+
+"I suppose you'd call it that," he answered blandly. "I don't think he
+was a burglar. Anyhow he's in the Tombs now, shouting for a lawyer. I
+listened to him and made a note of the case."
+
+Mr. Tutt pushed over the box of stogies and leaned back attentively.
+
+"You know the Hepplewhite house up on Fifth Avenue--that great stone
+one with the driveway?"
+
+The Tutts nodded.
+
+"Well, it appears that the prisoner--our prospective client--was
+snooping round looking for something to eat and found that the butler
+had left the front door slightly ajar. Filled with a natural curiosity
+to observe how the other half lived, he thrust his way cautiously in and
+found himself in the main hall--hung with tapestry and lined with stands
+of armor. No one was to be seen. Can't you imagine him standing there in
+his rags--the Weary Willy of the comic supplements--gazing about him at
+the _objets d'art_, the old masters, the onyx tables, the
+statuary--wondering where the pantry was and whether the housekeeper
+would be more likely to feed him or kick him out?"
+
+"Weren't any of the domestics about?" inquired Tutt.
+
+"Not one. They were all taking an afternoon off, except the third
+assistant second man who was reading 'The Pilgrim's Progress' in the
+servants' hall. To resume, our friend was not only very hungry, but very
+tired. He had walked all the way from Yonkers, and he needed everything
+from a Turkish bath to a manicuring. He had not been shaved for weeks.
+His feet sank almost out of sight in the thick nap of the carpets. It
+was quiet, warm, peaceful in there. A sense of relaxation stole over
+him. He hated to go away, he says, and he meditated no wrong. But he
+wanted to see what it was like upstairs.
+
+"So up he went. It was like the palace of 'The Sleeping Beauty.'
+Everywhere his eyes were soothed by the sight of hothouse plants, marble
+floors, priceless rugs, luxurious divans--"
+
+"Stop!" cried Tutt. "You are making me sleepy!"
+
+"Well, that's what it did to him. He wandered along the upper hall,
+peeking into the different rooms, until finally he came to a beautiful
+chamber finished entirely in pink silk. It had a pink rug--of silk; the
+furniture was upholstered in pink silk, the walls were lined with pink
+silk and in the middle of the room was a great big bed with a pink silk
+coverlid and a canopy of the same. It seemed to him that that bed must
+have been predestined for him. Without a thought for the morrow he
+jumped into it, pulled the coverlid over his head and went fast asleep.
+
+"Meanwhile, at tea time Mrs. De Lancy Witherspoon arrived for the
+week-end. Bibby, the butler, followed by Stocking, the second man,
+bearing the hand luggage, escorted the guest to the Bouguereau Room, as
+the pink-silk chamber is called."
+
+Mr. Bonnie Doon, carried away by his own powers of description, waved
+his hand dramatically at the old leather couch against the side wall,
+in which Weary Willy was supposed to be reclining.
+
+"Can't you see 'em?" he declaimed. "The haughty Bibby with nose in air,
+preceding the great dame of fashion, enters the pink room and comes to
+attention, 'This way, madam!' he declaims, and Mrs. Witherspoon sweeps
+across the threshold." Bonnie Doon, picking up an imaginary skirt,
+waddled round Mr. Tutt and approached the couch. Suddenly he started
+back.
+
+"Oh, la, la!" he half shrieked, dancing about. "There is a man in the
+bed!"
+
+Both Tutts stared hard at the couch as if fully expecting to see the
+form of Weary Willy thereon. Bonnie Doon had a way of making things
+appear very vivid.
+
+"And sure enough," he concluded, "there underneath the coverlid in the
+middle of the bed was a huddled heap with a stubby beard projecting like
+Excalibur from a pink silk lake!"
+
+"Excuse me," interrupted Tutt. "But may I ask what this is all about?"
+
+"Why, your new case, to be sure," grinned Bonnie, who, had he been
+employed by any other firm, might have run the risk of being regarded as
+an ambulance chaser. "To make a long and tragic story short, they sent
+for the watchman, whistled for a policeman, telephoned for the hurry-up
+wagon, and haled the sleeper away to prison--where he is now, waiting
+to be tried."
+
+"Tried!" ejaculated Mr. Tutt. "What for?"
+
+"For crime, to be sure," answered Mr. Doon.
+
+"What crime?"
+
+"I don't know. They'll find one, of course."
+
+Mr. Tutt swiftly lowered his legs from the desk and brought his fist
+down upon it with a bang.
+
+"Outrageous! What was I just telling you, Tutt!" he cried, a flush
+coming into his wrinkled face. "This poor man is a victim of the
+overzealousness which the officers of the law exhibit in protecting the
+privileges and property of the rich. If John De Puyster Hepplewhite fell
+asleep in somebody's vestibule the policeman on post would send him home
+in a cab; but if a hungry tramp does the same thing he runs him in. If
+John De Puyster Hepplewhite should be arrested for some crime they would
+let him out on bail; while the tramp is imprisoned for weeks awaiting
+trial, though under the law he is presumed to be innocent. Is he
+presumed to be innocent? Not much! He is presumed to be guilty,
+otherwise he would not be there. But what is he presumed to be guilty
+of? That's what I want to know! Just because this poor man--hungry,
+thirsty and weary--happened to select a bed belonging to John De Puyster
+Hepplewhite to lie on he is thrown into prison, indicted by a grand
+jury, and tried for felony! Ye gods! 'Sweet land of liberty!'"
+
+"Well, he hasn't been tried yet," replied Bonnie Doon. "If you feel that
+way about it why don't you defend him?"
+
+"I will!" shouted Mr. Tutt, springing to his feet. "I'll defend him and
+acquit him!"
+
+He seized his tall hat, placed it upon his head and strode rapidly
+through the door.
+
+"He will too!" remarked Bonnie, winking at Tutt.
+
+"He thinks that tramp is either a statesman or a prophet!" mused Tutt,
+his mind reverting to his partner's earlier remarks.
+
+"He won't think so after he's seen him," replied Mr. Doon.
+
+It sometimes happens that those who seek to establish great principles
+and redress social evils involve others in an involuntary martyrdom far
+from their desires. Mr. Tutt would have gone to the electric chair
+rather than see the Hepplewhite Tramp, as he was popularly called by the
+newspapers convicted of a crime, but the very fact that he had become
+his legal champion interjected a new element into the situation,
+particularly as O'Brien, Mr. Tutt's arch enemy in the district
+attorney's office, had been placed in charge of the case.
+
+It would have been one thing to let Hans Schmidt--that was the tramp's
+name--go, if after remaining in the Tombs until he had been forgotten by
+the press he could have been unobtrusively hustled over the Bridge of
+Sighs to freedom. Then there would have been no comeback. But with
+Ephraim Tutt breathing fire and slaughter, accusing the police and
+district attorney of being trucklers to the rich and great, and
+oppressors of the poor--law breakers, in fact--O'Brien found himself in
+the position of one having an elephant by the tail and unable to let go.
+
+In fact, it looked as if the case of the Hepplewhite Tramp might become
+a political issue. That there was something of a comic side to it made
+it all the worse.
+
+"Holy cats, boys!" snorted District Attorney Peckham to the circle of
+disgruntled police officers and assistants gathered about him on the
+occasion described by the reporters as his making a personal
+investigation of the case, "Why in the name of common sense didn't you
+simply boot the fellow into the street?"
+
+"I wish we had, counselor!" assented the captain of the Hepplewhite
+precinct mournfully. "But we thought he was a burglar. I guess he was,
+at that--and it was Mr. Hepplewhite's house."
+
+"I've heard that until I'm sick of it!" retorted Peckham.
+
+"One thing is sure--if we turn him out now Tutt will sue us all for
+false arrest and put the whole administration on the bum," snarled
+O'Brien.
+
+"But I didn't know the tramp would get Mr. Tutt to defend him,"
+expostulated the captain. "Anyhow, ain't it a crime to go to sleep in
+another man's bed?"
+
+"If it ain't it ought to be!" declared his plain-clothes man
+sententiously. "Can't you indict him for burglary?"
+
+"You can indict all day; the thing is to convict!" snapped Peckham.
+"It's up to you, O'Brien, to square this business so that the law is
+vindicated--somehow It must be a crime to go into a house on Fifth
+Avenue and use it as a hotel. Why, you can't cross the street faster
+than a walk these days without committing a crime. Everything's a
+crime."
+
+"Sure thing," agreed the captain. "I never yet had any trouble finding a
+crime to charge a man with, once I got the nippers on him."
+
+"That's so," interjected the plain-clothes man. "Did you ever know it
+was a crime to mismanage a steam boiler? Well, it is."
+
+"Quite right," agreed Mr. Magnus, the indictment clerk. "The great
+difficulty for the perfectly honest man nowadays is to avoid some act or
+omission which the legislature has seen fit to make a crime without his
+knowledge. Refilling a Sarsaparilla bottle, for instance, or getting up
+a masquerade ball or going fishing or playing on Sunday or loitering
+about a building to overhear what people are talking about inside--"
+
+"That's no crime," protested the captain scornfully.
+
+"Yes, it is too!" retorted Mr. Magnus, otherwise known to his fellows as
+Caput, because of his supposed cerebral inflation. "Just like it is a
+crime to have any kind of a show or procession on Sunday except a
+funeral, in which case it's a crime to make a disbursing noise at it."
+
+"What's a disbursing noise?" demanded O'Brien.
+
+"I don't know," admitted Magnus. "But that's the law anyway. You can't
+make a disbursing noise at a funeral on Sunday."
+
+"Oh, hell!" ejaculated the captain. "Come to think of it, it's a crime
+to spit. What man is safe?"
+
+"It occurs to me," continued Mr. Magnus thoughtfully, "that it is a
+crime under the law to build a house on another man's land; now I should
+say that there was a close analogy between doing that and sleeping in
+his bed."
+
+"Hear! Hear!" commented O'Brien. "Caput Magnus, otherwise known as Big
+Head, there is no doubt but that your fertile brain can easily devise a
+way out of our present difficulty."
+
+"Well, I've no time to waste on tramp cases," remarked District
+Attorney Peckham. "I've something more important to attend to. Indict
+this fellow and send him up quick. Charge him with everything in sight
+and trust in the Lord. That's the only thing to be done. Don't bother me
+about it, that's all!"
+
+Meantime Mr. Hepplewhite became more and more agitated. Entirely against
+his will and, so far as he could see, without any fault of his own, he
+suddenly found himself the center of a violent and acrimonious
+controversy respecting the fundamental and sacred rights of freemen
+which threatened to disrupt society and extinguish the supremacy of the
+dominant local political organization.
+
+On the one hand he was acclaimed by the conservative pulpit and press as
+a public-spirited citizen who had done exactly the right
+thing--disinterestedly enforced the law regardless of his own
+convenience and safety as a matter of principle and for the sake of the
+community--a moral hero; on the other, though he was president of
+several charitable organizations and at least one orphan asylum he was
+execrated as a heartless brute, an oppressor of the poor, an octopus, a
+soulless capitalist who fattened on the innocent and helpless and
+who--Mr. Hepplewhite was a bachelor--probably if the truth could be
+known lived a life of horrid depravity and crime.
+
+Indeed there was a man named Tutt, of whom Mr. Hepplewhite had never
+before heard, who publicly declared that he, Tutt, would show him,
+Hepplewhite, up for what he was and make him pay with his body and his
+blood, to say nothing of his money, for what he had done and caused to
+be done. And so Mr. Hepplewhite became even more agitated, until he
+dreamed of this Tutt as an enormous bird like the fabled roc, with a
+malignant face and a huge hooked beak that some day would nip him in the
+abdomen and fly, croaking, away with him. Mrs. Witherspoon had returned
+to Aiken, and after the first flood of commiserations from his friends
+on Lists Numbers One, Two, Three and Four he felt neglected, lonely and
+rather fearful.
+
+And then one morning something happened that upset his equanimity
+entirely. He had just started out for a walk in the park when a flashy
+person who looked like an actor walked impudently up to him and handed
+him a piece of paper in which was wrapped a silver half dollar. In a
+word Mr. Hepplewhite was subpoenaed and the nervous excitement attendant
+upon that operation nearly caused his collapse. For he was thereby
+commanded to appear before the Court of General Sessions of the Peace
+upon the following Monday at ten a.m. as a witness in a criminal action
+prosecuted by the People of the State of New York against Hans Schmidt.
+Moreover, the paper was a dirty-brown color and bore the awful name of
+Tutt. He returned immediately to the house and telephoned for Mr.
+Edgerton, his lawyer, who at once jumped into a taxi on the corner of
+Wall and Broad Streets and hurried uptown.
+
+"Edgerton," said Hepplewhite faintly as the lawyer entered his library,
+"this whole unfortunate affair has almost made me sick. I had nothing to
+do with the arrest of this man Schmidt. The police did everything. And
+now I'm ordered to appear as a witness! Why, I hardly looked at the man.
+I shouldn't know him if I saw him. Do I have to go to court?"
+
+Mr. Edgerton smiled genially in a manner which he thought would
+encourage Mr. Hepplewhite.
+
+"I suppose you'll have to go to court. You can't help that, you know, if
+you've been subpoenaed. But you can't testify to anything that I can
+see. It's just a formality."
+
+"Formality!" groaned his client. "Well, I supposed the arrest was just a
+formality."
+
+Mr. Edgerton smiled again rather unconvincingly.
+
+"Well, you see, you can't always tell what will happen when you once
+start something," he began.
+
+"But I didn't start anything," answered Mr. Hepplewhite. "I had nothing
+to say about it."
+
+At that moment Bibby appeared in the doorway.
+
+"Excuse me, sir," he said. "There is a young man outside who asked me to
+tell you that he has a paper he wishes to serve on you--and would you
+mind saving him the trouble of waiting for you to go out?"
+
+"Another!" gagged Mr. Hepplewhite.
+
+"Yes, sir! Thank you, sir," stammered Bibby.
+
+Mr. Hepplewhite looked inquiringly at Mr. Edgerton and rose feebly.
+
+"He'll get you sooner or later," declared the lawyer. "A man as well
+known as you can't avoid process."
+
+Mr. Hepplewhite bit his lips and went out into the hall.
+
+Presently he returned carrying a legal-looking bunch of papers.
+
+"Well, what is it this time?" asked Edgerton jocosely.
+
+"It's a suit for false imprisonment for one hundred thousand dollars!"
+choked Mr. Hepplewhite.
+
+Mr. Edgerton looked shocked.
+
+"Well, now you've got to convict him!" he declared.
+
+"Convict him?" retorted Mr. Hepplewhite. "I don't want to convict him.
+I'd gladly give a hundred thousand dollars to get out of the--the--darn
+thing!"
+
+Which was as near profanity as he had ever permitted himself to go.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Upon the following Monday Mr. Hepplewhite proceeded to court--flanked by
+his distinguished counsel in frock coats and tall hats--simply because
+he had been served with a dirty-brown subpoena by Tutt & Tutt; and his
+distress was not lessened by the crowd of reporters who joined him at
+the entrance of the Criminal Courts Building; or by the flashlight bomb
+that was exploded in the corridor in order that the evening papers might
+reproduce his picture on the front page. He had never been so much in
+the public eye before, and he felt slightly defiled. For some curious
+reason he had the feeling that he and not Schmidt was the actual
+defendant charged with being guilty of something; nor was this
+impression dispelled even by listening to the indictment by which the
+Grand Jury charged Schmidt in eleven counts with burglary in the first,
+second and third degrees and with the crime of entering his,
+Hepplewhite's, house under circumstances not amounting to a burglary but
+with intent to commit a felony, as follows:
+
+"Therefore, to wit, on the eleventh day of January in the year of our
+Lord one thousand nine hundred and nineteen in the night-time of the
+said day at the ward, city and county aforesaid the dwelling house of
+one John De Puyster Hepplewhite there situate, feloniously and
+burglariously did break into and enter there being then and there a
+human being in said dwelling house, with intent to commit some crime
+therein, to wit, the goods, chattels, and personal property of the said
+John De Puyster Hepplewhite, then and there being found, then and there
+feloniously and burglariously to steal, take and carry away one silver
+tea service of the value of five hundred dollars and one pair of opera
+glasses of the value of five dollars each with force and arms----"
+
+"But that silver tea service cost fifteen thousand dollars and weighs
+eight hundred pounds!" whispered Mr. Hepplewhite.
+
+"Order in the court!" shouted Captain Phelan, pounding upon the oak rail
+of the bar, and Mr. Hepplewhite subsided.
+
+Yet as he sat there between his lawyers listening to all the
+extraordinary things that the Grand Jury evidently had believed Schmidt
+intended to do, the suspicion began gradually to steal over him that
+something was not entirely right somewhere. Why, it was ridiculous to
+charge the man with trying to carry off a silver service weighing nearly
+half a ton when he simply had gone to bed and fallen asleep. Still,
+perhaps that was the law.
+
+However, when the assistant district attorney opened the People's case
+to the jury Mr. Hepplewhite began to feel much more at ease. Indeed
+O'Brien made it very plain that the defendant had been guilty of a very
+grievous--he pronounced it "gree-vious"--offense in forcing his way into
+another man's private house. It might or might not be burglary--that
+would depend upon the testimony--but in any event it was a criminal,
+illegal entry and he should ask for a conviction. A man's house was his
+castle and--to quote from that most famous of orators and
+statesmen--Edmund Burke--"the wind might enter, the rain might enter,
+but the King of England might not enter!" Thus Schmidt could not enter
+the house of Hepplewhite without making himself amenable to the law.
+
+Hepplewhite was filled with admiration for Mr. O'Brien, and his drooping
+spirits reared their wilted heads as the prosecutor called Bibby to the
+stand and elicited from him the salient features of the case. The jury
+was vastly interested in the butler personally, as well as his account
+rendered in the choicest cockney of how he had discovered Schmidt in his
+master's bed. O'Brien bowed to Mr. Tutt and told him that he might
+cross-examine.
+
+And then it was that Mr. Hepplewhite discovered why he had been haunted
+by that mysterious feeling of guilt; for by some occult and subtle
+method of suggestion on the part of Mr. Tutt, the case, instead of
+being a trial of Schmidt, resolved itself into an attack upon Mr.
+Hepplewhite and his retainers and upon the corrupt minions of the law
+who had violated every principle of justice, decency and morality in
+order to accomplish the unscrupulous purposes of a merciless
+aristocrat--meaning him. With biting sarcasm, Mr. Tutt forced from the
+writhing Bibby the admission that the prisoner was sound asleep in the
+pink silk fastnesses of the Bouguereau Room when he was discovered that
+he made no attempt to escape, that he did not assault anybody and that
+he had appeared comatose from exhaustion; that there was no sign of a
+break anywhere, and that the pair of opera glasses "worth five dollars
+_apiece_"--Tutt invited the court's attention to this ingenuous
+phraseology of Mr. Caput Magnus, as a literary curiosity--were a figment
+of the imagination.
+
+In a word Mr. Tutt rolled Bibby up and threw him away, while his master
+shuddered at the open disclosure of his trusted major-domo's vulgarity,
+mendacity and general lack of sportsmanship. Somehow all at once the
+case began to break up and go all to pot. The jury got laughing at
+Bibby, the footmen and the cops as Mr. Tutt painted for their
+edification the scene following the arrival of Mrs. Witherspoon, when
+Schmidt was discovered asleep, as Mr. Tutt put it, like Goldilocks in
+the Little, Small, Wee Bear's bed.
+
+Stocking was the next witness, and he fared no better than had Bibby.
+O'Brien, catching the judge's eye, made a wry face and imperceptibly
+lowered his left lid--on the side away from the jury, thus officially
+indicating that, of course, the case was a lemon but that there was
+nothing that could be done except to try it out to the bitter end.
+
+Then he rose and called out unexpectedly: "Mr. John De Puyster
+Hepplewhite--take the stand!"
+
+It was entirely unexpected. No one had suggested that he would be called
+for the prosecution. Possibly O'Brien was actuated by a slight touch of
+malice; possibly he wanted to be able, if the case was lost, to accuse
+Hepplewhite of losing it on his own testimony. But at any rate he
+certainly had no anticipation of what the ultimate consequence of his
+act would be.
+
+Mr. Hepplewhite suddenly felt as though his entire intestinal mechanism
+had been removed. But he had no time to take counsel of his fears.
+Everybody in the courtroom turned with one accord and looked at him. He
+rose, feeling as one who dreams; that he is naked in the midst of a
+multitude. He shrank back hesitating, but hostile hands reached out and
+pushed him forward. Cringing, he slunk to the witness chair, and for the
+first time faced the sardonic eyes of the terrible Tutt, his adversary
+who looked scornfully from Hepplewhite to the jury and then from the
+jury back to Hepplewhite as if to say: "Look at him! Call you this a
+man?"
+
+"You are the Mr. Hepplewhite who has been referred to in the testimony
+as the owner of the house in which the defendant was found?" inquired
+O'Brien.
+
+"Yes--yes," answered Mr. Hepplewhite deprecatingly.
+
+"The first witness--Bibby--is in your employ?"
+
+"Yes--yes."
+
+"Did you have a silver tea set of the value of--er--at least five
+hundred dollars in the house?"
+
+"It was worth fifteen thousand," corrected Mr. Hepplewhite.
+
+"Oh! Now, have you been served by the defendant's attorneys with a
+summons and complaint in an action for false arrest in which damages are
+claimed in the sum of one hundred thousand dollars?"
+
+"I object!" shouted Mr. Tutt. "It is wholly irrelevant."
+
+"I think it shows the importance of the result of this trial to the
+witness," argued O'Brien perfunctorily. "It shows this case isn't any
+joke--even if some people seem to think it is."
+
+"Objection sustained," ruled the court. "The question is irrelevant. The
+jury is supposed to know that every case is important to those
+concerned--to the defendant as well as to those who charge him with
+crime."
+
+O'Brien bowed.
+
+"That's all. You may examine, Mr. Tutt."
+
+The old lawyer slowly unfolded his tall frame and gazed quizzically down
+upon the shivering Hepplewhite.
+
+"You have been sued by my client for one hundred thousand dollars,
+haven't you?" he demanded.
+
+"Object!" shot out O'Brien.
+
+"Overruled," snapped the court. "It is a proper question for
+cross-examination. It may show motive."
+
+Mr. Hepplewhite sat helplessly until the shooting was over.
+
+"Answer the question!" suddenly shouted Mr. Tutt.
+
+"But I thought--" he began.
+
+"Don't think!" retorted the court sarcastically. "The time to think has
+gone by. Answer!"
+
+"I don't know what the question is," stammered Mr. Hepplewhite,
+thoroughly frightened.
+
+"Lord! Lord!" groaned O'Brien in plain hearing of the jury.
+
+Mr. Tutt sighed sympathetically in mock resignation.
+
+"My dear sir," he began in icy tones, "when you had my client arrested
+and charged with being a burglar, had you made any personal inquiry as
+to the facts?"
+
+"I didn't have him arrested!" protested the witness.
+
+"You deny that you ordered Bibby to charge the defendant with burglary?"
+roared Mr. Tutt. "Take care! You know there is such a crime as perjury,
+do you not?"
+
+"No--I mean yes," stuttered Mr. Hepplewhite abjectly. "That is, I've
+heard about perjury--but the police attended to everything for me."
+
+"Aha!" cried Mr. Tutt, snorting angrily like the war horse depicted in
+the Book of Job. "The police 'attended' to my client for you, did they?
+What do you mean--for you? Did you pay them for their little attention?"
+
+"I always send them something on Christmas," said Mr. Hepplewhite. "Just
+like the postmen."
+
+Mr. Tutt looked significantly at the jury, while a titter ran round the
+court room.
+
+"Well," he continued with patient irony, "what we wish to know is
+whether these friends of yours whom you so kindly remember at Christmas
+dragged the helpless man away from your house, threw him into jail and
+charged him with burglary by your authority?"
+
+"I didn't think anything about it," asserted Hepplewhite "Really I
+didn't. I assumed that they knew what to do under such circumstances. I
+didn't suppose they needed any authority from me."
+
+Mr. Tutt eyed sideways the twelve jurymen.
+
+"Trying to get out of it, are you? Attempting to avoid responsibility?
+Are you thinking of what your position will be if the defendant is
+acquitted--with an action against you for one hundred thousand dollars?"
+
+Ashamed, terrified, humiliated, Mr. Hepplewhite almost burst into tears.
+He had suffered a complete moral disintegration--did not know where to
+turn for help or sympathy. The whole world seemed to have risen against
+him. He opened his mouth to reply, but the words would not come. He
+looked appealingly at the judge, but the judge coldly ignored him. The
+whole room seemed crowded with a multitude of leering eyes. Why had God
+made him a rich man? Why was he compelled to suffer those terrible
+indignities? He was not responsible for what had been done--why then,
+was he being treated so abominably?
+
+"I don't want this man punished!" he suddenly broke out in fervent
+expostulation. "I have nothing against him. I don't believe he intended
+to do any wrong. And I hope the jury will acquit him!"
+
+"Oho!" whistled Mr. Tutt exultantly, while O'Brien gazed at Hepplewhite
+in stupefaction. _Was_ this a man?
+
+"So you admit that the charge against my client is without foundation?"
+insisted Mr. Tutt.
+
+Hepplewhite nodded weakly.
+
+"I don't know rightly what the charge is--but I don't think he meant any
+harm," he faltered.
+
+"Then why did you have the police put him under arrest and hale him
+away?" challenged Mr. Tutt ferociously.
+
+"I supposed they had to--if he came into my house," said Mr.
+Hepplewhite. Then he added shamefacedly: "I know it sounds silly--but
+frankly I did not know that I had anything to say in the matter. If your
+client has been injured by my fault or mistake I will gladly reimburse
+him as handsomely as you wish."
+
+O'Brien gasped. Then he made a funnel of his hands and whispered toward
+the bench: "Take it away, for heaven's sake!"
+
+"That is all!" remarked Mr. Tutt with deep sarcasm, making an elaborate
+bow in the direction of Mr. Hepplewhite. "Thank you for your excellent
+intentions!"
+
+A snicker followed Mr. Hepplewhite as he dragged himself back to his
+seat among the spectators.
+
+He felt as though he had passed through a clothes wringer. Dimly he
+heard Mr. Tutt addressing the court.
+
+"And I move, Your Honor," the lawyer was paying, "that you take the
+counts for burglary in the first, second and third degrees away from the
+jury on the ground that there has been a complete failure of proof that
+my client broke into the house of this man Hepplewhite either by night
+or by day, or that he assaulted anybody or stole anything there, or ever
+intended to."
+
+"Motion granted," agreed the judge. "I quite agree with you, Mr. Tutt.
+There is no evidence here of any breaking. In fact, the inferences are
+all the other way."
+
+"I further move that you take from the consideration of the jury the
+remaining count of illegally entering the house with intent to commit a
+crime and direct the jury to acquit the defendant for lack of evidence,"
+continued Mr. Tutt.
+
+"But what was your client doing in the house?" inquired the judge. "He
+had no particular business in it, had he?"
+
+"That does not make his presence a crime, Your Honor," retorted the
+lawyer. "A man is not guilty of a felony who falls asleep on my haycock.
+Why should he be if he falls asleep in my bed?"
+
+The judge smiled.
+
+"We have no illegal entry statute with respect to fields or meadows, Mr.
+Tutt," he remarked good-naturedly. "No, I shall be obliged to let the
+jury decide whether this defendant went into that house for an honest
+or dishonest purpose. It is clearly a proper question for them to pass
+upon. Proceed with your case."
+
+Now when, as in the case of the Hepplewhite Tramp, the chief witness for
+the prosecution throws up his hands and offers to repay the defendant
+for the wrong he has done him, naturally it is all over but the
+shouting.
+
+"There is no need for me to call the defendant," Mr. Tutt told the
+court, "in view of the admissions made by the last witness. I am ready
+to proceed with the summing up."
+
+"As you deem wise," answered the judge. "Proceed then."
+
+Through a blur of sight and sound Mr. Hepplewhite dimly heard Mr. Tutt
+addressing the jury and saw them lean forward to catch his every word.
+
+Beside him Mr. Edgerton was saying protestingly: "May I ask why you made
+those fool statements on the witness stand?"
+
+"Because I didn't want an innocent man convicted," returned Mr.
+Hepplewhite tartly.
+
+"Well, you'll get your wish!" sniffed his lawyer. "And you'll get soaked
+for about twenty thousand dollars for false arrest!"
+
+"I don't care," retorted the client. "And what's more I hope Mr. Tutt
+gets a substantial fee out of it. He strikes me as a lawyer who knows
+his business!"
+
+The oldest and fattest court officers, men so old and fat that they
+remembered the trial of Boss Tweed and the days when Delancey Nicoll was
+the White Hope of the Brownstone Court House--declared Mr. Tutt's
+summation was the greatest that ever they heard. For the shrewd old
+lawyer had an artist's hand with which he played upon the keyboard of
+the jury and knew just when to pull out the stops of the _vox humana_ of
+pathos and the grand diapason of indignation and defiance. So he began
+by tickling their sense of humor with an ironic description of afternoon
+tea at Mr. Hepplewhite's, with Bibby and Stocking as chief actors, until
+all twelve shook with suppressed laughter and the judge was forced to
+hide his face behind the _Law Journal_; ridiculed the idea of a criminal
+who wanted to commit a crime calmly going to sleep in a pink silk bed in
+broad daylight; and then brought tears to their eyes as he pictured the
+wretched homeless tramp, sick, footsore and starving, who, drawn by the
+need of food and warmth to this silk nest of luxury, was clubbed,
+arrested and jailed simply because he had violated the supposed sanctity
+of a rich man's home.
+
+The jury watched him as intently as a dog watches a piece of meat held
+over its nose. They smiled with him, they wept with him, they glared at
+Mr. Hepplewhite and they gazed in a friendly way at Schmidt, whom Mr.
+Tutt had bailed out just before the trial. The very stars in their
+courses seemed warring for Tutt & Tutt. In the words of Phelan: "There
+was nothing to it!"
+
+"Thank God," concluded Mr. Tutt eloquently, "that in this land of
+liberty in which we are privileged to dwell no man can be convicted of a
+crime except by a jury of his peers--a right sacred under our
+Constitution and inherited from Magna Charta, that foundation stone of
+English liberty, in which the barons forced King John to declare that
+'No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized, or outlawed, or
+exiled, or in any way harmed ... save by the lawful judgment of his
+peers or by the law of the land.'
+
+"Had I the time I would demonstrate to you the arbitrary character of
+our laws and the inequality with which they are administered.
+
+"But in this case the chief witness has already admitted the innocence
+of the defendant. There is nothing more to be said. The prosecution has
+cried '_Peccavi!_' I leave my client in your hands."
+
+He resumed his seat contentedly and wiped his forehead with his silk
+handkerchief. The judge looked down at O'Brien with raised eyebrows.
+
+"I will leave the case to the jury on Your Honor's charge," remarked
+the latter carelessly.
+
+"Gentlemen of the jury," began the judge, "the defendant is accused of
+entering the house of Mr. Hepplewhite with the intent to commit a crime
+therein--"
+
+Mr. Hepplewhite sat, his head upon his breast, for what seemed to him
+several hours. He had but one thought--to escape. His ordeal had been
+far worse than he had anticipated. But he had made a discovery. He had
+suddenly realized that one cannot avoid one's duties to one's fellows by
+leaving one's affairs to others--not even to the police. He perceived
+that he had lived with his head stuck in the sand. He had tried to
+escape from his responsibilities as a citizen by hiding behind the thick
+walls of his stone mansion on Fifth Avenue. He made up his mind that he
+would do differently if he ever had the chance. Meanwhile, was not the
+jury ever going to set the poor man free?
+
+They had indeed remained out a surprisingly long time in order merely to
+reach a verdict which was a mere formality. Ah! There they were! Mr.
+Hepplewhite watched with palpitating heart while they straggled slowly
+in. The clerk made the ordinary perfunctory inquiry as to what their
+verdict was. Mr. Hepplewhite did not hear what the foreman said in
+reply, but he saw both the Tutts and O'Brien start from their seats and
+heard a loud murmur rise throughout the court room.
+
+"What's that!" cried the clerk in astonished tones. "What did you say,
+Mister Foreman?"
+
+"I said that we find the defendant guilty," replied the foreman calmly.
+
+Mr. Tutt stared incredulously at the twelve traitors who had betrayed
+him.
+
+"Never mind, Mr. Tutt," whispered Number Six confidentially. "You did
+the best you could. Your argument was fine--grand--but nobody could ever
+make us believe that your client went into that house for any purpose
+except to steal whatever he could lay his hands on. Besides, it wasn't
+Mr. Hepplewhite's fault. He means well. And anyhow a nut like that has
+got to be protected against himself."
+
+He might have enlightened Mr. Tutt further upon the psychology of the
+situation had not the judge at that moment ordered the prisoner
+arraigned at the bar.
+
+"Have you ever been convicted before?" asked His Honor sharply.
+
+"Sure," replied the Hepplewhite Tramp carelessly. "I've done three or
+four bits, I'm a burglar. But you can't give me more than a year for
+illegal entry."
+
+"That is quite true," admitted His Honor stiffly. "And it isn't half
+enough!" He hesitated. "Perhaps under the circumstances you'll tell us
+what you were doing in Mr. Hepplewhite's bed?"
+
+"Oh, I don't mind," returned the defendant with the superior air of one
+who has put something over. "When I heard the guy in the knee breeches
+coming up the stairs I just dove for the slats and played I was asleep."
+
+Leaving the courthouse Mr. Tutt encountered Bonnie Doon.
+
+"Young man," he remarked severely, "you assured me that fellow was only
+a harmless tramp!"
+
+"Well," answered Bonnie, "that's what he said."
+
+"He says now he's a burglar," retorted Mr. Tutt wrathfully. "I don't
+believe he knows what he is. Did you ever hear of such an outrageous
+verdict? With not a scrap of evidence to support it?"
+
+Bonnie lit a cigarette doubtfully.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," he muttered. "The jury seems to have sized him up
+rather better than we did."
+
+"Jury!" growled Mr. Tutt, rolling his eyes heavenward. "'Sweet land of
+liberty!'"
+
+
+
+
+Lallapaloosa Limited
+
+
+
+  "Ethics: The doctrine of man's duty in respect to
+  himself and the rights of others."
+                             --CENTURY DICTIONARY.
+
+  "I don't say that all these people couldn't be squared;
+  but it is right to tell you that I shouldn't be sufficiently
+  degraded in my own estimation unless I was insulted
+  with a very considerable bribe."
+                             --POOH-BAH.
+
+"I've been all over those securities," Miss Wiggin informed Mr. Tutt as
+he entered the office one morning, "and not a single one of them is
+listed on the Stock Exchange."
+
+"What securities are those?" asked her employer, hanging his tall hat on
+the antiquated mahogany coat tree in the corner opposite the screen that
+ambushed the washing apparatus. "I don't remember any securities," he
+remarked as he applied a match to the off end of a particularly green
+and vicious-looking stogy.
+
+"Why, of course you do, Mr. Tutt!" insisted Miss Wiggin. "Don't you
+remember those great piles of bonds and stocks that Doctor Barrows left
+here with you to keep for him?"
+
+"Oh, those!" Mr. Tutt smiled inscrutably. "Mr. Barrows is not a
+physician," he corrected her, running his eye over the General Sessions
+calendar. "He's only a 'doc'--that is to say, one who doctors. You know
+you can doctor a lot of things besides the human anatomy. No, I guess
+they're not listed on the Stock Exchange or anywhere else."
+
+"Well, here's a schedule I made of them--Miss Sondheim typed it--and
+their total face value is seventeen million eight hundred thousand
+dollars. I tried to find out all I could, but none of the firms on Wall
+Street had ever heard of any of them--excepting of one that was traded
+in on the curb up to within a few weeks. There's Great Lakes and
+Canadian Southern Railway Company," she went on, "Chicago Water Front
+and Terminal Company, Great Geyser Texan Petroleum and Llano Estacado
+Land Company--dozens and dozens of them, and not one has an office or,
+so far as I can find out, any tangible existence--but the one I spoke
+of."
+
+"Which is this great exception?" queried Mr. Tutt absently as he
+searched through the _Law Journal_ for the case he was going to try that
+afternoon. "You said one of them had been dealt in on the curb? You
+astonish me!"
+
+"It's got a funny name," she answered. "It almost sounds as if they
+meant it for a joke--Horse's Neck Extension."
+
+"I guess they meant it for a joke all right--on the public," chuckled
+her employer. "How many shares are there?"
+
+"A hundred thousand," she answered.
+
+"Jumping Jehoshaphat!" ejaculated Mr. Tutt. "How on earth did old Doc
+manage to get hold of them?"
+
+"It sold for only ten cents a share!" replied Miss Wiggin. "That would
+mean ten thousand dollars--"
+
+"If Doc paid for it," supplemented Mr. Tutt. "Which he probably didn't.
+What's it selling for now?"
+
+"It isn't selling at all."
+
+Mr. Tutt pressed the button that summoned Willie.
+
+"When you haven't anything better to do," he said to her, "why don't you
+go round and see what has become of--of--Horse's Neck Extension?"
+
+"I will," assented Miss Wiggin. "It makes me feel rich just to talk
+about such things. I just love it."
+
+"Many a slick crook has taken advantage of just that kind of feeling,"
+mused Mr. Tutt. "There are two things that women--particularly trained
+nurses--seem to like better than anything else in the world--babies and
+stock certificates."
+
+Then upon the arrival of the recalcitrant William he gathered up his
+papers and took down his hat from the tree.
+
+"I wish you'd let me get your hat ironed, Mr. Tutt," remarked Miss
+Wiggin. "It would cost you only fifty cents."
+
+"That's all you know about it, my dear," he answered. "More likely it
+would cost me a hundred thousand dollars."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Tobias Greenbaum, of Scherer, Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck, carefully
+placed his cigar where it would not char his Italian Renaissance desk
+and smoothed out the list which Mr. Elderberry, the secretary of The
+Horse's Neck Extension Copper Mining Company, handed to him. The list
+was typed on thin sheets; of foolscap and contained the names of
+stockholders, but as it had lain rolled up in the bottom of Mr.
+Elderberry's desk for five years without being disturbed it was inclined
+to resist the gentle pressure of Mr. Greenbaum's fingers.
+
+Mr. Greenbaum glanced sharply round the plate-glass lake that separated
+him from the other directors of Horse's Neck, rather as if he had
+detected his associates in a crime.
+
+"Isaacs says," he announced in an arrogant, almost insulting tone,
+though below the surface he was an entirely genial person, "that the new
+vein in the Amphalula runs into the west drift of Horse's Neck almost to
+where we quit work in Number Nine five years ago."
+
+"If it does it will make it a bonanza property," emphatically declared
+his partner, Mr. Scherer, a dolichocephalous person with very black hair
+and thin bluish cheeks. "It's a pity we didn't buy it all in at ten
+cents a share."
+
+"We did!" retorted Greenbaum. "All that could be shaken out. We've got
+all the stock that hasn't gravitated to the cemeteries."
+
+"Even if the Amphalula vein doesn't run into it it will come near
+enough to make Horse's Neck worth dollars per share. It's a
+heads-I-win-tails-you-lose proposition," commented Mr. Hunn dryly. "Who
+controls Amphalula?"
+
+"We do," snapped Greenbaum.
+
+"Then it's a cinch," returned Hunn mildly. "Shake out the sleepers,
+reorganize, and sell or hold as seems most advisable later on."
+
+Mr. Elderberry cleared his throat tentatively.
+
+"If you gentlemen will pardon me--I have been considering this matter
+for some little time," he hazarded. Mr. Elderberry was not only the
+professional salaried secretary of Horse's Neck but was also treasurer
+of the Amphalula, and general factotum, representative and interlocking
+director for Scherer, Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck in their various mining
+enterprises, combining in his person almost as many offices as, Pooh-Bah
+in "The Mikado." Though he could not have claimed to serve as "First
+Lord of the Treasury, Lord Chief Justice, Commander-in-Chief, Lord High
+Admiral, Master of the Buck Hounds, Groom of the Back Stairs, Archbishop
+of Titipu and Lord Mayor, both acting and elect, all rolled into one,"
+he could with entire modesty have admitted the soft impeachment of being
+simultaneously treasurer of Amphalula, vice-president of Hooligan Gulch
+and Red Water, secretary of Horse's Neck, Holy Jo, Gargoyle Extension,
+Cowhide Number Five, Consolidated Bimetallic, Nevada Mastodon, Leaping
+Frog, Orelady Mine, Why Marry and Sol's Cliff Buttress, and president of
+Blimp Consolidated.
+
+All these various properties were either owned or controlled by Scherer,
+Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck and had been acquired with the use of the same
+original capital in various entirely legal ways, which at the present
+moment are irrelevant. The firm was a strictly honorable business house,
+from both their own point of view and that of the Street. Everything
+they did was with and by the advice of counsel. Yet not one of these
+active-minded gentlemen, including Mr. Greenbaum, the dolichocephalous
+Scherer and the acephalous Hunn, had ever done a stroke of productive
+work or contributed anything toward the common weal. In fact, distress
+to somebody in some form, and usually to a large number of persons,
+inevitably followed whatever deal they undertook, since their business
+was speculating in mining properties and unloading the bad ones upon an
+unsuspecting public which Scherer, Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck had permitted
+to deceive itself.
+
+Thus, when Greenbaum called upon Mr. Elderberry for advice, it savored
+strongly of Koko's consulting Pooh-Bah and was sometimes almost as
+confusing, for just as Pooh-Bah on these occasions was won't to reply,
+"Certainly. In which of my capacities? As First Lord of the Treasury,
+Lord Chamberlain, Attorney-General, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Privy
+Purse or Private Secretary?" so the financial and corporate Elderberry
+might equally well ask: "Exactly. But are you seeking my advice as
+secretary of Horse's Neck, of Holy Jo, of Cowhide Number Five, or as
+vice-president of Hooligan Gulch and Red Water, treasurer of Amphalula
+or president of Blimp Consolidated?"
+
+Just now it was, of course, obvious that he was addressing the company
+in his capacity of secretary of Horse's Neck.
+
+"It goes without saying, gentlemen, that this property is pretty nearly
+down and out. You will recall that most of the insiders sold out on the
+tail of the Goldfield Boom and waited for the market to sag until we
+could buy in again. The mines are full of water, work was abandoned over
+four years ago, and the property is practically defunct. The original
+capitalization was ten million shares at one dollar a share. We own or
+control at least four million shares, for which we paid ten to fifteen
+cents, while we had sold our original holdings for one dollar sixty to
+one dollar ninety-five a share. While Horse's Neck represents a handsome
+profit--in my opinion"--he cleared his throat again as if deprecating
+the vulgarity of his phrase--"it is good for another whirl."
+
+"You say it's full of water?" inquired Hunn.
+
+"It will cost about fifty thousand dollars to pump out the mines and a
+hundred thousand to repair the machinery. Then there's quite an
+indebtedness--about seventy-five thousand; and tax liens--another fifty.
+Half a million dollars would put Horse's Neck on the map, and if the
+Amphalula vein crosses the property it will be worth ten millions. If it
+doesn't, the chance that it is going to will make a market for the
+stock."
+
+Mr. Elderberry swept with a bland inquiring eye the shore of the glassy
+sea about which his associates were gathered.
+
+"I've been over the ground," announced Greenbaum "and it's a good
+gamble. We want Horse's Neck for ourselves--at any rate until we are
+confident that it's a real lemon. Half a million will do it. I'll
+personally put up a hundred thousand."
+
+"How are you going to get rid of the fifty thousand other stockholders?"
+asked Mr. Beck dubiously "We don't want them trailing along with us."
+
+"I propose," answered Mr. Elderberry brightly, in his capacity as chief
+conspirator for Scherer, Hunn, _et al._, "that we organize a new
+corporation to be called 'Lallapaloosa Limited' and capitalize it at a
+million dollars--one million shares at a dollar a share. Then we will
+execute a contract between Horse's Neck and Lallapaloosa by the terms of
+which the old bankrupt corporation will sell to the new corporation all
+its assets for one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars. We
+underwrite the stock of Lallapaloosa at fifty cents a share, thus
+supplying the new corporation with the funds with which to purchase the
+properties of the old. In a word we shall get Horse's Neck for a hundred
+and twenty-five thousand and have three hundred and seventy-five
+thousand left out of what we subscribe to underwrite the stock to put
+it on its feet."
+
+"That's all right," debated Hunn. "But how about the other stockholders
+in Horse's Neck that Beck referred to? Where do they come in?"
+
+"I've thought of that," returned Elderberry. "Of course you can't just
+squeeze 'em out entirely. That wouldn't be legal. They must be given the
+chance to subscribe at par to the stock of the new corporation on the
+basis of one share in the new for every ten they hold in the old; or, as
+Horse's Neck is a Delaware corporation, to have their old stock
+appraised under the laws of Delaware. In point of fact, they've all
+written off their holdings in Horse's Neck as a total loss years ago and
+you couldn't drag 'em into putting in any new money. They'll simply let
+it go--forfeit their stock in Horse's Neck and be wiped out because they
+were not willing to go in and reorganize the property with us."
+
+"They would if they knew about Amphalula," remarked Beck.
+
+"Well, they don't!" snapped Greenbaum, "and we're under no obligations
+to tell 'em. They can infer what they like from the fact that Horse's
+Neck has been selling for ten cents a share for the last three years."
+
+"Is that right, Chippingham?" inquired Beck of the attorney who was in
+attendance. "I mean--is it legal?"
+
+"Perfectly legal," replied Mr. Chippingham conclusively. "A corporation
+has a perfect right to dispose of its entire assets for a proper
+consideration and if any minority stockholder feels aggrieved he can
+take the matter to the Delaware courts and get his equity assessed.
+Besides, everybody is treated alike--all the stockholders in Horse's
+Neck can subscribe pro rata for Lallapaloosa."
+
+"Only they won't," grinned Scherer.
+
+"And so, as they are wiped out--the new corporation--that is us--in fact
+gets their equity, just as much as if they had deeded it to us."
+
+"That is, we get for nothing about one-half the value of the property,"
+agreed Elderberry. "Now, I've been over the list and I don't think
+you'll hear a peep from any of them."
+
+  "He's got 'em on the list--he's got 'em on the list;
+  And they'll none of 'em be missed--they'll none of 'em be missed!"
+
+hummed Mr. Beck. "It looks good to me! I'll take a hundred thousand."
+
+"Mr. Chippingham has the papers drawn already," continued Elderberry.
+"Of course you've got to give the old stockholders notice, but we can
+rush the thing through and before anybody wakes up the thing will be
+done. Then they can holler all they want."
+
+"Well, I'll come in," announced Hunn complacently.
+
+"So will I," echoed Scherer. "And the firm can underwrite the last
+hundred thousand, and that will clean it up."
+
+"Is it all right for us to underwrite the stock ourselves at half
+price?" inquired Mr. Beck. "I mean--is it legal?"
+
+"Sure!" reiterated Mr. Chippingham. "Somebody's got to underwrite it;
+why not us?"
+
+"Move we adjourn," said Mr. Greenbaum. "Elderberry--the usual."
+
+Mr. Elderberry removed from his change pocket five glittering gold
+pieces and slid one across the glass sheet to each director.
+
+"Second motion. Carried! All up--seventh inning!" smiled Mr. Scherer;
+and the directors, pocketing their gold pieces, arose.
+
+If, as it has been defined, ethics consists of a "system of principles
+and rules concerning moral obligations and regard for the rights of
+others," it may be interesting to speculate as to whether or not these
+gentlemen had any or not, and, if so, what it may have been. But in
+considering this somewhat nice question it should be borne in mind that
+Messrs. Scherer, Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck were bankers of standing, and
+were advised by a firm of attorneys of the highest reputation. On its
+face, and as it was about to be represented to the stockholders of
+Horse's Neck, the proposition appeared fair enough.
+
+The circular, shortly after sent out to all the names upon the list,
+stated succinctly that financial and labor conditions had been such that
+it had been found impossible to operate the mine profitably for several
+years, that it had depreciated greatly in value owing to the water which
+had accumulated in its lower levels, that it had exhausted its surplus,
+that a heavy indebtedness had accumulated, that the corporation's
+outstanding notes had been protested and that the property would be sold
+under foreclosure unless money was immediately raised to pay them, the
+interest due and taxes; that half a million dollars was needed to put
+the property in operation and that there was no way to secure it, as
+nobody was willing to loan money to a bankrupt mining concern. That
+under these circumstances no practical method had been proposed except
+to organize a new corporation capitalized at one million instead of ten,
+to the stock of which each shareholder in Horse's Neck might subscribe
+in proportion to his holdings, at par, and to which the assets of the
+old corporation should be transferred practically for its debts. That
+this, in a word, was the only way to save the situation and possibly
+make a go of a bad business, and that it was a gamble in which the old
+stockholders had a right, up to a certain date, to participate if they
+saw fit. Those that did not would find their stock in Horse's Neck
+entirely valueless as it would have no assets left which had not been
+transferred to Lallapaloosa. Stockholders who were dissatisfied could
+protest against the enabling resolution to be offered at the annual
+meeting of the stockholders of Horse's Neck to be held the following
+week at Wilmington, Delaware, and could avail themselves of the right to
+have their equity assessed under the laws of Delaware, but as the
+liabilities practically equaled the present value of the property that
+equity would naturally be highly problematical.
+
+Now, as a matter of morals or of law the only thing that made the
+proposed reorganization unethical or inequitable was the single trifling
+fact that those responsible for it were the only ones who knew of the
+existence and proximity of the Amphalula vein. When a mining company, a
+railroad, an oil well or any other enterprise is down and out it is only
+fair that the majority stockholders, who are obliged to protect their
+investment, should have the right to call upon the rest to come forward
+and do their share or else drop out. A minority stockholder cannot
+appeal to any canon of fair play whereby he should be entitled to sit
+back and let the majority take all the risks and then claim his share of
+the profits.
+
+The imponderable element of injustice in the situation consisted in the
+suppression of a fact which the directors concealed but concerning
+which, however, they made no representation, false or otherwise. They
+were going to risk half a million dollars of their own money and they
+wanted the whole gamble for themselves. They sincerely felt that nobody
+else was entitled to take that risk with them. Once they had floated
+Horse's Neck they had come to look upon it as their own private affair.
+The minority had no rights which they, the majority, were bound to
+respect. The minority were nothing but a lot of piking gamblers, anyway,
+who bought or sold for a rise or fall of a few cents. They knew nothing
+of the property and cared less for its real value. They were merely
+traders and if they lost they forgot it or tried to. On the other hand
+Scherer, Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck were promoters, who contributed
+something to the economic advancement of the nation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Regarding my hat, which you suggested this morning should be pressed at
+a cost of fifty cents," remarked Mr. Tutt to Miss Wiggin when he
+returned to the office upon the adjournment of court in the afternoon
+and replaced that ancient object in its accustomed resting-place
+--"regarding that precious hat of mine"--he eyed it affectionately
+--"I can only say that I would as soon send myself to a dry-cleaning
+establishment as to permit its profanation by the iron of a
+haberdasher."
+
+Miss Wiggin laughed lightly.
+
+"That doesn't explain your cryptic statement that it would probably cost
+you a hundred thousand dollars," she replied. "Still--"
+
+Mr. Tutt turned suddenly upon his heel and held her with an upraised
+hand, the bony wrist of which was encircled, after an intervening space
+of some five inches, by a frayed cuff confined with a black onyx button
+the size of a quarter.
+
+"Behold," he cried in the deep resonant voice that he used in addressing
+juries at the climax of a peroration, "the integuments of my
+personality--the ancient habiliments of an honorable profession--the
+panoply of the legal warrior. Here, my corslet"--he touched his dingy
+waistcoat with his left hand; "my greaves"--he brushed the baggy legs of
+his pantaloons; "my halberd"--he raised his old mahogany cane with its
+knot of yellow ivory; "my casque"--he indicated his ruffled stove-pipe
+"Arrayed in these I am Mr. Ephraim Tutt, attorney and counselor at
+law--the senior partner in Tutt & Tutt--a respected member of the bar
+duly accredited and authorized to practise before the Supreme Court of
+the State of New York, the Court of Appeals, the District Court of the
+United States, the Circuit Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court of the
+United States, the Court of Claims--"
+
+"--the Police Court and the Coroner's Court," concluded Miss Wiggin,
+making him a mock curtsy.
+
+"Without these indicia of my profession and my individuality I should be
+like David without his sling or Samson without his hair. I should be
+merely Tutt, a criminal lawyer--one of a multitude--regarded perhaps as
+a shyster. But in these robes of my high office I am a high priest of
+the law; just as you, my dear girl, are one of its many devoted and
+worthy priestesses. Can you imagine me going to court in a bowler hat or
+arguing to the jury in a cutaway coat or bobtail business suit? Can you
+picture Ephraim Tutt with his hair cut short or in an Ascot tie, any
+more than you can envisage him in riding breeches or wearing lilacs? No!
+There is but one Mr. Tutt, and these are his only garments. He who
+steals my hat may steal trash, but without it I should be like a
+disembodied spirit unable to return to my earthly dwelling-place.
+
+"A paltry hundred thousand?
+
+"Nay, without my hat--my helmet!--I should be valueless to myself and
+everybody else; so estimate my worth and you can assay the value of my
+hat. What am I worth in your opinion?"
+
+And then Miss Wiggin, having glanced cautiously if quickly round, made a
+most astonishing declaration.
+
+"Just about a million times more than anybody else in the whole world,
+you old dear!" she whispered and rising upon her toes she kissed his
+wrinkled cheek.
+
+"Dear me! You really mustn't do that!" gasped Mr. Tutt.
+
+"Well," she retorted, "you can discharge me if you like. But first sit
+down, light a cigar and let me tell you something."
+
+Mr. Tutt did as he was bid, chuckling.
+
+"Well," said Miss Wiggin, "there is such a thing as Horse's Neck
+Extension after all!"
+
+"Um--you don't say?" he answered, struggling to make his stogy draw.
+
+"And it has an office with about a hundred other corporations of various
+kinds--most of them with names that sound like the zoo--Yellow Wildcat,
+Jumping Leapfrog, and that sort of thing. It seems Horse's Neck is
+played out and they are going to reorganize it--"
+
+"Who are?" demanded her employer, suddenly sitting erect.
+
+"Scherer, Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck."
+
+"The dickens they are!" he ejaculated. "That bunch of pirates? Not if I
+know it!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Reorganize! Reorganize? Reorganization is my middle name!" cried Mr.
+Tutt. "So Scherer, Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck are going to reorganize
+something, are they? Let 'em try! Not so long as I've got my hat!"
+
+"This is all very enigmatical to me," replied Miss Wiggin. "But then,
+I'm only a woman. Aren't they all right? Why shouldn't they reorganize a
+mine if it's exhausted?"
+
+"If it's exhausted why do they want to reorganize it?" he demanded,
+climbing to his feet. "Let me tell you something, Minerva! All my life
+I've been fighting against tyranny--the tyranny of the law, the tyranny
+of power, the tyranny of money."
+
+He drew fiercely on his stogy, which being desiccated flared like a
+Roman candle.
+
+"You don't need to tell me what this plan of reorganization is; because
+they wouldn't propose one unless it was going to benefit them in some
+way, and the only way it can be made to benefit them is at the expense
+of the other stockholders. _Quod erat demonstrandum_."
+
+Mr. Tutt seemed to have become distended somehow and to have spread over
+the entire wall surface of his office like the genie which the
+fisherman innocently permitted to escape from the bottle.
+
+"There isn't one reorganization scheme in a hundred that isn't crooked
+somewhere."
+
+"According to that, if a business is unsuccessful it ought to be allowed
+to go to pot for fear that somebody might make a profit in putting it on
+its feet," she countered. "I think you're a violent, irascible,
+prejudiced old man!"
+
+"All the same," he retorted, "show me a reorganization scheme and I'll
+show you a flimflam! What's this one? Bet you anything you like it's as
+crooked as a ram's horn. I don't have to hear about it. Don't want to
+read the plan. But I'll bust it--higher than Hades. See if I don't!"
+
+He spat the remaining filaments of his stogy from the window and fished
+out another.
+
+"How do we come into it, anyhow?" he demanded.
+
+"Doctor--I mean Mister Barrows," replied Miss Wiggin.
+
+"Oh, yes. Of course. Well, you send for him to come down here and sign
+the papers."
+
+"What papers?"
+
+"The complaint and order to show cause."
+
+"But there isn't any."
+
+"There will be, all right, by the time he gets here."
+
+Miss Wiggin looked first puzzled and then pained.
+
+"I don't understand," she said rather stiffly. "Do you mean that the
+firm of Tutt & Tutt is going to engage in the enterprise of trying to
+break up a plan of reorganization without knowing what it is? Won't you
+lay us all open to the accusation of being strikers?"
+
+Mr. Tutt's ordinarily brown complexion became slightly tinged with
+purple.
+
+"Let the court decide!" he cried hotly. "You say Scherer, Hunn,
+Greenbaum & Beck are proposing to reorganize a mining company? You admit
+we hold some of the stock? Well--as the natural-born and perennial
+champion of the outraged minority--I'm going to attack it, and bust it,
+and raise heck with it--on general principles. I'm going to throw that
+damned old hat of mine into the ring, my child, and play hell with
+everything."
+
+And with a cluck Mr. Tutt leaned over, produced a dingy bottle wrapped
+in a coat of many colors and poured himself out a glass of malt extract.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Mr. Greenbaum was summoned to the telephone and informed by Mr.
+Elderberry in disgruntled tones that somebody had just served upon him
+an order to show cause why the proposed reorganization of Horse's Neck
+should not be set aside and enjoined, he not only became instantly
+annoyed but highly excited.
+
+"What!" he almost screamed.
+
+"I'll read it to you, if you don't believe it!" said Mr. Elderberry.
+
+"'United States District Court, Southern District of New York, Edward V.
+Barrows, Complainant against Horse's Neck Extension Mining Company,
+Defendant.
+
+"'Upon the subpoena herein and the complaint duly verified the
+nineteenth day of February, 1919, and the affidavit of Ephraim Tutt
+and--'"
+
+"Who in hell is Tutt?" shouted Greenbaum, interrupting.
+
+"I don't know," retorted Elderberry; "or Barrows either."
+
+"Well, skip all the legal rot and get to the point," directed Greenbaum.
+
+"'Ordered--ordered, that the defendant, Horse's Neck Extension Mining
+Company, show cause at a stated term to be held in and for--'"
+
+"I said to cut the legal rot!"
+
+"Um--um--'why an injunction order should not be issued herein pending
+the trial of this action and enjoining the defendant from disposing of
+its assets and for the appointment of a receiver of the assets of the
+defendant corporation; and why the complainant should not have such
+other, further and different relief as may be equitable.'"
+
+There was a long pause during which Mr. Elderberry was under a
+convincing delusion that he could actually hear the thoughts that were
+rattling round in Mr. Greenbaum's brain.
+
+"You there?" he inquired presently.
+
+"Oh, yes, I'm here!" retorted Greenbaum. "This is the devil of a note!
+Have you spoken to Chippingham?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What does he say?"
+
+"He says it's awkward. They have got hold somewhere of one of our old
+circulars of 1914 in which the property is described as worth about ten
+million dollars--that was during the boom, you remember--and they claim
+we are selling it to ourselves for less than one million and that on its
+face it's a fraud on the minority stockholders who can't afford to buy
+stock in the new corporation--as of course it would be if the mine was
+really worth ten million or anything like it."
+
+"Did we really ever get out any circular like that?" demanded Greenbaum
+in a protesting voice. "I don't recall any."
+
+"That was when we were making a market for the stock," Elderberry
+reminded him. "We couldn't say enough. Honestly, to look at the thing
+now is enough to make you sick!"
+
+"Well, it's just a hold-up--that's what it is. Some crook like this
+Tutt or this Barrows has found out about Amphalula and is bringing a
+strike suit. You'll have to call a meeting right away. I'd like to
+strangle all these shyster lawyers!"
+
+And it never occurred to Mr. Greenbaum that the possible existence of
+the Amphalula vein was what in fact made the order to show cause
+justifiable--his actual ground of complaint being that anybody should,
+as he assumed, have found out about it in defiance of his plans.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Yeronner," said Attendant Mike Horan as he helped Judge Pollak into his
+black bombazine gown in his chambers in the old Post-Office Building on
+the morning of the return day, "there's a great bunch out there in the
+court room waitin' for ye, an' no mistake!"
+
+"Indeed!" remarked His Honor. "And who are they? What is the case?"
+
+"Hanged if I know," answered Mike, snipping a piece of fluff off his
+judgeship's shoulder. "There's a white-bearded old guy, two or three
+swell gents with tall hats, Counselor Tutt and an attorney named
+Chippingham, besides that pretty Miss Wiggin; and they ain't speakin'
+none to one another, neither."
+
+"It must be that mining-reorganization case," answered the judge. "Well,
+it's time to go in."
+
+They walked down the dirty marble corridor and entered the court room,
+while the clerk rapped on the railing.
+
+"Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye! All persons having any business to do with
+the District Court of the United States draw near, give your attention
+and you will be heard," he intoned with unctuous authority.
+
+The "bunch" rose and made obeisance.
+
+"Good morning," said the judge pleasantly, sitting down with a side
+switch of the bombazine. "Barrows against the--er--er--Horse's Neck
+Mining Company. Do you represent the complainant, Mr. Tutt?"
+
+"I do," answered Mr. Tutt with great dignity. "Your Honor, this is a
+motion for an order to show cause why an injunction _pendente lite_
+should not issue restraining the sale of the assets, of this corporation
+to another in fraud of its minority stockholders--and for a receiver. My
+client, an aged man living upon his farm in the northern part of the
+state, is the owner of one hundred thousand shares in the Horse's Neck
+Mining Company of the par value of one hundred thousand dollars. He has
+owned these securities for many years. They represent his entire
+capital. He is a bona fide stockholder--"
+
+"May I be pardoned for interrupting?" sneered Chippingham, springing to
+his feet. "I think the court should be informed at the outset that this
+man, Barrows, is a notorious ex-convict."
+
+Judge Pollak raised his eyebrows.
+
+"This is an outrage!" thundered Mr. Tutt, his form rising ceilingward.
+"My client--like all of us--has had his misfortunes, but they are
+happily a thing of the past; he has the same rights as if he were an
+archbishop, the president of a university or--a judge of this honorable
+court."
+
+"We are sitting in equity," remarked His Honor. "The question of _bona
+fides_ is a vital one. _Is_ the complainant an ex-convict?"
+
+"This is the complainant, sir," cried Mr. Tutt, indicating old Doc, now
+for the first time in his life smartly arrayed in a new checked suit,
+red tie, patent-leather shoes and suède gloves, and with his beard
+neatly trimmed. "This is the unfortunate man whose honest savings of a
+lifetime are being wrested from him by an unscrupulous group of
+manipulators who--in my opinion--are more deserving of confinement
+behind prison walls than he ever was."
+
+The gentlemen with the tall hats bit their lips and showed signs of
+poorly suppressed agitation.
+
+"But _is_ your client an ex-convict, Mr. Tutt?" repeated the judge
+quietly.
+
+"Yes, Your Honor, he is."
+
+"When and how did he become possessed of his stock?"
+
+Mr. Tutt turned to Doc with an air of ineffectually striving to master
+his righteous indignation.
+
+"Tell the court, Mr. Barrows," he cried, "in your own words."
+
+Doc Barrows wonderingly rose.
+
+"If you please, sir," he began, "it's quite a long story. You see, I was
+the owner of all the stock of The Chicago Water Front and Terminal
+Company--there was a flaw in the title deed which I can explain to you
+privately if you wish--and when I was--er--visiting--up on the Hudson--I
+met a man there who was the owner of a hundred thousand shares of
+Horse's Neck, and we agreed to exchange."
+
+The judge tried to hide a slight smile.
+
+"I see," he replied pleasantly. "And what was the man's name?"
+
+"Oscar Bloom, sir."
+
+The gentlemen with the tall hats exchanged agitated glances.
+
+"Do you know how he got his stock?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"That is all. Go on, Mr. Tutt."
+
+Doc sat down while Mr. Tutt again unhooked his lank form.
+
+"To resume where I was interrupted, Your Honor, the directors
+controlling a majority of the stock of this corporation, the capital of
+which is ten millions of dollars, have made a contract to sell all of
+its properties to another corporation, organized by themselves and
+capitalized for one million, for the sum of one hundred and twenty-five
+thousand dollars!
+
+"It is true that in their plan of reorganization they offer to permit
+any stockholder in the old corporation to subscribe for stock in the new
+at par--thus at first glance placing all upon what seems to be an
+equality; but any stockholder who does not see fit to subscribe or
+cannot afford to do so is wiped out, for there will be nothing left in
+the way of assets in Horse's Neck after the transfer is completed.
+
+"Now these gentlemen have underwritten the stock in the new Lallapaloosa
+Company at fifty cents upon the dollar, and if this nefarious deal is
+permitted to go through they will thus acquire a property worth ten
+millions for five hundred thousand dollars, of which they will use only
+one hundred and twenty-five thousand in payment of old indebtedness. In
+effect, they confiscate the equity of all the minority stockholders in
+Horse's Neck who cannot afford to subscribe for stock in Lallapaloosa."
+He turned upon the uncomfortable tall hats with an arraigning eye.
+
+"In the criminal courts, Your Honor, such a conspiracy would be
+properly described as grand larceny; in Wall Street perchance it may be
+viewed as high finance. But so long as there are courts of equity such a
+wrong upon a helpless stockholder will not go unrebuked. Have I made
+myself clear to Your Honor?"
+
+Judge Pollak looked interested. He was a man famous for his protection
+of helpless minorities and his court had been selected by Mr. Tutt on
+this account.
+
+"If the facts are as you state them, Mr. Tutt," he answered seriously,
+"the plan on its face would seem to be inequitable. If the property is
+worth ten million the consideration is palpably inadequate. Your
+client's equity, worth on that basis at least one hundred thousand
+dollars, would be entirely destroyed without any redress."
+
+"Your Honor," burst out Mr. Chippingham, whose bald head had been
+bobbing about in excited contiguity with the tall hats, "this is a most
+misleading statement. The assets of Horse's Neck aren't worth a hundred
+thousand dollars. And if any of the minority don't want to come into the
+reorganization--and I assure Your Honor that we would welcome their
+participation--they can have their equity appraised under the laws of
+Delaware and the finding becomes a lien on the assets even after they
+have been transferred."
+
+"What relief does that give a man like Mr. Barrows?" shouted Mr. Tutt.
+"He can't afford to go down to Wilmington with a carload of books and a
+corps of experts to prove the value of Horse's Neck. It would cost him
+more than his stock is worth!"
+
+"That remedy is not exclusive, in any event," declared the judge. "If
+this complainant is going to be defrauded I will enjoin this contract
+_pendente lite_ and appoint a receiver."
+
+"Your Honor!" protested Chippingham in great agony. "It is not the fact
+that this mine is worth ten million. It isn't worth at the most more
+than one hundred thousand. It is, full of water, the machinery is rusted
+and falling to pieces and the workings are practically exhausted. The
+only way to rehabilitate this property is for everybody to come in and
+put up enough money by subscribing to the stock of the new corporation
+to pump it out, buy new engines and start producing again. Is it fair to
+the majority, who are willing to go on, put up more money, and make an
+attempt to save the property, to have this complainant--an ex-convict
+who never paid a cent for his stock, dug up from heaven knows
+where--enjoin their contract and throw the corporation into the hands of
+a receiver? This is nothing but a strike suit. I repeat--a strike suit!"
+
+He glowered breathless at his adversary.
+
+"Oh! Oh!" groaned Mr. Tutt in horrified tones.
+
+"Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" expostulated the court. "This will not do!"
+
+"I beg pardon--of the court," stammered Mr. Chippingham.
+
+"Your Honor," mourned Mr. Tutt, "I have practised here for thirty years
+and this is the first time I have ever been insulted in open court. A
+strike suit? I hold in my hand"--he waved it threateningly at the tall
+hats--"a circular issued by these directors less than five years ago, in
+which they give the itemized value of this property as ten million
+dollars. Shortly after that circular was issued the stock sold in the
+open market at one dollar and ninety cents a share. In two years it sank
+to ten cents a share. Will a little water, a little rust, a little
+trouble with labor reduce the value of a great property like this from
+ten millions of dollars to one hundred thousand--one per cent of its
+appraised value? Either"--he fixed Chippingham with an exultant and
+terrifying glance--"they were lying then or they are lying now!"
+
+"Let me look at that circular," directed Judge Pollak. He took it from
+Mr. Tutt's eager hand, glanced through it and turned sharply upon the
+quaking Chippingham.
+
+"How long have you been attorney for Scherer, Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck?"
+
+"Twelve years, Your Honor."
+
+"Who is Wilson W. Elderberry?"
+
+"He is the secretary of the Horse's Neck Extension, Your Honor."
+
+"Is he in court?"
+
+From a distant corner Mr. Elderberry bashfully rose.
+
+"Come here!" ordered the court. And the Pooh-Bah of the
+Scherer-Hunn-Greenbaum-Beck enterprises came cringing to the bar.
+
+"Did you sign this circular in 1914?" demanded Judge Pollak.
+
+"Yes, Your Honor."
+
+"Were the statements contained in it true?"
+
+Elderberry squirmed.
+
+"Ye-es, Your Honor. That is--they were to the best of my knowledge and
+belief. I was, of course, obliged to take what information was at
+hand--and--er--and--"
+
+"Did you sign the other circular, issued last month, to the effect that
+the mine was practically valueless?"
+
+"Yes, sir." Elderberry studiously examined the moldings on the cornice
+of the judge's canopy.
+
+"Um!" remarked the court significantly.
+
+There was a flurry among the tall hats. Then Mr. Greenbaum sprang to his
+feet.
+
+"If you please, Your Honor," he announced, staccato, "we entirely
+disavow Mr. Elderberry's circular of 1914. It was issued without our
+knowledge or authority. It is no evidence that the mine was worth ten
+millions or any other amount at that time."
+
+"Oh! Oh!" choked Mr. Tutt, while Miss Wiggin giggled delightedly into
+her brief case.
+
+Judge Pollak bent upon Mr. Greenbaum a withering glance.
+
+"Did your firm sell any of its holdings in Horse's Neck after the
+issuance of that circular?"
+
+Greenbaum hesitated. He would have liked to wring that judge's neck.
+
+"Why--how do I know? We may have."
+
+"_Did_ you?"
+
+"Say 'yes,' for God's sake," hissed Chippingham "or you'll land in the
+pen!"
+
+"I am informed that we did," answered Greenbaum defiantly. "That is, I
+don't _say_ we did. Very likely we did. Our books would show. But I
+repeat--we disavow this circular and we deny any responsibility for this
+man, Elderberry."
+
+This man, Elderberry, who for twelve long years had writhed under the
+biting lash of his employer's tongue, hating him with a hatred known
+only to those in subordinate positions who are bribed to suffer the
+"whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's
+contumely," quivered and saw red. He was going to be made the goat!
+They expected him to take all the responsibility and give them a clean
+slate! The nerve of it! To hell with them! Suddenly he began to cry,
+shockingly, with deep stertorous suspirations.
+
+"No--you won't!" he hiccuped. "You shan't lay the blame on me! I'll tell
+the truth, I will! I won't stand for it! Your Honor, they want to
+reorganize Horse's Neck because they think there's a vein in Amphalula
+that crosses one of the old workings and that it'll make the property
+worth millions and millions."
+
+Utter silence descended upon the court room--silence broken only by the
+slow ticktack of the self-winding clock on the rear wall and the whine
+of the electric cars on Park Row. One of the tall hats crept quietly to
+the door and vanished. The others sat like images.
+
+Then the court said very quietly: "I will adjourn this matter for one
+week. I need not point out that what has occurred has a very grave
+interpretation. Adjourn court!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Old Doc Barrows, the two Tutts and Miss Wiggin were sitting in Mr.
+Tutt's office an hour later when Willie announced that Mr. Tobias
+Greenbaum was outside and would like an interview.
+
+"Send him in!" directed Mr. Tutt, winking at Miss Wiggin.
+
+Mr. Greenbaum entered, frowning and without salutation, while Doc
+partially rose, moved by the acquired instinct of disciplinary
+politeness, then changed his mind and sat down again.
+
+"See here," snarled Greenbaum. "You sure have made a most awful hash of
+this business. I don't want to argue about it. We could go ahead and
+beat you, but Pollak is prejudiced and will probably give you your
+injunction and appoint a receiver. If he does, that will knock the whole
+property higher than a kite. Nobody would ever buy stock in it or even
+finance it. Now how much do you want to call off your suit?"
+
+"Have a stogy?" asked Mr. Tutt politely.
+
+"Nope."
+
+"We want exactly one hundred thousand dollars."
+
+Greenbaum laughed derisively.
+
+"A hundred thousand fiddlesticks! This old jailbird swindled another
+crook, Bloom--"
+
+"Oh, Bloom was a crook too, was he?" chuckled Mr. Tutt. "He worked for
+your firm, didn't he?"
+
+"That's nothing to do with it!" retorted Greenbaum angrily. "Your
+swindling client traded some bum stock in a fake corporation for Bloom's
+stock, which he received for bona fide services--"
+
+"Like Elderberry's?" inquired Tutt innocently.
+
+"Your man never paid a cent for his holdings. That alone would throw
+him out of court. The mine isn't worth a cent without the Amphalula
+vein. We're taking a big chance. You've got us down and we've got to
+pay; but we'll pay only ten thousand dollars--that's final."
+
+"I ain't any more of a swindler than you be!" said Doc with plaintive
+indignation.
+
+"What do you wish to do, Mr. Barrows?" asked Mr. Tutt, turning to him
+deferentially.
+
+"I leave it entirely to you, Mr. Tutt. It's your stock; I gave it all to
+you months ago."
+
+"Then," answered Mr. Tutt with fine scorn, "I shall tell this miserable
+cheating rogue and rascal either to pay you a hundred thousand dollars
+or go to hell."
+
+Mr. Tobias Greenbaum clenched his fists and cast a black glance upon the
+group.
+
+"You can wreck this corporation if you choose, you bunch of dirty
+blackmailers, but you'll get not a cent more than ten thousand. For the
+last time, will you take it or not?"
+
+Mr. Tutt rose and pointed toward the door.
+
+"Kindly remove yourself before I call the police," he said coldly. "I
+advise the firm of Scherer, Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck to retain criminal
+counsel. Your ten thousand may come in handy for that purpose."
+
+Mr. Tobias Greenbaum went.
+
+"And now, Miss Wiggin, how about a cup of tea?" said Mr. Tutt.
+
+The firm of Tutt & Tutt claimed to be the only law firm in the city of
+New York which still maintained the historic English custom of having
+tea at five o'clock. Whether the claim had any foundation or not the tea
+was none the less an institution, undoubtedly generating a friendly,
+sociable atmosphere throughout the office; and now Willie pulled aside
+the screen in the corner and disclosed the gate-leg table over which
+Miss Wiggin exercised her daily prerogative. Soon the room was filled
+with the comfortable odor of Pekoe, of muffins toasted upon an electric
+heater, of cigarettes and stogies. Yet there was, and had been ever
+since their conversation about the hat, a certain restraint between Miss
+Wiggin and Mr. Tutt, rising presumably out of her suggestion that his
+course savored of blackmail, however justified it had afterward turned
+out to be.
+
+"My, isn't this nice!" murmured Doc, trying unsuccessfully to eat a
+muffin, drink his tea and do justice to a stogy at the same time. "It's
+so homy now, isn't it?"
+
+"Doc," answered Mr. Tutt, "did you really want that ten thousand?"
+
+"Me?" repeated Doc vaguely. "Why, I told you I gave that stock to you
+long ago. It isn't mine any longer. Besides, I don't want any money.
+I'm perfectly happy as I am."
+
+Mr. Tutt laughed genially.
+
+"Oh, well," he said, "it's no matter who owns it. Elderberry just
+telephoned me that he had received a telegram from the Amphalula that
+the vein had definitely run out. It's all over--including the shouting."
+
+"Elderberry telephone you?" queried Miss Wiggin in astonishment.
+
+"Yes, Elderberry. You see, he's done, he says, with Scherer, Hunn,
+Greenbaum & Beck. Wants to turn state's evidence and put 'em all in
+jail. I've said I'd help him."
+
+"Then why didn't you take the ten thousand and call it quits while the
+getting was good?" demanded his partner icily.
+
+"Because I knew I'd never get the ten anyway," replied Mr. Tutt.
+"Greenbaum would have learned about the vein on his return to the
+office."
+
+"Well, I must be getting along back to Pottsville!" mumbled Doc. "This
+has been a very pleasant trip--very pleasant; and quite--quite--exciting.
+I--"
+
+"What I'd like to know, Mr. Tutt," interrupted Miss Wiggin, "is how you
+justify your course in this matter. When you attempted to block this
+proposed reorganization you knew nothing about the Elderberry circular
+of 1914 valuing the property at ten million, or of the Amphalula vein.
+On its face you were attempting to wreck a perfectly honest piece of
+financiering, and unless it was a strike suit--which I hope and pray it
+wasn't--"
+
+"Strike suit!" protested Mr. Tutt with a slight twinkle in his eye. "How
+can you suggest such a thing! Didn't the events demonstrate the wisdom
+of my judgment?"
+
+"But you didn't know what was going to happen when you began your suit!"
+she argued firmly. "I hate to say it, but I should think that if
+everything had not come out just as it has your motives might easily
+have been misconstrued."
+
+"It was a matter of principle with me, my dear," declared Mr. Tutt
+solemnly. "Just to show there's no ill feeling, won't you give me
+another cup of tea?"
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10440 ***