defendant--'therefore did disclose all this to him. Gentlemen, one has
only to say further that if this point of honor was to be so sacred as
that a man who comes by knowledge of this sort from an offender was not
to be at liberty to disclose it the most atrocious criminals would every
day escape punishment; and therefore it is that the wisdom of the law
knows nothing of that point of honor.'"
Miss Beekman listened politely.
"I am sorry," she replied with dignity. "I shall not change my mind. I
refuse to answer the question, and--and you can do whatever you like
with me."
"Do you understand that you are in contempt of this court? Do you intend
to show contempt for this court?" he demanded wrathfully.
"I do," answered Miss Althea. "I have contempt for this court."
A titter danced along the benches and some fool in the back of the room
clapped his hands.
Judge Babson's face grew hard and his eyes narrowed to steel points.
"The witness stands committed for contempt," he announced bitingly. "I
direct that she be confined in the city prison for thirty days and pay a
fine of two hundred and fifty dollars. Madam, you will go with the
officer."
Miss Althea rose while the ghost of the Signer encircled her with his
arm.
Mr. Tutt was already upon his feet. He knew that the ghost of the Signer
was there.
"May I ask the court if the witness, having been committed for the
contemptuous conduct of which she is obviously guilty, may remain in
your chambers until adjournment, in order that she may arrange her
private affairs?"
"I will grant her that privilege," agreed Judge Babson with internal
relief. "The request is quite reasonable. Captain Phelan, you may take
the witness into my robing room and keep her there for the present."
With her small head erect, her narrow shoulders thrown back, and with a
resolute step as befitted the descendant of a long line of ancestors
Miss Althea passed behind the jury box and disappeared.
The twelve looked at one another dubiously. Both Babson and O'Brien
seemed nervous and undecided.
"Well, call your next witness," remarked the judge finally.
"But I haven't any more witnesses!" growled O'Brien. "And you know it
almighty well, you idiot!" he muttered under his breath.
"If that is the people's case I move for the defendant's immediate
discharge," cried Mr. Tutt, jumping to his feet. "There is no evidence
connecting him with the crime."
McGurk, furious, sprang toward the bar.
"See here! Wait a minute! Hold on, judge! I can get a hundred
witnesses--"
"Sit down!" shouted one of the officers, thrusting him back. "Keep
quiet!"
Babson looked at O'Brien and elevated his forehead. Then as O'Brien
gave a shrug the judge turned to the expectant jury and said in
apologetic tones:
"Gentlemen of the jury, where the people have failed to prove the
defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt it is the duty of the court
to direct a verdict. In this case, though by inference the testimony
points strongly toward the prisoner, there is no direct proof against
him and I am accordingly constrained--much as I regret it--to instruct
you to return a verdict of not guilty."
In the confusion which followed the rendition of the verdict a messenger
entered breathlessly and forcing his way through the crowd delivered a
folded paper to Mr. Tutt, who immediately rose and handed it to the
clerk; and that official, having hurriedly perused it and pursed his
lips in surprise, passed it over the top of the bench to the judge.
"What's this?" demanded Babson. "Don't bother me now with trifles!"
"But it's a writ of habeas corpus, Your Honor, signed by Judge Winthrop,
requiring the warden to produce Miss Beekman in Part I of the Supreme
Court, and returnable forthwith," whispered Mr. McGuire in an
awe-stricken voice. "I can't disregard that, you know!"
"What!" cried Babson. "How on earth could he have issued a writ in this
space of time? The thing's impossible!"
"If Your Honor please," urbanely explained Mr. Tutt, "as--having known
Miss Beekman's father--I anticipated that the witness would pursue the
course of conduct which, in fact, she has, I prepared the necessary
papers early this morning and as soon as you ordered her into custody my
partner, who was waiting in Judge Winthrop's chambers, presented them to
His Honor, secured his signature and brought the writ here in a
taxicab."
Nobody seemed to be any longer interested in O'Connell. The reporters
had left their places and pushed their way into the inclosure before the
dais. In the rear of the room O'Brien was vainly engaged in trying to
placate the Pearl Button Kids, who were loudly swearing vengeance upon
both him and Peckham. It was a scene as nearly turbulent as the old
yellow clock had ever witnessed. Even the court officers abandoned any
effort to maintain order and joined the excited group about Mr. Tutt
before the bench.
"Does Your Honor desire that this matter be argued before the Supreme
Court?" inquired Mr. Tutt suavely. "If so I will ask that the prisoner
be paroled in my custody. Judge Winthrop is waiting."
Babson had turned pale. Facing a dozen newspapermen, pencils in hand, he
quailed. To hell with "face." Why, if he went on any longer with the
farce the papers would roast the life out of him. With an apology for a
smile that was, in fact, a ghastly grin, he addressed himself to the
waiting group of jurymen, lawyers and reporters.
"Of course, gentlemen," he said, "I never had any real intention of
dealing harshly with Miss Beekman. Undoubtedly she acted quite honestly
and according to her best lights. She is a very estimable member of
society. It will be unnecessary, Mr. Tutt, for you to argue the writ
before Judge Winthrop. The relator, Althea Beekman, is discharged."
"Thank you, Your Honor!" returned Mr. Tutt, bowing profoundly, and
lowering an eyelid in the direction of the gentlemen of the press. "You
are indeed a wise and upright judge!"
The wise and upright judge rose grandly and gathered his robes about the
judicial legs.
"Good morning, gentlemen," he remarked from his altitude to the
reporters.
"Good morning, judge," they replied in chorus. "May we say anything
about the writ?"
Judge Babson paused momentarily in his flight.
"Oh! Perhaps you might as well let the whole thing go," he answered
carelessly. "On the whole I think it better that you should."
As they fought their way out of the doorway Charley Still, of the _Sun_,
grinned at "Deacon" Terry, of the _Tribune_, and jocosely inquired:
"Say, Deac., did you ever think why one calls a judge 'Your Honor'?"
The Deacon momentarily removed his elbow from the abdomen of the
gentleman beside him and replied sincerely though breathlessly, "No! You
can search me!"
And "Cap." Phelan, who happened to be setting his watch at just that
instant, affirms that he will make affidavit that the old yellow clock
winked across the room at the Goddess of Justice, and that beneath her
bandages she unmistakably smiled.
By Advice of Counsel
"Kotow! Kotow! To the great Yen-How,
And wish him the longest of lives!
With his one-little, two-little, three-little, four-little,
Five-little, six-little wives!"
"The fact is I've been arrested for bigamy," said Mr. Higgleby in a
pained and slightly resentful manner. He was an ample flabby person,
built like an isosceles triangle with a smallish head for the apex,
slightly expanded in the gangliar region just above the nape of the
neck--medical students and phrenologists please note--and habitually
wearing an expression of helpless pathos. Instinctively you felt that
you wanted to do something for Mr. Higgleby--to mother him, maybe.
"Then you should see my partner, Mr. Tutt," said Mr. Tutt severely.
"He's the matrimonial specialist."
"I want to see Mr. Tutt, the celebrated divorce lawyer," explained Mr.
Higgleby.
"You mean my partner, Mr. Tutt," said Mr. Tutt. "Willie, show the
gentleman in to Mr. Tutt."
"Thank you, sir," said Mr. Higgleby, and followed Willie.
"Is this Mr. Higgleby?" chirped Tutt as Higgleby entered the adjoining
office. "Delighted to see you, sir! What can we--I--do for you?"
"The fact is, I've been arrested for bigamy," repeated Mr. Higgleby.
Now the Tutt system--demonstrated effective by years of experience--for
putting a client in a properly grateful and hence liberal frame of mind
was, like the method of some physicians, first to scare said client, or
patient, out of his seven senses; second, to admit reluctantly, upon
reflection, that in view of the fact that he had wisely come to Tutt &
Tutt there might still be some hope for him; and third, to exculpate him
with such a flourish of congratulation upon his escape that he was glad
to pay the modest little fee of which he was then and there relieved.
Tutt & Tutt had only two classes of clients: those who paid as they came
in, and those who paid as they went out.
Therefore upon hearing Mr. Higgleby's announcement as to the nature of
his trouble Tutt registered horror.
"What? What did you say?" he demanded.
"I said," repeated Mr. Higgleby with a shade of annoyance, "'the fact
is, I've been arrested for bigamy.' I don't see any reason for making
such a touse about it," he added plaintively.
"Who's making a--a--a touse about it?" inquired Tutt, perceiving that he
had taken the wrong tack. "I'm not. I was just a little surprised at a
man of your genteel appearance--"
"Oh, rot!" expostulated Mr. Higgleby weakly. "You're just like all of
'em! I suppose you were going to say I didn't look like a bigamist--and
all that. Well, cut it! Let's start fair. I _am_ a bigamist!"
Tutt regarded him with obvious curiosity. "You don't say!" he
ejaculated, much as if he wished to add: "How does it feel?"
"I do say!" retorted Mr. Higgleby.
"Well," exclaimed Tutt cheerily, passing into the second phase of the
Tutt-Tutt treatment, "after all, bigamy isn't so bad! It's only five
years at the worst. Generally it's not more than six months."
"Get wise!" snapped Mr. Higgleby. "I didn't come here to have you throw
cold chills into me. I came here to find out how to beat it!"
"Why, certainly! Of course!" protested Tutt hastily.
"I was--"
"And I expect you to get me off!"
"Yes, yes!" murmured Tutt, his usual style completely cramped.
"No matter what!"
"Yes," faintly tuttered Tutt.
"Well," continued Higgleby, taking out a cigar that in shape and
looseness of wrapping closely resembled its owner, "now that's settled,
let's get down to brass tacks. Here's a copy of the indictment."
He produced a document bearing a large gold seal.
"Those robbers made me pay a dollar-sixty for certification!" he
remarked peevishly, indicating the ornament. "What good is certification
to me? As if I wanted to pay to make sure I was accused in exact
language! Anybody can draw an indictment for bigamy!"
COURT OF GENERAL SESSIONS OF THE PEACE IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF NEW
YORK
The People of the State of New York against
THEOPHILUS HIGGLEBY
The Grand Jury of the County of New York, by this indictment,
accuse Theophilus Higgleby of the crime of bigamy, committed as
follows:
The said Theophilus Higgleby, late of the borough of Manhattan of
the city of New York in the county of New York, aforesaid, on the
eleventh day of May in the year of our Lord one thousand nine
hundred and nineteen, at Cook County and the city of Chicago in the
state of Illinois, did marry one Tomascene Startup, and her, the
said Tomascene Startup, did then and there have for his wife;
And afterward, to wit, on the seventeenth day of December in the
year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and nineteen, at the
borough of Manhattan of the city of New York in the county of New
York aforesaid, did feloniously marry and take as his wife one
Alvina Woodcock, and to the said Alvina Woodcock was then and there
married, the said Tomascene Startup being then and there living and
in full life, against the form of the statute in such case made and
provided, and against the peace of the people of the state of New
York and their dignity.
JEREMIAH PECKHAM,
District Attorney.
Such was the precise accusation against the isosceles-triangular client,
who now sat so limply and disjointedly on the opposite side of Tutt's
desk with a certain peculiar air of assurance all his own, as if, though
surprised and somewhat annoyed at the grand jury's interference with his
private affairs, he was nevertheless--being captain of his own soul--not
particularly disturbed about the matter.
"And--er--did you marry these two ladies?" inquired Tutt
apologetically.
"Sure!" responded Higgleby without hesitation.
"May I ask why?"
"Why not?" returned Higgleby. "I'm a traveling man."
"Look here," suddenly demanded Tutt. "Were you ever a lawyer?"
"Sure I was!" responded Mr. Higgleby. "I was a member of the bar of
Osceola County, Florida."
"You don't say!" gasped Tutt.
"And what, may I ask, are you now?"
"Now I'm a bigamist!" answered Mr. Higgleby.
We forget precisely who it was that so observantly said to another,
"Much learning doth make thee mad." At any rate the point to be noted is
that overindulgence in erudition has always been known to have an
unfortunate effect upon the intellectual faculty. Too much wine--though
it must have required an inordinate quantity in certain mendacious
periods--was regarded as provocative of truth; and too many books as
clearly put bats in a man's belfry. The explanation is of course simple
enough. If one overweights the head the whole structure is apt to become
unbalanced. This is the reason why we hold scholars in such light
esteem. They are an unbalanced lot. And after all, why should they get
paid more than half the wage of plumbers or locomotive firemen? What is
easier than sitting before a comfortable steam radiator and reading an
etymological dictionary or the Laws of Hammurabi? They toil not even if
their heads spin. Only in Germany has the pedagogue ever received full
meed of gold and of honor--and look at Germany!
Pedants have never been much considered by men of action. They never
will be. Experience is the only teacher, which, in the language of Amos
Eno, who left two millions to the Institute of Mechanics and Tradesmen,
is "worth a damn." We Americans abhor any affectation of learning; hence
our weakness for slang. I should apologize for the word "weakness." On
the contrary it is a token of our virile independence, our scorn for the
delicatessen of education, mere dilettanteism. And this has its
practical side, for if we don't know how to pronounce the words
"evanescent persiflage" we can call it "bunk" or "rot." We suspect all
college graduates. We don't want them in our business. They slink
through our lives like pickpockets fearful of detection.
What has all this to do with anything? It has to do, dear reader, with
Mr. Caput Magnus, the assistant of the district attorney of the county
of New York, whose duty it was to present the evidence in all criminal
cases to the grand jury and make ready the instruments of torture known
as bills of indictment for that august body's action thereon.
For by all the lights of the Five Points, Chinatown--Mulberry, Canal,
Franklin, Lafayette and Centre streets--Pontin's Restaurant, Moe Levy's
One Price Tailoring Establishment, and even by those of the glorious
days of Howe & Hummel, by the Nine Gods of Law--and more--Caput Magnus
was a learned savant. He and he alone of all the members of the bar on
the pay roll of the prosecutor's office, housed in their smoke-hung
cubicles in the Criminal Courts Building, knew how to draw up those
complicated and awful things with their barbed-wire entanglements of
"saids," "then and there beings," "with intents," "dids," "to wits," and
"aforesaids" in all the verbal chaos with which the law requires those
accused of crime to be "simply, clearly and directly" informed of the
nature of the offense charged against them, in order that they may know
what to do about it and prepare their defense.
And while we are on it--and in order that the reader may be fully
instructed and qualified to pursue Tutt & Tutt through their various
adventures hereafter--we may as well add that herein lies one of the
pitfalls of crime; for the simple-minded burglar or embezzler may
blithely make way with a silver service or bundle of bank notes only to
find himself floundering, horse, foot and dragoons, in a quagmire of
phraseology from which he cannot escape, wriggle as he will. Many such a
one has thrown up his hands--and with them silver service, bank notes
and all--in horror at what the grand jury has alleged against him.
Indeed there is a well-authenticated tradition that a certain gentleman
of color who had inadvertently acquired some poultry belonging to
another, when brought to the bar and informed that he theretofore, to
wit, in a specified year of our Lord in the night time of the day
aforesaid, the outhouse of one Jones then and there situate,
feloniously, burglariously did break into and enter with intent to
commit a crime therein, to wit, the goods, chattels and personal
property of the said Jones then and there being found, then and there
feloniously and burglariously by force of arms and against the peace of
the people to seize, appropriate and carry away, raised his voice in
anguish and cried:
"Fo de Lawd sake, jedge, Ah didn't do none ob dem tings--all Ah done was
to take a couple ob chickens!"
Thus to annihilate a man by pad and pencil is indeed an art worthy of
admiration. The pen of an indictment clerk is oft mightier than the
sword of a Lionheart, the brain behind the subtle quill far defter than
said swordsman's skill. Moreover, the ingenuity necessary to draft one
of these documents is not confined to its mere successful composition,
for having achieved the miraculous feat of alleging in fourteen ways
without punctuation that the defendant did something, and with a final
fanfare of "saids" and "to wits" inserted his verb where no one will
ever find it, the indicter must then be able to unwind himself, rolling
in and out among the "dids" and "thens" and "theres" until he is once
more safely upon the terra firma of foolscap at the head of the first
page.
Mr. Caput Magnus could do it--with the aid of a volume of printed forms
devised in the days of Jeremy Bentham. In fact, like a camel who smells
water afar off, he could in a desert of verbal sand unerringly find an
oasis of meaning. Therefore was Caput Magnus held in high honor among
the pack of human hounds who bayed at the call of Huntsman Peckham's
horn. Others might lose the scent of what it was all about in the
tropical jungle of an indictment eleven pages long, but not he. Like the
old dog in Masefield's "Reynard the Fox," Mr. Magnus would work through
ditches full of legal slime, nose through thorn thickets of confusion,
dash through copses and spinneys of words and phrases, until he snapped
close at the heels of intelligibility. The Honorable Peckham couldn't
have drawn an indictment to save his legal life. Neither could any of
the rest. Neither could Caput without his book of ancient forms--though
he didn't let anybody know it.
Shrouded in mystery on a salary of five thousand dollars a year, Caput
sat in the shrine of his inner office producing literature of a clarity
equaled only by that of George Meredith or Mr. Henry James. He was the
Great Accuser. He could call a man a thief in more different ways than
any deputy assistant district attorney known to memory--with the aid of
his little book. He could lasso and throw any galloping criminal,
however fierce, with a gracefully uncoiling rope of deadly adjectives.
On all of which he properly prided himself until he became unendurable
to his fellows and insufferable to Peckham, who would have cheerfully
fired him months gone by had he had a reason or had there been any other
legal esoteric to take his place.
Yet pride goeth before a fall. And I am glad of it, for Magnus was a
conceited little ass. This yarn is about the fall of Caput Magnus almost
as much as it is about the uxorious Higgleby, though the two are
inextricably entwined together.
* * * * *
"Mr. Tutt," remarked Tutt after Higgleby's departure, "that new client
of ours is certainly _sui generis_."
"That's no crime," smiled the senior partner, reaching for the
malt-extract bottle.
"His knowledge of matrimony and the laws governing the domestic
relations is certainly exhaustive--not to say exhausting. I look like a
piker beside him."
"For which," replied Mr. Tutt, "you may well be thankful."
"I am," replied Tutt devoutly. "But you could put what I know about
bigamy in that malt-extract bottle."
"I prefer the present contents!" retorted Mr. Tutt. "Bigamy is a
fascinating crime, involving as it does such complicated subjects as the
history of the institution of marriage, the ecclesiastical or canonical
law governing divorce and annulment, the interesting doctrines of
affinity and consanguinity, suits for alienation of affection and
criminal conversation, the conflict of laws, the White Slave Act--"
"Interstate commerce, so to speak?" suggested Tutt mischievously.
"Condonation, collusion and connivance," continued Mr. Tutt, brushing
him aside, "reinstitution of conjugal rights, the law of feme sole, The
Married Woman's Act, separation _a mensa et thoro_, abandonment,
jurisdiction, alimony, custody of children, precontract--"
"Help! You're breaking my heart!" cried Tutt. "No little lawyer could
know all about such things. It would take a big lawyer."
"Not at all! Not at all!" soothed Mr. Tutt, sipping his eleven-o'clock
nourishment and fingering for a stogy. "When it comes to divorce one
lawyer knows as much about the law as another. Not even the Supreme
Court is able to tell whether a man and woman are really married or not
without calling in outside assistance."
"Well, who can?" asked Tutt anxiously.
"Nobody," replied his partner with gravity, biting off the end of a
last year's stogy salvaged from the bottom of the letter basket. "Once a
man's married his troubles not only begin but never end."
"By the way," said Tutt, "speaking of this sort of thing, I see that
that Frenchman whom we referred to our Paris correspondent has just been
granted a divorce from his American wife."
"You mean the French diplomat who married the Yankee vaudeville artist
in China?"
"Yes," answered Tutt. "You recall they met in Shanghai and took a flying
trip to Mongolia, where they were married by a Belgian missionary. The
court held that the marriage was invalid, as the French statutes require
a native of that country marrying abroad to have the ceremony performed
either before a French diplomatic official or 'according to the usages
of the country in which the marriage is performed.'"
"Wasn't the Belgian missionary a diplomatic official?" asked Mr. Tutt.
"Evidently not sufficiently so," replied his partner. "Anyhow, in
Mongolia there are only two methods sanctified by tradition by which a
man may secure a wife--capture or purchase."
"Well, didn't our client capture the actress?"
"Only with her consent--which I assume would be collusion under the
French law," said Tutt. "And he certainly didn't buy her--though he
might have. It appears that in that happy land a wife costs from five
camels up; five camels for a flapper and so on up to thirty or forty
camels for an old widow, who invariably brings the highest quotation."
"In Mongolia age evidently ripens and mellows women as it does wine in
other countries," reflected Mr. Tutt.
"But you can buy some women for five pounds of rice," added Tutt. "Queer
country, isn't it?"
"Not at all!" declared his senior. "Even in America every man pays and
pays and pays for his wife--through the nose!"
Tutt grinned appreciatively.
"However that may be," he ventured, "a man who enters into a marriage
contract--"
"Marriage isn't a contract," interrupted Mr. Tutt.
"What is it?"
"It's a status--something entirely different--like slavery."
"It's like slavery all right!" agreed Tutt. "But we always speak of a
contract of marriage, don't we?"