her proud even in Athens, Ohio. Fire-breathing, she descended from her
car and, approaching the limousine, told the imperturbable chauffeur
that even if he did work for Mrs. Rutherford Wells, Mrs. Rutherford
Wells was no better than anybody else, and that gave him no right to
block up the whole street. She spoke loudly, emphatically, angrily, and
right in the middle of it the chauffeur, who had not deigned to look in
her direction, slyly pressed the electric button of his horn and caused
it to emit a low scornful grunt. Then a footman opened the door of the
Wells mansion and Mrs. Rutherford Wells herself came down the steps, and
Mrs. Pumpelly told her to her face exactly what she thought of her and
ordered her to move her car along so her own could get in front of the
vestibule.
Mrs. Wells ignored her. Deliberately--and as if there were no such
person as Mrs. Pumpelly upon the sidewalk--she stepped into her motor
and, the chauffeur having adjusted the robe, she remarked in a casual,
almost indifferent manner that nevertheless made Mrs. Pumpelly squirm,
"Go to Mr. Hepplewhite's, William. Pay no attention to that woman. If
she makes any further disturbance call a policeman."
And the limousine rolled away with a sneer at Mrs. Pumpelly from the
exhaust. More than one king has been dethroned for far less cause!
* * * * *
"You telephone Mr. Edgerton," she almost shrieked at Simmons, the
butler, "that he should come right up here as fast as he can. I've got
to see him at once!"
"Very good, madam," answered Simmons obsequiously.
And without more ado, in less than forty minutes, the distinguished Mr.
Wilfred Edgerton, of Edgerton & Edgerton, attorneys for Cuban Crucible
and hence alert to obey the behests of the wives of the officers
thereof, had deposited his tall silk hat on the marble Renaissance table
in the front hall and was entering Mrs. Pumpelly's Louis Quinze
drawing-room with the air of a Sir Walter Raleigh approaching his Queen
Elizabeth.
"Sit down, Mr. Edgerton!" directed the lady impressively. "No, you'll
find that other chair more comfortable; the one you're in's got a hump
in the seat. As I was saying to the butler before you came, I've been
insulted and I propose to teach that woman she can't make small of me no
matter what it costs--and Pierpont says you're no slouch of a charger at
that."
"My dear madam!" stammered the embarrassed attorney. "Of course, there
are lawyers and lawyers. But if you wish the best I feel sure my firm
charges no more than others of equal standing. In any event you can be
assured of our devotion to your interests. Now what, may I ask, are the
circumstances of the case?"
"Mr. Edgerton," she began, "I just want you should listen carefully to
what I have to say. This woman next door to me here has--"
At this point, as paper is precious and the lady voluble, we will drop
the curtain upon the first act of our legal comedy.
* * * * *
"I suppose we'll have to do it for her!" growled Mr. Wilfred Edgerton to
his brother on his return to their office. "She's a crazy idiot and I'm
very much afraid we'll all get involved in a good deal of undesirable
publicity. Still, she's the wife of the vice president of our best
paying client!"
"What does she want us to do?" asked Mr. Winfred, the other Edgerton.
"We can't afford to be made ridiculous--for anybody."
This was quite true since dignity was Edgerton & Edgerton's long suit,
they being the variety of Wall Street lawyers who are said to sleep in
their tall hats and cutaways.
"If you can imagine it," replied his brother irritably, "she insists on
our having Mrs. Wells arrested for obstructing the street in front of
her house. She asked me if it wasn't against the law, and I took a
chance and told her it was. Then she wanted to start for the police
court at once, but as I'd never been in one I said we'd have to prepare
the papers; I didn't know what papers."
"But we can't arrest Mrs. Wells!" expostulated Mr. Winfred Edgerton.
"She's socially one of our most prominent people. I dined with her only
last week!"
"That's why Mrs. Pumpelly wants to have her arrested, I fancy!" replied
Mr. Wilfred gloomily. "Mrs. Wells has given her the cold shoulder. It's
no use; I tried to argue the old girl out of it, but I couldn't. She
knows what she wants and she jolly well intends to have it."
"I wish you joy of her!" mournfully rejoined the younger Edgerton. "But
it's your funeral. I can't help you. I never got anybody arrested and I
haven't the least idea how to go about it."
"Neither have I," admitted his brother. "Luckily my practise has not
been of that sort. However, it can't be a difficult matter. The main
thing is to know exactly what we are trying to arrest Mrs. Wells for."
"Why don't you retain Tutt & Tutt to do it for us?" suggested Winfred.
"Criminal attorneys are used to all that sort of rotten business."
"Oh, it wouldn't do to let Pumpelly suspect we couldn't handle it
ourselves. Besides, the lady wants distinguished counsel to represent
her. No, for once we've got to lay dignity aside. I think I'll send
Maddox up to the Criminal Courts Building and have him find out just
what to do."
It may seem remarkable that neither of the members of a high-class law
firm in New York City should ever have been in a police court, but such
a situation is by no means infrequent. The county or small-town attorney
knows his business from the ground up. He starts with assault and
battery, petty larceny and collection cases and gradually works his way
up, so to speak, to murder and corporate reorganizations. But in Wall
Street the young student whose ambition is to appear before the Supreme
Court of the United States in some constitutional matter as soon as
possible is apt to spend his early years in brief writing and then
become a specialist in real estate, corporation, admiralty or probate
law and perhaps never see the inside of a trial court at all, much less
a police court, which, to the poor and ignorant, at any rate, is the
most important court of any of them, since it is here that the citizen
must go to enforce his everyday rights.
Mr. Wilfred Edgerton suspected that a magistrate's court was a dirty
sort of hole, full of brawling shyster lawyers, and he didn't want to
know any more about such places than he could help. Theoretically he was
aware that on a proper complaint sworn to by a person supposing himself
or herself criminally aggrieved the judge would issue a warrant to an
officer, who would execute it on the person of the criminal and hale him
or her to jail. The idea of Mrs. Wells being dragged shrieking down
Fifth Avenue or being carted away from her house in a Black Maria filled
him with dismay.
Yet that was what Mrs. Pumpelly proposed to have done, and unfortunately
he had to do exactly what Mrs. Pumpelly said; quickly too.
"Maddox," he called to a timid youth in a green eye-shade sitting in
lonely grandeur in the spacious library, "just run up to
the--er--magistrate's court on Blank Street and ascertain the proper
procedure for punishing a person for obstructing the highway. If you
find an appropriate statute or ordinance you may lay an information
against Mrs. Rutherford Wells for violating it this afternoon in front
of the residence next to hers; and see that the proper process issues in
the regular way."
To hear him one would have thought he did things like that daily before
breakfast--such is the effect of legal jargon.
"Yes, sir," answered Maddox respectfully, making a note. "Do you wish to
have the warrant held or executed?"
Mr. Wilfred Edgerton bit his mustache doubtfully.
"We-ell," he answered at length, perceiving that he stood upon the brink
of a legal Rubicon, "you may do whatever seems advisable under all the
circumstances."
In his nervous condition he did not recall what, had he stopped calmly
to consider the matter, he must have known very well--namely, that no
warrant could possibly issue unless Mrs. Pumpelly, as complainant,
signed and swore to the information herself.
"Very well, sir," answered Maddox, in the same tone and manner that he
would have used had he been a second footman at Mrs. Pumpelly's.
Thereafter both Edgertons, but particularly Wilfred, passed a miserable
hour. They realized that they had started something and they had no idea
of where, how or when what they had started would stop. Indeed they had
terrifying visions of Mrs. Wells being beaten into insensibility, if not
into a pulp, by a cohort of brutal police officers, and of their being
held personally responsible. But before anything of that sort actually
happened Maddox returned.
"Well," inquired Wilfred with an assumption of nonchalance, "what did
you find out?"
"The magistrate said that we would have to apply at the court in the
district where the offense occurred and that Mrs. Pumpelly would have to
appear there in person. Obstructing a highway is a violation of Section
Two of Article Two of the Police Department Regulations for Street
Traffic, which reads: 'A vehicle waiting at the curb shall promptly give
way to a vehicle arriving to take up or set down passengers.' It is not
usual to issue a warrant in such cases, but a summons merely."
"Ah!" sighed both Edgertons in great relief.
"Upon which the defendant must appear in default of fine or
imprisonment," continued Maddox.
The two lawyers looked at one another inquiringly.
"Did they treat you--er--with politeness?" asked Wilfred curiously.
"Oh, well enough," answered the clerk. "I can't say it's a place I
hanker to have much to do with. It's not like an afternoon tea party.
But it's all right. Do you wish me to do anything further?"
"Yes!" replied Wilfred with emphasis, "I do. I wish you would go right
up to Mrs. Pumpelly's house, conduct that lady to the nearest police
court and have her swear out the summons for Mrs. Wells herself. I'll
telephone her that you are coming."
Which was a wise conclusion, in view of the fact that Edna Pumpelly, née
Haskins, was much better equipped by nature to take care of Mr. Wilfred
Edgerton in the hectic environs of a police court than he was qualified
to take care of her. And so it was that just as Mrs. Rutherford Wells
was about to sit down to tea with several fashionable friends her butler
entered, bearing upon a salver a printed paper, which he presented to
her, in manner and form the following:
CITY MAGISTRATE'S COURT, CITY OF NEW YORK
In the name of the people of the State of New York To "Jane" Wells,
the name "Jane" being fictitious:
You are hereby summoned to appear before the ------ District
Magistrate's Court, Borough of Manhattan, City of New York, on the
eighth day of May, 1920, at ten o'clock in the forenoon, to answer
the charge made against you by Edna Pumpelly for violation of
Section Two, Article Two of the Traffic Regulations providing that a
vehicle waiting at the curb shall promptly give way to a vehicle
arriving to take up or set down passengers, and upon your failure to
appear at the time and place herein mentioned you are liable to a
fine of not exceeding fifty dollars or to imprisonment of not
exceeding ten days or both.
Dated 6th day of May, 1920.
JAMES CUDDAHEY, Police Officer,
Police Precinct ------, New York City.
Attest: JOHN J. JONES, Chief City Magistrate.
"Heavens!" cried Mrs. Wells as she read this formidable document. "What
a horrible woman! What shall I do?"
Mr. John De Puyster Hepplewhite, one of the nicest men in New York, who
had himself once had a somewhat interesting experience in the criminal
courts in connection with the arrest of a tramp who had gone to sleep in
a pink silk bed in the Hepplewhite mansion on Fifth Avenue, smiled
deprecatingly, set down his Dresden-china cup and dabbed his mustache
decorously with a filigree napkin.
"Dear lady," he remarked with conviction, "in such distressing
circumstances I have no hesitation whatever in advising you to consult
Mr. Ephraim Tutt."
* * * * *
"I have been thinking over what you said the other day regarding the
relationship of crime to progress, Mr. Tutt, and I'm rather of the
opinion that it's rot," announced Tutt as he strolled across from his
own office to that of his senior partner for a cup of tea at practically
the very moment when Mr. Hepplewhite was advising Mrs. Wells. "In the
vernacular--bunk."
"What did he say?" asked Miss Wiggin, rinsing out with hot water Tutt's
special blue-china cup, in the bottom of which had accumulated some
reddish-brown dust from Mason & Welsby's Admiralty and Divorce Reports
upon the adjacent shelf.
"He made the point," answered Tutt, helping himself to a piece of toast,
"that crime was--if I may be permitted to use the figure--part of the
onward urge of humanity toward a new and perhaps better social order; a
natural impulse to rebel against existing abuses; and he made the claim
that though an unsuccessful revolutionary was of course regarded as a
criminal, on the other hand, if successful he at once became a patriot,
a hero, a statesman or a saint."
"A very dangerous general doctrine, I should say," remarked Miss Wiggin.
"I should think it all depended on what sort of laws he was rebelling
against. I don't see how a murderer could ever be regarded as assisting
in the onward urge toward sweetness and light, exactly."
"Wouldn't it depend somewhat on whom you were murdering?" inquired Mr.
Tutt, finally succeeding in his attempt to make a damp stogy continue
in a state of combustion. "If you murdered a tyrant wouldn't you be
contributing toward progress?"
"No," retorted Miss Wiggin, "you wouldn't; and you know it. In certain
cases where the laws are manifestly unjust, antiquated or perhaps do not
really represent the moral sense of the community their violation may
occasionally call attention to their absurdity, like the famous blue
laws of Connecticut, for example; but as the laws as a whole do
crystallize the general opinion of what is right and desirable in
matters of conduct a movement toward progress would be exhibited not by
breaking laws but by making laws."
"But," argued Mr. Tutt, abandoning his stogy, "isn't the making of a new
law the same thing as changing an old law? And isn't changing a law
essentially the same thing as breaking it?"
"It isn't," replied Miss Wiggin tartly. "For the obvious and simple
reason that the legislators who change the laws have the right to do so,
while the man who breaks them has not."
"All the same," admitted Tutt, slightly wavering, "I see what Mr. Tutt
means."
"Oh, I see what he means!" sniffed Miss Wiggin. "I was only combating
what he said!"
"But the making of laws does not demonstrate progress," perversely
insisted Mr. Tutt. "The more statutes you pass the more it indicates
that you need 'em. An ideal community would have no laws at all."
"There's a thought!" interjected Tutt. "And there wouldn't be any
lawyers either!"
"As King Hal said: 'The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers,'"
commented Mr. Tutt.
"Awful vision!" ejaculated Miss Wiggin. "Luckily for us, that day has
not yet dawned. However, Mr. Tutt's argument is blatantly fallacious. Of
course, the making of new laws indicates an impulse toward social
betterment--and therefore toward progress."
"It seems to me," ventured Tutt, "that this conversation is more than
usually theoretical--not to say specious! The fact of the matter is that
the law is a part of our civilization and the state of the law marks the
stage of our development--more or less."
Mr. Tutt smiled sardonically.
"You have enunciated two great truths," said he. "First, that it is a
'part'; and second, 'more or less.' The law is a very small part of our
protection against what is harmful to us. It is only one of our
sanctions of conduct, and a very crude one at that. Did you ever stop to
think that compared with religion the efficacy of the law was almost
_nil_? The law deals with conduct, but only at a certain point. We are
apt to find fault with it because it makes what appear to us to be
arbitrary and unreasonable distinctions. That in large measure is
because law is only supplementary."
"How do you mean--supplementary?" queried Tutt.
"Why," answered his partner, "as James C. Carter pointed out,
ninety-nine per cent of all law is unwritten. What keeps most people
straight is not criminal statutes but their own sense of decency,
conscience or whatever you may choose to call it. Doubtless you recall
the famous saying of Diogenes Laertius: 'There is a written and an
unwritten law. The one by which we regulate our constitutions in our
cities is the written law; that which arises from custom is the
unwritten law.' I see that, of course you do! As I was saying only the
other day, infractions of good taste and of manners, civil wrongs, sins,
crimes--are in essence one and the same, differing only in degree. Thus
the man who goes out to dinner without a collar violates the laws of
social usage; if he takes all his clothes off and walks the streets he
commits a crime. In a measure it simply depends on how many clothes he
has on what grade of offense he commits. From that point of view the man
who is not a gentleman is in a sense a criminal. But the law can't make
a man a gentleman."
"I should say not!" murmured Miss Wiggin.
"Well," continued Mr. Tutt, "we have various ways of dealing with these
outlaws. The man who violates our ideas of good taste or good manners is
sent to Coventry; the man who does you a wrong is mulcted in damages;
the sinner is held under the town pump and ridden out of town on a rail,
or the church takes a hand and threatens him with the hereafter; but if
he crosses a certain line we arrest him and lock him up--either from
public spirit or for our own private ends."
"Hear! Hear!" cried Tutt admiringly.
"Fundamentally there is only an arbitrary distinction between wrongs,
sins and crimes. The meanest and most detestable of men, beside whom an
honest burglar is a sympathetic human being, may yet never violate a
criminal statute."
"That's so!" said Tutt. "Take Badger, for instance."
"How often we defend cases," ruminated his partner, "where the
complainant is just as bad as the prisoner at the bar--if not worse."
"And of course," added Tutt, "you must admit there are a lot of
criminals who are criminals from perfectly good motives. Take the man,
for instance, who thrashes a bystander who insults his wife--the man's
wife, I mean, naturally."
"Only in those cases where we elect to take the law into our own hands
we ought to be willing to accept the consequences like gentlemen and
sportsmen," commented the senior partner.
"This is all very interesting, no doubt," remarked Miss Wiggin, "but as
a matter of general information I should like to know why the criminal
law doesn't punish the sinners--as well as the criminals."
"I guess one reason," replied Tutt, "is that people don't wish to be
kept from sinning."
"Thou hast spoken!" agreed Mr. Tutt. "And another reason is that the
criminal law was not originally devised for the purpose of eradicating
sin--which, after all, is the state into which it is said man was
born--but was only intended to prevent certain kinds of physical
violence and lawlessness--murder, highway robbery, assault, and so on.
The church was supposed to take care of sin, and there was an elaborate
system of ecclesiastical courts. In point of fact, though there is a
great deal of misconception on the subject, the criminal law does not
deal with sin as sin at all, or even with wrongs merely as wrongs. It
has a precise and limited purpose--namely, to prevent certain kinds of
acts and to compel the performance of other acts.
"The state relies on the good taste and sense of decency, duty and
justice of the individual citizen to keep him in order most of the time.
It doesn't, or anyhow it shouldn't, attempt to deal with trifling
peccadillos; it generally couldn't. It merely says that if a man's
conscience and idea of fair play aren't enough to make him behave
himself, why, then, when he gets too obstreperous we'll lock him up. And
different generations have had entirely different ideas about what was
too obstreperous to be overlooked. In the early days the law only
punished bloodshed and violence. Later on, its scope was increased,
until thousands of acts and omissions are now made criminal by statute.
But that explains why the fact that something is a sin doesn't
necessarily mean that it is a crime. The law is artificial and not
founded on any general attempt to prohibit what is unethical, but simply
to prevent what is immediately dangerous to life, limb and property."
"Which, after all, is a good thing--for it leaves us free to do as we
choose so long as we don't harm anybody else," said Miss Wiggin.
"Yet," her employer continued, "unfortunately--or perhaps fortunately
from our professional point of view--our lawmakers from time to time get
rather hysterical and pass such a multiplicity of statutes that nobody
knows whether he is committing crime or not."
"In this enlightened state," interposed Tutt, "it's a crime to advertise
as a divorce lawyer; to attach a corpse for payment of debt; to board a
train while it is in motion; to plant oysters without permission; or
without authority wear the badge of the Patrons of Husbandry."
"Really, one would have to be a student to avoid becoming a criminal,"
commented Miss Wiggin.
Mr. Tutt rose and, looking along one of the shelves, took down a volume
which he opened at a point marked by a burned match thrust between the
leaves.
"My old friend Joseph H. Choate," he remarked, "in his memorial of his
partner, Charles H. Southmayde, who was generally regarded as one of the
greatest lawyers of our own or any other generation, says, 'The
ever-growing list of misdemeanors, created by statute, disturbed him,
and he even employed counsel to watch for such statutes introduced into
the legislature--mantraps, as he called them--lest he might, without
knowing it, commit offenses which might involve the penalty of
imprisonment.'"
"We certainly riot in the printed word," said Miss Wiggin. "Do you know
that last year alone to interpret all those statutes and decide the
respective rights of our citizens the Supreme Court of this state wrote
five thousand eight hundred pages of opinion?"
"Good Lord!" ejaculated Tutt. "Is that really so?"
"Of course it is!" she answered.
"But who reads the stuff?" demanded the junior partner. "I don't!"
"The real lawyers," replied Miss Wiggin innocently.
"The judges who write them probably read them," declared Mr. Tutt. "And
the defeated litigants; the successful ones merely read the final
paragraphs."
"But coming back to crime for a moment," said Miss Wiggin, pouring
herself out a second cup of tea; "I had almost forgotten that the
criminal law was originally intended only to keep down violence. That
explains a lot of things. I confess to being one of those who
unconsciously assumed that the law is a sort of official Mrs. Grundy."
"Not at all! Not at all!" corrected Mr. Tutt. "The law makes no pretense
of being an arbiter of morals. Even where justice is concerned it
expects the mere sentiment of the community to be capable of dealing
with trifling offenses. The laws of etiquette and manners, devised for
'the purpose of keeping fools at a distance,' are reasonably adapted to
enforcing the dictates of good taste and to dealing with minor offenses
against our ideas of propriety."
"I wonder," hazarded Miss Wiggin thoughtfully, "if there isn't some
sociological law about crimes, like the law of diminishing returns in
physics?"
"The law of what?"
"Why, the law that the greater the force or effort applied to anything,"
she explained a little vaguely, "the greater the resistance becomes,
until the effort doesn't accomplish anything; increased speed in a
warship, for instance."
"What's that got to do with crime?"
"Why, the more statutes you pass and more new crimes you create the
harder it becomes to enforce obedience to them, until finally you can't
enforce them at all."
"That is rather a profound analogy," observed Mr. Tutt. "It might well
repay study."
"Miss Wiggin has no corner on analogies," chirped Tutt. "Passing
statutes creating new crimes is like printing paper money without
anything back of it; in the one case there isn't really any more money
than there was before and in the other there isn't really any more crime
either."
"Only it makes more business for us."