is a good thing. Not because it means progress or any bunk like that,
but because unless you had a certain amount of crime, and also criminal
lawyers to attack the law, the state would never find out the weaknesses
in its statutes. Therefore the more crime there is the more the
protective power of the state is built up, just as the fever engendered
by vaccine renders the human body immune from smallpox! Eh, what?"
"I never heard such nonsense!" exclaimed Miss Wiggin. "Do let me give
you some more tea! Eh, what?"
But at that moment Willie announced that Mr. Rutherford Wells was
calling to see Mr. Tutt and tea was hastily adjourned. Half an hour
later the old lawyer rang for Bonnie Doon.
"Bonnie," he said, "one of our clients has been complained against by
her next-door neighbor, a got-rich-quick lady, for obstructing the
street with her motor. It's obviously a case of social envy, hatred and
malice. Just take a run up there in the morning, give Mrs. Pierpont
Pumpelly and her premises the once-over and let me know of any
violations you happen to observe. I don't care how technical they are,
either."
"All right, Mr. Tutt," answered Bonnie. "I get you. Isn't there a new
ordinance governing the filling of garbage cans?"
"I think there is," nodded Mr. Tutt. "And meantime I think I'll drop
over and see Judge O'Hare."
* * * * *
"I'll settle her hash for her, the hussy!" declared Mrs. Pumpelly to
her husband at dinner the following evening. "I'll teach her to insult
decent people and violate the law. Just because her husband belongs to a
swell club she thinks she can do as she likes! But I'll show her! Wait
till I get her in court to-morrow!"
"Well, of course, Edna, I'll stand back of you and all that," Pierpont
assured her. "No, thank you, Simmons, I don't wish any more 'voly vong.'
But I'd hate to see you get all messed up in a police court!"
"Me--messed up!" she exclaimed haughtily. "I guess I can take care of
myself most anywheres--good and plenty!"
"Of course you can, dearie!" he protested in a soothing tone. "But these
shyster lawyers who hang around those places--you 'member Jim O'Leary
out home to Athens? Well, they don't know a lady when they see one, and
they wouldn't care if they did; and they'll try and pry into your past
life--"
"I haven't got any past life, and you know it too, Pierpont Pumpelly!"
she retorted hotly. "I'm a respectable, law-abidin' woman, I am. I never
broke a law in all my days--"
"Excuse me, madam," interposed Simmons, with whom the second footman had
just held a whispered conference behind the screen, "but James informs
me that there is a police hofficer awaiting to see you in the front
'all."
"To see me?" ejaculated Mrs. Pumpelly.
"Yes, madam."
"I suppose it's about to-morrow. Tell him to call round about nine
o'clock in the morning."
"'E says 'e must see you to-night, ma'am," annotated James excitedly.
"And 'e acted most hobnoxious to me!"
"Oh, he acted obnoxious, did he?" remarked Mrs. Pumpelly airily. "What
was he obnoxious about?"
"'E 'as a paper 'e says 'e wants to serve on you personal," answered
James in agitation. "'E says if you will hallow 'm to step into the
dining-room 'e won't take a minute."
"Perhaps we'd better let him come in," mildly suggested Pierpont. "It's
always best to keep on good terms with the police."
"But I haven't broken any law," repeated Mrs. Pumpelly blankly.
"Maybe you have without knowin' it," commented her husband.
"Why, Pierpont Pumpelly, you know I never did such a thing!" she
retorted.
"Well, let's have him in, anyway," he urged. "I can't digest my food
with him sitting out there in the hall."
Mrs. Pumpelly took control of the situation.
"Have the man in, Simmons!" she directed grandly.
And thereupon entered Officer Patrick Roony. Politely Officer Roony
removed his cap, politely he unbuttoned several yards of blue overcoat
and fumbled in the caverns beneath. Eventually he brought forth a square
sheet of paper--it had a certain familiarity of aspect for Mrs.
Pumpelly--and handed it to her.
"Sorry to disturb you, ma'am," he apologized, "but I was instructed to
make sure and serve you personal."
"That's all right! That's all right!" said Pierpont with an effort at
bonhomie. "The--er--butler will give you a highball if you say so."
"Oh, boy, lead me to it!" murmured Roony in the most approved manner of
East Fourteenth Street. "Which way?"
"Come with me!" intoned Simmons with the exalted gesture of an
archbishop conducting an ecclesiastical ceremonial.
"What does it say?" asked her husband hurriedly as the butler led the
cop to it.
"Sh-h!" warned Mrs. Pumpelly. "James, kindly retire!"
James retired, and the lady examined the paper by the tempered light of
the shaded candles surrounding what was left of the "voly vong."
"Who ever heard of such a thing?" she cried. "Just listen here,
Pierpont!"
"CITY MAGISTRATE'S COURT, CITY OF NEW YORK
"In the name of the people of the State of New York
"To 'Maggie' Pumpelly, the name 'Maggie' being fictitious:
"You are hereby summoned to appear before the ------ District
Magistrate's Court, Borough of Manhattan, City of New York, on the tenth
day of May, 1920, at ten o'clock in the forenoon, to answer to the
charge made against you by William Mulcahy for violation of Section One,
Article Two, of the Police Traffic Regulations in that on May 7, 1920,
you permitted a vehicle owned or controlled by you to stop with its left
side to the curb on a street other than a one-way traffic street; and
also for violation of Section Seventeen, Article Two of Chapter
Twenty-four of the Code of Ordinances of the City of New York in that on
the date aforesaid, being the owner of a vehicle subject to Subdivision
One of said section and riding therein, you caused or permitted the same
to proceed at a rate of speed greater than four miles an hour in turning
corner of intersecting highways, to wit, Park Avenue and Seventy-third
Street; and upon your failure to appear at the time and place herein
mentioned you are liable to a fine of not exceeding fifty dollars or to
imprisonment of not exceeding ten days or both.
"Dated 7th day of May, 1920.
"PATRICK ROONY, Police Officer,
"Police Precinct ----,
"New York City.
"Attest: JOHN J. JONES,
"Chief City Magistrate."
"Well, I never!" she exploded. "What rubbish! Four miles an hour! And
'Maggie'--as if everybody didn't know my name was Edna!"
"The whole thing looks a bit phony to me!" muttered Pierpont, worried
over the possibility of having wasted a slug of the real thing on an
unreal police officer. "Perhaps that feller wasn't a cop at all!"
"And who's William Mul-kay-hay?" she continued. "I don't know any such
person! You better call up Mr. Edgerton right away and see what the law
is."
"I hope he knows!" countered Mr. Pumpelly. "Four miles an hour--that's a
joke! A baby carriage goes faster than four miles an hour. You wouldn't
arrest a baby!"
"Well, call him up!" directed Mrs. Pumpelly. "Tell him he should come
right round over here."
The summons from his client interrupted Mr. Edgerton in the middle of an
expensive dinner at his club and he left it in no good humor. He didn't
like being ordered round like a servant the way Mrs. Pumpelly was
ordering him. It wasn't dignified. Moreover, a lawyer out of his office
was like a snail out of its shell--at a distinct disadvantage. You
couldn't just make an excuse to step into the next office for a moment
and ask somebody what the law was. The Edgertons always kept somebody in
an adjoining office who knew the law--many lawyers do.
On the Pumpelly stoop the attorney found standing an evil-looking and
very shabby person holding a paper in his hand, but he ignored him until
the grilled iron _cinquecento_ door swung open, revealing James, the
retiring second man.
Then, before he could enter, the shabby person pushed past him and asked
in a loud, vulgar tone: "Does Edna Pumpelly live here?"
James stiffened in the approved style of erect vertebrata.
"This is Madame Pierpont Pumpelly's residence," he replied with hauteur.
"Madam or no madam, just slip this to her," said the shabby one. "Happy
days!"
Mr. Wilfred Edgerton beneath the medieval tapestry of the Pumpelly
marble hall glanced at the dirty sheet in James' hand and, though
unfamiliar with the form of the document, perceived it to be a summons
issued on the application of one Henry J. Goldsmith and returnable next
day, for violating Section Two Hundred and Fifteen of Article Twelve of
Chapter Twenty of the Municipal Ordinances for keeping and maintaining a
certain bird, to wit, a cockatoo, which by its noise did disturb the
quiet and repose of a certain person in the vicinity to the detriment
of the health of such person, to wit, Henry J. Goldsmith, aforesaid, and
upon her failure to appear, and so on.
Wilfred had some sort of vague idea of a law about keeping birds, but he
couldn't exactly recall what it was. There was something incongruous
about Mrs. Pierpont Pumpelly keeping a cockatoo. What did anybody want
of a cockatoo? He concluded that it must be an ancestral hereditament
from Athens, Ohio. Nervously he ascended the stairs to what Edna called
the saloon.
"So you've come at last!" cried she. "Well, what have you got to say to
this? Is it against the law to go round a corner at more than four miles
an hour?"
Now, whereas Mr. Wilfred Edgerton could have told Mrs. Pumpelly the
"rule in Shelly's case" or explained the doctrine of _cy pres_, he had
never read the building code or the health ordinances or the traffic
regulations, and in the present instance the latter were to the point
while the former were not. Thus he was confronted with the disagreeable
alternative of admitting his ignorance or bluffing it through. He chose
the latter, unwisely.
"Of course not! Utter nonsense!" replied he blithely. "The lawful rate
of speed is at least fifteen miles an hour."
"Excuse me, madam," said James, appearing once more in the doorway. "A
man has just left this--er--paper at the area doorway."
Mrs. Pumpelly snatched it out of his hand.
"Well, of all things!" she gasped.
"To 'Bridget' Pumpelly," it began, "said first name 'Bridget' being
fictitious:
"You are hereby summoned to appear ... for violating Section Two
Hundred and Forty-eight of Article Twelve of Chapter Twenty of the
Health Ordinances in that you did upon the seventh day of May, 1920,
fail to keep a certain tin receptacle used for swill or garbage, in
shape and form a barrel, within the building occupied and owned by you
until proper time for its removal and failed to securely bundle, tie up
and pack the newspapers and other light refuse and rubbish contained
therein, and, further, that you caused and permitted certain tin
receptacles, in the shape and form of barrels, containing such swill or
garbage, to be filled to a greater height with such swill or garbage
than a line within such receptacle four inches from the top thereof."
"Now what do you know about that?" remarked the vice president of Cuban
Crucible to the senior partner of Edgerton & Edgerton.
"I don't know anything about it!" answered the elegant Wilfred
miserably. "I don't know the law of garbage, and there's no use
pretending that I do. You'd better get a garbage lawyer."
"I thought all lawyers were supposed to know the law!" sniffed Mrs.
Pumpelly. "What's that you got in your hand?"
"It's another summons, for keeping a bird," answered the attorney.
"A bird? You don't suppose it's Moses?" she exclaimed indignantly.
"The name of the bird isn't mentioned," said Wilfred. "But very likely
it is Moses if Moses belongs to you."
"But I've had Moses ever since I was a little girl!" she protested.
"And no one ever complained of him before."
"Beg pardon, madam," interposed Simmons, parting the Flemish arras, upon
which was depicted the sinking of the Spanish Armada. "Officer Roony is
back again with two more papers. 'E says it isn't necessary for him to
see you again, as once is enough, but 'e was wondering whether being as
it was rather chilly--"
"Lead him to it!" hastily directed Pierpont, who was beginning to get a
certain amount of enjoyment out of the situation. "But tell him he
needn't call again."
"Give 'em here!" snapped Mrs. Pumpelly, grasping the documents. "This is
a little too much! 'Lulu' this time. Fictitious as usual. Who's Julius
Aberthaw? He says I caused a certain rug to be shaken in such place and
manner that certain particles of dust passed therefrom into the public
street or highway, to wit, East Seventy-third Street, contrary to
Section Two Hundred and Fifty-three of Article Twelve of Chapter Twenty
of the Municipal Ordinances. Huh!"
"What's the other one?" inquired her husband with a show of sympathy.
"For violating Section Fifteen of Article Two of Chapter Twenty, in that
on May 7, 1920, I permitted a certain unmuzzled dog, to wit, a Pekingese
brown spaniel dog, to be on a public highway, to wit, East Seventy-third
Street in the City of New York. But that was Randolph!"
"Was Randolph muzzled?" inquired Mr. Edgerton maliciously.
"Of course not! He only weighs two pounds and a quarter!" protested Mrs.
Pumpelly.
"He can bite all right, just the same!" interpolated Pierpont.
"But what shall I do?" wailed Mrs. Pumpelly, now thoroughly upset.
"Guess you'll have to take your medicine, same's other violators of the
law," commented her husband.
"I never heard of such ridiculous laws!"
"Ignorance of the law excuses no one!" murmured Wilfred.
"It don't excuse a lawyer!" she snorted. "I have an idea you don't know
much more about the law--this kind of law, anyway--than I do. I bet it
is against the law to go round a corner at more than four miles! Do you
want to bet me?"
"No, I don't!" snapped Edgerton. "What you want is a police-court
lawyer--if you're goin' in for this sort of thing."
"My Lord! What's this now, Simmons?" she raved as the butler
deprecatingly made his appearance again with another paper.
"I think, madam," he answered soothingly, "that it's a summons for
allowing the house man to use the hose on the sidewalk after eight A.M.
Roony just brought it."
"H'm!" remarked Mr. Pumpelly. "Don't lead him to it again!"
"But I wouldn't have disturbed you if it hadn't been for a young
gentleman who 'as called with another one regardin' the window boxes."
"What about window boxes?" moaned Mrs. Pumpelly.
"'E says," explained Simmons, "'e 'as a summons for you regardin' the
window boxes, but that if you'd care to speak to him perhaps the matter
might be adjusted--"
"Let's see the summons!" exclaimed Wilfred, coming to life.
"'To Edna Pumpelly,'" he read.
"They're gettin' more polite," she commented ironically.
"'For violating Section Two Hundred and Fifty of Article Eighteen of
Chapter Twenty-three in that you did place, keep and maintain upon a
certain window sill of the premises now being occupied by you in the
City of New York a window box for the cultivation or retention of
flowers, shrubs, vines or other articles or things without the same
being firmly protected by iron railings--'"
"Heavens," ejaculated Mr. Pumpelly, "there'll be somebody here in a
minute complaining that I don't use the right length of shaving stick."
"I understand," remarked Mr. Edgerton, "that in a certain Western state
they regulate the length of bed sheets!"
"What's that for?" asked Edna with sudden interest.
"About seeing this feller?" hurriedly continued Mr. Pumpelly. "Seems to
me they've rather got you, Edna!"
"But what's the use seein' him?" she asked. "I'm summoned, ain't I?"
"Why not see the man?" advised Mr. Edgerton, gladly seizing this
possibility of a diversion. "It cannot do any harm."
"What is his name?"
"Mr. Bonright Doon," answered Simmons encouragingly. "And he is a very
pleasant-spoken young man."
"Very well," yielded Mrs. Pumpelly.
Two minutes later, "Mr. Doon!" announced Simmons.
Though the friends of Tutt & Tutt have made the acquaintance of Bonnie
Doon only casually, they yet have seen enough of him to realize that he
is an up-and-coming sort of young person with an elastic conscience and
an ingratiating smile. Indeed the Pumpellys were rather taken with his
breezy "Well, here we all are again!" manner as well as impressed by the
fact that he was arrayed in immaculate evening costume.
"I represent Mr. Ephraim Tutt, who has been retained by your neighbor,
Mrs. Rutherford Wells, in connection with the summons which you caused
to be issued against her yesterday," he announced pleasantly by way of
introduction. "Mrs. Wells, you see, was a little annoyed by being
referred to in the papers as Jane when her proper name is Beatrix.
Besides, she felt that the offense charged against her was--so to
speak--rather trifling. However--be that as it may--she and her friends
in the block are not inclined to be severe with you if you are disposed
to let the matter drop."
"Inclined to be severe with me!" ejaculated Mrs. Pumpelly, bristling.
"Edna!" cautioned her husband. "Mr. Doon is not responsible."
"Exactly. I find after a somewhat casual investigation that you have
been consistently violating a large number of city ordinances--keeping
parrots, beating rugs, allowing unmuzzled dogs at large, overfilling
your garbage cans, disregarding the speed laws and traffic regulations,
using improperly secured window boxes--"
"Anything else?" inquired Pierpont jocularly. "Don't mind us."
Bonnie carelessly removed from the pocket of his dress coat a sheaf of
papers.
"One for neglecting to have your chauffeur display his metal badge on
the outside of his coat--Section Ninety-four of Article Eight of Chapter
Fourteen.
"One for allowing your drop awnings to extend more than six feet from
the house line--Section Forty-two of Article Five of Chapter Twenty-two.
"One for failing to keep your curbstone at a proper level--Section One
Hundred and Sixty-four of Article Fourteen of Chapter Twenty-three.
"One for maintaining an ornamental projection on your house--a statue, I
believe, of the Goddess Venus--to project more than five feet beyond the
building line--Section One Hundred and Eighty-one of Article Fifteen of
Chapter Twenty-three.
"One for having your area gate open outwardly instead of
inwardly--Section One Hundred and Sixty-four of Article Fourteen of
Chapter Twenty-three.
"And one for failing to affix to the fanlight or door the street number
of your house--Section One Hundred and Ten of Article Ten of Chapter
Twenty-three.
"I dare say there are others."
"I'd trust you to find 'em!" agreed Mr. Pumpelly. "Now what's your
proposition? What does it cost?"
"It doesn't cost anything at all! Drop your proceedings and we'll drop
ours," answered Bonnie genially.
"What do you say, Edgerton?" said Pumpelly, turning to the disgruntled
Wilfred and for the first time in years assuming charge of his own
domestic affairs.
"I should say that it was an excellent compromise!" answered the lawyer
soulfully. "There's something in the Bible, isn't there, about pulling
the mote out of your own eye before attempting to remove the beam from
anybody's else?"
"I believe there is," assented Bonnie politely. "'You're another'
certainly isn't a statutory legal plea, but as a practical defense--"
"Tit for tat!" said Mr. Edgerton playfully. "Ha, ha! Ha!"
"Ha, ha! Ha!" mocked Mrs. Pumpelly, her nose high in air. "A lot of good
you did me!"
"By the way, young man," asked Mr. Pumpelly, "whom do you say you
represent?"
"Tutt & Tutt," cooed Bonnie, instantly flashing one of the firm's cards.
"Thanks," said Pumpelly, putting it carefully into his pocket. "I may
need you sometime--perhaps even sooner. Now, if by any chance you'd care
for a highball--"
"Lead me right to it!" sighed Bonnie ecstatically.
"Me, too!" echoed Wilfred, to the great astonishment of those assembled.
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
"For twelve honest men have decided the cause,
Who are judges alike of the fact and the laws."
--The Honest Jury.
"Lastly," says Stevenson in his Letter to a Young Gentleman Who Proposes
to Embrace the Career of Art, "we come to those vocations which are at
once decisive and precise; to the men who are born with the love of
pigments, the passion of drawing, the gift of music, or the impulse to
create with words, just as other and perhaps the same men are born with
the love of hunting, or the sea, or horses, or the turning lathe. These
are predestined; if a man love the labor of any trade, apart from any
question of success or fame, the gods have called him."
Had anybody told Danny Lowry that the gods had called him he would have
stigmatized his informant as a liar--yet they had. For apart from any
question of success or fame he had loved horses from the day when as a
baby he had first sprawled in the straw of his Uncle Mike Aherne's
livery and hitching stable in Dublin City. He had grown up to the scrape
and whiffle of the currycomb, breathing ammonia, cracking the skin of
his infantile knuckles with harness soap. Out of the love that he bore
for the beautiful dumb brutes grew an understanding that in time became
almost uncanny. All the jockeys and hostlers said there was magic in
the lad's hands. He could ride anything on hoofs with a slack rein; and
the worst biter in the stable would take a bridle from him as it were an
apple.
"Oft, now, I hear him talkin' to 'em, so I do." Mike Aherne was wont to
say between spits. "An' they know what he says, I'm tellin' ye. He's a
charmer, he is; like the Whisperin' Blacksmith. You've heard tell of
him, belike? Well, Danny can spake to 'em widout even a whisper, so he
can that!"
That was near seventy years agone, and now Danny was a shrunken little
white-haired old wastrel who haunted Mulqueen's Livery over on
Twenty-fourth Street near Tenth Avenue, disappearing in and out of the
cellar and loft and stalls like a leprechaun haunts a hollow tree.
Nobody knew where he had come from or where he lived except that he
could always be found wherever there was a suffering animal, be it dog,
cat or squirrel, and the rest of the time at Mulqueen's, with whom he
had an understanding about the telephone. He was short, wiry, unshaven,
with the legs of a jockey; and when he could get it he drank. That,
however, was not why he had left Ireland, which had had something to do
with Phoenix Park; nor was it the cause of the decline of his fortunes,
which had been the coming of the motor.
Some day a story must be written called The Hitching Post, about those
thousands of little cast-iron negro boys who stand so patiently on the
green grass strips along village streets waiting to hold long-forgotten
bridle reins. They lost their usefulness a decade or more ago, and so,
by the same token and at the same time, did all that army of people who
lived and moved and had their being by ministering to the needs of the
horse. The gas engine was to them what the mechanical bobbin was to the
spinners of Liverpool and Belfast. With the coming of the motor the race
of coachmen, grooms and veterinaries began to perish from the earth.
Among the last was Danny Lowry, at the very zenith of his fortunes an
unofficial vet to most of the swell stables belonging to the carriage
people of Fifth Avenue. One by one these stables had been converted into
garages, and the broughams and C-spring victorias, the landaus and
basket phaetons had been dragged to the auction room or shoved into dim
corners to make room for snappy motors; and the horses Danny knew and
loved so well had been sold or turned out to grass.
But there was nobody to turn Danny out to grass. He had to keep going.
So he had drifted lower and lower, passing from the private stable to
the trucking stable, and from the trucking stable to the last remaining
decrepit boarding and liveries of the remote West Side. The tragedy of
the horse is the tragedy of all who loved them. Danny was one of these
tragedies, but he still picked up a precarious living by doing odd jobs
at Mulqueen's and acting as a veterinary when called upon, and he could
generally be found either loafing in the smelly little office or smoking
his T D pipe on the steps outside.