with the tall windows and piazzas protected by railings of open ironwork
round which twisted the stems of extinct wistarias, had long been
friends. Many a summer evening the two old men had sat together and
discoursed of famous jockeys and still more famous horses, of Epsom and
Ascot, until Mr. Tutt's cellaret was empty and never a stogy left in the
box at all. Probably no one save the odd lanky old attorney, who himself
seemed to belong to a bygone era, knew the story of Danny's glorious
past--how he had risen from his Uncle Aherne's livery in Dublin first to
being paddock groom to Lord Ashburnham and then to jockey, finally to
ride the Derby under the Farringdon gold and crimson, and to carry away
Katherine Brady, the second housemaid, as Mrs. Lowry when he went back
to Dublin with a goodly pile of money to take over his uncle's business;
and how thereafter had come babies, and fever, and the epizootic, and
hard times; and Danny, a heartbroken man, had fled from bereavement and
pauperism and possibly from prison to seek his fortune in America. And
then the motor! Lastly, now, a hand-to-mouth, furtive, ignorant old age,
a struggle for bare existence and to keep the tiny flat going for his
seventeen-year-old granddaughter, Katie, who kept house for him and of
whose existence few, even of Danny's friends, were aware excepting Mr.
Tutt.
There was, in fact, a striking parallel between these two old men, the
one so ignorant, the other so essentially a man of culture, in that they
were both humanitarians in a high sense. It is improbable that Ephraim
Tutt was conscious of what drew him to Danny Lowry, but drawn he was;
and the reason for it was that the fundamental mainspring of the life of
each was love--in the case of the man of law for those of his fellow men
who suffered through foolishness or poverty or weaknesses or misfortune;
and in that of his more humble counterpart, whose limitations precluded
his understanding of more endowed human beings, for the dumb animals,
who must mutely suffer through the foolishness or poverty or weakness or
misfortune of their owners and masters.
Danny had sat up all night with only a horse blanket drawn over his
legs, taking care of a roan mare with the croup. The helpless thing had
lain flat on her side in the straw struggling for breath, and Danny, his
heart racked with pity, had sat in the stall beside her, every hour
giving her steam and gently pouring his own secret mixture down her
throat. Nobody but Danny cared what became of the mare, left there two
weeks before by a stranger who had not returned for it; stolen,
probably. Cramped, stiff with rheumatism, half dead from fatigue and
suffering from a bad cough himself, he left the stable at eight o'clock
next morning, hopeful that the miserable beast would pull through, and
stepped round to Salvatore's lunch cart for a bowl of coffee and a hot
dog. He was just lighting his pipe preparatory to going back to the
stable when a stranger pulled up to the curb in a mud-splashed depot
wagon.
"'Morning," he remarked pleasantly. "Can you tell me if Mulqueen's
livery stable is anywhere about here?"
Danny removed his pipe and spat politely.
"Sure," he replied, taking in the horse, which besides being lame and
having a glaring spavin on its off hind leg was a mere bone bag fit only
for the soap factory. "'Tis just forninst the corner. I'm after goin'
there meself."
The stranger, a heavy-faced man with a thick neck, nodded.
"All right. You go along and I'll follow."
Mulqueen was not yet at the stable and Danny helped unharness the
animal, which, as soon as relieved of the shafts, hung its head between
its legs, evidently all in. The stranger handed Danny a cigar.
"I'm lookin' for a vet," said he. "My horse ought to have something done
for him."
"I can well see that!" agreed Danny. "He needs a poultice and hot
bandages. A bit of rest wouldn't do him no harm, neither."
"Well, I'm no vet," returned the stranger with an apologetic grin, "but
it don't take much to know that he's a sick horse. I'm a doctor, myself,
but not a horse doctor. Have you got one here?"
"Some calls me a horse doctor," modestly answered Danny. "I can treat a
spavin and wind a bandage as well as the next. How long will you be
leavin' him?"
"Oh, a day or two, I guess. Well, if you're a veterinary I leave him in
your care. My name's Simon--Dr. Joseph R. Simon, of Hempstead, Long
Island."
Danny worked all the morning over the horse, doing his best to make it
comfortable. Indeed, before he had concluded his treatment the animal
was probably more comfortable than he, for the night in the cold stall
had given him a chill and when he left the stable to go home for lunch
he was in a high fever. Doctor Simon was outside on the sidewalk talking
to Mulqueen.
"Well, doctor," said he, "what did you find was the matter with my
horse?"
"Spavin, lame in three legs, sore eyes, underfed," replied Danny,
shivering. "Sure an' he's a sick animal."
"How much do I owe you?" inquired Doctor Simon.
Danny was about to answer that a couple of dollars would be all right
when the thought occurred to him that here was an opportunity to secure
medical treatment for himself.
"If you'll give me something to stop a fever we'll call it even," he
suggested.
"That's easy!" returned Doctor Simon heartily. "Come into the office and
I'll take your temperature and write you out a prescription."
So they sat down by the stove and the doctor took Danny's pulse and put
a thermometer under his tongue, chatting amicably meanwhile, and when he
had completed his examination he wrote something on a piece of paper.
"How long have you been practicing veterinary medicine?" he inquired.
"All my life," answered Danny truthfully. "But I don't get near so much
to do as I used. These be hard times for those as have to do with
horses."
He got up painfully.
"Well, now," said Doctor Simon, "I'd feel better if I paid you for
treating my horse. Just put this five-dollar bill in your pocket. I
guess you need it more than I do."
Danny shook his head. "That's all right!" he said weakly, for he was
feeling very ill. "It's a stand-off."
"Oh, go ahead, take it!" urged Doctor Simon, shoving the bill into the
pocket of Danny's overcoat. "By the way, have you got your card? I might
be able to send a little business your way."
When his magic skill with horses was matter of common knowledge among
the upper circle of Long Island grooms and coachmen Danny had had a few
cards struck off by a friendly printer. A couple of fly-blown specimens
still lingered in the drawer of Mulqueen's desk. Danny searched until he
found one:
DANIEL LOWRY
VETERINARY
212 WEST 53D STREET
NEW YORK CITY
"Here, sor," said he, his head swimming, "that's my name, but the
address is wrong."
Doctor Simon put it in his pocketbook.
"Thanks," he remarked. "Much obliged for fixing up my horse." Then in a
businesslike manner, he threw back his coat and displayed a glittering
badge. "Now," he added brusquely, "I must arrest you for practising
veterinary medicine without a license. Just come along with me to the
nearest police station."
* * * * *
When Mr. Tutt returned home that evening after attending one of the
weekly sessions at the Colophon Club, where he had reluctantly
contributed the sum of fifty-seven dollars to relieve the immediate
needs of certain impecunious persons gathered there about a
green-baize-covered table in a remote corner of the card room, he
perceived by the light of an adjacent street lamp that someone was
sitting upon the top of the steps leading to his front door.
"Are you Mr. Tutt?" inquired Katie Lowry, getting up and making a timid
curtsy. "The great lawyer?"
"That is my name, child," he answered. "What do you want of me?"
She was but a wisp of a girl and her eyes shone like a cat's from under
a gray shawl gathered over a pair of narrow, pinched shoulders.
"They've taken grandfather away to prison," she replied with a catch in
her throat. "He didn't come in to lunch nor to supper, and when I went
to the stable Mr. Mulqueen said a detective had arrested grandfather for
doctoring horses without a license and he had pleaded guilty and they'd
locked him up. I went to the police station, but they said he wasn't
there any more, but that he was in the Tombs."
"Who is your grandfather?" demanded Mr. Tutt as he unlocked the door.
"Danny Lowry," she replied. "Oh, sir, won't you try to do something for
him, sir? He thinks so much of you! He often has told me what a grand
man you were and so kind, besides being such a clever lawyer and all the
judges afraid of you!"
"Danny Lowry in the Tombs!" cried Mr. Tutt. "What an outrage! Of course
I'll do what I can for him. But first come inside and warm yourself.
Miranda!" he shouted to the colored maid of all work. "Make us some hot
toast and tea and bring it up to the library. Now, my dear, take off
your shawl and sit down and tell me all about it."
So with her frayed kid shoes upturned on the fender, little Katie Lowry,
confident that she had found an all-powerful friend in this queer long
man who smoked such queer long cigars, sipping her tea only when she had
to pause for breath, poured out the story of her grandfather's fight
with poverty and misfortune, while her auditor's wrinkled face grew soft
and hard by turns as he watched her through the gray clouds from his
stogy. An hour later he left her at the door of her flat, happy and
encouraged, with a twenty-dollar bill crumpled in her hand.
* * * * *
"But what do you expect me to do about it?" retorted District Attorney
Peckham in his office next morning when Mr. Tutt had explained to him
the perversion of justice to accomplish which the law had been invoked.
"I'm sorry! No doubt he's a good feller. But he's guilty, isn't he?
Admitted it in the police court, didn't he?"
"I expect you to temper justice with mercy," replied Mr. Tutt earnestly.
"This old man's whole life has been devoted to relieving the sufferings
of animals. He's a genuine Samaritan."
"That's like saying that a thief has done good with his plunder, isn't
it?" commented Peckham. "Look here, Tutt, of course I hope you get your
man off and all that, but if I personally threw the case out I'd have
all the vets in the city on my neck. You see the motors have pretty
nearly put 'em all out of business. There aren't enough sick horses to
go round, so they've been conducting a sort of crusade. Tough luck--but
the law is the law. And I have to enforce it--ostensibly, anyway."
"Very well," answered the old lawyer amiably but defiantly. "Then if
you've got to enforce the law against a fine old chap like that I've got
to do my darnedest to smash that law higher than a kite. And I'll tell
you something, Peckham--which is that the human heart is a damn sight
bigger than the human conscience."
* * * * *
Danny Lowry had lived for years in fear of the blow which had so
suddenly struck him down, for there had never been any blinking of the
obvious fact that in acting as an unlicensed veterinary he was brazenly
violating the law. On the other hand, not being able to read or write,
and having no technical knowledge of medicine, all his experience, all
his skill, all his love of animals could avail him nothing so far as
securing a license was concerned. He could not read an examination
paper, but he could interpret the symptoms seen in a trembling neck and
a lack-luster eye. Danny had no choice but to break the law or abandon
the only career for which he had an aptitude, or by which he could hope
to earn a living at his age. His crime was _malum prohibitum_, not
_malum in se_, but it was, nevertheless, a violation of a most necessary
law. Certainly none of us wish to be doctored by tyros or humbugs, or to
have our animals treated by them. Only Danny was neither a tyro nor a
humbug, and had he not been a lawbreaker the world would have been to
some extent the loser.
Yet by all the canons of ethics and justice it was most improper for Mr.
Tutt to hurry off to the Tombs and bail out old Danny Lowry, a
self-confessed lawbreaker, giving his own bond and the house on
Twenty-third Street as security. Still more so, as more unblushingly
ostentatious, was his taking the criminal over to Pont's and giving him
the very best dinner that Signor Faccini, proprietor of that celebrated
hostelry, could purvey.
Hard cases are said to make bad law; I wonder if they make bad people.
If "conscience makes cowards of us all" does human sympathy play ducks
and drakes with conscience? Does it blind the eye of reason? Rather,
does it not illumine and expose the fallacies of logic and the falsities
of the syllogism? Do two and two make four in human polity as in
mathematics? Sometimes it would not seem so.
Certainly you would have picked Mr. Bently Gibson, of The Gibson Woolen
Mills, as a model juror. One look at him as a prospective talesman in a
murder case and you would have unhesitatingly murmured, "The defense
challenges peremptorily!" His broad forehead, large well-shaped nose,
firm chin and clear calm eye evidenced his common sense, his
conscientiousness and his uncompromising adherence to principle. His
customs declarations were complete to the smallest item, his income-tax
returns models of self-sacrifice, he was patriotic and civic, he
belonged to the Welfare League and the Citizens' Union, and--I hesitate
to confess it--he subscribed to the annual deficit of the Society for
the Suppression of Sin. On the face of it, he was the kind of man the
district attorney tries to select as foreman of a jury when he has to
prosecute a woman who had kidnaped her own child out of a foundling
asylum.
The heelers and hangers-on of the criminal courts would have described
him as a highbrow and as a holier-than-thou; perhaps he might in a
moment of jocularity have even so described himself--for he had his
human--perhaps I should have said, his weaker--side. Surely he seemed
human enough when he kissed Eleanor good-by at the door of their country
place on the Sound the morning he had been subpoenaed to serve as a
juryman in Part Five of the General Sessions. He had planned to take a
week's holiday that spring, and he had gone to infinite trouble to
arrange his business in order to have it, for they had become engaged
eleven years before at the moment when the apple blossoms and the
dogwoods were at the height of their glory, even as they were now.
When, however, he found the brown subpoena at his office directing him
to present himself for service the following Monday he simply gave a
half sigh, half grunt of disgust, and let the longed-for vacation go;
for one of his pet theories was that the jury system was the chief
bulwark of the Constitution, the cornerstone of liberty. Had he only
been disingenuous enough he need never have served on any jury, for no
lawyer for the defense hearing him enlarge on what he considered the
duties of a juryman to be, would ever have allowed him in the box. But
when other chaps on the panel presented their excuses to the judge and
managed to persuade him of the imperative needs of family or business,
and slipped--grinning discreetly--out of the court room, he merely
inaudibly called them welshers and pikers. No, he regarded jury service
as a duty and a privilege, one not to be lightly avoided--the one common
garden governmental function in which Uncle Sam expected every citizen
to do his duty.
"I won't let any of the rogues get by me!" he shouted gaily to his wife
over the back of the motor. "And anyhow I shan't be locked up all night.
There aren't any murder cases on the calendar. I'll be out on the
five-fifteen as usual."
Alas, poor Bently! Alas for human frailty and all those splendid
visions in which he pictured himself as the anchor of the ship of
justice, a prop and stay of the structure of democracy.
His train was a trifle late and the roll of the jury had already been
called, and the perennial excuses heard, when he entered the court room;
but the clerk, who knew him, nodded in a welcoming manner, checked him
off as present and dropped his name card in the revolving wheel. It was
a well-known scene to Bently, a veteran of fifteen years' service. Even
the actors were familiar friends--the pink-faced judge with his
snow-white whiskers, who at times suggested to Bently an octogenarian
angel, and, at others, a certain ancient baboon once observed in the
Primates cage at the Bronz Zoo; the harried, anxious little clerk with
his paradoxically grandiloquent intonation; the comedy assistant
district attorney with his wheezy voice emanating from a Falstaffian
body, who suffered from a soporific malady and was accustomed to open a
case and then let it take care of itself while he slumbered audibly
beneath the dais; even Ephraim Tutt, the gaunt, benignly
whimsical-looking attorney, in his rusty-black frock coat and
loose-hanging tie; his rotund partner, whose birdlike briskness and fat
paunch inevitably brought to mind a distended robin in specs; and the
_dégagé_ Bonnie Doon in his cut-in-at-the-waist checked suit--he knew
them all of old.
"Well, call your first case, Mister District Attorney!" directed the
judge, nodding encouragingly at Bently, well knowing that in him he had
a staunch upholder of the law-as-it-is, who could be depended upon to
bolster up his weaker or more sentimental brother talesmen into the
proper convicting attitude of mind.
Then--as per the schedule in force for at least an epoch--good-natured,
pot-bellied Tom Hingman, the oldest A.D.A. in the office, rose heavily,
fumbled with his stubby fingers among the blue indictments on the table,
drew one forth, panted a few times, gasped out "People against Daniel
Lowry," and looked round in a pseudo-helpless way as if not knowing
exactly what to do.
There was a slight stir, and from the back of the court room came
forward a funny little bow-legged old man, carrying in both hands a
funny little flat-topped derby hat, and took his seat timidly at the bar
of justice beside Mr. Tutt, who smiled down at him affectionately and
put his arm about the threadbare shoulders as if to protect him from the
evils of the world. They made a quaint and far from unpleasing picture,
thought Bently Gibson, the ideal juror, and he wondered what the poor
old devil could be up for.
A jury was impaneled, Bently among them; the balance of the panel was
excused until two o'clock; the court room was cleared of loafers; the
judge perused the indictment with a practised eye; Tom Hingman rose
again, wheezed and grinned at the embattled jury; and the mill of
justice began to grind.
Now the mill of justice, at least in the General Sessions of New York
County, grinds exceeding fine, so far as the number of convictions is
concerned. Of those brought to the bar for trial few escape; for modern
talesmen, being hard-headed men, regard the whole thing as a matter of
business and try to get through with it as quickly and as efficiently as
possible. The bombastic spread-eagle orator, the grandiloquent gas bag,
the highfaluting stump speaker gain few verdicts and win small applause
except from their clients. And district attorneys who ape the bloodhound
in their mien and tactics win scant approval and less acquiescence from
the bored gentlemen who are forced to listen to them. Nowadays--whatever
may have been the case two generations ago--each side briefly states its
claims and tries to win on points.
People were apt to wonder why each succeeding administration inevitably
retained stuffy old Tom Hingman at seventy-five hundred dollars a year
to handle the calendar in Part Five. Yet those on the inside knew why
very well. It was because Tom long ago, in his prehistoric youth, had
learned that the way to secure verdicts was to appear not to care a
tinker's dam whether the jury found the defendant guilty or not. He
pretended never to know anything about any case in advance, to be in
complete ignorance as to who the witnesses might be and to what they
were going to testify, and to be terribly sorry to have to prosecute the
unfortunate at the bar, though he wasn't to blame for that any more than
the jury were for having to find him guilty if proven to be so, which,
it seemed to him, he had been clearly proven to be. I say Tom pretended
all this, yet it was more than half true, for Tom was a kind-hearted old
bird. But the point was that, whether true or not, it got convictions.
The jury sucking it all up in its entirety felt sorrier for the
simple-minded old softy of a Tom, which they believed him to be, than
they did for the defendant, who they concluded was a good deal cleverer
than the assistant district attorney.
In a word, it put them on their honor as public officers not to let the
administration of justice suffer merely because the A.D.A. was too old
and easy-going and generally slab-sided to be really on his job. Thus,
they became prosecuting attorneys themselves--in all, thirteen to one.
So Tom, having thus delegated his functions to the jury, calmly left it
all to them and went to sleep, which was the best thing that he did.
Worth seventy-five hundred a year? Rather, seventy-five thousand!
"Gentlemen of the jury," he began haltingly, "this defendant seems to
have been indicted for the crime of practising medicine without a
license--a misdemeanor. I don't see exactly how he gets into this court,
which is supposed to try only felony cases, but I assume my old friend
Tutt made a motion to transfer the case from the Special to the General
Sessions on the theory that he would stand more chance with a jury than
three--er--hardened judges. Well, maybe he will--I don't know! I gather
from the papers that Mr. Lowry here, after holding himself out to be a
properly licensed veterinary, treated a horse belonging to the
complainant. It is not a very serious offense, and you and I have no
great interest in the case, but of course the public has got to be
protected from charlatans, and the only way to do it is to brand as
guilty those who pretend they are duly licensed to practise medicine
when they are not. If you had a sick baby, Mr. Foreman, and you saw a
sign 'A.S. Smith, M.D., Children's Specialist,' you would want to be
sure you were not going to hire a plumber, eh? You see! That's all there
is to this case!"
"All there is to this case!" murmured Mr. Tutt audibly, raising his eyes
ceilingward.
"Step up here, Mr. Brown."
Mr. Brown, the supposed Doctor Simon whose horse Danny had attended,
seated himself complacently in the witness chair and bowed to the jury
in a professional manner. He had, he told them, been a detective
employed by the state board of health for over sixteen years. It was his
duty to go round and arrest people who pretended to be licensed
practitioners of medicine and assumed to doctor other people and
animals. There were a lot of 'em, too; the jury would be surprised--
Mr. Tutt objected to their surprise and it was stricken out by order of
the court.
"I'll strike out 'and there are a lot of 'em, too,' if you say so, Mr.
Tutt," offered the court, smiling, but Mr. Tutt shook his head.
"No; let it stand!" said he significantly. "Let it stand!"
"Well, anyway," continued Mr. Brown, "this here defendant Lowry, as he
calls himself, is well known--"
Objected to and struck out.
"Well, this here defendant makes a practise--"
"Strike it out! What did he do?" snapped the octogenarian baboon on the
bench.
"I'm tellin' you, judge," protested Brown vigorously. "This here
defendant--"
"You've said that three times!" retorted the baboon. "Get along, can't
you? What did he do?"
"He treated my horse for spavin here in New York at 500 West 24th Street
at my request on the twentieth of last March and I paid him five
dollars. He said he was a licensed veterinary and he gave me his card.
Here it is."
"Well, why didn't you say so before?" remarked the judge more amiably.
"Let me see the card. All right! Anything more, Mr. Hingman?"
But Mr. Hingman had long before this subsided into his chair and was
emitting sounds like those from a saxophone.
"That is plain, simple testimony, Mr. Tutt," remarked the judge. "Go
ahead and cross-examine."
Ephraim Tutt slowly unjointed himself, the quintessence of affability,
though Mr. Brown clearly held him under suspicion.
"How long have you earned your living, my dear sir, by going round
arresting people?"
"Sixteen years."
"Under what name--your own?"
"I use any name I feel like."
Mr. Tutt nodded appreciatively.
"Let us see, then. You go about pretending to be somebody you are not?"
"Put it that way, if you choose."
"And pretending to be what you are not?"