By Advice of Counsel
Being Adventures of
the Celebrated Firm of
Tutt & Tutt
Attorneys & Counsellors at Law
By
Arthur Train
With Frontispiece
By Arthur William Brown
Published March, 1921
CONTENTS
THE SHYSTER
THE KID AND THE CAMEL
CONTEMPT OF COURT
BY ADVICE OF COUNSEL
"THAT SORT OF WOMAN"
YOU'RE ANOTHER!
BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT
The Shyster
Shyster, n. [Origin obscure.] One who does business trickily; a
person without professional honor: used chiefly of lawyers; as,
pettifoggers and shysters.--CENTURY DICTIONARY.
When Terry McGurk hove the brick through the window of Froelich's
butcher shop he did it casually, on general principles, and without any
idea of starting anything. He had strolled unexpectedly round the corner
from his dad's saloon, had seen the row going on between Froelich and
the gang of boys that after school hours used the street in front of the
shop as a ball ground, and had merely seized the opportunity to
vindicate his reputation as a desperado and put one over on the
Dutchman. The fact that he had on a red sweater was the barest
coincidence. Having observed the brick to be accurately pursuing its
proper trajectory he had ducked back round the corner again and
continued upon his way rejoicing. He had not even noticed Tony Mathusek,
who, having accidentally found himself in the midst of the mêlée, had
started to beat a retreat the instant of the crash, and had run plump
into the arms of Officer Delany of the Second. Unfortunately Tony too
was wearing a red sweater.
"I've got you, you young devil!" exulted Delany. "Here's one of 'em,
Froelich!"
"Dot's him! It was a feller mit a red sweater! Dot's the vun who done
it!" shrieked the butcher. "I vill make a gomblaint against him!"
"Come along, you! Quit yer kickin'!" ordered the cop, twisting Tony's
thin arm until he writhed. "You'll identify him, Froelich?"
"Sure! Didn't I see him mit my eyes? He's vun of dem rascals vot drives
all mine gustomers avay mit deir yelling and screaming. You fix it for
me, Bill."
"That's all right," the officer assured him. "I'll fix him good, I will!
It's the reformatory for him. Or, say, you can make a complaint for
malicious mischief."
"Sure! Dot's it! Malicious mischief!" assented the not over-intelligent
tradesman. "Ve'll get rid of him for good, eh?"
"Sure," assented Delany. "Come along, you!"
Tony Mathusek lifted a white face drawn with agony from his tortured
arm.
"Say, mister, you got the wrong feller! I didn't break the window. I was
just comin' from the house--"
"Aw, shut up!" sneered Delany. "Tell that to the judge!"
"Y' ain't goin' to take me to jail?" wailed Tony. "I wasn't with them
boys. I don't belong to that gang."
"Oh, so you belong to a gang, do ye? Well, we don't want no gangsters
round here!" cried the officer with adroit if unscrupulous sophistry.
"Come along now, and keep quiet or it'll be the worse for ye."
"Can't I tell my mother? She'll be lookin' for me. She's an old lady."
"Tell nuthin'. You come along!"
Tony saw all hope fade. He hadn't a chance--even to go to a decent
jail! He had heard all about the horrors of the reformatory. They
wouldn't even let your people visit you on Sundays! And his mother would
think he was run over or murdered. She would go crazy with worry. He
didn't mind on his own account, but his mother-- He loved the old
widowed mother who worked her fingers off to send him to school. And he
was the only one left, now that Peter had been killed in the war. It was
too much. With a sudden twist he tore out of his coat and dashed blindly
down the street. As well might a rabbit hope to escape the claws of a
wildcat. In three bounds Delany had him again, choking him until the
world turned black.
But this is not a story about police brutality, for most cops are not
brutal. Delany was an old-timer who believed in rough methods. He
belonged, happily, to a fast-vanishing system more in harmony with the
middle ages than with our present enlightened form of municipal
government. He remained what he was for the reason that farther up in
the official hierarchy there were others who looked to him, when it was
desirable, to deliver the goods--not necessarily cash--but to stand with
the bunch. These in turn were obligated on occasion, through
self-interest or mistaken loyalty to friend or party, to overlook
trifling irregularities, to use various sorts of pressure, or to forget
what they were asked to forget. There was a far-reaching web of
complicated relationships--official, political, matrimonial, commercial
and otherwise--which had a very practical effect upon the performance of
theoretical duty.
Delany was neither an idealist nor a philosopher. He was an empiricist,
with a touch of pragmatism--though he did not know it. He was "a
practical man." Even reform administrations have been known to advocate
a liberal enforcement of the laws. Can you blame Delany for being
practical when others so much greater than he have prided themselves
upon the same attribute of practicality? There were of course a lot of
things he simply had to do or get out of the force; at any rate, had he
not done them his life would have been intolerable. These consisted in
part of being deaf, dumb and blind when he was told to be so--a
comparatively easy matter. But there were other things that he had to
do, as a matter of fact, to show that he was all right, which were not
only more difficult, but expensive, and at times dangerous.
He had never been called upon to swear away an innocent man's liberty,
but more than once he had had to stand for a frame-up against a guilty
one. According to his cop-psychology, if his side partner saw something
it was practically the same as if he had seen it himself. That
phantasmagorical scintilla of evidence needed to bolster up a weak or
doubtful case could always be counted on if Delany was the officer who
had made the arrest. None of his cases were ever thrown out of court for
lack of evidence, but then, Delany never arrested anybody who wasn't
guilty!
Of course he had to "give up" at intervals, depending on what
administration was in power, who his immediate superior was, and what
precinct he was attached to, but he was not a regular grafter by any
means. He was an occasional one merely; when he had to be. He did not
consider that he was being grafted on when expected to contribute to
chowders, picnics, benevolent associations, defense funds or wedding
presents for high police officials. Neither did he think that he was
taking graft because he amicably permitted Froelich to leave a
fourteen-pound rib roast every Saturday night at his brother-in-law's
flat. In the same way he regarded the bills slipped him by Grabinsky,
the bondsman, as well-earned commissions, and saw no reason why the
civilian clothes he ordered at the store shouldn't be paid for by some
mysterious friendly person--identity unknown--but shrewdly suspected to
be Mr. Joseph Simpkins, Mr. Hogan's runner. Weren't there to be any
cakes and ale in New York simply because a highbrow happened to be
mayor? Were human kindness, good nature and generosity all dead? Would
he have taken a ten-dollar bill--or even a hundred-dollar one--from
Simpkins when he was going to be a witness in one of Hogan's cases? Not
on your life! He wasn't no crook, he wasn't! He didn't have to be. He
was just a cog in an immense wheel of crookedness. When the wheel came
down on his cog he automatically did his part.
I perceive that the police are engaging too much of our attention. But
it is necessary to explain why Delany was so ready to arrest Tony
Mathusek, and why as he dragged him into the station house he beckoned
to Mr. Joey Simpkins, who was loitering outside in front of the deputy
sheriff's office, and whispered behind his hand, "All right. I've got
one for you!"
Then the machine began to work as automatically as a cash register. Tony
was arraigned at the bar, and, having given his age as sixteen years and
five days, charged with the "malicious destruction of property, to wit,
a plate-glass window of one Karl Froelich, of the value of one hundred
and fifty dollars." Mr. Joey Simpkins had shouldered his way through the
smelly push and taken his stand beside the bewildered and half-fainting
boy.
"It's all right, kid. Leave it to me," he said, encircling him with a
protecting arm. Then to the clerk: "Pleads not guilty."
The magistrate glanced over the complaint, in which Delany, to save
Froelich trouble, had sworn that he had seen Tony throw the brick.
Hadn't the butcher said he'd seen him? Besides, that let the Dutchman
out of a possible suit for false arrest. Then the magistrate looked down
at the cop himself.
"Do you know this boy?" he asked sharply.
"Sure, Yerroner. He's a gangster. Admitted it to me on the way over."
"Are you really over sixteen?" suddenly demanded the judge, who knew and
distrusted Delany, having repeatedly stated in open court that he
wouldn't hang a yellow dog on his testimony. The underfed, undersized
boy did not look more than fourteen.
"Yes, sir," said Tony. "I was sixteen last week."
"Got anybody to defend you?"
Tony looked at Simpkins inquiringly. He seemed a very kind gentleman.
"Mr. Hogan's case, judge," answered Joey. "Please make the bail as low
as you can."
Now this judge was a political accident, having been pitchforked into
office by the providence that sometimes watches over sailors, drunks and
third parties. Moreover, in spite of being a reformer he was nobody's
fool, and when the other reformers who were fools got promptly fired out
of office he had been reappointed by a supposedly crooked boss simply
because, as the boss said, he had made a hell of a good judge and they
needed somebody with brains here and there to throw a front.
Incidentally, he had a swell cousin on Fifth Avenue who had invited the
boss and his wife to dinner, by reason of which the soreheads who lost
out went round asking what kind of a note it was when a silk-stocking
crook could buy a nine-thousand-dollar job for a fifty-dollar dinner.
Anyhow, he was clean and clean-looking, kindly, humorous and wise above
his years--which were thirty-one. And Tony looked to him like a poor
runt, Simpkins and Delany were both rascals, Froelich wasn't in court,
and he sensed a nigger somewhere. He would have turned Tony out on the
run had he had any excuse. He hadn't, but he tried.
"Would you like an immediate hearing?" he asked Tony in an encouraging
tone.
"Mr. Hogan can't be here until to-morrow morning," interposed Simpkins.
"Besides, we shall want to produce witnesses. Make it to-morrow
afternoon, judge."
Judge Harrison leaned forward.
"Are you sure you wouldn't prefer to have the hearing now?" he inquired
with a smile at the trembling boy.
"Well, I want to get Froelich here--if you're going to proceed now,"
spoke up Delany. "And I'd like to look up this defendant's record at
headquarters."
Tony quailed. He feared and distrusted everybody, except the kind Mr.
Simpkins. He suspected that smooth judge of trying to railroad him.
"No! No!" he whispered to the lawyer. "I want my mother should be here;
and the janitor, he knows I was in my house. The rabbi, he will give me
a good character."
The judge heard and shrugged his bombazine-covered shoulders. It was no
use. The children of darkness were wiser in their generation than the
children of light.
"Five hundred dollars bail," he remarked shortly. "Officer, have your
witnesses ready to proceed to-morrow afternoon at two o'clock."
* * * * *