By Advice of Counsel
been the scene of the crime! Curiously, he turned in there. Like all the
other places it was deserted, but at the sound of his footsteps a little
Syrian boy not more than ten years old came from behind the screen at
the end of the room and stood bashfully awaiting his order.
Mr. Tutt smiled one of his genial weather-beaten smiles at the youngster
and glancing idly over the bill of fare ordered _biklama_ and coffee.
Then he lit a stogy and stretched his long legs comfortably out under
the narrow table. Yes, this was the very spot where either Sardi Babu
and his friends had been sitting the night of the murder or Kasheed
Hassoun and his friends--one or the other; he wondered if anybody would
ever know which. Was it possible that in this humdrum little place human
passions had been roused to the taking of life on account of some mere
difference in religious dogma? Was this New York? Was it possible to
Americanize these people? A door clattered in the rear, and from behind
the screen again emerged the boy carrying a tray of pastry and coffee.
"Well, my little man," said Mr. Tutt, "do you work here?"
"Oh, yes," answered the embryonic citizen. "My father, he owns half the
store. I go to school every day, but I work here afterward. I got a
prize last week."
"What sort of a prize?"
"I got the English prize."
The lawyer took the child's hand and pulled him over between his knees.
He was an attractive lad, clean, responsive, frank, and his eyes looked
straight into Mr. Tutt's.
"Sonny," he inquired his new friend, "are you an American?"
"Me? Sure! You bet I'm an American! The old folks--no! You couldn't
change 'em in fifty years. They're just what they always were. They
don't want anything different. They think they're in Syria yet. But
me--say, what do you think? Of course I'm an American!"
"That's right!" answered Mr. Tutt, offering him a piece of pastry. "And
what is your name?"
"George Nasheen Assad," answered the boy, showing a set of white teeth.
"Well, George," continued the attorney, "what has become of Kasheed
Hassoun?"
"Oh, he's down at Coney Island. He runs a caravan. He has six camels. I
go there sometimes and he lets me ride for nothing. I know who you are,"
said the little Syrian confidently, as he took the cake. "You're the
great lawyer who defended Kasheed Hassoun."
"That's right. How did you know that, now?"
"I was to the trial."
"Do you think he ought to have been let off?" asked Mr. Tutt
whimsically.
"I don't know," returned the child. "I guess you did right not to call
me as a witness."
Mr. Tutt wrinkled his brows.
"Eh? What? You weren't a witness, were you?"
"Of course I was!" laughed George. "I was here behind the screen. I saw
the whole thing. I saw Kasheed Hassoun come in and speak to Sardi Babu,
and I saw Sardi draw his revolver, and I saw Kasheed tear it out of his
hand and strangle him."
Mr. Tutt turned cold.
"You saw that?" he challenged.
"Sure."
"How many other people were there in the restaurant?" inquired Mr. Tutt.
"Nobody at all," answered George in a matter-of-fact tone. "Only Kasheed
and Sardi. Nobody else was in the restaurant."
Contempt of Court
The court can't determine what is honor.--Chief Baron Bowes, 1743.
I know what my code of honor is, my lord, and I intend to adhere to
it.--John O'Conner, M.P., in Parnell Commission's Proceedings, 103d
Day; Times Rep. pt. 28, pp. 19 _ff_.
Well, honor is the subject of my story.--Julius Caesar, Act I, Sc 2.
"What has become of Katie--the second waitress?" asked Miss Althea
Beekman of Dawkins, her housekeeper, as she sat at her satinwood desk
after breakfast. "I didn't see her either last night or this morning."
Dawkins, who was a mid-Victorian, flushed awkwardly.
"I really had to let the girl go, ma'am!" she explained with an outraged
air. "I hardly know how to tell you--such a thing in this house! I
couldn't possibly have her round. I was afraid she might corrupt the
other girls, ma'am--and they are such a self-respecting lot--almost
quite ladylike, ma'am. So I simply paid her and told her to take herself
off."
Miss Beekman looked pained.
"You shouldn't have turned her out into the street like that, Dawkins!"
she expostulated. "Where has she gone?"
Dawkins gazed at her large feet in embarrassment.
"I don't know, ma'am," she admitted. "I didn't suppose you'd want her
here so I sent her away. It was quite inconvenient, too--with the
servant problem what it is. But I'm hoping to get another this afternoon
from Miss Healey's."
Miss Beekman was genuinely annoyed.
"I am seriously displeased with you, Dawkins!" she returned severely.
"Of course, I am shocked at any girl in my household misbehaving
herself, but--I--wouldn't want her to be sent away--under such
circumstances. It would be quite heartless. Yes, I am very much
disturbed!"
"I'm sorry, ma'am," answered the housekeeper penitently. "But I was only
thinking of the other girls."
"Well, it's too late to do anything about it now," repeated her
mistress. "But I'm sorry, Dawkins; very sorry, indeed. We have
responsibilities toward these people! However--this is Thursday, isn't
it?--we'll have veal for lunch as usual--and she was so pretty!" she
added inconsequently.
"H'm. That was the trouble!" sniffed the housekeeper. "We're well rid of
her. You'd think a girl would have some consideration for her
employer--if nothing else. In a sense she is a guest in the house and
should behave herself as such!"
"Yes, that is quite true!" agreed her employer. "Still--yes, Brown Betty
is very well for dessert. That will do, Dawkins."
Behind the curtain of this casual conversation had been enacted a
melodrama as intensely vital and elemental as any of Shakespeare's
tragedies, for the day Dawkins had fired Katie O'Connell--"for reasons,"
as she said--and told her to go back where she came from or anywhere she
liked for that matter, so long as she got out of her sight, Katie's
brother Shane in the back room of McManus' gin palace gave Red
McGurk--for the same "reasons"--a certain option and, the latter having
scornfully declined to avail himself of it, had then and there put a
bullet through his neck. But this, naturally, Miss Beekman did not know.
As may have been already surmised Miss Althea was a gracious, gentle and
tender-hearted lady who never knowingly would have done a wrong to
anybody and who did not believe that simply because God had been pleased
to call her into a state of life at least three stories higher than her
kitchen she was thereby relieved from her duty toward those who occupied
it. Nevertheless, from the altitude of those three stories she viewed
them as essentially different from herself, for she came of what is
known as "a long line of ancestors." As, however, Katie O'Connell and
Althea Beekman were practically contemporaries, it is somewhat difficult
to understand how one of them could have had a succession of ancestors
that was any longer than that of the other. Indeed, Miss Beekman's
friend, Prof. Abelard Samothrace, of Columbia University, probably would
have admitted that just as the two had lived in the same house--albeit
at different levels--on Fifth Avenue, so their forebears at some
prehistoric period had, likely as not, occupied the same cave and had in
company waded on frosty mornings the ice-skimmed swamps of Mittel Europa
in pursuit of the cave bear, the mastodon and the woolly rhinoceros, and
for afternoon relaxation had made up twosomes for hunting wives with
stone clubs instead of mashies in their hairy prehensile hands.
It would seem, therefore, that--whatever of tradition might have
originated in the epoch in question--glimmerings of sportsmanship, of
personal pride, of tribal duty or of conscience ought to have been the
common heritage of them both. For it was assuredly true that while Miss
Katie's historic ancestors had been Celtiberians, clad on occasion only
in a thin coating of blue paint, Miss Althea's had dwelt in the dank
marshes of the Elbe and had been unmistakably Teutonic, though this
curse had been largely removed by racial intermarriage during subsequent
thousands of years. Indeed, it may well have been that in the dimmer
past some Beekman serf on bended knee had handed a gilded harp to some
King O'Connell on his throne. If the O'Connells were foreigners the
Beekmans, from the point of view of the aboriginal American, were no
less so simply because they had preceded them by a couple of hundred
years.
Tradition is not a matter of centuries but of ages. If Katie inherited
some of hers from the peat bogs adjacent to Tara's Halls in that remote
period when there were still snakes in Ireland, Miss Althea had
vicariously acquired others from the fur-clad barbarians described by
Tacitus who spent their leisure time in drinking, gambling or splitting
each other's skulls with stone mallets. On this subject see Spencer's
"Data of Ethics" and Lecky's "History of European Morals." But all this
entirely escaped Miss Althea, who suffered from the erroneous impression
that because she was a Beekman and lived in a stone mansion facing
Central Park she differed fundamentally not only from the O'Connells but
from the Smiths, the Pasquales, the Ivanovitches and the Ginsbergs, all
of whom really come of very old families. Upon this supposed difference
she prided herself.
Because she was, in fact, mistaken and because the O'Connells shared
with the Beekmans and the Ginsbergs a tradition reaching back to a
period when revenge was justice, and custom of kinsfolk the only law,
Shane O'Connell had sought out Red McGurk and had sent him unshriven to
his God. The only reason why this everyday Bowery occurrence excited any
particular attention was not that Shane was an O'Connell but that McGurk
was the son of a political boss of much influence and himself one of the
leaders of a notorious cohort of young ruffians who when necessary could
be relied upon to stuff a ballot box or otherwise to influence public
opinion. As Red was a mighty man in Gideon, so his taking off was an
event of moment, and he was waked with an elegance unsurpassed in the
annals of Cherry Hill.
"An' if ye don't put the son-of-a----- who kilt me b'y in th' chair, ye
name's mud--see?" the elder McGurk had informed District Attorney
Peckham the next morning. "I've told the cops who done it. Now you do
the rest--understand?"
Peckham understood very well. No one seeing the expression on McGurk's
purple countenance could have failed to do so.
"We'll get him! Don't you worry!" Peckham had assured the desolated
father with a manner subtly suggesting both the profoundest sympathy and
the prophetic glories of a juridical revenge in which the name of McGurk
would be upon every lip and the picture of the deceased, his family, and
the home in which they dwelt would be featured on the front page of
every journal. "We'll get him, all right!"
"See to it that ye do!" commented his visitor meaningly.
Therefore, though no one had seen him commit the crime, word was passed
along the line to pick up Shane O'Connell for the murder of Red McGurk.
It mattered not there was no evidence except the report of a muttered
threat or two and the lie passed openly the week before.
Everybody knew that Shane had done it, and why; though no one could tell
how he knew it. And because everybody knew, it became a political
necessity for Peckham to put him under arrest with a great fanfare of
trumpets and a grandiose announcement of the celerity with which the
current would be turned through his body.
The only fly in the ointment was the fact that O'Connell had walked into
the district attorney's office as soon as the rumor reached him and