By Advice of Counsel
that compels a man to pay a gambling debt before he pays his tailor, but
I do believe that there may be situations where, though it would not be
permissible to perjure oneself, honor would require one to refuse to
obey the law."
"That's a pretty dangerous doctrine," reflected Mr. Tutt. "For everybody
would be free to make himself the judge of when he ought to respect the
law and when he oughtn't. We can easily imagine that the law would come
out at the small end of the horn."
"In matters of conscience--which, I take it, is the same thing as one's
sense of honor--one has got to be one's own judge," declared Miss Wiggin
firmly.
"The simplest way," announced Tutt, "is to take the position that the
law should always be obeyed and that the most honorable man is he who
respects it the most."
"Yes, the safest and also the most cowardly!" retorted Miss Wiggin.
"Supposing the law required you to do something which you personally
regarded not only as morally wrong but detestable, would you do it?"
"It wouldn't!" protested Tutt with a grimace. "The law is the perfection
of reason."
"But I am entitled, am I not, to suppose, for purposes of argument, that
it might?" she inquired caustically. "And I say that our sense of honor
is the most precious thing we've got. It's our duty to respect our
institutions and obey the law whether we like it or not, unless it
conflicts with our conscience, in which case we ought to defy it and
take the consequences!"
"Dear me!" mocked Tutt. "And be burned at the stake?"
"If necessary; yes!"
"I don't rightly get all this!" remarked Bonnie. "Me for the lee side of
the law, every time!"
"It's highly theoretical," commented Tutt. "As usual with our
discussions."
"Not so theoretical as you might think!" interrupted his senior,
hastening to reenforce Miss Wiggin. "Nobody can deny that to be true to
oneself is the highest principle of human conduct, and that ''tis man's
perdition to be safe when for the truth he ought to die.' That's why we
reverence the early Christian martyrs. But when it comes to choosing
between what we loosely call honor and what the law requires--"
"But I thought the law embodied our ideas of honor!" replied Tutt.
"Didn't you say so--a few hours earlier in this conversation? As our
highest duty is to the state, it is a mere play on words, in my humble
opinion, to speak of honor as distinguished from law or the obligation
of one's oath in a court of justice. I bet I can find plenty of
authorities to that effect in the library!"
"Of course you can," countered Miss Wiggin. "You can find an authority
on any side of any proposition you want to look for. That's why one's
own sense of honor is so much more reliable than the law. What is the
law, anyhow? It's what some judge says is the law--until he's reversed.
Do you suppose I'd surrender my own private ideas of honor to a casual
ruling from a judge who very likely hadn't the remotest idea of what I
think is honorable?"
"You'll be jailed for contempt before you get through!" Tutt warned her.
"The fact of the matter is," concluded Mr. Tutt, "that honor and law
haven't anything to do with one another. The courts have constantly
pointed that out from the earliest days, though judges like, when they
can, to make the two seem one and the same. Chief Baron Bowes, I
remember, said in some case in 1743, 'The court can't determine what is
honor.' No, no; the two are different, and that difference will always
make trouble. Isn't it nearly tea time?"
* * * * *
Miss Beekman was just stepping off the elevator on the first floor of
the Tombs the next afternoon on one of her weekly visits when she came
face to face with Mr. Tutt.
She greeted him cordially, for she had taken rather a fancy to the
shabby old man, drawn to him, in spite of her natural aversion to all
members of the criminal bar, by the gentle refinement of his
weather-beaten face. "I hope you have had a successful day."
The lawyer shook his head in a pseudo-melancholy manner.
"Unfortunately, I have not," he answered whimsically. "My only client
refuses to speak to me! Perhaps you could get something out of him for
me."
"Oh, they all talk to me readily enough!" she replied. "I fancy they
know I'm harmless. What is his name?"
"Shane O'Connell."
"What is his offense?"
"He is charged with murder."
"Oh!"
Miss Althea recoiled. Her charitable impulses did not extend to
defendants charged with homicide. There was too much notoriety connected
with them, for one thing; there was nothing she hated so much as
notoriety.
"Seriously," he went on with earnestness, "I wish you'd have a word with
him. It's pretty hard to have to defend a man and not to know a thing
about his side of the case. It's almost your duty, don't you think?"
Miss Althea hesitated, and was lost.
"Very well," she answered reluctantly, "I'll see what I can do. Perhaps
he needs some medicine or letter paper or something. I'll get an order
from the warden and go right back and see him."
Twenty minutes later Shane O'Connell faced Miss Beekman sullenly across
the deal table of the counsel room. A ray of late sunshine fell through
the high grating of the heavily barred window upon a face quite
different from those which Miss Althea was accustomed to encounter in
these surroundings, for it showed no touch of depravity or evil habits,
and confinement had not yet deprived its cheeks of their rugged mantle
of crimson or its eyes of their bold gleam.
He was little more than a boy, this murderer, as handsome a lad as ever
swaggered out of County Kerry.
"An' what may it be that leads you to send for such as me, Miss
Beekman!" he demanded, glowering at her.
She felt suddenly unnerved, startled and rather shocked at his use of
her name. Where could he have discovered it? From the keeper, probably,
she decided. All her usual composure, her quiet self-possession, her
aloof and slightly condescending sweetness--had deserted her.
"I thought," she stammered--"I might--possibly--be of help to you."
"'Tis too late to make up for the harm ye've done!" His coal-black eyes
reached into her shrinking body as if to tear out her heart.
"I!" she gasped. "I--do harm! What do you mean?"
"Did not my sister Katie work for yez?" he asked, and his words leaped
and curled about her like hissing flames. "Did you see after her or
watch her comings and goings, as she saw after you--she a mere lass of
sixteen? Arrah! No!"
With a sensation of horror Miss Althea realized that at last she was in
a murder case in spite of herself! This lad, the brother of Katie, the
waitress whom she had discharged! How curious! And how unfortunate! His
charge was preposterous; nevertheless a faint blush stole to her cheek
and she looked away.
"How ridiculous!" she managed to say. "It was no part of my obligation
to look after her! How could I?"
His hawk's eyes watched her every tremor.
"Did ye not lock her out the night of the ball when she went wid
McGurk?"
"I--how absurd!"
Suddenly she faltered. An indistinct accusing recollection turned her
faint--of the housekeeper having told her that one of the girls insisted
on going to a dance on an evening not hers by arrangement, and how she
had given orders that the house should be closed the same as usual at
ten o'clock for the night. If the girl couldn't abide by the rules of
the Beekman ménage she could sleep somewhere else. What of it? Supposing
she had done so? She could not be held responsible for remote,
unreasonable and discreditable consequences!
And then by chance Shane O'Connell made use of a phrase that indirectly
saved his life, a phrase curiously like the one used on a former
occasion by Dawkins to Miss Althea:
"Katie was a member of your household; ye might have had a bit of
thought for her!" he asserted bitterly.
Dawkins had said: "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."
There was no sense in it! There was no parallel, no analogy. There was
no obligation to treat the girl as a guest, even though the girl should
have acted like one. Miss Beekman knew it. And yet there was--something!
Didn't she owe some sort of duty at any rate toward those in her
employment--those who slept under her roof?
"'Twould have been better to have been kind to her then than to be kind
to me now!" said he with sad conviction.
The proud Miss Althea Beekman, the dignified descendant of a long line
of ancestors, turned red. Heretofore serenely confident of her own
personal virtue and her own artificial standards of democracy, she now
found herself humiliated and chagrined before this rough young criminal.
"You--are--quite right!" she confessed, her eyes smarting with sudden
tears. "My position is quite--quite illogical. But of course I had no
idea! Please, please let me try to help you--if I can--and Katie,
too--if it isn't too late."
Shane O'Connell experienced contrition. After all it was not seemly that
the likes of him should be dictating to the likes of her. And he could
never abide seeing a woman--particularly a pretty woman--cry.
"Forgive me, madam!" he begged, lowering his head.
"You were quite justified in all you said!" she assured him. "Please
tell me everything that has happened. I have influence with the district
attorney and--in other places. No doubt I can be of assistance to you.
Of course, you can absolutely trust me!"
Shane O'Connell, looking into her honest gray eyes, knew that he could
trust her. Slowly--brokenly--tensely, he told her how he had killed Red
McGurk, and why.
The corridors were full of shadows when Althea Beekman put her hands on
Shane O'Connell's shoulders and bade him good night. Though she
abominated his crime and loathed him for having committed it she felt in
some way partially responsible, and she also perceived that, by the code
of the O'Connells, Shane had done what he believed to be right. He had
taken the law into his own hands and he was ready to pay the necessary
penalty. He would have done the same thing all over again. To this
extent at least he had her respect.
She found Mr. Tutt waiting for her on the bench by the warden's office.
"Well?" he asked with a smile, rising to greet her and tossing away his
stogy.
"I haven't very good news for you," she answered regretfully. "He's
confessed to me--told me everything--why he shot him and where he bought
the pistol. He's a brave boy, though! It's a sad case! But what can you
do with people who believe themselves justified in doing things like
that?"
She did not notice Detective Eddie Conroy, of the D.A.'s office,
standing behind an adjacent pillar, ostentatiously lighting a cigar; nor
see him smile as he slowly walked away.
* * * * *
"Talk about luck!" exulted O'Brien, the yellow dog of the district
attorney's office, an hour later to his chief. "What do you think, boss?
Eddie Conroy heard Miss Beekman telling old man Tutt over in the Tombs
that O'Connell had confessed to her! Say, how's that? Some
evidence--what?"
"What good will that do us?" asked Peckham, glancing up with a scowl
from his desk. "She won't testify for us."
"But she'll have to testify if we call her, won't she?" demanded his
assistant.
The district attorney drummed on the polished surface before him.
"We--ell, I suppose so," he admitted hesitatingly. "But you can't just
subpoena a woman like that without any warning and put her on the stand
and make her testify. It would be too rough!"
"It's the only way to do it!" retorted O'Brien with a sly grin. "If she
knew in advance that we were thinking of calling her she'd beat it out
of town."