By Advice of Counsel
the power to regulate the domestic relations of the United States, not
being delegated under the Constitution to the Federal Government, is
expressly retained by the states themselves."
"You've given me a whole lot of ideas," admitted Tutt. "If I get you
rightly, as each state is governed by its own independent laws, the
status of married persons must be governed by the law of the state where
they are; otherwise if every couple on some theory of exterritoriality
carried the law of the state where they happened to have been joined
together round with them we would have the spectacle of every state in
the union interpreting the divorce laws of every other state--confusion
worse confounded."
"On the other hand," returned Mr. Tutt, "the law is settled that a
marriage valid when made is valid everywhere; and conversely, if invalid
where made is invalid everywhere--like our Mongolian case. If that were
not so every couple in order to continue legally married would have to
go through a new ceremony in every state through which they traveled."
"Right-o!" whistled Tutt. "A parson on every Pullman!"
"It follows," continued Mr. Tutt, lighting a fresh stogy and warming to
his subject, "that as each state has the right to regulate the status of
its own citizens it has jurisdiction to act in a divorce proceeding
provided one of the parties is actually domiciled within its borders.
Naturally this action must be determined by its own laws and not by
those of any other state. The great divergence of these laws makes
extraordinary complications."
"Hallelujah!" cried Tutt. "Now, in the words of the psalmist, you've
said a mouthful! I know a man who at one and the same time is legally
married to one woman in England, to another in Nevada, is a bigamist in
New York, and--"
"What else could he be except a widower in Pittsburgh?" pondered the
elder Tutt. "But it's quite possible. There's a case going on now where
a woman in New York City is suing her ex-husband for a divorce on the
usual statutory ground, and naming his present wife as co-respondent,
though the plaintiff herself divorced him ten years ago in Reno, and he
married again immediately after on the strength of it."
"I'm feeling stronger every minute!" exclaimed Tutt. "Surely in all this
bedlam we ought to be able to acquit our new client Mr. Higgleby of the
charge of bigamy. At least _you_ ought to be able to. I couldn't."
"What's the difficulty?" queried Mr. Tutt.
"The difficulty simply is that he married the present Mrs. Higgleby on
the seventeenth of last December here in the city of New York, when he
had a perfectly good wife, whom he had married on the eleventh of the
preceding May, living in Chicago."
"What on earth is the matter with him?" inquired Mr. Tutt.
"He simply says he's a traveling man," replied his partner, "and--he
happened to be in New York."
"Well, the next time he calls, you send him in to see me," directed Mr.
Tutt. "What was the present lady's name?"
"Woodcock," answered Tutt. "Alvina Woodcock."
"And she wanted to change to Higgleby?" muttered his partner. "I wonder
why."
"Oh, there's something sort of appealing about him," acknowledged Tutt.
"But he don't look like a bigamist," he concluded. "What does a bigamist
look like?" meditated Mr. Tutt as he lit another stogy.
* * * * *
"Good morning, Mr. Tutt," muttered the Honorable Peckham from behind the
imitation rubber plant in his office, where he was engaged in
surreptitiously consuming an apple. "Um--be with you in a minute. What's
on your mind?"
Mr. Tutt simultaneously removed his stogy with one hand and his
stovepipe with the other.
"I thought we might as well run over my list of cases," he replied. "I
can offer you a plea or two if you wish."
"Do I!" ejaculated the D.A., rolling his eyes heavenward. "Let's hear
the Roll of Honor."
Mr. Tutt placed his hat, bottom side up, on the carpet and lowered
himself into a huge leather armchair, furnished to the county by a
political friend of Mr. Peckham and billed at four hundred per cent of
the regular retail price. Then he reinserted the stogy between his lips
and produced from his inside pocket a typewritten sheet.
"There's Watkins--murdered his stepmother--indicted seven months ago.
Give you murder in the second?"
"I'll take it," assented Peckham, lighting a cigar in a businesslike
manner. "What else you got?"
"Joseph Goldstein--burglary. Will you give him grand larceny in the
second?"
The Honorable Peckham shook his head.
"Sorry I can't oblige you, old top," he said regretfully. "He's called
the King of the Fences. If I did, the papers would holler like hell.
I'll make it any degree of burglary, though."
"Very well. Burglary in the third," agreed Mr. Tutt, jotting it down.
"Then here's a whole bunch--five--indicted together for assault on a
bartender."
"What degree?"
"Second--brass knuckles."
"You can have third degree for the lot," grunted Peckham laconically.
"All right," said Mr. Tutt. "Now for the ones that are going to trial.
Here's Jennie Smith, indicted for stealing a mandarin chain valued at
sixty-five dollars up at Monahaka's. The chain's only worth about
six-fifty and I can prove it. Monahaka don't want to go to trial because
he knows I'll show him up for the Oriental flimflammer that he is. But
of course she took it. What do you say? I'll plead her to petty and you
give her a suspended sentence? That's a fair trade."
Peckham pondered.
"Sure," he said finally. "I'm agreeable. Only tell Jennie that next time
I'll have her run out of town."
Mr. Tutt nodded.
"I'll whisper it to her. Now then, here's Higgleby--"
"Higgle who?" inquired Peckham dreamily.
"Bee--by--Higgleby," explained Mr. Tutt. "For bigamy. I want you to
dismiss the indictment for me."
"What for?"
"You'll never convict him."
"Why not?"
"Just because you never will!" Mr. Tutt assured him with earnestness.
"And you might as well wipe him off the list."
"Anything the matter with the indictment?" asked the D.A. "Caput Magnus
drew it. He's a good man, you know."
Mr. Tutt drew sententiously on his stogy.
"I would like to tell you all my secrets," he replied after a pause,
"but I can't afford to. The indictment is in the usual form. But just
between you and me, you'll never convict Higgleby as long as you live."
"Didn't he marry two joint and several ladies?"
"He did."
"And one of 'em right here in New York County?"
"He did."
"Well, how in hell can I dismiss the indictment?"
"Oh, easily enough. Lack of proof as to the first marriage in Chicago,
for instance. How are you going to prove he wasn't divorced?"
"That's matter of defense," retorted Peckham.
"What's a little bigamy between friends, anyway?" ruminated the old
lawyer. "It's a kind of sumptuary offense. People will marry. And it's
good policy to have 'em. If they happen to overdo it a little--"
"Well, if I do chuck the darn thing out what will you give me in
return?" asked Peckham. "Of course, bigamy isn't my favorite crime or
anything like that. I'm no bloodhound on matrimonial offenses. How'll
you trade?"
"If you'll throw out Higgleby I'll plead Angelo Ferrero to
manslaughter," announced Mr. Tutt with a grand air of bestowing largess
upon an unworthy recipient.
"Cock-a-doodle-do!" chortled Peckham. "A lot you will! Angelo's halfway
to the chair already yet!"
"That's the best I'll do," replied Mr. Tutt, feeling for his hat.
Peckham hesitated. Mr. Tutt was a fair dealer. And he wanted to get rid
of Angelo.
"Give you murder in the second," he urged.
"Manslaughter."
"Nothing doing," answered the D.A. definitely. "Your Mr. Higglebigamy'll
have to stand trial."
"Oh, very well!" replied Mr. Tutt, unjointing himself. "We're
ready--whenever you are."
The old lawyer's lank figure had hardly disappeared out of the front
office when Peckham rang for Caput Magnus.
"Look here, Caput," he remarked suspiciously to the indictment clerk,
"is there anything wrong with that Higgledy indictment?"
"Higgleby, you mean, I guess," replied Mr. Magnus, regarding the D.A. in
a superior manner over the tops of his horn-rimmed spectacles. "Nothing
is the matter with the indictment. I have followed my customary form. It
has stood every test over and over again. Why do you ask?"
The Honorable Peckham turned away impatiently.
"Oh--nothing. Look here," he added unexpectedly, "I think I'll have you
try that indictment yourself."
"Me!" ejaculated Caput in horror. "Why, I never tried a case in my
life!"
"Well, 's time you began!" growled the D.A.
"I--I--shouldn't know what to do!" protested Mr. Magnus in agony at the
mere suggestion.
"Where the devil would we be if everybody felt like that?" demanded his
master. "You're supposed to be a lawyer, aren't you?"
"But I--I--can't! I--don't know how!"
"Hang it all," cried Peckham furiously, "you go ahead and do as I say.
You indicted Higgledy; now you can try Higgledy!"
He was utterly unreasonable, but his anger was genuine if baseless.
"Oh, very well, sir," stammered Mr. Magnus. "Of course I'll--I must--do
whatever you say."
"You better!" shouted Peckham after his retreating figure. "You little
blathering shrimp!"
Then he threw himself down in his swivel chair with a bang.
"Judas H. Priest!" he roared at the rubber plant. "I'd give a good deal
for a decent excuse to fire that blooming nincompoop!"
Meantime, as the object of his ire slunk down the corridor darkness
descended upon the soul of Caput Magnus. For Caput was what is known as
an office lawyer and had never gone into court save as an onlooker
or--as he would have phrased it--an _amicus curiae_. He was a perfect
pundit--"a hellion on law," according to the Honorable Peckham--a
strutting little cock on his own particular dunghill, but, stripped of
his goggles, books, forms and foolscap, as far as his equanimity was
concerned he might as well have been in face, figure and general
objectionability. No longer could he be heard roaring for his
stenographer. Instead, those of his colleagues who paused stealthily
outside his door on their way over to Pont's for "five-o'clock tea"
heard dulcet tones floating forth from the transom in varying
fluctuations:
"Ahem! H'm! Gentlemen of the jury--h'm! The defendant is indicted for
the outrageous crime of bigamy! No, that won't do! Gentlemen of the
jury, the defendant is indicted for the crime of bigamy! H'm! The crime
of bigamy is one of those atrocious offenses against the moral law--"
"Oh! Oh!" choked the legal assistants as they embraced themselves
wildly. "Oh! Oh! Caput's practisin'! Just listen to 'im! Ain't he the
little cuckoo! Bet he's takin' lessons in elocution! But won't old Tutt
just eat him alive!"
And in the stilly hours of the early dawn those sleeping in tenements
and extensions adjacent to the hall bedroom occupied by Caput were
roused by a trembling voice that sought vainly to imitate the
nonchalance of experience, declaiming: "Gentlemen of the jury, the
defendant is indicted for the crime of bigamy! This offense is one
repugnant to the instincts of civilization and odious to the tenets of
religion!" And thereafter they tossed until breakfast time, bigamy
becoming more and more odious to them every minute.
No form of diet, no physical exercise, no "reducicle" could have
achieved the extraordinary alteration in Mr. Magnus' appearance that was
in fact induced by his anxiety over his prospective prosecution of
Higgleby. Whereas erstwhile he had been smug and condescending,
complacent, lethargic and ponderous, he now became drawn, nervous,
apprehensive and obsequious. Moreover, he was markedly thinner. He was
obviously on a decline, caused by sheer funk. Speak sharply to him and