By Advice of Counsel
"Mr. Tutt," said Tutt with a depressed manner as he watched Willie
remove the screen and drag out the old gate-leg table for the firm's
daily five o'clock tea and conference in the senior partner's office,
"if a man called you a shyster what would you do about it?"
The elder lawyer sucked meditatively on the fag end of his stogy before
replying.
"Why not sue him?" Mr. Tutt inquired.
"But suppose he didn't have any money?" replied Tutt disgustedly.
"Then why not have him arrested?" continued Mr. Tutt. "It's libelous
_per se_ to call a lawyer a shyster."
"Even if he is one," supplemented Miss Minerva Wiggin ironically, as she
removed her paper cuffs preparatory to lighting the alcohol lamp under
the teakettle. "The greater the truth the greater the libel, you know!"
"And what do you mean by that?" sharply rejoined Tutt. "You don't--"
"No," replied the managing clerk of Tutt & Tutt. "I don't! Of course
not! And frankly, I don't know what a shyster is."
"Neither do I," admitted Tutt. "But it sounds opprobrious. Still, that
is a rather dangerous test. You remember that colored client of ours who
wanted us to bring an action against somebody for calling him an
Ethiopian!"
"There's nothing dishonorable in being an Ethiopian," asserted Miss
Wiggin.
"A shyster," said Mr. Tutt, reading from the Century Dictionary, "is
defined as 'one who does business trickily; a person without
professional honor; used chiefly of lawyers.'"
"Well?" snapped Tutt.
"Well?" echoed Miss Wiggin.
"H'm! Well!" concluded Mr. Tutt.
"I nominate for the first pedestal in our Hall of Legal Ill
Fame--Raphael B. Hogan," announced Tutt, complacently disregarding all
innuendoes.
"But he's a very elegant and gentlemanly person," objected Miss Wiggin
as she warmed the cups. "My idea of a shyster is a down-at-the-heels,
unshaved and generally disreputable-looking police-court
lawyer--preferably with a red nose--who murders the English
language--and who makes his living by preying upon the ignorant and
helpless."
"Like Finklestein?" suggested Tutt.
"Exactly!" agreed Miss Wiggin. "Like Finklestein."
"He's one of the most honorable men I know!" protested Mr. Tutt. "My
dear Minerva, you are making the great mistake--common, I confess, to a
large number of people--of associating dirt and crime. Now dirt may
breed crime, but crime doesn't necessarily breed dirt."
"You don't have to be shabby to prey upon the ignorant and helpless,"
argued Tutt. "Some of our most prosperous brethren are the worst sharks
out of Sing Sing."
"That is true!" she admitted, "but tell it not in Gath!"
"A shyster," began Mr. Tutt, unsuccessfully applying a forced draft to
his stogy and then throwing it away, "bears about the same relation to
an honest lawyer as a cad does to a gentleman. The fact that he's well
dressed, belongs to a good club and has his name in the Social Register
doesn't affect the situation. Clothes don't make men; they only make
opportunities."
"But why is it," persisted Miss Wiggin, "that we invariably associate
the idea of crime with that of 'poverty, hunger and dirt'?"
"That is easy to explain," asserted Mr. Tutt. "The criminal law
originally dealt only with crimes of violence--such as murder, rape and
assault. In the old days people didn't have any property in the modern
sense--except their land, their cattle or their weapons. They had no
bonds or stock or bank accounts. Now it is of course true that rough,
ignorant people are much more prone to violence of speech and action
than those of gentle breeding, and hence most of our crimes of violence
are committed by those whose lives are those of squalor. But"--and here
Mr. Tutt's voice rose indignantly--"our greatest mistake is to assume
that crimes of violence are the most dangerous to the state, for they
are not. They cause greater disturbance and perhaps more momentary
inconvenience, but they do not usually evince much moral turpitude.
After all, it does no great harm if one man punches another in the head,
or even in a fit of anger sticks a dagger in him. The police can easily
handle all that. The real danger to the community lies in the crimes of
duplicity--the cheats, frauds, false pretenses, tricks and devices,
flimflams--practised most successfully by well-dressed gentlemanly
crooks of polished manners."
By this time the kettle was boiling cheerfully, quite as if no such
thing as criminal law existed at all, and Miss Wiggin began to make the
tea.
"All the same," she ruminated, "people--particularly very poor
people--are often driven to crime by necessity."
"It's Nature's first law," contributed Tutt brightly.
Mr. Tutt uttered a snort of disgust.
"It may be Nature's first law, but it's about the weakest defense a
guilty man can offer. 'I couldn't help myself' has always been the
excuse for helping oneself!"
"Rather good--that!" approved Miss Wiggin. "Can you do it again?"
"The victim of circumstances is inevitably one who has made a victim of
someone else," blandly went on Mr. Tutt without hesitation.
"Ting-a-ling! Right on the bell!" she laughed.
"It's true!" he assured her seriously. "There are two defenses that are
played out--necessity and instigation. They've never been any good since
the Almighty overruled Adam's plea in confession and avoidance that a
certain female co-defendant took advantage of his hungry innocence and
put him up to it."
"No one could respect a man who tried to hide behind a woman's skirts!"
commented Tutt.
"Are you referring to Adam?" inquired his partner. "Anyhow, come to
think of it, the maxim is not that 'Necessity is the first law of
Nature,' but that 'Necessity knows no law.'"
"I'll bet you--" began Tutt. Then he paused, recalling a certain
celebrated wager which he had lost to Mr. Tutt upon the question of who
cut Samson's hair. "I bet you don't know who said it!" he concluded
lamely.
"If I recall correctly," ruminated Mr. Tutt, "Shakspere says in 'Julius
Caesar' that 'Nature must obey necessity'; while Rabelais says
'Necessity has no law'; but the quotation we familiarly use is
'Necessity knows no law except to conquer,' which is from Publilius
Syrus."
"From who?" cried Tutt in ungrammatical surprise.
"Never mind!" soothed Miss Wiggin. "Anyway, it wasn't Raphael B. Hogan."
"Who certainly completely satisfies your definition so far as preying
upon the ignorant and helpless is concerned," said Mr. Tutt. "That man
is a human hyena--worse than a highwayman."
"Yet he's a swell dresser," interjected Tutt. "Owns his house and lives
in amity with his wife."
"Doubtless he's a loyal husband and a devoted father," agreed Mr. Tutt.
"But so, very likely, is the hyena. Certainly Hogan hasn't got the
excuse of necessity for doing what he does."
"Don't you suppose he has to give up good and plenty to somebody?"
demanded Tutt. "Cops and prison keepers and bondsmen and under sheriffs,
and all kinds of crooked petty officials. I should worry!"
_"Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum,"_
quoted Miss Wiggin reminiscently.
"A flea has to be a flea," continued Tutt. "He, or it, can't be anything
else, but Hogan doesn't have to be a lawyer. He could be an honest man
if he chose."
"He? Not on your life! He couldn't be honest if he tried!" roared Mr.
Tutt. "He's just a carnivorous animal! A man eater! They talk about
scratching a Russian and finding a Tartar; I'd hate to scratch some of
our legal brethren."
"So would I!" assented Tutt. "I guess you're right, Mr. Tutt.
Christianity and the Golden Rule are all right in the upper social
circles, but off Fifth Avenue there's the same sort of struggle for
existence that goes on in the animal world. A man may be all sweetness
and light to his wife and children and go to church on Sundays; he may
even play pretty fair with his own gang; but outside of his home and
social circle he's a ravening wolf; at least Raphael B. Hogan is!"
* * * * *
The subject of the foregoing entirely accidental conversation was at
that moment standing contemplatively in his office window smoking an
excellent cigar preparatory to returning to the bosom of his family.
Raphael B. Hogan believed in taking life easily. He was accustomed to
say that outside office hours his time belonged to his wife and
children; and several times a week he made it his habit on the way home
to supper to stop at the florist's or the toy shop and bear away with
him inexpensive tokens of his love and affection. On the desk behind
him, over which in the course of each month passed a lot of very tainted
money, stood a large photograph of Mrs. Hogan, and another of the three
little Hogans in ornamented silver frames, and his face would soften
tenderly at the sight of their self-conscious faces, even at a moment
when he might be relieving a widowed seamstress of her entire
savings-bank account. After five o'clock this hyena purred at his wife
and licked his cubs; the rest of the time he knew no mercy.
But he concealed his cruelty and his avarice under a mask of benignity.
He was fat, jolly and sympathetic, and his smile was the smile of a
warm-hearted humanitarian. The milk of human kindness oozed from his
every pore. In fact, he was always grumbling about the amount of work he
had to do for nothing. He was a genial, generous host; unostentatiously
conspicuous in the local religious life of his denomination; in court a
model of obsequious urbanity, deferential to the judges before whom he
appeared and courteous to all with whom he was thrown in contact. A
good-natured, easy-going, simple-minded fat man; deliberate, slow of
speech, well-meaning, with honesty sticking out all over him, you would
have said; one in whom the widow and the orphan would have found a
staunch protector and an unselfish friend. And now, having thus subtly
connoted the character of our villain, let us proceed with our
narrative.
The telephone buzzed on the wall set beside him.
"That you, chief?" came the voice of Simpkins.
"Yep."
"Got one off Delany."
"What is it?"
"Kid smashed a window--malicious mischief. Held for examination
to-morrow at two. Five hundred bail."
"Any sugar?"
"Don't know. Says his father's dead and mother earns seventeen a week in
a sweatshop and sends him to school. Got some insurance. I'm going right
round there now."
"Well," replied Hogan, "don't scare her by taking too much off her at
first. I suppose there's evidence to hold him?"
"Sure. Delany says he saw it."
"All right. But go easy! Good night."
"Leave that to me, chief!" assured Simpkins. "See you to-morrow."
It will be observed that in this professional interchange nothing at all
was said regarding the possibility of establishing Tony's innocence, but
that on the contrary Mr. Simpkins' mind was concentrated upon his
mother's ability to pay. This was the only really important
consideration to either of them. But Hogan did not worry, because he
knew that Simpkins would skilfully entangle Mrs. Mathusek in such a web
of apprehension that rather than face her fears she would if necessary
go out and steal the money. So Mr. Raphael B. Hogan hung up the receiver
and with his heart full of gentle sympathy for all mankind walked slowly
home, pausing to get some roses for Mrs. Hogan and to buy a box for
Daddy Long Legs at the Strand, for whenever he got a new case he always
made it the occasion for a family party, and he wanted the children to
benefit by passing an evening under the sweet influence of Miss
Pickford.
Now just at the moment that his employer was buying the roses Mr.
Simpkins entered the apartment of Mrs. Mathusek and informed her of