By Advice of Counsel
Tony's arrest and incarceration. He was very sympathetic about it, very
gentle, this dapper little man with the pale gray eyes and inquisitive,
tapirlike nose; and after the first moment of shock Mrs. Mathusek took
courage and begged the gentleman to sit down. There are always two
vultures hanging over the poor--death and the law; but of the two the
law is the lesser evil. The former is a calamity; the latter is a
misfortune. The one is final, hopeless, irretrievable; from the other
there may perhaps be an escape. She knew Tony was a good boy; was sure
his arrest was a mistake, and that when the judge heard the evidence he
would let Tony go. Life had dealt hardly with her and made her an old
woman at thirty-four, really old, not only in body but in spirit, just
as in the middle ages the rigor of existence made even kings old at
thirty-five. What do the rich know of age? The women of the poor have a
day of spring, a year or two of summer, and a lifetime of autumn and
winter.
Mrs. Mathusek distrusted the law and lawyers in the abstract, but Mr.
Simpkins' appearance was so reassuring that he almost counteracted in
her mind the distress of Tony's misfortune. He was clearly a gentleman,
and she had a reverential regard for the gentry. What gentlefolk said
was to be accepted as true. In addition this particular gentleman was
learned in the law and skilled in getting unfortunate people out of
trouble. Now, though Mr. Simpkins possessed undoubtedly this latter
qualification, it was also true that he was equally skilled in getting
people into it. If he ultimately doubled their joys and halved their
sorrows he inevitably first doubled their sorrows and halved their
savings. Like the witch in Macbeth: "Double, double toil and trouble."
His aims were childishly simple: First, to find out how much money his
victim had, and then to get it.
His methods were no more complicated than his aims and had weathered the
test of generations of experience. So:
"Of course Tony must be bailed out," he said gently. "You don't want him
to spend the night in jail."
"Jail! Oh, no! How much is the bail?" cried Tony's mother.
"Only five hundred dollars." His pale gray eyes were watching her for
the slightest sign of suspicion.
"Five hundred dollars! Eoi! Eoi! It is a fortune! Where can I get five
hundred dollars?" She burst into tears. "I have saved only one hundred
and sixty!"
Mr. Simpkins pursed his lips. Then there was nothing for it! He reached
for his hat. Mrs. Mathusek wrung her hands. Couldn't the gentleman go
bail for Tony? He was such a dear, kind, good gentleman! She searched
his face hungrily. Mr. Simpkins falteringly admitted that he did not
possess five hundred dollars.
"But--" he hesitated.
"Yes!"
"But--" she echoed, seizing his sleeve and dragging him back.
Mr. Simpkins thought that they could hire somebody to go bail; no, in
that case there would be no money to pay the great lawyer whom they must
at once engage to defend her son--Mr. Hogan, one who had the pull and
called all the judges by their first names. He would not usually go into
court for less than five hundred dollars, but Mr. Simpkins said he would
explain the circumstances to him and could almost promise Mrs. Mathusek
that he would persuade him to do it this once for one hundred and fifty.
So well did he act his part that Tony's mother had to force him to take
the money, which she unsewed from inside the ticking of her mattress.
Then he conducted her to the station house to show her how comfortable
Tony really was and how much better it was to let him stay in jail one
night and make sure of his being turned out the next afternoon by giving
the money to Mr. Hogan, than to use it for getting bail for him and
leave him lawyerless and at the mercy of his accusers. When Mrs.
Mathusek saw the cell Tony was in she became even more frightened than
she had been at first. But by that time she had already given the money
to Simpkins.
Second thoughts are ofttimes best. Most crooks are eventually caught
through their having, from long immunity, grown careless and yielded to
impulse. Once he had signed the complaint in which he swore that he had
seen Tony throw the brick, Delany had undergone a change of heart. Being
an experienced policeman he was sensitive to official atmosphere, and he
had developed a hunch that Judge Harrison was leery of the case. The
more he thought of it the less he liked the way the son-of-a-gun had
acted, the way he'd tried to get Mathusek to ask for an immediate
hearing. Why had he ever been such a fool as to sign the complaint
himself? It had been ridiculous--just because he was mad at the boy for
trying to get away and wanted to make things easy for Froelich. If he
went on the stand the next afternoon he'd have to make up all sorts of
fancy details, and Hogan would have his skin neatly tacked to the barn
doors for keeps. Thereafter, no matter what happened, he'd never be able
to change his testimony. After all, it would be easy enough to abandon
the charge at the present point. It was a genuine case of cold feet. He
scented trouble. He wanted to renig while the renigging was good. What
in hell had Froelich ever done for him, anyhow? A few measly pieces of
roast!
When Hogan returned home that evening with the little Hogans from the
movies he found the cop waiting for him outside his door.
"Look here," Delany whispered, "I'm going to can this here Mathusek
window case. I'm going to fall down flat on my identification and give
you a walkout. So go easy on me--and sort of help me along, see?"
"The hell you are!" retorted Hogan indignantly. "Then where do I come
in, eh? Why don't you come through?"
"But I've got him wrong!" pleaded Delany. "You don't want me to put my
neck in a sling, do you, so as you can make a few dollars? Look at all
the money I've sent your way. Have a heart, Rafe!"
"Bull!" sneered the Honorable Rafe. "A man's gotta live! You saw him do
it! You've sworn to it, haven't you?"
"I made a mistake."
"How'll that sound to the commissioner? An' to Judge Harrison? No, no!
Nothin' doin'! If you start anything like that I'll roast the life out
of you!"
Delany spat as near Hogan's foot as he elegantly could.
"You're a hell of a feller, you are!" he growled, and turned his back on
him as upon Satan.
* * * * *
The brick that Terry McGurk hurled as a matter of principle through
Froelich's window produced almost as momentous consequences as the want
of the horseshoe nail did in Franklin's famous maxim. It is the unknown
element in every transaction that makes for danger.
The morning after the catastrophe Mr. Froelich promptly made application
to the casualty company with which he had insured his window for
reimbursement for his damage. Just as promptly the company's lawyer
appeared at the butcher shop and ascertained that the miscreant who had
done the foul deed had been arrested and was to be brought into court
that afternoon. This lawyer, whose salary depended indirectly upon the
success which attended his efforts to secure the conviction and
punishment of those who had cost his company money, immediately camped
upon the trails of both Froelich and Delany. It was up to them, he said,
to have the doer of wanton mischief sent away. If they didn't cooperate
he would most certainly ascertain why. Now insurance companies are
powerful corporations. They can do favors, and contrariwise they can
make trouble, and Lawyer Asche was hot under the collar about that
window. Had he ever heard of the place he would have likened it to the
destruction of Coucy-le-Château by the Huns.
This, for Delany, put an entirely new aspect upon the affair. It was one
thing to ditch a case and another to run up against Nathan Asche. He had
sworn to the complaint and if he didn't make good on the witness stand
Asche would get his hide. Then he bethought him that if only Froelich
was sufficiently emphatic in his testimony a little uncertainty on his
own part might be excused.
In the meantime, however, two things had happened to curdle Froelich's
enthusiasm. First, his claim against the Tornado Casualty Company had
been approved, and second, he had been informed on credible authority
that they had got the wrong boy. Now he had sincerely thought that he
had seen Tony throw the brick--he had certainly seen a boy in a red
sweater do something--but he realized also that he had been excited and
more or less bewildered at the time; and his informant--Mrs. Sussman,
the wife of the cigar dealer--alleged positively that it had been thrown
by a strange kid who appeared suddenly from round the corner and as
suddenly ran away in the direction whence he had come.
Froelich perceived that he had probably been mistaken, and being
relatively honest--and being also about to get his money--and not
wishing to bear false witness, particularly if he might later be sued
for false imprisonment, he decided to duck and pass the buck to Delany,
who was definitely committed. He was shrewd enough, however, not to give
his real reason to the policeman, but put it on the ground of being so
confused that he couldn't remember. This left Delany responsible for
everything.
"But you said that that was the feller!" argued the cop, who had gone to
urge Froelich to assume the onus of the charge. "And now you want to
leave me holdin' the bag!"
"Vell, you said yourself you seen him, didn't you?" replied the German.
"An' you svore to it. I didn't svear to noddings."
"Aw, you!" roared the enraged cop, and hastened to interview Mr. Asche.
Aping a broad humanitarianism he suggested to Asche that if Mrs.
Mathusek would pay for the window they could afford to let up on the
boy. He did it so ingeniously that he got Asche to go round there, only
to find that she had no money, all given to Simpkins. Gee, what a
mix-up!
It is quite possible that even under these circumstances Delany might
still have availed himself of what in law is called a _locus
poenitentiae_ had it not been that the mix-up was rendered still more
mixed by the surreptitious appearance in the case of Mr. Michael McGurk,
the father of the actual brick artist, who had learned that the cop was
getting wabbly and was entertaining the preposterous possibility of
withdrawing the charge against the innocent Mathusek, to the imminent
danger of his own offspring. In no uncertain terms the saloon keeper
intimated to the now embarrassed guardian of the public peace that if he
pulled anything like that he would have him thrown off the force, to say
nothing of other and darker possibilities connected with the morgue.
All of which gave Delany decided pause.
Hogan, for his own reasons, had meanwhile reached an independent
conclusion as to how he could circumvent Delany's contemplated
treachery. If, he decided, the cop should go back on his identification
of the criminal he foresaw Tony's discharge in the magistrate's court,
and no more money. The only sure way, therefore, to prevent Tony's
escape would be by not giving Delany the chance to change his testimony;
and by waiving examination before the magistrate and consenting
voluntarily to having his client held for the action of the grand jury,
in which event Tony would be sent to the Tombs and there would be plenty
of time for Simpkins to get an assignment of Mrs. Mathusek's insurance
money before the grand jury kicked out the case. This also had the
additional advantage of preventing any funny business on the part of
Judge Harrison.
Delany was still undecided what he was going to do when the case was
called at two o'clock. It is conceivable that he might still have tried
to rectify his error by telling something near the truth, in spite of
Hogan, Asche and McGurk, but the opportunity was denied him.