By Advice of Counsel
or we'll tell the judge on you!"
The tall man subsided.
"Vell," suddenly interjected the foreman, "he admitted he was guilty in
the bolice gourt."
"Sure!" "That's so!" "Pass the box again!" came from all hands.
When the foreman had counted the ballots Bently was horrified to
discover that ten jurors now thought the defendant guilty, and only two
believed him innocent.
"May I suggest," said he earnestly, "that perhaps this old man did not
understand in the magistrate's court the elements that went to make up
the offense charged against him? He merely stood ready to admit freely
whatever the facts were. His opinion on the purely legal question of his
own guilt was not of much value. Anyhow, his subsequent plea of not
guilty to the indictment neutralizes the significance of the original
plea."
There was a murmur of surprise and admiration from Bently's companions.
"That's true, too!" declared the salesman. "I never thought of that!
You're some talker--you are, I must say! But how about that business
card?"
"It seems to me," argued Bently, "that the card plays no particular part
in this case. In the first place the question before us is not whether
Lowry ever did--in the past--hold himself out as a veterinary, but
whether he did so on the day alleged in the indictment. The fact that he
gave the detective a card which he had had printed perhaps years before
only tends to show that at some time or other he may have pretended to
be a licensed veterinary. And you will recall, gentlemen, that the
testimony is merely that he said to the detective in reference to the
card: 'That is my name.' He did not say anything to him about being a
veterinary."
This somewhat disingenuous argument created a profound impression.
"Say, now you've said something!" declared the salesman. "You'd oughta
been a lawyer yourself. Let's take another vote."
Curiously enough Bently's argument seemed to have had a revolutionary
effect, for the jury now stood ten to two for acquittal. He began to
feel encouraged. If ever there was a case-- Then he heard an altercation
going on fiercely between the salesman and Brown's summer friend, the
latter insisting loudly that the detective was a perfect gentleman and
entirely all right.
"Nobody questions Mr. Brown's entire honesty," interposed Bently
hastily, in a friendly way. "The question before us is the sufficiency
of the evidence. Upon this, it seems to me, there is what might fairly
be called a reasonable doubt."
"And you have to give that to the defendant--it's the law!" shouted the
salesman in fury.
It was at this point that Mr. Tutt and Phelan had taken up their
positions outside the door, and the friend of Brown had told the
salesman that he gave him a pain; that his doubt wasn't a reasonable
doubt.
"Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" protested Bently. "Let us discuss this matter
calmly."
"But I'm a reasonable man!" shouted the salesman. "And so, if I have any
doubt, my doubt is bound to be reasonable."
"You--a reasonable man?" sneered Brown's friend. "You're nothin' but a
damn fool!"
"I am, am I?" yelled the salesman, starting to remove his coat. "I'll
show you--"
"Oh, cut it out!" expostulated the fat man complacently. "Settle all
that afterward! We ain't interested."
"Vell, take annoder vote," mildly suggested the foreman.
This time it stood eleven to one for acquittal. All concentrated upon
the friend of Brown, over whose face had settled a look of grim
determination. But a similar expression occupied the features of Mr.
Bently Gibson, erstwhile the exponent of the-law-as-it-is, the bulwark
of the jury system, now adrift upon the ship of justice, blindly
determined that no matter what--law or no law, principles or no
principles--that old man was going to be acquitted.
"My friend," he remarked solemnly, taking the floor, "of course you want
to do justice in this case. We have nothing against Mr. Brown at all. He
is doubtless a very honest and efficient officer. But surely the good
character of this defendant may well create a reasonable doubt--and the
rest of us feel that it does."
"Sure! 'Course it does!" came from all sides. Mr. Brown's red-faced
friend having escaped the salesman's wrath began to show somewhat less
aggressiveness.
"I don't care a damn about Brown!" he assured them. "He can go to hell
for all of me! But I don't see how you can acquit this feller when the
evidence is uncontradicted that he told Brown he was a veterinary and
treated his horse. I'd be violating my oath if I voted for acquittal
after that testimony. I ain't going to commit perjury for nobody! I'd
like to oblige you gentlemen, too, and vote your way, but I just can't
with that evidence stickin' in my crop. If it wasn't for that--"
"He could 'a' treated the horse without doing it as a veterinary, just
as Mr. Tutt said!" interjected the tall man.
"Good for you!" said the salesman, fully restored to equanimity. "You're
gettin' intelligent. Serve on a few more juries--"
"But he said he was a veterinary," insisted Brown's friend. "How could
he have treated the horse as anything else but as a veterinary when he
said he was treating him as a veterinary?"
"Maybe he just thought he was doing it as a veterinary", commented the
gloom in black. "He may have tried to do it as a veterinary and failed.
In that case he didn't do it as a veterinary but just as a plain man.
Get me?"
"No, I don't!" snorted the red-faced one. "That's all bull. He said he
was a vet and he treated the horse as a vet and got five dollars for
it."
"How do you know he did?" unexpectedly asked Bently.
"Because he said so himself. That was part of the conversation between
Brown and Lowry," declared the obstinate summer friend of Brown. "If it
wasn't for that--"
"If it wasn't for that you'd acquit?" demanded Bently sharply.
"Yes. Sure I would!"
"Then I say you should disregard all that conversation because it was a
privileged communication between a doctor--Brown--and his
patient--Lowry!" declared Bently heatedly.
"But the judge said it wasn't privileged!" retorted the other.
"Mr. Tutt said it was, though," shot back the salesman.
"Well, the judge said--"
"Let's go in and find out who said what," proposed the tall man. "I'd
like to know myself. I don't remember who said anything any longer."
So they filed back into court.
"Your Honor," stuttered the foreman, licking his lips in embarrassment,
"some of the gen'l'muns vant to inguire veder the gonversation between
Mr. Brown and Mr. Lowry is privileged or veder we haf to belief it?"
The judge, who had evidently expected that the return of the jury was
for the purpose of declaring the defendant guilty, scowled.
"The rule is," said he wearily, "that conversations between a doctor and
his patient are privileged and cannot be testified to without the
consent of the patient. If Brown had been a doctor--which he is not--it
is possible that I might have sustained Mr. Tutt's objection on the
ground and struck out the conversation. But he only pretended to be a
doctor, and no privilege exists under those circumstances even if in
some cases it seems to work a hardship upon the one who is deceived. The
conversation in this instance is part of the record. You may retire."
But Bently, with a light upon his countenance such as theretofore had
ne'er been seen on sea or land, suddenly held up his hand.
"One question, Your Honor. If Brown had been a doctor you would have
excluded the testimony?"
The aged angel raised his eyebrows deprecatingly.
"Perhaps; I might have considered the suggestion."
"Thank you," said Bently, and they all traipsed out.
"That cooks him!" whispered Phelan to Mr. Tutt at the keyhole.
"Wait and see! Wait and see!" muttered the lawyer. "We're not dead yet."
Once back in their room the jury took another vote. Eleven to one again.
Then Bently rose.
"Gentlemen," he cried, "I think I have the key to this case."
They all gazed at him expectantly.
"We are obliged by law to give every reasonable doubt to the defendant.
Now the only obstacle to our acquitting this poor old man is the fact
that there is in evidence a conversation in which Lowry is claimed to
have said that he was a veterinary and had been acting as such all his
life. Mr. Tutt says that that conversation is privileged and should be
disregarded because it was a confidential communication between a doctor
and a patient. The judge says it is not privileged for the reason that
Mr. Brown was not in fact a doctor--but he says further that if Brown
were a doctor we should have to disregard that part of the
evidence--which would, as we all agree, leave us free to acquit.
"Now then, how do we know Brown is _not_ a doctor? He says he isn't; but
he lied about everything else he told Lowry, and he may have been lying
about that too. And if he lied to Lowry he may have been lying to us
here to-day. I say that there is a reasonable doubt right there as to
whether Brown is really a doctor or not. Such a doubt belongs to the
defendant. He is entitled to it and it is our duty to acquit him!"
"Hear! Hear!" "That's so!" "Bully for you!" "What yer got to say now,
eh?" "Take a vote!" "Pass the box!" resounded through the transom amid a
tremendous scuffling of feet and scraping of chairs.
"Phelan!" gasped Mr. Tutt. "Who shall ever again have the temerity to
suggest that the jury system is not the greatest of our institutions?"
"Pst!" answered Cap. "Listen! Sh-h. By God! They've acquitted him!"
* * * * *
"So you caught the five-fifteen after all!" was Eleanor's greeting as
the model juror jumped off the train. "I was terribly afraid you
wouldn't! I hope you didn't let any rascal get away from you?"
"No!" He laughed as he leaped into the motor beside her. "Not a rascal!
And I've got a surprise for you! I'm going to have my vacation after
all!"
"Really!" she cried, delighted. "You clever boy! How did you manage it?"
"Well," he answered a little shamefacedly as he lit a cigarette, "the
fact is that when the jury I was on returned their verdict this
afternoon the judge said he wouldn't require our services any longer."
* * * * *
It was at about the same moment that two other good and true friends
stood at the foot of the steps leading up to Mr. Tutt's ramshackle front
door.
"Sorr!" Danny was saying in a trembling voice, the tears in his faded
eyes. "Sorr! I would go to jail a hundred years and more, so I would,
could I but hear again what they all said of me! Sure, I niver knew I
was any account at all, at all! And them sayin' what a fine man I was,
an' all! God bless ye, sorr! And whin ye stand, sorr, at the bar of
heaven before God, the Judge, and the jury of all his holy angels, if
there be none else to defend ye, sure old Danny Lowry'll be there to do
that same."