Tutt and Mr. Tutt - Arthur Train
"You shall pay well for this!" he cried, frowning at the distressed
proprietor, while Newbegin leaned piteously against a papier-mache
pillar. "This is an outrage! You shall be held liable in heavy damages
for my client's indigestion!"
And thus Tutt & Tutt got their first case out of Newbegin, for under the
influence of the eloquence of Mr. Tutt a jury was induced to give him a
verdict of one thousand dollars against the Comers Hotel, which the
Court of Appeals sustained in the following words, quoting verbatim from
the learned brief furnished by Tutt & Tutt, Ephraim Tutt of counsel:
"The only legal question in the case, or so it appears to us, is whether
there is such a sale of food to a guest on the part of the proprietor
as will sustain a warranty. If we are not in error, however, the law is
settled and has been since the reign of Henry the Sixth. In the Ninth
Year Book of that Monarch's reign there is a case in which it was held
that 'if I go to a tavern to eat, and the taverner gives and sells me
meat and it corrupted, whereby I am made very sick, action lies against
him without any express warranty, for there is a warranty in law'; and
in the time of Henry the Seventh the learned Justice Keilway said, 'No
man can justify selling corrupt victual, but an action on the case lies
against the seller, whether the victual was warranted to be good or
not.' Now, certainly, whether mouse meat be or be not deleterious to
health a guest at a hotel who orders a portion of kidney stew has the
right to expect, and the hotel keeper impliedly warrants, that such dish
will contain no ingredients beyond those ordinarily placed therein."
* * * * *
"A thousand dollars!" exulted Tutt when the verdict was rendered. "Why,
anyone would eat mouse for a thousand dollars!"
The Comers Hotel became in due course a client of Tutt & Tutt, and the
mouse which made Mr. Tutt famous did not die in vain, for the case
became celebrated throughout the length and breadth of the land, to the
glory of the firm and a vast improvement in the culinary conditions
existing in hotels.
"Come in, Mr. Barrows! Come right in! I haven't seen you for--well, how
long is it?" exclaimed Mr. Tutt, extending a long welcoming arm toward a
human scarecrow upon the threshold.
"Five years," answered the visitor. "I only got out day before
yesterday. Fourteen months off for good behavior."
He coughed and put down carefully beside him a large dress-suit case
marked E.V.B., Pottsville, N.Y.
"Well, well!" sighed Mr. Tutt. "So it is. How time flies!"
"Not in Sing Sing!" replied Mr. Barrows ruefully.
"I suppose not. Still, it must feel good to be out!"
Mr. Barrows made no reply but dusted off his felt hat. He was but the
shadow of a man, an old man at that, as was attested by his long gray
beard, his faded blue eyes, and the thin white hair about his fine
domelike forehead.
"I forget what your trouble was about," said Mr. Tutt gently. "Won't you
have a stogy?"
Mr. Barrows shook his head.
"I ain't used to it," he answered. "Makes me cough." He gazed about him
vaguely.
"Something about bonds, wasn't it?" asked Mr. Tutt.
"Yes," replied Mr. Barrows; "Great Lakes and Canadian Southern."
"Of course! Of course!"
"A wonderful property," murmured Mr. Barrows regretfully. "The bonds
were perfectly good. There was a defect in the foreclosure proceedings
which made them a permanent underlying security of the reorganized
company--under The Northern Pacific R.R. Co. vs. Boyd; you know--but the
court refused to hold that way. They never will hold the way you want,
will they?" He looked innocently at Mr. Tutt.
"No," agreed the latter with conviction, "they never will!"
"Now those bonds were as good as gold," went on the old man; "and yet
they said I had to go to prison. You know all about it. You were my
lawyer."
"Yes," assented Mr. Tutt, "I remember all about it now."
Indeed it had all come back to him with the vividness of a landscape
seen during a lightning flash--the crowded court, old Doc Barrows upon
the witness stand, charged with getting money on the strength of
defaulted and outlawed bonds--picked up heaven knows where--pathetically
trying to persuade an unsympathetic court that for some reason they
were still worth their face value, though the mortgage securing the debt
which they represented had long since been foreclosed and the money
distributed.
"I'd paid for 'em--actual cash," he rambled on. "Not much, to be
sure--but real money. If I got 'em cheap that was my good luck, wasn't
it? It was because my brain was sharper than other folks'! I said they
had value and I say so now--only nobody will believe it or take the
trouble to find out. I learned a lot up there in Sing Sing too," he
continued, warming to his subject. "Do you know, sir, there are fortunes
lying all about us? Take gold, for instance! There's a fraction of a
grain in every ton of sea water. But the big people don't want it taken
out because it would depress the standard of exchange. I say it's a
conspiracy--and yet they jailed a man for it! There's great mineral
deposits all about just waiting for the right man to come along and
develop 'em."
His lifted eye rested upon the engraving of Abraham Lincoln over Mr.
Tutt's desk. "There was a man!" he exclaimed inconsequently; then
stopped and ran his transparent, heavily veined old hand over his
forehead. "Where was I? Let me see. Oh, yes--gold. All those great
properties could be bought at one time or another for a song. It needed
a pioneer! That's what I was--a pioneer to find the gold where other
people couldn't find it. That's not any crime; it's a service to
humanity! If only they'd have a little faith--instead of locking you up.
The judge never looked up the law about those Great Lakes bonds! If he
had he'd have found out I was right! I'd looked it up. I studied law
once myself."
"I know," said Mr. Tutt, almost moved to tears by the sight of the wreck
before him. "You practised up state, didn't you?"
"Yes," responded Doc Barrows eagerly. "And in Chicago too. I'm a member
of the Cook County bar. I'll tell you something! If the Supreme Court of
Illinois hadn't been wrong in its law I'd be the richest man in the
world--in the whole world!" He grabbed Mr. Tutt by the arm and stared
hard into his eyes. "Didn't I show you my papers? I own seven feet of
water front clean round Lake Michigan all through the city of Chicago I
got it for a song from the man who found out the flaw in the original
title deed of 1817; he was dying. 'I'll sell my secret to you,' he says,
'because I'm passing on. May it bring you luck!' I looked it all up and
it was just as he said. So I got up a corporation--The Chicago Water
Front and Terminal Company--and sold bonds to fight my claim in the
courts. But all the people who had deeds to my land conspired against
me and had me arrested! They sent me to the penitentiary. There's
justice for you!"
"That was too bad!" said Mr. Tutt in a soothing voice. "But after all
what good would all that money have done you?"
"I don't want money!" affirmed Doc plaintively. "I've never needed
money. I know enough secrets to make me rich a dozen times over. Not
money but justice is what I want--my legal rights. But I'm tired of
fighting against 'em. They've beaten me! Yes, they've beaten me! I'm
going to retire. That's why I came in to see you, Mr. Tutt. I never paid
you for your services as my attorney. I'm going away. You see my married
daughter lost her husband the other day and she wants me to come up and
live with her on the farm to keep her from being lonely. Of course it
won't be much like life in Wall Street--but I owe her some duty and I'm
getting on--I am, Mr. Tutt, I really am!"
He smiled.
"And I haven't seen Louisa for three years--my only daughter. I shall
enjoy being with her. She was such a dear little girl! I'll tell you
another secret"--his voice dropped to a whisper--"I've found out there's
a gold mine on her farm, only she doesn't know it. A rich vein runs
right through her cow pasture. We'll be rich! Wouldn't it be fine, Mr.
Tutt, to be rich? Then I'm going to pay you in real money for all you've
done for me--thousands! But until then I'm going to let you have
these--all my securities; my own, you know, every one of them."
He placed the suitcase in front of Mr. Tutt and opened the clasps with
his shaking old fingers. It bulged with bonds, and he dumped them forth
until they covered the top of the desk.
"These are my jewels!" he said. "There's millions represented here!" He
lifted one tenderly and held it to the light, fresh as it came from the
engraver's press--a thousand dollar first-mortgage bond of The Chicago
Water Front and Terminal Company. "Look at that! Good as gold--if the
courts only knew the law."
He took up a yellow package of valueless obligations upon the top of
which an old-fashioned locomotive from whose bell-shaped funnel the
smoke poured in picturesque black clouds, dragging behind it a chain of
funny little passenger coaches, drove furiously along beside a rushing
river through fields rich with corn and wheat amid a border of dollar
signs.
"The Great Lakes and Canadian Southern," he crooned lovingly. "The child
of my heart! The district attorney kept all the rest--as evidence, he
claimed, but some day you'll see he'll bring an action against the Lake
Shore or the New York Central based on these bonds. Yes, sir! They're
all right!"
He pawed them over, picking out favorites here and there and excitedly
extolling the merits of the imaginary properties they represented. There
were the repudiated bonds of Southern states and municipalities of
railroads upon whose tracks no wheel had ever turned; of factories never
built except in Doc Barrows' addled brain; of companies which had
defaulted and given stock for their worthless obligations; certificates
of oil, mining and land companies; deeds to tracts now covered with sky
scrapers in Pittsburgh, St. Louis and New York--each and every one of
them not worth the paper they were printed on except to some crook who
dealt in high finance. But they were exquisitely engraved, quite lovely
to look at, and Doc Barrows gloated upon them with scintillating eyes.
"Ain't they beauties?" he sighed. "Some day--yes sir!--some day they'll
be worth real money. I paid it for some of 'em. But they're yours--all
yours."
He gathered them up with care and returned them to the suitcase, then
fastened the clasps and patted the leather cover with his hand.
"They are yours, sir!" he exclaimed dramatically.
"As you say," agreed Mr. Tutt, "there's gold lying round everywhere if
we only had sense enough to look for it. But I think you're wise to
retire. After all, you have the satisfaction of knowing that your
enterprises were sound even if other people disagreed with you."
"If this was 1819 instead of 1919 I'd own Chicago," began Doc, a gleam
appearing in his eye. "But they don't want to upset the status
quo--that's why I haven't got a fair chance. But they needn't worry! I'd
be generous with 'em--give 'em easy terms--long leases and nominal
rents."
"But you'll like living with your daughter, I'm sure," said Mr. Tutt.
"It will make a new man of you in no time."
"Healthiest spot in northern New York," exclaimed Doc. "Within two miles
of a lake--fishing, shooting, outdoor recreation of all kinds, an ideal
site for a mammoth summer hotel."
Mr. Tutt rose and laid his arms round old Doc Barrows' shoulders.
"Thank you a thousand times," he said gratefully, "for the securities.
I'll be glad to keep them for you in my vault." His lips puckered in a
stealthy smile which he tried hard to conceal.
"Louisa may want to repaper the farmhouse some time," he added to
himself.
"Oh, they're all yours to keep!" insisted Doc. "I want you to have
them!" His voice trembled.
"Well, well!" answered Mr. Tutt. "Leave it that way; but if you ever
should want them they'll be here waiting for you."
"I'm no Indian giver!" replied Doc with dignity. "Give, give, give a
thing--never take it back again."
He laughed rather childishly. He was evidently embarrassed.
"Could--could you let me have the loan of seventy-five cents?" he asked
shyly.
* * * * *
Down below, inside a doorway upon the other side of the street, Sergeant
Murtha of the Detective Bureau waited for Doc Barrows to come out and be
arrested again. Murtha had known Doc for fifteen years as a harmless old
nut who had rarely succeeded in cheating anybody, but who was regarded
as generally undesirable by the authorities and sent away every few
years in order to keep him out of mischief. There was no danger that the
public would accept Doc's version of the nature or value of his
securities, but there was always the chance that some of his worthless
bonds--those bastard offsprings of his cracked old brain--would find
their way into less honest but saner hands. So Doc rattled about from
penitentiary to prison and from prison to madhouse and out again,
constantly taking appeals and securing writs of habeas corpus, and
feeling mildly resentful, but not particularly so, that people should be
so interfering with his business. Now as from force of long habit he
peered out of the doorway before making his exit; he looked like one of
the John Sargent's prophets gone a little madder than usual--a Jeremiah
or a Habakkuk.
"Hello, Doc!" called Murtha in hearty, friendly tones. "Hie spy! Come on
out!"
"Oh, how d'ye do, captain!" responded Doc. "How are you? I was just
interviewing my solicitor."
"Sorry," said Murtha. "The inspector wants to see you."
Doc flinched.
"But they've just let me go!" he protested faintly.
"It's one of those old indictments--Chicago Water Front or something.
Anyhow--Here! Hold on to yourself!"
He threw his arms around the old man, who seemed on the point of
falling.
"Oh, captain! That's all over! I served time for that out in Illinois!"
For some strange reason all the insanity had gone out of his bearing.
"Not in this state," answered Murtha. New pity for this poor old wastrel
took hold upon him. "What were you going to do?"
"I was going to retire, captain," said Doc faintly. "My daughter's
husband--he owned a farm up in Cayuga County--well, he died and I was
planning to go up there and live with her."
"And sting all the boobs?" grinned Murtha not unsympathetically. "How
much money have you got?"
"Seventy-five cents."
"How much is the ticket?"
"About nine dollars," quavered Doc. "But I know a man down on Chatham
Square who might buy a block of stock in the Last Chance Gold Mining
Company; I could get the money that way."
"What's the Last Chance Gold Mining Company?" asked Murtha sharply.
"It's a company I'm going to organize. I'll tell you a secret, Murtha.
There's a vein of gold runs right through my daughter Louisa's cow
pasture--she doesn't know anything about it--"
"Oh, hell!" exclaimed Murtha. "Come along to the station. I'll let you
have the nine bones. And you can put me down for half a million of the
underwriting."
* * * * *
That same evening Mr. Tutt was toasting his carpet slippers before the
sea-coal fire in his library, sipping a hot toddy and rereading for the
eleventh time the "Lives of the Chancellors" when Miranda, who had not
yet finished washing the few dishes incident to her master's meager
supper, pushed open the door and announced that a lady was calling.
"She said you'd know her sho' enough, Mis' Tutt," grinned Miranda,
swinging her dishrag, "'case you and she used to live tergidder when you
was a young man."
This scandalous announcement did not have the startling effect upon the
respectable Mr. Tutt which might naturally have been anticipated, since
he was quite used to Miranda's forms of expression.
"It must be Mrs. Effingham," he remarked, closing the career of Lord
Eldon and removing his feet from the fender.
"Dat's who it is!" answered Miranda. "She's downstairs waitin' to come
up."
"Well, let her come," directed Mr. Tutt, wondering what his old
boarding-house keeper could want of him, for he had not seen Mrs.
Effingham for more than fifteen years, at which time she was well
provided with husband, three children and a going business. Indeed, it
required some mental adjustment on his part to recognize the withered
little old lady in widow's weeds and rusty black with a gold star on her
sleeve who so timidly, a moment later, followed Miranda into the room.
"I'm afraid you don't recognize me," she said with a pitiful attempt at
faded coquetry. "I don't blame you, Mr. Tutt. You don't look a day older
yourself. But a great deal has happened to me!"
"I should have recognized you anywhere," he protested gallantly. "Do sit
down, Mrs. Effingham won't you? I am delighted to see you. How would you
like a glass of toddy? Just to show there's no ill-feeling!"
He forced a glass into her hand and filled it from the teakettle
standing on the hearth, while Miranda brought a sofa cushion and tucked
it behind the old lady's back.
Mrs. Effingham sighed, tasted the toddy and leaned back deliciously. She
was very wrinkled and her hair under the bonnet was startlingly white in
contrast with the crepe of her veil, but there were still traces of
beauty in her face.
"I've come to you, Mr. Tutt," she explained apologetically, "because I
always said that if I ever was in trouble you'd be the one to whom I
should go to help me out."
"What greater compliment could I receive?"
"Well, in those days I never thought that time would come," she went on.
"You remember my husband--Jim? Jim died two years ago. And little
Jimmy--our eldest--he was only fourteen when you boarded with us--he was
killed at the Front last July." She paused and felt for her
handkerchief, but could not find it. "I still keep the house; but do you
know how old I am, Mr. Tutt? I'm seventy-one! And the two older girls
got married long ago and I'm all alone except for Jessie, the
youngest--and I haven't told her anything about it."
"Yes?" said Mr. Tutt sympathetically. "What haven't you told her about?"
"My trouble. You see, Jessie's not a well girl--she really ought to live
out West somewhere, the doctor says--and Jim and I had saved up all
these years so that after we were gone she would have something to live
on. We saved twelve thousand dollars--and put it into Government bonds."
"You couldn't have anything safer, at any rate," remarked the lawyer. "I
think you did exceedingly well."
"Now comes the awful part of it all!" exclaimed Mrs. Effingham, clasping
her hands. "I'm afraid it's gone--gone forever. I should have consulted
you first before I did it, but it all seemed so fair and above-board
that I never thought."
"Have you got rid of your bonds?"
"Yes--no--that is, the bank has them. You see I borrowed ten thousand
dollars on them and gave it to Mr. Badger to invest in his oil company
for me."
Mr. Tutt groaned inwardly. Badger was the most celebrated of Wall
Street's near-financiers.
"Where on earth did you meet Badger?" he demanded.
"Why, he boarded with me--for a long time," she answered. "I've no
complaint to make of Mr. Badger. He's a very handsome polite gentleman.
And I don't feel altogether right about coming to you and saying
anything that might be taken against him--but lately I've heard so many
things--"
"Don't worry about Badger!" growled Mr. Tutt. "How did you come to
invest in his oil stock?"
"I was there when he got the telegram telling how they had found oil on
the property; it came one night at dinner. He was tickled to death. The
stock had been selling at three cents a share, and, of course, after the
oil was discovered he said it would go right up to ten dollars. But he
was real nice about it--he said anybody who had been living there in the
house could share his good fortune with him, come in on the ground
floor, and have it just the same for three cents. A week later there
came a photograph of the gusher and almost all of us decided to buy
stock."
At this point in the narrative Mr. Tutt kicked the coal hod violently
and uttered a smothered ejaculation.
"Of course I didn't have any ready money," explained Mrs. Effingham,
"but I had the bonds--they only paid two per cent and the oil stock was
going to pay twenty--and so I took them down to the bank and borrowed
ten thousand dollars on them. I had to sign a note and pay five per cent
interest. I was making the difference--fifteen hundred dollars every
year."
"What has it paid?" demanded Mr. Tutt ironically.
"Twenty per cent," replied Mrs. Effingham. "I get Mr. Badger's check
regularly every six months."
"How many times have you got it?"
"Twice."
"Well, why don't you like your investment?" inquired Mr. Tutt blandly.
"I'd like something that would pay me twenty per cent a year!"
"Because I'm afraid Mr. Badger isn't quite truthful, and one of the
ladies--that old Mrs. Channing; you remember her, don't you--the one
with the curls?--she tried to sell her stock and nobody would make a bid
on it at all--and when she spoke to Mr. Badger about it he became very
angry and swore right in front of her. Then somebody told me that Mr.
Badger had been arrested once for something--and--and--Oh, I wish I
hadn't given him the money, because if it's lost Jessie won't have
anything to live on after I'm dead--and she's too sick to work. What do
you think, Mr. Tutt? Do you suppose Mr. Badger would buy the stock
back?"
Mr. Tutt smiled grimly.
"Not if I know him! Have you got your stock with you?"
She nodded. Fumbling in her black bag she pulled forth a flaring
certificate--of the regulation kind, not even engraved--which evidenced
that Sarah Maria Ann Effingham was the legal owner of three hundred and
thirty thousand shares of the capital stock of the Great Geyser Texan
Petroleum and Llano Estacado Land Company.
Mr. Tutt took it gingerly between his thumb and forefinger. It was
signed ALFRED HAYNES BADGER, Pres., and he had an almost irresistible
temptation to twist it into a spill and light a stogy with it. But he
used a match instead, while Mrs. Effingham watched him apprehensively.
Then he handed the stock back to her and poured out another glass of
toddy.
"Ever been in Mr. Badger's office?"
"Oh, yes!" she answered. "It's a lovely office. You can see 'way down
the harbor--and over to New Jersey. It's real elegant."
"Would you mind going there again? That is, are you on friendly terms
with him?"
Already a strange, rather desperate plan was half formulated in his
mind.
"Oh, we're perfectly friendly," she smiled. "I generally go down there
to get my check."
"Whose check is it--his or the company's?"
"I really don't know," she answered simply. "What difference would it
make?"
"Oh, nothing--except that he might claim that he'd loaned you the
money."
"Loaned it? To me?"
"Why, yes. One hears of such things."
"But it is my money!" she cried, stiffening.
"You paid that for the stock."
She shook her head helplessly.
"I don't understand these things," she murmured. "If Jim had been alive
it wouldn't have happened. He was so careful."
"Husbands have some uses occasionally."
Suddenly she put her hands to her face.
"Oh, Mr. Tutt! Please get the money back from him. If you don't
something terrible will happen to Jessie!"
"I'll do my best," he said gently, laying his hand on her fragile
shoulder. "But I may not be able to do it--and anyhow I'll need your
help."
"What can I do?"
"I want you to go down to Mr. Badger's office to-morrow morning and tell
him that you are so much pleased with your investment that you would
like to turn all your securities over to him to sell and put the money
into the Great Geyser Texan Petroleum and Llano Estacado Land Company."
He rolled out the words with unction.
"But I don't!"
"Oh, yes, you do!" he assured her. "You want to do just what I tell
you, don't you?"
"Of course," she answered. "But I thought you didn't like Mr. Badger's
oil company."
"Whether I like it or not makes no difference. I want you to say just
what I tell you."
"Oh, very well, Mr. Tutt."
"Then you must tell him about the note, and that first it will have to
be paid off."
"Yes."
"And then you must hand him a letter which I will dictate to you now."
She flushed slightly, her eyes bright with excitement.
"You're sure it's perfectly honest, Mr. Tutt? I wouldn't want to do
anything unfair!"
"Would you be honest with a burglar?"
"But Mr. Badger isn't a burglar!"
"No--he's only about a thousand times worse. He's a robber of widows and
orphans. He isn't man enough to take a chance at housebreaking."
"I don't know what you mean," she sighed. "Where shall I write?"
Mr. Tutt cleared a space upon his desk, handed her a pad and dipped a
pen in the ink while she took off her gloves.
"Address the note to the bank," he directed.
She did so.
"Now say: 'Kindly deliver to Mr. Badger all the securities I have on
deposit with you, whenever he pays my note. Very truly yours, Sarah
Maria Ann Effingham.'"