Tutt and Mr. Tutt - Arthur Train
"That's all right," answered Tutt. "But how about progress?"
"Why, that is simple," replied his partner. "The man who refuses to bow
to habit, tradition, law--who thinks for himself and acts for himself,
who evolves new theories, who has the courage of his convictions and
stakes his life and liberty upon them--that man is either a statesman, a
prophet or a criminal. And in the end he is either hailed as a hero and
a liberator or is burned, cast into prison or crucified."
Tutt looked interested.
"Well, now," he returned, helping himself from the box, "I never thought
of it, but, of course, it's true. Your proposition is that progress
depends on development and development depends on new ideas. If the new
idea is contrary to those of society it is probably criminal. If its
inventor puts it across, gets away with it, and persuades society that
he is right he is a leader in the march of progress. If he fails he goes
to jail. Hence the relationship between crime and progress. Why not say
that crime is progress?"
"If successful it is," answered Mr. Tutt. "But the moment it is
successful it ceases to be crime."
"I get you," nodded Tutt. "Here to-day it is a crime to kill one's
grandmother; but I recall reading that among certain savage tribes to do
so is regarded as a highly virtuous act. Now if I convince society that
to kill one's grandmother is a good thing it ceases to be a crime.
Society has progressed. I am a public benefactor."
"And if you don't persuade society you go to the chair," remarked Mr.
Tutt laconically.
"To use another illustration," exclaimed Tutt, warming to the subject,
"the private ownership of property at the present time is recognized and
protected by the law, but if we had a Bolshevik government it might be a
crime to refuse to share one's property with others."
"In that case if you took your share of another's property by force,
instead of being a thief you would be a Progressive," smiled his
partner.
Tutt robbed his forehead.
"Looking at it that way, you know," said he, "makes it seem as if
criminals were rather to be admired."
"Well, some of them are, and a great multitude of them certainly were,"
answered Mr. Tutt. "All the early Christian martyrs were criminals in
the sense that they were law-breakers."
"And Martin Luther," suggested Tutt.
"And Garibaldi," added Mr. Tutt.
"And George Washington--maybe?" hazarded the junior partner.
Mr. Tutt shrugged his high shoulders.
"You press the analogy a long way, but--in a sense every successful
revolutionist was in the beginning a criminal--as every rebel is and
perforce must be," he replied.
"So," said Tutt, "if you're a big enough criminal you cease to be a
criminal at all. If you're going to be a crook, don't be a piker--it's
too risky. Grab everything in sight. Exterminate a whole nation, if
possible. Don't be a common garden highwayman or pirate; be a Napoleon
or a Willy Hohenzollern."
"You have the idea," replied Mr. Tutt. "Crime is unsuccessful defiance
of the existing order of things. Once rebellion rises to the dignity of
revolution murder becomes execution and the murderers become
belligerents. Therefore, as all real progress involves a change in or
defiance of existing law, those who advocate progress are essentially
criminally minded, and if they attempt to secure progress by openly
refusing to obey the law they are actual criminals. Then if they
prevail, and from being in the minority come into power, they are taken
out of jail, banquets are given in their honor, and they are called
patriots and heroes. Hence the close connection between crime and
progress."
Tutt scratched his chin doubtfully.
"That sounds pretty good," he admitted, "but"--and he shook his
head--"there's something the matter with it. It doesn't work except in
the case of crimes involving personal rights and liberties. I see your
point that all progressives are criminals in the sense that they are
'agin the law' as it is, but--I also see the hole in your argument,
which is that the fact that all progressives are criminals doesn't make
all criminals progressive. Your proposition is only a half truth."
"You're quite wrong about my theory being a half truth," retorted Mr.
Tutt. "It is fundamentally sound. The fellow who steals a razor or a few
dollars is regarded as a mean thief, but if he loots a trust company or
takes a million he's a financier. The criminal law, I maintain, is
administered for the purpose of protecting the strong from the weak, the
successful from the unsuccessful the rich from the poor. And, sir"--Mr.
Tutt here shook his fist at an imaginary jury--"the man who wears a red
necktie in violation of the taste of his community or eats peas with his
knife is just as much a criminal as a man who spits on the floor when
there's a law against it. Don't you agree with me?"
"I do not!" replied Tutt. "But that makes no difference. Nevertheless
what you say about the criminal law being devised to protect the rich
from the poor interests me very much--very much indeed But I think
there's a flaw in that argument too, isn't there? Your proposition is
true only to the extent that the criminal law is invoked to protect
property rights--and not life and liberty. Naturally the laws that
protect property are chiefly of benefit to those who have it--the rich."
"However that may be," declared Mr. Tutt fiercely, "I claim that the
criminal laws are administered, interpreted and construed in favor of
the rich as against the liberties of the poor, for the simple reason
that the administrators of the criminal law desire to curry favor with
the powers that be."
"The moral of which all is," retorted the other, "that the law ought to
be very careful about locking up people."
"At any rate those who have violated laws upon which there can be a
legitimate difference of opinion," agreed Mr. Tutt.
"That's where we come in," said Tutt. "We make the difference--even if
there never was any before."
Mr. Tutt chuckled.
"We perform a dual service to society," he declared. "We prevent the law
from making mistakes and so keep it from falling into disrepute, and we
show up its weak points and thus enable it to be improved."
"And incidentally we keep many a future statesman and prophet from going
to prison," said Tutt. "The name of the last one was Solomon
Rabinovitch--and he was charged with stealing a second-hand razor from a
colored person described in the papers as one Morris Cohen."
How long this specious philosophic discussion would have continued is
problematical had it not been interrupted by the entry of a young
gentleman dressed with a somewhat ostentatious elegance, whose wizened
face bore an expression at once of vast good nature and of a deep and
subtle wisdom.
It was clear that he held an intimate relationship to Tutt & Tutt from
the familiar way in which he returned their cordial, if casual,
salutations.
"Well, here we are again," remarked Mr. Doon pleasantly, seating himself
upon the corner of Mr. Tutt's desk and spinning his bowler hat upon the
forefinger of his left hand. "The hospitals are empty. The Tombs is as
dry as a bone. Everybody's good and every day'll be Sunday by and by."
"How about that man who stole a razor?" asked Tutt.
"Discharged on the ground that the fact that he had a full beard created
a reasonable doubt," replied Doon. "Honestly there's nothing doing in my
line--unless you want a tramp case."
"A tramp case!" exclaimed Tutt & Tutt.
"I suppose you'd call it that," he answered blandly. "I don't think he
was a burglar. Anyhow he's in the Tombs now, shouting for a lawyer. I
listened to him and made a note of the case."
Mr. Tutt pushed over the box of stogies and leaned back attentively.
"You know the Hepplewhite house up on Fifth Avenue--that great stone
one with the driveway?"
The Tutts nodded.
"Well, it appears that the prisoner--our prospective client--was
snooping round looking for something to eat and found that the butler
had left the front door slightly ajar. Filled with a natural curiosity
to observe how the other half lived, he thrust his way cautiously in and
found himself in the main hall--hung with tapestry and lined with stands
of armor. No one was to be seen. Can't you imagine him standing there in
his rags--the Weary Willy of the comic supplements--gazing about him at
the _objets d'art_, the old masters, the onyx tables, the
statuary--wondering where the pantry was and whether the housekeeper
would be more likely to feed him or kick him out?"
"Weren't any of the domestics about?" inquired Tutt.
"Not one. They were all taking an afternoon off, except the third
assistant second man who was reading 'The Pilgrim's Progress' in the
servants' hall. To resume, our friend was not only very hungry, but very
tired. He had walked all the way from Yonkers, and he needed everything
from a Turkish bath to a manicuring. He had not been shaved for weeks.
His feet sank almost out of sight in the thick nap of the carpets. It
was quiet, warm, peaceful in there. A sense of relaxation stole over
him. He hated to go away, he says, and he meditated no wrong. But he
wanted to see what it was like upstairs.
"So up he went. It was like the palace of 'The Sleeping Beauty.'
Everywhere his eyes were soothed by the sight of hothouse plants, marble
floors, priceless rugs, luxurious divans--"
"Stop!" cried Tutt. "You are making me sleepy!"
"Well, that's what it did to him. He wandered along the upper hall,
peeking into the different rooms, until finally he came to a beautiful
chamber finished entirely in pink silk. It had a pink rug--of silk; the
furniture was upholstered in pink silk, the walls were lined with pink
silk and in the middle of the room was a great big bed with a pink silk
coverlid and a canopy of the same. It seemed to him that that bed must
have been predestined for him. Without a thought for the morrow he
jumped into it, pulled the coverlid over his head and went fast asleep.
"Meanwhile, at tea time Mrs. De Lancy Witherspoon arrived for the
week-end. Bibby, the butler, followed by Stocking, the second man,
bearing the hand luggage, escorted the guest to the Bouguereau Room, as
the pink-silk chamber is called."
Mr. Bonnie Doon, carried away by his own powers of description, waved
his hand dramatically at the old leather couch against the side wall,
in which Weary Willy was supposed to be reclining.
"Can't you see 'em?" he declaimed. "The haughty Bibby with nose in air,
preceding the great dame of fashion, enters the pink room and comes to
attention, 'This way, madam!' he declaims, and Mrs. Witherspoon sweeps
across the threshold." Bonnie Doon, picking up an imaginary skirt,
waddled round Mr. Tutt and approached the couch. Suddenly he started
back.
"Oh, la, la!" he half shrieked, dancing about. "There is a man in the
bed!"
Both Tutts stared hard at the couch as if fully expecting to see the
form of Weary Willy thereon. Bonnie Doon had a way of making things
appear very vivid.
"And sure enough," he concluded, "there underneath the coverlid in the
middle of the bed was a huddled heap with a stubby beard projecting like
Excalibur from a pink silk lake!"
"Excuse me," interrupted Tutt. "But may I ask what this is all about?"
"Why, your new case, to be sure," grinned Bonnie, who, had he been
employed by any other firm, might have run the risk of being regarded as
an ambulance chaser. "To make a long and tragic story short, they sent
for the watchman, whistled for a policeman, telephoned for the hurry-up
wagon, and haled the sleeper away to prison--where he is now, waiting
to be tried."
"Tried!" ejaculated Mr. Tutt. "What for?"
"For crime, to be sure," answered Mr. Doon.
"What crime?"
"I don't know. They'll find one, of course."
Mr. Tutt swiftly lowered his legs from the desk and brought his fist
down upon it with a bang.
"Outrageous! What was I just telling you, Tutt!" he cried, a flush
coming into his wrinkled face. "This poor man is a victim of the
overzealousness which the officers of the law exhibit in protecting the
privileges and property of the rich. If John De Puyster Hepplewhite fell
asleep in somebody's vestibule the policeman on post would send him home
in a cab; but if a hungry tramp does the same thing he runs him in. If
John De Puyster Hepplewhite should be arrested for some crime they would
let him out on bail; while the tramp is imprisoned for weeks awaiting
trial, though under the law he is presumed to be innocent. Is he
presumed to be innocent? Not much! He is presumed to be guilty,
otherwise he would not be there. But what is he presumed to be guilty
of? That's what I want to know! Just because this poor man--hungry,
thirsty and weary--happened to select a bed belonging to John De Puyster
Hepplewhite to lie on he is thrown into prison, indicted by a grand
jury, and tried for felony! Ye gods! 'Sweet land of liberty!'"
"Well, he hasn't been tried yet," replied Bonnie Doon. "If you feel that
way about it why don't you defend him?"
"I will!" shouted Mr. Tutt, springing to his feet. "I'll defend him and
acquit him!"
He seized his tall hat, placed it upon his head and strode rapidly
through the door.
"He will too!" remarked Bonnie, winking at Tutt.
"He thinks that tramp is either a statesman or a prophet!" mused Tutt,
his mind reverting to his partner's earlier remarks.
"He won't think so after he's seen him," replied Mr. Doon.
It sometimes happens that those who seek to establish great principles
and redress social evils involve others in an involuntary martyrdom far
from their desires. Mr. Tutt would have gone to the electric chair
rather than see the Hepplewhite Tramp, as he was popularly called by the
newspapers convicted of a crime, but the very fact that he had become
his legal champion interjected a new element into the situation,
particularly as O'Brien, Mr. Tutt's arch enemy in the district
attorney's office, had been placed in charge of the case.
It would have been one thing to let Hans Schmidt--that was the tramp's
name--go, if after remaining in the Tombs until he had been forgotten by
the press he could have been unobtrusively hustled over the Bridge of
Sighs to freedom. Then there would have been no comeback. But with
Ephraim Tutt breathing fire and slaughter, accusing the police and
district attorney of being trucklers to the rich and great, and
oppressors of the poor--law breakers, in fact--O'Brien found himself in
the position of one having an elephant by the tail and unable to let go.
In fact, it looked as if the case of the Hepplewhite Tramp might become
a political issue. That there was something of a comic side to it made
it all the worse.
"Holy cats, boys!" snorted District Attorney Peckham to the circle of
disgruntled police officers and assistants gathered about him on the
occasion described by the reporters as his making a personal
investigation of the case, "Why in the name of common sense didn't you
simply boot the fellow into the street?"
"I wish we had, counselor!" assented the captain of the Hepplewhite
precinct mournfully. "But we thought he was a burglar. I guess he was,
at that--and it was Mr. Hepplewhite's house."
"I've heard that until I'm sick of it!" retorted Peckham.
"One thing is sure--if we turn him out now Tutt will sue us all for
false arrest and put the whole administration on the bum," snarled
O'Brien.
"But I didn't know the tramp would get Mr. Tutt to defend him,"
expostulated the captain. "Anyhow, ain't it a crime to go to sleep in
another man's bed?"
"If it ain't it ought to be!" declared his plain-clothes man
sententiously. "Can't you indict him for burglary?"
"You can indict all day; the thing is to convict!" snapped Peckham.
"It's up to you, O'Brien, to square this business so that the law is
vindicated--somehow It must be a crime to go into a house on Fifth
Avenue and use it as a hotel. Why, you can't cross the street faster
than a walk these days without committing a crime. Everything's a
crime."
"Sure thing," agreed the captain. "I never yet had any trouble finding a
crime to charge a man with, once I got the nippers on him."
"That's so," interjected the plain-clothes man. "Did you ever know it
was a crime to mismanage a steam boiler? Well, it is."
"Quite right," agreed Mr. Magnus, the indictment clerk. "The great
difficulty for the perfectly honest man nowadays is to avoid some act or
omission which the legislature has seen fit to make a crime without his
knowledge. Refilling a Sarsaparilla bottle, for instance, or getting up
a masquerade ball or going fishing or playing on Sunday or loitering
about a building to overhear what people are talking about inside--"
"That's no crime," protested the captain scornfully.
"Yes, it is too!" retorted Mr. Magnus, otherwise known to his fellows as
Caput, because of his supposed cerebral inflation. "Just like it is a
crime to have any kind of a show or procession on Sunday except a
funeral, in which case it's a crime to make a disbursing noise at it."
"What's a disbursing noise?" demanded O'Brien.
"I don't know," admitted Magnus. "But that's the law anyway. You can't
make a disbursing noise at a funeral on Sunday."
"Oh, hell!" ejaculated the captain. "Come to think of it, it's a crime
to spit. What man is safe?"
"It occurs to me," continued Mr. Magnus thoughtfully, "that it is a
crime under the law to build a house on another man's land; now I should
say that there was a close analogy between doing that and sleeping in
his bed."
"Hear! Hear!" commented O'Brien. "Caput Magnus, otherwise known as Big
Head, there is no doubt but that your fertile brain can easily devise a
way out of our present difficulty."
"Well, I've no time to waste on tramp cases," remarked District
Attorney Peckham. "I've something more important to attend to. Indict
this fellow and send him up quick. Charge him with everything in sight
and trust in the Lord. That's the only thing to be done. Don't bother me
about it, that's all!"
Meantime Mr. Hepplewhite became more and more agitated. Entirely against
his will and, so far as he could see, without any fault of his own, he
suddenly found himself the center of a violent and acrimonious
controversy respecting the fundamental and sacred rights of freemen
which threatened to disrupt society and extinguish the supremacy of the
dominant local political organization.
On the one hand he was acclaimed by the conservative pulpit and press as
a public-spirited citizen who had done exactly the right
thing--disinterestedly enforced the law regardless of his own
convenience and safety as a matter of principle and for the sake of the
community--a moral hero; on the other, though he was president of
several charitable organizations and at least one orphan asylum he was
execrated as a heartless brute, an oppressor of the poor, an octopus, a
soulless capitalist who fattened on the innocent and helpless and
who--Mr. Hepplewhite was a bachelor--probably if the truth could be
known lived a life of horrid depravity and crime.
Indeed there was a man named Tutt, of whom Mr. Hepplewhite had never
before heard, who publicly declared that he, Tutt, would show him,
Hepplewhite, up for what he was and make him pay with his body and his
blood, to say nothing of his money, for what he had done and caused to
be done. And so Mr. Hepplewhite became even more agitated, until he
dreamed of this Tutt as an enormous bird like the fabled roc, with a
malignant face and a huge hooked beak that some day would nip him in the
abdomen and fly, croaking, away with him. Mrs. Witherspoon had returned
to Aiken, and after the first flood of commiserations from his friends
on Lists Numbers One, Two, Three and Four he felt neglected, lonely and
rather fearful.
And then one morning something happened that upset his equanimity
entirely. He had just started out for a walk in the park when a flashy
person who looked like an actor walked impudently up to him and handed
him a piece of paper in which was wrapped a silver half dollar. In a
word Mr. Hepplewhite was subpoenaed and the nervous excitement attendant
upon that operation nearly caused his collapse. For he was thereby
commanded to appear before the Court of General Sessions of the Peace
upon the following Monday at ten a.m. as a witness in a criminal action
prosecuted by the People of the State of New York against Hans Schmidt.
Moreover, the paper was a dirty-brown color and bore the awful name of
Tutt. He returned immediately to the house and telephoned for Mr.
Edgerton, his lawyer, who at once jumped into a taxi on the corner of
Wall and Broad Streets and hurried uptown.
"Edgerton," said Hepplewhite faintly as the lawyer entered his library,
"this whole unfortunate affair has almost made me sick. I had nothing to
do with the arrest of this man Schmidt. The police did everything. And
now I'm ordered to appear as a witness! Why, I hardly looked at the man.
I shouldn't know him if I saw him. Do I have to go to court?"
Mr. Edgerton smiled genially in a manner which he thought would
encourage Mr. Hepplewhite.
"I suppose you'll have to go to court. You can't help that, you know, if
you've been subpoenaed. But you can't testify to anything that I can
see. It's just a formality."
"Formality!" groaned his client. "Well, I supposed the arrest was just a
formality."
Mr. Edgerton smiled again rather unconvincingly.
"Well, you see, you can't always tell what will happen when you once
start something," he began.
"But I didn't start anything," answered Mr. Hepplewhite. "I had nothing
to say about it."
At that moment Bibby appeared in the doorway.
"Excuse me, sir," he said. "There is a young man outside who asked me to
tell you that he has a paper he wishes to serve on you--and would you
mind saving him the trouble of waiting for you to go out?"
"Another!" gagged Mr. Hepplewhite.
"Yes, sir! Thank you, sir," stammered Bibby.
Mr. Hepplewhite looked inquiringly at Mr. Edgerton and rose feebly.
"He'll get you sooner or later," declared the lawyer. "A man as well
known as you can't avoid process."
Mr. Hepplewhite bit his lips and went out into the hall.
Presently he returned carrying a legal-looking bunch of papers.
"Well, what is it this time?" asked Edgerton jocosely.
"It's a suit for false imprisonment for one hundred thousand dollars!"
choked Mr. Hepplewhite.
Mr. Edgerton looked shocked.
"Well, now you've got to convict him!" he declared.
"Convict him?" retorted Mr. Hepplewhite. "I don't want to convict him.
I'd gladly give a hundred thousand dollars to get out of the--the--darn
thing!"
Which was as near profanity as he had ever permitted himself to go.
* * * * *
Upon the following Monday Mr. Hepplewhite proceeded to court--flanked by
his distinguished counsel in frock coats and tall hats--simply because
he had been served with a dirty-brown subpoena by Tutt & Tutt; and his
distress was not lessened by the crowd of reporters who joined him at
the entrance of the Criminal Courts Building; or by the flashlight bomb
that was exploded in the corridor in order that the evening papers might
reproduce his picture on the front page. He had never been so much in
the public eye before, and he felt slightly defiled. For some curious
reason he had the feeling that he and not Schmidt was the actual
defendant charged with being guilty of something; nor was this
impression dispelled even by listening to the indictment by which the
Grand Jury charged Schmidt in eleven counts with burglary in the first,
second and third degrees and with the crime of entering his,
Hepplewhite's, house under circumstances not amounting to a burglary but
with intent to commit a felony, as follows:
"Therefore, to wit, on the eleventh day of January in the year of our
Lord one thousand nine hundred and nineteen in the night-time of the
said day at the ward, city and county aforesaid the dwelling house of
one John De Puyster Hepplewhite there situate, feloniously and
burglariously did break into and enter there being then and there a
human being in said dwelling house, with intent to commit some crime
therein, to wit, the goods, chattels, and personal property of the said
John De Puyster Hepplewhite, then and there being found, then and there
feloniously and burglariously to steal, take and carry away one silver
tea service of the value of five hundred dollars and one pair of opera
glasses of the value of five dollars each with force and arms----"
"But that silver tea service cost fifteen thousand dollars and weighs
eight hundred pounds!" whispered Mr. Hepplewhite.
"Order in the court!" shouted Captain Phelan, pounding upon the oak rail
of the bar, and Mr. Hepplewhite subsided.
Yet as he sat there between his lawyers listening to all the
extraordinary things that the Grand Jury evidently had believed Schmidt
intended to do, the suspicion began gradually to steal over him that
something was not entirely right somewhere. Why, it was ridiculous to
charge the man with trying to carry off a silver service weighing nearly
half a ton when he simply had gone to bed and fallen asleep. Still,
perhaps that was the law.