For which, interjected Mr. Tutt, he is entitled to everyone's respect.
Quite so! agreed Tutt. Now Tomasso, though not willing to marry the girl himself, seems to have resented the idea of having anyone else do so, and accordingly seized every opportunity which presented itself to twit Angelo about the matter.
Dog in the manger, so to speak, nodded Mr. Tutt.
He not only jeered at Angelo for marrying Rosalina but he began to hang about his discarded mistress again and scoff at her choice of a husband. But Rosalina gave him the cold shoulder, with the result that he became more and more insulting to Angelo. Finally one day our client made up his mind not to stand it any longer, secured a revolver, sought out Tomasso in his barber shop and put a bullet through his head. Now however much you may sympathize with Angelo as a man and a husband there isn't the slightest doubt that he killed Tomasso with every kind of deliberation and premeditation.
If the case is as you say, replied Mr. Tutt, replacing the bottle and tumbler within the lower drawer and flicking a stogy ash from his waistcoat, the honorable justice who handed it to us is no friend of ours.
He isn't, assented his partner. It was Babson and he hates Italians. Moreover, he stated in open court that he proposed to try the case himself next Monday and that we must be ready without fail.
So Babson did that to us! growled Mr. Tutt. Just like him. He'll pack the jury and charge our innocent Angelo into the middle of hades.
And O'Brien is the assistant district attorney in charge of the prosecution, mildly added Tutt. But what can we do? We're assigned, we've got a guilty client, and we've got to defend him.
Have you set Bonnie Doon looking up witnesses? asked Mr. Tutt. I thought I saw him outside during the forenoon.
Yes, replied Tutt. But Bonnie says it's the toughest case he ever had to handle in which to find any witnesses for the defense. There aren't any. Besides, the girl bought the gun and gave it to Angelo the same day.
How do you know that? demanded Mr. Tutt, frowning.
Because she told me so herself, said Tutt. She's outside if you want to see her.
I might as well give her what you call 'the once over,' replied the senior partner.
Tutt retired and presently returned half leading, half pushing a shrinking young Italian woman, shabbily dressed but with the features of one of Raphael's madonnas. She wore no hat and her hands and finger nails were far from clean, but from the folds of her black shawl her neck rose like a column of slightly discolored Carrara marble, upon which her head with its coils of heavy hair was poised with the grace of a sulky empress.
Come in, my child, and sit down, said Mr. Tutt kindly. No, not in that one; in that one. He indicated the chair previously occupied by his junior. You can leave us, Tutt. I want to talk to this young lady alone.
The girl sat sullenly with averted face, showing in her attitude her instinctive feeling that all officers of the law, no matter upon which side they were supposed to be, were one and all engaged in a mysterious conspiracy of which she and her unfortunate Angelo were the victims. A few words from the old lawyer and she began to feel more confidence, however. No one, in fact, could help but realize at first glance Mr. Tutt's warmth of heart. The lines of his sunken cheeks if left to themselves automatically tended to draw together into a whimsical smile, and it required a positive act of will upon his part to adopt the stern and relentless look with which he was wont to glower down upon some unfortunate witness in cross-examination.
Inside Mr. Tutt was a benign and rather mellow old fellow, with a dry sense of humor and a very keen knowledge of his fellow men. He made a good deal of money, but not having any wife or child upon which to lavish it he spent it all either on books or surreptitiously in quixotic gifts to friends or strangers whom he either secretly admired or whom he believed to be in need of money. There were vague traditions in the office of presents of bizarre and quite impossible clothes made to office boys and stenographers; of ex-convicts reoutfitted and sent rejoicing to foreign parts; of tramps gorged to repletion and then pumped dry of their adventures in Mr. Tutt's comfortable, dingy old library; of a fur coat suddenly clapped upon the rounded shoulders of old Scraggs, the antiquated scrivener in the accountant's cage in the outer office, whose alcoholic career, his employer alleged, was marked by a trail of empty rum kegs, each one flying the white flag of surrender.
And yet old Ephraim Tutt could on occasion be cold as chiseled steel, and as hard. Any appeal from a child, a woman or an outcast always met with his ready response; but for the rich, successful and those in power he seemed to entertain a deep and enduring grudge. He would burn the midnight oil with equal zest to block a crooked deal on the part of a wealthy corporation or to devise a means to extricate some no less crooked rascal from the clutches of the law, provided that the rascal seemed the victim of hard luck, inheritance or environment. His weather-beaten conscience was as elastic as his heart. Indeed when under the expansive influence of a sufficient quantity of malt extract or ancient brandy from the cellaret on his library desk he had sometimes been heard to enunciate the theory that there was very little difference between the people in jail and those who were not.
He would work weeks without compensation to argue the case of some guilty rogue before the Court of Appeals, in order, as he said, to settle the law, when his only real object was to get the miserable fellow out of jail and send him back to his wife and children. He went through life with a twinkling eye and a quizzical smile, and when he did wrong he did it-if such a thing is possible-in a way to make people better. He was a dangerous adversary and judges were afraid of him, not because he ever tricked or deceived them but because of the audacity and novelty of his arguments which left them speechless. He had the assurance that usually comes with age and with a lifelong knowledge of human nature, yet apparently he had always been possessed of it.
Once a judge having assigned him to look out for the interests of a lawyerless prisoner suggested that he take his new client into the adjoining jury room and give him the best advice he could. Mr. Tutt was gone so long that the judge became weary, and to find out what had become of him sent an officer, who found the lawyer reading a newspaper beside an open window, but no sign of the prisoner. In great excitement the officer reported the situation to the judge, who ordered Mr. Tutt to the bar.
What has become of the prisoner? demanded His Honor.
I do not know, replied the lawyer calmly. The window was open and I suspect that he used it as a means of exit.
Are you not aware that you are a party to an escape-a crime? hotly challenged the judge.
I most respectfully deny the charge, returned Mr. Tutt.
I told you to take the prisoner into that room and give him the best advice you could.
I did! interjected the lawyer.
Ah! exclaimed the judge. You admit it! What advice did you give him?
The law does not permit me to state that, answered Mr. Tutt in his most dignified tones. That is a privileged communication from the inviolate obligation to preserve which only my client can release me-I cannot betray a sacred trust. Yet I might quote Cervantes and remind Your Honor that 'Fortune leaves always some door open to come at a remedy!'
Now as he gazed at the tear-stained cheeks of the girl-wife whose husband had committed murder in defense of her self-respect, he vowed that so far as he was able he would fight to save him. The more desperate the case the more desperate her need of him-the greater the duty and the greater his honor if successful.
Believe that I am your friend, my dear! he assured her. You and I must work together to set Angelo free.
It's no use, she returned less defiantly. He done it. He won't deny it.
But he is entitled to his defense, urged Mr. Tutt quietly.
He won't make no defense.
We must make one for him.
There ain't none. He just went and killed him.
Mr. Tutt shrugged his shoulders.
There is always a defense, he answered with conviction. Anyhow we can't let him be convicted without making an effort. Will they be able to prove where he got the pistol?
He didn't get the pistol, retorted the girl with a glint in her black eyes. I got it. I'd ha' shot him myself if he hadn't. I said I was goin' to, but he wouldn't let me.
Dear, dear! sighed Mr. Tutt. What a case! Both of you trying to see which could get hanged first!
The inevitable day of Angelo's trial came. Upon the bench the Honorable Mr. Justice Babson glowered down upon the cowering defendant flanked by his distinguished counsel, Tutt &Tutt, and upon the two hundred good and true talesmen who, all other business laid aside, had been dragged from the comfort of their homes and the important affairs of their various livelihoods to pass upon the merits of the issue duly joined between The People of the State of New York and Angelo Serafino, charged with murder.
One by one as his name was called each took his seat in the witness chair upon the voir dire and perjured himself like a gentleman in order to escape from service, shyly confessing to an ineradicable prejudice against the entire Italian race and this defendant in particular, and to an antipathy against capital punishment which, so each unhesitatingly averred, would render him utterly incapable of satisfactorily performing his functions if selected as a juryman. Hardly one, however, but was routed by the Machiavellian Babson. Hardly one, however ingenious his excuse-whether about to be married or immediately become a father, whether engaged in a business deal involving millions which required his instant and personal attention whether in the last stages of illness or obligated to be present at the bedside of a dying wife-but was browbeaten into helplessness and ordered back to take his place amidst the waiting throng of recalcitrant citizens so disinclined to do their part in elevating that system of trial by jury the failure of which at other times they so loudly condemned.
This trifling preliminary having been concluded, the few jurymen who had managed to wriggle through the judicial sieve were allowed to withdraw, the balance of the calendar was adjourned, those spectators who were standing up were ordered to sit down and those already sitting down were ordered to sit somewhere else, the prisoners in the rear of the room were sent back to the Tombs to await their fate upon some later day, the reporters gathered rapaciously about the table just behind the defendant, a corpulent Ganymede in the person of an aged court officer bore tremblingly an opaque glass of yellow drinking water to the bench, O'Brien the prosecutor blew his nose with a fanfare of trumpets, Mr. Tutt smiled an ingratiating smile which seemed to clasp the whole world to his bosom-and the real battle commenced; a game in which every card in the pack had been stacked against the prisoner by an unscrupulous pair of officials whose only aim was to maintain their record of convictions of murder in the first and who laid their plans with ingenuity and carried them out with skill and enthusiasm to habitual success.