By Advice of Counsel Part 14

For any violator of the law she had the uttermost abhorrence, and the only weakness in her ethics arose out of her failure to discriminate between relative importances, for she undoubtedly regarded the sale of a gla.s.s of beer after the closing hour as being quite as reprehensible as grand larceny or the bearing of false witness. To her every judge must be a learned, wise and honorable man because he stood for the enforcement of the law of the land, and she never questioned whether or not that law was wise or otherwise, which latter often--it must be confessed--it was not.

In a word, though there was nothing progressive about Miss Althea she was one of those delightful, cultivated, loyal and enthusiastic female citizens who are rightfully regarded as vertebrae in the backbone of a country which, after it has got its back up, can undoubtedly lick any other nation on earth. It was characteristic of her that carefully folded inside the will drawn for her by her family solicitor was a slip of paper addressed to her heirs and next of kin requesting that at her funeral the national anthem should be played and that her coffin should be draped with the American flag.

But there was a somewhat curious if not uncommon inconsistency in Miss Beekman's att.i.tude toward lawbreakers in that once they were in prison they instantly became objects of her gentlest solicitude. Thus she was a frequent visitor at the Tombs, where she brought spiritual, and more often, it must be frankly admitted, bodily comfort to those of the inmates who were recommended by the district attorney and prison authorities as worthy of her attention; and Prosecutor Peckham being not unmindful of the possible political advantage that might accrue from being on friendly terms with so well-known a member of the distinguished family of Beekman, lost no opportunity to ingratiate himself with her and gave orders, to his subordinates to make her path as easy as possible. Thus quite naturally she had heard of Tutt & Tutt, and had a casual acquaintance with the senior partner himself.

"That O'Connell is a regular clam--won't tell me anything at all!"

remarked Mr. Tutt severely, hanging up his hat on the office tree with one hand while he felt for a match in his waistcoat pocket with the other, upon the afternoon of the day that Miss Beekman had had the conversation with Dawkins with which this story opens.

"National temperament," answered Bonnie Doon, producing the desired match. "It's just like an Irishman to refuse point-blank to talk to the lawyer who has been a.s.signed to defend him. He's probably afraid he'll make some admission from which you will infer he's guilty. No Irishman ever yet admitted that he was guilty of anything!"

"Well, I've never met a defendant of any other nationality who would, either," replied Mr. Tutt, pulling vigorously at his stogy. "Even so, this chap O'Connell is a puzzle to me. 'Go ahead and defend me,' said he today, 'but don't ask me to talk about the case, because I won't.' I give it up. He wouldn't even tell me where he was on the day of the murder."

Bonnie grunted dubiously.

"There may be a very good reason for that!" he retorted. "If what rumor says is true he simply hunted for McGurk until he found him and put a lead pellet back of his ear."

"And also, if what rumor says is true," supplemented Tutt, who entered at this moment, "a good job it was, too. McGurk was a treacherous, dirty blackguard, the leader of a gang of criminals, even if he was, as they all agree, a handsome rascal who had every woman in the district on tenterhooks. Any girl in this case?"

Bonnie shrugged his shoulders.

"They claim so; only there's nothing definite. The O'Connells are well spoken of."

"If there was, that would explain why he wouldn't talk," commented Mr.

Tutt. "That's the devil of it. You can't put in a defense under the unwritten law without besmirching the very reputation you are trying to protect."

The senior partner of Tutt & Tutt wheeled his swivel chair to the window and crossing his congress boots upon the sill gazed contemplatively down upon the shipping.

"Unwritten law!" sarcastically exclaimed Tutt from the doorway. "There ain't no such animal in these parts!"

"You're quite wrong!" retorted his elder partner. "Most of our law--ninety-nine per cent of it, in fact--is unwritten."

"Excuse me!" interjected Bonnie Doon, abandoning his usual flippancy.

"What is that you said, Mr. Tutt?"

"That ninety-nine per cent of the laws by which we are governed are unwritten laws, just as binding as the printed ones upon our statute books, which after all are only the crystallization of the sentiments and opinions of the community based upon its traditions, manners, customs and religious beliefs. For every statute in print there are a hundred that have no tangible existence, based on our sense of decency, of duty and of honor, which are equally controlling and which it has never been found necessary to reduce to writing, since their infraction usually brings its own penalty or infringes the more delicate domain of private conscience where the crude processes of the criminal law cannot follow. The laws of etiquette and fair play are just as obligatory as legislative enactments--the Ten Commandments as efficacious as the Penal Code."

"Don't you agree with that, Tutt?" demanded Bonnie. "Every man's conscience is his own private unwritten law."

Tutt looked skeptical.

"Did you say every man had a conscience?" he inquired.

"And it makes a lot of trouble sometimes," continued Mr. Tutt, ignoring him. "You remember when old Cogswell was on the bench and a man was brought before him for breaking his umbrella over the head of a fellow who had insulted the defendant's wife, he said to the jury: 'Gentlemen, if this plaintiff had called my wife a name like that I'd have smashed my umbrella over his head pretty quick. However, that's not the law!

Take the case, gentlemen!'"

"Well, I guess I was wrong," admitted Tutt. "Of course, that is unwritten law. People don't like to punish a man for resenting a slur upon his wife's reputation."

"But you see where that leads you?" remarked his partner. "The so-called unwritten law is based on our inherited idea of chivalry. A lady's honor and reputation were sacred, and her knight was prepared instantly to defend it with the last drop of his blood. A reflection on her honesty was almost as unbearable as one upon her virtue. Logically, the unwritten law ought to permit women to break their contracts and do practically anything they see fit."

"They do, don't they--the dear things!" sighed Bonnie.

"I remember," interjected Tutt brightly, "when it was the unwritten law of Cook County, Illinois--that's Chicago, you know--that any woman could kill her husband for the life-insurance money. Seriously!"

"There's no point of chivalry that I can see involved in that--it's merely good business," remarked Mr. Doon, lighting another cigarette.

"All the same it's obvious that the unwritten law might be stretched a long way. It's a great convenience, though, on occasion!"

"We should be in an awful stew if nowadays we subst.i.tuted ideas of chivalry for those of justice," declared Mr. Tutt. "Fortunately the danger is past. As someone has said, 'The women, once our superiors, have become our equals!'"

"We don't even give 'em our seats in the Subway," commented Tutt complacently. "No, we needn't worry about the return of chivalry--in New York at any rate."

"I should say not!" exclaimed Miss Wiggin, entering at that moment with a pile of papers, as n.o.body rose.

"But," insisted Bonnie, "all the same there are certainly plenty of cases where if he had to choose between them any man would obey his conscience rather than the law."

"Of course, there are such cases," admitted Mr. Tutt. "But we ought to discourage the idea as much as possible."

"Discourage a sense of honor?" exclaimed Miss Wiggin. "Why, Mr. Tutt!"

"It depends on what you mean by honor," he retorted. "I don't take much stock in the kind of honor that makes an heir apparent 'perjure himself like a gentleman' about a card game at a country house."

"Neither do I," she returned, "any more than I do in the kind of honor that compels a man to pay a gambling debt before he pays his tailor, but I do believe that there may be situations where, though it would not be permissible to perjure oneself, honor would require one to refuse to obey the law."

"That's a pretty dangerous doctrine," reflected Mr. Tutt. "For everybody would be free to make himself the judge of when he ought to respect the law and when he oughtn't. We can easily imagine that the law would come out at the small end of the horn."

"In matters of conscience--which, I take it, is the same thing as one's sense of honor--one has got to be one's own judge," declared Miss Wiggin firmly.

"The simplest way," announced Tutt, "is to take the position that the law should always be obeyed and that the most honorable man is he who respects it the most."

"Yes, the safest and also the most cowardly!" retorted Miss Wiggin.

"Supposing the law required you to do something which you personally regarded not only as morally wrong but detestable, would you do it?"

"It wouldn't!" protested Tutt with a grimace. "The law is the perfection of reason."

"But I am ent.i.tled, am I not, to suppose, for purposes of argument, that it might?" she inquired caustically. "And I say that our sense of honor is the most precious thing we've got. It's our duty to respect our inst.i.tutions and obey the law whether we like it or not, unless it conflicts with our conscience, in which case we ought to defy it and take the consequences!"

"Dear me!" mocked Tutt. "And be burned at the stake?"

"If necessary; yes!"

"I don't rightly get all this!" remarked Bonnie. "Me for the lee side of the law, every time!"

"It's highly theoretical," commented Tutt. "As usual with our discussions."

"Not so theoretical as you might think!" interrupted his senior, hastening to reenforce Miss Wiggin. "n.o.body can deny that to be true to oneself is the highest principle of human conduct, and that ''tis man's perdition to be safe when for the truth he ought to die.' That's why we reverence the early Christian martyrs. But when it comes to choosing between what we loosely call honor and what the law requires--"

"But I thought the law embodied our ideas of honor!" replied Tutt.

"Didn't you say so--a few hours earlier in this conversation? As our highest duty is to the state, it is a mere play on words, in my humble opinion, to speak of honor as distinguished from law or the obligation of one's oath in a court of justice. I bet I can find plenty of authorities to that effect in the library!"

"Of course you can," countered Miss Wiggin. "You can find an authority on any side of any proposition you want to look for. That's why one's own sense of honor is so much more reliable than the law. What is the law, anyhow? It's what some judge says is the law--until he's reversed.