By Advice of Counsel Part 38

"I don't know who the fellers are that voted for acquittal!" suddenly announced a juror with a red face. "But I know this Brown personally, and he's all right. You can rely on him absolutely. He goes to the same place as me in the summer--Cottage Point. If any of you gentlemen want a good quiet place--"

"Any mosquitoes?" inquired an unknown irreverently.

"No more'n anywheres else near New York."

They took another ballot and found that the juryman who knew Brown had brought over two others to conviction, so that the jury was now evenly divided, Bently voting irresponsibly for acquittal.

"Look here!" proposed the man in black. "Let's argue this out. Suppose I put the various propositions and you vote on 'em each separately."

"Shoot ahead!" adjured somebody.

"Now, first, all who think this defendant claimed to be a veterinary say aye."

"Wait a minute!" interposed the tall man, who was still standing by the window. "Maybe I am a nut. But I wish someone would explain to me which is the defender. I thought Mr. Tutt was the defender."

"Oh, my Lord!" groaned a flabby salesman in a pink tie.

"Defend-ant--a-n-t--remember your ant! He's the man we're trying! The other one is the complainant!"

"The only one that had any complaint was the horse", protested the tall man. "But I understand now--we're tryin' the defendant. I've never served on a jury before. Now, what's the question?"

"Did the defendant--ant--claim to be a licensed veterinary--when he wasn't?"

"Now wait a second," objected the tall man again. "I want to get this straight. Is it the point that if this old man pretended he was a horse doctor when he wasn't he has to go to jail?"

"Sure."

"But the other man pretended he was a doctor."

"But he was trying to trick the defendant."

"But the first feller wasn't a doctor any more than the other feller.

Why not convict the first feller?"

There was a chorus of groans from about the table.

"You ought not to be here at all!" remarked the salesman acidly. "You're simple-minded, you are! You keep still now and vote with the majority, 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!" "Pa.s.s 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.

"n.o.body 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 d.a.m.n 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 d.a.m.n about Brown!" he a.s.sured them. "He can go to h.e.l.l 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 n.o.body! 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."