Tutt and Mr. Tutt Page 2

  “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.

  They were a grand little pair of convictors, were Babson and O'Brien, and woe unto that man who was brought before them. It was even alleged by the impious that when Babson was in doubt what to do or what O'Brien wanted him to do the latter communicated the information to his conspirator upon the bench by a system of preconcerted signals. But indeed no such system was necessary, for the judge's part in the drama was merely to sustain his colleague's objections and overrule those of his opponent, after which he himself delivered the coup de grace with unerring insight and accuracy. When Babson got through charging a jury the latter had always in fact been instructed in brutal and sneering tones to convict the defendant or forever after to regard themselves as disloyal citizens, oath violators and outcasts though the stenographic record of his remarks would have led the reader thereof to suppose that this same judge was a conscientious, tender-hearted merciful lover of humanity, whose sensitive soul quivered at the mere thought of a prison cell, and who meticulously sought to surround the defendant with every protection the law could interpose against the imputation of guilt.

  He was, as Tutt put it, “a dangerous old cuss.” O'Brien was even worse. He was a bull-necked, bullet-headed, pugnosed young ruffian with beery eyes, who had an insatiable ambition and a still greater conceit, but who had devised a blundering, innocent, helpless way of conducting himself before a jury that deceived them into believing that his inexperience required their help and his disinterestedness their loyal support. Both of them were apparently fair-minded, honest public servants; both in reality were subtly disingenuous to a degree beyond ordinary comprehension, for years of practise had made them sensitive to every whimsy of emotion and taught them how to play upon the psychology of the jury as the careless zephyr softly draws its melody from the aeolian harp. In a word they were a precious pair of crooks, who for their own petty selfish ends played fast and loose with liberty, life and death.

  Both of them hated Mr. Tutt, who had more than once made them ridiculous before the jury and shown them up before the Court of Appeals, and the old lawyer recognized well the fact that these two legal wolves were in revenge planning to tear him and his helpless client to pieces, having first deliberately selected him as a victim and assigned him to officiate at a ceremony which, however just so far as its consummation might be concerned, was nothing less in its conduct than judicial murder. Now they were laughing at him in their sleeves, for Mr. Tutt enjoyed the reputation of never having defended a client who had been convicted of murder, and that spotless reputation was about to be annihilated forever.

  Though the defense had thirty peremptory challenges Mr. Tutt well knew that Babson would sustain the prosecutor's objections for bias until the jury box would contain the twelve automata personally selected by O'Brien in advance from what Tutt called “the army of the gibbet.” Yet the old war horse outwardly maintained a calm and genial exterior, betraying none of the apprehension which in fact existed beneath his mask of professional composure. The court officer rapped sharply for silence.

  “Are you quite ready to proceed with the case?” inquired the judge with a courtesy in which was ill concealed a leer of triumph.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” responded Mr. Tutt in velvet tones.

  “Call the first talesman!”

  The fight was on, the professional duel between traditional enemies, in which
the stake-a human life-was in truth the thing of least concern, had begun. Yet no casual observer would have suspected the actual significance of what was going on or the part that envy, malice, uncharitableness, greed, selfishness and ambition were playing in it. He would have seen merely a partially filled courtroom flooded with sunshine from high windows, an attentive and dignified judge in a black silk robe sitting upon a dais below which a white-haired clerk drew little slips of paper from a wheel and summoned jurymen to a service which outwardly bore no suggestion of a tragedy.

  He would have seen a somewhat unprepossessing assistant district attorney lounging in front of the jury box, taking apparently no great interest in the proceedings, and a worried-looking young Italian sitting at the prisoner's table between a rubicund little man with a round red face and a tall, grave, longish-haired lawyer with a frame not unlike that of Abraham Lincoln, over whose wrinkled face played from time to time the suggestion of a smile. Behind a balustrade were the reporters, scribbling on rough sheets of yellow paper. Then came rows of benches, upon the first of which, as near the jury box as possible, sat Rosalina in a new bombazine dress and wearing a large imitation gold cross furnished for the occasion out of the legal property room of Tutt & Tutt. Occasionally she sobbed softly. The bulk of the spectators consisted of rejected talesmen, witnesses, law clerks, professional court loafers and women seeking emotional sensations which they had not the courage or the means to satisfy otherwise. The courtroom was comparatively quiet, the silence broken only by the droning voice of the clerk and the lazy interplay of question and answer between talesman and lawyer.

  Yet beneath the humdrum, casual, almost indifferent manner in which the proceedings seemed to be conducted each side was watching every move made by the other with the tension of a tiger ready to spring upon its prey. Babson and O'Brien were engaged in forcing upon the defense a jury composed entirely of case-hardened convictors, while Tutt &Tutt were fighting desperately to secure one so heterogeneous in character that they could hope for a disagreement.

  By recess thirty-seven talesmen had been examined without a foreman having been selected, and Mr. Tutt had exhausted twenty-nine of his thirty challenges, as against three for the prosecution. The court reconvened and a new talesman was called, resembling in appearance a professional hangman who for relaxation leaned toward the execution of Italians. Mr. Tutt examined him for bias and every known form of incompetency, but in vain-then challenged peremptorily. Thirty challenges! He looked on Tutt with slightly raised eyebrows.

  “Patrick Henry Walsh-to the witness chair, please, Mr. Walsh!” called the clerk, drawing another slip from the box.

  Mr. Walsh rose and came forward heavily, while Tutt &Tutt trembled. He was the one man they were afraid of-an old-timer celebrated as a bulwark of the prosecution, who could always be safely counted upon to uphold the arms of the law, who regarded with reverence all officials connected with the administration of justice, and from whose composition all human emotions had been carefully excluded by the Creator. He was a square-jawed, severe, heavily built person, with a long relentless upper lip, cheeks ruddy from the open air; engaged in the contracting business; and he had a brogue that would have charmed a mavis off a tree. Mr. Tutt looked hopelessly at Tutt.

  Babson and O'Brien had won.

  Once more Mr. Tutt struggled against his fate. Was Mr. Walsh sure he had no prejudices against Italians or foreigners generally? Quite. Did he know anyone connected with the case? No. Had he any objection to the infliction of capital punishment? None whatever. The defense had exhausted all its challenges. Mr. Tutt turned to the prospective foreman with an endearing smile.

  “Mr. Walsh,” said he in caressing tones, “you are precisely the type of man in whom I feel the utmost confidence in submitting the fate of my client. I believe that you will make an ideal foreman I hardly need to ask you whether you will accord the defendant the benefit of every reasonable doubt, and if you have such a doubt will acquit him.”

  Mr. Walsh gazed suspiciously at Mr. Tutt.

  “Sure,” he responded dryly, “Oi'll give him the benefit o' the doubt, but if Oi think he's guilty Oi'll convict him.”

  Mr. Tutt shivered.

  “Of course! Of course! That would be your duty! You are entirely satisfactory, Mr. Walsh!”

  “Mr. Walsh is more than satisfactory to the prosecution!” intoned O'Brien.

  “Be sworn, Mr. Walsh,” directed the clerk; and the filling of the jury box in the memorable case of People versus Serafino was begun.

  “That chap doesn't like us,” whispered Mr. Tutt to Tutt. “I laid it on a bit too thick.”

  In fact, Mr. Walsh had already entered upon friendly relations with Mr. O'Brien, and as the latter helped him arrange a place for his hat and coat the foreman cast a look tinged with malevolence at the defendant and his counsel, as if to say “You can't fool me. I know the kind of tricks you fellows are all up to.”

  O'Brien could not repress a grin. The clerk drew forth another name.

  “Mr. Tompkins-will you take the chair?”

  Swiftly the jury was impaneled. O'Brien challenged everybody who did not suit his fancy, while Tutt &Tutt sat helpless.

  Ten minutes and the clerk called the roll, beginning with Mr. Walsh, and they were solemnly sworn a true verdict to find, and settled themselves to the task.

  The mills of the gods had begun to grind, and Angelo was being dragged to his fate as inexorably and as surely, with about as much chance of escape, as a log that is being drawn slowly toward a buzz saw.

  “You may open the case, Mr. O'Brien,” announced Judge Babson, leaning back and wiping his glasses.

  Then surreptitiously he began to read his mail as his fellow conspirator undertook to tell the jury what it was all about. One by one the witnesses were called-the coroner's physician, the policeman who had arrested Angelo outside the barber shop with the smoking pistol in his hand, the assistant barber who had seen the shooting, the customer who was being shaved. Each drove a spike into poor Angelo's legal coffin. Mr. Tutt could not shake them. This evidence was plain. He had come into the shop, accused Crocedoro of making his wife's life unbearable and-shot him.

  Yet Mr. Tutt did not lose any of his equanimity. With the tips of his long fingers held lightly together in front of him, and swaying slightly backward and forward upon the balls of his feet, he smiled benignly down upon the customer and the barber's assistant as if these witnesses were merely unfortunate in not being able to disclose to the jury all the facts. His manner indicated that a mysterious and untold tragedy lay behind what they had heard, a tragedy pregnant with primordial vital passions, involving the most sacred of human relationships, which when known would rouse the spirit of chivalry of the entire panel.

  On cross-examination the barber testified that Angelo had said: “You maka small of my wife long enough!”

  “Ah!” murmured Mr. Tutt, waving an arm in the direction of Rosalina. Did the witness recognize the defendant's young wife? The jury showed interest and examined the sobbing Rosalina with approval. Yes, the witness recognized her. Did the witness know to what incident or incidents the defendant had referred by his remark-what the deceased Crocedoro had done to Rosalina-if anything? No, the witness did not. Mr. Tutt looked significantly at the row of faces in the jury box.

  Then leaning forward he asked significantly: “Did you see Crocedoro threaten the defendant with his razor?”

  “I object!” shouted O'Brien, springing to his feet. “The question is improper. There is no suggestion that Crocedoro did anything. The defendant can testify to that if he wants to!”

  “Oh, let him answer!” drawled the judge.

  “No-” began the witness.

  “Ah!” cried Mr. Tutt. “You did not see Crocedoro threaten the defendant with his razor! That will do!”

  But forewarned by this trifling experience, Mr. O'Brien induced the customer, the next witness, to swear that Crocedoro had not in fact made any move whatever with his razor toward A
ngelo, who had deliberately raised his pistol and shot him.

  Mr. Tutt rose to the cross-examination with the same urbanity as before. Where was the witness standing? The witness said he wasn't standing. Well, where was he sitting, then? In the chair.

  “Ah!” exclaimed Mr. Tutt triumphantly. “Then you had your back to the shooting!”

  In a moment O'Brien had the witness practically rescued by the explanation that he had seen the whole thing in the glass in front of him. The firm of Tutt &Tutt uttered in chorus a groan of outraged incredulity. Several jurymen were seen to wrinkle their foreheads in meditation. Mr. Tutt had sown a tiny-infinitesimally tiny, to be sure-seed of doubt, not as to the killing at all but as to the complete veracity of the witness.

  And then O'Brien made his coup.

  “Rosalina Serafino-take the witness stand!” he ordered.

  He would get from her own lips the admission that she bought the pistol and gave it to Angelo!

  But with an outburst of indignation that would have done credit to the elder Booth Mr. Tutt was immediately on his feet protesting against the outrage, the barbarity, the heartlessness, the illegality of making a wife testify against her husband! His eyes flashed, his disordered locks waved in picturesque synchronization with his impassioned gestures Rosalina, her beautiful golden cross rising and falling hysterically upon her bosom, took her seat in the witness chair like a frightened, furtive creature of the woods, gazed for one brief instant upon the twelve men in the jury box with those great black eyes of hers, and then with burning cheeks buried her face in her handkerchief.

  “I protest against this piece of cruelty!” cried Mr. Tutt in a voice vibrating with indignation. “This is worthy of the Inquisition. Will not even the cross upon her breast protect her from being compelled to reveal those secrets that are sacred to wife and motherhood? Can the law thus indirectly tear the seal of confidence from the Confessional? Mr. O'Brien, you go too far! There are some things that even you-brilliant as you are-may not trifle with.”