Chapter IV: Part 4

"You know, Mr. Oaklander is the pastor of St. Lukes-Over-the-Way," said Mrs. Allison. "I thought that maybe rather than have any publicity he might do a little something for me."

"I suppose you've got something in the way of evidence, haven't you? Letters or photographs or something?" inquired Tutt, reverting absent-mindedly to his more professional manner.

"No," she answered. "We never wrote to one another. And when we went out it was usually in the evening. I don't suppose half a dozen people have ever seen us together."

"That's awkward!" meditated Tutt, "if he denies it."

"Of course he will deny it!"

"You can't tell. He may not."

"Oh, yes, he will! Why, he even refuses to admit that he ever met me!" declared Mrs. Allison indignantly.

Now, to Tutt's credit be it said that neither at this point nor at any other did any suspicion of Mrs. Allison's sincerity enter his mind. For the first time in his professional existence he accepted what a lady client told him at its face value. Indeed he felt that no one, not even a clergyman, could help loving so miraculous a woman, or that loving her one could refrain from marrying her save for some religious or other permanent obstacle He was sublimely, ecstatically happy in the mere thought that he, Tutt, might be of help to such a celestial being, and he desired no reward other than the privilege of being her willing slave and of reading her gratitude in those melting, misty eyes.

Mrs. Allison went away just before lunch time, leaving her telephone number, her handkerchief, a pungent odor of violet talc, and a disconsolate but highly excited Tutt. Never, at any rate within twenty years, had he felt so young. Life seemed tinged with every color of the spectrum. The radiant fact was that he would--he simply had to--see her again. What he might do for her professionally--all that aspect of the affair was shoved far into the background of his mind. His only thought was how to get her back into his office at the earliest possible moment.

"Shall I enter the lady's name in the address book?" inquired Miss Wiggin coldly as he went out to get a bite of lunch.

Tutt hesitated.

"Mrs. Georgie Allison is her name," he said in a detached sort of way.

"Address?"

Tutt felt in his waistcoat pocket.

"By George!" he muttered, "I didn't take it. But her telephone number is Lincoln Square 9187."

To chronicle the details of Tutt's second blooming would be needlessly to derogate from the dignity of the history of Tutt & Tutt. There is a silly season in the life of everyone--even of every lawyer--who can call himself a man, and out of such silliness comes the gravity of knowledge. Tutt found it necessary for his new client to come to the office almost every day, and as she usually arrived about the noon hour what was more natural than that he should invite her out to lunch? Twice he walked home with her. The telephone was busy constantly. And the only thorn in the rose of Tutt's delirious happiness was the fear lest Abigail might discover something. The thought gave him many an anxious hour, cost him several sleepless nights. At times this nervousness about his wife almost exceeded the delight of having Mrs. Allison for a friend. Yet each day he became on more and more cordial terms with her, and the lunches became longer and more intimate.

The Reverend Winthrop Oaklander gave no sign of life, however. The customary barrage of legal letters had been laid down, but without eliciting any response. The Reverend Winthrop must be a wise one, opined Tutt, and he began to have a hearty contempt as well as hatred for his quarry. The first letter had been the usual vague hint that the clergyman might and probably would find it to his advantage to call at the offices of Tutt & Tutt, and so on. The Reverend Winthrop, however did not seem to care to secure said advantage whatever it might be. The second epistle gave the name of the client and proposed a friendly discussion of her affairs. No reply. The third hinted at legal proceedings. Total silence. The fourth demanded ten thousand dollars damages and threatened immediate suit.

In answer to this last appeared the Reverend Winthrop himself. He was a fine-looking young chap with a clear eye--almost as blue as Georgie's--and a skin even pinker than hers, and he stood six feet five in his Oxfords and his fist looked to Tutt as big as a coconut.

"Are you the blackmailer who's been writing me those letters?" he demanded, springing into Tutt's office. "If you are, let me tell you something. You've got hold of the wrong monkey. I've been dealing with fellows of your variety ever since I got out of the seminary. I don't know the lady you pretend to represent, and I never heard of her. If I get any more letters from you I'll go down and lay the case before the district attorney; and if he doesn't put you in jail I'll come up here and knock your head off. Understand? Good day!"

At any other period in his existence Tutt could not have failed to be impressed with the honesty of this husky exponent of the church militant, but he was drugged as by the drowsy mandragora. The blatant defiance of this muscular preacher outraged him. This canting hypocrite, this wolf in priest's clothing must be brought to book. But how? Mrs. Allison had admitted the literal truth when she had told him that there were no letters, no photographs. There was no use commencing an action for breach of promise if there was no evidence to support it. And once the papers were filed their bolt would have been shot. Some way must be devised whereby the Reverend Winthrop Oaklander could be made to perceive that Tutt & Tutt meant business, and--equally imperative --whereby Georgie would be impressed with the fact that not for nothing had she come to them--that is, to him--for help.

The fact of the matter was that the whole thing had become rather hysterical. Tutt, though having nothing seriously to reproach himself with, was constantly haunted by a sense of being rather ridiculous and doing something behind his wife's back. He told himself that his Platonic regard for Georgie was a noble thing and did him honor, but it was an honor which he preferred to wear as an entirely private decoration. He was conscious of being laughed at by Willie and Scraggs and disapproved of by Miss Wiggin, who was very snippy to him. And in addition there was the omnipresent horror of having Abigail unearth his philandering. He now not only thought of Mrs. Allison as Georgie but addressed her thus, and there was quite a tidy little bill at the florist's for flowers that he had sent her. In one respect only did he exhibit even the most elementary caution--he wrote and signed all his letters to her himself upon the typewriter, and filed copies in the safe.

"So there we are!" he sighed as he gave to Mrs. Allison a somewhat expurgated, or rather emasculated version of the Reverend Winthrop's visit. "We have got to hand him something hot or make up our minds to surrender. In a word we have got to scare him--Georgie."

And then it was that, like the apocryphal mosquito, the Fat and Skinny Club justified its attempted existence. For the indefatigable Sorg made an unheralded reappearance in the outer office and insisted upon seeing Tutt, loudly asserting that he had reason to believe that if a new application were now made to another judge--whom he knew--it would be more favorably received. Tutt went to the doorway and stood there barring the entrance and expostulating with him.

"All right!" shouted Sorg. "All right! I hear you! But don't tell me that a man named Solomon Swackhamer can change his name to Phillips Brooks Vanderbilt and in the same breath a reputable body of citizens be denied the right to call themselves what they please!"

"He don't understand!" explained Tutt to Georgie, who had listened with wide, dreamy eyes. "He don't appreciate the difference between doing a thing as an individual and as a group."

"What thing?"

"Why, taking a name."

"I don't get you," said Georgie.

"Sorg wanted to call his crowd the Fat and Skinny Club, and the court wouldn't let him--thought it was silly."

"Well?"

"But he could have called himself Mr. Fat or Mr. Skinny or Mr. Anything Else without having to ask anybody--Oh, I say!"

Tutt had stiffened into sculpture.

"What is it?" demanded Georgie fascinated.

"I've got an idea," he cried. "You can call yourself anything you like. Why not call yourself Mrs. Winthrop Oaklander?"

"But what good would that do?" she asked vaguely.

"Look here!" directed Tutt. "This is the surest thing you know! Just go up to the Biltmore and register as Mrs. Winthrop Oaklander. You have a perfect legal right to do it. You could call yourself Mrs. Julius Caesar if you wanted to. Take a room and stay there until our young Christian soldier offers you a suitable inducement to move along. Even if you're violating the law somehow his first attempt to make trouble for you will bring about the very publicity he is anxious to avoid. Why, it's marvelous--and absolutely safe? They can't touch you. He'll come across inside of two hours. If he doesn't a word to the reporters will start things in the right direction."

For a moment Mrs. Allison looked puzzled. Then her beautiful face broke into an enthusiastic classic smile and she laid her little hand softly on his arm.

"What a clever boy you are--Sammy!"

A subdued snigger came from the direction of the desk usually occupied by William. Tutt flushed. It was one thing to call Mrs. Allison "Georgie" in private and another to have her "Sammy" him within hearing of the office force. And just then Miss Wiggin passed by with her nose slightly in the air.

"What a perfectly wonderful idea!" went on Mrs. Allison rapturously. "A perfectly wonderful idea!"

Then she smiled a strange, mysterious, significant smile that almost tore Tutt's heart out by the roots.

"Listen, Sammy," she whispered, with a new light in those beautiful eyes. "I want five thousand dollars."

"Five?" repeated Tutt simply. "I thought you wanted ten thousand!"

"Only five from you, Sammy!"

"Me!" he gagged.

"You--dearest!"

Tutt turned blazing hot; then cold, dizzy and sea-sick. His sight was slightly blurred. Slowly he groped for the door and closed it cautiously.

"What--are--you--talking about?" he choked, though he knew perfectly well.

Georgie had thrown herself back in the leather chair by his desk and had opened her gold mesh-bag.

"About five thousand dollars," she replied with the careful enunciation of a New England school-mistress.

"What five thousand dollars?"

"The five you're going to hand me before I leave this office, Sammy darling," she retorted dazzlingly.

Tutt's head swam and he sank weakly into his swivel chair. It was incredible that he, a veteran of the criminal bar, should have been so tricked. Instantly, as when a reagent is injected into a retort of chemicals and a precipitate is formed leaving the previously cloudy liquid like crystal, Tutt's addled brain cleared. He was caught! The victim of his own asininity. He dared not look at this woman who had wound him thus round her finger, innocent as he was of any wrongdoing; he was ashamed to think of his wife.

"My Lord!" he murmured, realizing for the first time the depth of his weakness.

"Oh, it isn't as bad as that!" she laughed. "Remember you were going to charge Oaklander ten thousand. This costs you only five. Special rates for physicians and lawyers!"

"And suppose I don't choose to give it to you?" he asked.

"Listen here, you funny little man!" she answered in caressing tones that made him writhe. "You'd stand for twenty if I insisted on it. Oh, don't jump! I'm not going to. You're getting off easy--too easy. But I want to stay on good terms with you. I may need you sometime in my business. Your certified check for five thousand dollars--and I leave you."

She struck a match and started to light a tiny gold-tipped cigarette.

"Don't!" he gasped. "Not in the office."

"Do I get the five thousand?"

He ground his teeth, not yet willing to concede defeat.

"You silly old bird!" she said. "Do you know how many times you've had me down here in your office in the last three weeks? Fifteen. How many times you've taken me out to lunch? Ten. How often you've called me on the telephone? Eighty-nine How many times you've sent me flowers? Twelve. How many letters you've written me? Eleven! Oh, I realize they're typewritten, but a photograph enlargement would show they were typed in your office. Every typewriter has its own individuality, you know. Your clerks and office boy have heard me call you Sammy. Why, every time you've moved with me beside you someone has seen you. That's enough, isn't it? But now, on top of all that, you go and hand me exactly what I need on a gold plate."

He gazed at her stupidly.

"Why, if now you don't give me that check I shall simply go up to the Biltmore and register as Mrs. Samuel Tutt. I shall take a room and stay there until you offer me a proper inducement to move on." She giggled delightedly. "It's marvelous--absolutely safe," she quoted. "They can't touch me. You'll come across inside of two hours. If you don't a word to the reporters will start things in the right direction."

"Don't!" he groaned. "I must have been crazy. That was simply blackmail!"

"That's exactly what it was!" she agreed. "There aren't any letters except these typewritten ones, or photographs, or any evidence at all, but you're going to give me five thousand dollars just the same. Just so that your wife won't know what a silly old fool you've been. Where's your check book, Sam?"

Tutt pulled out the bottom drawer of his desk and slowly removed his personal check book. With his fountain pen in his hand he paused and looked at her.

"Rather than give you another cent I'd stand the gaff," he remarked defiantly.

"I know it," she answered. "I looked you up before I came here the first time. You are good for exactly five thousand dollars."

Tutt filled out the check to cash and sent Willie across the street to the bank to have it certified. The sun was just sinking over the Jersey shore beyond the Statue of Liberty and the surface of the harbor undulated like iridescent watered silk. The clouds were torn into golden-purple rents, and the air was so clear that one could look down the Narrows far out to the open sea. Standing there by the window Mrs. Allison looked as innocently beautiful as the day Tutt had first beheld her. After all, he thought, perhaps the experience had been worth the money.

Something of the same thought may have occurred to the lady, for as she took the check and carefully examined the certification she remarked with a distinct access of cordiality: "Really, Sammy, you're quite a nice little man. I rather like you."

Tutt stood after she had gone watching the sunset until the west was only a mass of leaden shadows Then, strangely relieved, he took his hat and started out of the office. Somewhat to his surprise he found Miss Wiggin still at her desk.

"By the way," she remarked casually as he passed her, "what shall I charge that check to? The one you just drew to cash for five thousand dollars?"

"Charge it to life insurance," he said shortly.

He felt almost gay as he threaded his way through the crowds along Broadway. Somehow a tremendous load had been lifted from his shoulders He would no longer be obliged to lead a sneaking, surreptitious existence. He felt like shouting with joy now that he could look the world frankly in the face. The genuine agony he had endured during the past three weeks loomed like a sickness behind him. He had been a fool--and there was no fool like an old one. Just let him get back to his old Abigail and there'd be no more wandering-boy business for him! Abigail might not have the figure or the complexion that Georgie had, but she was a darn sight more reliable. Henceforth she could have him from five p.m. to nine a.m. without reserve. As for kicking over the traces, sowing wild oats and that sort of thing, there was nothing in it for him. Give him Friend Wife.

He stopped at the florist's and, having paid a bill of thirty-six dollars for Georgie's flowers, purchased a double bunch of violets and carried them home with him. Abigail was watching for him out of the window. Something warm rushed to his heart at the sight of her. Through the lace curtains she looked quite trim.

"Hello, old girl!" he cried, as she opened the door. "Waiting for me, eh? Here's a bunch of posies for you."

And he kissed her on the cheek.

"That's more than I ever did to Georgie," he said to himself.

"Why, Samuel!" laughed Abigail with a faded blush. "What's ever got into you?"

"Dunno!" he retorted gaily. "The spring, I guess. What do you say to a little dinner at a restaurant and then going to the play?"

She bridled--being one of the generation who did such things--with pleasure.

"Seems to me you're getting rather extravagant." she objected. "Still--"

"Oh, come along!" he bullied her. "One of my clients collected five thousand dollars this afternoon."

Tutt summoned a taxi and they drove to the brightest, most glittering of Broadway hostelries. Abigail had never been in such a chic place before. It half terrified and shocked her, all those women in dresses that hardly came up to their armpits. Some of them were handsome though. That slim one at the table by the pillar, for instance. She was really quite lovely with that mass of yellow-golden hair, that startlingly white skin, and those misty China-blue eyes. And the gentleman with her, the tall man with the pink cheeks, was very handsome, too.

"Look, Samuel," she said, touching his hand. "See that good-looking couple over there."

But Samuel was looking at them already--intently. And just then the beautiful woman turned and, catching sight of the Tutts, smiled cordially if somewhat roguishly and raised her glass, as did her companion. Mechanically Tutt elevated his. The three drank to one another.

"Do you know those people, Samuel?" inquired Mrs. Tutt somewhat stiffly. "Who are they?"

"Oh, those over there?" he repeated absently. "I don't really know what the lady's name is, she's been down to our office a few times. But the man is Winthrop Oaklander--and the funny part of it is, I always thought he was a clergyman."

Later in the evening he turned to her between the acts and remarked inconsequently: "Say, Abbie, do I look as if I'd just had my hair cut?"

The Dog Andrew

"Every dog is entitled to one bite."--UNREPORTED
OPINION OF THE APPELLATE DIVISION OF THE NEW
YORK SUPREME COURT.

"Now see here!" shouted Mr. Appleboy, coming out of the boathouse, where he was cleaning his morning's catch of perch, as his neighbor Mr. Tunnygate crashed through the hedge and cut across Appleboy's parched lawn to the beach. "See here, Tunnygate, I won't have you trespassing on my place! I've told you so at least a dozen times! Look at the hole you've made in that hedge, now! Why can't you stay in the path?"

His ordinarily good-natured countenance was suffused with anger and perspiration. His irritation with Mr. Tunnygate had reached the point of explosion. Tunnygate was a thankless friend and he was a great cross to Mr. Appleboy. Aforetime the two had been intimate in the fraternal, taciturn intimacy characteristic of fat men, an attraction perhaps akin to that exerted for one another by celestial bodies of great mass, for it is a fact that stout people do gravitate toward one another--and hang or float in placid juxtaposition, perhaps merely as a physical result of their avoirdupois. So Appleboy and Tunnygate had swum into each other's spheres of influence, either blown by the dallying winds of chance or drawn by some mysterious animal magnetism, and, being both addicted to the delights of the soporific sport sanctified by Izaak Walton, had raised unto themselves portable temples upon the shores of Long Island Sound in that part of the geographical limits of the Greater City known as Throggs Neck.

Every morn during the heat of the summer months Appleboy would rouse Tunnygate or conversely Tunnygate would rouse Appleboy, and each in his own wobbly skiff would row out to the spot which seemed most propitious to the piscatorial art. There, under two green umbrellas, like two fat rajahs in their shaking howdahs upon the backs of two white elephants, the friends would sit in solemn equanimity awaiting the evasive cunner, the vagrant perch or cod or the occasional flirtatious eel. They rarely spoke and when they did the edifice of their conversation--their Tower of Babel, so to speak--was monosyllabic. Thus:

"Huh! Ain't had a bite!"

"Huh!"

"Huh!"

Silence for forty minutes. Then: "Huh! Had a bite?"

"Nope!"

"Huh!"

That was generally the sum total of their interchange Yet it satisfied them, for their souls were in harmony. To them it was pregnant of unutterable meanings, of philosophic mysteries more subtle than those of the esoterics, of flowers and poetry, of bird-song and twilight, of all the nuances of softly whispered avowals, of the elusive harmonies of love's half-fainting ecstasy.

"Huh!"

"Huh!"

And then into this Eden--only not by virtue of the excision of any vertebra such as was originally necessary in the case of Adam--burst woman. There was silence no longer. The air was rent with clamor; for both Appleboy and Tunnygate, within a month of one another, took unto themselves wives. Wives after their own image!

For a while things went well enough; it takes ladies a few weeks to find out each other's weak points. But then the new Mrs. Tunnygate unexpectedly yet undeniably began to exhibit the serpent's tooth, the adder's tongue or the cloven hoof--as the reader's literary traditions may lead him to prefer. For no obvious reason at all she conceived a violent hatred of Mrs. Appleboy, a hatred that waxed all the more virulent on account of its object's innocently obstinate refusal to comprehend or recognize it. Indeed Mrs. Tunnygate found it so difficult to rouse Mrs. Appleboy into a state of belligerency sufficiently interesting that she soon transferred her energies to the more worthy task of making Appleboy's life a burden to him.

To this end she devoted herself with a truly Machiavellian ingenuity, devising all sorts of insults irritations and annoyances, and adding to the venom of her tongue the inventive cunning of a Malayan witch doctor. The Appleboys' flower-pots mysteriously fell off the piazza, their thole-pins disappeared, their milk bottles vanished, Mr. Appleboy's fish lines acquired a habit of derangement equaled only by barbed-wire entanglements, and his clams went bad! But these things might have been borne had it not been for the crowning achievement of her malevolence, the invasion of the Appleboys' cherished lawn, upon which they lavished all that anxious tenderness which otherwise they might have devoted to a child.

It was only about twenty feet by twenty, and it was bordered by a hedge of moth-eaten privet, but anyone who has ever attempted to induce a blade of grass to grow upon a sand dune will fully appreciate the deviltry of Mrs. Tunnygate's malignant mind. Already there was a horrid rent where Tunnygate had floundered through at her suggestion in order to save going round the pathetic grass plot which the Appleboys had struggled to create where Nature had obviously intended a floral vacuum. Undoubtedly it had been the sight of Mrs. Appleboy with her small watering pot patiently encouraging the recalcitrant blades that had suggested the malicious thought to Mrs. Tunnygate that maybe the Appleboys didn't own that far up the beach. They didn't--that was the mockery of it. Like many others they had built their porch on their boundary line, and, as Mrs. Tunnygate pointed out, they were claiming to own something that wasn't theirs. So Tunnygate, in daily obedience to his spouse, forced his way through the hedge to the beach, and daily the wrath of the Appleboys grew until they were driven almost to desperation.

Now when the two former friends sat fishing in their skiffs they either contemptuously ignored one another or, if they "Huh-Huhed!" at all the "Huhs!" resembled the angry growls of infuriated beasts. The worst of it was that the Appleboys couldn't properly do anything about it. Tunnygate had, as Mrs. Tunnygate sneeringly pointed out, a perfect legal right to push his way through the hedge and tramp across the lawn, and she didn't propose to allow the Appleboys to gain any rights by proscription, either. Not much!

Therefore, when Mr. Appleboy addressed to Mr. Tunnygate the remarks with which this story opens, the latter insolently replied in words, form or substance that Mr. Appleboy could go to hell. Moreover, as he went by Mr. Appleboy he took pains to kick over a clod of transplanted sea grass, nurtured by Mrs. Appleboy as the darling of her bosom, and designed to give an air of verisimilitude to an otherwise bare and unconvincing surface of sand. Mr. Appleboy almost cried with vexation.

"Oh!" he ejaculated, struggling for words to express the full content of his feeling. "Gosh, but you're--mean!"

He hit it! Curiously enough, that was exactly the word! Tunnygate was mean--and his meanness was second only to that of the fat hippopotama his wife.

Then, without knowing why, for he had no formulated ideas as to the future, and probably only intended to try to scare Tunnygate with vague threats, Appleboy added: "I warn you not to go through that hedge again! Understand--I warn you! And if you do I won't be responsible for the consequences!"

He really didn't mean a thing by the words, and Tunnygate knew it.

"Huh!" retorted the latter contemptuously. "You!"

Mr. Appleboy went inside the shack and banged the door. Mrs. Appleboy was peeling potatoes in the kitchen-living room.

"I can't stand it!" he cried weakly. "He's driving me wild!"

"Poor lamb!" soothed Mrs. Appleboy, peeling an interminable rind. "Ain't that just a sweetie? Look! It's most as long as your arm!"

She held it up dangling between her thumb and fore-finger. Then, with a groan she dropped it at his feet. "I know it's a real burden to you, deary!" she sighed.

Suddenly they both bent forward with startled eyes, hypnotized by the peel upon the floor.

Unmistakably it spelt "dog"! They looked at one another significantly.

"It is a symbol!" breathed Mrs. Appleboy in an awed whisper.

"Whatever it is, it's some grand idea!" exclaimed her husband. "Do you know anybody who's got one? I mean a--a--"

"I know just what you mean," she agreed. "I wonder we never thought of it before! But there wouldn't be any use in getting any dog!"

"Oh, no!" he concurred. "We want a real--dog!"

"One you know about!" she commented.

"The fact is," said he, rubbing his forehead, "if they know about 'em they do something to 'em. It ain't so easy to get the right kind."

"Oh, we'll get one!" she encouraged him. "Now Aunt Eliza up to Livornia used to have one. It made a lot of trouble and they ordered her--the selectmen did--to do away with it. But she only pretended she had--she didn't really--and I think she's got him yet."

"Gee!" said Mr. Appleboy tensely. "What sort was it?"

"A bull!" she replied. "With a big white face."

"That's the kind!" he agreed excitedly. "What was its name?"

"Andrew," she answered.

"That's a queer name for a dog!" he commented "Still, I don't care what his name is, so long as he's the right kind of dog! Why don't you write to Aunt Eliza to-night?"

"Of course Andrew may be dead," she hazarded. "Dogs do die."

"Oh, I guess Andrew isn't dead!" he said hopefully "That tough kind of dog lasts a long time. What will you say to Aunt Eliza?"

Mrs. Appleboy went to the dresser and took a pad and pencil from one of the shelves.

"Oh, something like this," she answered, poising the pencil over the pad in her lap:

"Dear Aunt Eliza: I hope you are quite well. It is sort of lonely living down here on the beach and there are a good many rough characters, so we are looking for a dog for companionship and protection Almost any kind of healthy dog would do and you may be sure he would have a good home. Hoping to see you soon. Your affectionate niece, Bashemath."

"I hope she'll send us Andrew," said Appleboy fervently.

"I guess she will!" nodded Bashemath.

* * * * *

"What on earth is that sign?" wrathfully demanded Mrs. Tunnygate one morning about a week later as she looked across the Appleboys' lawn from her kitchen window. "Can you read it, Herman?"

Herman stopped trying to adjust his collar and went out on the piazza.

"Something about 'dog'," he declared finally.

"Dog!" she exclaimed. "They haven't got a dog!"

"Well," he remarked, "that's what the sign says: 'Beware of the dog'! And there's something above it. Oh! 'No crossing this property. Trespassing forbidden.'"

"What impudence!" avowed Mrs. Tunnygate. "Did you ever know such people! First they try and take land that don't belong to them, and then they go and lie about having a dog. Where are they, anyway?"

"I haven't seen 'em this morning," he answered. "Maybe they've gone away and put up the sign so we won't go over. Think that'll stop us!"

"In that case they've got another think comin'!" she retorted angrily. "I've a good mind to have you go over and tear up the whole place!"

"'N pull up the hedge?" he concurred eagerly. "Good chance!"

Indeed, to Mr. Tunnygate it seemed the supreme opportunity both to distinguish himself in the eyes of his blushing bride and to gratify that perverse instinct inherited from our cave-dwelling ancestors to destroy utterly--in order, perhaps, that they may never seek to avenge themselves upon us--those whom we have wronged. Accordingly Mr. Tunnygate girded himself with his suspenders, and with a gleam of fiendish exultation in his eye stealthily descended from his porch and crossed to the hole in the hedge. No one was in sight except two barefooted searchers after clams a few hundred yards farther up the beach and a man working in a field half a mile away. The bay shimmered in the broiling August sun and from a distant grove came the rattle and wheeze of locusts. Throggs Neck blazed in silence, and utterly silent was the house of Appleboy.

With an air of bravado, but with a slightly accelerated heartbeat, Tunnygate thrust himself through the hole in the hedge and looked scornfully about the Appleboy lawn. A fierce rage worked through his veins. A lawn! What effrontery! What business had these condescending second-raters to presume to improve a perfectly good beach which was satisfactory to other folks? He'd show 'em! He took a step in the direction of the transplanted sea grass. Unexpectedly the door of the Appleboy kitchen opened.

"I warned you!" enunciated Mr. Appleboy with unnatural calmness, which with another background might have struck almost anybody as suspicious.

"Huh!" returned the startled Tunnygate, forced under the circumstances to assume a nonchalance that he did not altogether feel. "You!"

"Well," repeated Mr. Appleboy. "Don't ever say I didn't!"

"Pshaw!" ejaculated Mr. Tunnygate disdainfully.

With premeditation and deliberation, and with undeniable malice aforethought, he kicked the nearest bunch of sea grass several feet in the air. His violence carried his leg high in the air and he partially lost his equilibrium. Simultaneously a white streak shot from beneath the porch and something like a red-hot poker thrust itself savagely into an extremely tender part of his anatomy.

"Ouch! O--o--oh!" he yelled in agony. "Oh!"

"Come here, Andrew!" said Mr. Appleboy mildly. "Good doggy! Come here!"

But Andrew paid no attention. He had firmly affixed himself to the base of Mr. Tunnygate's personality without any intention of being immediately detached. And he had selected that place, taken aim, and discharged himself with an air of confidence and skill begotten of lifelong experience.

"Oh! O--o--oh!" screamed Tunnygate, turning wildly and clawing through the hedge, dragging Andrew after him. "Oh! O--oh!"

Mrs. Tunnygate rushed to the door in time to see her spouse lumbering up the beach with a white object gyrating in the air behind him.

"What's the matter?" she called out languidly. Then perceiving the matter she hastily followed. The Appleboys were standing on their lawn viewing the whole proceeding with ostentatious indifference.

Up the beach fled Tunnygate, his cries becoming fainter and fainter. The two clam diggers watched him curiously, but made no attempt to go to his assistance. The man in the field leaned luxuriously upon his hoe and surrendered himself to unalloyed delight. Tunnygate was now but a white flicker against the distant sand. His wails had a dying fall: "O--o--oh!"

"Well, we warned him!" remarked Mr. Appleboy to Bashemath with a smile in which, however, lurked a slight trace of apprehension.

"We certainly did!" she replied. Then after a moment she added a trifle anxiously: "I wonder what will happen to Andrew!"

Tunnygate did not return. Neither did Andrew. Secluded in their kitchen living-room the Appleboys heard a motor arrive and through a crack in the door saw it carry Mrs. Tunnygate away bedecked as for some momentous ceremonial. At four o'clock, while Appleboy was digging bait, he observed another motor making its wriggly way along the dunes. It was fitted longitudinally with seats, had a wire grating and was marked "N.Y.P.D." Two policemen in uniform sat in front. Instinctively Appleboy realized that the gods had called him. His heart sank among the clams. Slowly he made his way back to the lawn where the wagon had stopped outside the hedge.

"Hey there!" called out the driver. "Is your name Appleboy?"

Appleboy nodded.

"Put your coat on, then, and come along," directed the other. "I've got a warrant for you."

"Warrant?" stammered Appleboy dizzily.

"What's that?" cried Bashemath, appearing at the door. "Warrant for what?"

The officer slowly descended and handed Appleboy a paper.

"For assault," he replied. "I guess you know what for, all right!"

"We haven't assaulted anybody," protested Mrs. Appleboy heatedly. "Andrew--"

"You can explain all that to the judge," retorted the cop. "Meantime put on your duds and climb in. If you don't expect to spend the night at the station you'd better bring along the deed of your house so you can give bail."

"But who's the warrant for?" persisted Mrs. Appleboy.

"For Enoch Appleboy," retorted the cop wearily. "Can't you read?"

"But Enoch didn't do a thing!" she declared. "It was Andrew!"

"Who's Andrew?" inquired the officer of the law mistrustfully.

"Andrew's a dog," she explained.

* * * * *

"Mr. Tutt," announced Tutt, leaning against his senior partner's door jamb with a formal-looking paper in his hand, "I have landed a case that will delight your legal soul."

"Indeed?" queried the elder lawyer. "I have never differentiated between my legal soul and any other I may possess. However, I assume from your remark that we have been retained in a matter presenting some peculiarly absurd, archaic or otherwise interesting doctrine of law?"

"Not directly," responded Tutt. "Though you will doubtless find it entertaining enough, but indirectly--atmospherically so to speak--it touches upon doctrines of jurisprudence, of religion and of philosophy, replete with historic fascination."

"Good!" exclaimed Mr. Tutt, laying down his stogy. "What kind of a case is it?"

"It's a dog case!" said the junior partner, waving the paper. "The dog bit somebody."

"Ah!" exclaimed Mr. Tutt, perceptibly brightening. "Doubtless we shall find a precedent in Oliver Goldsmith's famous elegy:

"And in that town a dog was found,
As many dogs there be,
Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound,
And curs of low degree."

"Only," explained Tutt, "in this case, though the man recovered of the bite, the dog refused to die!"

"And so they want to prosecute the dog? It can't be done. An animal hasn't been brought to the bar of justice for several centuries."

"No, no!" interrupted Tutt. "They don't--"

"There was a case," went on Mr. Tutt reminiscently "Let me see--at Sauvigny, I think it was--about 1457, when they tried a sow and three pigs for killing a child. The court assigned a lawyer to defend her, but like many assigned counsel he couldn't think of anything to say in her behalf. As regards the little pigs he did enter the plea that no animus was shown, that they had merely followed the example of their mother, and that at worst they were under age and irresponsible. However, the court found them all guilty, and the sow was publicly hanged in the market place."

"What did they do with the three little pigs?" inquired Tutt with some interest.

"They were pardoned on account of their extreme youth," said Mr. Tutt, "and turned loose again--with a warning."

"I'm glad of that!" sighed Tutt. "Is that a real case?"

"Absolutely," replied his partner. "I've read it in the Sauvigny records."

"I'll be hanged!" exclaimed Tutt. "I never knew that animals were ever held personally responsible."

"Why, of course they were!" said Mr. Tutt. "Why shouldn't they be? If animals have souls why shouldn't they be responsible for their acts?"

"But they haven't any souls!" protested Tutt.

"Haven't they now?" remarked the elder lawyer. "I've seen many an old horse that had a great deal more conscience than his master. And on general principles wouldn't it be far more just and humane to have the law deal with a vicious animal that had injured somebody than to leave its punishment to an irresponsible and arbitrary owner who might be guilty of extreme brutality?"

"If the punishment would do any good--yes!" agreed Tutt.

"Well, who knows?" meditated Mr. Tutt. "I wonder if it ever does any good? But anybody would have to agree that responsibility for one's acts should depend upon the degree of one's intelligence--and from that point of view many of our friends are really much less responsible than sheep."

"Which, as you so sagely point out, would, however be a poor reason for letting their families punish them in case they did wrong. Just think how such a privilege might be abused! If Uncle John didn't behave himself as his nephews thought proper they could simply set upon him and briskly beat him up."

"Yes, of course, the law even to-day recognizes the right to exercise physical discipline within the family. Even homicide is excusable, under Section 1054 of our code, when committed in lawfully correcting a child or servant."

"That's a fine relic of barbarism!" remarked Tutt. "But the child soon passes through that dangerous zone and becomes entitled to be tried for his offenses by a jury of his peers; the animal never does."

"Well, an animal couldn't be tried by a jury of his peers, anyhow," said Mr. Tutt.

"I've seen juries that were more like nanny goats than men!" commentated Tutt. "I'd like to see some of our clients tried by juries of geese or woodchucks."

"The field of criminal responsibility is the No Man's Land of the law," mused Mr. Tutt. "Roughly, mental capacity to understand the nature of one's acts is the test, but it is applied arbitrarily in the case of human beings and a mere point of time is taken beyond which, irrespective of his actual intelligence, a man is held accountable for whatever he does. Of course that is theoretically unsound. The more intelligent a person is the more responsible he should be held to be and the higher the quality of conduct demanded of him by his fellows. Yet after twenty-one all are held equally responsible--unless they're actually insane. It isn't equity! In theory no man or animal should be subject to the power of discretionary punishment on the part of another--even his own father or master. I've often wondered what earthly right we have to make the animals work for us--to bind them to slavery when we denounce slavery as a crime. It would horrify us to see a human being put up and sold at auction. Yet we tear the families of animals apart, subject them to lives of toil, and kill them whenever we see fit. We say we do this because their intelligence is limited and they cannot exercise any discrimination in their conduct, that they are always in the zone of irresponsibility and so have no rights. But I've seen animals that were shrewder than men, and men who were vastly less intelligent than animals."

"Right-o!" assented Tutt. "Take Scraggs, for instance. He's no more responsible than a chipmunk."

"Nevertheless, the law has always been consistent," said Mr. Tutt, "and has never discriminated between animals any more than it has between men on the ground of varying degrees of intelligence. They used to try 'em all, big and little, wild and domesticated, mammals and invertebrates."

"Oh, come!" exclaimed Tutt. "I may not know much law, but--"

"Between 1120 and 1740 they prosecuted in France alone no less than ninety-two animals. The last one was a cow."

"A cow hasn't much intelligence," observed Tutt.

"And they tried fleas," added Mr. Tutt.

"They have a lot!" commented his junior partner. "I knew a flea once, who--"

"They had a regular form of procedure," continued Mr. Tutt, brushing the flea aside, "which was adhered to with the utmost technical accuracy. You could try an individual animal, either in person or by proxy, or you could try a whole family, swarm or herd. If a town was infested by rats, for example, they first assigned counsel--an advocate, he was called--and then the defendants were summoned three times publicly to appear. If they didn't show up on the third and last call they were tried _in absentia_, and if convicted were ordered out of the country before a certain date under penalty of being exorcised."

"What happened if they were exorcised?" asked Tutt curiously.

"It depended a good deal on the local power of Satan," answered the old lawyer dryly. "Sometimes they became even more prolific and destructive than they were before, and sometimes they promptly died. All the leeches were prosecuted at Lausanne in 1451. A few selected representatives were brought into court, tried, convicted and ordered to depart within a fixed period. Maybe they didn't fully grasp their obligations or perhaps were just acting contemptuously, but they didn't depart and so were promptly exorcised. Immediately they began to die off and before long there were none left in the country."

"I know some rats and mice I'd like to have exorcised," mused Tutt.

"At Autun in the fifteenth century the rats won their case," said Mr. Tutt.

"Who got 'em off?" asked Tutt.

"M. Chassensée, the advocate appointed to defend them. They had been a great nuisance and were ordered to appear in court. But none of them turned up. M. Chassensée therefore argued that a default should not be taken because _all_ the rats had been summoned, and some were either so young or so old and decrepit that they needed more time. The court thereupon granted him an extension. However, they didn't arrive on the day set, and this time their lawyer claimed that they were under duress and restrained by bodily fear--of the townspeople's cats. That all these cats, therefore should first be bound over to keep the peace! The court admitted the reasonableness of this, but the townsfolk refused to be responsible for their cats and the judge dismissed the case!"

"What did Chassensée get out of it?" inquired Tutt.

"There is no record of who paid him or what was his fee."

"He was a pretty slick lawyer," observed Tutt. "Did they ever try birds?"

"Oh, yes!" answered Mr. Tutt. "They tried a cock at Basel in 1474--for the crime of laying an egg."

"Why was that a crime?" asked Tutt. "I should call it a _tour de force_."

"Be that as it may," said his partner, "from a cock's egg is hatched the cockatrice, or basilisk, the glance of whose eye turns the beholder to stone. Therefore they tried the cock, found him guilty and burned him and his egg together at the stake. That is why cocks don't lay eggs now."

"I'm glad to know that," said Tutt. "When did they give up trying animals?"

"Nearly two hundred years ago," answered Mr. Tutt. "But for some time after that they continued to try inanimate objects for causing injury to people. I've heard they tried one of the first locomotives that ran over a man and declared it forfeit to the crown as a deodand."

"I wonder if you couldn't get 'em to try Andrew," hazarded Tutt, "and maybe declare him forfeited to somebody as a deodand."

"Deodand means 'given to God,'" explained Mr. Tutt.

"Well, I'd give Andrew to God--if God would take him," declared Tutt devoutly.

"But who is Andrew?" asked Mr. Tutt.

"Andrew is a dog," said Tutt, "who bit one Tunnygate, and now the Grand Jury have indicted not the dog, as it is clear from your historical disquisition they should have done, but the dog's owner, Mr. Enoch Appleboy."

"What for?"

"Assault in the second degree with a dangerous weapon."

"What was the weapon?" inquired Mr. Tutt simply.

"The dog."

"What are you talking about?" cried Mr. Tutt. "What nonsense!"

"Yes, it is nonsense!" agreed Tutt. "But they've done it all the same. Read it for yourself!" And he handed Mr. Tutt the indictment.

* * * * *

"The Grand Jury of the County of New York by this indictment accuse Enoch Appleboy of the crime of assault in the second degree, committed as follows:

"Said Enoch Appleboy, late of the Borough of Bronx, City and County aforesaid, on the 21st day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and fifteen, at the Borough and County aforesaid, with force and arms in and upon one Herman Tunnygate, in the peace of the State and People then and there being, feloniously did willfully and wrongfully make an assault in and upon the legs and body of him the said Herman Tunnygate, by means of a certain dangerous weapon, to wit: one dog, of the form, style and breed known as 'bull,' being of the name of 'Andrew,' then and there being within control of the said Enoch Appleboy, which said dog, being of the name of 'Andrew,' the said Enoch Appleboy did then and there feloniously, willfully and wrongfully incite, provoke, and encourage, then and there being, to bite him, the said Herman Tunnygate, by means whereof said dog 'Andrew' did then and there grievously bite the said Herman Tunnygate in and upon the legs and body of him, the said Herman Tunnygate, and the said Enoch Appleboy thus then and there feloniously did willfully and wrongfully cut, tear, lacerate and bruise, and did then and there by the means of the dog 'Andrew' aforesaid feloniously, willfully and wrongfully inflict grievous bodily harm upon the said Herman Tunnygate, against the form of the statute in such case made and provided, and against the peace of the People of the State of New York and their dignity."

"That," asserted Mr. Tutt, wiping his spectacles, "is a document worthy of preservation in the Congressional Library. Who drew it?"

"Don't know," answered Tutt, "but whoever he was he was a humorist!"

"It's no good. There isn't any allegation of _scienter_ in it," affirmed Mr. Tutt.

"What of it? It says he assaulted Tunnygate with a dangerous weapon. You don't have to set forth that he knew it was a dangerous weapon if you assert that he did it willfully. You don't have to allege in an indictment charging an assault with a pistol that the defendant knew it was loaded."

"But a dog is different!" reasoned Mr. Tutt. "A dog is not _per se_ a dangerous weapon. Saying so doesn't make it so, and that part of the indictment is bad on its face--unless, to be sure, it means that he hit him with a dead dog, which it is clear from the context that he didn't. The other part--that he set the dog on him--lacks the allegation that the dog was vicious and that Appleboy knew it; in other words an allegation of _scienter_. It ought to read that said Enoch Appleboy 'well knowing that said dog Andrew was a dangerous and ferocious animal and would, if incited, provoked and encouraged, bite the legs and body of him the said Herman--did then and there feloniously, willfully and wrongfully incite, provoke and encourage the said Andrew, and so forth.'"

"I get you!" exclaimed Tutt enthusiastically. "Of course an allegation of _scienter_ is necessary! In other words you could demur to the indictment for insufficiency?"

Mr. Tutt nodded.

"But in that case they'd merely go before the Grand Jury and find another--a good one. It's much better to try and knock the case out on the trial once and for all."

"Well, the Appleboys are waiting to see you," said Tutt. "They are in my office. Bonnie Doon got the case for us off his local district leader, who's a member of the same lodge of the Abyssinian Mysteries--Bonnie's been Supreme Exalted Ruler of the Purple Mountain for over a year--and he's pulled in quite a lot of good stuff, not all dog cases either! Appleboy's an Abyssinian too."

"I'll see them," consented Mr. Tutt, "but I'm going to have you try the case. I shall insist upon acting solely in an advisory capacity. Dog trials aren't in my line. There are some things which are _infra dig_--even for Ephraim Tutt."

* * * * *

Mr. Appleboy sat stolidly at the bar of justice, pale but resolute. Beside him sat Mrs. Appleboy, also pale but even more resolute. A jury had been selected without much manifest attention by Tutt, who had nevertheless managed to slip in an Abyssinian brother on the back row, and an ex-dog fancier for Number Six. Also among those present were a delicatessen man from East Houston Street, a dealer in rubber novelties, a plumber and the editor of Baby's World. The foreman was almost as fat as Mr. Appleboy, but Tutt regarded this as an even break on account of the size of Tunnygate. As Tutt confidently whispered to Mrs. Appleboy, it was as rotten a jury as he could get.

Mrs. Appleboy didn't understand why Tutt should want a rotten jury, but she nevertheless imbibed some vicarious confidence from this statement and squeezed Appleboy's hand encouragingly. For Appleboy, in spite of his apparent calm, was a very much frightened man, and under the creases of his floppy waistcoat his heart was beating like a tom-tom. The penalty for assault in the second degree was ten years in state's prison, and life with Bashemath, even in the vicinity of the Tunnygates, seemed sweet. The thought of breaking stones under the summer sun--it was a peculiarly hot summer--was awful. Ten years! He could never live through it! And yet as his glance fell upon the Tunnygates, arrayed in their best finery and sitting with an air of importance upon the front bench of the court room, he told himself that he would do the whole thing all over again--yes, he would! He had only stood up for his rights, and Tunnygate's blood was upon his own head--or wherever it was. So he squeezed Bashemath's hand tenderly in response.

Upon the bench Judge Witherspoon, assigned from somewhere upstate to help keep down the ever-lengthening criminal calendar of the Metropolitan District, finished the letter he was writing to his wife in Genesee County, sealed it and settled back in his chair. An old war horse of the country bar, he had in his time been mixed up in almost every kind of litigation, but as he looked over the indictment he with difficulty repressed a smile. Thirty years ago he'd had a dog case himself; also of the form, style and breed known as bull.

"You may proceed, Mister District Attorney!" he announced, and little Pepperill, the youngest of the D.A.'s staff, just out of the law school, begoggled and with his hair plastered evenly down on either side of his small round head, rose with serious mien, and with a high piping voice opened the prosecution.

It was, he told them, a most unusual and hence most important case. The defendant Appleboy had maliciously procured a savage dog of the most vicious sort and loosed it upon the innocent complainant as he was on his way to work, with the result that the latter had nearly been torn to shreds. It was a horrible, dastardly, incredible, fiendish crime, he would expect them to do their full duty in the premises, and they should hear Mr. Tunnygate's story from his own lips.