“Can't you see 'em?” he declaimed. “The haughty Bibby with nose in air, preceding the great dame of fashion, enters the pink room and comes to attention, 'This way, madam!' he declaims, and Mrs. Witherspoon sweeps across the threshold.” Bonnie Doon, picking up an imaginary skirt, waddled round Mr. Tutt and approached the couch. Suddenly he started back.
“Oh, la, la!” he half shrieked, dancing about. “There is a man in the bed!”
Both Tutts stared hard at the couch as if fully expecting to see the form of Weary Willy thereon. Bonnie Doon had a way of making things appear very vivid.
“And sure enough,” he concluded, “there underneath the coverlid in the middle of the bed was a huddled heap with a stubby beard projecting like Excalibur from a pink silk lake!”
“Excuse me,” interrupted Tutt. “But may I ask what this is all about?”
“Why, your new case, to be sure,” grinned Bonnie, who, had he been employed by any other firm, might have run the risk of being regarded as an ambulance chaser. “To make a long and tragic story short, they sent for the watchman, whistled for a policeman, telephoned for the hurry-up wagon, and haled the sleeper away to prison-where he is now, waiting to be tried.”
“Tried!” ejaculated Mr. Tutt. “What for?”
“For crime, to be sure,” answered Mr. Doon.
“What crime?”
“I don't know. They'll find one, of course.”
Mr. Tutt swiftly lowered his legs from the desk and brought his fist down upon it with a bang.
“Outrageous! What was I just telling you, Tutt!” he cried, a flush coming into his wrinkled face. “This poor man is a victim of the overzealousness which the officers of the law exhibit in protecting the privileges and property of the rich. If John De Puyster Hepplewhite fell asleep in somebody's vestibule the policeman on post would send him home in a cab; but if a hungry tramp does the same thing he runs him in. If John De Puyster Hepplewhite should be arrested for some crime they would let him out on bail; while the tramp is imprisoned for weeks awaiting trial, though under the law he is presumed to be innocent. Is he presumed to be innocent? Not much! He is presumed to be guilty, otherwise he would not be there. But what is he presumed to be guilty of? That's what I want to know! Just because this poor man-hungry, thirsty and weary-happened to select a bed belonging to John De Puyster Hepplewhite to lie on he is thrown into prison, indicted by a grand jury, and tried for felony! Ye gods! 'Sweet land of liberty!'“
“Well, he hasn't been tried yet,” replied Bonnie Doon. “If you feel that way about it why don't you defend him?”
“I will!” shouted Mr. Tutt, springing to his feet. “I'll defend him and acquit him!”
He seized his tall hat, placed it upon his head and strode rapidly through the door.
“He will too!” remarked Bonnie, winking at Tutt.
“He thinks that tramp is either a statesman or a prophet!” mused Tutt, his mind reverting to his partner's earlier remarks.
“He won't think so after he's seen him,” replied Mr. Doon.
It sometimes happens that those who seek to establish great principles and redress social evils involve others in an involuntary martyrdom far from their desires. Mr. Tutt would have gone to the electric chair rather than see the Hepplewhite Tramp, as he was popularly called by the newspapers convicted of a crime, but the very fact that he had become his legal champion interjected a new element into the situation, particularly as O'Brien, Mr. Tutt's arch enemy in the district attorney's office, had been placed in charge of the case.
It would have been one thing to let Hans Schmidt-that was the tramp's name-go, if after remaining in the Tombs until he had been forgotten by the press he could have been unobtrusively hustled over the Bridge of Sighs to freedom. Then there would have been no comeback. But with Ephraim Tutt breathing fire and slaughter, accusing the police and district attorney of being trucklers to the rich and great, and oppressors of the poor-law breakers, in fact-O'Brien found himself in the position of one having an elephant by the tail and unable to let go.
In fact, it looked as if the case of the Hepplewhite Tramp might become a political issue. That there was something of a comic side to it made it all the worse.
“Holy cats, boys!” snorted District Attorney Peckham to the circle of disgruntled police officers and assistants gathered about him on the occasion described by the reporters as his making a personal investigation of the case, “Why in the name of common sense didn't you simply boot the fellow into the street?”
“I wish we had, counselor!” assented the captain of the Hepplewhite precinct mournfully. “But we thought he was a burglar. I guess he was, at that-and it was Mr. Hepplewhite's house.”
“I've heard that until I'm sick of it!” retorted Peckham.
“One thing is sure-if we turn him out now Tutt will sue us all for false arrest and put the whole administration on the bum,” snarled O'Brien.
“But I didn't know the tramp would get Mr. Tutt to defend him,” expostulated the captain. “Anyhow, ain't it a crime to go to sleep in another man's bed?”
“If it ain't it ought to be!” declared his plain-clothes man sententiously. “Can't you indict him for burglary?”
“You can indict all day; the thing is to convict!” snapped Peckham. “It's up to you, O'Brien, to square this business so that the law is vindicated-somehow It must be a crime to go into a house on Fifth Avenue and use it as a hotel. Why, you can't cross the street faster than a walk these days without committing a crime. Everything's a crime.”
“Sure thing,” agreed the captain. “I never yet had any trouble finding a crime to charge a man with, once I got the nippers on him.”
“That's so,” interjected the plain-clothes man. “Did you ever know it was a crime to mismanage a steam boiler? Well, it is.”
“Quite right,” agreed Mr. Magnus, the indictment clerk. “The great difficulty for the perfectly honest man nowadays is to avoid some act or omission which the legislature has seen fit to make a crime without his knowledge. Refilling a Sarsaparilla bottle, for instance, or getting up a masquerade ball or going fishing or playing on Sunday or loitering about a building to overhear what people are talking about inside-”
“That's no crime,” protested the captain scornfully.
“Yes, it is too!” retorted Mr. Magnus, otherwise known to his fellows as Caput, because of his supposed cerebral inflation. “Just like it is a crime to have any kind of a show or procession on Sunday except a funeral, in which case it's a crime to make a disbursing noise at it.”
“What's a disbursing noise?” demanded O'Brien.
“I don't know,” admitted Magnus. “But that's the law anyway. You can't make a disbursing noise at a funeral on Sunday.”
“Oh, hell!” ejaculated the captain. “Come to think of it, it's a crime to spit. What man is safe?”
“It occurs to me,” continued Mr. Magnus thoughtfully, “that it is a crime under the law to build a house on another man's land; now I should say that there was a close analogy between doing that and sleeping in his bed.”
“Hear! Hear!” commented O'Brien. “Caput Magnus, otherwise known as Big Head, there is no doubt but that your fertile brain can easily devise a way out of our present difficulty.”
“Well, I've no time to waste on tramp cases,” remarked District Attorney Peckham. “I've something more important to attend to. Indict this fellow and send him up quick. Charge him with everything in sight and trust in the Lord. That's the only thing to be done. Don't bother me about it, that's all!”
Meantime Mr. Hepplewhite became more and more agitated. Entirely against his will and, so far as he could see, without any fault of his own, he suddenly found himself the center of a violent and acrimonious controversy respecting the fundamental and sacred rights of freemen which threatened to disrupt society and extinguish the supremacy of the dominant local political organization.