IN WITNESS WHEREOF
I
“What I want is a lawyer who can deliver the goods; I don’t care what it costs. Can I talk business with you?”
The grim-visaged woman sitting opposite Mr. Ephraim Tutt looked across the desk at him significantly.
“I don’t know why not,” replied the lawyer affably. “Business is what I’m looking for; what every lawyer is after, I guess!”
“Well”—she hesitated, striving to penetrate the sphinxlike mask of his wizened old face, which had defied lawyers and judges and poker players alike for half a century—“you drew Cabel’s will, and you’re the executor named in it. I know that much, because he’s told me so. Now, it’s this way: Cabel wants to make some changes in that will of his, but, besides being old and feeble, he’s crotchety and cantankerous and suspicious of almost everybody. But he’ll listen to you. You’re his executor and the proper one to do it anyway.”
“Well,” hazarded Mr. Tutt blandly, “as I said before—why not?”
“So naturally I’ve come to you. Besides, I’ve heard quite a lot about your firm; and I guess you and I can get along pretty well together.”
“I’m sure we can,” smiled the attorney. “I always strive to please.”
“What’s more, I’ll see that your fee is promptly paid—with maybe a little besides!” she concluded meaningly.
Mr. Tutt searched her face.
“Am I to understand then that you—and not Mr. Baldwin—are my client?” he inquired pointedly.
Mrs. Alfreda Baldwin smiled to herself. She wasn’t going to let the old fox catch her—put her in a position where maybe she would have to pay his bill.
“Not at all!” she retorted. “It is my husband who wants his will changed. He’s your client—not me. All I say is that you don’t need to worry about getting paid. Anyhow I don’t see what difference it makes which of us is your client.”
Mr. Tutt fumbled in a long box upon his desk and selected a cigar resembling in shape and general appearance what a coiffeur would refer to as “a rat.”
“Do you mind if I smoke?” he inquired ceremoniously. “Answering your question—it might make a lot of difference which of two persons happened to be one’s client.”
“How do you mean?” she demanded. “Of course I don’t mind if you smoke.”
Mr. Tutt carefully ignited the attenuated stogy which he had excavated from its stratified brethren.
“A lawyer has to be faithful to his retainer—even if sometimes he doesn’t get it,” he announced, exhaling a poisonous cloud of greenish-gray smoke. “It is the duty of the attorney to be loyal to the interests of the person who employs him and to carry out his wishes to the best of his ability, just as it is the duty of the client to compensate him for his services. Now, if those interests conflict with those of any other person”
“Oh, I understand all that!” she interrupted. “That doesn’t enter into it here. Mr. Baldwin is your client. I am only his agent—his messenger, if you choose. He will pay your bill. But, as it happens, our interests and wishes are identical.”
Mr. Tutt nodded behind his smoke screen.
“That’s all right, then!”
She returned his glance fixedly. He had not put anything over on her and he had, she opined, absorbed her hint about the “little besides” and all the rest of it.
“I don’t want to have Mr. Baldwin disturbed any more than is absolutely necessary,” she continued. “We both thought that I could tell you what he wanted to do with his money and that you could draw up a codicil here in your office and bring it up to the house for him to sign. That’s the simplest, easiest way, isn’t it? A codicil?”
“Quite so!” agreed Mr. Tutt. “I can easily do that if you really know what changes he wants to make in the disposition of his property. But there’s no use preparing a codicil and having it engrossed only to find you’ve got to do it all over again.”
“You won’t have to do that in this case. I know—that is, Mr. Baldwin knows—exactly what he wants to do. I’ve been over it with him most carefully. It’s all written down right here.”
She produced from a black bead bag several sheets of folded note-paper covered closely with handwriting. Mr. Tutt drew toward him a yellow pad, regretfully laid down his stogy and took up a pencil. Mrs. Baldwin put on a pair of heavy spectacles, which intensified her already hawkish appearance, and settled back in her chair.
“First, he wants to bequeath outright ten thousand dollars each to the Museum of Art, the Museum of Natural History, the Children’s Aid Society, the Charity Organization Society, St. Luke’s Hospital, and Columbia University.”
“That makes sixty thousand dollars,” commented Mr. Tutt, jotting down the names. “What next?”
“Then he wants to leave thirty thousand dollars to Alvin H. Spearman, of Englewood, New Jersey.”
“Who is he?” asked the lawyer, his pencil poised.
“An old friend of his,” she answered. “And thirty thousand dollars to his wife, Rowena Howell Spearman.”
“That makes another sixty thousand dollars,” said Mr. Tutt.
“Twenty thousand each to Alfred Spearman, the son of Alvin Spearman; Esther S. Bowman, of Trenton; Anna S. Rawson, of Scranton; and Josephine S. Briggs, of New York City.”
“Now you’ve got two hundred and forty thousand.”
Mrs. Baldwin eyed him a trifle suspiciously.
“What’s that?” she snapped.
“In personal legacies, I mean,” he explained quickly. “He’s disposed of two hundred and forty thousand in all.”
Mrs. Baldwin checked off something on the sheet of note-paper in her lap.
“Then he wants to leave ten thousand each to the following: Almina Bostwick, of Jersey City; Georgina H. Hibbard, of Flatbush, Long Island; Isabel F. Hawkins, of Flushing, Long Island; Mary P. Daly, of Riverdale, New York; Edith L. Mills, of Yonkers, New York; and Althea W. Rose, of Ringwood, New Jersey.”
“Sixty more,” scored Mr. Tutt. “Makes three hundred thousand dollars. Then what?”
“Twenty-five thousand to the Nurses’ Benefit Club.”
“What’s that?”
“A charitable corporation,” she answered shortly. “Then fifteen thousand each to his physicians, Doctor Samuel Woodman and Doctor Richard Aspinall.”
“I have it,” said the lawyer.
“Then there are a few smaller legacies: Five thousand dollars to Bridget Mulcahy, the cook; five thousand to Patrick Moynahan, the butler; five thousand to Pierre Larue, the valet; and five thousand to Agnes Roony, the parlor maid. He believes in being liberal with servants.”
“So I see!” observed Mr. Tutt. “And with the medical profession as well!”
“Oh. he’s very fond of both Doctor Woodman and Doctor Aspinall!” she assured him. “They have been lifelong friends!”
“Anything more?”
“Only his legacy to me—two hundred and fifty thousand—and, of course, I’m also to be the residuary legatee,” said Mrs. Baldwin, folding up her notes. “You’ll continue as executor. How soon can you have the codicil ready?”
“By to-morrow afternoon,” he replied. “It’s quite simple.”
“Then bring it up to-morrow evening so that Mr. Baldwin can sign it,” she directed. “About nine o’clock, say?”
“As you like,” he agreed. “If that will be more convenient for your husband than to have him come here.”
“Oh, he couldn’t possibly come here!” she asserted. “He’s sick in bed!”
Mrs. Baldwin arose and pulled down her black jacket, which had a tendency to ride upward upon her ample figure; and Mr. Tutt arose also. There was something about her which inspired in him more than dislike—he could not say exactly what, whether it was the beetling nose, the compressed lips, the expansive, tightly corseted bosom, the flabby brown skin beneath her chin, which merged into the pendulous cheeks—like an old mastiff, he decided. A full-rigger! How could any man in his senses have married her? And the thought quite naturally suggested that perhaps the man hadn’t been.
II
“Where did you get little Eva?” chirped Tutt, peering at his partner over his goggles through the door after the lady’s departure. “I was quite worried at first over leaving you alone with her!”
Mr. Tutt’s long wrinkled face wreathed itself in an expansive grin.
“Isn’t she terrible!” he ejaculated.
“Some crocodile!” asserted the lesser Tutt. “I can see now what the fellow meant when he said that the female of the species is more deadly than the male! What kind friend passed her on to us?”
“Nobody—she came herself,” replied the senior partner. “I think she must like my looks!”
“B-r-r-h!” shivered Tutt, shielding his face with his hands. “I hope she won’t take a fancy to me!”
“You’re safe!” laughed his partner. “Mrs. Georgie Allison has rendered you immune to the attractions of the opposite sex for all time.”
“Who told you about that?” queried Tutt rather peevishly.
“Never mind! Never mind!” returned the old lawyer airily. “You can’t keep all your little peccadilloes concealed from the public eye.”
“I know! Miss Wiggin must have double-crossed me!” growled Tutt. “Well, reverting to the subject we were discussing, what was the Lady Gorgon’s name?”
“Mrs. Cabel Baldwin.”
“Wife of the old fellow that married his trained nurse?”
Mr. Tutt gave a fervid start of surprise.
“What!” he ejaculated. “Really?”
“Don’t you recall the case? ‘Nurse Spearman’—and all that? It was in the papers,” Tutt reminded him. “He got out of bed when he had the pneumonia or something and beat it over to Jersey and married her before a J. P. without telling even his own daughter. That was about three years ago. He was seventy-two; she was forty-seven. He’d be over seventy-five now, and she’d be fifty.”
“She would! She is!” assented Mr. Tutt. “Or stronger!”
“There was a grand row about it!” said Tutt. “But nobody could do anything. The Constitution guarantees to every man the inalienable right to marry his trained nurse. But she was such an old chisel-face that it seemed as though she must have chloroformed him first. She’d been married before, too; twice, I mean!”
“So that’s it!” remarked Mr. Tutt. “Did you say there was a daughter?”
“I have an idea there was, but if I remember correctly she was away at college or somewhere. I don’t recall all the details. But look out for nursie! What did she want?”
“To have us draw a codicil to her husband’s will.”
“Oho!” piped Tutt. “And does little birdie get the big fat worm?”
“She gets half of it; the other half of the worm goes to various individuals and charities.”
“That’s funny!” commented the junior Tutt, pursing his lips. “If she was after the kale why should she let anybody else have a rake-off?”
Mr. Tutt took a turn up and down his office, then he amputated another stogy, lit the remains, leaned back in his swivel chair, crossed his congress boots upon his desk and folded his hands behind his head.
“Simply because that’s the artistic way to do it,” said he. “Don’t you remember the Blodgett case? Blodgett was ninety-one and dead at the top; he’d had senile dementia for fifteen years. A woman got hold of him—only that time it was a young one—and induced him to make a will in her favor. All she had to do was to take him out to concerts and ride him round the park in a victoria. Well, when he died it was discovered that he’d left her the greater part of his fortune—a couple of millions; but—and here was the clever part of it—he’d apparently divided another million between Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, with the result that, although the heirs at law and next of kin contested the probate, they found the three most influential universities in the country lined up against them, with all their counsel, naturally including the leaders of the bar, alongside Little Bright Eyes—who succeeded in probating the will, got her two millions and bought a foreign prince and a château on Lake Geneva with them.”
“Pretty good!” nodded Tutt. “And is that the game our old battle-axe is trying to pull?”
“Here’s the horoscope. Read it for yourself,” answered Mr. Tutt, pushing the yellow pad toward his partner with his toe. “You’ll note that the very first thing she did was to square a few of our more select public institutions—like the Museum of Art and St. Luke’s Hospital.”
“Holy crickets!” mused Tutt. “I wonder if she could be the same girl—tired of living on Lake Geneva with her prince—and looking for further adventures!”
“No,” declared his partner. “You couldn’t give this one away with a bonus of two million dollars.”
“Aha! What’s this?” suddenly cried Tutt, scanning the prospectus of Mr. Baldwin’s proposed benefactions. “Here’s another little joker! Twenty thousand dollars to the domestics and thirty to the doctors! She’s got all the witnesses signed, sealed and delivered! He could be a raving maniac and there’d be nobody to prove it. No doctor—that is, no ‘bug doctor’—is going to admit that any patient of his can have senile dementia who has sense enough to leave him fifteen thousand dollars! We ought to take Alfreda into partnership!”
“But you haven’t covered it all yet!” said Mr. Tutt. “I’ll wager that if we looked into it we’d find she’s not only given herself a quarter of a million and the residuary, but in order to prevent any possible slip-up she’s salted a quarter million around where she can get hold of it afterward if she misses out on her own legacy. She’s left her father and mother thirty thousand each, and the four little Spearmans eighty more; to say nothing of half a dozen of her intimate female friends and a nursing society of which she probably controls the board of directors.”
“Rather a speedy client!” affirmed Tutt.
Mr. Tutt shook his head.
“She’s not our client.”
“Who is, then?”
“Her husband.”
“It’s all the same thing,” affirmed the lesser Tutt. “You can soak her a thousand or fifteen hundred just for drawing a codicil like that! And think of the fight we’ll have on our hands when the old boy dies! Makes no difference to us which way the cat jumps. If she gets him to execute your codicil we’ll have to defend it against the heirs on the ground of mental incapacity; and if he won’t execute it she’ll have us attacking all his prior wills in her behalf on the same ground. Coming and going! Both ends against the mid. It’ll take six months in court—after we finally get there! Why, it’s worth thirty thousand dollars to us!”
“Do you really think so, now?” murmured his partner. “Thirty thousand dollars is a lot of money—a powerful lot of money!”
The morality—or rather the immorality—of lawyers has been the subject of jest since the days when the bare fact that a man could read and write rendered him immune to punishment for crime. “Benefit of clergy” was felt to be a joke; and so was the law. The pun that made “lawyer” and “liar” indistinguishable dates doubtless from considerably before the days of Falstaff. Not only, as Bumble said, was the law “a ass, a idiot,” but lawyers were natural-born pettifoggers, crooks, thieves, tricksters, and rascals. An honest lawyer? There was no such animal!
We have no desire at the present writing to enter into a general defense of the conduct of our brethren of the bar, but merely take occasion to point out that in many instances the lawyer is really no more deserving of censure than the layman the product of whose skill is subsequently used by another for an unlawful or immoral purpose. Shall no more whips be manufactured because some ruffians use them upon their wives? Or chisels, lest burglars avail themselves of them in their unholy business? Shall the cobbler cease from cobbling for fear that some one may hurl his shoe after a blushing bride? Tut-tut! There is nothing under the sun that cannot be made subject to the devil’s ingenuity. We have even heard of two murders committed within a single month by means of oyster shells. Yet, shall we be forbidden oysters?
The reader has already grasped our analogue. Shall there be no cakes and ale because a custard pie can be used as an instrument of assault? And, similarly, because a will, deed, bond or other paper writing may, perhaps, be used eventually to perpetrate a fraud, is that any reason why an innocent attorney should not draw it up? He may suspect that old Hardscrabble intends to cheat the Widow Perkins, or that the rifles for which he has drawn the bill of sale to Mr. Jones are intended for Mr. Villa; but the very law by which the attorney earns his livelihood requires him to give the benefit of the doubt to an accused and presume him innocent until the contrary is proved. Why, then, should he not give that same doubt to old Hardscrabble, to Mr. Jones—and to himself?
Thus, shall a lawyer refuse to draw a will because his client might—if he were made the subject of prolonged study by a faculty of alienists—be shown to be without testamentary capacity? Shall he take the bread out of his children’s mouths because the fruit of his professional labors may, in the hands of another, be used to work an injustice? Must every attorney maintain a hospital, an observation ward in connection with his office? Nay! Such a thought is nonsense! It is no part of a lawyer’s business to act as a spy upon his client or anticipate and expose his contemplated iniquities.
Had Tutt & Tutt refused to draw the codicil to Mr. Baldwin’s will Alfreda would simply have given the job to some other firm. They knew well that a will is like any article of merchandise purveyed in market overt; for instance—a bologna. If the buyer is planning to administer the bologna to an infant of tender years—or days—it may, it is true, thereby become an instrument of infanticide; and in like case if a will or a codicil is about to be offered for signature to an imbecile it may become a link in a chain of fraud; but why gratuitously visit upon either the will or the bologna a foul suspicion which may in fact be entirely unwarranted?
Let us admit at once—whether or not the reader be convinced by this tosh, which we contend is as sound as most legal argument and equally edifying—let us admit freely, frankly, and without reserve that it did not occur to Tutt or even to Mr. Tutt to decline to draw the codicil proposed by Mrs. Baldwin. It was a perfectly good legal job for anybody. It would take Mr. Tutt, with a stereotyped office form before him, twenty minutes—no more, probably—to dictate it to Miss Sondheim, who would thereupon pound it out on the typewriter; then Mr. Tutt would correct and possibly revise it; and Scraggs, the inebriated scrivener in the wire cage in the outer office, would have a perfect time writing it all out in a beautiful Spencerian hand on glossy imitation parchment; after which Miss Wiggin, the chief clerk, Willie, the office boy, and Miss Sondheim would deck it out like a newborn babe in dainty blue ribbons, tie a beautiful red seal around its neck, roll it up tenderly in tissue-paper and put it to sleep in the top drawer of a desk until it was time for somebody to unwrap it, spread it out upon the counterpane of the death chamber and, pointing to the final paragraph, beginning with the fateful words “In witness whereof,” place the pen in the shaking hand of the testator and say: “Well, Mr. Baldwin, you understand, of course, that this is your will? Yes, I said, ‘Your will.’ Will. W-i-l-l—WILL! Yes! Sign here!”
And Tutt & Tutt would thereupon receive in due course from the executors a check for a thousand dollars, of which about nine hundred and ninety-three would be net. Why should Mr. Tutt have refused this choice titbit of humdrum practice—particularly as will-drawing was one of the best things that he did? Can he properly be censured for so doing?
Yet, quite naturally, what might be called the internal evidence of possible fraud contained in the codicil itself excited his interest. Certainly every step had been taken to render the instrument, if executed, impregnable to attack. However, there was no particular reason why it should be assumed that the scheme had not emanated from the mind of the old gentleman himself. Many a testator provides his legatees with a doughty legal champion by leaving a fat legacy to some eleemosynary institution which will lose it if the will is denied probate. But in this instance, it is true, there were other indications that Mrs. Baldwin was engaged in feathering her nest in an expert manner and safely anchoring said nest against the assaults of outraged heirs and next of kin.
Now, Mr. Tutt practised law largely for the fun of it, for he really didn’t need the money, and he scented in the visit of Mrs. Alfreda Baldwin a plot almost as exciting as a detective story. And that was why he sent for Mr. Bonnie Doon, that wise and finished specimen of young-gentleman-about-town, who made himself generally useful to Tutt & Tutt, and instructed him to ascertain by whatever means were at his disposal all he could about the past career of Mrs. Cabel Baldwin, née Alfreda Spearman, daughter of Alvin Spearman, Esquire, of Englewood, New Jersey.
III
“Tell Oscar I want him here at nine o’clock without the car,” said Mrs. Baldwin from her desk in the library to the girl sitting listlessly by the centre table with her hands in her lap. “Don’t send the message, either. Speak to him yourself. And tell the other servants they can have the evening out.”
The girl arose silently. She was languid, pale, harassed, with dark circles under her eyes, but she bore herself with dignity.
“Why don’t you answer when you’re spoken to?” snapped the older woman. “One would think you—and not I—was the mistress of this house!”
“I haven’t any such delusion,” answered the girl tonelessly. “I will take your message. You know very well I’d not stay here another day except for my father.”
“You know well enough where your bread is buttered!” shot back her stepmother with a sneer. “You are dependent upon me for everything you have in this world. And you had better mind your p’s and q’s.”
“Shall I tell Oscar what you want him for?” asked the girl.
“Ha!” replied the other. “You want to find out, do you? Well, it’s none of your business!”
The girl shrugged her shoulders and walked slowly toward the door.
“And then come back here!” ordered Mrs. Baldwin. “I don’t want you hanging round your father. He can’t stand your whining and crying!”
The girl controlled herself with difficulty, and once in the privacy of the hall outside the library burst into tears. She had been living under the same strain ever since the previous spring upon her graduation from college, where her father had sent her at the death of her mother four years before that. She had gone away from home leaving him a melancholy but apparently well old man. A year later she had received a sudden telegram from him announcing his marriage in Jersey City to an unknown woman who, it turned out, had been acting as his nurse during a sudden attack of pneumonia.
She had been crushed not only by her father’s forgetfulness of her mother in so short a time but also by the notoriety that had followed the old man’s escapade and the state of mental and physical deterioration in which she found him on her return. From being a handsome, vigorous, upstanding old gentleman he had shrivelled away into a bent, tottering, querulous invalid afraid of his own shadow; at times, when they were alone, responding to her caresses with something of his former affection, but in general furtive, suspicious, cowering before this strange, ugly woman who had in some sinister way secured mastery over him—fearful in her presence to call his soul his own. There seemed to be something hypnotic about the ex-nurse’s influence, for the mere sound of her voice was enough to set his shrunken old limbs trembling. And if when she was down-stairs she heard him up and moving about in his room she had only to call up through the well, and he would obediently clamber back into bed again.
So Lydia Baldwin found herself half servant, half prisoner in her father’s house. She would, as she had said, have fled out into the world and earned her own living had it not been for the possibility that she might be of some service to him. She saw her father getting weaker and weaker, but was not allowed to minister to him save under the direction and supervision of her jailer. Everybody employed in the establishment—in fact everybody who came there—was on her stepmother’s pay-roll. Even the doctors were persons of the latter’s own choosing, with whom she had had some mysterious association in the past. Surrounded by spies, without money, Lydia Baldwin was treated as a hostage, all her movements watched and reported upon.
At rare intervals her father would awake as from a nightmare and, once a month, perhaps, would have a day when he seemed almost like himself again and would even make feeble jokes about his condition. These exceptional phases occurred without premonition and were immediately followed by states of depression in which he believed his end to be near and during which he insisted upon the constant presence of his wife, upon whom he then seemed utterly dependent. At such times Lydia suffered torture, since she could not even render her father the solace of her affection. Then, and only then, was she really tempted to accept Henry Holborn’s offer of marriage and escape from the domestic hell in which she lived. For, although Henry was only twenty-five—she was twenty-three—he was earning a good salary in an architect’s office, and his abilities were recognized as such as to entitle him to view the future with confidence. That she would remain penniless Lydia had no doubt. Her stepmother would never permit her father to leave her anything; and although he had once told her shortly after her mother’s death that she would one day be a rich woman, since his second marriage he had never referred to the subject.
IV
It was precisely nine o’clock when Mr. Tutt mounted the front stoop of the Baldwin mansion and rang the bell. Mrs. Baldwin opened the door herself.
“Good evening,” she said affably, extending a muscular hand, with a smile as convincing as that of a hyena. “Glad you’re so prompt!”
Over her shoulder the old lawyer could see the drooping figure of a young girl standing disconsolately at the head of the stairs leading to the next floor. As he took off his coat and hat she turned away and retreated into the shadow.
“Lydia, come down here!” called up Mrs. Baldwin. “I don’t want you bothering your father. Come and meet Mr. Tutt!”
The girl obediently emerged once more and, resting her hand upon the rail of the staircase, came wearily down. Descending thus, with the half light falling upon her pale face against the background of shadow, she reminded him of a Burne-Jones figure standing at evening beside some lily-covered pool. Mr. Tutt’s parched old soul yearned to her like a withered tree whose leaves thirst for a cool breeze after a sultry day.
“Hurry up!” ordered Mrs. Baldwin. “Don’t keep us waiting all the evening.”
The girl lifted her chin proudly and as she did so caught the tender gleam in the old man’s eyes. There was no mistaking that look of pity, almost of affection with which he was regarding her. She smiled faintly.
“This is my stepdaughter, Lydia,” said Mrs. Baldwin.
Mr. Tutt moved a step forward, took the girl’s hand and bent over it as she stood upon the stairs above him. Then, still holding it in his, he led her down the remaining steps. Something—we do not know what it is that leaps from heart to heart on such occasions—passed between them. Neither spoke. Yet each said to the other, “I am your friend!”
“I want you to sit here in the front parlor, Lydia,” said Mrs. Baldwin, “and when I call to you, send up Oscar to your father’s bedroom. If anybody should ring the front-door bell, you answer it. The servants are out.”
“Very well,” answered Lydia coldly.
“Now,” continued Mrs. Baldwin, “if you are all ready we’ll go up-stairs.” She lowered her voice to a whisper, so that Lydia, who had gone into the drawing-room, might not hear. “Have you got the codicil all ready?”
Mr. Tutt nodded and followed her up to the next landing. The woman turned the knob of the door nearest the head of the stairs and pushed it open with a suggestion of stealth. Certain people cannot move without giving the impression of trying to stalk some prey. Usually it is a man trying to stalk a woman. This time it was a woman trying to stalk a man.
In a large high-ceiled room, dimly lighted by only a green-shaded reading-lamp, an old man lay propped up in bed. The face was gaunt, the eyes lustreless, the mouth drooping. Both arms were extended across the sheet in front of him, motionless and parallel.
“Here is somebody to see you, grandpa!” said Mrs. Baldwin as if she were speaking to a child who must be at one and the same time cajoled and warned to be good.
The old man in the bed licked his lips and a hardly perceptible quiver passed over his features.
“This is the lawyer,” announced his wife. “Mr. Tutt. You know him.”
A puzzled look—of recollection, almost of recognition—flickered in the senile eyes, followed by one of dread fused with cunning.
“Yes,” he replied thickly in a half whisper, “I know him.”
“He has drawn up the codicil for you to sign.” She might as well have added the words “like a good little boy.”
Mr. Baldwin made no reply. He appeared for the moment to have forgotten that they were there.
“Cabel!” said Mrs. Baldwin in a metallic tone, stepping toward the bed. “Cabel—pay attention!”
The old man shrank back as if he had been slapped in the face.
“I’m listening,” he protested feebly, blinking.
“Sit down, won’t you?” directed the wife. “He’s a little dopy to-night. But he’s all right. You take that chair by the bed.”
Mr. Tutt did as he was told. What was the truth behind this rather grisly tableau? What was the old man’s real condition? Was he of sound and disposing mind and memory?
Mrs. Baldwin stepped to the foot of the bed, facing her husband.
“Now, Cabel, listen to me!” she repeated, articulating with meticulous distinctness. “You’re going to make a codicil to your will—understand?”
The old man peered craftily at her out of the shadowy caverns of his eyes.
“My will,” he muttered slyly. “I’ve made my will.”
“But you’re going to make a codicil to it. You want to!” she said, focusing her eyes upon him. “Grandpa wants to make a codicil to his will—all nice and fresh!”
“A codicil,” mumbled Mr. Baldwin, as if to himself. “Yes—yes! That’s so. I want a codicil. Where is it?”
“The lawyer has it—right there!” she said. “Here is the pen. Put the paper there in front of him.”
“But I must read it over to him first,” declared Mr. Tutt. “I must be sure it contains his wishes.”
“It isn’t necessary!” she answered quickly. “I’ve been all over it with him a dozen times. You see how hard it is to get him to concentrate! I was a week finding out what he wanted. The sooner it is done the better!”
“But it is necessary that I should read it to him!” protested the lawyer. “It would be most irregular if I did not! Mr. Baldwin, I am about to read over to you the provisions of the codicil which I have drawn according to what I understand to be your wishes. Will you kindly give me your attention?”
Mr. Baldwin turned and stared vacantly at Mr. Tutt.
“I’ve made my will,” he repeated.
“This is a codicil.”
“Oh, yes. A codicil.”
Mr. Baldwin nodded once or twice as if now entirely conversant with what was going on.
“Shall I read it to you?” inquired Mr. Tutt a little impatiently.
“Yes—read it to me,” said Mr. Baldwin.
Mr. Tutt held the carefully engrossed document beneath the lamp and began:
“‘In the name of God, amen! I, Cabel Baldwin, being of sound mind and memory, do hereby make, publish and declare this as and for a codicil to my last will and testament’”
Suddenly the old gentleman began to whimper.
“I want my milk!” he whined. “I want my hot milk! Where is it?”
Mrs. Baldwin uttered an exclamation of annoyance.
“Can’t you wait a minute?” she cried angrily. “It will only take a moment.”
“I want my milk! I can’t do anything without my milk!” he moaned pettishly.
“Well, well! I’ll get it for you!” she exclaimed. “I’ll be right back.”
She was gone about five minutes, at the end of which she returned with a glass of warm milk, which she put to the old gentleman’s lips.
“Have you read him the will?” she asked out of the corner of her mouth.
“No,” answered Mr. Tutt. “I waited for you to come back. ‘In the name of God, amen! I, Cabel Baldwin, being of sound mind and memory, do hereby make, publish and declare this as and for a codicil to my last will and testament, which I otherwise confirm in all respects not inconsistent herewith:
“‘First: I give and bequeath out of my personal estate ten thousand dollars each to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’”
Slowly, carefully, Mr. Tutt proceeded to read through the document. It was impossible to tell whether Mr. Baldwin heard him or not.
“Do you understand what I have been reading to you?” asked Mr. Tutt at the end of the performance.
“Yes; it is a codicil to my will,” assented Mr. Baldwin. “The codicil you have drawn for me to sign.”
“Now,” said the wife eagerly, “I will have the chauffeur come up and we can witness it.” She hurried to the door. “Lydia! Send up Oscar!”
Almost immediately there was a sound of footsteps, and a man in livery entered.
“This is the other witness,” explained Mrs. Baldwin to Mr. Tutt. “Oscar Boynton, our chauffeur.”
Mr. Tutt arose and spread open the last page of the instrument upon the bedclothes in the old man’s lap.
“This is the codicil to his last will and testament, which Mr. Baldwin desires you to witness,” he stated. “He will sign first, and after him Mrs. Baldwin and yourself. You must both sign in his presence and in the presence of each other. Mr. Baldwin, do you understand this to be a codicil to your will? And do you wish these witnesses to attest it by signing their names?”
“Yes—yes,” murmured the old man in the bed.
“Then,” said Mr. Tutt, “write your name in the blank space at the foot of the paragraph beginning ‘In witness whereof.’”
He held out the fountain pen supplied by the wife. But Mr. Baldwin did not seem to see it.
Mr. Tutt placed it gently in the fragile blue-veined right hand.
“Here!” he directed. “Below the words ‘In witness whereof.’”
Mr. Baldwin’s fingers closed over the pen. He appeared to be making an heroic effort to bring his mind to bear upon what was expected of him. Helplessly, like a child, he looked from the pen to Mr. Tutt and back again.
“Write!” ordered his wife icily.
“Write!” repeated the old man. “Yes, write!”
Dropping his chin toward the paper, he pressed down the pen and painfully began tracing the word “Cab”
Mrs. Baldwin watched him hungrily. The strain was too much for her.
“Here!” she cried, going round beside him and, taking the trembling fingers firmly in her own, “I’ll help you!” And she guided the pen along the paper until below the inscription “In witness whereof” appeared in straggling characters the signature of Cabel Baldwin.
Mr. Tutt blotted the name and removed the codicil to a table, where Mrs. Baldwin and Boynton each signed it as a witness. Then he folded it and placed it again in the envelope from which he had removed it. Mr. Baldwin had fallen back on his pillow and closed his eyes, exhausted.
“What shall I do with the codicil?” asked Mr. Tutt. “Put it in my safe?”
“No,” returned Mrs. Baldwin tartly. “You can leave it here. I’ll attend to it.”
V
Contrary to his wife’s expectations, Mr. Baldwin did not die for a long time, but when at last he did, on that same day Lydia Baldwin left the house forever, and within the week after her father’s funeral was married to Henry Holborn before a justice of the peace. It was on the afternoon of Lydia’s marriage that the Widow Baldwin appeared at the offices of Tutt & Tutt and asked for the senior partner. He received her in silence, standing.
“Well,” she greeted him, looking more vulturelike than ever in her weeds, “I guess it’s time to start probating the will and codicil. Is there anything particular I have to do?”
Mr. Tutt did not invite her to sit down. Coldly he replied: “Mrs. Baldwin, I cannot undertake any business for you.”
“What’s the matter?” she demanded acidly. “Isn’t my money as good as anybody else’s?”
He shook his shaggy head.
“No,” he returned shortly, “it isn’t. A lawyer has some choice in the matter of clients, and I want no business of yours.”
“That’s pretty good!” she cried, flushing. “You were ready enough to act as my attorney the last time I called on you and asked you to draw the codicil. What’s the matter? Are you scared of anything? Don’t go back on me now!” she begged, changing her attack. “You can charge me what you like!”
“You may recall,” answered Mr. Tutt sternly, “that on that occasion I specifically inquired for whom I was acting, and that you replied categorically that I represented your husband and not you. I drew a codicil and superintended its execution by my client at his request. I was paid for it. That ended the matter. I shall, of course, proceed at once to offer for probate the will in my possession, in which I am named as executor. In so doing I represent your husband’s estate and not you. If you are legally entitled to anything, you will get it in due course.”
She stared at him, open-mouthed.
“Get anything! Why, I get a couple of millions!”
“Do you?” tossed off Mr. Tutt coolly.
“You drew the codicil yourself! Unless you fooled me by substituting another paper!”
The old lawyer grunted savagely.
“Be assured, I did not.”
“What’s the hitch, then?”
“If you want to know, Mrs. Baldwin, that I will have nothing to do with you.”
Mrs. Baldwin seemed to swell until her dimensions threatened to prevent her exit.
“Well, I never!” she exploded. “I never heard of such treatment!” She paused, swallowed and lost color. “If you’ve tricked me—put anything over—I’ll” She dropped her shoulders limply, turning momentarily sick with apprehension. “Is there” she gasped.
“Simply to relieve your anxiety,” said Mr. Tutt coldly, “I will say that the codicil executed—or partly executed—in your husband’s bedchamber isn’t worth the paper it is written on.”
“Nonsense!” she cried, losing all control of herself. “I know what’s the matter! You’ve got cold feet! You’re afraid to go on with it! You’re scared they’ll show Cabel had senile dementia or something—wasn’t legally fit to make a codicil. Well, you might as well stick! Be as well hung for a sheep as a lamb. It would look fine, wouldn’t it, for Ephraim Tutt to admit in court that he allowed a senile old man to execute a codicil when he didn’t know what he was doing? Why, it would ruin you forever! All right, coward! There are plenty of lawyers who’ve got courage as well as brains. Some day when I’ve got millions in the bank you’ll wish you had your share!”
Mr. Tutt gave a low chuckle. Reaching over to the cigar-box he selected the usual stogy and lighted it with deliberation.
“I remember you don’t mind smoking,” he remarked reminiscently, “or I shouldn’t venture.” Then as he exhaled a voluminous cloud of sulphurous vapor he added: “As I was saying, that document will never be probated. The only instrument of your husband’s that is of any value is the one I drew six months after you married him, in which he leaves practically everything to his daughter, Lydia.”
VI
When Surrogate Sampson entered the great court-room of the Hall of Records at half after ten the following Friday morning, he found it more than ordinarily crowded. Indeed, it seemed to him as if he had never before seen so many noted counsel sitting together in the leather armchairs at the long mahogany table whose marvellous patine had been polished by generations of distinguished legal elbows. The surrogate liked to see his court filled with the leaders of the bar, for it gave him a sense of importance and stirred his pride.
“Good morning, Mr. Philbrick!” he murmured genially as he bestowed his gown on the judicial chair. “Ah, Mr. Goodwin! And Mr. Lowenthal! What is the occasion of this illustrious gathering?”
Mr. Philbrick, Mr. Lowenthal, and the rest of the constellation of juridical luminaries simpered and bowed in unison, and Surrogate Sampson, who did not expect any answer to his interrogation, since it had been purely hortatory, blew his nose with one hand, picked up the calendar with the other and cleared his throat.
“Matter of Baldwin?” he called out briskly.
Simultaneously the company of the elect before him arose and with military precision presented arms. So did several other rows immediately behind them; a cohort of office boys, clerks, assistants, and junior counsel, carrying bags, books, parcels, and bundles of papers, closed in behind in a compact body.
“Er—if Your Honor please!” began Mr. Philbrick, in his capacity of chief of staff, in an ingratiating voice, “this is the contested probate of the codicil to the last will and testament, offered coincidently, of the late Cabel Baldwin, a distinguished resident of this city, under which he gives a large percentage of his property to various public institutions, of which I represent one.”
“Who appears in opposition?” inquired the surrogate over his spectacles. “I may as well get this straight from the beginning. There are so many of you!”
For a moment there was no response; then out from behind the jury box sauntered Mr. Ephraim Tutt.
“I appear for Mrs. Henry Holborn, who was Lydia Baldwin,” said he quietly, “the daughter and only child of the deceased, the sole heir and next of kin, who is also the chief beneficiary under the will.”
“Ah, Mr. Tutt,” commented Surrogate Sampson, “I suppose you have duly filed your objections?”
“I certainly have!” answered the lawyer, and there was something ominous in his manner. “I drew the original will for Mr. Baldwin and am the executor named in it. I have offered it for probate—and so far as I know, there is no objection to it. Indeed, there can’t very well be any, since unless the will stands the codicil which these distinguished gentlemen are offering—and to which I object—falls too.”
“Quite so!” nodded the judge. “Let me see the will.”
Immediately a clerk handed a paper to Mr. Philbrick, who in turn passed it to an officer, who gave it to an attendant, who duly delivered it to His Honor, while the throng round the table parted to allow Mr. Tutt to approach the dais.
“Well,” remarked His Honor curtly, after glancing through it, “the will seems simple enough. The testator revokes all previous wills and after a provision in lieu of dower to his wife devises a large quantity of realty described specifically by metes and bounds to his only daughter, Lydia, whom he thereafter makes the residuary legatee of all his property, both real and personal. He names you as executor. The usual affidavits are before me, made by the attesting witnesses. Is there any reason, gentlemen, why I should not receive this will for probate?”
He looked along the table. Obviously in the nature of things there could be no opposition, for the reception of the codicil depended upon the acceptance of the will.
“I’ll receive it for probate, then,” announced the surrogate. “Now we come to the codicil. Who offers it?”
“I do,” answered Mr. Philbrick, “at the request of the chief beneficiary and sole residuary legatee, the widow.”
“Is she in court?”
Mr. Philbrick waved toward a figure behind him.
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Please step forward, madam. Perhaps it will be more comfortable if you sit here beside me in the witness chair.” He bowed courteously.
Mrs. Baldwin, aggressive as ever in her habiliments of mourning, yet with a worried look superimposed upon the usual malevolence of her features, now drawn into the semblance of grief, took the seat indicated.
“Are you the widow of Cabel Baldwin, deceased?”
“Yes, I am,” she replied aggressively.
“You offer for probate a codicil to his will?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Let me see it, please.”
Mr. Philbrick promptly handed up the document.
“H’m!” exclaimed His Honor. “This is a rather lengthy instrument. I’ll not bother to go through it now.” And he leaned back and began polishing his glasses, in anticipation of an interesting morning. “What are the grounds of your objections to my admitting it to probate, Mr. Tutt?”
“Simply that the proposed paper is not sufficiently attested under our statutes,” stated the lawyer solemnly.
The surrogate turned to the last page of the codicil, which lay on the desk before him.
“There seem to be two witnesses,” he remarked, “—all the law requires.”
“But one of them is the lady beside you, who under this codicil is made chief beneficiary and sole residuary legatee. As an interested party she cannot qualify—unless, to be sure, she is prepared to waive her legacy, which amounts to a quarter of a million dollars, besides the residue amounting to over a million,” declared Mr. Tutt quietly.
Mrs. Baldwin had grown white. Defiantly she watched the surrogate as he now perused the codicil in its entirety.
“That seems to be so,” he said with a puzzled air. “Mr. Tutt’s point is perfectly well taken. There are only two witnesses to this propounded codicil, and one of those witnesses is undoubtedly an interested party; in fact could hardly be more interested. Madam, do you understand the situation? Under the law you can’t qualify as a witness to prove the codicil unless you renounce your legacy; and if you don’t qualify I shall have to reject the codicil, having only one witness, as insufficiently attested. Extraordinary!” he added to himself.
There was a murmur of interest throughout the rows and a closer crowding together of the group of counsel before the dais. Mrs. Baldwin sucked in her cheeks.
Mr. Philbrick smiled conciliatingly in the direction of the bench.
“That is, of course, true,” said he. “But we—that is, Mrs. Baldwin has arranged, after consulting with counsel, to waive her legacy and qualify as a witness.”
“Is that correct, madam?” queried the surrogate, peering at her over his spectacles. “Are you willing to forfeit your legacy of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, as well as your residuary interest, under this codicil if I admit it to probate?”
“If that’s the law I guess I’ve got to!” she snapped viciously. “But I’ve been tricked—hoodwinked! All the same, the rest will get their money!”
The surrogate gazed bewilderedly at the cluster of attorneys. Then he turned to Mr. Tutt.
“Under these circumstances is there any reason why I should not admit the codicil after the witness has signed a written waiver and given her testimony? That meets your objection, doesn’t it? Have you anything further?”
“Only that it would be an act of supererogation—productive of no result whatever—as far as this lady’s benefit is concerned,” replied the lawyer, and the court-room became as quiet as a country churchyard at midnight. “Two years ago, at the request of Mr. Baldwin, I drew the will which you have just admitted to probate and in which, as you have observed, after a provision for his widow in lieu of dower, he left all his property to his only daughter, my present client. She is here. Please stand up, Mrs. Holborn.”
There was a rustle to the right on the lower seat of the jury box as Lydia arose, pale as a ghost in her black dress. With her stood up a tall young man, as if to protect her from the stares of the spectators. The woman in the witness chair shot in their direction a single venomous shaft.
“Thank you,” went on Mr. Tutt. “That will do. If Your Honor will refer to the instrument you will see that in it Mr. Baldwin describes himself as ‘of the city of Fall River, in the State of Massachusetts.’ That was his permanent legal residence, his domicile. He had been in business there all his life, had lived, voted, and paid his personal taxes there. He was merely taking a vacation and spending the winter in New York City when his wife died.”
“He was previously married to another lady?” asked the surrogate.
“Oh, yes; for fifteen years,” said Mr. Tutt. “Now all his property—both real and personal—with the exception of a comparatively trifling sum in a Fifth Avenue bank where he kept a checking account—is situated in Massachusetts, the place of his domicile. And his estate consists almost entirely of various parcels of land and office buildings in Fall River, which he specifically bequeathed to his daughter, Lydia, in the will drawn by me, which has three witnesses as required by Massachusetts law. The schedules, which I have prepared, show that his personal estate amounts to less than fifteen thousand dollars.”
There was a buzz of consternation from the lawyers about Mr. Philbrick, whose owl-like countenance wore an expression of dismay and wrath.
“Now,” continued Mr. Tutt amiably, “even if this good lady with the laudable object of sacrificing the quarter million and her interest in the residuary which this codicil purports to give her—in order that these charitable institutions, represented by my friend Philbrick and his associates, and her manifold relatives and friends named in the codicil as legatees, may secure what is given to them—even if, I say, she renounces her legacy and qualifies as a witness, and, in consequence, Your Honor is enabled to admit the codicil to probate, there will be nothing out of which to pay the legacies given under it, for”—and he could not help a chuckle—“the testator has expressly directed in each instance that the legacy shall be paid out of his personal estate—and there isn’t any!”
A wave of astonishment swept across the benches.
“But,” began Mr. Philbrick pompously, “they—the realty is more than sufficient to pay them all; and under the principles governing equitable conversion”
“Oh, no!” contradicted the surrogate briskly. “Even if the codicil is probated it will not affect the real estate devised to the daughter under the will.”
The woman in the witness chair swayed.
“I’ve been robbed—cheated!” she cried savagely, gritting her teeth.
“Please be quiet, madam,” rebuked the surrogate. “We must have no scenes here.”
“Anyhow,” she declared, glaring at him, “as widow I’ll take my third under the Massachusetts law! I’ll get that much anyway!”
“That is for the courts of Massachusetts to decide!” returned the surrogate with asperity.
“That question won’t bother them much,” interjected Mr. Tutt carelessly. “For the woman sitting in that chair beside Your Honor is not the legal widow of Cabel Baldwin. She has a husband living—a railroad brakeman from whom she has never been legally divorced. I have here affidavits showing that he was never served in the divorce proceedings brought by her and upon which she must rely to establish the validity of her subsequent marriages. I say ‘marriages,’ for this is not her only matrimonial experience. She was wedded to two others of her patients who subsequently died; and, I may add, she inherited property from both.”
The ex-nurse had half started from her seat. Mr. Philbrick had turned a bright pink.
“If this is so” he began faintly.
“It’s a lie!” cried the woman in a shrill voice. “An absolute lie! I am Cabel Baldwin’s widow—and I’ll prove it! I don’t care what that old crook says!”
“Be quiet, madam!” shouted the surrogate angrily, banging with his gavel. “I will adjourn this matter for one week.” Then he paused as he gathered the papers together. “One more question, gentlemen,” said he with an expression of curiosity. “I should like to know who drew the codicil that is here offered for probate.”
“I did,” affirmed Mr. Tutt boldly.
There was a hiatus during which the only noise audible was the hysterical intake of the relict Baldwin upon the witness chair.
“You did!” exclaimed the surrogate. “And you now appear in opposition to it—contest the legality of your own work? That is a most astounding proceeding!”
“Exactly,” answered Mr. Tutt, entirely unmoved. “I drew the codicil which this woman is now seeking to probate, and I superintended its execution.”
“Knowing that she could take nothing under it?” persisted the judge.
“Knowing that she wouldn’t get one red cent!”
Surrogate Sampson leaned back and removed his spectacles with amazement.
“Did you do this with the approval and consent of the testator?” he demanded.
Mr. Tutt smiled inscrutably.
“What passed between my client and myself at the time he executed this codicil,” he replied, picking up his stovepipe hat, “is a privileged communication made in the course of my professional employment, which the law does not permit me to reveal!”