SAVING HIS FACE
Whether or not the Honorable Amos T. Wiltbank did save his face will be for the reader to decide somewhere further on. Perhaps this story should be more properly listed as “Face, Attempt to Save His;” or, “His Face, Unsuccessful Effort to Save.” It makes practically no difference. Once you get speculating about such things there’s no end to it. For example, as I write, it occurs to me that there may be some connection between the Chinese expression of “saving your face” and the Irish one of “saving your presence.” I wonder! Anyhow, the Honorable Amos T. Wiltbank had plenty of presence—and he had also face. Have you ever noticed how there is a tide in the affairs of men which reaches at the flood up around the chin, when there seems—to speak vulgarly—to be a rush of flesh to the face? There is. Pink flesh. And some of the surplus is deflected lower down—Johnny Bullish. It is the flush of fortune, rose-tinting the summits of success. A thin magnate is no magnate at all.
The Honorable Amos T. Wiltbank was a regular fellow, as most magnates have been. This was shown by the fact that he did not call himself A. Todhunter Wiltbank, which he had a legal right to do. He knew better. Neither did he wear a tall silk hat or drab burnsides, nor sport a gold-headed cane. No, he covered his bald spot with a green fedora, uncovered his neck with a turnover collar, and sported a pair of golden antlers on his lapel. He was no gilded lily; he was a power; not an old-fashioned multimillionaire or profiteer, but an up-to-date, Lambs-Club and sheriff’s-jury guy who owned an interest in the Giants, and sometimes threw the ball into the arena at the opening game. A live one!
That was what made the situation so intolerable for those about him. For he had all the window-dressings of geniality, with the disposition of Caligula; a breezy grouch, a smiler with a glassy eye—ice-cream, so to speak, with tabasco sauce. Smart as silk, running to fat and fifty-cent cigars, and with twenty thousand dollars’ worth of hooch cached in his cellar, he would have run away with it except for the pomposity, the self-satisfaction, the pink smugness that gets ’em all. He was hand in glove with both political parties, a regular Republican, but very close to Tammany Hall.
He was a special motor policeman, had a pass inside the fire lines, and could always get seats right down in front centre. “Say, know who that is? That’s Amos T. Wiltbank!” You know the kind. He had a box at the Polo Grounds, and on Saturday afternoons in the spring a short foul into it might easily knock the blocks off a number of persons high up in the city government who like as not would be sitting there. In a word or two, he was a heavy political and business swell, and what he said went. He brooked no interference with his will. He was a widower. His success had been the death of her.
The Honorable Amos T.’s office was on the very top—the thirty-seventh floor—of the office building in which the law firm of Tutt & Tutt were tenants—considerably lower down. He dwelt on an Olympus of Kurdistan rugs, smoked oak, mother-of-pearl push buttons, and best-quality green-grained imitation Spanish leather; they, amid the grime and dust of the New York Criminal Reports, Abbott’s Practice and Forms, and the smoke of old Ephraim Tutt’s poisonous stogies—all the difference, in fact, between the parlor floor and the kitchen, and in much the same way, the higher the colder.
But Tutt & Tutt were nothing in the life of Amos T., whose own lawyers were the great combination politico-legal firm of Vanderpoel, Callahan & Levitsky. Occasionally Amos T. would come up in the elevator with Mr. Tutt, but he did not know him. Contrariwise Mr. Tutt, who knew everything, knew Amos T., but did not like him. The cause of their difference lay in the imponderable trifle that one day, when Amos T. in getting out had tried to push in front of an old lady, Mr. Tutt had held him back. Later that morning Amos T. had fired two office boys and a salesman, and had made his stenographer cry. Yes, he had a mean streak, but he was It. He had all the immense dignity and solid self-possession, coupled with the petty arrogance, of a tyrannical judge. Butler says, as you recall:
Authority intoxicates and makes mere sots of magistrates;
The fumes of it invade the brain, and make men giddy, proud and vain.
It may be felt that we are overdeveloping the Honorable Amos T., but naturally we must inflate before we can puncture him. Those who have the habit of success are prone to imagine themselves immune to nature’s laws, and exceptions to all ordinary rules. They fall because they are unwilling to recognize the possibilities latent in the apparently insignificant. The grand dame waves her bejewelled hand and the great gates swing back as if by magic, but next instant she may slip heavily upon a banana peel. Goliath mocked the little yokel David with his sling, and Germany scorned tiny Belgium. Yet Goliath has been dead these many years agone, and look at Germany! So it was with Amos T.
Many stories below where the magnate sat in grandeur, gazing across the glinting waves of the harbor, and on the same floor with Tutt & Tutt, and adjacent to their suite, was situate the modest real-estate office of Mr. Moses Icklebaum, who dealt in lands, tenements, hereditaments, messuages, rents, and insurance of all kinds. It consisted of but a single room with two desks, at one of which, when he was there, he sat, and at the other a certain Miss Margaret Haggerty, aged twenty-two, his assistant. As often happens, Moses was the figurehead, but Maggie was the brains.
The sign on the door read:
MOSES ICKLEBAUM
Real Estate and Insurance
M. Haggerty, Notary
It should have read:
MARGARET HAGGERTY
Real Estate and Insurance
M. Icklebaum
The Honorable Amos T. had never heard of either of them—yet Maggie Haggerty, with the inconspicuous aid of Mr. Ephraim Tutt, was the cause of a revolution in the magnate’s character, the making of a man.
Far up among the hills of Dutchess County, Amos T. Wiltbank had built for himself a great estate. With his usual business acumen he had gone there ahead of everybody else, had bought up several thousand acres and, having utilized what portion of them he wanted for his lawns, gardens, farms, and game preserves, had sold off the remainder to such as would pay for it. Among the latter had been Ezra Carter, a young farmer, who had purchased fifty acres together with the house and barn standing thereon. Those transactions were in the days of Mrs. Wiltbank, and of course, as a matter of the simplest business precaution, all the land Amos T. had originally purchased he had taken over in his wife’s name. Thus nominally Carter bought his farm from Mrs. Wiltbank, who was in turn to deed it to Carter’s young wife.
It was a negligible affair to the magnate—that disposal of what was to him but a few acres of useless land. To Carter, on the other hand, it was a matter of the deepest moment, for it meant a livelihood, a home for his family, a future. The fifty acres cost him the savings of nine years. But the deal once put through, the magnate suffered the unsigned deed to lie upon his desk for days. The local real-estate dealer dictated a polite note to Mr. Wiltbank, who tossed it aside; Carter wrote in a childish humpbacked scrawl, asking the great man kindly to attend to having his wife sign the deed, but Wiltbank was too busy overseeing the building of his kennels to take the trouble to remember about it.
Then one morning the farmer appeared with his money in his hand and the proprietor called his wife over, showed her where to write her name, and signed his own as witness. Carter counted out the purchase price in soiled and crumpled bills, Wiltbank stuffed them in his pocket, and the deed was done—or, rather, delivered. The young farmer brought his wife to the farm; a child was born, a boy; and just as he had got the place in shape to make an honest living, Carter died.
This was all ancient history and only remotely connected—as a back drop, so to speak—with the little one-act comedy of which we write. And then Mrs. Wiltbank died; and Wiltbank himself gave up his country place in favor of a sort of second blooming in the city.
Mrs. Carter struggled on, trying to run the farm, found herself not strong enough to do so, and offered it for sale. In due time a purchaser appeared, but when the day came to pass title it was discovered that Carter had never had the original deed to his wife recorded, and the county clerk now refused to do so, on the ground that Mrs. Wiltbank, the grantor, had not acknowledged it before a commissioner of deeds. Of course the buyer would not pay over his money until his grantor’s title was clear on the records. There was only one thing to do, according to the clerk, and that was for Mrs. Carter, the grantee in the first deed, to go to New York and secure from Mr. Wiltbank, who had signed as an attesting witness, an affidavit—as provided by statute in such cases—to the effect that he had been present when his wife signed the deed, and saw her execute it.
Now this may seem to the reader a very simple thing. All the woman had to do, he may say, was to hop on a train, find the Honorable Amos T. Wiltbank and get him to put his name at the bottom of a paper. But that is the mockery of the law. What it requires may be the merest trifle—a “yes” or a “no,” the scratch of a pen, the delivery of a sheet of paper, the lifting of a hand. Yet the procuring of that “yes” or “no,” that mark, that signature or that oath may involve difficulties rendered well-nigh insuperable by the ignorance, the poverty, or the fortuitous circumstances surrounding the person obligated to secure it. It would have been one thing for the Honorable Amos T. Wiltbank to shroud himself in his furs and motor at sixty miles an hour to New York, call up his lawyer on the telephone, and get an affidavit on any subject, executed by almost anybody, from the mayor himself up or down, in half an hour; it was quite another for Mrs. Carter to lock her house and barn, arrange for transportation for herself and baby seven miles to the railroad station, and, once in New York, to secure an audience with the great man and get from him the paper that she needed to make her record title to the farm complete. She had been in the city only twice in her life, she possessed but a few dollars, she knew nothing of law or lawyers, and her only guide was a slip of paper given her by the local Dutchess County real-estate agent, with the name and address of Moses Icklebaum upon it. That is all this humble tale amounts to—the desperate situation in which she found herself simply by virtue of another human being’s selfish pomposity, and the fall that a plucky little Maggie Haggerty took out of the pride-swollen Amos T., whereby he became a better-mannered man.
So let us take our stand on the sidewalk in front of a Broadway office building and watch our characters one by one as they emerge from the Subway and pass inside the revolving doors to play their parts. First Moses Icklebaum, thin, bald, nervous, hurrying along with a bundle of fire-insurance policies in his hand; then old Lawyer Tutt, in his stovepipe hat, carrying his ivory-headed cane, pausing to scratch a match and light a long rat-tailed stogy before entering; then the crisp, brisk Miss Minerva Wiggin, Mr. Tutt’s chief clerk and confidential assistant, or, as he often called her, his legal conscience, in tailor-made suit of gray, her leather brief case under her arm; next the Honorable Amos T. Wiltbank, emerging, ulstered and begoggled, from his automobile, puffing a cigar, authoritative, regal.
Let us trail along with them. Behold the starter touch his cap as the great man stalks by! See him speed an elevator on its way, that the god may shoot up to Olympus, unsullied by contact with mere common mortals! “Right through to the thirty-seventh—Jim!” he says. Behold the pomp with which Amos enters his office and greets his creatures, the air with which the urbane clerk relieves him of his fur coat in the antechamber of his business suite, and the anxious celerity with which Miss Madden, his social secretary, indicates the relative importance of his mail. Note the atmosphere of sanctity that pervades the cubicle in which he sits, and the hush that has fallen upon the office. What is greater than greatness? There is but one Amos Todhunter Wiltbank—and this is it!
“My name is Ozymandius—king of kings!
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Maggie Haggerty was late coming in from Flushing that morning. There had been a block on the B. R. T. and she had had to get out and walk. She did not really mind, for this had the advantage of giving her the opportunity of a moment’s banter with Officer Dennis O’Leary on the corner. Some day, she knew quite well, she was going to marry Dennis—when he got to be a captain, maybe—but she had no idea of making it too easy for him. That would be fatal, later on. So almost always she held him at arm’s length.
“Your easy day, is it, Maggie?” said he, holding up the traffic with a dégagé gesture to let the wisp of a colleen cross under his arm. “Sure, you look prettier than ever! If it wasn’t right in the middle of Broadway I’d be tempted to steal a kiss.”
Maggie dug into his heavily padded ribs with a fairy elbow.
“Hold your tongue, you big booby!” she scowled with a twinkle in her gray eyes. “I thought you were set to catch thieves, not to be one. You—steal a kiss! Don’t make me laugh!”
He half lifted her to the sidewalk.
“For ten cents I’d do it this minute!” he grinned as he released her.
Maggie made as if to cuff him and darted across the sidewalk, but on the steps she paused and called back at him: “Why not drop in at twelve o’clock when you go off duty?”
He nodded assent, grinning over his shoulder at her as he waved the traffic onward. He was a big man, was Dennis O’Leary—six feet four of muscle, bone and sinew—one not to be trifled with when resolved. So fine a figure of a cop, indeed, that once a month the Honorable Amos T. Wiltbank regularly gave him a box of Havana cigars, thus supposing that he would gain immunity from arrest if he violated the traffic laws. Oh, vanity! What is a box of cigars compared to the love of a maid?
We freely admit that the Honorable Todhunter was about the limit. Whether he sat sternly at his smoked-oak desk in his green-grained cordovan-leather armchair or strode thoughtfully up and down the Kurdistan rug with a cigar between his teeth, his subordinates eyed him furtively, as they might the lion at the zoo, ready to jump out of their skins at his gentlest roar; and the sanctum in which he sat was guarded by a series of antechambers full of wild beasts. Actually to reach and see the Honorable Todhunter was an achievement akin to climbing the Matterhorn. Royalty was nothing to him. A cat may look at a king, but a common human animal couldn’t get even a look at A. T. W. No insurance or book agent, no bill collector, missionary, or bond broker could get over the threshold of the outer office—the first-line trenches. For a lynx-eyed intelligence officer sat at an advance observation post, and the minute an enemy appeared let him have it pointblank:
“Who do you wish to see? Have you an appointment? No? Mr. Wiltbank never sees anybody except by appointment. I’m sorry, but I cannot interrupt him. He is in an important conference. … Yes, you had better write him a letter.”
Even if successfully past the O. P.—by appointment—you were only tangled in the wire, so to speak. You were grudgingly allowed to take a seat in the outer anteroom—Room 1—where you were told that Mr. Wiltbank would be free to see you in a few minutes. Here various suspicious persons, sauntering casually in, gave you the once-over to make sure you did not have homicidal mania or an infectious disease, or a subpœna, injunction, or capias hidden up your sleeve. The thing the Honorable Amos T. most abhorred in this life was a subpœna. The mere sight of one would turn him green. Once they got you on the stand in one of these infernal investigations or John Doe proceedings, they could tear the very innards out of you! They were so beastly unfair.
Amos T. held that it was nobody’s business whether he was an interlocking director, had a pooling agreement with other companies, had contributed to the campaign funds of both parties, or had promised somebody’s wife’s cousin’s nephew a job if his concern got a government contract. He regarded this prying into a man’s private affairs as undemocratic, unconstitutional, and contrary to the very principles of liberty upon which our government was founded.
And no one had ever got to him yet. No one had ever slapped a subpœna on him. No one had ever made him hold up his right hand before a mahogany horseshoe draped with up-State Legislators and quaver “I do” in answer to a complicated adjuration to tell the whole truth and not merely a part thereof. No, sir! You might catch John D. or W. K. or J. P., but, by heck! you couldn’t catch A. T. W. An ordinary citizen had about as much chance to reach the Honorable Amos T. Wiltbank as a drunken German to cross the No Man’s Land of Verdun with the searchlights playing on him. So after you had been combed in Anteroom 1 you were shoved along to Room 2—and the door was locked behind you; then, in course, to Room 3, and at last you were face to face with—no, not Mr. Wiltbank, but with Mr. Baer, his business secretary.
Mr. Baer was almost as much of a swell as his master; and almost as wise. Nobody had ever subpœnaed him either. He was the last trench, the Cerberus, the high priest or muckamuck or whatever who passed you in through the temple door to the shrine where A. T. W. sat smoking his cigar. You see how impossible it was to catch the great man. Besides, he had a secret exit which he could use if necessary. The process servers had given him up years ago, at the time of the original Lexow investigation.
On the beautiful spring morning when our story opens, the Honorable Amos Todhunter Wiltbank was sitting in his office on the thirty-seventh floor of the building, with his feet on six hundred dollars’ worth of fumed oak, with a fifty-five-cent—five for war tax—cigar in his mouth, while twenty-seven stories below him Mr. Ephraim Tutt reclined in the same position before an ancient rickety affair knocked down in a Liberty Street auction room for $3.70—and smoking a Wheeling stogy costing $.009 by the thousand. But the higher you are the bigger the bump.
“Mr. Tutt!” remarked Miss Minerva Wiggin, appearing in the doorway.
“Yes, my dear!” returned the old lawyer, smiling at her through the blue smoke of his stogy.
“You are always ready to help people.”
“Yes, my dear.”
“Well, I wish you’d help my friend Miss Haggerty. She’s the notary across the hall, you know—with Moses Icklebaum.”
“Where is she?”
“In the outer office. She’s got a poor, helpless woman with her. The trouble isn’t with the law—it’s just the tremendous difficulty under which the poor and insignificant inevitably labor when they have to approach the rich and powerful; just getting to them, you understand. She”
“Send her in!” cried Mr. Tutt, his congress shoes describing a perfect arc as they descended toward the floor with a bang. “Send her in!” And he sprang up.
“Here they are!” remarked Miss Wiggin, producing the visitors from behind her. “You know Mr. Tutt, Maggie. And this is Mrs. Carter, from Valley Fair.”
Mr. Tutt shook hands with each ceremoniously and drew up a couple of chairs.
“Now,” said he, returning to his desk, “what can I do for you—or Mrs. Carter?”
Miss Haggerty’s freckles were almost submerged in the dull red that suffused her face. She was a wiry, nervous little thing not quite five feet in height.
“I’m just hopping mad!” she informed him, her eyes glittering. “Here’s poor Mrs. Carter—her husband’s only been dead a few months—come all the way down from Dutchess County with her baby, to straighten out the deed to her farm, and she can’t get within a mile of the man who could fix it for her in half a minute.”
“Who is he?” Mr. Tutt lifted his eyebrows.
“Amos T. Wiltbank.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Mr. Tutt with interest. “You mean friend Todhunter?”
“Exactly.”
The lawyer turned to Mrs. Carter. “Why do you wish to see this man?”
Mrs. Carter shifted the baby to her other arm and then raised a pair of rather faded gray eyes to the old man’s face.
“You see, sir” she began. “Oh, do keep quiet, Ezra! Mr. Wiltbank’s wife sold us the farm and signed the deed, but she didn’t acknowledge it, and so the county clerk won’t record it.”
“Why not have her acknowledge it now?” he asked.
“She’s dead,” replied Mrs. Carter simply. “But Mr. Wiltbank saw her sign it, and put his own name on as a witness; and everything will be all right if only he will make an affidavit that he did. But I can’t reach him.”
Mr. Tutt’s long face tightened.
“Why didn’t you write him about it?”
“I did, but he never answered.”
The old lawyer clapped his knee with his right palm. “He didn’t—didn’t he!” he growled.
“It makes me furious!” interjected Maggie Haggerty, jumping to her feet. “Mrs. Carter’s all alone with her baby—nowhere to stay—has to get back to look after her cow and chickens—and unable to communicate with this man, who is right in this very building! First she goes up there and they won’t let her cross the threshold; and then I go up and they shoo me out like a tramp.”
“Did you explain what you wished to see Mr. Wiltbank about?” asked Mr. Tutt quietly.
“Why, of course! But they didn’t half listen! They’re so smooth and oily you can’t get anywhere. They wouldn’t even say whether he was in or not. And I had the affidavit all ready too. It would have been no trouble at all for them to take it in or for him to sign it. But they pretended they didn’t know where he was, or when he would be in, or how I could see him; acted almost as if they had never heard of such a man, although his name is on the door in great big letters; treated me like a book agent! Ugh! I could have punched that smart Aleck in the nose.”
“Why didn’t you?” laughed Mr. Tutt. “It would have done him good!”
“Well, he’s still there!” she snapped.
Mr. Tutt caressed his lantern jaw thoughtfully.
“As I understand it, all you want of Wiltbank is that he shall make an affidavit that he saw his wife, now deceased, sign the deed, as grantor, of the land she sold to Mrs. Carter, she not having acknowledged her signature before any notary or commissioner of deeds at the time.”
“That’s it precisely,” nodded Miss Haggerty. “The statute provides that such an affidavit by the subscribing witness shall be equivalent to an acknowledgement of execution by the maker of the instrument.”
“Let’s see your affidavit,” suggested Mr. Tutt, and the notary handed it to him.
| State of New York | ss: |
| County of New York |
On the twenty-seventh day of April, nineteen hundred and twenty-one, before me came Amos T. Wiltbank, the subscribing witness to the foregoing instrument, with whom I am personally acquainted, who, being by me duly sworn, did depose and say that he resides in New York City; that he knew Sarah M. Wiltbank to be the individual described in, and who executed, the foregoing instrument; that he, the said subscribing witness, was present and saw Sarah M. Wiltbank execute the same, and that he, said witness, at the time subscribed his name as witness thereto.
“Quite all right,” approved Mr. Tutt. “If you ever need a job, call in here.”
“But how is Mrs. Carter going to make Mr. Wiltbank sign and swear to this affidavit?” demanded Miss Haggerty. “I know he’s in his office, from the way they all acted. Besides, the starter told me that although Wiltbank went up this morning he hadn’t seen him come down—and that he usually has his lunch served in his office on a tray. You can get within forty feet of him, and yet he’s as far away as if he were in China.”
Mr. Tutt was fingering the telephone book. “Give me West 9991,” said he, lifting the receiver.
“Office of Amos T. Wiltbank,” answered a silvery female voice.
“I want Mr. Wiltbank, please.”
“Who is calling?”
“Ephraim Tutt, attorney at law.”
“Do you know Mr. Wiltbank?”
Mr. Tutt ground his teeth. “Yes, yes!” he retorted. “Certainly I do!”
“Well, does he know you?” chuckled the telephone.
The old lawyer shook his fist toward the picture of Lord Eldon on the wall in front of him.
“He’s heard of me, I guess.”
There was a provoking laugh at the other end. “Kindly tell me what you wish to speak to him about?”
“I want to speak to him about a legal paper.”
“Oh—a legal paper?”
“Yes. An affidavit I want him to sign.”
“Mr. Wiltbank doesn’t sign affidavits.”
“Well, he’ll sign this one!” roared Mr. Tutt. “Will you kindly tell him this is a very important matter and that a grave injustice”
“Mr. Wiltbank is out of town,” remarked the voice conclusively.
“When is he coming back?”
“We don’t know. You’d better write him a letter.”
Mr. Tutt suddenly sat bolt upright, turned to Maggie Haggerty, and placed the end of his forefinger upon the point of his nose.
“You say he’s in his office?”
“I’m sure of it!”
“Did you ever hear of Section 305?”
“No; what is it?” demanded Miss Haggerty excitedly. “Should I have?”
Mr. Tutt did not reply to this counter-question.
“I’ll give him one more chance!” he muttered. “One more chance.”
Five minutes later a curious group emerged from the elevator and approached the outer office of the great Mr. Wiltbank. First came Mr. Tutt, lean, rackety, sardonic, in his shabby frock coat and baggy breeches, his wrists protruding from frayed round cuffs adorned with huge onyx buttons, holding an old-fashioned stovepipe hat. Just behind him followed Mrs. Carter, her baby in her arms, shabby but neat, her plain honest face pale against her threadbare mourning. Then Maggie Haggerty, hopping along like a small angry bird, ready to fly at the first head that might appear.
The middle-aged guardian arose, in his careful cutaway and equally careful manner, at their approach.
“Is Mr. Wiltbank in?” demanded Mr. Tutt.
“Who wishes to see him?” inquired Mr. Hosmer, the intelligence officer.
“Please tell him Mr. Ephraim Tutt, representing Mrs. Ezra Carter, of Valley Fair. I wish to get Mr. Wiltbank to sign an affidavit as to his wife’s execution of a deed as grantor of some land sold to this lady here.”
Mr. Hosmer looked faintly amused.
“Have you an appointment?”
“I have not. My client has come all the way down to the city to see Mr. Wiltbank, and she must return home to-day. If he does not sign this paper for her her journey will have been fruitless, her time and money thrown away. Merely as a matter of justice”
Something in Mr. Tutt’s manner impressed Mr. Hosmer.
“Wait a moment,” said he. “I will see if something cannot be done. William! Take my place at the door.”
A stout youth arose from a neighboring desk and usurped the place of Mr. Hosmer, who disappeared toward the rear of the office. The fact was that he had heard of Mr. Tutt, and it was the second time Mrs. Carter had been there that morning! Perhaps Mr. Wiltbank might be persuaded
“Better not go in there!” warned Mr. Baer. “The boss is on the rampage. He’ll bite your head off!”
But the captain of the guard pushed by him and knocked respectfully.
“Well?” came from within.
He entered. The Honorable Amos T. Wiltbank raised a plethoric countenance.
“Well?” he snorted.
“If you please, sir,” began Mr. Hosmer timidly, “there’s a woman here from up your way in the country. Her lawyer is with her, too—Mr. Tutt—a very well-known barrister. They want you to sign an affidavit”
The Honorable Todhunter’s massive face seemed suddenly to swell.
“What do you mean,” he demanded, “interrupting me in the middle of my work this way? You know my orders! I see nobody without an appointment! Nobody! Tell these people to go and talk to Mr. Vanderpoel. If it’s anything demanding my attention he can write to me.”
Mr. Hosmer hesitated.
“Excuse me, sir,” he began again. “Might it not be better for you to make an exception for once? This Mr. Tutt can be very disagreeable”
“So can I!” yelled the apoplectic Todhunter, lumbering to his feet. “Tell him I’m the most disagreeable man in New York. Tell him to go to Vanderpoel, and if he doesn’t want to do that, tell him to go to hell!”
“Take this!” directed Mr. Tutt to the beautiful Miss Sondheim, his stenographer. “And knock it out on your machine now—before you go out to lunch:
“The People of the State of New York to Amos T. Wiltbank, greeting:
“I command you, that all and singular business and excuses being laid aside, you appear and attend before me, Margaret Haggerty, a notary public, duly qualified and appointed under the laws of the State of New York, in Room 1012 of the building known as Broadway, Borough of Manhattan, New York City, forthwith, on this the 29th day of April, to testify under oath before me concerning the execution of a deed, in which Sarah M. Wiltbank appears as grantor and Emily P. Carter as grantee, and to the execution of which you were a subscribing witness. And for failure to so attend and testify you shall forfeit to said Emily P. Carter one hundred dollars and shall be committed to the Prison of the City of New York, there to remain without bail and without the liberties of the jail until you answer under oath as required by the law.
“Margaret Haggerty, notary public in New York County.
“Ephraim Tutt, attorney for Margaret Haggerty, Broadway, New York City.”
“What is all that?” asked Maggie in amazement. “I can’t issue a subpœna!”
“You can do a lot more than that, my child!” he replied. “You can commit this bulldozing ruffian to jail!”
“Little me?” she gasped. “It can’t be. I never heard of such a thing.”
“Very few lawyers have. Or, if so, they’ve forgotten it. It’s the law, though,” he informed her. “That is, it is how the statute reads. It’s worth trying out, anyhow. Listen, I’ll read it to you. It’s Section 305 of the Real Property Law:
“Real Property Law, Section 305, compelling witnesses to testify.
“On the application of a grantee in a conveyance, his heir or personal representative, or a person claiming under either of them, verified by the oath of the applicant, stating that a witness to a conveyance, residing in the county where the application is made, refused to appear and testify concerning its execution, and that such conveyance cannot be proved without his testimony, any officer authorized to take, within the state, acknowledgment or proof of conveyance of real property may issue a subpœna, requiring such witness to attend and testify before him concerning the execution of the conveyance. A person who, on being duly served with such a subpœna, without reasonable cause refuses or neglects to attend or refuses to answer under oath concerning the execution of such conveyance, forfeits to the person injured one hundred dollars, and may also be committed to prison by the officer who issued the subpœna, there to remain without bail and without the liberties of the jail until he answers under oath as required by this section.
“Now I propose to teach this mannerless brute what he is clearly too selfish or ignorant to realize, that the mere fact that he is supposedly a human being entails a certain recognition upon his part of the existence of other people.”
“Hear! Hear!” cried Miss Wiggin. “I have always hated that man!”
“If,” continued the lawyer grimly, “our friend Todhunter refuses to do that which the law requires of him, even if he be ignorant of his duty, we will take advantage of that same ignorance and stick him in jail—for a while anyhow!”
“Do you really mean” stammered Maggie.
“Mean? Of course I mean!” shouted Mr. Tutt. “Take this, too:
“City and County of New York, ss: In the matter of the committal of Amos T. Wiltbank for a criminal contempt.
“On this 29th day of April, 1921, at about the hour of noon, the above-named Amos T. Wiltbank having been duly subpœnaed by me the undersigned to appear, attend, and testify as a witness before me concerning the execution of a certain deed to which he was a subscribing witness, between Sarah M. Wiltbank, grantor, and Emily P. Carter, grantee, and the said Amos T. Wiltbank having without reasonable cause, refused, and neglected to so attend, appear, and testify with respect thereto, now therefore it is ordered and adjudged that the said Amos T. Wiltbank forfeit to the said Emily P. Carter the sum of one hundred dollars and be forthwith committed to the City Prison of the City of New York, there to remain without bail and without the liberties of the jail until he answers under oath as required by Section 305 of the Real Property Law of the State of New York.
“Margaret Haggerty, notary public in New York County.”
“Lord love you!” exclaimed Maggie. “Who ever would mind that?”
“Amos T. Wiltbank,” answered Mr. Tutt grimly. “Or I’ll know why! Do you know a friendly cop?”
“Do I know one!” ejaculated Her Honor. “The very finest!”
“Then produce him.” returned Mr. Tutt.
Officer Dennis O’Leary had just been relieved from post and was about to attend, in accordance with the previous command of his superior officer, at the office of Moses Icklebaum, when Maggie, hatless, met him at the curb.
“Do you love me, Dennis?” she demanded.
“Do I” he began, astounded.
“Then prove it! Or I’ll never speak to you again—or marry you—or anything!”
“Give me the chance!” he ejaculated. “What is it?”
“I want you to make an arrest—maybe!”
Dennis’ kindly face expanded into a receptive grin. “If that’s all—lead me to him!” he swaggered.
“Oh, I knew you would!” she panted delightedly.
“Who is it?” he asked curiously.
“Amos T. Wiltbank!” she shot at him.
O’Leary’s jaw dropped and he stared at her blankly. “For the love of Mike!” he gasped.
“No, Denny dear,” she responded archly. “For love of me!”
Ten minutes thereafter Mr. Baer, who happened to have gone into the outer office, saw the young policeman emerge from the elevator. Denny’s monthly visits had rendered him a familiar figure, and the secretary had made a point of cultivating a sort of intimacy. You never knew when you would need a cop.
“Hello,” he greeted him cordially. “Want to see the boss?”
“Sure,” replied the officer. “Is he in?”
Baer nodded and motioned toward the communication trench.
“I guess it’ll be all right for you to go in there. You know the way. Miss Madden, just tell Mr. Wiltbank that Officer O’Leary is here and wants to speak to him a minute.”
The Honorable Amos T. was in the very act of bending over to remove a fresh box of cigars from the bottom drawer of his desk when Denny appeared at the doorway in answer to the permission extended through Miss Madden.
“Well,” exclaimed Mr. Wiltbank with an affectation of delight at seeing his visitor, “how are you, old man? What can I do for you? Have a cigar?”
“Guess I’ll pass ’em up this time, gov’nor,” said Denny.
There was something in his tone that bothered Amos T., who in his entire experience had never known a cop to refuse anything before. In this we do not intend to reflect upon the police in general, but only upon those who were of the kind that Mr. Wiltbank knew. “What do you want, then?” he demanded.
“I’ve got a paper for you to sign, gov’nor,” he answered quietly.
Instantly the Honorable Todhunter felt as if his stomach—no inconsiderable portion of his whole works—had dropped through the bottom of his green-grained leather chair. It was a subpœna! In a flash he was on his feet.
“Look here!” he panted. “You ought to know better than to intrude on me like this without permission! You should have stated your business in the outer office. I never see anybody without an appointment. Please go out and confer with Mr. Baer.”
“This ain’t got nothin’ to do with Mr. Baer,” explained Denny. “This here is a subpœna”
At that the world went bad for Amos Todhunter. Blackness descended. Devils shrieked.
“I don’t care what it is!” he shouted. “Get out of here!”
“Listen, Mr. Wiltbank,” urged Dennis in a vain endeavor to pacify him. “You sold some land to a man named Carter”
“Go and see my lawyer!” yelled Todhunter. “I know nothing whatever about it. I didn’t sell any land to him. I never sold any land to anybody in my life.”
“Well, your wife” began Dennis.
“Get out of my office,” repeated Todhunter wildly, “or I’ll send for the pol”
His voice died away. Obviously, they were already there.
“First I’m goin’ to serve you with this subpœna!” announced the cop doggedly.
“I won’t take it!” yelled A. T. W. “Keep away from me!”
Dennis began to get angry.
“Yes, you will!” he growled. “You’ll take that and a lot more before I get through with you.”
Then he put his hand in the middle of the fumed-oak writing table and leaped over it. He had taken a prize in the hurdles at the police games down at Belmont Park. He slapped the horrid thing on Todhunter’s chest just above the solar plexus.
“Take it!” he ordered.
Todhunter took it.
“Read it!” he commanded.
“I can’t without my glasses!” expostulated Todhunter. “What is it?”
“It’s a subpœna ordering you to testify about a deed.”
“Who issued it?”
“Miss Haggerty.”
“Who’s Miss Haggerty?”
“She’s the finest little woman”
“I mean,” interrupted Todhunter, getting hold of himself and, as he thought, regaining control of the situation, “what is she? How can she issue a subpœna?”
“She’s a notary public.”
Todhunter bit off the end of a cigar, lit it, and laughed.
“A notary can’t issue a subpœna!”
Denny eyed him belligerently.
“Well, she has!” he announced.
“But I don’t have to obey it,” retorted Todhunter. “Who sent you here?”
“None of your business!” replied the cop. “A subpœna is a subpœna!”
“It’s of no validity unless issued by a proper officer—a judge,” answered Todhunter, now, as he supposed, on firm ground. “You’ll get yourself in trouble if you lend yourself to such tricks. I know the commissioner and I’ll see you get sent out among the goats.”
For a fraction of a second there came upon the film of Denny’s mind a mouthing close-up of the “Commish”—yclept the Little Tin Jehoshaphat—but it faded almost instantly in favor of Maggie’s twisted little freckled smile. The Honorable Amos T. felt a hand hard as iron grab the linen adjacent to his Adam’s apple and yank him to his feet.
“You come with me!” roared O’Leary. “You’ll see who’s the goat!”
Todhunter, choking, tried to free himself. His sacred person was unused to violence.
“Let go of me!” he stuttered. “There’s obviously some mistake!”
But Denny did not relax his hold.
“You’re going with me—now—like this! Come along!” he directed.
Todhunter half swooned. Go through an alley of smirking, sneering clerks like that—in front of Baer, Wadhams, Miss Madden, the elevator boys! If he did he could never hold up his head again.
“Wait a minute!” he gagged. “I’ll go with you—that is, I’ll go as far as the elevator anyway. You’re a nice fellow, you are! I don’t know what this is all about, but can’t I fix it with you somehow? How would a twenty-dollar bill look?”
“A thousand-dollar bill would look so small I couldn’t see it!” snorted Denny. “Cut that out, Mr. Wiltbank! There’s nothin’ doin’. You come outside and I’ll give you plenty of time to make up your mind what you’ll do. But that’s all.”
“All right!” snarled Todhunter. “You take back that subpœna and forget you ever served it or I’ll have your job! When I go after a man’s skin I usually get his bones! I’ll break you—understand?”
For reply Dennis propelled his prisoner vigorously toward the door. “Easy!” whined A. T. W. “I’m going!”
“You bet you are!” retorted O’Leary.
They passed through the shrouded sanctuary known as Room 3, the more blatant ostentation of Room 2, the austere elegance of Room 1, and into the large outer office, where it seemed to Todhunter as if no less than fifty pairs of derisive eyes were focused upon him. In the middle of the room, in full view of all the clerks, accountants, bookkeepers, stenographers, attendants, and office boys, stood a tall, lean, ramshackly, wizened old cuss who looked something like a lamp-post wrapped in a frock coat, and whom the miserable magnate suspected he had seen somewhere before. Beside this gaunt Nemesis was a small but furious female, a panther woman who crouched ready to spring. Then she sprang.
“I have subpœnaed you,” she announced in a high, firm voice, “to appear before me and testify regarding the execution of a deed to which you were a subscribing witness. Are you coming?”
Todhunter could hear the hush descending upon the office. The babble of voices, the rattle and ring of typewriters ceased. No jaws moved. It was as if a forest swaying in the wind had suddenly become motionless.
“My good woman,” began Todhunter nervously, “this sort of thing is quite unpardonable. I do not recall the matter to which you refer. But whatever assistance I might have been to you is now out of the question. I shall decline to help you in any way.”
A curious smile played elusively over Mr. Tutt’s gaunt face, but he swiftly repressed it.
“All right,” he muttered sotto voce to the little pepper pot beside him. “Go to it.”
“Then,” exclaimed Maggie dramatically, “I fine you one hundred dollars and commit you to the City Prison without jail privileges until you are prepared to testify. Of-fi-cer”—her voice shook almost imperceptibly—“of-fi-cer! Arrest that man and take him to the Tombs!”
Utter silence, as in the curvature of space, followed. It was broken by a brazen laugh from A. T. W.
“What nonsense!” he remarked. “You must be crazy! You couldn’t send a dog to jail!”
“She can send you!” smiled the tall old man who towered above him.
“Who in hell are you?” snapped the Honorable Todhunter.
“I suppose I am known by the same name everywhere,” answered Mr. Tutt benignly. “Let it suffice that I am the young lady’s attorney. I advise you that she has full authority to send you to prison. Here is the necessary commitment, signed by her, and this officer is ready to execute it. Would you like to convey any messages to your friends before you start? Send for a toothbrush or anything?”
The Honorable Todhunter’s face sank like a blazing sun into the purple horizon of his neck. To be insulted thus in the presence of his clerks; baited and jeered at! Suffocating with repressed fury he turned to Miss Madden.
“Call up Mr. Vanderpoel,” he directed her.
A moment later she handed him the instrument.
“That you, Vanderpoel? Yes, A. T. W. Listen. Can a notary commit a person to jail simply because that person refuses to be questioned about a real-estate transaction?”
“Notary—send—a person—to jail!” ejaculated Mr. Vanderpoel. “Of course not! Who ever heard of such a thing? Nobody except a judge can send anybody to jail.”
“Well, there’s a notary trying to send me,” answered Todhunter.
“You? You! That’s a good one!” laughed the learned Vanderpoel. “Tell him to go to the devil.”
The Honorable Amos T. Wiltbank hung up the receiver.
“My lawyer instructs me to tell you to go to the devil!” he informed Miss Haggerty.
“Very well! Arrest him, of-fi-cer!” she quavered.
With something that sounded suspiciously like profanity Officer Dennis O’Leary brought his hand down with a bang upon the magnate’s shoulder, gripped him roughly by the collar and dragged him toward the elevator. A gasp of astonishment and horror escaped from half a hundred throats. The great A. T. W. treated like that—so rough!
“Help!” cried the magnate. “Look here”
“Under the law,” said Mr. Tutt calmly, “you may be sent to prison. I will show you the statute if you care to read it. I confess it is rather obsolete, but it will serve. It is Section 305 of the Real Property Law. But you may still escape the humiliation of going to jail by acceding to the young lady’s demands and signing the necessary affidavit—which I hold in my hand.”
The Honorable Amos T. Wiltbank hesitated. Should he now yield he could never again be the same to his employees. He would be an exploded balloon, a shattered idol, a busted phenomenon. But if he didn’t
“Come along, you!” snarled Dennis, jerking him ignominiously.
Hot tears of baffled rage and humiliation smarted in the great man’s eyes. The cop’s knuckles dug painfully into the cords of his neck. His collar hurt him.
“Come on!”
Oh, sacrilege! What difference did it make whether this outrageous performance was legal or illegal? Here was an officer who was prepared to yank him into the elevator and, if need be, club him to a pulp and drag him by the heels down Broadway to the Tombs. Even if he didn’t beat, club, and mangle him he would bruise and maltreat him by word and deed, conduct him along by the arm in the presence of a jeering crowd, who would follow, snarling, at his heels. It was not so much the idea of jail—even without the usual courtesies—as the puncturing of his pride, the writhing humiliation, the awful irony that he, the great A. T. W.—the man who had cigarettes named after him—should be Oh it was inconceivable! And think of the newspapers!
The shadow of the descending elevator flashed across the ground glass and the door slid open.
The magnate went suddenly weak in the knees. He was beaten; he knew it! For the first time in his life his bluff had been called—and by a woman! He wavered, he caved!
“Goin’ down?” intoned the elevator man.
“I think not,” answered the Honorable Amos T. Wiltbank sheepishly.