THE TWELVE LITTLE HUSBANDS
Alas, the love of woman! It is known
To be a lovely and a tearful thing.
Señor Don Antonio Jesu Maria Perarra y Castadandos daintily wiped his mustache upon the frayed napkin that went with Señor Amontillado’s table d’hôte, leaned across the table behind the green curtain that separated the alcove from the public dining-room and sadly implanted a kiss upon the cheek of the lady opposite him—the Señora Isabella Ramirez.
“Adios!” he whispered in a choking voice. “Adios, my beloved. I go—I go to face my accusers! But thou wilt visit me in my dungeon? Thou wilt strengthen me to defy the inquisitors?”
“How canst thou doubt it, dear one!” she answered, fondly clasping his head to her shoulder, thereby endangering the claret bottle, which, however, she dexterously rescued with her disengaged hand. “It will at worst be but a few weeks before thou wilt be free! And then—then”
“Then we will fly!” he echoed. “Adios!” He tore himself away and with an eloquent gesture ducked behind the curtain. Señora Ramirez wiped her eyes and sighed deeply. Exertion and emotion were both difficult for her.
Señora Ramirez had mass, and though she was probably also fat, she gave an impression less of obesity than of muscular strength backed by indomitable will. She was tall and broad-shouldered, with generous bosom and substantial hips, and her neck and arms were like the pillars of the temple. She was large, with the expansive masculine largeness of the female Latin, and the slight touch of masculinity was intensified by the tiny black mustache which adorned her upper lip. But for all her solidity she was a fine figurehead of a woman—one hundred and ninety-five pounds of Hispanic beauty—a lady of power and of passion, whom no one would approach carelessly and to whom no one would make love without encouragement. Her husband, Señor Ramirez, was attenuated, elderly, and more or less of an invalid. Her lover, Don Antonio, was also small, but he was elegant, dashing, debonair—a caballero.
There are certain philosophers who contend that just as pity is akin to love, so the tender passion is largely composed of the protective instinct. The emotion most women feel for their husbands, they say, is chiefly maternal, and hence big women do not hesitate to mate with little men and seem to feel no embarrassment about it. How far the converse of this theory is true remains to be seen. To what extent does the protective instinct enter into the feeling of men for women? Does it draw the males instinctively toward the weak and fragile, the clinging vines, the ultrafeminine, rather than toward the strong, vigorous, and efficient specimens of womankind? Does it lead men naturally to select as the objects of their affections women smaller than themselves, about whose waists they can thrust the protective arm without too much reaching? Or whom they can embrace without standing on tiptoe?
On the other hand, may not the mysterious passion we call love originate in impulses so subtle that all such crass details as form and feature, height, weight, breadth, thickness, and cubic contents play no part in it? Read on, and as you read ponder this question, for upon it the temperamental tragedy which we are about to relate may shed some light.
Don Antonio, jauntily swinging his Malacca stick, threaded his way among the tables, dodging past the cash register operated by Señora Amontillado. Whatever loose cash he had in his pockets he needed for other purposes. Isabella could—gladly would—pay for their luncheon, which had been a substantial one. So instead of paying he ostentatiously examined the pet turtle in the aquarium on the steam radiator, helped himself to a toothpick, stepped to the sidewalk, and glanced about him.
Across the street three men stood under a gas lamp. They were evidently waiting for him, since the moment he made his exit the smallest of the three, whom he recognized as Señor Ramirez, said something to the others and all began to stroll toward him. Don Antonio calmly awaited their approach. As they reached the sidewalk the little man, who wore an immense gray muffler and yellow gloves, suddenly pointed to him with his cane and shouted in a high-pitched voice: “There he is! That is he—Antonio Perarra y Castadandos! I identify him to you! Arrest him!” And, becoming more excited, he began to dance furiously up and down. “Murderer!” he chattered. “Assassin! Traducer! Thou shalt pay! I will have thy body and thy purse! Thou shalt not escape! They will cast thee at once into the calabozo! Seducer! Betrayer of my home! Ya!” he screamed.
Don Antonio viewed him calmly, much as he would have regarded an overexcited fox-terrier. Then, removing his toothpick, he placed his left thumb-nail beneath the edge of his right upper incisor and snapped it twice at Señor Ramirez.
“Tck!” contemptuously. “Tck!”
Señor Don Antonio Perarra y Castadandos came of a very old and distinguished family which, unfortunately for him, no longer possessed any of the usual material concomitants of nobility. Indeed, he was so far reduced that only by resorting to the vulgarities of commerce could he keep the she-wolf from the door of his hall bedroom. With pain we are obliged to confess that Don Antonio was in the cork business. By cork alone did he manage to keep afloat. The corks did not even come from his own cork forests. The Castadandos no longer had any—if indeed they had ever had any. In moments of hilarity Señor Ramirez had sometimes jocosely remarked that the Castadandos had less use for corks than almost any people that he knew—had no use at all for them, in fact, except to pull them out and throw them away. At this witticism Don Antonio would laugh heartily and pour out another goblet of Señor Ramirez’s red wine, while Señora Ramirez would glower at her husband as if he were a tarantula.
But even if Don Antonio would have had difficulty in demonstrating his noble birth at the consular office or even in identifying himself sufficiently to secure an invitation to dinner at the Spanish Embassy in Washington, to say nothing of establishing a claim to any particular piece of real estate in Aragon or Cordova, nevertheless he was a caballero of the caballeros—and a noble specimen of the present generation of hidalgos. Gentility was exuded by his every movement. Bernardo del Carpio had nothing on him. He wore the straw hat, which in the course of numberless seasons had acquired a color rivaling that of his cigarette-holder, with the haughty air of a Castilian and carried his threadbare overcoat across his arm as it were a velvet cloak concealing a rapier.
One would have thought that such a man would have married young; indeed, that he might have married, had he so chosen, again and again. Yet Don Antonio, charming though he undoubtedly was, remained single. The answer was on the tip of everyone’s tongue in the neighborhood. Don Antonio was known to be desperately in love with the Señora Isabella Ramirez, the victim of a hopeless but none the less interesting passion. It is true that the cynics hinted that as Señor Ramirez, her husband, was a large importer of wines there might be method in Don Antonio’s madness. But though the importer’s friendship might indeed have been of some slight material value to Don Antonio—and always assuming further that Don Antonio was that kind of man—it is hard to see how falling in love with Isabella Ramirez would have helped the cork business. Indeed, one would think that he might on the contrary easily have feared being shipwrecked upon the rock of romance and, corks or no corks, going down forever.
But apparently he had no fear.
Don Antonio, in spite of the gossip of wagging tongues, continued to dine every Thursday at Señor Ramirez’s house and to lunch there every Sunday and, as his friend was habitually afflicted with rheumatism, he regularly took the Señora Isabella out for a walk—either to see the bird pictures at the American Museum of Natural History, the collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the animals in the Zoo at Bronx Park—and brought her safely back to Señor Ramirez by seven o’clock. The Señora Isabella liked best to go to the Natural History Museum because the cases holding the stuffed birds are in a wing rather far apart and it is quite bosky in there, with seats where two people can sit close together and hold hands without much chance of being seen—for the other visitors naturally are looking at the birds.
Señora Isabella and Don Antonio used to sit thus for hours gazing with a far-away expression at thousands of scarlet flamingos having the time of their lives upon miles and miles of beach all covered with nests. They especially liked the flamingos because they were at the very end of the wing and hence many of the visitors never got that far. Señor Ramirez generally did, however, and used to watch them from behind the pelicans, and when they got back he would ask them innocently where they had been and smile in a pleased way when they told him that they had gone to the cathedral or on a bus ride to Grant’s Tomb. Then he would beg Don Antonio almost effusively to remain to supper, but Don Antonio never would. Yet always he came on Thursday evening.
Don Antonio seemed to have a genuine affection for Señor Ramirez. He was younger in years, but his greater knowledge of the social world made him an entertaining and stimulating companion for his older friend, who found getting about difficult on account of his rheumatism. Had it not been for the suspicions of Señor Ramirez regarding Isabella the friendship would have been one of his greatest satisfactions. Even as it was, the two saw each other regularly and on Thursday evenings played an interminable game of chess, which seemed to Isabella to have begun at a time so far distant in the past that they had all forgotten when it was. That it should not continue into eternity she was fully resolved. Both she and Antonio had agreed that the situation was impossible. Señor Ramirez might live on indefinitely, and when he ultimately died, if indeed he ever died, they would both be old.
“Courage, amigo!” Señora Isabella had whispered to Don Antonio in her deep contralto, seizing his hand in a powerful clutch as they sat before the nesting flamingos. “It is the only way. Better that both of us should be dead than eating our hearts out. Pah! Ramirez will last ten—twenty—who knows how many years!”
“Thou art right, dearest heart,” Don Antonio had answered. “A great love justifies all things.”
“On Thursday then?” she had murmured tragically, almost as if she were ordering an execution. “Thou knowest where the powder may be bought?”
“On Thursday, beloved,” he had assented. “Leave all to me. I will slip it into his demi-tasse after dinner. He will have an apoplexy before morning.”
Their hands sealed the customary oscular pledge forbidden by the presence of several bird lovers near by. Señor Ramirez, hovering behind the pelicans, hobbled quietly away to his waiting taxicab. Though he had heard nothing, he had seen enough, he believed, to justify all his suspicions. That evening he would tell Don Antonio in no uncertain terms what he thought of him and expel him from the Casa Ramirez forever. They had lied to him! They were having an affair! Philandering there in the dark! Grant’s Tomb! He squirmed with humiliation and fury. But the next moment he became unutterably sad and depressed. He was really very fond of Don Antonio and would be lonely without him. Moreover, at times Isabella got distinctly on his nerves. He was in a terrible quandary. He could not afford to be made a fool of; but, after all, he did not wish to be unjust to his friend!
This had been a month before. Thrice—upon three consecutive Thursday evenings—had Don Antonio placed sugar of lead in the coffee of Señor Ramirez as the latter limped to the corner of the room to unlock the humidor containing his choicest cigars. And each time his host had innocently quaffed the beverage. Yet nothing particular had occurred. In fact, upon the first occasion nothing had occurred at all, and the guilty pair decided that the dose must be increased. Accordingly Don Antonio had doubled the amount and Señor Ramirez had swallowed some of it. That night he had been slightly indisposed and the next morning suffered from a headache, but otherwise the poison had had no obviously injurious effects, although, as Don Antonio explained, it might still be working latently and at the proper time accomplish the victim’s intended dissolution. The suspense, however, was almost too much for them, and Isabella, being a woman, began to exhibit symptoms of nervous strain. Upon the third Thursday they quadrupled the dose. As usual, Ramirez rose after the dessert, reached for his cane and hobbled to the humidor, and Don Antonio, sitting beside Isabella at the table, emptied the entire contents of his phial into her husband’s favorite blue coffee cup ornamented with yellow and gilt butterflies.
“Here, amigo,” said Ramirez on his return, tendering Don Antonio an immense cigar wrapped in tinfoil. “Here is the last of my private reservation of the crop of 1904.”
Then he settled himself comfortably, while Isabella, bedewed with a sweat of horror, watched him lift it to his lips and drink half of it.
“Nombre de Dios!” he ejaculated, looking into the cup. “What has got into the coffee? You must really speak to Maria!”
Then he turned color and put his hand quickly to his stomach.
“Oh!” he groaned.
“What is it, my darling?” inquired Isabella agonizedly. “Do you feel unwell?”
For answer Señor Ramirez rolled up his eyes and suffered his head to loll upon his shoulder.
“Permit me to go for the doctor!” exclaimed Don Antonio sympathetically, springing to his feet.
“Yes—by all means!” echoed Isabella in deep solicitude.
Together they carried Señor Ramirez to the lounge. That night he was violently ill. The dawn found him weak, pale, helpless—with slight reminiscent pains in his abdominal region. But by afternoon he had eaten a plate of onion soup, a chile con carne and a tortilla, had drunk a pint of claret, and never had felt better in his life. In fact, he was completely cured of the attack of rheumatism from which he had been suffering.
But the conspirators in their excitement had forgotten to dispose of the remainder of the cup of coffee, and the doctor when he left the house had taken it away with him. On Saturday Señor Ramirez learned definitely from chemical analysis that he was suffering slightly from lead poisoning, and that probably only the fact that he possessed the constitution of an ox had saved his life.
Then events had taken place with great rapidity, and in a sequence most disconcerting to Isabella and Don Antonio, for Señor Ramirez had not died as arranged, and hence the situation was one for which they were entirely unprepared. Flight would have been tantamount to confession. It was vital for them both to face whatever music there was going to be with as much equanimity as possible and to ape a nonchalance which should avert suspicion. Isabella found her husband curiously uncommunicative. He made no comment upon his illness and did not disclose the nature of the doctor’s report. It was uncanny! Instinctively she recognized that trouble was brewing. Moreover, the only servant they kept had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, without being paid, and they had been obliged to get in a waiter from Señor Amontillado’s restaurant.
Don Antonio still went cheerfully about his business, but both Isabella and he knew that it was probably only a question of hours or even of minutes before the purchase of the poison would be traced and he would be charged with the attempted murder of Señor Ramirez; she, perhaps, as his accomplice. So each made ready for the ordeal to come, the man after his kind and the woman after hers. His was the manner of a grandee of Spain; who would fight for a lady’s honor to the death or blithely suffer it for her sake.
Thus when he made his exit from Señor Amontillado’s his course had already been determined. He had learned his part, and naught remained but to act it out like the caballero and patrician that he was.
So—“Tck!” went Don Antonio, snapping his tooth with the nail of his left thumb. “Tck!”
Yet under the corset that he wore beneath his yellow-and-brown-checked waistcoat his heart was pumping like a machine-gun.
“I am ready!” he announced, bowing in the direction of Señor Ramirez’s companions. “Do not agitate yourselves. I am entirely at your service!”
“Some case, chief—what?” remarked “Deacon” Terry, The Tribune’s star reporter, to the district attorney as he showed him the front-page feature of a rival daily. “This ought to put your office on the map! It’s a real story! Nan Patterson and Harry Thaw left at the flag!”
The headlines read:
ATTEMPTED POISONING OF WEALTHY SPANISH MERCHANT
Arrest of Don A. J. M. P. Castadandos,
Spanish Nobleman and Society Leader,
Friend of Señora Ramirez.
The Honorable John Henry Peckham examined the illustrations with the eye of an expert. From the middle of the page an astonishingly slender maiden yearned forth at him with eyes of a bereaved gazelle, her hands folded demurely in the lap of a ballgown of the cut fashionable at the time of the Vanderbilt Ball.
Señora Isabella Ramirez, beautiful wife of Señor José Pedro Concepcion Ramirez.
Peckham regarded her with interest.
“Yes, yes!” he agreed. Then he turned to a picture in which Señor Ramirez was portrayed upon the point of stepping dangerously off a curb in the company of two detectives, their three right legs prominently poised in unison in mid-air.
“Who’s that little chickadee-dee?” he grunted, pointing to the reproduction of a juvenile Don Antonio in tennis flannels made from a photograph taken in Barcelona before his emigration in 1889.
“That’s the murderer,” grinned Terry.
“Alas! Poor brother!” commented the D.A. “He must have taken a lot of something before he got his nerve up to commit homicide! What sort of a case is it—really?”
“It looks all right,” answered Terry, accepting a cigarette. “Anyhow, it’s a good yarn. Old Ramirez is a wholesale wine and liquor importer and stands ’way up in New York Latin society—whatever that is. He has, as you perceive, somewhat of a wife. He had also, as you further perceive, some sort of a friend. Paolo and Francesca—Spanish-American triangle stuff. But—and here’s the point! Do the beautiful Isabella Villa Villa Perfecto and her Don Antonio Intimidado Corona hire the Pearl Button Kids or the Gas House Gang to punch the lights out of the venerable Ramirez? Does the gay Spanish cavalier beat out the brains of the doddering husband with his guitar or puncture him with an automatic? Not so! In the best historic manner of the Borgias he hies him to an apothecary and purchases a malignant poison to kill—as he poetically puts it—a rat, and then dumps it in his victim’s coffee. Only—and there’s the merry mockery of it—being old and tough and used to the table d’hôte espagnole, the victim refuses to die! Instead—he hustles off and has his coffee analyzed.”
“Motive, premeditation, deliberation, and malice aforethought!” nodded Peckham.
“It ought to be a cinch,” the Deacon assured him. “They say both the apothecary and his assistant positively identify the prisoner as having bought sugar of lead on two separate occasions.”
The D.A. looked appreciative.
“‘Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age’s tooth!’” he murmured. “The papers will eat it alive! If it’s as simple as all that I don’t see why we shouldn’t put it on before Recorder Williams and try it right off the bat.”
“I wish you would,” approved the Deacon. “We’re as dry as the Sahara out in the pressroom, and there hasn’t even been a Syrian murder in six months. The public have forgotten there’s such a thing as a district attorney’s office. This will keep us going for a couple of weeks anyhow. All the preliminary matter, you know—interviews with Señor Ramirez Claro Invincible and Señora Isabella Pippinetta Colorado—famous murder trials of the past—Buchanan, Harris, Molineux et al.; historic stuff about kings, Spanish or otherwise, murdered by their wives or mistresses and the latter’s lovers; popular articles in the Sunday sup. on poisons, ancient and modern—preventive measures taken by state and municipal authorities to preclude purchase; the trial; the conviction; the sentence; the—er—execution! We couldn’t ask anything better, and we’ll guarantee to deliver you the entire Hispano-American vote, conservatively estimated at one hundred and forty nine.”
“All right!” nodded the D.A. “Tell Mooney I want to see Fitzpatrick; I guess I’ll let him try it. He’s a good exhorter.”
“Why don’t you try it yourself? It’s a big case,” suggested Terry. “You ought to get into the ring occasionally.”
“Who’s defending him?” meditatively inquired Peckham.
“Tutt & Tutt,” replied the Deacon. “And old man Tutt says he’s going to win in a walk!”
“How on earth can he think that?” demanded the D.A. “But of course he always says he’ll win in a walk!”
“And sometimes he does!” warned Terry. “Look out for him, chief!”
The district attorney hesitated while he lit another cigarette.
“I guess I’ll think it over a bit,” he decided. “You needn’t tell Mooney anything—except to have the papers sent in to me.”
“You better not take any chances,” advised the veteran reporter. “Meantime I’m going down to find out if Mr. Tutt will make a statement about the nature of his defense.”
“A statement! A statement!” repeated Peckham. “A lot you’ll get! Tutt’s the noisiest clam in the business!”
“I observe by the papers,” remarked Tutt, as they foregathered at tea-time about the small round table presided over by Miss Wiggin in Mr. Tutt’s office, “that our firm has been retained to defend Don Antonio Castadandos. Is that correct?”
“Quite so!” replied his partner. “We have not only been retained but what is more to the point—we’ve been paid in advance.”
“Does that indicate that we have or have not got any defense?” smiled Miss Wiggin as she arranged the cups.
“It looks bad to me,” said Bonnie Doon, pulling up a chair. “However, as the first duty of a lawyer is to see that he is properly paid, I am glad to see that Mr. Tutt has not been remiss.”
“He hasn’t said how much he got!” retorted Tutt. “Make mine strong, please, Miss Wiggin. According to the press it’s quite a snappy case and our client hasn’t got a chance.”
“Anyhow there’ll be a heap of advertising in it!” commented Bonnie. “Just look at that!” He unfolded the frontal display of two afternoon editions.
“Let me see!” cried Miss Wiggin. “How exciting. So there’s a woman in it!”
“There is,” replied Mr. Tutt grimly, carefully amputating a stogy and unsuccessfully attempting to light it from the alcohol lamp underneath the tea-kettle.
“I should say so!” ejaculated Bonnie. “Some chick? Just look at her, Miss Wiggin.”
The managing clerk paused in her functions of hostess long enough to study the youthful reproduction of Señora Ramirez.
“She’s quite beautiful—I should say. Did he try to murder the husband on her account?”
“That’s what they claim,” answered Bonnie. “Fed poison to him three times. They’ve found the apothecary that sold it to him.”
“Great Cæsar!” whistled Tutt. “No wonder we’re paid in advance.”
“Will someone contribute a match?” asked Mr. Tutt disconsolately. “This stogy”
“It’s just like all the others,” retorted Miss Wiggin. “I don’t understand how you can bring yourself to smoke such things!”
“Habit, my dear, habit!” he replied. “To me their aroma is more exquisite than that of the rarest of Habanas!”
“Well, what is our defense?” demanded Tutt as he received his cup. “Attempted suicide?”
Mr. Tutt shook his head mysteriously.
“That,” he returned, “you will learn at the trial.”
The chief duty of any lawyer—next to that indicated by Mr. Doon of being promptly paid—is to be non-communicative about his client’s affairs. In this Ephraim Tutt, after a lifetime of experience, was particularly skilful. For he had learned that most priceless of all lessons, that to be silent is by no means to be successful in concealment. Not for nothing had the district attorney referred to him as “the noisiest clam in the business.” The diplomatist who achieved fame by being able to remain silent in seven languages was a child in subtlety compared to Mr. Tutt. He never apparently had anything to conceal at all. Any knowledge he had belonged to anybody who desired it. He would discuss his cases with the utmost freedom but without imparting one jot or tittle of information. His cardinal principle was never to remain silent, for he had discovered early in his career that silence is indeed golden—to an astute interlocutor. And yet he never made a misstatement. He was a voluble sphinx, who never by silence gave assent.
“Piffle!” said Tutt peevishly. “What’s the use”
“May Mr. Terry come in?” asked Willie from the doorway.
“Certainly! Certainly! Delighted!” answered Mr. Tutt. “Show him right in,” while the others looked at one another significantly, anticipating the skirmish sure to follow between the wily old practitioner and the shrewdest reporter attached to the Criminal Courts Building.
“Deacon” Terry—origin of said name of Deacon unknown—was an old hand and wise in his generation. Once and again he had pulled off a stunt of his own that had made him momentarily famous. He respected and had a pronounced affection for Mr. Tutt—never betrayed his confidence—always played fair with him—but he was a newspaper man, first, last, and always—and he had come for a specific purpose. So as he crossed the threshold of the office he threw up his hands above his head and exclaimed jocularly: “No quarter!”
“Have a cup of tea?” invited Miss Wiggin.
“Thanks,” he replied, “as long as it’s fully understood that I’m in the camp of my enemies. No confidences! This isn’t murder—it’s war!”
“As you like, as you like,” agreed Mr. Tutt. “Now I wonder what on earth you can be down here for? Can you guess, Bonnie?”
“Can’t imagine!” said Mr. Doon blandly. “Perhaps Deacon saw something in the papers about that Spanish case”
“Naturally I want to find out what your defense is going to be in the most sensational case in years. Is it going to be a denial of the purchase of the poison? They have two reputable witnesses?”
“What would you advise?” countered Mr. Tutt blandly.
“It would somewhat depend on whether your client gave his correct name and address at the time of purchase,” replied Deacon. “It’s good tactics, isn’t it, to deny everything?”
“Not if it can be proved,” said Mr. Tutt. “Did he give his correct name and address?”
“I don’t know. Of course motive is very important. If Señora Ramirez wasn’t such a beauty it would be difficult for Peckham to prove why Castadandos would want to kill Ramirez—but a woman like that!”
“Is she so wonderful?” inquired Mr. Tutt innocently.
“Don’t you think so?”
“Her picture in the paper would make her seem so. Still, you know how little they usually resemble the original.”
Mr. Tutt exhaled a wallowing ring of blue-gray smoke.
The Deacon chuckled.
“The fact that your firm is retained by Señora Ramirez is rather damaging, isn’t it?” he asked carelessly as he handed back his cup for more tea.
“I haven’t seen any such statement as that in the papers,” mused the old lawyer without betraying the slightest sign of concern. “If she had, perhaps”
“Oh, I don’t know that she has!” hastily added the Deacon. “But when a lady visits the house of her lover’s lawyer late in the evening, one naturally—eliminating the idea of a rendezvous—jumps to the conclusion that she is interested.”
He emptied his cup and put it down in the most matter-of-fact way imaginable. It was a shot in the dark but, as sometimes happens, it hit a cat.
“Well,” retorted Mr. Tutt, “supposing she has retained us?”
“It wouldn’t make for much harmony in the family,” hazarded the Deacon. “Aren’t you willing to make any statement regarding the nature of your defense? The public would naturally be pleased to know that Don Antonio was innocent. I’d be glad to help you in creating sentiment for him and all that! Why not frankly admit that Don Antonio loves Señora Ramirez? By heck! Why not have her take the stand and testify that she did it—and not Castadandos?”
“Perhaps I will,” replied Mr. Tutt, stroking his long chin. “Perhaps I will!”
“By the way,” concluded the Deacon, “what does the lady look like? Does she actually to-day at all resemble this picture, which I have ascertained was made in 1905?”
Mr. Tutt suddenly realized that somehow or other he had betrayed himself; just how he could not precisely determine.
“Deacon,” he answered sternly, “Señora Isabella Ramirez looks no more like that illustration than—than a Brontosaurus!”
Terry regarded him suspiciously. Mr. Tutt gave every indication of sincerity.
“Well,” queried the Deacon as he rose and picked up his hat, “where does that let you off?”
“You’ll have to work that out for yourself,” growled Mr. Tutt.
The Deacon twirled his bowler between his fingers.
“After all,” he remarked blithely, “that isn’t official. And maybe you are no judge of feminine attractions. For the rest of us—for the public at large—Señora Isabella Ramirez will remain one of the most beautiful women in the world—until we know different!”
Deacon Terry, the dean of New York’s Criminal Fourth Estate, like most experienced reporters, was a cynic in that he realized that the lust for publicity is in most men more potent than the love of women or the lure of gold. He was prepared to condone those slight distortions of exactitude whereby every actor in any drama, however mild, becomes under the artistry of the write-up man a “leading” something—a “leading” society man or woman, a “leading” butcher, grocer, or laundryman—at the very least a “leading” citizen. The Deacon discounted ninety per cent of what he read and all that he heard, and he had been known to assert that there was no such thing as truth, since it was incapable of human interpretation. Moreover, he held strongly to the thesis that just as most people are highly complex in their natures and neither wholly idealistic nor wholly selfish, so their motives are apt to be intricate and involved.
That a love motif was the key to the Ramirez mystery—if it could be called one—seemed obvious, yet to the Deacon there was something about the whole affair that gave it an air of artificiality. Was it the ludicrous, almost ridiculous, personality of the characters? The simple-minded crudity of the methods employed, that suggested the days of Lorenzo the Magnificent? Or was it the inability of a Yankee newspaper man to grasp the ferocity of the fires latent in the Latin temperament? The Deacon did not take much stock in temperament; he thought it was worked much too hard.
Besides, he had never covered a case where there prevailed such a general air of nonchalance. Mr. Tutt did not seem to feel the least anxiety over the outcome, and the Deacon knew the old lawyer well enough to feel convinced that he was not acting. As for Don Antonio, it almost seemed as if he enjoyed being in the Tombs. Queer! What sort of game could they all be up to? A bluff like that would be simply too preposterous. No! There was something. Yet the Deacon’s doubts did not prevent him from playing the case up for all it was worth.
Soon a wave of sympathy, fostered by the sob sisters in the evening editions for Señora Ramirez and Don Antonio, swept over the city. This, however, did not disturb the district attorney. The case was absolutely impregnable—cast-iron; the evidence incontrovertible.
“Don’t you think so yourself, Deacon?” he demanded the day before the trial as Terry lingered on after the daily five o’clock interview accorded to the press.
The Deacon pressed his cheeks together with his thumb and middle finger and hesitated.
“Well?” repeated the D. A. a trifle impatiently.
“To tell you the truth, chief,” answered the Deacon, “this blooming case has got my goat. It looks like a cinch, but—it’s too good. I have a hunch you may find that it’s loaded.”
“Nonsense!” snapped Peckham, annoyed, because he valued the Deacon’s opinion. “What makes you feel that way?”
“Don’t know!” replied Terry. “I guess it’s the way that little jackanapes of a Don Antonio snaps his thumbnail under his front teeth and says ‘Tck!’”
Meantime, all remained quiet in the offices of Tutt & Tutt. Never had such an atmosphere of peace been known there before upon the eve of a legal battle.
“Seems to me you’re taking things pretty easy,” observed Tutt as he came in just before tea-time on the eve of the combat. “I don’t see that you’ve done anything at all in the way of preparation.”
“I haven’t,” answered Mr. Tutt. “There’s nothing to do.”
“In that case I don’t suppose you want any help,” replied the junior.
Mr. Tutt laid down the Law Journal and took off his glasses.
“Yes, I do,” he said. “I want you to get the jury.”
“Me?” inquired Tutt. “Why, I thought you liked to get acquainted with ’em that way yourself.”
“I do, usually. But this time I’m going to keep out of sight until the case gets really started.”
“What sort of jury do you want?” asked his partner.
Ephraim Tutt regarded his legal other half with solemnity.
“I want,” said he thoughtfully, “a jury of middle-aged married men—old enough to have exhausted the possibilities of the joy of living—depressed, anxious, worried-looking men—and I want ’em small. Not one over a hundred and ten pounds.”
“What do you expect me to do?” jeered Tutt. “Weigh ’em?”
“I’m quite serious!” the elder partner rebuked him. “Quite serious! Remember—no bachelors—nothing over one hundred and ten, and the lighter the better—the mournfulest pick of the panel. Do you follow me?”
“No!” retorted Tutt. “I don’t! But I understand that you want a jury of feather-weight crape-hangers—twelve bantam benedicts.”
“Precisely!” nodded Mr. Tutt. “I want twelve middle-aged adventurers in matrimony who look as if they hadn’t a friend in the world.”
“It’s too bad I can’t serve!” remarked Tutt with feeling.
When Mr. Tutt the following afternoon forced his way through the crowd in the court-room, and took his seat beside the freshly barbered Don Antonio at the table reserved for the prisoner and his counsel, he would have been captious indeed had he felt dissatisfaction with the jury which Tutt had selected. With due observance of his senior’s field orders the junior member of the firm had breezily challenged without explanation every unmarried talesman and all those others who in any way showed by their appearance that their lives were anything but a burden. Moreover, they were all diminutive—like Don Antonio. In fact, they resembled a lodge meeting of undersized undertakers.
The court-room was jammed. There hadn’t been a genuine high-class murder case for years! Even the steps leading up to the bench were occupied by highly interested lady friends of His Honor, who simply would not be denied the privilege of attendance. Four cartoonists with full-fledged easels unblushingly caricatured for their respective journals the judge, the jury, the defendant and his counsel. An extra force of court officers had been installed to preserve order, and the only persons allowed access to the room were a constant succession of small boys who, waiting breathlessly while the reporters dashed off trenchant comments upon the progress of the trial, pounced upon them as completed and rushed to the telephones below. The court-room smelled like a steam-heated menagerie. Not a window was raised even the fraction of an inch, for the judge had an aversion to drafts. But it was a great occasion and District Attorney Peckham, appreciating his opportunity, had condescended to leave his official pedestal and personally to enter the arena.
He was a celebrated trial lawyer, was the Honorable Peckham, and his articulation was the wonder and envy of the criminal bar. Each syllable fell from his thin lips a perfect thing, meticulously separated from its predecessor. His language was beautiful, majestic, full of dignity. No door to Peckham was such a base thing as a mere door; it became a “means of egress”; the poor old earth was always “God’s green footstool”; a primrose on the river’s brim a primrose never was to him, but “a delicate blossom nestling modestly in retirement upon the grassy banks of a placid stream flowing gently to the sea.” This in his moments of sentiment, pathos, or reflection. But when it came time in the carefully ordered course of forensic events to assail the cowering defendant the Honorable Peckham’s whole nature seemed to change. His eyes flashed fire, his dilated nostrils quivered with righteous anger, and his voice trembled with horror and rose in a wild shriek of denunciation.
“And so, gen-til-men!” he concluded upon this occasion, dropping his voice to an impressive whisper, “at the con-clu-sion of this, the most im-por-tant pros-e-cution of my term of of-fice, I shall ask yeou, much as my nature re-volts at the in-car-cer-a-tion of a fel-low hu-man be-ing, to find this would-be as-sas-sin guilty of at-temp-ted murder in the first de-gree!”
There was a murmur of applause as the Honorable Peckham sat down. But the defendant and his attorneys had listened undisturbed by his invective and they continued to listen with equanimity as one by one the witnesses were called, sworn, and gave their testimony. Mr. Tutt interposed not one objection; the witnesses told their stories without interruption. The serene progress of the trial was marred by no acrimonious encounter between counsel. Even Peckham began to feel slightly worried. The thing was going too well, too darn well! He wished Tutt & Tutt would hurry up and unmask their batteries.
But Tutt & Tutt didn’t. Unhindered, they permitted each witness to wend his way as he chose along the path of Peckham’s verbal dalliance, to paint Don Antonio as black as his imagination permitted. Witness after witness told of the attentions showered by Don Antonio upon Señora Ramirez; the druggist and his clerk both identified him as twice having purchased the poison later discovered in the coffee; and Señor Ramirez grandiloquently described the actions of the viper who had warmed himself at his fireside in order to steal the affections of his wife. And while Señora Ramirez, her face purple with fury, glared malignantly at him across the inclosure he depicted the scene in the Natural History Museum, where from behind the pelicans he had observed the pair as they sat in the recess adjoining the flamingos.
Finally Peckham sprang the surprise which he had so carefully concealed. From the distant confines of the State of New Jersey he produced the missing waitress who had so strangely disappeared immediately after the poisoning of Señor Ramirez, and from her he elicited the momentous fact that on three consecutive Thursdays she had observed Don Antonio place something in Señor Ramirez’s cup and that, being of a somewhat suspicious nature, she had carefully preserved each of said cups with the liquid therein intact. These cups—the telltale contents of each of which had been analyzed by the chemical expert retained by the State—were now offered in evidence—three innocent after-dinner coffee-cups, of turquoise blue, adorned with yellow and golden butterflies.
“Looks like nothing to it!” muttered Charlie Still to the Deacon. “He’s half-way up to Briarcliff already!”
The Deacon regarded him placidly.
“The ball is still rolling,” he remarked enigmatically. “You can make your bet!”
“The People rest,” announced the Honorable Peckham with a gesture toward the jury as if to indicate that the People had earned the right to.
The Recorder looked down at Mr. Tutt.
“The case is with you,” he said pleasantly.
Mr. Tutt rose and felt in his waistcoat pocket for the old-fashioned turnip watch that he always carried.
“Your Honor,” he said in an unconcerned manner, “it’s twenty minutes past twelve. No doubt the jury are tired. Might I suggest an adjournment until after lunch—say, two o’clock?”
“How long do you expect to be with your side of the case?” asked the court.
“Oh, I think about twenty minutes will be enough,” replied Mr. Tutt.
A gust of astonishment blew across the benches.
“What!” ejaculated the Honorable Peckham. “Twenty minutes! Well, if the trial is going to wind up as soon as that he can lunch as long as he likes!”
“No doubt Mr. Tutt knows his own case,” smiled the court. “I will adjourn until two o’clock.”
Deacon Terry, a curious flicker playing about his mouth and eyes, sat immovable, parting the struggling throng as a projecting bowlder divides the current of a brawling river.
“I’m on!” he whispered delightedly to himself as the crowd surged about him, “I’m on!”
Two o’clock came and the corridors emptied themselves into the court-room again. The crucial moment had arrived. The newspaper men, the district attorney’s staff, the distinguished representatives of the Spanish colony, the melancholy jury, and the recorder reassembled in their places. Last of all placidly strolled in Mr. Tutt. The atmosphere was tense with expectation. It was the zero hour of the trial. And the crowd breathlessly awaited the instant when Mr. Tutt and Don Antonio would go over the top together.
At the left of the inclosure the dignified Señor Ramirez sat with his hands upon the head of his cane, the living presentment of a betrayed and rheumatic husband, his eyes fixed entreatingly upon the jury. Behind the press table Señora Ramirez, her figure tightly compressed in a costume of yellow and black satin, her hands gripping the arms of her chair, her abundant bosom pulsating with emotion, leaned forward intently. There was that about her suggesting the tigress about to be deprived of her cub, ready to spring upon the first who should lay a hand upon it; and the resemblance was heightened by the fact that from time to time her upper lip, with its thin line of black, twitched nervously. She was the incarnation of indomitable will—irresistible; a formidable human battle-ax, a man-woman!
“We are ready to proceed, Mr. Tutt,” suggested the judge.
Mr. Tutt coughed, pushed back his chair, and obediently rose. If the crowd had expected any burst of forensic oratory it was disappointed, for glancing along the double line of dejected countenances before him, the lawyer merely remarked in a casual tone:
“My friends of the jury: This is a very simple case—very simple! No man can be convicted of a crime which he did not intend to commit. My client, Don Antonio Castadandos, is accused of attempting to murder his old friend—I might almost say his benefactor—Señor Ramirez. He never attempted to murder him—never wished to harm him. But I will let Don Antonio tell his own story. Don Antonio—please take the stand.”
Don Antonio, resplendent in a new purple suit with a black velvet waistcoat bound with pink braid, straightened, flecked a bit of fluff from his lapel, twirled his mustache and jauntily followed the officer to the witness chair. He walked proudly, for in ten minutes the words about to fall from his lips would be flashing under the rolling ocean to Madrid, Bilbao, Barcelona. His name would be tossed from mouth to mouth in the public squares of Avila, of Segovia, of Salamanca. For twenty-four hours at least the story of his romance with Señora Ramirez would fill the columns of the Spanish newspapers, together with the announcement of the jury’s action. It was his supreme opportunity. For one crowded hour he would stand upon Fame’s tottering pinnacle.
As he stood there preening himself before the jury Señora Ramirez, the woman for whom he had sacrificed everything, fastened her eyes passionately upon his face. But he did not look at her. Rather he sought the glance of Señor Ramirez, his erstwhile friend, whose death he was accused of seeking to encompass.
Don Antonio bowed in courtly fashion to the recorder, murmuring the word “Excellentissimo,” bowed to the jury, and then magnificently to the multitude.
“Is he not a caballero grande!” whispered Señora Amontillado.
And all the Spanish colony without exception felt that even if he were a would-be murderer he was nevertheless a gallant specimen of the patrician caste of ancient Spain, and was doing them proud.
“Caramba!” replied Señor Amontillado to his señora. “He is truly a caballero! What a pity that he must be kept in the calabozo!”
Deacon Terry meanwhile was scribbling furiously, tearing yellow sheet from yellow sheet, and crunching it into the fists of the waiting messengers.
Don Antonio with an air of amiable condescension gazed about the room, according proper recognition to his various friends among the audience, gave a final pat to his mustache and crossed one glossy boot daintily over the other.
“Don Antonio—or perhaps I should say Mr. Castadandos,” began Mr. Tutt, also in the courtly manner of old Castile, “you are charged with having attempted the murder of Señor Ramirez.”
“I—kill—Señor Ramirez!” protested Don Antonio lightly. “Dios! Nevair!”
He smiled at the jury as if the suggestion were too utterly preposterous to be entertained for a moment by anybody—even a juryman.
“Did you attempt to kill Señor Ramirez?” went on the lawyer.
“Nevair, I did not!” replied Don Antonio calmly.
“Did you, in fact, entertain any ill feeling for Señor Ramirez?”
“I? Nevair! I lova-ed him—I lova him now!”
Señor Ramirez half started from his chair, brandishing his cane.
“Assassin!” he shouted contemptuously. “Thou—lova-edst me! Nombre de Dios!”
“It is true, nevertheless!” affirmed Don Antonio, as if asking the jury considerately to overlook Señor Ramirez’s outburst.
Mr. Tutt waited until the excitement had somewhat subsided and then proceeded:
“Did you put acetate of lead, or any other poison, in the coffee of Señor Ramirez?”
Don Antonio shot his cuffs and stroked his mustache as if giving the question the consideration it might be supposed to deserve.
“Yes,” he replied in a judicial fashion, “and no.”
“Come, come!” interrupted Peckham. “That’s no answer. You either did or you didn’t!”
“Pardon, Señor!” answered Don Antonio patiently. “Thou art in error. I am correct in saying that from one angle of eyesight I did place poison in the coffee-cups of Señor Ramirez, but from another angle of eyesight I did not.”
The recorder raised his brows and looked over his spectacles at Mr. Tutt. Was the lawyer going to permit the defendant to confess his guilt?
“Kindly explain yourself to the jury!” directed Mr. Tutt with entire unconcern.
Señora Ramirez’s face quivered with agonized bewilderment. Why in heaven’s name should her Antonio admit that he had given poison to her husband?
“Excellentissimo—and señores,” said Don Antonio, turning to the judge and then facing the jury, “it is true that I gave poison to Señor Ramirez—three times, just as has been testified, but”—and he uttered the words defiantly—“I each time also administered the proper antidote—sulphate of soda!”
“Holy Mike!” suspirated the Honorable Peckham. “That’s the weirdest defense I ever heard of!”
“I could do nothing else,” explained Don Antonio. “The excellentissimo and señores will appreciate my position most unfortunate. I could not repulse the advances of Señora Ramirez—for she was a lady, and I a nobleman of Spain. But I did not lova her! Nombre de Dios, no! My love was all for my old amigo, Ramirez! Struggle as I would I became with her more and more involv-ed. I feared of her love the very intensity! I could not go back! And I could not go on!
“At last she demanded that I poison her husband in order that I might marry her. If I did not, she swore, she would kill both herself and me. What could I do? I did not want to die. Neither did I want to marry her. Fate might not permit me to live peacefully without her, but, por Dios, I could not possibly live with her!
“Could one love a woman like that? Four times my size! Caramba! An Amazon! A female rhinoceros—un’ abâda! Un’ elefante! I trembled—for she filled me with terror. Her very love smothered me. I could not escape from her! She pursued me like the blood-dog in the ‘Cabin of Uncle Thomas’!
“She hovered over me like the vulture. I was exhausted. I dared not refuse when she conducted me to the chemist for the poison. And she—ah!—she waited outside to observe that I bought it. Twice we did it. But afterward I went secretly to another chemist and purchased the antidote. Ah, what relief! Some angel must have told me what to do! Then happily—with entire satisfaction—I administered the poison before her very eyes! Thrice did I! Never did she suspect for an instant that I”
A weird cry suddenly emanated from Señora Ramirez.
But it was quickly submerged in another. Señor Ramirez had struggled to his feet and, abandoning his cane, had staggered across the inclosure toward the witness chair.
“Amigo!” he shouted, holding out his arms, while tears of joy streamed down his mottled cheeks. “How could I have doubted thee! Forgive me! Forgive me! Embrace me, Antonio!”
Don Antonio descended gracefully from his platform in the Hall of Fame, and clasped Señor Ramirez convulsively to his bosom.
“I forgive thee, amigo!” he answered graciously. “I cannot blame thee for what thou hast done. Thou knowest women—this woman!”
“Here, you two! Sit down! Take your seats!” ordered the recorder brutally, and the two caballeros disentangled themselves and reluctantly resought their places.
The Honorable Peckham beckoned furiously to Fitzpatrick, his assistant.
“Where’s old Horowitz, our expert? What got into him, anyhow? Why didn’t he tell you there was an antidote in the stuff?”
Mr. Fitzpatrick disappeared hastily, returning just as the tableau of reconciliation had been concluded.
“Horowitz says he’s sorry, but that you only told him to look for poison. He filtered the coffee in each cup, and got a heavy black powder which proved to be sulphate of lead—found the poison all right—and didn’t go any further.”
“Well, now he can go all the way to hades!” growled the Honorable Peckham. “This ain’t a case, it’s a joke.”
From the reporters’ table came a noise like the scratching of a thousand hens. A ceaseless stream of small boys tore to and fro between it and the door.
The Señora Amontillado wiped her eyes spasmodically.
“How beautiful!” she exclaimed brokenly to her husband. “I knew that he must be innocent—a man like that!”
“Bah!” retorted Señor Amontillado rudely. “You women are all alike!”
“That is the defense,” finished Mr. Tutt mildly. “I have my own chemist, who will testify that the compound administered was practically harmless. In any event it is clear there was no homicidal intent. Moreover”—his eye searched the jury significantly—“my client acted under duress—actual physical fear. The district attorney may cross-examine.”
But the Honorable Peckham’s feet had been swept from under him. The witness had admitted everything; there was nothing to cross-examine him about. Don Antonio had confessed and avoided, ducked, side-stepped—leaving the prosecution helplessly hanging in mid-air. The district attorney roared a few questions at him, which Don Antonio answered with the utmost punctilio. He even conceded his amorous dallying with Señora Ramirez beside the flamingos.
“That is all!” lamely ended the Honorable Peckham, sitting down with mingled feelings of wrath, disgust, and chagrin, fully realizing that the prosecution had made a fool of itself, and that he was himself largely to blame for not having taken the Deacon’s hint. “Go on! Call your expert!”
So Don Antonio gave place to Mr. Tutt’s chemist, who proved to be no less a person than Professor Brannigan, of Columbia University, and a fellow member of Mr. Tutt’s at the Colophon Club. It was also the fact that he was a member of the famous “Bible Class,” held in the card-room every Saturday night, where they always played without the joker and ended with a round of hundred-dollar jacks, but this he kept to himself. What he did testify to was that he had so greatly enjoyed Mr. Tutt’s account of his client’s homicidal adventure that he had volunteered his services as an expert for the defense and, having borrowed Professor Horowitz’ samples, had quickly satisfied himself of the truth of Don Antonio’s story. Sugar of lead would remain in solution when dropped into a cup of coffee, but would be precipitated into lead sulphate, and sink to the bottom of the cup in a heavy black powder, if sodium sulphate were added, which would correspondingly be transformed into acetate of soda. So long as the contents were not thereafter stirred up anybody could drink the coffee without evil consequences, if he did not mind the taste or swallow any of the dregs. He had examined the precipitate which Professor Horowitz had collected from the bottom of each cup and found it to be lead sulphate, and he had analyzed the fluid taken from each and found it in every case to contain acetate of soda. Q. E. D. That was all there was to it. Simple as rolling off a log. And he winked an enormous wink at the twelve little husbands in the jury-box and shook like Santa Claus in “The Night Before Christmas.”
“That is the case!” bowed Mr. Tutt. “I have nothing to say. I will leave the matter entirely to the jury.”
The district attorney looked pathetically at the bench. The recorder was trying to hide a smile behind a huge copy of the “Criminal Code,” which he seemed to be studying assiduously.
“Oh—well!” stammered Peckham, flushing, “I’ll do the same. We both submit on Your Honor’s charge.”
The twelve little husbands in the box raised their chins expectantly.
“Gentlemen,” began His Honor, “I will first expound to you the law governing the various degrees of homicide.” And he did. Then, closing the statute book, he cleared his throat and went on: “This is an unusual case. The law requires an intent to kill—without it you cannot convict the defendant of attempted murder. If you believe the defendant’s story he had no such intent. At most he could be convicted only of assault in a lesser degree. Do you wish me to charge the law of assault, Mister District Attorney?”
Peckham hesitated.
“No,” he answered finally, wisely perceiving that the glory of his office would not be heightened by bringing down a mosquito while pursuing “un’ elefante.” “I prefer to go to the jury on the murder count.”
“Then,” continued His Honor, “if you have a reasonable doubt whether the defendant intended to cause the death of Señor Ramirez by administering the poison you will acquit him.”
“But there isn’t any doubt!” interrupted a thin voice from the back row. “If he’d wanted to kill him he wouldn’t have given him the sulphate of soda, too, would he?”
His Honor smiled affably.
“That is for you to say, gentlemen. You may retire.”
The uxorious twelve filed slowly out, but the door had hardly closed behind them before it opened and they came in again.
“How say you?” demanded the clerk. “Do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?”
“Not guilty!” answered the foreman eagerly.
And all twelve nodded their confirmation.
“The defendant is discharged!” declared the court.
Don Antonio, having first made a low obeisance in the direction of the recorder, seized Mr. Tutt’s hands in both of his and covered them with kisses.
“Gracias! Gracias!” he cried and, turning to the jury: “Gracias, señores! Gracias!”
Then his eyes rested upon the massive form and determined features of Señora Ramirez. Coldly he returned her stony glance. A faint smile curled his lip. Placing his thumb-nail beneath one of his front teeth, he snapped it toward her.
“TCK!”