"Hell's at work!" returned Mr. Asche, solemnly handing over a sheaf of
affidavits. "I never smoke."
Mr. Tutt somewhat reluctantly altered his position from the horizontal
to the vertical and reached for a fresh stogy. Then his eye caught the
name of Raphael B. Hogan.
"What the devil is this?" he cried.
"It's the devil himself!" answered Mr. Asche with sudden vehemence.
"Tutt, Tutt! Come in here!" shouted the head of the firm. "Mine enemy
hath been delivered into mine hands!"
"Hey? What?" inquired Tutt, popping across the threshold. "Who--I
mean--"
"Raphael B. Hogan!"
"The devil!" ejaculated Tutt.
"You've said it!" declared Mr. Asche devoutly.
* * * * *
That evening under cover of darkness Mr. Ephraim Tutt descended from a
dilapidated taxi at the corner adjacent to Froelich's butcher shop, and
several hours later was whisked uptown again to the brownstone dwelling
occupied by the Hon. Simeon Watkins, the venerable white-haired judge
then presiding in Part I of the General Sessions, where he remained
until what may be described either as a very late or a very early hour,
and where during the final period of his intercourse he and that
distinguished member of the judiciary emptied an ancient bottle
containing a sparkling rose-colored liquid of great artistic beauty.
Then Mr. Tutt returned to his own library at the house on Twenty-third
Street and paced up and down before the antiquated open grate, inhaling
quantities of what Mr. Bonnie Doon irreverently called "hay smoke," and
pondering deeply upon the evils that men do to one another, until the
dawn peered through the windows and he bethought him of the all-night
lunch stand round the corner on Tenth Avenue, and there sought
refreshment.
"Salvatore," he remarked to the smiling son of the olive groves who
tended that bar of innocence, "the worst crook in the world is the man
who does evil for mere money."
"_Si, Signor Tutti_," answered Salvatore with Latin perspicacity. "You
gotta one, eh? You giva him hell?"
"_Si! Si!_" replied Mr. Tutt cheerily. "Even so! And of a truth,
moreover! Give me another hot dog and a cup of bilge water!"
* * * * *
"People versus Mathusek?" inquired Judge Watkins some hours later on the
call of the calendar, looking quite vaguely as if he had never heard of
the case before, round Part I, which was as usual crowded, hot, stuffy
and smelling of unwashed linen and prisoners' lunch. "People versus
Mathusek? What do you want done with this case, Mr. O'Brien?"
"Ready!" chanted the red-headed O'Brien, and, just as he had expected,
the Hon. Raphael Hogan limbered up in his slow, genial way and said: "If
Your Honor please, the defendant would like a few days longer to get his
witnesses. Will Your Honor kindly adjourn the case for one week?"
He did not notice that the stenographer was taking down everything that
he said.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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