"I shall do nothing of the kind!" retorted the lawyer, getting red in the face.
"Y" won"t, eh?" exclaimed the deputy; and, grasping Mr. Winthrop Van Rennsellaer by his linen collar, he yanked him out of his chair and, to the horror of the servile supernumeraries in the lawyer"s employ, dragged that eminent member of the bar through his own offices, down the stairs, and into the street.
The lawyer protested loudly at the indignities to which he was being subjected and a large crowd gathered, which for the time being blocked Broadway. Mike, confident that he had the authority of the United States Government behind him, exhibited his badge, called upon the police to a.s.sist him in the exercise of his duty and proceeded triumphantly to march Mr. Winthrop Van Rennsellaer, hatless, up the street at the head of a large and enthusiastic procession of interested citizens. From time to time Mike would turn and call upon the crowd to disperse, at the same time announcing in a loud voice that he had arrested his prisoner by an order of the Government to take him alive or dead.
By this time the lawyer"s little round head was glowing a bright red and his legs almost refused to carry him. Once they had arrived at the Post-office Building the mistake was quickly discovered and Mr. Van Rennsellaer was set at liberty; but each and every United States judge had to descend in his robes from the bench and implore his pardon before the furious little lawyer would consent to call a cab and return to his office.
I understand that he always believed that the whole thing was a trick of Gottlieb"s to humiliate him; and, indeed, some members of the bar have suspected me of the same thing--entirely without justification, of course. During the rest of his exceedingly distinguished career one had only to mention the words _duces tec.u.m_ in the presence of Mr. Winthrop Van Rennsellaer to deprive him instantly of his composure; in fact, for a long time he abandoned appearing in court and contented himself with nursing his dignity in his office. I should add that the incident so affected his confidence the next day in court that we won our case without difficulty.
But to return to the unfortunate McDuff. To my great astonishment and still more so to that of my partner the Court of Appeals handed down an opinion sustaining my contention and holding his client"s conviction to be illegal. That night Gottlieb and I, sitting in his office, shook our sides with laughter at the idea of having hoodwinked the greatest court in the State into a solemn opinion that a rogue should not be punished if at the same time he could persuade his victim to try to be a rogue also! But there it was in cold print. They had followed my reasoning absolutely and even adopted as their own some of the language used in my brief. Does any one of my readers doubt me, let him read the report of a like case in the forty-sixth volume of the reports of the Court of Appeals of New York, at page four hundred and seventy.
Said the Court: "The prosecutor"--Jones--"parted with his property as an inducement to a supposed officer to violate the law and his duties; and if in attempting to do this he has been defrauded the law will not punish his confederate, although such confederate may have been instrumental in inducing the commission of the offence.
Neither the law nor public policy designs the protection of rogues in their dealings with each other, or to insure fair dealing and truthfulness, as between each other, in their dishonest practices."
(This sentence had been in my brief.) "The design of the law is to protect those who, for some _honest_ purpose, are induced upon false and fraudulent representations to give credit or part with their property to another, and not to protect those who, for _unworthy_ or illegal purposes, part with their goods."
"Why, Quib," quoth Gottlieb, "you are the discoverer of a new legal principle. You will inaugurate a new field of human activity.
Generations yet unborn will profit by your ingenuity. From now on every rascal in the land will set his wits to work trying to bring his schemes within the scope of this beneficent opinion."
"Indeed," I replied, "however fine it may be for McDuff, I can easily see that I have unloosed as many troubles as ever flew out of Pandora"s Box."
"Yes--but to our profit," he retorted, with a grin. "Don"t forget that. The inventors will all come flocking straight to us to get them out of their difficulties--you may be sure of it!"
""Tis extraordinary," I said, "what a mult.i.tude of opportunities this new principle enunciated by the Court of Appeals affords to a man of an inventive turn of mind. As I take it, all one has to do is to induce another man to part with his money in the belief that he is going to take a sharp advantage of some one else. For example, let us suppose that I go to some person and falsely tell him that I have a client serving a term in Sing Sing for burglary who has confided to me the whereabouts of the secret hiding-place of his loot. All that is necessary is some one to put up sufficient money to cover the expense of transportation and excavation--and it can be divided between us. For this purpose he intrusts me with several hundred dollars, with which I make off. I have stolen the money fast enough, but I can never be punished for it."
"Exactly!" exclaimed my partner. "And here is another idea that is well calculated to appeal to almost anybody. It has just occurred to me quite involuntarily while you were speaking. Many of our clients want to know if they cannot send the judge, who is trying the case, a present of some sort, or maybe loan him a little money; and it is always distressing to be obliged to tell them--usually-- that it is quite out of the question; that it would only get them into trouble. Of course, occasionally we let them send the judge a box of cigars, _but always with the compliments of our adversary --never our own_. Now this shows how readily persons who are mixed up in lawsuits or other difficulties would be ready to put up their money if they supposed the judge were going to get it. All you need is some unscrupulous fellow to go up to one of our clients and mention the fact that he is the judge"s brother-in-law and is in dearth of ready money. Can"t you see the client digging up the needful? He"d be stuffing it down our friend"s pockets before he got through speaking; and the whole thing could be done quite openly, you observe, because, even if the client found out later that he had made a mistake, the law would not help him."
"An excellent ill.u.s.tration," I answered, "of the uses to which a legal decision may be put."
"Indeed, though," continued Gottlieb, "the scheme need by no means by as raw as all that. It is enough if there be merely an _immoral_ or _improper_ motive that induces the victim to part with his money.
For example, if he but thinks that he can do a sharp trick to some one else. Let us suppose that I pretend to have secret information to the effect that certain property is really much more valuable than the owner supposes it to be. I propose to another that--if he will put up the money for that purpose--we shall buy the property, leading the owner to suppose he is getting full value for it. Now, if, to induce the latter to make the sale, it is agreed between us that we make false or misleading statements as to the real value of the property I do not see but that I would be perfectly safe."
"Safe?" I queried. "I don"t understand. You would have bought the property, that is all."
"My dear Quib," returned my partner, "you seem singularly dull this evening for one of your brilliant parts. The point is that the property really isn"t worth anything. I am in cahoots with the man who sells it; and we divide even!"
"Yes," I answered; "a dozen similar schemes could be worked like that."
"A dozen!" cried Gottlieb, bounding enthusiastically out of his chair and commencing to stalk up and down the room. "A hundred!
Why, there are endless ways in which it can be worked--and I know the man to work them too!"
"Eh!" I exclaimed.
"I mean, who will undoubtedly avail himself of some of them," he corrected himself. "Take this case: It is a crime under the law to give back or rebate part of the premium on a life insurance policy. Now many a man could be induced to insure his life if he could get back the first year"s premium. All you have got to do is to tell him that you are an insurance agent and will give it back--and then put the money in your own pocket, for he will have given you the premium for an illegal purpose--that is to say, with the idea of having it paid back to him contrary to law. Under the decision he will have no chance to get you arrested."
"Never say that you are not a man of ingenuity yourself," said I.
I bade my partner good-night and walked slowly homeward meditating upon the wonders of the law, but totally unconscious of what a harvest was to be reaped from the seed I had sown so innocently.
It was but a short time after this that, happening to enter the office somewhat unexpectedly one evening, I discovered Gottlieb in animated conversation with a stockily built man of about forty years of age, whose coal-black hair--by far his most conspicuous feature--had been suffered to grow quite long and was parted evenly in the middle, so that it gave him somewhat the appearance of the hooded seal that was then on exhibition at P. T. Barnum"s museum.
He had a good-humored face, jet-black eyes, and a familiar, easy way with him that put one on a friendly footing at once.
"h.e.l.lo! Quib!" exclaimed my partner. "I want you to meet my friend, Charlie Billington."
"Delighted to meet you, Mister Quibble," cried the stranger, grasping my hand. "Our friend Gottlieb knows me almost better than I know myself--eh, Gottie? Between us we have turned many a trick."
"You mean that I have pulled you out of many a bad hole," retorted Gottlieb.
"As you please," answered Billington good-temperedly. "But in any event you are a splendid fellow at all times--and especially in times of need."
"May I inquire your business, Mr. Billington?" I asked, curious to identify my new acquaintance.
Billington winked at Gottlieb.
"How would you describe it, Mr. Lawyer?" said he.
Gottlieb laughed and shifted his cigar.
"Our friend Charlie lives by his brains," he replied. "He is an inventor, a promoter, an artist. He has earned many a small fortune by the simple use of a postage stamp. He can extract gold from seawater or silver from pineapples. Incidentally, he is of a scientific turn of mind and can rattle off the Morse alphabet as deftly as any operator in the business. Occasionally he has, in the interest of finance, tapped a wire."
"Tapped a wire!" Instantly I regarded Billington with a new interest. So at last I had met one of those famous gentry of whom I had so often heard!
"Never again, I fancy!" laughed Charlie. "My friend, you have saved a lot of poor devils a deal of trouble. From this time on none of us will ever need to tap wires. After this we shall only _pretend_ to tap "em."
"How so?" I inquired, dropping into a near-by chair.
"Why, under the new law," responded Billington--"the law of which, I may say, you are the creator--we shall only have to induce some innocent countryman to believe that he has heard the result of a horse-race being sent over the wire in advance of the pool rooms, and persuade him to turn over his roll for the purpose of betting it on a horse that is presumably already cooling off in the paddock and we can keep his money, for he has parted with it for an illegal or an inimical purpose--to wit, cheating the bookies."
"Not with my sanction!" I retorted, somewhat aghast at the idea of having paved a broad and easy path for the way of criminals.
"Tut, tut, Quib!" said Gottlieb. "You have nothing to do with what use our friend here sees fit to put your law to. I have never yet advised any man how to do an illegal thing. The most I have ever done has been to show some of my clients how to do in a perfectly legal manner that which had heretofore been unlawful."
"Yea, Gottlieb," remarked Billington. "And many things that before were accounted faults have now, thanks to you, become virtues."
After Billington bade us good-night, Gottlieb said to me:
"Quib, the more I think of it, the more astonishing is the result of this new doctrine of yours that has been sanctified by the Court of Appeals. I do not for the life of me see how a seller of "green goods" can be prosecuted. The countryman comes to the city for the purpose of buying counterfeit money at a ridiculously low figure. He puts up his money and gets a package of blank paper with a genuine one-dollar bill on top of it. What good will it do him to appeal to the police? Has he not parted with his money avowedly for a most wicked purpose--that of uttering counterfeit bills?"
"I quite agree with you," I answered. "There seems to be no escape from your result; and I, for one, do not see what is to prevent New York from becoming the Mecca of all the thieves and rogues in the country."
And such, indeed, it became. From this time on, until very recently, the metropolis was the stamping ground of all the rogues who could not earn a dishonest living elsewhere. With our friend Charles as their sponsor, there sprang into being herds of "sick engineers,"
fake "wire-tappers," "green-goods" swindlers, and confidence men of all sorts, who flourished safely under the protection of the decision of the Court of Appeals in McDuff"s case.
It was but shortly after this that one of Billington"s friends found himself in the toils of the police for having pretended to sell a package of "green goods" to a yokel from the rural part of the State. Charlie at once engaged me to defend him, a.s.serting that as I was responsible for the law it was my duty to apply it for the benefit of our clients. So once again I entered the arena in behalf of a principle that at heart I believed to be vicious and even absurd, and once again, to my surprise and the delight of my new clients, I triumphed. The Appellate Division reversed the conviction that had followed the arrest and discharged the prisoner, a.s.serting that there was no longer any authority for holding him if the McDuff case was to be taken as law.
Thus it was, by such unconscious steps, that I, the only son of a clergyman, found myself--w.i.l.l.y-nilly--a leader of the criminal bar.
Yet at no time during my career would I have exchanged places with my honored parent or even with Mr. Tuckerman Toddleham, of Barristers"
Hall, Boston.