"Well," continued Higgleby, taking out a cigar that in shape and looseness of wrapping closely resembled its owner, "now that's settled, let's get down to brass tacks. Here's a copy of the indictment."
He produced a document bearing a large gold seal.
"Those robbers made me pay a dollar-sixty for certification!" he remarked peevishly, indicating the ornament. "What good is certification to me? As if I wanted to pay to make sure I was accused in exact language! Anybody can draw an indictment for bigamy!"
COURT OF GENERAL SESSIONS OF THE PEACE IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF NEW YORK
The People of the State of New York against
THEOPHILUS HIGGLEBY
The Grand Jury of the County of New York, by this indictment, accuse Theophilus Higgleby of the crime of bigamy, committed as follows:
The said Theophilus Higgleby, late of the borough of Manhattan of the city of New York in the county of New York, aforesaid, on the eleventh day of May in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and nineteen, at Cook County and the city of Chicago in the state of Illinois, did marry one Tomascene Startup, and her, the said Tomascene Startup, did then and there have for his wife;
And afterward, to wit, on the seventeenth day of December in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and nineteen, at the borough of Manhattan of the city of New York in the county of New York aforesaid, did feloniously marry and take as his wife one Alvina Woodcock, and to the said Alvina Woodcock was then and there married, the said Tomascene Startup being then and there living and in full life, against the form of the statute in such case made and provided, and against the peace of the people of the state of New York and their dignity.
JEREMIAH PECKHAM,
District Attorney.
Such was the precise accusation against the isosceles-triangular client, who now sat so limply and disjointedly on the opposite side of Tutt's desk with a certain peculiar air of assurance all his own, as if, though surprised and somewhat annoyed at the grand jury's interference with his private affairs, he was nevertheless—being captain of his own soul—not particularly disturbed about the matter.
"And—er—did you marry these two ladies?" inquired Tutt apologetically.
"Sure!" responded Higgleby without hesitation.
"May I ask why?"
"Why not?" returned Higgleby. "I'm a traveling man."
"Look here," suddenly demanded Tutt. "Were you ever a lawyer?"
"Sure I was!" responded Mr. Higgleby. "I was a member of the bar of Osceola County, Florida."
"You don't say!" gasped Tutt.
"And what, may I ask, are you now?"
"Now I'm a bigamist!" answered Mr. Higgleby.
We forget precisely who it was that so observantly said to another, "Much learning doth make thee mad." At any rate the point to be noted is that overindulgence in erudition has always been known to have an unfortunate effect upon the intellectual faculty. Too much wine—though it must have required an inordinate quantity in certain mendacious periods—was regarded as provocative of truth; and too many books as clearly put bats in a man's belfry. The explanation is of course simple enough. If one overweights the head the whole structure is apt to become unbalanced. This is the reason why we hold scholars in such light esteem. They are an unbalanced lot. And after all, why should they get paid more than half the wage of plumbers or locomotive firemen? What is easier than sitting before a comfortable steam radiator and reading an etymological dictionary or the Laws of Hammurabi? They toil not even if their heads spin. Only in Germany has the pedagogue ever received full meed of gold and of honor—and look at Germany!
Pedants have never been much considered by men of action. They never will be. Experience is the only teacher, which, in the language of Amos Eno, who left two millions to the Institute of Mechanics and Tradesmen, is "worth a damn." We Americans abhor any affectation of learning; hence our weakness for slang. I should apologize for the word "weakness." On the contrary it is a token of our virile independence, our scorn for the delicatessen of education, mere dilettanteism. And this has its practical side, for if we don't know how to pronounce the words "evanescent persiflage" we can call it "bunk" or "rot." We suspect all college graduates. We don't want them in our business. They slink through our lives like pickpockets fearful of detection.
What has all this to do with anything? It has to do, dear reader, with Mr. Caput Magnus, the assistant of the district attorney of the county of New York, whose duty it was to present the evidence in all criminal cases to the grand jury and make ready the instruments of torture known as bills of indictment for that august body's action thereon.
For by all the lights of the Five Points, Chinatown—Mulberry, Canal, Franklin, Lafayette and Centre streets—Pontin's Restaurant, Moe Levy's One Price Tailoring Establishment, and even by those of the glorious days of Howe & Hummel, by the Nine Gods of Law—and more—Caput Magnus was a learned savant. He and he alone of all the members of the bar on the pay roll of the prosecutor's office, housed in their smoke-hung cubicles in the Criminal Courts Building, knew how to draw up those complicated and awful things with their barbed-wire entanglements of "saids," "then and there beings," "with intents," "dids," "to wits," and "aforesaids" in all the verbal chaos with which the law requires those accused of crime to be "simply, clearly and directly" informed of the nature of the offense charged against them, in order that they may know what to do about it and prepare their defense.
And while we are on it—and in order that the reader may be fully instructed and qualified to pursue Tutt & Tutt through their various adventures hereafter—we may as well add that herein lies one of the pitfalls of crime; for the simple-minded burglar or embezzler may blithely make way with a silver service or bundle of bank notes only to find himself floundering, horse, foot and dragoons, in a quagmire of phraseology from which he cannot escape, wriggle as he will. Many such a one has thrown up his hands—and with them silver service, bank notes and all—in horror at what the grand jury has alleged against him.
Indeed there is a well-authenticated tradition that a certain gentleman of color who had inadvertently acquired some poultry belonging to another, when brought to the bar and informed that he theretofore, to wit, in a specified year of our Lord in the night time of the day aforesaid, the outhouse of one Jones then and there situate, feloniously, burglariously did break into and enter with intent to commit a crime therein, to wit, the goods, chattels and personal property of the said Jones then and there being found, then and there feloniously and burglariously by force of arms and against the peace of the people to seize, appropriate and carry away, raised his voice in anguish and cried:
"Fo de Lawd sake, jedge, Ah didn't do none ob dem tings—all Ah done was to take a couple ob chickens!"
Thus to annihilate a man by pad and pencil is indeed an art worthy of admiration. The pen of an indictment clerk is oft mightier than the sword of a Lionheart, the brain behind the subtle quill far defter than said swordsman's skill. Moreover, the ingenuity necessary to draft one of these documents is not confined to its mere successful composition, for having achieved the miraculous feat of alleging in fourteen ways without punctuation that the defendant did something, and with a final fanfare of "saids" and "to wits" inserted his verb where no one will ever find it, the indicter must then be able to unwind himself, rolling in and out among the "dids" and "thens" and "theres" until he is once more safely upon the terra firma of foolscap at the head of the first page.
Mr. Caput Magnus could do it—with the aid of a volume of printed forms devised in the days of Jeremy Bentham. In fact, like a camel who smells water afar off, he could in a desert of verbal sand unerringly find an oasis of meaning. Therefore was Caput Magnus held in high honor among the pack of human hounds who bayed at the call of Huntsman Peckham's horn. Others might lose the scent of what it was all about in the tropical jungle of an indictment eleven pages long, but not he. Like the old dog in Masefield's "Reynard the Fox," Mr. Magnus would work through ditches full of legal slime, nose through thorn thickets of confusion,