Though the said Pierpont produced the wherewithal, it was his wife, Edna, who attended to the disbursing of it. She loved her husband, but regarded him socially as somewhat of a liability, and Society was now, as she informed everybody, her "meal yure."
She had eaten her way straight through the meal—opera box, pew at St. Simeon Stylites, Crystal Room, musicales, Carusals, hospital entertainments, Malted Milk for Freezing France, Inns for Indigent Italians, Biscuits for Bereft Belgians, dinner parties, lunch parties, supper parties, the whole thing; and a lot of the right people had come, too.
The fly in the ointment of her social happiness—and unfortunately it happened to be an extremely gaudy butterfly indeed—was her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Rutherford Wells, who obstinately refused to recognize her existence.
At home, in Athens, Edna would have resorted to the simple expedient of sending over the hired girl to borrow something. But here there was nothing doing. Mrs. Rutherford had probably never seen her own chef and Mrs. Pumpelly was afraid of hers. Besides, even Edna recognized the lamentable fact that it was up to Mrs. Wells to call first, which she didn't. Once when the ladies had emerged simultaneously from their domiciles Mrs. Pumpelly had smilingly waddled forward a few steps with an ingratiating bow, but Mrs. Wells had looked over her head and hadn't seen her.
Thereupon the iron had entered into Mrs. Pumpelly's soul and her life had become wormwood and gall, ashes in her mouth and all the rest of it. She proposed to get even with the cat at the very first chance, but somehow the chance never seemed to come. She hated to be living on the same street with that kind of nasty person. And who was this Wells woman? Her husband never did a thing except play croquet or something at a club! He probably was a drunkard—and a roo-ay. Mrs. Pumpelly soon convinced herself that Mrs. Wells also must be a very undesirable, if not hopelessly immoral lady. Anyhow, she made up her mind that she would certainly take nothing further from her. Even if Mrs. Wells should have a change of heart and see fit to call, she just wouldn't return it! So when she rolled up in the diminutive car and found Mrs. Wells' lumbering limousine blocking the doorway she was simply furious.
"Make that man move along!" she directed, and Jules honked and honked, but the limousine did not budge.
Then Mrs. Pumpelly gave way to a fit of indignation that would have done her proud even in Athens, Ohio. Fire-breathing, she descended from her car and, approaching the limousine, told the imperturbable chauffeur that even if he did work for Mrs. Rutherford Wells, Mrs. Rutherford Wells was no better than anybody else, and that gave him no right to block up the whole street. She spoke loudly, emphatically, angrily, and right in the middle of it the chauffeur, who had not deigned to look in her direction, slyly pressed the electric button of his horn and caused it to emit a low scornful grunt. Then a footman opened the door of the Wells mansion and Mrs. Rutherford Wells herself came down the steps, and Mrs. Pumpelly told her to her face exactly what she thought of her and ordered her to move her car along so her own could get in front of the vestibule.
Mrs. Wells ignored her. Deliberately—and as if there were no such person as Mrs. Pumpelly upon the sidewalk—she stepped into her motor and, the chauffeur having adjusted the robe, she remarked in a casual, almost indifferent manner that nevertheless made Mrs. Pumpelly squirm, "Go to Mr. Hepplewhite's, William. Pay no attention to that woman. If she makes any further disturbance call a policeman."
And the limousine rolled away with a sneer at Mrs. Pumpelly from the exhaust. More than one king has been dethroned for far less cause!
"You telephone Mr. Edgerton," she almost shrieked at Simmons, the butler, "that he should come right up here as fast as he can. I've got to see him at once!"
"Very good, madam," answered Simmons obsequiously.
And without more ado, in less than forty minutes, the distinguished Mr. Wilfred Edgerton, of Edgerton & Edgerton, attorneys for Cuban Crucible and hence alert to obey the behests of the wives of the officers thereof, had deposited his tall silk hat on the marble Renaissance table in the front hall and was entering Mrs. Pumpelly's Louis Quinze drawing-room with the air of a Sir Walter Raleigh approaching his Queen Elizabeth.
"Sit down, Mr. Edgerton!" directed the lady impressively. "No, you'll find that other chair more comfortable; the one you're in's got a hump in the seat. As I was saying to the butler before you came, I've been insulted and I propose to teach that woman she can't make small of me no matter what it costs—and Pierpont says you're no slouch of a charger at that."
"My dear madam!" stammered the embarrassed attorney. "Of course, there are lawyers and lawyers. But if you wish the best I feel sure my firm charges no more than others of equal standing. In any event you can be assured of our devotion to your interests. Now what, may I ask, are the circumstances of the case?"
"Mr. Edgerton," she began, "I just want you should listen carefully to what I have to say. This woman next door to me here has—"
At this point, as paper is precious and the lady voluble, we will drop the curtain upon the first act of our legal comedy.
"I suppose we'll have to do it for her!" growled Mr. Wilfred Edgerton to his brother on his return to their office. "She's a crazy idiot and I'm very much afraid we'll all get involved in a good deal of undesirable publicity. Still, she's the wife of the vice president of our best paying client!"
"What does she want us to do?" asked Mr. Winfred, the other Edgerton. "We can't afford to be made ridiculous—for anybody."
This was quite true since dignity was Edgerton & Edgerton's long suit, they being the variety of Wall Street lawyers who are said to sleep in their tall hats and cutaways.
"If you can imagine it," replied his brother irritably, "she insists on our having Mrs. Wells arrested for obstructing the street in front of her house. She asked me if it wasn't against the law, and I took a chance and told her it was. Then she wanted to start for the police court at once, but as I'd never been in one I said we'd have to prepare the papers; I didn't know what papers."
"But we can't arrest Mrs. Wells!" expostulated Mr. Winfred Edgerton. "She's socially one of our most prominent people. I dined with her only last week!"
"That's why Mrs. Pumpelly wants to have her arrested, I fancy!" replied Mr. Wilfred gloomily. "Mrs. Wells has given her the cold shoulder. It's no use; I tried to argue the old girl out of it, but I couldn't. She knows what she wants and she jolly well intends to have it."
"I wish you joy of her!" mournfully rejoined the younger Edgerton. "But it's your funeral. I can't help you. I never got anybody arrested and I haven't the least idea how to go about it."
"Neither have I," admitted his brother. "Luckily my practise has not been of that sort. However, it can't be a difficult matter. The main thing is to know exactly what we are trying to arrest Mrs. Wells for."
"Why don't you retain Tutt & Tutt to do it for us?" suggested Winfred. "Criminal attorneys are used to all that sort of rotten business."
"Oh, it wouldn't do to let Pumpelly suspect we couldn't handle it ourselves. Besides, the lady wants distinguished counsel to represent her. No, for once we've got to lay dignity aside. I think I'll send Maddox up to the Criminal Courts Building and have him find out just what to do."
It may seem remarkable that neither of the members of a high-class law firm in New York City should ever have been in a police court, but such a situation is by no means infrequent. The county or small-town attorney knows his business from the ground up. He starts with assault and battery, petty larceny and collection cases and gradually works his way up, so to speak, to murder and corporate reorganizations. But in Wall Street the young student whose ambition is to appear before the Supreme Court of the United States in some constitutional matter as soon as possible is apt to spend his early years in brief writing and then become a specialist in real estate, corporation, admiralty or probate law and perhaps never see the inside of a trial court at all, much less a police court, which, to the poor and ignorant, at any rate, is the most important court of any of them, since it is here that the citizen must go to enforce his everyday rights.
Mr. Wilfred