Yet that was what Mrs. Pumpelly proposed to have done, and unfortunately he had to do exactly what Mrs. Pumpelly said; quickly too.
"Maddox," he called to a timid youth in a green eye-shade sitting in lonely grandeur in the spacious library, "just run up to the—er—magistrate's court on Blank Street and ascertain the proper procedure for punishing a person for obstructing the highway. If you find an appropriate statute or ordinance you may lay an information against Mrs. Rutherford Wells for violating it this afternoon in front of the residence next to hers; and see that the proper process issues in the regular way."
To hear him one would have thought he did things like that daily before breakfast—such is the effect of legal jargon.
"Yes, sir," answered Maddox respectfully, making a note. "Do you wish to have the warrant held or executed?"
Mr. Wilfred Edgerton bit his mustache doubtfully.
"We-ell," he answered at length, perceiving that he stood upon the brink of a legal Rubicon, "you may do whatever seems advisable under all the circumstances."
In his nervous condition he did not recall what, had he stopped calmly to consider the matter, he must have known very well—namely, that no warrant could possibly issue unless Mrs. Pumpelly, as complainant, signed and swore to the information herself.
"Very well, sir," answered Maddox, in the same tone and manner that he would have used had he been a second footman at Mrs. Pumpelly's.
Thereafter both Edgertons, but particularly Wilfred, passed a miserable hour. They realized that they had started something and they had no idea of where, how or when what they had started would stop. Indeed they had terrifying visions of Mrs. Wells being beaten into insensibility, if not into a pulp, by a cohort of brutal police officers, and of their being held personally responsible. But before anything of that sort actually happened Maddox returned.
"Well," inquired Wilfred with an assumption of nonchalance, "what did you find out?"
"The magistrate said that we would have to apply at the court in the district where the offense occurred and that Mrs. Pumpelly would have to appear there in person. Obstructing a highway is a violation of Section Two of Article Two of the Police Department Regulations for Street Traffic, which reads: 'A vehicle waiting at the curb shall promptly give way to a vehicle arriving to take up or set down passengers.' It is not usual to issue a warrant in such cases, but a summons merely."
"Ah!" sighed both Edgertons in great relief.
"Upon which the defendant must appear in default of fine or imprisonment," continued Maddox.
The two lawyers looked at one another inquiringly.
"Did they treat you—er—with politeness?" asked Wilfred curiously.
"Oh, well enough," answered the clerk. "I can't say it's a place I hanker to have much to do with. It's not like an afternoon tea party. But it's all right. Do you wish me to do anything further?"
"Yes!" replied Wilfred with emphasis, "I do. I wish you would go right up to Mrs. Pumpelly's house, conduct that lady to the nearest police court and have her swear out the summons for Mrs. Wells herself. I'll telephone her that you are coming."
Which was a wise conclusion, in view of the fact that Edna Pumpelly, née Haskins, was much better equipped by nature to take care of Mr. Wilfred Edgerton in the hectic environs of a police court than he was qualified to take care of her. And so it was that just as Mrs. Rutherford Wells was about to sit down to tea with several fashionable friends her butler entered, bearing upon a salver a printed paper, which he presented to her, in manner and form the following:
CITY MAGISTRATE'S COURT, CITY OF NEW YORK
In the name of the people of the State of New York To "Jane" Wells, the name "Jane" being fictitious:
You are hereby summoned to appear before the ——— District Magistrate's Court, Borough of Manhattan, City of New York, on the eighth day of May, 1920, at ten o'clock in the forenoon, to answer the charge made against you by Edna Pumpelly for violation of Section Two, Article Two of the Traffic Regulations providing that a vehicle waiting at the curb shall promptly give way to a vehicle arriving to take up or set down passengers, and upon your failure to appear at the time and place herein mentioned you are liable to a fine of not exceeding fifty dollars or to imprisonment of not exceeding ten days or both.
Dated 6th day of May, 1920.
JAMES CUDDAHEY, Police Officer,
Police Precinct ———, New York City.
Attest: JOHN J. JONES, Chief City Magistrate.
"Heavens!" cried Mrs. Wells as she read this formidable document. "What a horrible woman! What shall I do?"
Mr. John De Puyster Hepplewhite, one of the nicest men in New York, who had himself once had a somewhat interesting experience in the criminal courts in connection with the arrest of a tramp who had gone to sleep in a pink silk bed in the Hepplewhite mansion on Fifth Avenue, smiled deprecatingly, set down his Dresden-china cup and dabbed his mustache decorously with a filigree napkin.
"Dear lady," he remarked with conviction, "in such distressing circumstances I have no hesitation whatever in advising you to consult Mr. Ephraim Tutt."
"I have been thinking over what you said the other day regarding the relationship of crime to progress, Mr. Tutt, and I'm rather of the opinion that it's rot," announced Tutt as he strolled across from his own office to that of his senior partner for a cup of tea at practically the very moment when Mr. Hepplewhite was advising Mrs. Wells. "In the vernacular—bunk."
"What did he say?" asked Miss Wiggin, rinsing out with hot water Tutt's special blue-china cup, in the bottom of which had accumulated some reddish-brown dust from Mason & Welsby's Admiralty and Divorce Reports upon the adjacent shelf.
"He made the point," answered Tutt, helping himself to a piece of toast, "that crime was—if I may be permitted to use the figure—part of the onward urge of humanity toward a new and perhaps better social order; a natural impulse to rebel against existing abuses; and he made the claim that though an unsuccessful revolutionary was of course regarded as a criminal, on the other hand, if successful he at once became a patriot, a hero, a statesman or a saint."
"A very dangerous general doctrine, I should say," remarked Miss Wiggin. "I should think it all depended on what sort of laws he was rebelling against. I don't see how a murderer could ever be regarded as assisting in the onward urge toward sweetness and light, exactly."
"Wouldn't it depend somewhat on whom you were murdering?" inquired Mr. Tutt, finally succeeding in his attempt to make a damp stogy continue in a state of combustion. "If you murdered a tyrant wouldn't you be contributing toward progress?"
"No," retorted Miss Wiggin, "you wouldn't; and you know it. In certain cases where the laws are manifestly unjust, antiquated or perhaps do not really represent the moral sense of the community their violation may occasionally call attention to their absurdity, like the famous blue laws of Connecticut, for example; but as the laws as a whole do crystallize the general opinion of what is right and desirable in matters of conduct a movement toward progress would be exhibited not by breaking laws but by making laws."
"But," argued Mr. Tutt, abandoning his stogy, "isn't the making of a new law the same thing as changing an old law? And isn't changing a law essentially the same thing as breaking it?"
"It isn't," replied Miss Wiggin tartly. "For the obvious and simple reason that the legislators who change the laws have the right to do so, while the man who breaks them has not."
"All