"Dated 7th day of May, 1920.
"PATRICK ROONY, Police Officer,
"Police Precinct ——,
"New York City.
"Attest: JOHN J. JONES,
"Chief City Magistrate."
"Well, I never!" she exploded. "What rubbish! Four miles an hour! And 'Maggie'—as if everybody didn't know my name was Edna!"
"The whole thing looks a bit phony to me!" muttered Pierpont, worried over the possibility of having wasted a slug of the real thing on an unreal police officer. "Perhaps that feller wasn't a cop at all!"
"And who's William Mul-kay-hay?" she continued. "I don't know any such person! You better call up Mr. Edgerton right away and see what the law is."
"I hope he knows!" countered Mr. Pumpelly. "Four miles an hour—that's a joke! A baby carriage goes faster than four miles an hour. You wouldn't arrest a baby!"
"Well, call him up!" directed Mrs. Pumpelly. "Tell him he should come right round over here."
The summons from his client interrupted Mr. Edgerton in the middle of an expensive dinner at his club and he left it in no good humor. He didn't like being ordered round like a servant the way Mrs. Pumpelly was ordering him. It wasn't dignified. Moreover, a lawyer out of his office was like a snail out of its shell—at a distinct disadvantage. You couldn't just make an excuse to step into the next office for a moment and ask somebody what the law was. The Edgertons always kept somebody in an adjoining office who knew the law—many lawyers do.
On the Pumpelly stoop the attorney found standing an evil-looking and very shabby person holding a paper in his hand, but he ignored him until the grilled iron cinquecento door swung open, revealing James, the retiring second man.
Then, before he could enter, the shabby person pushed past him and asked in a loud, vulgar tone: "Does Edna Pumpelly live here?"
James stiffened in the approved style of erect vertebrata.
"This is Madame Pierpont Pumpelly's residence," he replied with hauteur.
"Madam or no madam, just slip this to her," said the shabby one. "Happy days!"
Mr. Wilfred Edgerton beneath the medieval tapestry of the Pumpelly marble hall glanced at the dirty sheet in James' hand and, though unfamiliar with the form of the document, perceived it to be a summons issued on the application of one Henry J. Goldsmith and returnable next day, for violating Section Two Hundred and Fifteen of Article Twelve of Chapter Twenty of the Municipal Ordinances for keeping and maintaining a certain bird, to wit, a cockatoo, which by its noise did disturb the quiet and repose of a certain person in the vicinity to the detriment of the health of such person, to wit, Henry J. Goldsmith, aforesaid, and upon her failure to appear, and so on.
Wilfred had some sort of vague idea of a law about keeping birds, but he couldn't exactly recall what it was. There was something incongruous about Mrs. Pierpont Pumpelly keeping a cockatoo. What did anybody want of a cockatoo? He concluded that it must be an ancestral hereditament from Athens, Ohio. Nervously he ascended the stairs to what Edna called the saloon.
"So you've come at last!" cried she. "Well, what have you got to say to this? Is it against the law to go round a corner at more than four miles an hour?"
Now, whereas Mr. Wilfred Edgerton could have told Mrs. Pumpelly the "rule in Shelly's case" or explained the doctrine of cy pres, he had never read the building code or the health ordinances or the traffic regulations, and in the present instance the latter were to the point while the former were not. Thus he was confronted with the disagreeable alternative of admitting his ignorance or bluffing it through. He chose the latter, unwisely.
"Of course not! Utter nonsense!" replied he blithely. "The lawful rate of speed is at least fifteen miles an hour."
"Excuse me, madam," said James, appearing once more in the doorway. "A man has just left this—er—paper at the area doorway."
Mrs. Pumpelly snatched it out of his hand.
"Well, of all things!" she gasped.
"To 'Bridget' Pumpelly," it began, "said first name 'Bridget' being fictitious:
"You are hereby summoned to appear ... for violating Section Two Hundred and Forty-eight of Article Twelve of Chapter Twenty of the Health Ordinances in that you did upon the seventh day of May, 1920, fail to keep a certain tin receptacle used for swill or garbage, in shape and form a barrel, within the building occupied and owned by you until proper time for its removal and failed to securely bundle, tie up and pack the newspapers and other light refuse and rubbish contained therein, and, further, that you caused and permitted certain tin receptacles, in the shape and form of barrels, containing such swill or garbage, to be filled to a greater height with such swill or garbage than a line within such receptacle four inches from the top thereof."
"Now what do you know about that?" remarked the vice president of Cuban Crucible to the senior partner of Edgerton & Edgerton.
"I don't know anything about it!" answered the elegant Wilfred miserably. "I don't know the law of garbage, and there's no use pretending that I do. You'd better get a garbage lawyer."
"I thought all lawyers were supposed to know the law!" sniffed Mrs. Pumpelly. "What's that you got in your hand?"
"It's another summons, for keeping a bird," answered the attorney.
"A bird? You don't suppose it's Moses?" she exclaimed indignantly.
"The name of the bird isn't mentioned," said Wilfred. "But very likely it is Moses if Moses belongs to you."
"But I've had Moses ever since I was a little girl!" she protested. "And no one ever complained of him before."
"Beg pardon, madam," interposed Simmons, parting the Flemish arras, upon which was depicted the sinking of the Spanish Armada. "Officer Roony is back again with two more papers. 'E says it isn't necessary for him to see you again, as once is enough, but 'e was wondering whether being as it was rather chilly—"
"Lead him to it!" hastily directed Pierpont, who was beginning to get a certain amount of enjoyment out of the situation. "But tell him he needn't call again."
"Give 'em here!" snapped Mrs. Pumpelly, grasping the documents. "This is a little too much! 'Lulu' this time. Fictitious as usual. Who's Julius Aberthaw? He says I caused a certain rug to be shaken in such place and manner that certain particles of dust passed therefrom into the public street or highway, to wit, East Seventy-third Street, contrary to
"What's the other one?" inquired her husband with a show of sympathy.
"For violating Section Fifteen of Article Two of Chapter Twenty, in that on May 7, 1920, I permitted a certain unmuzzled dog, to wit, a Pekingese brown spaniel dog, to be on a public highway, to wit, East Seventy-third Street in the City of New York. But that was Randolph!"
"Was Randolph muzzled?" inquired Mr. Edgerton maliciously.
"Of course not! He only weighs two pounds and a quarter!" protested Mrs. Pumpelly.
"He can bite all right, just the same!" interpolated Pierpont.
"But what shall I do?" wailed Mrs. Pumpelly, now thoroughly upset.
"Guess you'll have to take your medicine, same's other violators of the law," commented her husband.
"I never heard of such ridiculous laws!"
"Ignorance of the law excuses no one!" murmured Wilfred.
"It don't excuse a lawyer!" she snorted. "I have an idea you don't know much more about the law—this kind of law, anyway—than I do. I bet it is against the law to go round a corner at more than four miles! Do you want to bet me?"
"No, I don't!" snapped Edgerton. "What you want is a police-court lawyer—if you're goin' in for this sort of thing."
"My Lord! What's this now, Simmons?" she raved as the butler deprecatingly