"I'm tellin' you, judge," protested Brown vigorously. "This here defendant—"
"You've said that three times!" retorted the baboon. "Get along, can't you? What did he do?"
"He treated my horse for spavin here in New York at 500 West 24th Street at my request on the twentieth of last March and I paid him five dollars. He said he was a licensed veterinary and he gave me his card. Here it is."
"Well, why didn't you say so before?" remarked the judge more amiably. "Let me see the card. All right! Anything more, Mr. Hingman?"
But Mr. Hingman had long before this subsided into his chair and was emitting sounds like those from a saxophone.
"That is plain, simple testimony, Mr. Tutt," remarked the judge. "Go ahead and cross-examine."
Ephraim Tutt slowly unjointed himself, the quintessence of affability, though Mr. Brown clearly held him under suspicion.
"How long have you earned your living, my dear sir, by going round arresting people?"
"Sixteen years."
"Under what name—your own?"
"I use any name I feel like."
Mr. Tutt nodded appreciatively.
"Let us see, then. You go about pretending to be somebody you are not?"
"Put it that way, if you choose."
"And pretending to be what you are not?"
Mr. Brown eyed Mr. Tutt savagely. "What do you mean by that?"
"Didn't you tell this old gentleman beside me that you were a doctor of medicine but not a doctor of veterinary medicine—and beg him to treat your horse for that reason?"
"Sure I did. Certainly."
"Well, are you a licensed medical practitioner?"
"Look here! What's that got to do with it?" snarled Mr. Brown, looking about for aid from the sleeping Hingman.
"The question is a proper one. Answer it," directed the judge.
"No, I'm not a licensed doctor."
"Well, didn't you treat Mr. Lowry?"
The jury by this time had caught the drift of the examination and were listening with intent appreciation.
Mr. Brown leaned forward, a sickening smile of sneering superiority curling about his yellow molars.
"Ah!" he cried. "That's where I have you, sir! I only pretended to treat him. I didn't really. I only scribbled something on a piece of paper."
"You knew he couldn't read, of course?"
"Sure."
Mr. Tutt turned to the uplifted faces of the twelve. "So," he retorted, pursing his wrinkled lips and placing his fingers together in that attitude of piety which we frequently observe upon effigies of defunct ecclesiastics—"so you did the very thing for which you threw this old man at my side into jail—and for which he is now on trial! You lied to him about being a doctor! You deceived him about giving him the medical treatment he so much needed! And you arrested him after he had worked for hours to relieve the sufferings of a sick animal. By the way, it was a sick animal, wasn't it?"
"The sickest I could find," replied Brown airily.
"And he did relieve its sufferings, did he not?" continued Mr. Tutt gently.
"Very likely. I wasn't particularly interested in that end of it."
Mr. Tutt's meager frame seemed suddenly to expand until he hung over the witness chair like the genii who mushroomed so unexpectedly out of the fisherman's bottle in the Arabian Nights Entertainments.
"You were not interested in ministering to a poor horse, so sick it could hardly stand! You were only interested in imprisoning and depriving of his only form of livelihood this old man whose heart was not hardened like yours! May I ask at whose instance you went and lied to him?"
"Mr. Tutt! Mr. Tutt!" interjected the octogenarian angel. "Your examination is exceeding the bounds of judicial propriety."
Ephraim Tutt bowed low.
"A thousand pardons, Your Honor! My emotions swept me away! I most humbly apologize! But when this witness so unblushingly confesses how he played the scoundrel's part, aged case hardened practitioner as I am, my heart cries out against such infamous treachery—"
Bang! went the judge's gavel.
"You are only making it worse!" declared the court severely. "Proceed with your examination."
"Very well, Your Honor!" replied Mr. Tutt, his lips trembling with well-simulated indignation. "Now, sir, who instigated this miserable deception—I beg Your Honor's pardon! Who put you up to this game—I mean, this course of conduct?"
"Nobody," replied Brown in a surly tone.
"Did you ever hear of the United Association of Veterinaries of the Greater City of New York—sometimes referred to as The Horse Leeches' Union?" asked Mr. Tutt insinuatingly.
Mr. Brown hesitated.
"I've heard of some such organization," he admitted. "But I never heard it was called a Horse Leeches' Union."
"Didn't one of its officers come to you and say that unless something was done to reduce competition they'd have to go out of business—owing to the decrease in horses in New York?"
"I don't remember," answered Brown slowly. "One of 'em may have said something of the sort to me. But that's my business!"
"Yes!" roared Mr. Tutt suddenly. "It's your business to pretend you're a doctor when you're not, and you walk the streets a free man; and you want to send my client to Sing Sing for the same offense! That is all! I am done with you! Get down off the stand! Do not let me detain you from the practise of your unlicensed profession!"
"Mr. Tutt!" again admonished His Honor as the lawyer threw himself angrily into his chair. "This really won't do at all!"
"I beg Your Honor's pardon—a thousand times!" said Mr. Tutt in tones so humble and sincere that he almost made the angel-faced baboon believe him.
I should like to go on and describe the whole course of Danny Lowry's trial item by item, witness by witness, and tell what Mr. Tutt did to each. But I can't; there isn't room. I can only dwell upon the tactics of Mr. Tutt long enough to state that at the conclusion of the case against Daniel Lowry, wherein it was clearly, definitely and convincingly established that Danny had been practising veterinary medicine for a long time without the faintest legal right, the lawyer rose and declared emphatically to the jury that his client was absolutely, totally and unquestionably innocent, as they would see by giving proper attention to the evidence he would produce—so that he would not take up any more of their valuable time in talk.
And having made this opening statement with all the earnestness and solemnity of which he was capable Mr. Tutt called to prove the defendant's good reputation, first, Father Plunkett, the priest to whom Danny made his monthly confession and who told the jury that he knew no better man in all his parish; second, Mulqueen, who described Danny's love of horses, his knowledge of them, his mysterious intuition concerning their hidden ailments, which, being as they could not speak, it was given to few to know, and how night after night he would sit up with a sick or dying animal to relieve its pain without thought of himself or of any earthly reward; then, man after man and woman after woman from the neighborhood of West Twenty-third Street who gave Danny the best of characters, including policemen, firemen, delicatessens, hotel keepers, and Salvatore, the proprietor of the night lunch frequented by Mr. Tutt.
And last of all little Katie Lowry. It was she who found the crack in Bently's moral armor. For Eleanor his wife was of Irish ancestry and of the colleen type, like Katie; and Bently had always played up to her Irish side when courting her as a humorous short cut to a quasi familiarity, for you may call a girl "acushla" and "Ellin darlint" when otherwise you are fully aware, but for