"He? Not on your life! He couldn't be honest if he tried!" roared Mr.

Tutt. "He's just a carnivorous animal! A man eater! They talk about scratching a Russian and finding a Tartar; I'd hate to scratch some of our legal brethren."

"So would I!" a.s.sented Tutt. "I guess you're right, Mr. Tutt.

Christianity and the Golden Rule are all right in the upper social circles, but off Fifth Avenue there's the same sort of struggle for existence that goes on in the animal world. A man may be all sweetness and light to his wife and children and go to church on Sundays; he may even play pretty fair with his own gang; but outside of his home and social circle he's a ravening wolf; at least Raphael B. Hogan is!"

The subject of the foregoing entirely accidental conversation was at that moment standing contemplatively in his office window smoking an excellent cigar preparatory to returning to the bosom of his family.

Raphael B. Hogan believed in taking life easily. He was accustomed to say that outside office hours his time belonged to his wife and children; and several times a week he made it his habit on the way home to supper to stop at the florist's or the toy shop and bear away with him inexpensive tokens of his love and affection. On the desk behind him, over which in the course of each month pa.s.sed a lot of very tainted money, stood a large photograph of Mrs. Hogan, and another of the three little Hogans in ornamented silver frames, and his face would soften tenderly at the sight of their self-conscious faces, even at a moment when he might be relieving a widowed seamstress of her entire savings-bank account. After five o'clock this hyena purred at his wife and licked his cubs; the rest of the time he knew no mercy.

But he concealed his cruelty and his avarice under a mask of benignity.

He was fat, jolly and sympathetic, and his smile was the smile of a warm-hearted humanitarian. The milk of human kindness oozed from his every pore. In fact, he was always grumbling about the amount of work he had to do for nothing. He was a genial, generous host; unostentatiously conspicuous in the local religious life of his denomination; in court a model of obsequious urbanity, deferential to the judges before whom he appeared and courteous to all with whom he was thrown in contact. A good-natured, easy-going, simple-minded fat man; deliberate, slow of speech, well-meaning, with honesty sticking out all over him, you would have said; one in whom the widow and the orphan would have found a staunch protector and an unselfish friend. And now, having thus subtly connoted the character of our villain, let us proceed with our narrative.

The telephone buzzed on the wall set beside him.

"That you, chief?" came the voice of Simpkins.

"Yep."

"Got one off Delany."

"What is it?"

"Kid smashed a window--malicious mischief. Held for examination to-morrow at two. Five hundred bail."

"Any sugar?"

"Don't know. Says his father's dead and mother earns seventeen a week in a sweatshop and sends him to school. Got some insurance. I'm going right round there now."

"Well," replied Hogan, "don't scare her by taking too much off her at first. I suppose there's evidence to hold him?"

"Sure. Delany says he saw it."

"All right. But go easy! Good night."

"Leave that to me, chief!" a.s.sured Simpkins. "See you to-morrow."

It will be observed that in this professional interchange nothing at all was said regarding the possibility of establishing Tony's innocence, but that on the contrary Mr. Simpkins' mind was concentrated upon his mother's ability to pay. This was the only really important consideration to either of them. But Hogan did not worry, because he knew that Simpkins would skilfully entangle Mrs. Mathusek in such a web of apprehension that rather than face her fears she would if necessary go out and steal the money. So Mr. Raphael B. Hogan hung up the receiver and with his heart full of gentle sympathy for all mankind walked slowly home, pausing to get some roses for Mrs. Hogan and to buy a box for Daddy Long Legs at the Strand, for whenever he got a new case he always made it the occasion for a family party, and he wanted the children to benefit by pa.s.sing an evening under the sweet influence of Miss Pickford.

Now just at the moment that his employer was buying the roses Mr.

Simpkins entered the apartment of Mrs. Mathusek and informed her of Tony's arrest and incarceration. He was very sympathetic about it, very gentle, this dapper little man with the pale gray eyes and inquisitive, tapirlike nose; and after the first moment of shock Mrs. Mathusek took courage and begged the gentleman to sit down. There are always two vultures hanging over the poor--death and the law; but of the two the law is the lesser evil. The former is a calamity; the latter is a misfortune. The one is final, hopeless, irretrievable; from the other there may perhaps be an escape. She knew Tony was a good boy; was sure his arrest was a mistake, and that when the judge heard the evidence he would let Tony go. Life had dealt hardly with her and made her an old woman at thirty-four, really old, not only in body but in spirit, just as in the middle ages the rigor of existence made even kings old at thirty-five. What do the rich know of age? The women of the poor have a day of spring, a year or two of summer, and a lifetime of autumn and winter.

Mrs. Mathusek distrusted the law and lawyers in the abstract, but Mr.

Simpkins' appearance was so rea.s.suring that he almost counteracted in her mind the distress of Tony's misfortune. He was clearly a gentleman, and she had a reverential regard for the gentry. What gentlefolk said was to be accepted as true. In addition this particular gentleman was learned in the law and skilled in getting unfortunate people out of trouble. Now, though Mr. Simpkins possessed undoubtedly this latter qualification, it was also true that he was equally skilled in getting people into it. If he ultimately doubled their joys and halved their sorrows he inevitably first doubled their sorrows and halved their savings. Like the witch in Macbeth: "Double, double toil and trouble."

His aims were childishly simple: First, to find out how much money his victim had, and then to get it.

His methods were no more complicated than his aims and had weathered the test of generations of experience. So:

"Of course Tony must be bailed out," he said gently. "You don't want him to spend the night in jail."

"Jail! Oh, no! How much is the bail?" cried Tony's mother.

"Only five hundred dollars." His pale gray eyes were watching her for the slightest sign of suspicion.

"Five hundred dollars! Eoi! Eoi! It is a fortune! Where can I get five hundred dollars?" She burst into tears. "I have saved only one hundred and sixty!"

Mr. Simpkins pursed his lips. Then there was nothing for it! He reached for his hat. Mrs. Mathusek wrung her hands. Couldn't the gentleman go bail for Tony? He was such a dear, kind, good gentleman! She searched his face hungrily. Mr. Simpkins falteringly admitted that he did not possess five hundred dollars.

"But--" he hesitated.

"Yes!"

"But--" she echoed, seizing his sleeve and dragging him back.

Mr. Simpkins thought that they could hire somebody to go bail; no, in that case there would be no money to pay the great lawyer whom they must at once engage to defend her son--Mr. Hogan, one who had the pull and called all the judges by their first names. He would not usually go into court for less than five hundred dollars, but Mr. Simpkins said he would explain the circ.u.mstances to him and could almost promise Mrs. Mathusek that he would persuade him to do it this once for one hundred and fifty.

So well did he act his part that Tony's mother had to force him to take the money, which she unsewed from inside the ticking of her mattress.

Then he conducted her to the station house to show her how comfortable Tony really was and how much better it was to let him stay in jail one night and make sure of his being turned out the next afternoon by giving the money to Mr. Hogan, than to use it for getting bail for him and leave him lawyerless and at the mercy of his accusers. When Mrs.

Mathusek saw the cell Tony was in she became even more frightened than she had been at first. But by that time she had already given the money to Simpkins.

Second thoughts are ofttimes best. Most crooks are eventually caught through their having, from long immunity, grown careless and yielded to impulse. Once he had signed the complaint in which he swore that he had seen Tony throw the brick, Delany had undergone a change of heart. Being an experienced policeman he was sensitive to official atmosphere, and he had developed a hunch that Judge Harrison was leery of the case. The more he thought of it the less he liked the way the son-of-a-gun had acted, the way he'd tried to get Mathusek to ask for an immediate hearing. Why had he ever been such a fool as to sign the complaint himself? It had been ridiculous--just because he was mad at the boy for trying to get away and wanted to make things easy for Froelich. If he went on the stand the next afternoon he'd have to make up all sorts of fancy details, and Hogan would have his skin neatly tacked to the barn doors for keeps. Thereafter, no matter what happened, he'd never be able to change his testimony. After all, it would be easy enough to abandon the charge at the present point. It was a genuine case of cold feet. He scented trouble. He wanted to renig while the renigging was good. What in h.e.l.l had Froelich ever done for him, anyhow? A few measly pieces of roast!

When Hogan returned home that evening with the little Hogans from the movies he found the cop waiting for him outside his door.

"Look here," Delany whispered, "I'm going to can this here Mathusek window case. I'm going to fall down flat on my identification and give you a walkout. So go easy on me--and sort of help me along, see?"

"The h.e.l.l you are!" retorted Hogan indignantly. "Then where do I come in, eh? Why don't you come through?"

"But I've got him wrong!" pleaded Delany. "You don't want me to put my neck in a sling, do you, so as you can make a few dollars? Look at all the money I've sent your way. Have a heart, Rafe!"

"Bull!" sneered the Honorable Rafe. "A man's gotta live! You saw him do it! You've sworn to it, haven't you?"

"I made a mistake."

"How'll that sound to the commissioner? An' to Judge Harrison? No, no!

Nothin' doin'! If you start anything like that I'll roast the life out of you!"

Delany spat as near Hogan's foot as he elegantly could.

"You're a h.e.l.l of a feller, you are!" he growled, and turned his back on him as upon Satan.

The brick that Terry McGurk hurled as a matter of principle through Froelich's window produced almost as momentous consequences as the want of the horseshoe nail did in Franklin's famous maxim. It is the unknown element in every transaction that makes for danger.

The morning after the catastrophe Mr. Froelich promptly made application to the casualty company with which he had insured his window for reimburs.e.m.e.nt for his damage. Just as promptly the company's lawyer appeared at the butcher shop and ascertained that the miscreant who had done the foul deed had been arrested and was to be brought into court that afternoon. This lawyer, whose salary depended indirectly upon the success which attended his efforts to secure the conviction and punishment of those who had cost his company money, immediately camped upon the trails of both Froelich and Delany. It was up to them, he said, to have the doer of wanton mischief sent away. If they didn't cooperate he would most certainly ascertain why. Now insurance companies are powerful corporations. They can do favors, and contrariwise they can make trouble, and Lawyer Asche was hot under the collar about that window. Had he ever heard of the place he would have likened it to the destruction of Coucy-le-Chateau by the Huns.

This, for Delany, put an entirely new aspect upon the affair. It was one thing to ditch a case and another to run up against Nathan Asche. He had sworn to the complaint and if he didn't make good on the witness stand Asche would get his hide. Then he bethought him that if only Froelich was sufficiently emphatic in his testimony a little uncertainty on his own part might be excused.

In the meantime, however, two things had happened to curdle Froelich's enthusiasm. First, his claim against the Tornado Casualty Company had been approved, and second, he had been informed on credible authority that they had got the wrong boy. Now he had sincerely thought that he had seen Tony throw the brick--he had certainly seen a boy in a red sweater do something--but he realized also that he had been excited and more or less bewildered at the time; and his informant--Mrs. Sussman, the wife of the cigar dealer--alleged positively that it had been thrown by a strange kid who appeared suddenly from round the corner and as suddenly ran away in the direction whence he had come.