of business and try to get through with it as quickly and as efficiently as possible. The bombastic spread-eagle orator, the grandiloquent gas bag, the highfaluting stump speaker gain few verdicts and win small applause except from their clients. And district attorneys who ape the bloodhound in their mien and tactics win scant approval and less acquiescence from the bored gentlemen who are forced to listen to them. Nowadays—whatever may have been the case two generations ago—each side briefly states its claims and tries to win on points.
People were apt to wonder why each succeeding administration inevitably retained stuffy old Tom Hingman at seventy-five hundred dollars a year to handle the calendar in Part Five. Yet those on the inside knew why very well. It was because Tom long ago, in his prehistoric youth, had learned that the way to secure verdicts was to appear not to care a tinker's dam whether the jury found the defendant guilty or not. He pretended never to know anything about any case in advance, to be in complete ignorance as to who the witnesses might be and to what they were going to testify, and to be terribly sorry to have to prosecute the unfortunate at the bar, though he wasn't to blame for that any more than the jury were for having to find him guilty if proven to be so, which, it seemed to him, he had been clearly proven to be. I say Tom pretended all this, yet it was more than half true, for Tom was a kind-hearted old bird. But the point was that, whether true or not, it got convictions. The jury sucking it all up in its entirety felt sorrier for the simple-minded old softy of a Tom, which they believed him to be, than they did for the defendant, who they concluded was a good deal cleverer than the assistant district attorney.
In a word, it put them on their honor as public officers not to let the administration of justice suffer merely because the A.D.A. was too old and easy-going and generally slab-sided to be really on his job. Thus, they became prosecuting attorneys themselves—in all, thirteen to one. So Tom, having thus delegated his functions to the jury, calmly left it all to them and went to sleep, which was the best thing that he did. Worth seventy-five hundred a year? Rather, seventy-five thousand!
"Gentlemen of the jury," he began haltingly, "this defendant seems to have been indicted for the crime of practising medicine without a license—a misdemeanor. I don't see exactly how he gets into this court, which is supposed to try only felony cases, but I assume my old friend Tutt made a motion to transfer the case from the Special to the General Sessions on the theory that he would stand more chance with a jury than three—er—hardened judges. Well, maybe he will—I don't know! I gather from the papers that Mr. Lowry here, after holding himself out to be a properly licensed veterinary, treated a horse belonging to the complainant. It is not a very serious offense, and you and I have no great interest in the case, but of course the public has got to be protected from charlatans, and the only way to do it is to brand as guilty those who pretend they are duly licensed to practise medicine when they are not. If you had a sick baby, Mr. Foreman, and you saw a sign 'A.S. Smith, M.D., Children's Specialist,' you would want to be sure you were not going to hire a plumber, eh? You see! That's all there is to this case!"
"All there is to this case!" murmured Mr. Tutt audibly, raising his eyes ceilingward.
"Step up here, Mr. Brown."
Mr. Brown, the supposed Doctor Simon whose horse Danny had attended, seated himself complacently in the witness chair and bowed to the jury in a professional manner. He had, he told them, been a detective employed by the state board of health for over sixteen years. It was his duty to go round and arrest people who pretended to be licensed practitioners of medicine and assumed to doctor other people and animals. There were a lot of 'em, too; the jury would be surprised—
Mr. Tutt objected to their surprise and it was stricken out by order of the court.
"I'll strike out 'and there are a lot of 'em, too,' if you say so, Mr. Tutt," offered the court, smiling, but Mr. Tutt shook his head.
"No; let it stand!" said he significantly. "Let it stand!"
"Well, anyway," continued Mr. Brown, "this here defendant Lowry, as he calls himself, is well known—"
Objected to and struck out.
"Well, this here defendant makes a practise—"
"Strike it out! What did he do?" snapped the octogenarian baboon on the bench.
"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
