am inclined to agree. However, I’ll hear what Mr. Lecky wants to ask. Let the plaintiff be sworn.”
A murmur of hostility ran along the benches as Gamage seated himself in the witness chair. His hairless baby face was as inscrutable as that of a poker player who holds four aces.
“Mr. Gamage,” said Mr. Lecky, “please tell the Court your reasons for refusing to give your consent to my client’s marriage.”
Squire Mason shot up:
“I object. The plaintiff’s reasons for his refusal are wholly irrelevant.”
Several boos came from the crowd in the rear.
Judge Tompkins pounded angrily with his gavel.
“If I hear anything like that again, I shall clear the room!” he said severely.... “Mr. Lecky, I don’t see what difference it makes what the plaintiff’s reasons may have been. I exclude the question as irrelevant.”
“Very well,” plaintively replied Mr. Lecky. “Then I will make an offer of proof. I propose to show from this witness’ own lips that long after his wife, a dying woman, had executed her will, she learned of her daughter’s engagement to Doctor Kellogg and gave it her approval. In spite of which, and for the sole and obvious purpose of securing the estate for himself, the witness deliberately declined to honor his wife’s wishes and refused the consent which she had, in fact, already given.”
A chorus of jeers and catcalls burst from the remoter spectators.
“Order! Order in the Court!” shouted Sheriff Higgins, pounding on the rail.
Judge Tompkins stood up.
“I decline to receive the evidence offered and I give the defendant an exception to my refusal.... Sheriff Higgins, clear the room! The Court will take a recess for ten minutes.”
He stalked out, his robe bellying behind him. Mr. Tutt picked up his stovepipe hat and followed to the judicial chamber.
“Well, Eph,” remarked the judge, pacing up and down, “there seems to be an all-fired lot of feeling about this case. What’s your opinion about it?”
“That Gamage and Mason are a pair of first-class crooks.”
“Looks that way,” admitted His Honor, accepting a stogie from his friend. “Between them, they’ve got that girl hog-tied. It’s an outrage, but I guess I’ll have to render judgment for the plaintiff.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to. Mason apparently has the law on his side. There doesn’t seem any way out of it—at least for the moment.”
Judge Tompkins peered searchingly at the old lawyer.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing in particular. But I’ve a firm conviction that, in a situation so manifestly inequitable, justice is bound to triumph in the end,” replied Mr. Tutt earnestly. “I’ve got a vague sort of hunch that I read of a case something like this one, years ago, but I haven’t the remotest idea where.”
The business of an Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court is to determine whether, on the facts proved at the trial of any case, the judge has rightly interpreted and applied the law. Throughout the entire procedure there is one unalterable rule—their decision must be made exclusively upon the record as sent up from below. Nothing can be added to or subtracted from it. As the justly celebrated Prof. James Bradley Thayer, of the Harvard Law School, used to say: “As we find it here, it is as it is, and whatever it is, this is it.”
Judge Tompkins’ decision in favor of the plaintiff in Gamage versus Kellogg was received throughout Somersett County with indignation. He must be a bum judge to let Squire Mason bamboozle him in any such fashion. Even poor well-meaning Mr. Lecky came in for a share of the universal odium. Justice! Boloney!
All the good burghers could do was to ostracize Judge Gamage and kick him out of the Order of Abyssinian Mysteries, and this they did with alacrity and enthusiasm. The Judge, however, did not seem to mind any of it in the least, clearly content to remain placidly fanning himself upon the veranda of the Tarleton house, awaiting the confirmation of the judgment in the Appellate Division, to which Mr. Lecky had, as a matter of form, taken an appeal. What did he care if Squire Mason was the only person who would speak to him? What was the good opinion of a parcel of hicks like Toggery Bill Gookin, Cy Pennypacker and Mose Higgins compared with fifty thousand smackers? He should worry!
But when he learned that Lawyer Ephraim Tutt had prolonged his vacation and was taking an incomprehensible interest in the case, he did begin to worry a little. Durn the old cuss! And had he known of a certain conversation between the old cuss and Ma Best, his own former landlady, he might have worried even more.
“How long has Judge Gamage adorned Pottsville?” Mr. Tutt had asked her meditatively, one evening after supper.
“About ten years. He lived here at the Phœnix House until he married Mrs. Tarleton.”
“How long?”
“Almost four years.”
“What was he a judge of, besides whisky?”
“Said he was a justice of the peace one time.”
“Ever see any of his mail?”
“No. He had a private box at the post office.”
“Didn’t he ever mention where he had come from?”
“Nary a word.”
Mr. Tutt coddled his long chin.
“When he left you—the time he married—did he take away all his belongings?”
“Sure!” Ma pursed her lips meditatively. “I donno. Come to think of it, I believe he did leave some old duds behind. They didn’t amount to nuthin,’ though. Seems to me, I put ’em in an old cracker box up in the attic. If I did, they’re up there yet.”
Twenty minutes later, Mr. Tutt and Ma Best, under the hanging kerosene lamp, were examining the duds on the dining-room table—a soiled collar, a frayed pair of old suspenders, a broken comb, a rusty pocketknife, a tobacco tin and an empty envelope addressed to “Hon. Thos. Gamage, Phœnix Hotel, Pottsville, N. Y.,” faintly postmarked “Topsfield, Iowa.”
That night Mr. Tutt sent a telegram to his legal handyman, Bonnie Doon, in care of Tutt & Tutt, Broadway, N. Y.
ASCERTAIN IDENTITY OF OLEAGINOUS EX-JUSTICE OF THE PEACE KNOWN AS THOMAS GAMAGE WHO LEFT TOPSFIELD IOWA SOME TEN YEARS AGO STOP THIS MAN MOUNTAIN WEIGHS ABOUT THREE HUNDRED POUNDS HAS A FACE LIKE A TUB OF BUTTER AND A SMILE THAT IS CHILDLIKE AND BLAND STOP CHARGE EXPENSES TO ME PERSONALLY AND DO YOUR STUFF
E TUTT
While Justice is proverbially blind, she is not necessarily either deaf or dumb. It is true that judges are not supposed to discuss the cases which come before them, but judges are human. There is a grapevine among the judiciary just as in most professions, and sometimes the grapes are sour. Mr. Tutt and his old friend, Tompkins, fished Chasm Brook several times together that spring, and perhaps all their conversations did
