had gone on for some time he had turned around and without any warning pushed her severely in the face.
“Call the plaintiff,” said the judge, sitting up a little in his chair. “Let’s hear what she has to say.”
The courtroom, sparsely crowded and unusually languid in the hot afternoon, had become suddenly alert. Several men in the back of the room moved into benches near the desk and a young reporter leaned over the clerk’s shoulder and copied the defendant’s name on the back of an envelope.
The plaintiff arose. She was a woman just this side of fifty with a determined, rather overbearing face under yellowish white hair. Her dress was a dignified black and she gave the impression of wearing glasses; indeed the young reporter, who believed in observation, had so described her in his mind before he realized that no such adornment sat upon her thin, beaked nose.
It developed that she was Mrs. George D. Robinson of 1219 Riverside Drive. She had always been fond of the theater and sometimes she went to the matinee. There had been two ladies with her yesterday, her cousin, who lived with her, and a Miss Ingles—both ladies were in court.
This is what had occurred:
As the curtain went up for the first act a woman sitting behind had asked her to remove her hat. Mrs. Robinson had been about to do so anyhow, and so she was a little annoyed at the request and had remarked as much to Miss Ingles and her cousin. At this point she had first noticed the defendant who was sitting directly in front, for he had turned around and looked at her quickly in a most insolent way. Then she had forgotten his existence until just before the end of the act when she made some remark to Miss Ingles—when suddenly he had stood up, turned around and pushed her in the face.
“Was it a hard blow?” asked the judge at this point.
“A hard blow!” said Mrs. Robinson indignantly, “I should say it was. I had hot and cold applications on my nose all night.”
“—on her nose all night.”
This echo came from the witness bench where two faded ladies were leaning forward eagerly and nodding their heads in corroboration.
“Were the lights on?” asked the judge.
No, but everyone around had seen the incident and some people had taken hold of the man right then and there.
This concluded the case for the plaintiff. Her two companions gave similar evidence and in the minds of everyone in the courtroom the incident defined itself as one of unprovoked and inexcusable brutality.
The one element which did not fit in with this interpretation was the physiognomy of the prisoner himself. Of any one of a number of minor offenses he might have appeared guilty—pickpockets were notoriously mild-mannered, for example—but of this particular assault in a crowded theater he seemed physically incapable. He did not have the kind of voice or the kind of clothes or the kind of mustache that went with such an attack.
“Charles David Stuart,” said the judge, “you’ve heard the evidence against you?”
“Yes.”
“And you plead guilty?”
“Yes.”
“Have you anything to say before I sentence you?”
“No.” The prisoner shook his head hopelessly. His small hands were trembling.
“Not one word in extenuation of this unwarranted assault?”
The prisoner appeared to hesitate.
“Go on,” said the judge. “Speak up—it’s your last chance.”
“Well,” said Stuart with an effort, “she began talking about the plumber’s stomach.”
There was a stir in the courtroom. The judge leaned forward.
“What do you mean?”
“Why, at first she was only talking about her own stomach to—to those two ladies there”—he indicated the cousin and Miss Ingles—“and that wasn’t so bad. But when she began talking about the plumber’s stomach it got different.”
“How do you mean—different?”
Charles Stuart looked around helplessly.
“I can’t explain,” he said, his mustache wavering a little, “but when she began talking about the plumber’s stomach you—you had to listen.”
A snicker ran about the courtroom. Mrs. Robinson and her attendant ladies on the bench were visibly horrified. The guard took a step nearer as if at a nod from the judge he would whisk off this criminal to the dingiest dungeon in Manhattan.
But much to his surprise the judge settled himself comfortably in his chair.
“Tell us about it, Stuart,” he said not unkindly. “Tell us the whole story from the beginning.”
This request was a shock to the prisoner and for a moment he looked as though he would have preferred the order of condemnation. Then after one nervous look around the room he put his hands on the edge of the desk, like the paws of a fox-terrier just being trained to sit up, and began to speak in a quivering voice.
“Well, I’m a night cashier, your honor, in T. Cushmael’s restaurant on Third Avenue. I’m not married”—he smiled a little, as if he knew they had all guessed that — “and so on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons I usually go to the matinee. It helps to pass the time till dinner. There’s a drug store, maybe you know, where you can get tickets for a dollar sixty-five to some of the shows and I usually go there and pick out something. They got awful prices at the box office now.” He gave out a long silent whistle and looked feelingly at the judge. “Four or five dollars for one seat—”
The judge nodded his head.
“Well,” continued Charles Stuart, “when I pay even a dollar sixty-five I expect to see my money’s worth. About two weeks ago I went to one of these here mystery plays where they have one fella that did the crime and nobody knows who it was. Well, the fun at a thing like that is to guess who did it. And there was a lady behind me that’d been there before and she gave it all away to the fella with her. Gee”—his face fell and he shook his head from side to side—“I like to died right there. When I got home to my room I was so mad that they had to come and ask me to stop walking up and down. Dollar sixty-five of my money gone for nothing.
“Well, Wednesday came around again, and this show was one show I wanted to see. I’d been wanting to see it for months, and every time I went into the drug store I asked them if they had any tickets. But they never did.” He hesitated. “So Tuesday I took a chance and went over to the box office and got a seat. Two seventy-five it cost me.” He nodded impressively. “Two seventy-five. Like throwing money away. But I wanted to see that show.”
Mrs. Robinson in the front row rose suddenly to her feet.
“I don’t see what all this story has to do with it,” she broke out a little shrilly. “I’m sure I don’t care—”
The judge brought his gavel sharply down on the desk.
