The Greatest Mysteries of Arthur Cheney Train – 50+ Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Arthur Cheney Train
take nothing further from her. Even if Mrs. Wells should have a change of heart and see fit to call, she just wouldn't return it! So when she rolled up in the diminutive car and found Mrs. Wells' lumbering limousine blocking the doorway she was simply furious.
"Make that man move along!" she directed, and Jules honked and honked, but the limousine did not budge.
Then Mrs. Pumpelly gave way to a fit of indignation that would have done her proud even in Athens, Ohio. Fire-breathing, she descended from her car and, approaching the limousine, told the imperturbable chauffeur that even if he did work for Mrs. Rutherford Wells, Mrs. Rutherford Wells was no better than anybody else, and that gave him no right to block up the whole street. She spoke loudly, emphatically, angrily, and right in the middle of it the chauffeur, who had not deigned to look in her direction, slyly pressed the electric button of his horn and caused it to emit a low scornful grunt. Then a footman opened the door of the Wells mansion and Mrs. Rutherford Wells herself came down the steps, and Mrs. Pumpelly told her to her face exactly what she thought of her and ordered her to move her car along so her own could get in front of the vestibule.
Mrs. Wells ignored her. Deliberately—and as if there were no such person as Mrs. Pumpelly upon the sidewalk—she stepped into her motor and, the chauffeur having adjusted the robe, she remarked in a casual, almost indifferent manner that nevertheless made Mrs. Pumpelly squirm, "Go to Mr. Hepplewhite's, William. Pay no attention to that woman. If she makes any further disturbance call a policeman."
And the limousine rolled away with a sneer at Mrs. Pumpelly from the exhaust. More than one king has been dethroned for far less cause!
"You telephone Mr. Edgerton," she almost shrieked at Simmons, the butler, "that he should come right up here as fast as he can. I've got to see him at once!"
"Very good, madam," answered Simmons obsequiously.
And without more ado, in less than forty minutes, the distinguished Mr. Wilfred Edgerton, of Edgerton & Edgerton, attorneys for Cuban Crucible and hence alert to obey the behests of the wives of the officers thereof, had deposited his tall silk hat on the marble Renaissance table in the front hall and was entering Mrs. Pumpelly's Louis Quinze drawing-room with the air of a Sir Walter Raleigh approaching his Queen Elizabeth.
"Sit down, Mr. Edgerton!" directed the lady impressively. "No, you'll find that other chair more comfortable; the one you're in's got a hump in the seat. As I was saying to the butler before you came, I've been insulted and I propose to teach that woman she can't make small of me no matter what it costs—and Pierpont says you're no slouch of a charger at that."
"My dear madam!" stammered the embarrassed attorney. "Of course, there are lawyers and lawyers. But if you wish the best I feel sure my firm charges no more than others of equal standing. In any event you can be assured of our devotion to your interests. Now what, may I ask, are the circumstances of the case?"
"Mr. Edgerton," she began, "I just want you should listen carefully to what I have to say. This woman next door to me here has—"
At this point, as paper is precious and the lady voluble, we will drop the curtain upon the first act of our legal comedy.
"I suppose we'll have to do it for her!" growled Mr. Wilfred Edgerton to his brother on his return to their office. "She's a crazy idiot and I'm very much afraid we'll all get involved in a good deal of undesirable publicity. Still, she's the wife of the vice president of our best paying client!"
"What does she want us to do?" asked Mr. Winfred, the other Edgerton. "We can't afford to be made ridiculous—for anybody."
This was quite true since dignity was Edgerton & Edgerton's long suit, they being the variety of Wall Street lawyers who are said to sleep in their tall hats and cutaways.
"If you can imagine it," replied his brother irritably, "she insists on our having Mrs. Wells arrested for obstructing the street in front of her house. She asked me if it wasn't against the law, and I took a chance and told her it was. Then she wanted to start for the police court at once, but as I'd never been in one I said we'd have to prepare the papers; I didn't know what papers."
"But we can't arrest Mrs. Wells!" expostulated Mr. Winfred Edgerton. "She's socially one of our most prominent people. I dined with her only last week!"
"That's why Mrs. Pumpelly wants to have her arrested, I fancy!" replied Mr. Wilfred gloomily. "Mrs. Wells has given her the cold shoulder. It's no use; I tried to argue the old girl out of it, but I couldn't. She knows what she wants and she jolly well intends to have it."
"I wish you joy of her!" mournfully rejoined the younger Edgerton. "But it's your funeral. I can't help you. I never got anybody arrested and I haven't the least idea how to go about it."
"Neither have I," admitted his brother. "Luckily my practise has not been of that sort. However, it can't be a difficult matter. The main thing is to know exactly what we are trying to arrest Mrs. Wells for."
"Why don't you retain Tutt & Tutt to do it for us?" suggested Winfred. "Criminal attorneys are used to all that sort of rotten business."
"Oh, it wouldn't do to let Pumpelly suspect we couldn't handle it ourselves. Besides, the lady wants distinguished counsel to represent her. No, for once we've got to lay dignity aside. I think I'll send Maddox up to the Criminal Courts Building and have him find out just what to do."
It may seem remarkable that neither of the members of a high-class law firm in New York City should ever have been in a police court, but such a situation is by no means infrequent. The county or small-town attorney knows his business from the ground up. He starts with assault and battery, petty larceny and collection cases and gradually works his way up, so to speak, to murder and corporate reorganizations. But in Wall Street the young student whose ambition is to appear before the Supreme Court of the United States in some constitutional matter as soon as possible is apt to spend his early years in brief writing and then become a specialist in real estate, corporation, admiralty or probate law and perhaps never see the inside of a trial court at all, much less a police court, which, to the poor and ignorant, at any rate, is the most important court of any of them, since it is here that the citizen must go to enforce his everyday rights.
Mr. Wilfred Edgerton suspected that a magistrate's court was a dirty sort of hole, full of brawling shyster lawyers, and he didn't want to know any more about such places than he could help. Theoretically he was aware that on a proper complaint sworn to by a person supposing himself or herself criminally aggrieved the judge would issue a warrant to an officer, who would execute it on the person of the criminal and hale him or her to jail. The idea of Mrs. Wells being dragged shrieking down Fifth Avenue or being carted away from her house in a Black Maria filled him with dismay.
Yet that was what Mrs. Pumpelly proposed to have done, and unfortunately he had to do exactly what Mrs. Pumpelly said; quickly too.
"Maddox," he called to a timid youth in a green eye-shade sitting in lonely grandeur in the spacious library, "just run up to the—er—magistrate's court on Blank Street and ascertain the proper procedure for punishing a person for obstructing the highway. If you find an appropriate statute or ordinance you may lay an information against Mrs. Rutherford Wells for violating it this afternoon in front of the residence next to hers; and see that the proper process issues in the regular way."
To hear him one would have thought he did things like that daily before breakfast—such is the effect of legal jargon.
"Yes, sir," answered Maddox respectfully, making a note. "Do you wish to have the warrant held or executed?"
Mr. Wilfred Edgerton bit his mustache doubtfully.
"We-ell," he answered at length, perceiving that he stood upon the brink of a legal Rubicon, "you may do whatever seems advisable under all the circumstances."
In his nervous condition he did not recall what, had he stopped calmly to consider the matter, he must have known very well—namely, that no warrant could possibly issue unless Mrs. Pumpelly, as complainant, signed and swore to the information herself.
"Very well, sir," answered Maddox, in the same tone and manner that he would have