The case of the State vs. Cassius Smilk, charged with burglary, was finally set for trial the second week in February, just one year, one month and eleven days after his arrest in the apartment of Crittenden Yollop. There had been, it appears, a slight delay in getting 'round to his case. The dockets in all Parts of General Sessions were more or less clogged by the efforts of ex-convicts to get back into the penitentiary. Also, there were a great many murder cases that kept bobbing up every now and then for continuance on one plea or another to the disgust of the harassed judges; to say nothing of the re-trials made necessary by the jurors who listened more attentively to the lawyers who "summed up" than they did to the witnesses who were under oath to tell nothing but the truth.
Cassius, on arraignment, had pleaded not guilty, according to the ancient ritual of his profession. Notwithstanding his evident and expressed desire to return to a haven of peace and luxury, he was far too conscientious a criminal to violate the soundest—it may well be said, the elemental—law of his craft, by pleading guilty to anything.
It was a matter of principle with him. Circumstances had nothing to do with it. The instant he found himself in court, he reverted to type, somewhat gleefully setting about to make as much trouble as possible. He adhered to the principle that no criminal is adequately punished unless the people are made to pay for the privilege of suppressing him. The only way to make the people respect the law, he contended, is to let 'em understand that it costs money to enforce it. Besides, crime has a certain, clearly established dignity that must be reckoned with. The world thinks a great deal less of you if after you have violated the law, you also refuse to fight it.
Take the judge, for instance. (I quote Smilk.) What sort of an opinion does he have of you if you slide up to the little "gate," with your tail between your legs and plead guilty? Why, he hardly notices you. He has to put on his spectacles in order to see you at all and he doesn't even have to look in the statute book to refresh his memory as to the minimum penalty for larceny or whatever it is. And the way the Assistant District Attorney looks at you! And the bailiffs too. But put up a fight and see what happens. The whole blamed works sits up and takes notice. The judge looks over his spectacles and says to himself, "by gosh, he's a tough lookin' bird, that guy is;" the District Attorney goes around tellin' everybody in a whisper that you're a desperate character; the clerk of the court, the stenographer and all the bailiffs sort of wake up and act busy; the men waiting to be examined for jobs on the jury begin to fidget and wonder whether the judge is a "crab" or a nice, decent feller what'll let 'em off when they tell him they got sickness in the family, and all of 'em ha tin' you worse than poison because you didn't plead guilty.
He was remanded for trial within two weeks after his arrest. The court, finding him penniless, announced he would appoint counsel to defend him. Whereupon Smilk sauntered back to the Tombs with a light heart, confident that his sojourn there would be brief and that March at the very latest would see him snugly settled in his rent-free, food-free, landlordless home on the Hudson, entertainment for man and beast provided without discrimination, crime no object.
First of all, his lawyer unexpectedly got a job to represent a shady lady in a sensational breach of promise suit that drew weekly postponements over a period of five months and finally died a natural death out of court sometime in June.
This resulted in his lawyer becoming so affluent that it wasn't necessary for him to bother with Cassius, so he withdrew from the case. After some delay, another lawyer was appointed to defend him and things began to look up. But by this time the dockets had become so jammed with unrelated dilemmas, and the summer heat was so intense, that the new lawyer informed him he couldn't possibly sandwich him in unless he would consent to change his plea to "guilty", contending that the combination of humility and humidity would go a long ways towards softening the judge. But Cassius sturdily refused to cheapen himself.
In the meantime, new crimes had been committed by countless gentlemen of leisure; the Tombs was full of men clamoring for attention, and there was an undetected waiting list outside that stretched all the way from the Battery to the lower extremities of Yonkers.
The principal witness, Mr. Crittenden Yollop, did his best to behave nobly. He thrice postponed a business trip to Paris in order to be within reach when Cassius needed him. Then, in the fall, when things looked most propitious for a speedy termination of Smilk's suspense, the millinery business took a sudden and alarming turn for the worse and Mr. Yollop fell into the hands of the specialists. He had his teeth ex-rayed, his sinuses probed, his eyes examined, his stomach sounded, his intestines visited, his nerves tampered with, his blood tested, his kidneys explored, his heart observed, his ears inspected, his gall stones (if he had any) shifted, his last will and testament drawn up, his funeral practically arranged for,—all by different scientists,—and then was ordered to go off somewhere in the country and play golf for his health. He went to Hot Springs, Virginia, and inside of two weeks contracted the golf disease in its most virulent form. He got it so bad that other players looked upon him as a scourge and avoided him even to the point of self-sacrifice. It was said of him that when he once got on a green it was next to impossible to get him off of it.
But all this is neither here nor there. Suffice to say that shortly after his return to New York, Mr. Yollop paid a more or less clandestine visit to the Tombs, where he saw Cassius. This was the week before the trial was to open. He found the crook in a disconsolate frame of mind.
"Don't call me Yollop," he managed to convey to the prisoner. "I gave another name to the jailer or whatever he is. Is it jail bird? It wouldn't look right for the prosecuting witness to come down here to see you. They think I'm your brother-in-law."
Smilk glowered. "Has your hearin' improved any?" he inquired, after locating the disc.
"No, of course not."
"Then," said the prisoner, "I can't tell you what I think of you without the whole damn' jail hearin' me, so I guess you'd better beat it."
"Splendid! That's just the way I might have expected you to talk to your brother-in-law."
"Well, what do you want anyhow?"
"I don't think that's a very nice way to speak to a—"
"Come on, what do you want to see me about? Get it over with and get out. It can't help my case any if it gets noised around that you come down here to pay a friendly visit to me. I'm havin' a hard enough time as it is. It's gettin' so it's almost impossible to get back into the pen even—"
"See here, Cassius, I've been giving your case a great deal—of serious thought. I want to help you out of this scrape if there is any way to do it."
"That's just what I thought you'd be up to," groaned Cassius. "What's got into you? Have you soured on life, or what is it?"
"Not a bit of it. You do not get my meaning. Your wife came to see me yesterday afternoon."
"My wife? Which one?"
"A tallish one with a flat nose."
"Yes, I know her. What'd she want?"
"She asked me to be as easy on you as I could, on account of the children."
"How many children has she got now?"
"Four, she informs me. The youngest is two and a half."
Cassius seemed to be doing a bit of mental arithmetic. He pondered well before speaking. Then he said: "Did she say whose children?"
"I assumed them to be yours, Cassius."
Smilk grinned. "Well, I guess she's adopted a couple since the last time I saw her, which was five years ago last Spring. I been married twice since then. So she wants you to go easy on me, eh?"
"She seems to think that if I intercede for you the judge will let you off with a suspended sentence, and then you can go to work and support your family."
"It's time she woke up," snarled Smilk.
"I been at large quite a bit in the last ten years and if she can prove that I ever supported her,—why, darn her hide, what right has she got to accuse me of supportin' her when she knows I've never been guilty of doin' it? She knows as well as anything that she supported me on three different occasions when I was out for a month or two at a stretch. I will say this for her, she supported me better than the other two did,—a lot better. And it's her own fault her nose is flat. If she'd stood still that time—But I'm not goin' to discuss family affairs with you, Mr. Yol—"
"Sh! Easy!"
"It's all right. He ain't listenin'."
"What is your brother-in-law's name?" in a whisper.
"I never had but one name for him, and it's something I wouldn't call you for anything in the world," said Smilk. "Let's make it Bill. You ain't goin' to do what she asks, are you? You ain't goin' to do a dirty trick like that are you,—Bill?"
"I thought I would come down and talk the matter over with you, Cash. I'm in quite a dilemma. She says if I don't help you out of this scrape she and all your children will haunt me to my dying day. It sounds rather terrible, doesn't it?"
"I can't think of anything worse," acknowledged Cassius, solemnly.
"She asked me what I thought your sentence would be, and I told her I doubted very much whether you'd get more than a year or so, in view of all the extenuating circumstances,—that is to say, your self-restraint and all that when you had not only the jewels but the revolver as well. That seemed to cheer her up a bit."
"You made a ten strike that time, Bill," said Smilk, his face brightening. "I didn't give you credit for bein' so clever. If she thinks I'll be out in a year or two, maybe she'll be satisfied to keep her nose out of my affairs. If you had told her I was dead sure to go up for twenty years or so, she'd come and camp over there in the Criminal Courts Building and just raise particular hell with everything."
Mr. Yollop turned his face away. "I'm sorry to bring bad news to you, Cash, but she's made up her mind to attend your trial next Monday. She's going to bring the children and—"
He was interrupted by the string of horrific oaths that issued, pianissimo, through the twisted lips of the prisoner. After a time, Cassius interrupted himself to murmur weakly:
"If she does that, I'm lost. We got to head her off somehow, Mr.—er—Bill."
"I don't see how it can be managed. She has a perfect right to attend the pro—"
"Wait a minute, Bill," broke in the other eagerly. "I got an idea. If you give her that roll of mine, maybe she'll stay away."
"What roll are you talking about?"
"My roll of bills,—you remember, don't you?"
"My good man, I haven't got your roll of bills. And besides I couldn't put myself in the position of—of—er—what is it you call it?—tinkering with witnesses to defeat the ends of justice."
"But she ain't a witness, Bill. You couldn't possibly get in wrong. What's more, it's my money, and I got a right to give it to my wife, ain't I? Ain't I got a right to give money to my own wife,—or to one of my wives, strictly speakin',—and to my own children? Ain't I?"
"That isn't the point. I refuse to be a party to any such game. We need not discuss it any farther. As I said before, I haven't your roll of bills, and if I had it I—"
"Oh, yes, you have. You got it right up there in your apartment. I stuck it away behind a—"
"Stop! Not another word, Cassius. I don't want to know where it is. If you persist in telling me, I'll—I'll ask the judge to let you off with the lightest sentence he can—"
"Oh, Lord, you WOULDN'T do that, would you?"
"Yes, I would. What do you mean by secreting stolen property in my apartments?"
"I didn't steal it. I found it, I tell you."
"Bosh!"
"Hope I may die if I didn't."
"Well, it may stay there till it rots, so far as I am concerned."
"No danger of that," said Smilk composedly. "A friend of mine is comin' around some night soon to get it. What else did she say?"
"Eh?"
"What else did my wife say?"
"Oh! Well, among other things, she wondered if it would be possible to get an injunction against the court to prevent him from depriving her of her only means of support. She says everybody is getting injunctions these days and—"
"Bosh!" said Smilk, but not with conviction. An anxious, inquiring gleam lurked in his eyes.
Mr. Yollop continued:
"I told her it was ridiculous,—and it is. Then she said she was going to see your lawyer and ask him to put her on the witness stand to testify that you are a good, loyal, hard-working husband and that your children ought to have a father's hand over them, and a lot more like that."
"She tried that once before and the court wouldn't let her testify," said Smilk. "But anyhow, I'll tell my lawyer to kick her out of the office if she comes around there offering to commit perjury."
"I rather fancy she has considered that angle, Cassius. She says if she isn't allowed to testify, she's going to attempt suicide right there in the court-room."
"By gum, she's a mean woman," groaned Smilk.
"I'm obliged to agree with you," said Mr. Yollop, compressing his lips as a far-away look came into his eyes. "If I live to be a thousand years old, I'll never forget the way she talked to me when I finally succeeded in telling her I was busy and she would have to excuse me. It was something appalling."
"Course. I suppose I got myself to blame," lamented Cassius ruefully. "I don't know how many times I come near to doin' it and didn't because I was so darned chicken-hearted."
"I have decided, Cash, that you ought to go up for life,—or for thirty years, at least. So when I go on the stand I intend to do everything in my power to secure the maximum for you. At first, I was reluctant to aid you in your efforts to lead a life of ease and enjoyment but recent events have convinced me that you are entitled to all that the law can give you."
"It won't do much good if she's to set there in the Courtroom, snivelling and lookin' heart-broke, with a pack of half-starved kids hangin' on to her. Like as not, she won't give 'em anything to eat for two or three days so's they'll look the part. I remember two of them kids fairly well. The Lord knows I used to take all kinds of risks to provide clothes and all sorts of luxuries for them,—and for her too. I used to give 'em bicycles and skates and gold watches,—yes, sir, we had Christmas regularly once a month. And she never was without fur neck-pieces and muffs and silk stockings and everything. The trouble with that woman is, she can't stand poverty. She just keeps on hopin' for the day to come when she can wear all sorts of finery and jewels again, even if I do have to go to the penitentiary for it. All this comes of bein' too good a provider, Bill. You spoil 'em."
Mr. Yollop was thinking, so Cassius, after waiting a moment, scratched his head and ventured:
"That guy's beginnin' to fidget, Bill. I guess your time's about up. What are you thinkin' about?"
"I was thinking about your other wives. How many did you say you have?"
"Three, all told. The other two don't bother me much."
"Haven't you ever been divorced from any of them?"
"Not especially. Why?"
"Where do the other two live, and what are their names?"
"Elsie Morton and Jennie Finch. I mean, those are their married names. I use a different alias every time I get married, you see. Course, my first wife,—the one you met,—her name is Smilk. I married her when I was young and not very smart. Elsie lives in Brooklyn and Jennie keeps a delicatessen up on the West Side."
"Do they know where you are?"
"I don't think so. I forgot to tell 'em I was out on parole last year."
"And they have never been divorced from you?"
"No. They couldn't prove anything on me as long as I was locked up in the penitentiary."
"Does either one of them know about the other two?"
"I should say not! What do you think I am?"
"Don't lose your temper, Cassius. I am trying to think of some way to help you,—and I believe I see a ray of hope. You were regularly married to Elsie and Jennie,—I mean, by a minister, and so on?"
"Sure. They both got their marriage certificates. I always believe in doin' things in the proper legal way. It's only fair and right. They—"
"Never mind. Give me their addresses."
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg