Arthur Cheney Train

“ I asked, pacing up and down the office.
"My dear Quib," answered Gottlieb soothingly, "don't agitate yourself over so trifling a matter. The only living man who can prove that Hawkins was served is Bunce—and Bunce is a fool. At best it would simply be one swearing against the other. We have a perfect right to believe Hawkins in preference to Bunce if we choose. Anyhow, we're not the judge. All we have to do is to present the evidence at our command—if we can get it. And, by God! we will get it if it costs us ten thousand dollars! Why, Quib, the thing is a windfall. ”

“ I had ten thousand dollars in the pocket of my ragged trousers and a forty-four-calibre revolver at my hip. Gottlieb drew me back into the shadow and whispered harshly in my ear.
"Quib," said he, "this fellow must never come back!—do you understand? Once the district attorney gets hold of him, it's all up with us! It's Sing Sing for each of us—ten years of it! For God's sake, hire somebody to put him out of the way!—quietly. Many a man would take him off our hands for a thousand or so." ”

“ It seemed incredible to me that human beings should have staked their liberty and often their lives for a few wretched dollars. Outcasts, they skulked through existence, forced, once they had begun, to go on and on committing crimes—on the one hand to live, and on the other to pay tribute to Gottlieb and myself, who alone stood between them and jail. ”

“ These men have made a fat living for nearly a generation in this city by blackmail, bribery, and perjury. They have made a business of ruining homes, reputations, and the lives of others. They have directed the operations of organized bands of criminals. They are the Fagins of the city of New York. Once the poor and defenceless have fallen into their power, they have extorted tribute from them and turned them into the paths of crime. Better that one of them should be convicted than a thousand of the miserable wretches ordinarily brought to the bar of justice! ”

“ Gottlieb," remarked the judge, "tell me, if you can, why I should not lock your client up. Did he not falsely pretend, by requesting the complainant to cash the check, that he had money in the bank to meet it?"
"By no means, your Honor," answered Gottlieb. "The proffering of a check with a request for money thereon is merely asking that the money be advanced on the faith that the bank will honor the demand made upon it. One who cashes a check does so at his own risk. He has a full remedy at civil law, and if the bank refuses to pay no crime has been committed. ”

“ Few persons realize how difficult it is for an outsider, such as an ordinary juryman, to decide an issue of fact. A flat denial is worth a hundred ingenious defences in which the act is admitted but the attempt is made to explain it away. It is this that gives the jury so much trouble in criminal cases. For example, in the case of the pickpocket the lawyers and the judge may know that the complaining witness is a worthy woman, the respectable mother of a family, and that the defendant is a rascal. But each comes before the jury presumably of equal innocence. ”

“ A green-baize door, likely enough the same one, still hung there—where the lawyer's office had been. Naught about the room was altered. There were the bookcases, with their glass doors and green-silk curtains; the threadbare carpet, the portrait of the Honorable Jeremiah Mason over the fireplace; the old mahogany desk; the little bronze paper- weight in the shape of a horse; the books, brown and faded with years; and at the desk—I brushed my hand across my eyes—at the desk sat old Tuckerman Toddleham himself! ”

“ Neither the law nor public policy designs the protection of rogues in their dealings with each other, or to insure fair dealing and truthfulness, as between each other, in their dishonest practices." (This sentence had been in my brief.) "The design of the law is to protect those who, for some honest purpose, are induced upon false and fraudulent representations to give credit or part with their property to another, and not to protect those who, for unworthy or illegal purposes, part with their goods."
"Why, Quib," quoth Gottlieb, "you are the discoverer of a new legal principle. ”

“ And if any young aspirant for legal honors who reads these fugitive memoirs believes that the road to the supreme bench leads via Blackstone, and is lighted by the midnight oil of study, let him disabuse himself of that idea, but seek rather the district leader; and let him make himself useful in getting the boys that are in trouble out of it. Under our elective system there is no more honor in being a judge than in being a sheriff or a hog-reeve; but, when one is young—and perhaps starving—it may seem otherwise. ”

“ I could not have been more astonished had I walked into the family lot in the Salem cemetery and found my grandfather sitting on his own tombstone; but there the old lawyer surely was, as certainly as he had been there twenty years before; and the same sensations that I had always experienced as a child while in his presence now swept over me and made me feel like a whipped school-boy. Not for the world would I have had him see me and be forced to answer his questions as to my business in the city of Boston ”

“ Being a sort of sea-lawyer himself he was forever devising quaint defences and strange reasons why he should not pay his creditors; and he was ever ready to spend a hundred dollars in lawyers' fees in order to save fifty. This is the most desirable variety of client a lawyer can have.
One trifling weakness, common to mankind in general, gave him much encouragement; for he soon discovered that, rather than incur the trouble of hiring lawyers and going to court, his creditors would usually compound with him for considerably less than their just claims. ”

“ What woman, unless she had a heart of granite, would not be moved by such a tale! She opens her purse and pours its contents into his lap; for it is a psychological truth that, if you can once get a woman up to the point of giving anything, she will give all that she has. How often have I seen these old men—the children of Gottlieb's brain—sitting patiently and silently on the streets! And how often have they paid us handsome fees to get them out of the "jug"!
In this catalogue of clients I must not forget "Banana Anna," who recently, I am sad to say, met her Waterloo. ”

“ Billington winked at Gottlieb.
"How would you describe it, Mr. Lawyer?" said he.
Gottlieb laughed and shifted his cigar.
"Our friend Charlie lives by his brains," he replied. "He is an inventor, a promoter, an artist. He has earned many a small fortune by the simple use of a postage stamp. He can extract gold from seawater or silver from pineapples. Incidentally, he is of a scientific turn of mind and can rattle off the Morse alphabet as deftly as any operator in the business. Occasionally he has, in the interest of finance, tapped a wire." ”

“ He perceived the obvious fact that the way to make money at the law is to have money-makers for clients, but he had no acquaintances with financiers and had no reason to advance to himself why he should ever hope to receive any business from such. Reading one day that a certain young attorney he knew had received a large retainer for bringing an injunction in an important railroad matter, it occurred to him that, after all, it was merely chance and nothing else that had sent the business to the other instead of to himself. ”

“ To-day I'm worth real money and am on top of the heap downtown; but socially—Good Lord! the woman's a millstone! She's grown fat and talks through her nose, and—"
"You want to get rid of her," finished Gottlieb.
"Exactly!" answered Dillingham. "How much will it cost?"
"I think you had better give me your check for ten thousand dollars to begin with," replied my partner. "Such a case presents great difficulties—almost insuperable without money. I am not even sure that what you want can be accomplished without running grave personal risks—not on your part, but on ours. ”

“ To get ahead you must have one or the other. You must either be so irreproachable in your conduct and elevated in your ideals that your reputation for virtue becomes your chief asset, or, on the other hand, so crooked that your very dishonesty makes you invaluable to your clients. Both kinds of lawyers are equally in demand. Some cases require respectability and some dirty work. But the crooked lawyer has got to be so crooked that everybody is afraid of him, even the judge. Now, the trouble with me is that I'm too honest. Sometimes I wish I were a crook like the rest of them! ”

“ The old lawyer looked at me whimsically.
"My gay young man," he remarked finally, "the only position you occupy is one into which you have deliberately walked yourself. You come here in your fine clothes and your beaver hat and—excuse me—your whiskers, and you are surprised that there is no money forthcoming to pay your debts. Do not look astonished. I know and have known for a long time of your debts. I have followed your career with attention if not with edification. Even for the son of a Baptist minister you have done pretty well. However, life is life and everybody is not the same. ”

“ In New York the right of having the defendant arrested in certain classes of civil cases is a matter of statute. It is a preliminary remedy not half as much availed of as it might be. The young lady who brings a breach-of-promise suit against her faithless follower has the right to put him under arrest and make him give bail; and the young gentleman who would laugh ordinarily at the mere service of papers may well settle her claim if a sheriff whispers in his ear that he has a warrant for his person. ”

“ You would have bought the property, that is all."
"My dear Quib," returned my partner, "you seem singularly dull this evening for one of your brilliant parts. The point is that the property really isn't worth anything. I am in cahoots with the man who sells it; and we divide even!"
"Yes," I answered; "a dozen similar schemes could be worked like that."
"A dozen!" cried Gottlieb, bounding enthusiastically out of his chair and commencing to stalk up and down the room. "A hundred! Why, there are endless ways in which it can be worked—and I know the man to work them too!" ”

“ It is not worth more than ten dollars."
"Ten dollars!" shouted Gottlieb. "Ten dollars! Why scienter is one of the most complicated and technical defences known to the law. Ten dollars! Scienter is worth a thousand! Your rascally friend got his money for nothing, didn't he? He's lucky to be outside the bars—for if I ever saw a guilty man he's one. Get along, both of you, or I'll call an officer!"
And with that Gottlieb slipped inside his office and banged the door.
"Come along, Quib!" urged Tony; "there's a great deal of truth in what he says. ”

“ Gottlieb," said I, suppressing an inclination to smile. "I'll take your advice. Perhaps you'll let me talk to you again later on."
"Come as often as you like," he replied. "And look you, young- feller-me-lad, I'll give you half of all the profits I make out of any business you bring me. You don't have to be a lawyer to get clients. Hustle around among your friends and drum up some trade and you'll do almost as well as if you could try cases yourself. For every dollar I earn you get another. ”

“ Let other men find their gratification and emolument in the supposed honor of wearing the ermine! I have never found that a judge became any the less an erring human being after his elevation to the dais, and I could rake out of one good semi-criminal case twice the salary of any judge on the supreme bench. What is popularly regarded as respectability is oft-times in reality—if the truth were known— merely stodginess and stupidity. ”

“ It is a crime under the law to give back or rebate part of the premium on a life insurance policy. Now many a man could be induced to insure his life if he could get back the first year's premium. All you have got to do is to tell him that you are an insurance agent and will give it back—and then put the money in your own pocket, for he will have given you the premium for an illegal purpose—that is to say, with the idea of having it paid back to him contrary to law. ”

“ Cohen calmly persisted in his denial that he had ever enjoyed the honor of the architect's acquaintance, and after two prosecutions, in each of which the jury hopelessly disagreed, the indictments against him were dismissed. From this it may easily be inferred that no fact is too patent to be denied. Frequently the more heroic the denial the greater its verisimilitude to truth. The jury feel that no prisoner would deny a fact that it would be much easier to explain away—and believe him. ”

“ Then I hastily changed my clothes and accompanied Gottlieb to the Tombs, to which Hawkins had been transferred the night before. He was brought down to us in the counsel-room, looking like a scared and sickly ghost. What little spirit he had before had already vanished. I have never seen a more wretched human creature. ”