- -
- 100%
- +
He laughed grimly.
"Well, as luck would have it, my Uncle John died just about that time and left me ten thousand dollars and I started in to make her my own by getting her a divorce. Now, this husband of hers was a wretched fellow—the son of a neighbor—who never got beyond being a waiter in a railroad station. Say, it is rather rough, eh? To think of me, Dillingham, of Dillingham, Hodges & Flynn, the biggest independent steel man in the State, tied up to a pale-faced woman who can't speak the King's English properly and whose first husband is a waiter—yes, a waiter to-day, understand, in a railroad restaurant at Baltimore! It makes me sick every time I go to Washington. I can't eat—fact! So I hired a lawyer for her—you know him, I guess—Bunce. Oscar Willoughby Bunce! And he prepared divorce papers—Oh, we had cause enough! And the next time Hawkins —that was the husband's name, Arthur P. Hawkins—came over to New York, to borrow some money from his wife, Bunce slapped a summons on him. It makes me squirm to think how delighted I was to know we had actually begun our case. Hawkins hired a lawyer, I believe, and pretended he was going to put up a defence, but I bought him off and we got our decree by default. Then, gentlemen"—Dillingham paused with a wry face—"I had the inestimable privilege of marrying my present wife!"
He sucked meditatively on his cigar for a few moments before resuming his narrative.
"Curious, isn't it—the fascination of the stage? You, gentlemen, probably have observed it even more than I have; but when he sees a slim girl with yellow curls capering around in tights behind the footlights, a young man's imagination runs riot and he fancies her the incarnation of coquetry and the personification of vivacious loveliness. I admit it—the present Mrs. Dillingham was a dancer. On the stage she used to ogle me out of my shoes and off it she'd help me spend my money and drink my wine and jolly me up to beat the cars; but once I'd married her she changed completely. Instead of a dashing, snappy, tantalizing sort of a little Yum-Yum, she turned religious and settled down so you wouldn't have known her. There was nothing in it. Instead of a peach I had acquired a lemon. I expected champagne and found I was drinking buttermilk. Get me? You would never have guessed she'd been inside a theatre in her life. Well, we got along the best we could and she made a hit at the church, as a brand plucked from the burning. Used to tell her experiences Friday nights and have all the parsons up to five- o'clock tea. Meanwhile I forgot my romantic dreams of flashing eyes and twinkling feet and began to get interested in business. 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. Such risks must be compensated for. What you desire, I take it, is to have your marriage annulled. To do that it will be necessary to prove that the divorce procured by Mrs. Dillingham from her former husband, Hawkins, was improperly and illegally granted. We must knock out the decree in Hawkins versus Hawkins somehow or other. To be frank with you, it may cost you a large sum."
"It is worth it," answered Dillingham. "Free me from this woman and I'll give you twenty-five thousand dollars."
"Make it thirty-five thousand dollars," coaxed Gottlieb.
"Well, then, thirty-five thousand dollars," said Dillingham after a pause.
"But you must promise to do exactly what we tell you!" continued my partner.
"I expect to," replied the other.
"Very good, then," said Gottlieb. "In the first place, the original decree is no good unless the summons actually was served on Hawkins and the suit properly commenced. Now, perhaps Bunce served the wrong man. He didn't know Hawkins. The latter was merely pointed out to him. Already I begin to feel that there is grave doubt as to whether the proceedings in Hawkins versus Hawkins were ever legally initiated."
"Hold on, Mr. Gottlieb!" remonstrated Dillingham. "You want to go easy there. After Hawkins was served he retained a lawyer. I know that, dammit, because it cost me twenty-five hundred dollars to get rid of him."
"What was his name?" asked Gottlieb sharply.
"Crookshank—Walter E. Crookshank—down on Nassau Street."
Gottlieb gave a short, dry laugh.
"Luck's with you, Dillingham. Crookshank died three years ago."
None of us broke silence for the space of about two minutes.
"You see now why this sort of thing costs money?" finally remarked my partner.
Dillingham wiped his forehead with his handkerchief nervously.
"Say," he began, "isn't that taking a pretty long chance? I—"
"It is taking no chance at all," retorted Gottlieb, his little eyes glistening like a snake's. "You have simply retained us to see if your wife's original divorce was regular—not to see if it was irregular—catch on? You tell us nothing. We ask you nothing. We make our investigation. Much to our surprise and horror, we discover that the defendant never was served—perhaps that he never even knew of the proceeding until years afterward. We don't know what you know. We simply advise you the divorce is N. G. and you ask no questions. We'll attend to all that—for our thirty-five thousand dollars."
"Well, you know your business," responded Dillingham hesitantly, "and I leave the matter in your hands. How long will it take?"
"Everything now depends on our friend Hawkins," replied Gottlieb. "We may be able to hand you your manumission papers in three months."
When Dillingham had written out his check and bade us good day I no longer made any pretence of concealing from my partner my perturbation. I had, of course, known that from time to time we had skated on thin ice; but this was the first occasion upon which Gottlieb had deliberately acknowledged to a client that he would resort to perjury to accomplish his ends.
"Don't you think we're running entirely too close to the wind?" 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. Thirty-five thousand! Why, thirty-five hundred for such a case would be a big fee!"
"I don't know!" I answered, for I felt a curious premonition in the matter. "Something tells me that we ought to take no chances."
"Come, come!" quoth Gottlieb, with a light show of irritation. "Don't lose your nerve. You've done many a worse thing than this, to my own knowledge!"
I do not pretend to any virtue in the matter and yet I must admit to some feelings of compunction about Mrs. Dillingham. Truth to tell, I had taken a strong dislike to her husband, with his sleek confidence and cold-blooded selfishness. In addition, I was quite sure that there was some other fell reason why he wished to divorce her—probably he had another marriage in contemplation, even if he had not admitted it.
"I wish we could make the beggar do his own dirty work," I exclaimed.
"But what does he pay us for?" inquired Gottlieb innocently. "Quib, just think of the money!"
I had, in fact, been thinking of the money, and it looked very good to me. Since my days in Haight & Foster's law office, a great, great change had come in my manner of life; and, though my friends to a great extent remained among the theatrical and sporting class to which I had received my first introduction on coming to New York, I now occupied a large brick house with stone trimmings in Washington Square, where I entertained in truly luxurious fashion. I had a French cook and an English butler, and drove a pair of trotters that were second to none except those of William H. Vanderbilt, with whom I had many a fast brush on the speedways.
Though I had never allowed myself to be caught in the net of matrimony, I had many friends among the fair sex, particularly among those who graced the footlights; and some of my evening parties did not break up until dawn was glinting over the roofs of the respectable mansions round about me. It was a gay life, but it cost money—almost more money than I could make; and my share in the thirty-five thousand dollars offered by our friend Dillingham would go a long way to keeping up my establishment for another year. So I allowed my qualms to give me no further uneasiness and told myself that Gottlieb was clever enough to manage the business in such a fashion that there would be no "come-back."
A week or so later I encountered in our office a narrow-shouldered, watery-eyed, reddish-nosed party that I instantly recognized for Hawkins. There could be no doubt about the matter, for he had a way of standing at attention and thrusting his head forward when addressed that were unmistakable. He was waiting, it turned out, for Gottlieb, who had sent for him to come on from Baltimore; and the readiness with which he had responded could be better accounted for by the five hundred dollars which he had received at the hands of our emissary for travelling expenses than by any desire on his part to regain the society of the present Mrs. Dillingham.
"I suppose," began Gottlieb when he had retired to the seclusion of his inner office, "that you fully understand that the divorce secured by your wife is inoperative—Tut! Tut! Don't interrupt me!"—for Hawkins had opened his mouth in protest—"for the reason —for the very good reason, I repeat—that you were never served with any summons or notified that the proceeding had been commenced. Am I correct?"
Hawkins grinned and turned his watery eyes from one of us to the other.
"Quite so, sir!" he stuttered. "Exactly, sir!"
"Now, on the contrary, if any one says you were served with such a paper, it was quite impossible for the reason—by the way, what was the reason?"
Hawkins dropped one eyelid to a narrow slit and pursed his lips.
"Quite impossible, sir! The fact is, sir, I was waitin' on a dinin'– car that ran at the time between San Antonio and New Orleans, sir."
"You see, Quib?" exclaimed Gottlieb. "My suspicions in the matter were quite correct. This gentleman has been most outrageously treated! If you will kindly retire for a moment—as I have a matter which I wish to discuss with him privately—I will turn him over to you for the purpose of taking his affidavit."
A few moments thereafter Hawkins appeared in my office, apparently in the act of stuffing something into his pocket, and announced that he was ready to sign his "davy." Although I had no taste for the business, there was nothing for it but to do my part; so I called in a stenographer and dictated the following:
"SUPREME COURT—COUNTY OF NEW YORK"RUFUS P. DILLINGHAM, Plaintiff ) against ) Action for Annulment of Marriage LILIAN DILLINGHAM, Defendant )
"CITY AND COUNTY OF NEW YORK, ss.:
"ARTHUR P. HAWKINS, being duly sworn, deposes and says: That he is forty-three years old, a waiter by occupation, and resides in the city of Baltimore, Maryland; that he was married to the defendant herein on the eighteenth day of June, 187-, and thereafter lived with her as man and wife until the month of December, 1882, when for some reason unknown to deponent the defendant left his house and did not thereafter return; that he has recently learned that said defendant, in July, 1887, procured a decree of divorce against him in the county and State of New York, upon grounds of which deponent is totally ignorant, and that thereafter said defendant contracted a marriage with one Rufus P. Dillingham, the plaintiff therein; that deponent was never served with any summons or complaint in said action of divorce and had no knowledge or information that any such proceeding was pending against him; that he never appeared in such proceeding and until recently always supposed that the defendant was his lawful wife.
"Sworn to before me this fourteenth )
day of September, 1894 ) ARTHUR P. HAWKINS
"ISAAC M. COHEN,
"Notary Public, New York County."
There was something about this seedy rascal that filled me with disgust and suspicion, and he looked at me out of the corners of his evil eyes as if he knew that by some trick of fate he had me in his power and was gloating over it. Even while he was swearing to the paper he had a sickly sneer on his pimply face that sickened me, and when Cohen, my clerk, administered the oath to him he had the audacity to wink in his face and answer:
"It's the truth—not!"
Cohen, who knew a thing or two and had taken affidavits before, merely laughed, but the words sent a shiver down my spine and I snarled out:
"Be careful what you're saying! Do you swear that this affidavit of yours is true?"
"Yes, sir! Yes, sir!" he hastened to answer, somewhat chagrined at my not taking as a joke what he had intended for one.
"Very well," I said to Cohen. "Show the gentleman out. I'm very busy. Good-day."
Afterward I would have given all the money I possessed to undo what
I had done.
The case of Dillingham versus Dillingham duly came on for trial, with Oscar Willoughby Bunce as the chief witness for defendant. He had visited our office several times in an attempt to convince us that we were entirely misinformed in regard to the service of the papers in the original action and had insisted vehemently that he had personally delivered them to Hawkins in the office of the Astor House. Gottlieb had gently assured him that he must be mistaken and bowed him out, but Bunce for once in his little toy career was "all up in the air." He felt that his own integrity was, in some mysterious way, at stake, since it was upon his own testimony to the effect that he had made the service of the papers in question that the original decree had in part been granted. The case was sent to a referee for hearing, and on the morning of the day set Gottlieb called me into his office and said:
"Harkee, Quib! I've a plan that will put our little friend Bunce's nose out of joint for good. It is nearly seven years now since he has seen Hawkins and it was then only for a moment."
"Well," said I, "what is your game?"
"Come along to the hearing and you'll find out, my lad," answered
Gottlieb. "Don't fail if you want to see some fun."
Curious to discover what trick Gottlieb would be able to play, I accordingly arranged my work so as to attend the hearing, which was to be held in the referee's office in an old wooden building on Broadway. As I climbed the stairs I caught sight of Hawkins skulking on one of the landings, but he laid a finger on his lips and I passed on and up to the attorney's office. The room, like most old-fashioned lawyers' offices, was but dimly lighted, and on entering I found the other side, with the exception of Mrs. Dillingham, already there. The referee sat at one end of a large table, surrounded by his books, with his stenographer beside him; and to his left sat Bunce and a lawyer named Stires, the present "attorney of record" for the defendant. I took my seat opposite them, introduced myself to the referee and waited. In a few moments the door opened noisily and Gottlieb entered with much bustle, accompanied by a clerk carrying books and papers and by a perfectly strange man, arrayed in very new clothes, who seemed much embarrassed and doubtful as to what he should do.
"Good afternoon, gentlemen!" exclaimed Gottlieb breezily. "I regret to have kept you waiting, but I was unavoidably detained. Shall I sit down here? Yes? Very good. Please take your seat beside me, Mr. Hawkins."
The stranger blushed, fumbled his hat, and sat down bashfully in the place designated.
"Are you ready to proceed, gentlemen?" inquired the referee over his spectacles. "Call your first witness."
Bunce, who had been fidgeting in his eagerness to tell what he knew, instantly bobbed up and asked to be sworn.
After giving his name, age, and profession, he detailed how he had prepared the papers in the original case of Hawkins versus Hawkins and served them upon the defendant personally at the Astor House.
"I handed them to Mr. Hawkins myself and explained them to him.
He was dressed very much as he is now," cried Bunce.
"Do you positively identify this gentleman on your oath as the person you served with the summons and complaint?" inquired Gottlieb as if the matter were merely one of routine.
"Absolutely!" retorted Bunce hotly. "I could identify him anywhere by the shape of his nose. I took especial pains to remark his appearance in case the service should ever be disputed."
"Thank you. That is all," said Gottlieb. Then turning to the stranger he directed him to take the stand.
"What is your name?" he asked sternly.
"Aaron Finkelstein—as you know very well, Mr. Gottlieb," answered the stranger.
"Do you recognize this gentleman who has just testified?" indicating
Bunce.
"As far as I know I never saw him in my life," answered Finkelstein.
"Did he ever serve you with any papers—in the Astor House or anywhere else?"
"Never."
"What is your business?"
"I am an undertaker."
In an instant the room was in a turmoil, Bunce screaming out that he had been tricked by a parcel of shysters, Gottlieb indignantly defending his ruse as a perfectly proper method of discrediting Bunce, and the referee vainly endeavoring to restore order. As for myself, in spite of my anxiety over the whole affair, I could not do otherwise than laugh heartily over Bunce's ludicrous mistake. When Hawkins was brought in from outside, and, after proclaiming his identity, denied ever being served in the original action, the referee was but little inclined to listen to Lawyer Bunce, who now corrected his testimony and swore just as insistently that the real Hawkins was the person to whom he had given the papers in the case.
Here, then, was as pretty a trick as had ever been played upon an unsuspecting and well-meaning lawyer; and by it Gottlieb had so strengthened our position that, very likely, the referee would have found for our side even had not Hawkins taken it upon himself to swear the matter through. Moreover, the only person who could have disproved the latter's testimony or given evidence that might have militated against its probability—to wit, Crookshank, his former attorney—was dead and buried, and it seemed as if truth were buried with him. On the way back to our office I congratulated my partner on the Napoleonic strategy which he had displayed and a few days later a more substantial compliment followed, in the shape of an unqualified finding in our favor on the part of the referee.
"Was ever thirty-five thousand dollars earned so easily!" laughed
Gottlieb over his cigar as we were dining at Delmonico's.
"So long as Hawkins stays bought—yes," I answered.
"Don't be a death's head, Quib!" he retorted. "Why, even if he turned State's evidence, no one would believe him! Have another glass of this vintage—we can drink it every night now for a year at Dillingham's expense!"
"Well, here's to you, Gottlieb!" I answered, filling my goblet with creaming wine; "and here's to crime—whereby we live and move and have our being!"
And we clinked our glasses and drained them with a laugh.
I had now been a resident of New York for upward of twenty years and had acquired, as the junior member of the firm of Gottlieb & Quibble, an international reputation. It is true that my partner and I felt it to be beneath our dignity to advertise in the newspapers —and, indeed, advertising in New York City was for us entirely unnecessary—but we carried a card regularly in the English journals and received many retainers from across the water; in fact, we controlled practically all the theatrical business in the city, drawing the contracts for the managers and being constantly engaged in litigations on their behalf. We had long since abandoned as trivial all my various profit-sharing schemes, and, with the exception of carrying on our pay-rolls many of the attendants attached to the police and other criminal courts, had practically no "runners." We did not need any. There was no big criminal case in which we were not retained for the defence and rarely a divorce action of any notoriety where we did not appear for one of the parties.
This matter of Hawkins's was the first in twenty years in which he had ever deliberately faked an entire case! Yet, if ever there was a safe opportunity to do so, this seemed the one, and I cannot even now charge Gottlieb with recklessness in taking the chances that he did; but, as luck would have it, there were two facts connected with the Dillingham annulment the significance of which we totally overlooked—one, that Bunce was not so much of a fool as he looked, and the other, that Mrs. Dillingham was a mother.
Once, however, judgment had been entered to the effect that Mrs. Dillingham had never lawfully ceased to be Mrs. Hawkins, then the real reason of our client's anxiety to be rid of his wife and her child, a girl of six years, became apparent; for he instantly announced his engagement to a fashionable widow, who lacked money if not experience, and who needed the one as much as he had a super- abundance of the other. He made a fairly liberal allowance for his child and its mother, and since this was paid monthly through our office, I had an opportunity of making their acquaintance; and I confess that I had no sooner done so than I began to have a sort of regret for my own part in the transaction. For Mrs. Dillingham —Hawkins, or whatever she was—proved to be a rather sweet-faced young woman, with great, sad blue eyes and a winsomely childish innocence of expression that concealed, as I afterward found out, a will of iron and a heart full of courage.
She used to come and wait for Gottlieb or me to pay over her money, and while she waited she would sit there so helplessly, looking withal so lovely, that the clerks cannot be blamed for having talked to her. Incidentally she extracted from the susceptible Cohen various trifles in the way of information which later proved highly inconvenient. Yet she never asked me or my partner any questions or showed the slightest resentment at the part we had played as her husband's attorneys in ruining her life. Sometimes she brought the little girl with her and I marvelled that Dillingham could have sacrificed such a charming little daughter so easily.
Six months passed and the Dillingham scandal ceased to be a matter of public or even of private interest. Other affairs, equally profitable, engaged our attention, and the waiter, Hawkins, having received a substantial honorarium from the firm's bank account, had passed completely out of our minds. I had that winter been giving a series of dinners at my house to actor clients and their managers, and these had proved conspicuously successful for the reason that my guests were of the sort who, after the wine had begun to flow, had no hesitation in entertaining the rest of the company by an exhibition of their talents. Occasionally, as part of the fun, I would do a bit of a turn myself by way of reviving old memories of the Cock and Spur and my Athenaeum days in Boston.
It was on one of these festive occasions—not unlike, my readers may recall, my famous translation from college during my banquet at the Cambridge Tavern—that Fate struck me my first severe blow. My guests were still sitting at table while one of the ladies executed a fantastic dance amid the wine-glasses, when my butler touched me upon the arm and whispered that Mr. Gottlieb was outside and desired to see me on urgent business. Excusing myself, I hurried out, greeting my partner rather impatiently, as I disliked to be interrupted by business details in my hours of relaxation; but one sight of his weazened little hawk face sufficed to tell me that no trifling matter was at stake. He was in his day clothes, which were even more than ordinarily dishevelled, and his face, usually pale, was chalklike.