Tut, Tut! Mr. Tutt/The Cloak of St. Martin
THE CLOAK OF ST. MARTIN
St. Martin of Tours, best known for having given his cloak to a beggar, is also the patron saint of drunkards. This is due to the accident of his having been born upon the 11th of November, the “vinalia,” or Feast of Bacchus, which is in consequence now known as “St. Martin’s Day.” From his name is derived the French verb “martiner” (to be drunk) and the old English expression “to be Martin-drunk.”
I
Mr. Ezra Scraggs, the antiquated scrivener who occupied the wire cage in the outer office of Tutt & Tutt, glanced up at the clock over Willie Toothaker’s desk, sighed, laid down his pen, and turned to put on his fur coat. Scraggs and his coat were equally ancient, equally decrepit, and both inseparably connected with the past of Ephraim Tutt, for even before Samuel Tutt was, Scraggs had been.
The coat, now a patched and shiny garment of a vaguely green color with a collar of spiky reddish brown fur, had in his police court days been the pride and glory of young Ephraim Tutt, marking him out, together with his tall stovepipe hat, from the vulgar herd of criminal practitioners who swarmed in the Essex Market Court. That was thirty-seven years before. Scraggs, even then not so young as Ephraim Tutt, but thirty-seven years younger than he was now, had been haled one cold winter’s afternoon to the bar of justice charged with being drunk—“Martin-drunk.”
“Please be easy with me, judge!” pleaded the half-frozen Scraggs, “I know I’m drunk! But I’m down and out! I’ve no place to sleep. I’ve had nothin’ to eat for two whole days. I pawned my overcoat a week ago. A man threw me a dime and I bought a drink just to get warm!”
“No defense!” snapped the judge. “Three dollars or three days.”
The officer was about to lead Scraggs away when young Lawyer Tutt laid three dollars upon the desk. Something of refinement in the prisoner’s face had appealed to him.
“I’ll pay your fine. Come along with me,” he said; and when they were once outside, “Tell me the truth. Are you actually down and out? And do you want a chance?”
Scraggs nodded, shivering, the tears blurring his weak eyes.
Mr. Tutt took off his fur surtout and threw it over the derelict’s shoulders.
“Well—I’ll give you one!” he declared, clapping him upon the back.
That was thirty-seven years ago, and since that day Scraggs had never been separated from Mr. Tutt, nor the coat from Scraggs. In some strange, mystic way the coat symbolized to the drunkard the new life opened to him through his employer’s sympathy. In it he not only felt protected from the scornful and accusing glances of those who had known him before he had met Mr. Tutt, but shielded as by an armor of righteousness from temptation. Somehow it seemed to carry with it Mr. Tutt’s influence for good, strengthening Scraggs’ feeble resolution. Wearing it he realized that any unbecoming or ungenerous act would be a reflection upon the giver and a betrayal of his confidence. It was indeed a wonderful coat, and it was quite a long time before Scraggs succumbed to the lures of Satan.
But as the years went on, and the coat, in spite of every care, became spotted and frayed and worn, it seemed to lose something of its virtue. The irresistible craving, which had been his downfall at college, reasserted itself and Scraggs, leaving the coat carefully hanging in his wardrobe, would disappear for a few days, to return pale, bleary-eyed, and repentant. His career was marked like the course of a boat-race—with a succession of empty rum kegs each flying the white flag of surrender. But by that time he had become a fixture. Tutt & Tutt would no more have thought of closing the door of Scraggs’ wire cage against his return than Noah would have considered fastening the shutters on the outside of the ark to deny admittance to the homing dove, and the junior partner asserted that when Scraggs died, although he might look forward to being pickled, they were going to have him stuffed.
When prohibition came he still managed to get it—somehow.
He was bent, bald, decrepit; capable when sober of totting up columns of figures accurately and copying in an uncannily neat, if slightly tremulous, script such documents as the purse and station of the firm’s more favored clients might justify. He also kept the books—as well as he could, in view of Mr. Tutt’s outrageous carelessness in failing to make any record of the many loose vouchers which he was accustomed to carry around in his pocket, and filled out and cashed wherever he happened to be. Yet even this serious failing did not diminish Scraggs’ adoration for Mr. Tutt, who, in return, had a great pity for the old fellow’s moral struggles and a whimsical appreciation of the influence the coat seemed to exert over him.
Whenever the scrivener was unaccountably absent, Mr. Tutt would glance into the cage and, if the old fur coat were not there, would remark reassuringly, “Scraggs is all right. He’s got his coat!”
Whereas the sight of it hanging there, in its owner’s absence, inevitably aroused fears as to his condition—like a storm signal indicating the imminence of wet weather.
As Tutt had once put it rather neatly: “Scraggs’ coat on that peg is the crepe on the door-knob of his sobriety.”
And he wore it winter and summer—his magic coat that made him invisible to the powers of evil.
But—having upon this occasion, as we have already said, looked at the clock, laid down his pen, and turned to put on the coat—he now thought better of it and decided that, on the whole, there was no particular use in going outside for his lunch when he could do just about as well at the cafeteria in the basement. Accordingly, he left the coat on its peg and, having locked the door of the cage, put the key in his pocket, and fixing his eye severely upon Willie Toothaker said: “Don’t you dare go out until I come back!”
“Don’t you worry ’bout me!” retorted Willie. “I can take care of myself all right—and a good deal better’n some. Have you got Mr. Tutt’s checks ready for him to sign?”
Now it so happened that the scrivener had been engaged in making out Mr. Tutt’s personal checks at the very moment he had looked at the clock, and that they were not quite done.
Scraggs therefore did not reply. It was none of that boy’s business whether he had them ready or not.
“Better take your coat with you!” warned the annoying urchin.
Scraggs glared at him, turned his back, and made his way to the door. There was no need for him to take his coat with him—for he was only going down-stairs in the elevator to take a quick snack at the luncheon-counter, with maybe a glass of malted milk. Malted milk! “Milk for babes!” “A little wine for thy stomach’s sake” would be more like it. Involuntarily, as he closed the outer door behind him, he ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth. How long was it since he’d had a drink? Let’s see—three weeks! And then only a glass of lager. That didn’t count anyway, and it had been home-brew at that—less than five per cent. The one overpowering emotion that ever swept over his old body, the one irresistible lust of his desiccated flesh, unaccountably possessed him as he stood there, tingling at his fingers and toes, drying his throat and mouth.
Suddenly he sniffed, stiffening like a pointer dog. He heard a voice.
“Mr. Scraggs, isn’t it? Remember me? I was just comin’ in to see you. My name’s Gill—the firm used to be Annis and Gill. You did quite a lot of business with us at one time, I believe.”
A thickset man was standing before him, one hand extended in fellowship, the other holding by the string a paper covered package. A subtle, soul-satisfying odor seemed to emanate clandestinely from the stranger, and to impregnate the circumambient atmosphere.
“Yes, yes!” answered Scraggs tremulously. “Of course, I remember you very well!”
“Ever need anything in our line now? Are you all looked out for?” inquired Mr. Gill amiably, as if not desiring to intrude himself upon the preserves of others.
Scraggs’ tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. His throat seemed to be on fire. Where, oh where, was his magic coat? He steadied himself with a hand against the door jamb. Then he made an heroic effort and shook his head.
“No, thank you. I don’t need anything!” he answered feebly. Mr. Gill nodded affably.
“I got something particularly good,” he said, tapping the package. “The real thing—Teague and Teague. Got fourteen cases off the last liner that came in. I can let you have it—delivered in your house or office—for one hundred and twenty dollars.”
Scraggs’ head was swimming.
“No!” he protested thickly. “Really”
Unconsciously he moistened his lips. Mr. Gill saw it.
“Listen,” said the bootlegger. “Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll slip you a sample pint right now for nothing. And then, in case you decide you’d like a case, I’ll be around later in my car—say at half-past five—with the goods. Anyhow I’ll drop in here just to find out. If you don’t want anything, it’ll be all right. No feeling at all!”
He had backed Scraggs into a corner, and, before the scrivener quite realized it, had forced a small flat bottle into his not unwilling hands. A case? No! But this was a gift! After all, Gill had taken enough out of him in past years to warrant that slight deception. Besides—possibly—sometime—he might
“All right,” he answered. “If you shouldn’t find me here when you come you’ll know I don’t want anything.”
“Right-o!” agreed Mr. Gill. “Well, see you later, maybe!”
The elevator picked him up and he was gone. Scraggs stood motionless and ecstatic, with the bottle in his hand. Then he walked slowly down the hall toward the back stairs.
He returned to the office shortly before two o’clock, elated, transfigured, and trailing clouds of alcoholic glory. An hour before he had been depressed and disgruntled, had felt old and tired. Now everything was completely altered. The short pint had done its work. Thirty-seven years had dropped off him in almost that number of minutes. It was a new Scraggs entirely who sauntered back into his cage—debonair, nonchalant, witty, or so he seemed to himself.
“Life in the old dog yet!” He’d take no lip from that young Jackanapes! No, sir! He fumbled the key to the cage, finding it a trifle difficult to focus his vision through the golden nimbus of happiness surrounding him, and at first, after he had climbed up on his high stool, there seemed to be many more papers and one or two more pens on his desk than before lunch. But presently he was hard at work again filling out Mr. Tutt’s checks. He hummed softly an ancient melody—vintage of 1857.
“Woof!” sniffed Mr. Bonnie Doon coming in to make his afternoon report to Samuel Tutt, who had charge of the accident cases. “There is a peculiar odor of sanctity in this office!”
“So I have observed!” replied the junior partner, eyeing Scraggs sternly, “if ‘observed’ is the proper verb under these circumstances.”
“If I hadn’t heretofore acted as Scraggs’ attorney, and the Court of Appeals hadn’t expressly held that for a lawyer to disclose the fact that his client had a whiskey breath was revealing a confidential communication, and hence a violation of Section 835 of the Code of Civil Procedure”—he grinned—“I might say something.”
“And you’d say a noseful!” remarked Tutt disgustedly. “By the way, has any fool court actually gone so far as to hold that an alcoholic breath was a confidential communication?”
“It has,” answered Bonnie. “‘Any fact ascertained from or regarding one’s client in the course of one’s professional employment.’”
“That’s on a par with their refusing to allow a layman to testify that in his opinion another man was drunk,” snorted Tutt. “As if anybody needed a medical license to find that out!”
“‘Your nose knows,’” agreed Bonnie, wrinkling his.
“Anyhow, I’m willing to take judicial notice that Scraggs is brilliantly illuminated,” said Tutt. “If he gets too gay, tell Willie to turn the key on him.”
II
“Oh, Jehoshaphat!” exclaimed the Honorable Ephraim Tutt, an hour and a half later, hurling his stub book across the room and through the door leading into the outer office, and strewing a hundred or so of cancelled vouchers over the floor. “Oh, temperature! Oh, Moses! Oh, hell!”
He leaned back in his swivel chair and shook a scrawny fist at the dingy bust of Plato in the corner.
“You never had to balance a check book!” he asserted. “Only that fact could account for your monumental calm!”
The exit of the stub book was followed by the immediate advent of Miss Minerva Wiggin holding the missile in her hand.
“Why this display of temper?” she inquired reprovingly. “You don’t wish me to infer that you can’t add—do you?”
“I decline to incriminate myself!” he answered with a wry smile. “Isn’t it nearly tea-time?”
“Wil-lee!” called Miss Wiggin over her shoulder. “The tea things!”
“The trouble is,” confessed her employer, as Willie wheeled out the old gate-leg table from behind the screen, “that half the time there aren’t any figures there at all!”
“Honestly, that old man’s carelessness in regard to money matters is enough to bring down a bank president’s gray hairs in sorrow to the vault,” declared Tutt, strolling in.
Mr. Tutt sipped the tea handed him by Miss Wiggin, and then fumbled in the long coffin-shaped box for a stogy.
“You haven’t enough faith,” he asserted, “in either the honesty or the accuracy of mankind. Therefore you make me spend hours every month going over my check books, comparing the cancelled vouchers with the bank statements, and trying to make them conform—and they never have yet—in thirty-seven years! They never will either!”
“Not so long as you draw checks without entering them on your stubs, or forget to put down the amounts!” she retorted. “A child could rob you!”
“But no child would want to rob me!” he protested gently. “I should hate to go through life expecting to be taken advantage of or cheated, in some way, at every turn! I’d rather lose my money than my belief in human nature.”
“Then why do you get into this stew every month?” asked Miss Wiggin.
“Because you insist that I shall do so, my dear!” he lamented.
“Pooh!” remarked Tutt, laying down his cup and lighting a cigarette. “He knows well enough that there’s a point where any man will yield to temptation, and that everybody—including banks—makes mistakes! So he tries to add up his figures and simply finds he can’t! He’s just lazy, that’s all!”
“Nonsense!” answered Mr. Tutt. “I could add up the figures on my counterfoils perfectly well if I wanted to—and if there were any. I can add as well as you can, Tutt! And anyhow, they use adding-machines in the banks. Machines don’t—can’t—make mistakes! I never heard of a bank making an error yet, in all the thirty-seven years”
“You wouldn’t know it if they had,” retorted his partner. “You acknowledge you never yet succeeded in balancing your own check book. No wonder, either, when you go wandering round town all night like a ‘nit-wit,’ without a cent in your pocket, and then borrow a blank check from the night-clerk at the Astor and cash it on the Century Roof! Criminal negligence—that’s what it is! You deserve to lose your money!”
“When I lose any it will be time enough for you to talk!” replied Mr. Tutt stiffly. “Meanwhile!”
“Meanwhile you’ll go on signing every check that’s shoved at you without looking, and have St. Vitus’ Dance, delirium tremens, and senile dementia the first of every month, simply because you won’t take the trouble to make a note of what checks you cash away from the office, to fill out the stubs of those you draw when you’re here, or to sign your name on any of ’em so anybody can read it.”
“I write as legibly as any of you!” replied Mr. Tutt with dignity. “Anyhow the bank has no difficulty in reading my signature, and, after all, that’s the important thing, isn’t it? As for filling out my stubs—Scraggs does all that for me. If occasionally I draw a check outside—why, I usually remember the amount.”
He winked mischievously at Miss Wiggin, who made a face at him in return, and then proceeded to pick up the scattered vouchers, which she placed upon his desk in two neat piles.
“There!” she said. “In that pile are the cancelled vouchers, returned by the bank with last month’s statement, and in this pile are the checks Scraggs has just drawn for you to sign in payment of your bills that came in the first of this month. Now be a good boy, and look them all over carefully.”
“Look ’em over fiddlesticks!” retorted the old man in pretended wrath. “Not much! What do I pay Scraggs for? I refuse to look at that infernal bank statement again. I don’t care what it says. Take it away. I’d rather go bankrupt. As for those other checks, I suppose I’ve got to sign ’em, but I really don’t see why Scraggs or Willie shouldn’t do it for me.”
“He’s incorrigible!” grumbled Tutt as Miss Wiggin rinsed out the cups and called Willie to put back the table. “But some day something may happen!”
“Crepe hanger!” shouted his partner indignantly. “Get out of my office! Here, Minerva! Hand me those checks! How’s that for a John Hancock?”
And the old lawyer affixed his name to the topmost of the pile with a flourish worthy of Mr. Spencer himself.
Mr. Tutt was not peculiar in his distaste for the details of elementary bookkeeping, which is shared by most professional men. Who of us does not contemplate with dread the monthly comparison of the bank’s statement with our own—up to that moment—supposedly accurately ascertained balance? Why is it that we who faithfully and even cheerfully perform most of the routine duties of our humdrum lives, including our preposterous “daily dozen,” find it difficult, if not impossible, to bring ourselves to fill out our check stubs and add up the amounts upon the counterfoils? To do so requires no knowledge of bookkeeping or accountancy. It demands only accuracy, which involves only the ability to add. Yet when a professional man keeps his own accounts, his books will almost inevitably reveal inaccuracies in addition. His check book refuses to synchronize with the bank balance. Both can’t be right, but his own error is lost in a mass of detail and, after poring over his accounts for an hour without result, he throws up his hands in despair, concludes that the bank is probably right, and accepts its figures, although—as some of us know—banks do sometimes make mistakes.
III
As the afternoon wore on the benign effect of the Teague and Teague wore off, leaving Scraggs more depressed than ever and tortured with a devouring thirst. The taste of the whiskey had roused in him a sleeping lion that seemed clawing him to bits. It seemed as if he and the lion were caged in there together. Mr. Tutt had signed the checks and handed them to him on his way out of the office, and now the scrivener kept doggedly on at his monthly task of placing each one with its accompanying bill in a properly addressed stamped envelope. There were a lot of them, and everybody had left the office, as he had intended that they should, long before he finished. Mr. Gill was coming at half-past five with the case of Teague and Teague, and although Scraggs knew that it was impossible for him to pay for it, he nevertheless did not wish to lose his hold on the bootlegger, who, after all, was an old friend. Meantime the menagerie inside him grew more and more ravenous. Maybe Gill would let him have another pint! Scraggs kept on folding the bills, inserting the checks, and laboriously addressing the envelopes. He did not stamp or seal them in the cage, however. To lick the mucilage under the circumstances would have been too desperate a torture. He would wait and moisten the lot with one fell swoop of Willie Toothaker’s sponge.
He had just finished addressing the last envelope when Mr. Gill entered.
“Well, Mr. Scraggs!” he said, good-naturedly. “How about it? Shall I bring up that case? It’s right down in my bus at the bottom of the freight elevator. I’m practically giving it to you for one hundred and twenty, but you’re an old customer.”
Scraggs was suffering an excruciating agony. The lion’s claws were deep in his viscera. He swallowed, finding difficulty in replying to Mr. Gill—all of which Mr. Gill duly observed. This time the latter held no package in his hand.
“I’m sorry,” Scraggs answered at length in a husky voice; “but I really can’t afford the money.” He did not have the nerve to ask Gill if he ever let anything go retail—broke a case.
“Only a hundred and twenty!” repeated Gill encouragingly. “Last you forever!”
He sauntered casually through the offices, glanced into the chamber sacred to Mr. Tutt, and stood looking through Miss Wiggin’s window, giving the poison time to work.
Meantime, Scraggs sat rigid at his desk, his bloodshot eyes hypnotized by an oblong piece of paper which he now for the first time perceived lying inconspicuously one side of the blotter—a check bearing the almost undecipherable signature of Mr. Tutt to the order of Jno. E. Watts for one hundred and twenty dollars! One hundred and twenty dollars! The precise amount. He experienced a contraction of the larynx and a slight numbing of his motor centres. One hundred and twenty dollars! Just the price of a case! How had he happened to omit to put the check in its proper envelope? He ran his finger through the pile, found the one addressed to Jno. E. Watts, opened it, and discovered there was a check in it already for one hundred and twenty dollars! He must have drawn two checks for the same bill! He remembered now that Watts was Mr. Tutt’s grocer, and the Watts check was the last one he had drawn before going out to lunch. He had duplicated it on his return. Everything had been looking double about that time.
A wicked but wonderful and fascinatingly clever scheme slowly formulated itself in his mind. He could indorse Watts’ name on the back of the check and give it to Gill in payment for the whiskey. The bootlegger could, of course, cash it on the strength of his own indorsement. He, Scraggs, would alter the stub—mark it “cancelled” or “void.” At the end of the month he could abstract the check itself from among those returned from the bank without Mr. Tutt being any the wiser. There would be nothing to show that any such check had ever been issued!
A chill ran along his spine and a dampness collected behind his ears. A cinch! The only possibility of detection lay in the consequent failure of Mr. Tutt’s balance to agree with that of the bank—but this could be disregarded, since the two never balanced. Checks were always turning up which Mr. Tutt had forgotten entirely. The old lawyer rarely looked over his returned vouchers, but, should he do so, and even should he notice the second Watts check indorsed and cashed by Mr. Gill, there would be nothing to arouse his suspicions, since the signature would be genuine.
Even that situation, harmless as it probably would turn out to be, could be obviated just as he planned, by removing the check from the bundle and destroying it before handing the bank statement over to his employer. Every evidence of irregularity would be wiped out, except the bank’s debit charge of one hundred and twenty dollars on its statement for which there would be no corresponding voucher. That discrepancy would not, however, necessarily involve him, since the voucher might have been lost or mislaid at the bank, and so not included with the others. If any question arose it would naturally be assumed that the missing check was one of those irresponsibly cashed by Mr. Tutt upon some one of his nocturnal rambles about town. Scraggs’ woozy brain grasped all these angles in an instant; they were in his line of business. The lion tore at his vitals, roaring in his ears, drowning the voice of conscience. He must satisfy it—quench its thirst!
With an astonishing facility he reversed the check, and wrote swiftly across the back, the words “Jno. E. Watts.”
“All right,” he said, nonchalantly; “you don’t mind a check, do you?”
“Not if it’s good!” laughed Mr. Gill, taking it. “Who’s this Watts?”
“Mr. Tutt’s grocer,” answered Scraggs. “I was just going to mail it to him, when he came in himself and asked for cash. Rather than have all the bother of cancelling the check and charging it off, I had him indorse it. If you’d prefer the money I’ll go down-stairs and get it for you at the bank. No, I can’t either, at this hour—five-thirty.”
“I don’t want cash,” answered Gill. “I guess I can take a chance on Ephraim Tutt’s signature for a hundred and twenty dollars. Where’ll you have the stuff?”
There was no place in Scraggs’ tiny bedroom to conceal even a phial from the watchful eye of his landlady—another bright idea occurred to him.
“Bring it up here!” he said.
IV
There were times during the ensuing month when Scraggs achieved a blurred sort of happiness. These were the evenings when, under a pretense of having work to do, he stayed on at the office and, locking himself in after the departure of the Lithuanian scrubwomen, surrendered himself to the consolation of the Teague and Teague. Yet no sooner did he, on these occasions, take down his old fur overcoat and put it on than he invariably began to experience such pangs of contrition as to make his life almost unendurable. These usually lasted throughout the night, and until he got safely back into his cage the following morning. From that time on habit would reassert itself, and he would go through the motions of his various duties with an appearance of calmness, which in reality concealed sickening apprehension.
For he could not bring himself to look Mr. Tutt in the face. With the others in the office he affected a strange and unbecoming bravado. All sensed something the matter with the old man. They had always looked upon him as one already dead, and this galvanic return to life under an unseen stimulus had something grotesque and even terrible about it.
As the days passed he became, during his intervals of sobriety, more and more fearful lest in some unexpected fashion his crime should be revealed. Every casual remark, every look, exchanged between Tutt, Willie Toothaker, Miss Sondheim, Miss Wiggin, or Bonnie Doon seemed charged with significance. Any reference to a bank statement made him nearly swoon. He pictured his guilt discovered, the officers of the law summoned, himself locked in a prison cell—“The Tombs!” At such times the wire cage in which he sat became the symbol of the dock in the criminal court in which he would eventually be tried and hear his doom pronounced. He particularly feared Miss Wiggin. Her eye seemed to be in every place. As for Willie Toothaker, the gibes and taunts of that young imp, which heretofore he had regarded as but the harmless vaporings of an adolescent mind, now appeared to Scraggs as laden with deep and hidden meanings. Humorous references to his coat seemed somehow almost equivalent to direct accusations of guilt.
He aged perceptibly during the three weeks of torture through which he passed, becoming furtive, apologetic, palpably more feeble and uncertain in his movements, almost senile. Willie declared that he could hear the hardening of Scraggs’ arteries. It was bad enough by day, when he had the momentum of thirty-seven years of habit behind him to bolster him up and shove him along. But at night, to the fear of discovery, was added the excoriation of his conscience. From the moment when at five o’clock he turned and slipped his right arm through the sleeve of his fur coat, to the following morning when he re-hung it upon its hook, he was the prey to a remorse far more bitter than the suffering of his unsatisfied thirst. The consciousness that he had betrayed Mr. Tutt’s confidence, had turned upon and stung him like a snake in the grass, made his nights a hell. He had robbed his benefactor. He was as despicable as Judas. He could no longer sleep, no longer eat. The only thing that kept him going was the Teague and Teague.
The end of the month—the shortest in the year—leaped toward him. Three more days, and the bulky envelope containing the evidence of his crime—the monthly bank statement with its accompanying bundle of cancelled vouchers—would be delivered in the morning mail. Suppose Miss Wiggin, or even Mr. Tutt, should happen to get to the office ahead of him, open the envelope, check off the vouchers against the statement, and discover the second check for one hundred and twenty dollars, with the forged indorsement? Jail for him! Worse than that the look of sadness in Mr. Tutt’s eyes! He could not chance it. He must get that check from the bank and destroy it before it could be returned to his employer.
Unable to trust his shaking fingers to indite a letter to the bank, he picked one out on Miss Sondheim’s typewriter, requesting the cashier to “deliver to bearer check No. 300 for one hundred and twenty dollars drawn by me February 4, to the order of Jno. E. Watts.” This he signed “Ephraim Tutt, per E. S.,” and at the noon-hour delivered it himself, stating that he would return later on for the reply. An hour afterward when he went back to the window, in place of the long envelope containing the check possession of which he sought, he was handed a note addressed to Ephraim Tutt, Esq., stating that in response to the latter’s request the bank had searched its files and found that a check for one hundred and twenty dollars to the order of Jno. E. Watts had in fact been presented for payment through the Chemical National Bank and paid on February 6, but that this check was stamped No. 299 and not No. 300. Should this be the check desired, they would be pleased to return same if so advised, and meantime they respectfully begged to remain, E. and O. E., etc., etc., his obedient servants, World without end, Amen! The Utopia Trust Co., per O. M. Fithian, 2d Cashier.
V
Scraggs’ relief on learning that the forged check had not been deposited for collection was but momentary, for it was immediately followed by the ghastly realization that outstanding in the hands of a man like Gill it was infinitely more dangerous. He at once became convinced that the bootlegger would hold it over his head as a club with which to blackmail for the rest of his life, to compel him to commit forgery after forgery until finally he should be abandoned to the harsh mercies of the criminal law. He had fatuously fancied that Gill had been taken in by his silly story about the grocer wanting cash. He now perceived that it could not have fooled anybody, much less the crafty bootlegger. He would be coming around any time now demanding more money—and no mere hundred and twenty dollars either! Gill would try to stick him up for thousands—thousands! Alarm at what the future might hold in store turned his bowels to water. What an abject idiot he had been to forge Watts’ name on the check! He must get the check back from Gill somehow—anyhow! The possibility that Gill might have lost the check occurred to him, but in that event the bootlegger would have come around again asking for another. No, Gill was going to suck his blood—strip the withered skin from his old bones! The end of the month under these circumstances, however, unless the check should be presented for payment in the meantime—which seemed unlikely—no longer held any special terrors for him. It was now simply a question of when Gill would begin his fiendish scheme of blackmail.
The bootlegger made his appearance that very afternoon. He came at half-past four, while all the staff, including both Tutts, were still there, and walked right up to the cage and thrust his hand through the grill. To the half fainting Scraggs his face, seen through the apertures of the wire, seemed like that of a hideous grinning hyena.
“Well,” he said, in a circumspect whisper. “How about it? Want any more of the stuff? I can let you have some while it lasts.”
Scraggs, bewildered, ran his fingers through the half-dozen spikes of gray hair protruding from his withered dome. Gill did not look as if he harbored any evil purposes—any other, at least, than those implied by his profession.
“How’d you like the last?” he inquired.
“All right,” croaked Scraggs, his lips clicking.
The next thing, he felt sure, would be that Gill would order him to slip him a check for five hundred dollars. That, of course, was why he had come so early in the afternoon—in order to terrorize him with fear of instant disclosure before the firm.
“S’pose anybody else here—any of your—er—associates—might like a little?” breathed Gill, almost inaudibly.
A huge relief, almost an ecstasy, pervaded Scraggs. He shook his head with decision.
“No—no! But meet me outside in the hall. I’ll join you in two minutes,” he said in a guttural tone, and Gill, with a disappointed glance around the office, reluctantly walked out of the door, through which he had entered so shortly before.
“Look here!” queried Scraggs, as they confronted one another in the hall behind the elevator; “why haven’t you cashed that check for a hundred and twenty dollars I gave you?”
“I did—next morning,” replied Gill, “Do you suppose I can afford to let money sit and wait for me? Not me! I have to keep it moving.”
“It hasn’t been presented for payment!” persisted Scraggs—as if distrustful of the bootlegger’s reply.
“That’s funny!” answered Gill. “I deposited it right off, as I told you, in my own bank—the Chemical National. It must have gone through all right, because my account was credited with it. I drew against it long ago.”
“Well, where the devil is it?” demanded the scrivener, now satisfied of the ingenuousness of Gill, but even more apprehensive lest some other person unknown might have secured possession of the damning bit of paper. “Where do you suppose it can be?”
“Hanged if I know!” replied Gill. “Your bank ought to have it. They must have paid it, because my bank got the money. Yes, sir, they must have that check. Unless—” and he paused humorously.
“—Unless what?” cried Scraggs in distress.
“Unless some mouse has et it!” concluded Gill. “Say, if I can’t sell you any more to-day, I must be hoppin’ along. If you want some, give me a ring!”
Thoroughly mystified Scraggs re-entered his cage. Had Providence intervened to save him? Was it conceivable that the great Utopia Trust Company, which financed half the international loans, and was almost as powerful as the government itself, had lost the check. It wasn’t possible! Its system of recording and balancing was automatic and mechanically perfect. The Utopia Trust Company would not err, even if it could not forgive. But where was the check?
“Who was that fellow that came in?” asked Tutt of Bonnie, as the accountant left his cage and limped to the door.
“That is Scraggs’ private bootlegger,” Mr. Doon informed him. “And,” he elevated his nose slightly in the direction of the empty cage, “I should say that he was probably a good one!”
VI
Scraggs’ anxieties did not abate by reason of the fact that he no longer feared being blackmailed by Gill. Someone in the bank might have got hold of the check and intend using it for the same purpose, or, almost as bad, it might have been mislaid in some way, in which case, on its eventual discovery, it would be returned to Mr. Tutt in a separate envelope with a note of explanation, thus drawing attention to it in a manner inviting certain detection.
He tossed feverishly on his cot throughout the entire night of February 28, afraid to go to sleep lest he should not wake up early enough to reach the office in time to intercept the bank’s monthly statement in the morning mail, and he arose at the first daylight, dressed, put on his fur coat, and, without stopping for breakfast, hurried down-town. It was not yet six o’clock, and the mail did not come until eighty-thirty, at which hour Willie Toothaker was supposed to be on hand, although Scraggs knew, as they all did, that he never was. Nevertheless he was determined to take no chances. There might have been an extra delivery of mail the night before after they had all gone home, and the statement be among it. He signed the book for the night watchman, ascended in the elevator, walked down the long marble corridor in which his steps echoed as in a lonely chapel, and unlocked the outer door.
How deserted the rooms seemed, and yet, somehow, instinct with life! The steam had not been turned on yet, and it was a trifle cold. He got out a bottle of whiskey and took a stiff drink—neat. It made him feel much better, but he kept his coat on, and foraging for a cigarette in the top drawer of Bonnie Doon’s desk, lit it and sat down in the sag bottomed easy-chair in Tutt’s office.
He could look straight through the open door to where Mr. Tutt always sat at his rickety old desk. Although he had worked there half his life he had never been down at such an hour. The place seemed alive with spirits, not of the departed, but of those who spent their days there. He could see Miss Wiggin’s narrow back as she bent over her books, and Bonnie Doon’s long legs as he lounged half beneath the table. A paper crackled and a snicker eddied softly from where Willie lurked at the office rail, and he could hear Miss Sondheim’s typewriter clicking—“tut—tut—Tutt & Tutt—tut-a-tut-tut—Tutt & Tutt!” And there was old Scraggs, the scrivener, perched on his high stool in the cage. Funny dried up old man! “Tut-a-tut-tut—Tutt & Tutt!” went Miss Sondheim’s machine. He moved uneasily and glanced through the door at Mr. Tutt. The old man was gazing reproachfully at him, elbows on the desk in front of him, his chin on his hands. How sad he looked! As if he bore upon his high-rounded shoulders most of the sorrows of mankind. Scraggs turned away his eyes. He could not look at Mr. Tutt. They were blurred with tears anyway. What an ungrateful wretch he had been! Thirty-seven years together! Mr. Tutt had rescued him from the gutter, held out the hand of affection and encouragement, put his own coat upon his back! And how had he repaid him? With a sob Scraggs dropped his head upon the moth-eaten collar of his fur coat. Once he raised his eyes furtively. Mr. Tutt was holding out his arms to him in mute appeal.
Click! The postman was shoving the mail through the letter slide, and it was dropping, plopping, and flopping in a pile upon the floor. Scraggs awoke abruptly. He looked about startled. Where was everybody! Click! The cover of the slide closed, and the steps of the postman crossed the corridor. He recalled where he was and why. Taking off his coat, he hung it on the peg inside the cage, and pawed over the mail. The monthly statement was there! He opened it hurriedly and examined the cancelled vouchers. The check drawn to Jno. E. Watts and dated February 4 was not among them! Luck was with him!
With a deep sigh of relief he replaced the vouchers and statement in the envelope, laid it with the rest of the mail for Mr. Tutt upon the latter’s desk, and descended to the basement for a bite of breakfast at the cafeteria.
The girl behind the counter chaffed him good-naturedly about having been up “stravagling” all night, and the hot coffee and frankfurter started the sap flowing through his withered limbs. His spirits rose with the steam from the canteen. He began to feel that he had been unduly fearful of discovery. The check was lost—had slipped down a crack probably, or into a wastepaper basket, and was gone forever. Otherwise it would have come back long ago to plague him. No, he could breathe freely! The chances were now all in his favor. After all, what was a hundred and twenty dollars to Mr. Tutt? A mere nothing! Besides, he, Scraggs, had earned that amount over his salary a thousand times. His mercury began to rise. For the first time since he had parted with the check he felt reasonably at ease. He bought one of his favorite five-cent cigars—a “J. B.”—paid for his breakfast, and returned to the office. It was empty—only ten minutes to nine. That young rapscallion of a Willie might not come along for another half-hour. Scraggs found himself humming an old song:
“Each rosy morn with hounds and horn
Young bucks a-hunting go!
Young bucks a-hunting go-o-o!
Young bucks a-hunting go-o-o!
For all my fancy dwells with Nancy.
Hark! Sweet tally-ho!”
A good old song! His cracked voice quavered through the rooms.
It was still cold up there and he put on his coat again.
“Let bucks a-hunting go!”
He remembered now why the song held a special sentiment for him. He had known a girl named Nancy—Nance O’Dell—up in Kingston back when he was a lad.
“For all my fancy dwells with Nancy!”
She had died, poor thing, drowned in the Rondout Creek! His rheumy eyes filled. He had not thought of her for years. He felt now that he had known Nance O’Dell very well, although in point of fact this was not so. She had drowned herself in the creek for love of another. But Scraggs had forgotten that. Fifty years ago that was! His handkerchief was still crummy from the frankfurter, but he wiped his eyes with it and went back into the cage. That was the way of it! You died and were forgotten—just as he had forgotten his sweet little love—Nancy. There would be nobody to remember him after he was gone. There would be the customary “office funeral”—a wreath, “We mourn our loss!”—and then some other moth-eaten old squirrel would be stuck into the cage to go whirring round. “Moth-eaten old squirrel!” That was just what he was!
He had forfeited the dearest blessing life had to offer—a home of his own hallowed by the love of a wife and children. If only he had had a child! He laughed. Why, it would be old enough to have children of its own by that time. He might have had grandchildren! Who would gather prattling about him in the evening before the fire and listen with eyes of wonder, while he told them stories of his boyhood instead of sitting alone in his chilly little room studying the evening paper until it was time to go to bed. Nobody’s fault but his own! He had thrown away every chance of happiness—for what? Rum! Those mocking pleasures of the bottle, that had robbed him of his self-control, his powers of mind and body, until now he was—just what he was!—a moth-eaten old squirrel, spinning in its cage until it died. And once again he squirmed at the thought of how he had treated Mr. Tutt. Rum had done that, too! Another black mark to be added to the hateful score. Well, it was too late to do anything about it now. He must stick it out. A loathsome business, it was! Disgusting and despicable! A forger! He knew the penalty—twenty years. He daren’t take a chance on admitting it. Even if Mr. Tutt might be moved to pity, there was always the other fellow whose name he had violated—Watts. And the bank! All the banks belonged to some association or other that obligated them to prosecute forgers to the bitter end. He looked down at the sleeves of his coat—Mr. Tutt’s coat—given him just because he had been cold. A fine way to pay him back! With a groan he went back into his cage and clanged-to the door behind him; then climbed to his seat on the high stool and huddled there shivering, with the skirts of his patched old surtout dangling about his thin legs.
There was a slight noise at the door. A short, thick-set woman in dingy black, holding a baby, was standing just inside the threshold. She gave the appearance of having on a large wardrobe of petticoats. A scrubwoman probably! They were apt to come to Mr. Tutt if they got into difficulties. This one was swarthy, her young-old face marked, as most of them were, by anxiety and undernourishment, but with something rather fine about it—of patience, courage, cheerfulness. A good woman, anybody could see that—even if she was a foreigner and a peasant. The baby—one of the fat, gurgling variety—wriggled and poked her cheek with its fist.
“Eesa—eesa theese Meester Tutt?” she asked with a faint smile, as she dodged the fingers that clutched at her lips. Scraggs shook his head.
The woman looked disappointed, but the baby, intrigued at the sight of an old gentleman in a cage, began to coo and hold out its chubby arms. Scraggs was greatly flattered. He had always liked babies, and there was something particularly jolly and enticing about this one. He yearned to lift it out of its mother’s arms, crunch it up against the collar of his surtout, and stick his old nose in its soft little neck.
“Da-da!” it said, nodding violently.
Scraggs beamed. It was an age since he had made a hit with anybody, even a baby. For the moment he forgot all his misery.
“Goo-ee!” he replied, following up the communication with a series of those clucking sounds supposed to give gratification to the young. The infant squawked with delight, waving its arms, and the mother grinned appreciatively. Even if he were not the great Mr. Tutt, this was a nice man!
“Ho-ho! Good baby!” chirped Scraggs, descending from his stool and coming out of the cage. Then abandoning all reserve he suddenly began to sing
“How sweet is the horn that sounds in the morn.
Young bucks a-hunting go!
Young bucks a-hunting go-o-o!
Young bucks a-hunting go-o-o!
For all my fancy dwells with Nancy.
Whilst I sing tally-ho-o-o!”
“Well, well!” he ejaculated, out of breath. “Who’d ’a’ thought I’d be singin’ to a baby at this hour of the morning!”
He coughed in a deprecating manner.
“Won’t you sit down and wait?”
The woman shook her head in turn.
“I come again. Or I loosa the job!”
“Is there anything I can do?” inquired Scraggs politely.
The woman shrugged her shoulders. Then, shifting the baby and taking from her bosom a piece of paper, she held it out to him.
Scraggs’ knees turned wabbly. It was No. 300—the check for one hundred and twenty dollars bearing the forged indorsement. His Adam’s apple seemed to swell to enormous proportions and fill his entire throat.
“Thees notta my name!” she said. “But the bank maka me pay!”
Scraggs subsided upon Willie Toothaker’s desk. The worst had happened. The bank had made some crazy sort of a mistake. Everything would come out! He was ruined!
He waved his hand feebly toward the chair usually occupied by Miss Wiggin.
“Sit down!” he faltered, feeling a thousand years old.
The woman put the baby on the desk beside her and pulled out the chair. Scraggs looked at the clock. It was only a few minutes past nine. She followed his eyes.
“I stay twenta min!” she said.
But in spite of her ignorance of English she managed, in some extraordinary way, to communicate to him the nature of her trouble in less time. It may have been that the tension under which he was laboring had keyed up the old man’s power of interpretation, or that the woman herself possessed an extraordinary faculty of transmitting her ideas by gesture and expression.
Probably it was a little of both, with the added element that Scraggs must intuitively have suspected what had occurred. The gist of it was simple enough. Her name was Tull. An Italian girl wedded to an English Cockney. Her husband, a window-washer, had died the year before, leaving a hundred and fifty dollars in the Utopia Trust Company. She had wisely resolved to leave it there and never to touch it. She had found a job as a cleaner at thirteen dollars a week and had got along well enough until she had caught the flu. The doctor’s bill had been thirty-five dollars. She had gone to the bank, filled out a check for that amount, and—been informed that the account contained a balance of only thirty dollars! Not enough to meet her check for the doctor. They had given her a statement and a cancelled voucher which had been charged against her account for one hundred and twenty dollars. This was it, in her hand. It was not hers. She had lost a hundred and twenty dollars! The cashier had given her a list of depositors with somewhat similar names. Mr. Tutt’s had been the first.
Again she extended the check to Scraggs for his examination. He had no need to look at it. He already realized precisely what must have occurred. Gill had deposited the check at his own bank, the Utopia’s cashier had honored it on its receipt from the Clearing House on the strength of the Chemical National’s indorsement, barely glancing at the face of it, if, in fact, even doing that, and then, when he had sought later in the day to charge it to the right account, had been unable to read the signature. He had probably therefore looked through the “T” cards to find the nearest thing to it, and having reached Mrs. Tull’s signature had assumed that it was the same as that on the check. Once he had charged the check to her account his pride had naturally demanded that he should make at least a show of requiring further proof before acknowledging his mistake. The name on the check might have been almost anybody’s—Tull, Tall, Tell, Teel, or any one of a hundred others. He, Scraggs, could recognize it easily enough as Mr. Tutt’s signature, but nobody else, including Mr. Tutt himself, could be blamed for not doing so, particularly as there was no identifying name engraved or printed upon the check.
The baby, doubtless desiring a vocal encore, had started crawling toward him across Miss Wiggin’s desk.
“Da-da!” it remarked with a gluey chuckle.
Mrs. Tull pulled it back by the legs, gurgling on its stomach.
“You keepa the check! You tella him. You tella Meester Tutt!” she said placidly. “I come back tomorrow!”
Smiling, she got up and hoisted the baby upon her shoulder.
A strange and fearful exhilaration seized Scraggs. He moistened his cracked lips and looked at the clock again. In his shaking hand was the only existing evidence of his crime. He could retain it, and by destroying it after her departure, be safe forever! He mitigated the baseness of this treachery by telling himself that he could make the amount good to her in instalments—later on. It would be easy! The blood rushed to his eyes and sang in his ears. Every instinct of self-preservation was urging him to this one last act, which, compared with what he had already done, seemed insignificant. Yet—! He hesitated. Could he rob this poor woman of her savings? Deprive her of all that might at any moment stand between her and actual starvation? A month ago such an idea would have filled him with abhorrence. When he had yielded to the temptation to buy the Teague and Teague he had never contemplated the possibility of his act having any such far-reaching effect as this. The roof of his mouth seemed coated with sand. His solar plexus palpitated like a fluttering bird beneath his waistcoat. A fiery spot burned in either cheek. His hands were as ice. The desk on which he sat was acting like a raft. He clung to it like a half-drowning man, unable longer to survive.
The battle going on within him transcended any of his previous struggles against even that all-devouring thirst. This was something deeper, more fundamental, involving his moral life or death. He had an almost irresistible impulse to rush into the other room and burn or destroy the check. It seemed as though some malignant power were standing at his elbow urging him on.
Shuddering, he drew his old coat closer about his shoulders. And as he did so, he felt a sudden strength steal through his body, as if the shabby, patched old garment were warming and invigorating his soul. He perceived that he simply couldn’t do this despicable thing. He might be a bad egg, an old rummy, no better than a crook, but he had left some self-respect worth preserving. How could he have thought for a moment of anything so contemptible! He’d rather go to jail for a thousand years! Yes, he would—a thousand years! To jail
The woman had nearly reached the door. The baby was peeking over her shoulder at him. A wave of tremulous emotion passed through Scraggs. He had felt something like it before, though not exactly like it, when he had been rather drunk. He wanted to cry, yet he was curiously happy—happy enough to sing!
The woman opened the door and smiled back at him, slightly elevating the baby, who evidently regarded its withdrawal from the society of so entrancing a person as unwarrantable. Scraggs contorted his withered features into a sardonic grin, but in his eyes was an expression almost like that of Mr. Tutt.
“Good-by, baby!” he said, waving the check after it; “be a good baby!”
He sat there motionless for several minutes after the door had closed behind them. Then he rubbed his right sleeve across his eyes, got to his feet and, walking stiffly into Mr. Tutt’s room, laid the check on the top of the desk. A moment later his voice quavered resolutely through the offices.
“Each rosy morn with hounds and horn
Young bucks a-hunting go!
Young bucks a-hunting go-o-o!
Young bucks a-hunting go-o-o!”
Willie Toothaker, slipping surreptitiously in at half past nine, watched in amazement from the outer hallway as he saw Scraggs place a ladder against Mr. Tutt’s southerly bookcase and cautiously ascend far enough to reach the topmost shelf, where reposed the most ancient and least used volumes. Taking from his pocket a slip of paper, which he thereupon consulted, he peered along the row of dusty tomes until his eyes had found the one he sought.
“‘Thirteen Mason and Welsby, New Series,’” he muttered, and removing the volume, disclosed in the hollow immediately behind it an unopened quart of Teague and Teague. Clasping the precious bottle to his bosom, Scraggs felt his way to the floor in safety, and holding the label to the light appeared to read something written upon it.
“‘Three Howard’s State Trials,’” he repeated.
Then, having placed the bottle on Mr. Tutt’s desk, the old fellow leaned the ladder against another section of the bookcase, climbed up and retrieved a second bottle, the label of which he examined in like manner.
“‘Two Crown Cases Reserved,’” murmured the scrivener, with evident satisfaction.
And now having similarly exhumed a third bottle from the custody of the criminal courts, Scraggs passed from law to equity, which yielded a fourth, and sought finally the jurisdiction of the Admiralty and Divorce Division, from which he recaptured still two more.
He was engaged in marshalling them upon Mr. Tutt’s blotter when the old lawyer entered.
“What on earth—!” he began.
Scraggs covered his face with his hands.
It was then that to Willie’s deep disappointment Mr. Tutt quickly turned and closed his office door. When it was opened half an hour later a different and much younger Scraggs emerged.
“What’s that tune you’ve been humming all day?” asked Willie as he paused outside the scrivener’s cage on his way to lunch.
“That?—Oh, just an old song I used to sing when I was a boy!” answered Scraggs.