"The big mitt?"
"No, short change! He came in drunk--he's been at it for a month; of course, if he hadn't, he wouldn't have done anything so foolish. Did you know a moll buzzer named McGlynn? Well, he got home the other day from doin' a stretch, and Ed gets sorry for him and promises to take him out. So they go down to the spill and turned a sucker--Ed flopped him for a ten!" Gibbs's tone expressed the greatest contempt. "He'll be doing a heel or a stick-up next, or go shark hunting. Think of Ed Dean's being in for a thing like that!"
"Is he down at the boob?"
"No, we sprung him on paper. He's all broke up--you heard about McDougall?"
"What about him?"
"Dead; didn't you know? Died in Baltimore--some one shot him in a saloon. He wouldn't tell who; he was game--died saying it was all right, that the guy wasn't to blame. And then," Gibbs went on, "that ain't all. Dempsey was settled."
"Yes, I read it in the paper."
"That was a kangaroo, too."
"I judged so; they settled him for the dip. How did it come off?"
"Oh, it was them farmers down at Bayport. Dempsey had a privilege at the fair last fall; he took a hieronymous--hanky-panky, chuck-a-luck."
"Yes, I know," said Curly impatiently, "the old army game."
"Well, he skinned the shellapers, and they squealed this year to get even. They had him pinched for the dip. Why, old Dempsey couldn't even stall--he couldn't put his back up to go to the front!"
"Who did it?"
"Oh, a little Chicago gun. You don't know him."
"Well," said Curly, "you have had a run of bad luck."
"Do you know what does it?" Gibbs leaned over confidentially, a superstitious gleam in his eye. "It's that Koerner thing. There's a hoodoo over that family. That girl's been in here once or twice--with Jane. You tell Jane not to tow her round here any more. If I was you, I'd cut her loose--she'll queer you. You won't have any luck as long as you're filled in with her."
"I thought the old man had some damages coming to him for the loss of his gimp," said Curly.
"Well, he has; but it's in the courts. They'll job him, too, I suppose.
He can't win against that hoodoo. The courts have been taking their time."
The courts, indeed, had been taking their time with Koerner's case.
Months had gone by and still no hint of a decision. The truth was, the judges of the Supreme Court were divided. They had discussed the case many times and had had heated arguments over it, but they could not agree as to what had been the proximate cause of Koerner's injury, whether it was the unblocked frog in which he had caught his foot, or the ice on which he had slipped. If it was the unblocked frog, then it was the railroad company's fault; if it was the snow and ice, then it was what is known as the act of God. Dixon, McGee and Bundy, justices, all thought the unblocked frog was the proximate cause; they argued that if the frog had been blocked, Koerner could not have caught his foot in it. They were supported in their opinion by Sharlow, of the _nisi prius_ court, and by Gardner, Dawson and Kirkpatrick, of the Appellate Court; so that of all the judges who were to pass on Koerner's case, he had seven on his side. On the other hand, Funk, Hambaugh and Ficklin thought it was God's fault and not the railroad company's; they argued it was the ice causing him to slip that made Koerner fall and catch his foot.
It resulted, therefore, that with all the elaborate machinery of the law, one man, after all, was to decide this case, and that man was Buckmaster, the chief justice. Buckmaster had the printed transcript of the record and the printed briefs of counsel, but, like most of his colleagues, he disliked to read records and merely skimmed the briefs.
Besides, Buckmaster could not fix his mind on anything just then, for, like Archie, he, too, was under sentence of death. His doctor, some time before this, had told him he had Bright's disease, and Buckmaster had now reached the stage where he had almost convinced himself that his doctor was wrong, and he felt that if he could take a trip south, he would come back well again. Buckmaster would have preferred to lay the blame of Koerner's accident on God rather than on the railroad company.
He had thought more about the railroads and the laws they had made than he had about God and the laws He had made, for he had been a railroad attorney before he became a judge; indeed, the railroad companies had had his party nominate him for judge of the Supreme Court. Buckmaster knew how much the railroads lost in damages every year, and how the unscrupulous personal-injury lawyers mulcted them; and just now, when he was needing this trip south, and the manager of the railroad had placed his own private car at his disposal, Buckmaster felt more than ever inclined toward the railroad's side of these cases. Therefore, after getting some ideas from Hambaugh, he announced to his colleagues that he had concluded, after careful consideration, that Funk and Hambaugh and Ficklin were right; and Hambaugh was designated to write the profound opinion in which the decision of the court below was reversed.
Marriott had the news of the reversal in a telegram from the clerk of the Supreme Court, and he sat a long time at his desk, gazing out over the hideous roofs and chimneys with their plumes of white steam....
Well, he must tell old Koerner. He never dreaded anything more in his life, yet it must be done. But he could wait until morning. Bad news would keep.
But Marriott was spared the pain of bearing the news of this final defeat to Koerner. It would seem that the law itself would forego none of its privileges as to this family with which it so long had sported.
The news, in fact, was borne to Koerner by a deputy sheriff.
Packard, the lawyer for the Building and Loan Company which held the mortgage on Koerner's house, had been waiting, at Marriott's request, for the determination of Koerner's suit against the railroad company.
That morning Packard had read of the reversal in the _Legal Bulletin_, a journal that spun out daily through its short and formal columns, the threads of misery and woe and sin that men tangle into that inextricable snarl called "jurisprudence." And Packard immediately, that very morning, began his suit in foreclosure, and before noon the papers were served.
When Marriott knocked at the little door in Bolt Street, where he had stood so often and in so many varying moods of hope and despair,--though all of these moods, as he was perhaps in his egoism glad to feel, had owed their origin to the altruistic spirit,--he felt that surely he must be standing there now for the last time. He glanced at the front of the little home; it had been so neat when he first saw it; now it was weather-beaten and worn; the front door was scratched, the paint had cracked and come off in flakes.
The door was opened by the old man himself, and he almost frightened Marriott by the fierce expression of his haggard face. His shirt was open, revealing his red and wrinkled throat; his white hair stood up straight, his lean jaws were covered with a short, white beard, and his thick white eyebrows beetled fearfully. When he saw Marriott his lips trembled in anger, and his eyes flashed from their caverns.
"So!" he cried, not opening wide the door, not inviting Marriott in, "you gom', huh?"
"Yes, Mr. Koerner," said Marriott, "I came--to--"
"You lost, yah, I know dot! You lose all your cases, huh, pretty much, aindt it so?"
Marriott flamed hotly.
"No, it isn't so," he retorted, stepping back a little. "I have been unfortunate, I know, in your case, and in Archie's, but I did--"
"Ho!" scoffed Koerner in his tremendous voice. "Vell! Maybe you like to lose anudder case. _Hier_! I gif you von!"
With a sudden and elaborate flourish of the arm he stretched over his crutch, he delivered a document to Marriott, and Marriott saw that it was the summons in the foreclosure suit.
"I s'pose we lose dot case, too, aindt it?"
"Yes," said Marriott thoughtfully and sadly, tapping his hand with the paper, "we'll lose this. When did you get it?"
"Dis morning. A deputy sheriff, he brought 'im--"
"And he told you--"
"'Bout de oder von? Yah, dot's so."
They were silent a moment and Marriott, unconsciously, and with something of the habit of the family solicitor, put the summons into his pocket.
"Vell, I bet dere be no delays in dis case, huh?" Koerner asked.
Marriott wondered if it were possible to make this old man understand.
"You see, Mr. Koerner," he began, "the law--"
The old German reared before him in mighty rage, and he roared out from his tremendous throat:
"Oh, go to hell mit your Gott-tamned law!"
And he slammed the door in Marriott's face.
Koerner was right; there were no delays now, no questions of proximate cause, no more, indeed, than there had been in Archie's case. The law worked unerringly, remorselessly and swiftly; the _Legal Bulletin_ marked the steps day by day, judgment by default--decree--order of sale.
There came a day when the sheriff's deputies--there were two of them now, knowing old man Koerner--went to the little cottage in Bolt Street.
Standing on the little stoop, one of them, holding a paper in his hand, rapped on the door. There was no answer, and he rapped again. Still no answer. He beat with his gloved knuckles; he kicked lightly with his boot; still no answer. The deputies went about the house trying to peep in at the windows. The blinds were down; they tried both doors, front and back; they were locked.