By Advice of Counsel Part 17

"One moment!" he cried. "May I ask a preliminary question?"

The court signified acquiescence.

"Was that conversation which you had with the defendant a confidential one?"

"I object to the question!" snapped O'Brien. "The law recognizes no confidential communications as privileged except those made to a priest, a physician or an attorney. The witness is none of these. The question is immaterial and irrelevant."

"That is the law," announced the judge, "but under all the circ.u.mstances I will permit the witness to answer."

Miss Beekman paused.

"Why," she began, "of course it was confidential, Mr. Tutt. O'Connell wouldn't have told me anything if he had supposed for one moment I was going to repeat what he said. Besides, I suggested that I might be able to help him. Yes, certainly our talk was confidential."

"I am sorry," gloated O'Brien, "but I shall have to ask you what it was."

"That is not a question," said Mr. Tutt calmly.

"What did the defendant say to you in the counsel room of the Tombs on the twenty-third of last month?" cautiously revised O'Brien.

"I object!" thundered Mr. Tutt, his form towering until seemingly it matched that of the blind G.o.ddess in height. "I object to the answer as requiring a breach of confidence which the law could not tolerate."

Judge Babson turned politely to Miss Beekman.

"I regret very much that I shall be obliged to ask you to state what the defendant said to you. You will recall that you yourself volunteered the information that you had had the talk in question. Otherwise"--he coughed and put up his hand--"we might possibly never have learned of it. A defendant cannot deprive the people of the right to prove what he may have divulged respecting his offense merely by claiming that it was in confidence. Public policy could never allow that. It may be unpleasant for you to answer the question but I must ask you to do so."

"But," she protested, "you certainly cannot expect me to betray a confidence! I asked O'Connell to tell me what he had done so that I could help him--and he trusted me!"

"But you are not responsible for the law! He took his chance!"

admonished the judge.

Slowly Miss Althea's indignation rose as she perceived the dastardly trick which O'Brien had played upon her. Already she suspected that the judge was only masquerading in the clothing of a gentleman. With a white face she turned to Mr. Tutt.

"Does the law require me to answer, Mr. Tutt?" she inquired.

"Do not ask questions--answer them," ordered Babson brusquely, feeling the change in her manner. "You are a witness for the people--not the defendant."

"I am not a witness against O'Connell!" she declared. "This man"--indicating O'Brien scornfully--"has in some way found out that I--Oh, surely the law doesn't demand anything so base as that!"

There was silence. The wheels of justice hung on a dead center.

"Answer the question," remarked His Honor tartly.

All Miss Beekman's long line of ancestors turned in their graves. In her Beekman blood the chief justice, the amba.s.sador, the great editor, the signer of the Declaration of Independence, stirred, awoke, rubbed their eyes and sternly reared themselves. And that blood--blue though it was instead of scarlet like the O'Connells'--boiled in her veins and burned through the delicate tissue of her cheeks.

"My conscience will not permit me to betray a confidence!" she cried angrily.

"I direct you to answer!" ordered the judge.

"I object to the court's threatening the witness!" interjected Mr. Tutt.

"I wish it to appear upon the record that the manner of the court is most unjudicial and damaging to the defendant."

"Take your seat, sir!" barked Babson, his features swelling with anger.

"Your language is contemptuous!"

The jury were leaning forward intently. Trained militiamen of the gibbet, they nevertheless admired this little woman's fearlessness and the old lawyer's pugnacity. On the rear wall the yellow face of the old self-regulating clock, that had gayly ticked so many men into the electric chair, leered shamelessly across at the blind G.o.ddess.

"Answer the question, madam! If, as you claim, you are a patriotic citizen of this commonwealth, having due respect for its inst.i.tutions and for the statutes, you will not set up your own ideas of what the law ought to be in defiance of the law as it stands. I order you to answer!

If you do not I shall be obliged to take steps to compel you to do so."

In the dead silence that followed, the stones in the edifice of Miss Beekman's inherited complacency, with each beat of the clock, fell one by one to the ground until it was entirely demolished. Vainly she struggled to test her conscience by her loyalty to her country's laws.

But the task was beyond her.

Tightly compressing her lips she sat silent in the chair, while the delighted reporters scribbled furious messages to their city editors that Miss Althea Beekman, one of the Four Hundred, was defying Judge Babson, and to rush up a camera man right off in a taxi, and to look her up in the morgue for a front-page story. O'Brien glanced uneasily at Babson. Possible defiance on the part of this usually una.s.suming lady had not entered into his calculations. The judge took a new tack.

"You probably do not fully understand the situation in which you are placed," he explained. "You are not responsible for the law. Neither are you responsible in any way for the consequences to this defendant, whatever they may be. The matter is entirely out of your hands. You are compelled to do as the court orders. As a law-abiding citizen you have no choice in the matter."

Miss Althea's modest intellect reeled, but she stood her ground, the ghost of the Signer at her elbow.

"I am sorry," she replied, "but my own self-respect will not allow me to answer."

"In that case," declared Babson, playing his trump card, "it will be my unpleasant duty to commit you for contempt."

There was a bustle of excitement about the reporters' table. Here was a story!

"Very well," answered Miss Beekman proudly. "Do as you see fit, and as your own duty and conscience demand."

The judge could not conceal his annoyance. The last thing in the world that he wished to do was to send Miss Althea to jail. But having threatened her he must carry out his threat or forever lose face.

"I will give the witness until tomorrow morning at half after ten o'clock to make up her mind what she will do," he announced after a hurried conference with O'Brien. "Adjourn court!"

Miss Beekman did not go to bed at all that night. Until a late hour she conferred in the secrecy of her Fifth Avenue library with her gray-haired solicitor, who, in some mysterious way, merely over the telephone, managed to induce the newspapers to omit any reference to his client's contemptuous conduct in their morning editions.

"There's no way out of it, my dear," he said finally as he took his leave--he was her father's cousin and very fond of her--"this judge has the power to send you to jail if he wants to--and dares to! It's an even chance whether he will dare to or not. It depends on whether he prefers to stand well with the McGurks or with the general public. Of course I respect your att.i.tude, but really I think you are a little quixotic.

Points of honor are too ephemeral to be debated in courts of justice. To do so would be to open the door to all kinds of abuses. Dishonest witnesses would constantly avail themselves of the opportunity to avoid giving evidence."

"Dishonest witnesses would probably lie in the first place!" she quavered.

"True! I quite overlooked that!" he smiled, gazing down at her in an avuncular manner. "But to-day the question isn't open. It is settled, whether we like it or not. No pledge of privacy, no oath of secrecy--can avail against demand in a court of justice. Even confessions obtained by fraud are admissible--though we might wish otherwise."

Miss Beekman shrugged her shoulders.

"Nothing you have said seems to me to alter the situation."

"Very well," he replied. "I guess that settles it. Knowing you and the Beekman breed! There's one thing I must say," he added as he stood in the doorway after bidding her good night--"that old fellow Tutt has behaved pretty well, leaving you entirely alone this way. I always had an idea he was a sort of shyster. Most attorneys of that cla.s.s would have been sitting on your doorstep all the evening trying to persuade you to stick to your resolution not to give their client away, and to do the square thing. But he's done nothing of the sort. Rather decent on the whole!"

"Perhaps he recognizes a woman of honor when he sees one!" she retorted.

"Honor!" he muttered as he closed the door. "What crimes are sometimes committed in thy name!"