The clerk called the roll, and Messrs. Walsh, Tompkins, et al., stated that they were all present.
Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed upon a verdict? inquired the clerk.
We have! replied Mr. Walsh sternly.
How say you? Do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?
Mr. Tutt gripped the balustrade in front of him with one hand and put his other arm round Angelo. He felt that now in truth murder was being done.
The clerk called the roll, and Messrs. Walsh, Tompkins, et al., stated that they were all present.
Gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed upon a verdict? inquired the clerk.
We have! replied Mr. Walsh sternly.
How say you? Do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?
Mr. Tutt gripped the balustrade in front of him with one hand and put his other arm round Angelo. He felt that now in truth murder was being done.
We find the defendant not guilty, said Mr. Walsh defiantly.
There was a momentary silence of incredulity. Then Babson and O'Brien shouted simultaneously: What!
We find the defendant not guilty, repeated Mr. Walsh stubbornly.
I demand that the jury be polled! cried the crestfallen O'Brien, his face crimson.
And then the twelve reiterated severally that that was their verdict and that they hearkened unto it as it stood recorded and that they were entirely satisfied with it.
You are discharged! said Babson in icy tones. Strike the names of these men from the list of jurors-as incompetent. Haven't you any other charge on which you can try this defendant?
No, Your Honor, answered O'Brien grimly. He didn't take the stand, so we can't try him for perjury; and there isn't any other indictment against him.
Judge Babson turned ferociously upon Mr. Tutt:
This acquittal is a blot upon the administration of criminal justice; a disgrace to the city! It is an unconscionable verdict; a reflection upon the intelligence of the jury! The defendant is discharged. This court is adjourned.
The crowd surged round Angelo and bore him away, bewildered. The judge and prosecutor hurried from the room. Alone Mr. Tutt stood at the bar, trying to grasp the full meaning of what had occurred.
He no longer felt tired; he experienced an exultation such as he had never known before. Some miracle had happened! What was it?
Unexpectedly the lawyer felt a rough warm hand clasped over his own upon the rail and heard the voice of Mr. Walsh with its rich brogue saying: At first we couldn't see that there was much to be said for your side of the case, Mr. Tutt; but when Oi stepped into the cathedral on me way down to court this morning and spied you prayin' there for guidance I knew you wouldn't be defendin' him unless he was innocent, and so we decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Mock Hen and Mock Turtle
Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the
twain shall meet.
BALLAD OF EAST AND WEST.
But the law of the jungle is jungle law only, and the
law of the pack is only for the pack.
OTHER SAYINGS OF SHERE KHAN.
A half turn from the clattering hubbub of Chatham Square and you are in Chinatown, slipping, within ten feet, through an invisible wall, from the glitter of the gin palace and the pawn-shop to the sinister shadows of irregular streets and blind alleys, where yellow men pad swiftly along greasy asphalt beneath windows glinting with ivory, bronze and lacquer; through which float the scents of aloes and of incense and all the subtle suggestion of the East.
No one better than the Chink himself realizes the commercial value of the taboo, the bizarre and the unclean. Nightly the rubber-neck car swinging gayly with lanterns stops before the imitation joss house, the spurious opium joint and tortuous passage to the fake fan-tan and faro game, with a farewell call at Hong Joy Fah's Oriental restaurant and the well-stocked novelty store of Wing, Hen &Co. The visitors see what they expect to see, for the Chinaman always gives his public exactly what it wants.
But a dollar does not show you Chinatown. To some the ivories will always be but crudely carven bone, the jades the potter's sham, the musk and aloes the product of a soap factory, the joss but a cigar-store Indian, and the Oriental dainties of Hong Fah the scrappings of a Yankee grocery store. Yet behind the shoddy tinsel of Doyers and Pell Streets, as behind Alice's looking-glass, there is another Chinatown-a strange, inhuman, Oriental world, not necessarily of trapdoors and stifled screams, but one moved by influences undreamed of in our banal philosophies. Hearken then to the story of the avenging of Wah Sing.
'Tis a tale was undoubtedly true
In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.
In the murky cellar of a Pell Street tenement seventeen Chinamen sat cross-legged in a circle round an octagonal teakwood table. To an Occidental they would have appeared to differ in no detail except that of a varying degree of fatness. An oil lamp flickered before a joss near by, and the place reeked with the odor of starch, sweat, tobacco, rice whisky and the incense that rose ceilingward in thin, shaking columns from two bowls of Tibetan soapstone. An obese Chinaman with a walnutlike countenance in which cunning and melancholy were equally commingled was speaking monotonously through long, rat-tailed mustaches, while the others listened with impassive decorum. It was a special meeting of the Hip Leong Tong, held in their private clubrooms at the Great Shanghai Tea Company, and conducted according to rule.