Tutt and Mr. Tutt

by Arthur Cheney Train

"Yes," assented Mr. Tutt, "I remember all about it now."

Indeed it had all come back to him with the vividness of a landscape seen during a lightning flash—the crowded court, old Doc Barrows upon the witness stand, charged with getting money on the strength of defaulted and outlawed bonds—picked up heaven knows where—pathetically trying to persuade an unsympathetic court that for some reason they were still worth their face value, though the mortgage securing the debt which they represented had long since been foreclosed and the money distributed.

"I'd paid for 'em—actual cash," he rambled on. "Not much, to be sure—but real money. If I got 'em cheap that was my good luck, wasn't it? It was because my brain was sharper than other folks'! I said they had value and I say so now—only nobody will believe it or take the trouble to find out. I learned a lot up there in Sing Sing too," he continued, warming to his subject. "Do you know, sir, there are fortunes lying all about us? Take gold, for instance! There's a fraction of a grain in every ton of sea water. But the big people don't want it taken out because it would depress the standard of exchange. I say it's a conspiracy—and yet they jailed a man for it! There's great mineral deposits all about just waiting for the right man to come along and develop 'em."

His lifted eye rested upon the engraving of Abraham Lincoln over Mr. Tutt's desk. "There was a man!" he exclaimed inconsequently; then stopped and ran his transparent, heavily veined old hand over his forehead. "Where was I? Let me see. Oh, yes—gold. All those great properties could be bought at one time or another for a song. It needed a pioneer! That's what I was—a pioneer to find the gold where other people couldn't find it. That's not any crime; it's a service to humanity! If only they'd have a little faith—instead of locking you up. The judge never looked up the law about those Great Lakes bonds! If he had he'd have found out I was right! I'd looked it up. I studied law once myself."

"I know," said Mr. Tutt, almost moved to tears by the sight of the wreck before him. "You practised up state, didn't you?"

"Yes," responded Doc Barrows eagerly. "And in Chicago too. I'm a member of the Cook County bar. I'll tell you something! If the Supreme Court of Illinois hadn't been wrong in its law I'd be the richest man in the world—in the whole world!" He grabbed Mr. Tutt by the arm and stared hard into his eyes. "Didn't I show you my papers? I own seven feet of water front clean round Lake Michigan all through the city of Chicago I got it for a song from the man who found out the flaw in the original title deed of 1817; he was dying. 'I'll sell my secret to you,' he says, 'because I'm passing on. May it bring you luck!' I looked it all up and it was just as he said. So I got up a corporation—The Chicago Water Front and Terminal Company—and sold bonds to fight my claim in the courts. But all the people who had deeds to my land conspired against me and had me arrested! They sent me to the penitentiary. There's justice for you!"

"That was too bad!" said Mr. Tutt in a soothing voice. "But after all what good would all that money have done you?"

"I don't want money!" affirmed Doc plaintively. "I've never needed money. I know enough secrets to make me rich a dozen times over. Not money but justice is what I want—my legal rights. But I'm tired of fighting against 'em. They've beaten me! Yes, they've beaten me! I'm going to retire. That's why I came in to see you, Mr. Tutt. I never paid you for your services as my attorney. I'm going away. You see my married daughter lost her husband the other day and she wants me to come up and live with her on the farm to keep her from being lonely. Of course it won't be much like life in Wall Street—but I owe her some duty and I'm getting on—I am, Mr. Tutt, I really am!"

He smiled.

"And I haven't seen Louisa for three years—my only daughter. I shall enjoy being with her. She was such a dear little girl! I'll tell you another secret"—his voice dropped to a whisper—"I've found out there's a gold mine on her farm, only she doesn't know it. A rich vein runs right through her cow pasture. We'll be rich! Wouldn't it be fine, Mr. Tutt, to be rich? Then I'm going to pay you in real money for all you've done for me—thousands! But until then I'm going to let you have these—all my securities; my own, you know, every one of them."