As Tutt guided the Appleboys out into the corridor the party came face to face with Mr. and Mrs. Tunnygate.

“Huh!” sneered Tunnygate.

“Huh!” retorted Appleboy.

Wile Versus Guile

  For ’tis the sport to have the engineer
  Hoist with his own petar.—­HAMLET.

It was a mouse by virtue of which Ephraim Tutt had leaped into fame.  It is true that other characters famous in song and story—­particularly in “Mother Goose”—­have similarly owed their celebrity in whole or part to rodents, but there is, it is submitted, no other case of a mouse, as mouse per se, reported in the annals of the law, except Tutt’s mouse, from Doomsday Book down to the present time.

Yet it is doubtful whether without his mouse Ephraim Tutt would ever have been heard of at all, and same would equally have been true if when pursued by the chef’s gray cat the mouse aforesaid had jumped in another direction.  But as luck would have it, said mouse leaped foolishly into an open casserole upon a stove in the kitchen of the Comers Hotel, and Mr. Tutt became in his way a leader of the bar.

It is quite true that the tragic end of the mouse in question has nothing to do with our present narrative except as a side light upon the vagaries of the legal career, but it illustrates how an attorney if he expects to succeed in his profession, must be ready for anything that comes along—­even if it be a mouse.

The two Tutts composing the firm of Tutt & Tutt were both, at the time of the mouse case, comparatively young men.  Tutt was a native of Bangor, Maine, and numbered among his childhood friends one Newbegin, a commercial wayfarer in the shingle and clapboard line; and as he hoped at some future time to draw Newbegin’s will or to incorporate for him some business venture Tutt made a practise of entertaining his prospective client at dinner upon his various visits to the metropolis, first at one New York hostelry and then at another.

Chance led them one night to the Comers, and there amid the imitation palms and imitation French waiters of the imitation French restaurant Tutt invited his friend Newbegin to select what dish he chose from those upon the bill of fare; and Newbegin chose kidney stew.  It was at about that moment that the adventure which has been referred to occurred in the hotel kitchen.  The gray cat was cheated of its prey, and in due course the casserole containing the stew was borne into the dining room and the dish was served.

Suddenly Mr. Newbegin contorted his mouth and exclaimed: 

“Heck!  A mouse!”

It was.  The head waiter was summoned, the manager, the owner.  Guests and garcons crowded about Tutt and Mr. Newbegin to inspect what had so unexpectedly been found.  No one could deny that it was, mouse—­cooked mouse; and Newbegin had ordered kidney stew.  Then Tutt had had his inspiration.