“His knowledge of matrimony and the laws governing the domestic relations is certainly exhaustive—­not to say exhausting.  I look like a piker beside him.”

“For which,” replied Mr. Tutt, “you may well be thankful.”

“I am,” replied Tutt devoutly.  “But you could put what I know about bigamy in that malt-extract bottle.”

“I prefer the present contents!” retorted Mr. Tutt.  “Bigamy is a fascinating crime, involving as it does such complicated subjects as the history of the institution of marriage, the ecclesiastical or canonical law governing divorce and annulment, the interesting doctrines of affinity and consanguinity, suits for alienation of affection and criminal conversation, the conflict of laws, the White Slave Act—­”

“Interstate commerce, so to speak?” suggested Tutt mischievously.

“Condonation, collusion and connivance,” continued Mr. Tutt, brushing him aside, “reinstitution of conjugal rights, the law of feme sole, The Married Woman’s Act, separation a mensa et thoro, abandonment, jurisdiction, alimony, custody of children, precontract—­”

“Help!  You’re breaking my heart!” cried Tutt.  “No little lawyer could know all about such things.  It would take a big lawyer.”

“Not at all!  Not at all!” soothed Mr. Tutt, sipping his eleven-o’clock nourishment and fingering for a stogy.  “When it comes to divorce one lawyer knows as much about the law as another.  Not even the Supreme Court is able to tell whether a man and woman are really married or not without calling in outside assistance.”

“Well, who can?” asked Tutt anxiously.

“Nobody,” replied his partner with gravity, biting off the end of a last year’s stogy salvaged from the bottom of the letter basket.  “Once a man’s married his troubles not only begin but never end.”

“By the way,” said Tutt, “speaking of this sort of thing, I see that that Frenchman whom we referred to our Paris correspondent has just been granted a divorce from his American wife.”

“You mean the French diplomat who married the Yankee vaudeville artist in China?”

“Yes,” answered Tutt.  “You recall they met in Shanghai and took a flying trip to Mongolia, where they were married by a Belgian missionary.  The court held that the marriage was invalid, as the French statutes require a native of that country marrying abroad to have the ceremony performed either before a French diplomatic official or ’according to the usages of the country in which the marriage is performed.’”

“Wasn’t the Belgian missionary a diplomatic official?” asked Mr. Tutt.

“Evidently not sufficiently so,” replied his partner.  “Anyhow, in Mongolia there are only two methods sanctified by tradition by which a man may secure a wife—­capture or purchase.”

“Well, didn’t our client capture the actress?”

“Only with her consent—­which I assume would be collusion under the French law,” said Tutt.  “And he certainly didn’t buy her—­though he might have.  It appears that in that happy land a wife costs from five camels up; five camels for a flapper and so on up to thirty or forty camels for an old widow, who invariably brings the highest quotation.”