“Right-o!” whistled Tutt.  “A parson on every Pullman!”

“It follows,” continued Mr. Tutt, lighting a fresh stogy and warming to his subject, “that as each state has the right to regulate the status of its own citizens it has jurisdiction to act in a divorce proceeding provided one of the parties is actually domiciled within its borders.  Naturally this action must be determined by its own laws and not by those of any other state.  The great divergence of these laws makes extraordinary complications.”

“Hallelujah!” cried Tutt.  “Now, in the words of the psalmist, you’ve said a mouthful!  I know a man who at one and the same time is legally married to one woman in England, to another in Nevada, is a bigamist in New York, and—­”

“What else could he be except a widower in Pittsburgh?” pondered the elder Tutt.  “But it’s quite possible.  There’s a case going on now where a woman in New York City is suing her ex-husband for a divorce on the usual statutory ground, and naming his present wife as co-respondent, though the plaintiff herself divorced him ten years ago in Reno, and he married again immediately after on the strength of it.”

“I’m feeling stronger every minute!” exclaimed Tutt.  “Surely in all this bedlam we ought to be able to acquit our new client Mr. Higgleby of the charge of bigamy.  At least you ought to be able to.  I couldn’t.”

“What’s the difficulty?” queried Mr. Tutt.

“The difficulty simply is that he married the present Mrs. Higgleby on the seventeenth of last December here in the city of New York, when he had a perfectly good wife, whom he had married on the eleventh of the preceding May, living in Chicago.”

“What on earth is the matter with him?” inquired Mr. Tutt.

“He simply says he’s a traveling man,” replied his partner, “and—­he happened to be in New York.”

“Well, the next time he calls, you send him in to see me,” directed Mr. Tutt.  “What was the present lady’s name?”

“Woodcock,” answered Tutt.  “Alvina Woodcock.”

“And she wanted to change to Higgleby?” muttered his partner.  “I wonder why.”

“Oh, there’s something sort of appealing about him,” acknowledged Tutt.  “But he don’t look like a bigamist,” he concluded.  “What does a bigamist look like?” meditated Mr. Tutt as he lit another stogy.

* * * * *

“Good morning, Mr. Tutt,” muttered the Honorable Peckham from behind the imitation rubber plant in his office, where he was engaged in surreptitiously consuming an apple.  “Um—­be with you in a minute.  What’s on your mind?”

Mr. Tutt simultaneously removed his stogy with one hand and his stovepipe with the other.

“I thought we might as well run over my list of cases,” he replied.  “I can offer you a plea or two if you wish.”

“Do I!” ejaculated the D.A., rolling his eyes heavenward.  “Let’s hear the Roll of Honor.”