Chapter II: Part 2

Great, however, as his expedition had been in its later stages, it had scarcely surpassed that of Mr. Whitcomb, who from the first had been devouring steadily. No sooner had that gentleman eaten his final mouthful than he ordered both plates to be replenished.

At this moment, by one of those significant coöperations of events which form the basis of the drama, a large, fat, frock-coated, and pomatumed gentleman appeared, a little sheath of quiet smiles twinkling all over his person, as though the playful god of love was in hiding behind his ample shirt-front and slyly tickling his bosom with feathers.

“Hommage, monsieur le chef, hommage!” cried Mr. Whitcomb. “Cette consommé est délicieuse. Vous êtes un vrai ruban bleu.”

The chef emitted a loud purr of satisfaction like an unusually large Persian cat. And then by a still more exquisite coöperation of events than that which had already preceded this incident, who should appear but Jools, behind whom his attendant satellite was mincing with a warmed decanter of wine.

“Two more glasses, Jools, if you please,” said the solicitor. “Monsieur le chef and your worthy self will honor us, I hope. The first product of your country will not prove unworthy of two of its most distinguished sons.”

A look of rapture sprang to the proud eyes of Jools, and he measured four glasses of wine with an agitation that was more dignified than perfect composure.

“To l’Entente Cordiale, messieurs,” said Mr. Whitcomb, raising his glass.

“L’Entente Cordiale!” chimed the others.

“It is part of my religion,” said Mr. Whitcomb, “never to encounter the artistic temperament without rendering my homage. If we had only a trace of it in this country to fuse and rarefy our other manifold gifts and blessings, I believe we should become the most perfect nation upon the earth.”

“Is it not, sir, the absence of it that makes you English so perfect?” said the chef, who had all the alert intelligence of his race.

“That is not a thrust, monsieur?”

“Ah, no. As a citizen of the world I make it my duty never to wound the English. I respect your country; there are seasons when I adore it.”

“Ees it not the land of justice, order, and liberty?” said Jools.

“Justice we have for those who can afford to pay for it,” said the solicitor; “that is to say, the poor man is quite unable to purchase it, and even the rich finds it costs a great deal of money. Order we have; it is the birthright of us all--an adumbration of our exaggerated reverence for mud, and stones, and bricks, and mortar. Liberty, Jools, I regret to say, we have not. We are all base slaves--”

“Of the External,” said Northcote, with a lustre in his eyes that the wine had kindled. “There is no slave like a Saxon. In his scheme of sense the eye takes precedence. Even his religion is Money.”

“Ah, no,” said the chef, with much amiability, “you English have no avarice like we have in my native Normandy.”

“An Englishman’s avarice is not of the heart, but of the spirit,” said Northcote, with the melancholy calmness of one who knows everything.

“You haf your Shakespeare, your Milton,” said Jools.

“I think sometimes we could afford to exchange them both for your Honoré Balzac,” said Northcote.

“You would be unwise to do so,” said the chef. “Your Shakespeare is among the first order of mankind. He is greater than Molière; my faith! he is as great as Napoleon.”

“Perhaps you are right, but your Honoré Balzac showed the bourgeoisie its every form and feature.”

“Truly,” said the chef, with a sly laugh; “but you have ceased to be bourgeois in your England nowadays.”

“Since when, sir?” said the young advocate, with a flame in his eyes. “Since we have learned the trick of calling our mean ambitions by high-sounding names?”

The solicitor filled up the glasses of Northcote and the chef.

“You speak well, my friends,” he said, with his richest chuckle; “although myself being a middle-class Englishman, I am sorry to say your discourse is over my head. But if it is to be my privilege to maintain the talk upon this extremely high level, it will cost me, Jools--”

“It will cost him, Jools,” interrupted Northcote, with a truculent glance at the waiter.

“It will cost me, Jools,” said the solicitor, with an imperturbable smile, “an extra quart at least of your Château Margaux.”

At the moment this order fell on deaf ears, for the lips of Jools were trembling with speech like those of Socrates.

“We will give you our Honoré de Balzac, sare,” he said, with a heavy sigh, “ef you will part wiz your Shikspeare.”

“Also our Voltaire,” said the chef, with a leer at his melancholy compatriot, “if they will part with their Shakespeare.”

“Your Honoré Balzac is only just coming into his own,” said Northcote, with immense solemnity.

“That is to say, sir,” said the chef, “a reputation must be established at least a hundred years in the arts before the world can be decorated with the radiance that proceeds from the enormous fire it holds in its bowels.”

“True, monsieur,” said Northcote. “It is like a new-born planet. It has to be allowed to cool a little before it can assume a shape, and the wonderful vegetation begins to appear upon it. It cannot be approached at first; it is a mere ball of fire in the heavens, without form and without meaning to the human eyes.”

“Or it ees like a young wine, sare; it must be allowed time to mature,” said Jools.

“It is the worst feature, Jools,” said the solicitor, “of this claret of yours, that it always unlocks the door for these pleasantries. And this British skull of mine is so packed with business, that with our shopkeeping instinct of transacting a little of it whenever and wherever we can, before we fall upon the latest theories in regard to the composition of matter, with every reluctance, I shall ask you and your distinguished compatriot to withdraw for the space of one hour.”

“Personally,” said Northcote, “I believe the universe is not made up of matter at all.”

“In other words, sir,” said the chef, “matter is--”

“I ask your pardon, my friends,” said the solicitor; “but with true Britannic effrontery, this business of mine even seeks to take precedence of the mystery of the universe.”

“There is no such thing as the universe,” said Northcote, draining his glass with great decision. “The whole of it is contained within ourselves.”

“Peace, peace!” said the solicitor. “We will resume our speculations, with the permission of our good friends, in the space of one hour.”

Filled with every fraternal and complacent feeling, Jools and his distinguished compatriot bowed smilingly, and with a profound regard for the solicitor and the advocate, retired, in opposite directions, to those spheres of activity in which there was none to dispute their supremacy.

VI

A PROPHECY

“And now,” said the solicitor, “as the decks are clear, let me say this is a rather odd affair which has sent me hungry about the streets of London at an unpleasant hour.”

“Am I not surprisingly cool about it?” said Northcote, with a flushed face, balancing his empty wine-glass on the handle of a knife, “considering that this business of yours is destined to mark the turning-point in my career.”

“When a man begins to talk of his career,” said the solicitor, “it is safe to infer that he has taken the wrong quantity of liquor. Waiter!”

“Sare?”

“Tell Jools we want another pint of this filthy stuff--this what-do-you-call-it?--with which he is poisoning us. And, Alphonse, have a couple of Welsh rarebits ready by the time we want them.”

The waiter withdrew, walking delicately; and the solicitor bent across the table towards his companion in a manner of confidential gravity.

“Correct me if I am wrong,” said he, “but you have done no circuit work?”

“Hitherto I have not soared beyond a police-court,” said the young man, with perfect frankness. “And even there I have only made a public display of my incapacity on half a dozen occasions.”

“A beginner one might say, yet an ambitious one.”

“Where do you get the ambition from?”

“It is in the color of your eyes. Besides, have you not a habit of turning your phrases?”

“If I did not know you to be a connoisseur in men of promise I should not be convinced.”

“That’s my foible, right enough,” said the solicitor, with a laugh. “A connoisseur in men of promise. Samuel Whitcomb owes his own reputation to that, and he is proud to believe that the reputations of half a score of those who are in every way his superiors are to be traced to that source.”

“Laying aside the question of superiority, all the world knows it.”

“I gave Finnemore Jones his first brief,” said the solicitor, immodestly. “I provided Cooper, Howard, and Harrington with the opportunities that made them famous.”

“And above all,” said the young advocate, measuring with a stealthy eye the man before him, “are you not the discoverer of Michael Tobin?”

“Ha!” cried the solicitor, as he brought his fist upon the table with an air of unmistakable triumph, “I was holding that back.”

“As the crown of your achievement?”

“Yes; Michael Tobin is almost here. But how do you come to suspect it, when at present his quality is only known to the few?”

“I am one of them,” said Northcote, looking his companion imperturbably in the eyes.

Such a cool affirmation seemed to delight the solicitor.

“Well, I should not be surprised if you were,” he said, with a violent chuckle. “If I had not had some such suspicion I might not have climbed up all those dark stairs at a quarter-past ten of a winter’s night.”

“Without your dinner.”

“Without my dinner. Why, if that fellow hasn’t forgotten the black currant jelly. But here he comes with his poisonous claret.”

“Tobin is a brilliant man,” said Northcote, poising his glass after having replenished it. “Irish to the bone; a real discovery; ought to go far. But far as he ought to go and will go, there is one name in your list that will surpass him.”

“That is where I cannot agree with you, my son,” said the solicitor, with confidential and parental bonhomie, for this subject lay at the source of his intellectual pride. “You must know somewhat to have found out about Tobin; but when you name his superior you betray your youth.”

“I concede it is quite impossible for me to name Tobin’s superior without betraying my youth.”

“Go to,” said the solicitor, with an air of indulgence that he reserved for the young and promising. “Don’t labor the point. It wants experience to detect greatness in the shell. Michael Tobin will easily be the first upon my list.”

“There is one who will surpass Michael Tobin,” said the young man.

“Not among those I have mentioned.”

“True. As is usual with the prophet, you don’t dare to affirm the authentic name.”

“Upon my word I can’t think who you mean!”

“One Henry Northcote.”

The solicitor broke forth in a suppressed shout of laughter.

“Good!” he said; “you’ll do. Fill up your glass and we’ll get to work. And I’m glad your talent is so remarkable, because I’ve got some business here that is likely to tax it.”

“It is increasingly clear to me that you are the genie,” said the young advocate in a low voice, and fetching a deep breath.

VII

THE OFFER OF A BRIEF

The solicitor drew from an inner pocket of his coat a bundle of papers tied with red tape. He placed them on the table at the side of his plate.

“At the eleventh hour,” he said, speaking coolly and distinctly, “I am going to ask you to undertake the defence in a trial for murder.”

Northcote was conscious of no more than a slight sharp throb of the pulses as he met the shrewd, even cunning, eyes of the man who sat opposite.

“Yes, that’s a chance for Henry Northcote,” were his first words, uttered under the breath.

“The fee is not much,” said the solicitor, with the precision of the man of affairs entering his fat voice. “You will not be briefed at more than twenty guineas.”

“To-night I think I would sell my soul for half that sum,” said the young man, with an excited laugh.

“Is not that a somewhat damaging admission for you to make?” said the solicitor.

“I agree, I agree,” said the young man; “but the truth is never discreet.”

“There’s no money in this case,” said the solicitor, “and I’m afraid there is no kudos. It is one of those disagreeable cases which are not only irreclaimably sordid, but also as dead as mutton. In order to obtain a small sum of money, a woman of the ‘unfortunate’ class has poisoned a man with whom she lived. She is one of those cold-blooded persons who are born for the gallows. There is enough evidence to hang her ten times. We shall be forced to submit to the inevitable.”

“You disappoint me,” said Northcote. “I was thinking of a real fighting case.”

The solicitor smiled, with a faint suggestion of patronage.

“I beg your pardon, I’m sure,” said the young man, quickly. “Had there been any life in the case you would not have carried it to one so obscure. Even as it is, I ought to be grateful to you--and I am grateful indeed--for putting it in my way.”

“The circumstances of this case are somewhat peculiar,” said the solicitor. “We are under rather severe pressure in the matter of time. The case will be called on the day after to-morrow at the Central Criminal Court.”

“That hardly explains away your kindness towards myself. Even at this short notice you could have got plenty of men to have consented to a verdict.”

“I am aware of it, but then it is not quite the method of Whitcomb and Whitcomb. We like ‘Thorough’ to be our motto. If we accept a client, we feel we owe it to ourselves to leave no stone unturned, irrespective of position or emolument.”

“But I understand this case is too dead to be fought?”

“Ah, we are now about to approach the first of the ‘peculiar’ circumstances. At five o’clock this evening Tobin himself was holding this brief, but at that hour his bicycle had the misfortune to collide with a motor-car, and the poor fellow now lies in hospital with a compound fracture of the right thigh.”

“Poor fellow, poor fellow!”

“I think you and I are agreed that Tobin is without a rival in a case of this nature.”

“You must forgive me if I express surprise that Tobin should have accepted the brief.”

“That is easily explained. Tobin is the generous-hearted Irishman who is never weary of affirming that Whitcomb and Whitcomb gave him his start. He never refuses us, and I am afraid we, in the interests of a client, trade occasionally on his good nature.”

“Then the practitioners of law are sometimes more disinterested than they seem.”

“My dear fellow, among a considerable body of men must there not be a leaven of human nature? And my own experience is that human nature is so much more disinterested than the young and cynical like to consider it.”

“That is well said,” replied Northcote, feeling the rebuke to be merited.

“And so you see,” said the solicitor, “in regard to this wretched woman whom we had undertaken to defend, we were in the position of being able to brief a first-rate man for a third-rate fee.”

“Yet a third-rate man would have served your purpose equally well, if one is allowed to hazard the remark.”

“No; for this reason: the woman has long been of intemperate habits. Prior to the commission of the crime she was known to be drinking heavily, and Tobin, who is a real fighting man, if ever there was one, had decided to take the line of insanity.”

“As the only possible means of saving her neck?”

“There is no other. And even in the hands of such a man as Tobin, the chance is remote. He has his witnesses to call, of course, in support of his plea, but they cannot be considered as entirely satisfactory. And, unfortunately, their evidence will be rebutted by that of the prison doctors, who are against us.”

“Then, after all,” said the young man, with a sunken eagerness appearing in his eyes, “there will be opportunities for advocacy.”

“Pretty considerable opportunities, if we are to save her neck.”

“Then forgive me if again I put the question, Why did you come to a tyro with a case of this nature?”

“How can you ask,” said the solicitor, with an arch smile, “when the tyro happens to be one Henry Northcote?”

“Upon your own admission that is a name that has no particular significance for you.”

“Nay, you go too fast, my friend. It must be left to the future to place the name of Henry Northcote, but let me confess that in the meantime the bearer of it has not wholly escaped my vigilance.”

“In your capacity as a connoisseur in young men of promise?”

“Precisely.”

“Upon what data have you built, when you have never seen him in open court?”

“My dear fellow, you are as curious as a woman.”

“Every comprehensive mind is partly feminine.”

“No mind can be in any sense feminine. It is a contradiction in terms.”

“Well, well! From what data have you derived the courage to entrust an untried man with the defence in a trial for murder?”

“To be perfectly frank, it was Tobin who found the courage for me.”

“Tobin!”

“No less.”

“Why, Tobin doesn’t know me from Adam.”

“Not so fast, my friend; don’t come to conclusions so abruptly. Tobin has his eyes about him.”

“Well, yes, that is an attribute that is common to all who become first-rate in anything.”

“Let me tell you exactly what occurred. I was on the point of leaving Chancery Lane about six, and beginning to think about my dinner, when I received poor Tobin’s telegram to say he was tucked up in hospital with a broken thigh, and would I come to him at once. Of course I went; and there the poor fellow was in a devilish uncomfortable attitude, as white as the sheets, face drawn with pain, but himself as cool as ice.

“‘We shall have to apply for a postponement,’ were his first words.

“‘In any case, old boy,’ said I, ‘I shall relieve you of further responsibility.’

“‘Not much!’ said he. ‘Get a postponement until next sessions; I am going to save the poor beggar’s neck.’

“‘Why, old boy,’ I said, fixing him up with a cigarette, ‘you will be lying here in your little bed until next sessions.’

“‘Not for me,’ he said; ‘not for Michael. I shall be in court on two sticks a-saving the poor beggar’s neck.’

“‘Now, look here, old son,’ said I, ‘just let the whole thing go, and we’ll put up somebody else.’

“‘If you do,’ said he, ‘as sure as a gun she’s a gonner.’

“‘I am afraid I agree,’ said I; ‘but if our fair client is not a fit subject for the rope, upon my soul there’s no need to hang anybody.’

“Well, the next thing I saw was that his eyes were full of tears.

“‘Oh, damn it all!’ he said, ‘I can’t stand this hanging of women.’

“‘She’s an out-and-outer,’ said I.

“‘That doesn’t alter her sex,’ said the Irishman.

“‘Well,’ said I, ‘who can you suggest to put up in your stead with your plea of insanity? The difficulty is the brief is only marked twenty guineas, and you can’t get much for that money with you fellows.’

“‘You can’t,’ said he; ‘besides, this is a case for Michael. Unless it is handled in a certain way she is certain to hang. Apply for a postponement.’

“‘Why, you old sentimentalist, I don’t think we could get one,’ said I, having pretty well made up my mind that we could not.

“‘Who is the judge?’ said he.

“‘Bow-wow Brudenell,’ said I, ‘the most pedantic and cantankerous old man on the bench. And Weekes is leading for the Crown. There will not be much in the way of accommodation in that quarter.’

“‘Oh, come, old Bow-wow is not such a bad old sportsman,’ said the Irishman. ‘Tell him just how it is; tell him I’m suddenly laid by the wing, and it will be all right.’

“‘But,’ said I, ‘even if we get a postponement, we shall be none the better for it. It can’t be extended indefinitely; and I am afraid, old boy, this is going to be a long business of yours. I think I shall hand the brief over to Harris.’

“At first I was afraid the wild Irishman was going to jump out of his plaster of Paris.

“‘Harris!’ said he. ‘My aunt! I wouldn’t brief Harris to defend a fox-terrier for worrying a tortoise-shell kitten.’

“‘I’ll admit,’ said I, ‘that Christopher is not a genius, but at least he will get our unfortunate client hanged like a Christian and a gentleman.’

“I spent nearly an hour arguing the point with the poor old fellow. ‘I don’t hold with dumb animals performing on the stage, and I don’t hold with the hanging of women,’ he kept saying, in that odd way of his which one doesn’t know exactly how to take.

“‘Look here, old son,’ I said at last, growing impatient, ‘this will have to be fixed up with Harris to-night; and if I can’t get Harris, I shall get Westby.’

“‘She can hand in her checks if you get either,’ said he. ‘She’ll be hanged by the neck without even a run for her money.’

“‘Well, you can’t get “silk” for twenty guineas,’ said I; ‘and you can’t get a really useful junior.’

“Now, here follows another of the ‘peculiar’ circumstances. Suddenly the wild Irishman lifted himself in his bed, and again there was that odd look in his eyes.

“‘I’ll tell you who you _can_ get,’ said he; ‘he’s come to me in a flash. Get that fellow Northcote.’

“‘Northcote?’ said I; ‘never heard of him.’

“‘Never mind, get him,’ said the wild Irishman. ‘He’s young, and they say he’s mad, but he might bring us luck.’

“‘For a chap with as brilliant a set of brains as are to be found in London,’ said I, ‘you do come out with some of the oddest suggestions. How did you come to think of this fellow Northcote, when you won’t allow Harris and Westby to be good enough?’

“‘Oh,’ said he, ‘he’s one of my inspirations,’

“‘Inspiration my foot!’ said I. ‘I’m off to Christopher Harris.’

“Well, as I was about to go, poor Tobin raised himself again, and those queer eyes came at me in a way I don’t like.

“‘Look here, Whitcomb,’ he said; ‘you were a pal to me when I had hardly a boot to my foot, but if you go to Harris I’ll never speak to you again.’

“‘Lie down, you damned Celt, and go to sleep,’ I said, ‘and I’ll come and talk to you another day.’

“‘I won’t lie down until you promise to go to Northcote at No. 3 Shepherd’s Inn.’

“‘King’s Bench Walk,’ I assured him, ‘will be far better. If I can’t have a reckless fellow like you, I mean to play for safety.’

“‘All the safety in the world,’ said he, ‘won’t save the poor beggar’s neck.’

“‘That’s all very well,’ said I, ‘but an inexperienced man might come a dreadful cropper in a case of this kind. I believe myself in a moderate amount of speculation, but not in a capital charge.’

“‘It’s her only chance,’ said the Irishman.

“‘I am afraid,’ said I, ‘her attorneys are not willing to provide her with it at the risk of decency.’

“‘There’s your Saxon,’ said he. ‘Even when they hang a woman, they insist on decency. Praise be to the saints, we haven’t got any decency in our dirty old island.’

“‘No,’ said I; ‘but you’ve got a good deal of superstition. Whatever put this fellow Northcote into your wild head? I never remember to have heard of him in court.’

“‘I don’t care what you’ve heard of him,’ said the Irishman, ‘this is where he gets his chance. He’ll bring us luck.’

“‘Luck!’ said I. ‘A lawyer’s luck is based on common sense and the capacity to see into the future.’

“‘We crack-brained Celts possess that capacity,’ said Tobin. ‘You can come and tell me on Monday whether I’ve been wrong.’

“‘Is Northcote an Irishman, too?’ I asked, feeling myself beginning to waver; and I don’t mind confessing that I have never been able to withstand Michael Tobin from the first hour I met him.

“‘I’ve only seen the man twice,’ said he; ‘but if he doesn’t carry a drop of the Celt under his waistcoat, Cork was not my birthplace.’

“‘Have you seen him in court?’

“‘Not I. The first time I saw him he was addressing a few well-chosen remarks, quoting the pagan philosophers, to a select gathering of the unemployed in Hyde Park. M’Murdo was with me. “My hat,” said he, “that’s a fellow called Northcote; he’s at the bar. A nice place for a barrister, isn’t it?” “Personally,” said I, “I don’t care a curse about the place, but I’d give ten years of my life to have his voice.” There the thing was booming like an organ, and we stayed half an hour listening to rhetoric that might have come out of Burke.’

“‘And the second time?’

“‘I have only the haziest recollection of the occasion. Where it was I can’t recall, but the mob orator was paraphrasing “Hamlet” to gain facility of expression. But I remember thinking, “My son, you will be bursting upon an astonished world one of these fine afternoons, and then we shall all be complaining about your luck for being born so gifted.”’

“And so, my dear Northcote, to round up a long story, thus it was I came to stand in your chambers, dinnerless, at a quarter-past ten of a winter’s night.”

As is not uncommon with those who possess mental energy, the solicitor, under the stimulus of wine and events, had an immense volubility. During this recital the claret had circulated freely between his companion and himself. Both their faces were flushed, and, moreover, the emotions which had been excited in the young advocate had filled him with a kind of vertigo.

“After all,” said he, resting his forehead on his hand and staring into vacancy, “it is most probably Tobin who is the genie.”

“Set a thief to catch a thief,” laughed the solicitor. “Michael Tobin and yourself are well matched--a pair of deuced odd fellows.”

“In any case,” persisted Northcote, “if a genie you are, you would say you are a genie in spite of yourself.”

“I say nothing at all when it comes to genies,” said the solicitor with emphasis. “I don’t know anything about them; they are not in my line. They don’t trouble the common lawyer in the pursuit of his bread. What does trouble him is time, for time is money.”

The solicitor took out his watch, a thing of value.

“Twenty past eleven,” he said. “There’s a fortune awaiting the fellow who invents an automatic brake to slip on old Father Time. I’ve got to get out to Norbiton to-night,--I promised my little girl, and she will be sitting up. But before I go I wish you would cast your eyes over your brief, and tell me precisely what you think about it.”

The solicitor handed to Northcote the document tied with red tape, and called again for the waiter.

“You’ll have a liqueur?--they’ve got some white curaçao that might be worse. And perhaps some coffee might help us at this stage. Fortunately, this is the one place in London where they know how it’s made. And, Alphonse, you might bring some of those fireworks that you call cigars.”

VIII

EQUITY A FRUIT OF THE GODS

By the time the waiter had returned, the young advocate was addressing himself to the bundle of papers with a remarkable energy. Already a fierce mental excitement had stirred him. His senses, overstimulated by a wine of great potency, and by a too sudden reaction from a state of actual bodily starvation, a fever had been kindled in his frame. And those high ambitions which had reconciled him to existence through so long a period of the most abject penury, yet whose only home had been his wild dreams, had suddenly, at the touch of the magic wand of the enchanter, acquired a name and a local habitation.

It was no wonder that to the eyes of the solicitor, that cool, mature, and rather cynical man of the world, this young man, in whom strong and deep emotions had been let loose, soon became an object of scientific interest. Mr. Whitcomb felt himself to be even a little disconcerted by the feverish manner in which the young advocate tossed about the pages of his brief. As he came to note the vivid pallor of the face before him, the burning of the eyes, the twitching of the lips, he felt a qualm of uneasiness. Perchance it had been neither wise nor kind to be so lavish of the Château Margaux. Blood which had been deteriorated by a course of insufficient food was only too likely to be over-charged by an unaccustomed accession of heat. Already it had seemed to be waxing too high.

“Here is your liqueur,” said Mr. Whitcomb, with a slight perturbation, “and here’s a cigar I’ve chosen for you. And here’s a nice black coffee that may steady you a bit.”

“Thanks, thanks,” muttered Northcote, nodding his head in a mechanical manner.

The solicitor gulped his liqueur, and cut off the end of his cigar.

“Well, old boy,” he said, letting a somewhat whimsical gaze fall upon the man who sat opposite, “do you feel like giving us a bit of a run for our money at the hour of ten-thirty at the Central Criminal Court on Friday morning next, or would you prefer that the chance should be offered to Harris?”

The advocate swallowed his coffee.

“You will have a run for your money all right,” said he, “on Friday morning next. Upon my soul, I believe you have given me a start with the most fascinating case in the world.”

The solicitor pursed up his lips in an expression of genial contradiction.

“If you find fascination in a thing like that,” he said, “you must look very deep. The whole business is sordid, atrocious, bestial. The crime is brutal and perfectly commonplace.”

“Is it not a mere question,” said the advocate, “of the fashion in which one uses one’s eyes, of the plane over which one permits them to stray?”

“There is only one plane, my friend,” said the solicitor, “over which an attorney permits _his_ eyes to stray. That is the obvious diurnal one of matter-of-fact common sense.”

“Yet it may happen,” Northcote rejoined, “that the plane of matter-of-fact common sense may not be identical in the eyes of attorney and advocate.”

“Is not the hour somewhat advanced for a Socratic dialogue?” said the solicitor.

“Also,” persisted Northcote, “the plane of matter-of-fact common sense, in whatever it may consist, may not prove identical in the eyes of the jury and the judge; also in the eyes of the person who committed the crime, and the person who was the victim of it.”

“We are not here to traverse the moral code,” said the solicitor, “or to enter the domain of abstract reason. The English penal law is perfectly explicit upon the point at issue, as I think you will find on Friday.”

Of a sudden Northcote struck the table a violent blow.

“This unhappy woman has been deeply wronged by circumstance,” he said, with a vehemence that was totally unexpected.

“It will do your case no harm to show that to the jury,” said the solicitor, sucking quietly at his cigar. “There is not a scrap of evidence to support such a contention, but it might be of service if it could be upheld.”

“Is it not here that we enter on the higher function of the advocate’s art?” said the young man. “Does it not consist in the evocation of that which lies outside the obvious?”

“You must have it entirely your own way, my dear fellow,” said the solicitor warily. “I don’t propose to play the rôle of Adeimantus at this hour of the night. But I don’t mind remarking that you will have to evoke that which is very far outside the obvious to secure the acquittal of my client on Friday.”

“That is viewing the subject from the plane of matter-of-fact common sense which you are content to inhabit?”

“That is so; I can view it from no other. But may I remark in parenthesis that you are also likely to find the judge and jury inhabiting that plane on Friday.”

“You permit yourself a greater definiteness than I dare to employ,” said Northcote. “But the point I would like to fix is this: Assuming that I am able to evoke that which in your view lies so far outside the obvious as to be non-existent, will you countenance my so doing in the prisoner’s interest?”

The solicitor gave a short nervous jerk to his mustache.

“That is a rather extraordinary proposition to advance,” he said disconcertedly; “and as you are a young man, a beginner, perhaps you will forgive my saying that I consider you hardly wise to advance it.”

“Because we cannot contrive to keep our corns out of the way, eh? We would look upon equity as a sort of fruit of the gods, which mankind may eat of, but may not analyze.”

“I shall not attempt to follow you. But what I would like to say is this,--and I hope, my dear fellow, you, as an advocate, will not consider this as a breach of etiquette on the part of your client,--I don’t like your question at all. In a word, speaking with twenty years’ experience behind me, I hardly think it ought to have been put.”

The accession of somewhat strenuous solemnity to a manner which a minute ago had been grossly, carelessly genial, filled Northcote with a heavy mocking laughter.

“I don’t like it at all; oughtn’t to have been put,” Mr. Whitcomb reaffirmed, with a curious admixture of nervousness and sternness.

“I wonder if I shall ever acquire the most valuable of all the arts,” said the young man, with an arch smile; “the art of knowing where not to look.”

“That art comprises the first law of success,” said the solicitor sententiously.

“I omitted to append a rather important corollary to that extraordinary proposition of mine,” said Northcote, with a mischievous air. “It is this: Is the advocate entitled to evoke what is non-existent in the eyes of his client, providing it has an existence in his own?”

“I hope to be spared anything further upon the subject,” said the solicitor. “I don’t aspire to be a casuist; I’m a common lawyer. But I feel I am entitled to say this: use this subtlety of yours on Friday to a full advantage, and you will have no cause to regret having done so.”

“Yes, it’s the voice of the genie, right enough,” said the young man, in a hollow voice, as he toyed with an empty wine-glass.

“And I feel I am also entitled to say,” said the solicitor, with emphasis, “since your mind appears to be exercised by the question, that when an advocate accepts a brief, his whole duty is to his client.”

“And in the case of this unfortunate woman, will serve the interests of his client by securing her acquittal?”

“Unquestionably.”

“If the ends of justice are thereby defeated?”

“Well, since you force one to say it, the interests of the prisoner’s attorney may not always be coincident with those of justice.”

“My dear Adeimantus, that is well said,” the young man exclaimed. “Yet I have your assurance that the interests of client and advocate should be always identical?”

“Yes, I think you are entitled to say that,” said the solicitor; “although understand, if you please, I speak entirely in my capacity as an attorney.”

“From which I gather that as a unit of mankind, as a subscriber to the common equity, you reserve to yourself the right to appease your private gods subsequently in your own private fashion?”

“I suppose one does.”

“And in the meantime, you and I, attorney and advocate, must compass the liberation of this foul murderess, must, if we can, give her back to society?”

“Personally, I shall be content if we enable her to escape the extreme penalty.”

“You balk my question.”

“Pray have it as you choose. Thank God, I am only a common lawyer!”

“My dear Samuel Whitcomb,” said the young man, peering at him with gaunt eyes, “you would do well to get down here and now on your knees, and thank Him for a dispensation of that kind.”

IX

THE BRIEF WITHDRAWN

“Waiter!” called the solicitor at this point. “More coffee, if you please. Let it be hot and strong.” Turning to Northcote, he added: “Our minds have grown so subtle with that claret we’ve got to find out where we are.”

“Narcotics are not usually the friends of truth,” said his companion.

“My worthy Samuel Taylor,” laughed the solicitor, “I hope you will not forget I want to get to Norbiton to-night.”

“There is one other point,” said the young man imperturbably, “on which I wish to render myself clear.”

Mr. Whitcomb permitted himself a shrug of unmistakable expostulation.

“What, another!” he muttered under his breath. “This fellow is the devil!”

“I do not propose to take the line of insanity.”

Northcote spoke with a quietness which seemed to deepen the reverberation of Mr. Whitcomb’s subsequent exclamation.

“Then you hang her!”

“On the contrary,” said Northcote, “I promise an acquittal.”

For a moment the solicitor was robbed of speech by this extraordinary announcement.

“Upon my word,” he exclaimed, with a more manifest impatience than any he had yet shown, “you can hardly have read your brief. There is nothing to extenuate the crime; and the evidence of it is overwhelming.”

“Circumstantial, apparently.”

“You must know that in a capital charge the prosecution relies almost invariably upon circumstantial evidence.”

“So much the worse for it in this particular instance.”

“I am at a loss to understand.” The solicitor spoke in accents of alarm. “There is not a man living who could overthrow the present evidence.”

The young man smiled darkly. The symptoms of his inebriation had yielded to the clarifying influence of a liqueur and two cups of strong black coffee. His calmness was now forming a memorable contrast to the marked excitement of the older man.

“My dear Mr. Whitcomb,” he said, “I suggest, as you wish to get to Norbiton, that we adjourn this discussion until Friday evening, by which time Emma Harrison, _alias_ Cox, _alias_ Marshall, will be restored to society.”

“Such an undertaking is entirely reckless,” said the solicitor bluntly. “Quite the last thing that Tobin himself would attempt would be to upset the theory of the prosecution. The chain of evidence could not be more complete. Even he, in the opinion of many the most brilliant common law man we have at the present moment at the bar, would be content to urge extenuating circumstances, and call witnesses in their support.”

“Since you have seen fit to entrust the conduct of this case to me,” said Northcote, “I shall beg to be conceded as free a hand as would have been conceded to Michael Tobin.”

“Is your request quite reasonable?” said the solicitor. “Tobin has years of experience and success behind him.”

“You can trust me not to attempt more than I can perform,” said Northcote.

“Really, sir,” said Mr. Whitcomb, genuinely alarmed by such an obduracy, “I cannot admit your right, in the circumstances in which you stand at present, to overstep the bounds that are so clearly indicated by persons of experience.”

“I take this brief into court free of all restriction,” was the young man’s rejoinder.

“That one can hardly consent to,” said the solicitor. “Would you say it is quite legitimate to make such a stipulation? We have our witnesses on the line of insanity, and we must ask to have them called.”

“But do you not see,” said Northcote, “that if we call those witnesses we admit the theory of the prosecution, and cut the ground from under our own feet?”

“Certainly, certainly. One would have thought that so much would be self-evident.”

“Yet you sought me out in the capacity of a fighter. I take it that had you not desired to fight you would have gone straightway to Harris.”

“I can only admit the possibilities of a fight within limits. The woman’s guilt is established beyond question; our only concern is to mitigate its degree.”

“For my own part,” said the advocate, “I am not prepared to accept your proposition. To my mind, so far is the woman’s guilt from being already established, that I am prepared to give an undertaking that it never will be established.”

The solicitor drummed his fingers on the table-cloth.

“I should like Tobin to hear you say that. I wish you had been at the police-court when the case came before the magistrate. There is enough evidence to hang an archdeacon.”

“Very likely. But we shall be getting back to those abstract principles for entertaining which I have already suffered reproof.”

The solicitor gave an uneasy eye to his watch.

“You force me to deliver an ultimatum,” said he, in an uncompromising tone. “Please have the goodness to give an undertaking to conduct the defence on the lines indicated by Tobin, or return the brief.”

A wave of blood surged through the brain of the young advocate. A dismal sickness overspread his veins. Tantalus was about to pluck away that which he had fasted and prayed for before he could take it in his grasp.

“You have entrusted it to me already,” he said, in a dull, dry voice.

“In a case of this magnitude,” said the solicitor, with an almost brutal precision, “I reserve to myself the right to alter my mind. You have forced me to issue an ultimatum. Accept or reject it, whichever you choose.”

The solicitor called for his bill in a hectoring manner, and threw a bank-note on the waiter’s salver.

The young advocate, in the meantime, buttoned the brief in the breast-pocket of his somewhat threadbare black coat.

“What is your decision?” said the solicitor, regarding the young man with an insolent coolness.

“You can’t have back your brief,” said Northcote. “You gave it to me.”

“It can only be held conditionally,” said Mr. Whitcomb, “and the conditions are perfectly easy to accept.”

“The brief was delivered unconditionally into my keeping,” said Northcote, in an arid voice. “And,” he added, with a sudden gleam of the eyes as an overpowering recollection of his destiny came back to him, “you will have no reason to regret your act.”

Before the solicitor had framed a reply the waiter had returned with the receipted bill.

“Keep the change,” said the solicitor, “and call a hansom.”

The waiter withdrew.

“Do I take it,” said the solicitor, with an incisive drawl in his speech as he turned to Northcote, “that you have said no?”

“I have said no in the first place to your restrictions,” said Northcote, looking him full in the eyes, “and in the second to your ultimatum.”

“Then with all possible reluctance I must ask you to have the goodness to return the brief.”

“With an equal reluctance I feel I must decline to do so,” said Northcote, speaking through tight lips.

For a moment the solicitor was taken aback by this pointblank refusal.

“But--but--” he stammered, “surely this is most unprofessional. Such a thing has never happened to me in all my twenty years of practice.”

“And I don’t suppose,” rejoined the young advocate, “it will ever happen to you again. But suppose we leave the plane of our professionalism, step down from our platform, and approach the prejudices of each other in a rational spirit.”

“No more argument, I beseech you,” said the solicitor sternly; “I’ve got to get to Norbiton. Return the brief, and we will say no more. You are not the man for this case. You have a bee in your bonnet; you have too many brains. I think none the worse of you, mind; I respect you; you have your ideas; one day they may prove valuable, but not in common law. You have mistaken your _métier_, that is all. We will say you are above your work; at any rate, with all deference to Michael Tobin, I shall prefer to see Harris holding briefs of ours before a common-sense English jury and a matter-of-fact English judge when it comes to the capital charge.”

“If you are present in court on Friday,” said Northcote, “you will find that I, not Harris, will still be holding the brief you entrusted to my care.”

“Upon my word,” muttered the solicitor to himself, “this fellow is a madman, a lunatic. I dare say he’s been starving so long that a square meal has turned his brain.”

Involuntarily his eyes began to traverse the face of the man who sat bolt upright with arms folded at the other side of the table. It was excessively pale, flushed with wine and conversation, and strangely, exquisitely mobile. It had a kind of gaunt delicacy, but the obvious traces of suffering were permeated by a remarkable power. The features were irregular yet not unpleasing, the nose was straight and incisive, the eyes deep and luminous, the mouth large and full-lipped. The general expression was sombre, because it was so bluntly dominating, yet it was rendered memorable by many subtle qualities. Clearly it was one of those faces which to see was never to forget.

Mr. Whitcomb, in spite of his desire to get to Norbiton, and the severe tests to which his constitutional arrogance as an immensely successful man of the world had been subjected, owed too much to his trained powers of observation to lay them aside at a moment so remarkable.

“This fellow is cut to a big pattern,” was his mental comment. “That is a splendid mask for an advocate. Upon my soul, if he were not so mad I think I should be inclined to back him heavily. Yet I believe he is literally starving.”

The solicitor rose abruptly from the table to dispel his reverie.

“Rather than you should feel you have ground for complaint,” said he abruptly, as if touched by compassion, “I shall ask you to allow me to advance half of your fee; and to-morrow I will send you some other sort of work.”

Mr. Whitcomb unrolled a note for ten pounds and gave it to Northcote.

“Now,” he said, “kindly return the brief and I will go.”

Northcote crumpled up the note and thrust it in his pocket.

“I accept half my fee,” said he, “not as a bribe, but as a retainer. By this means I pledge myself to conduct the case to its appointed issue.”

“Pray do not let us misunderstand one another,” said the solicitor, with a sense of being trapped. “This brief is withdrawn definitely; I ask you to return it to me. I give you ten pounds as a solatium for losing your fee.”

“I cannot construe the situation in that fashion,” said the young man calmly.

“This is not a question of construction,” said the solicitor, with his anger beginning to announce itself; “it is a question of hard fact. Your brief is withdrawn.”

“And I,” said Northcote, with expansive bluntness, “do not submit to its withdrawal.”

Before this _impasse_ which had presented itself in a manner so definite, the solicitor, whose patience had been strained beyond the breaking-point, could only take refuge in a series of imprecations.

“Fellow’s drunk,” he muttered. “Shall have to see him first thing to-morrow. But it is most irritating that he should refuse to give up the papers when time is so short. It looks like an application for a postponement after all.”

The solicitor turned for the last time to the advocate.

“It is a quarter-past twelve,” he said brusquely, “and I am going home. And I would like to urge you to gain reflection by the aid of a few hours’ sleep, because I shall look for that brief to be delivered at my offices at a quarter-past ten to-morrow morning. Good night.”

He held out his hand; Northcote ignored it.

“You appear to impugn my sobriety,” said the latter, “and that is a pity, because in all my life I have never felt my mind to be quite so clear as it is to-night. Perhaps it is not fair to expect you to appreciate the point at which I have arrived, and why it is impossible for me to restore your brief.” He pressed his hands over the bundle of papers in his coat. “You see your brief is my destiny.”

A final expression of somewhat forcible disapproval escaped Mr. Whitcomb, and he moved away to the room in which he had deposited his hat and coat.

As an attendant was assisting to envelop the solicitor’s portliness in these articles, it annoyed him to find that Northcote had followed him.

“Why not spare one this trouble to which you are putting one?” he said reproachfully. “Why not be moderately reasonable about it?”

“Ah, you see,” said Northcote with a smile, as he presented the ticket for his own extremely time-worn hat and coat, “even a thing so primitive as ‘the moderately reasonable’ must submit itself to the peculiarly elusive mental plane one is doomed to inhabit.”

“Peace! peace!” said the solicitor. “No more of that!”

“Attorney and advocate, judge and jury,” said the young man, as he rummaged in vain among his pockets to find a tip for the attendant, “justice and equity, the prisoner at the bar and the victim of circumstance,--one and all are to be poised upon the same arbitrary moral elevation, to submit to the mandates of a tribunal which is the creation of that egregiously warped and time-serving thing upon which we bestow the name of The Majority.”

“Peace! peace!” said the solicitor, unable in spite of himself to repress a laugh at the amazed face of the cloak-room attendant, and moving to where his hansom awaited him; “give up those papers here and now like a good fellow, and save me a great deal of time and worry. If Harris doesn’t see them first thing to-morrow it means a postponement, and we don’t want that.”

“There is need for neither,” said Northcote, buttoning up his threadbare overcoat. “But, ye gods and little fishes! what is the name for the total blindness, the pathetic obtuseness, which has eclipsed the faculties of this connoisseur, this expert? Here is one who has been angling for years for a real authentic fish from the sea, yet when one plumps into his net, being accustomed to nothing but the sight of minnows, he doesn’t even guess at his travaille.”

By this time the solicitor had fled precipitately through the vestibule of the restaurant, and stood in the portico awaiting his hansom.

X

THE RIDE TO NORBITON

As he was entering the vehicle Northcote came to his side.

“Good night,” said Mr. Whitcomb. “In the morning, perhaps, when you see things a bit clearer you will think better of this. In fact I am sure of it; and I hope you will not forget to send round the brief.”

Before he could close the door of the hansom, the young man had joined him in its interior.

“I hope you don’t mind my coming with you,” he said, entirely at his ease. “This matter is far too momentous for all concerned to be left in the unsatisfactory stage at which it has now arrived.”

“This fellow is the devil,” muttered the solicitor, suppressing a groan.

“Where, sir?” said the cabman through the hole in the roof.

“Norbiton.”

“Norbiton! Not to-night, sir; the ’oss is tired.”

“Take me to Norbiton,” said the solicitor sharply, “and never mind about your horse.”

“Very sorry, guv’nor--”

“Well, if you can afford to lose a sovereign--”

The cabman’s head disappeared immediately, and the horse started on its journey at a good round pace.

“These cabmen are the greatest robbers in Europe,” said the solicitor, settling himself in his corner. “They are a disgrace to London. One would like to see them taken over by the state.”

Although Mr. Whitcomb was ruffled by his companion’s strange pertinacity, his philosophic habit soon came to his aid.

“Have a weed?” he said, offering his cigar-case.

By the time each had lighted a cigar and ensconced himself in a measure of comfort in a corner of the vehicle, the irritation of the one and the aggressive tenacity of the other had been somewhat allayed.