The Case and Exceptions Part 19

"Miss Halpin," began Williams when the door closed, "I suppose you are well aware what your position is, and that it can't be made much worse.

I cannot, of course, promise you any leniency, but if you want to answer a few questions you can regard yourself as speaking confidentially to your Counsel, and I may possibly be able to give you some advice."

The woman looked at him in silence for a moment and then nodded.

"Are you the Mary Halpin mentioned in the divorce case of _Forbes_ vs.

_Forbes_?"

"Yes."

Williams studied the face before him, and as he did so, possibilities began to crowd thick and fast upon his mind. He determined to risk something in his next question.

"Mr. Forbes suggested that you impersonate Mrs. Forbes," he a.s.serted boldly.

"How do you know that?" snapped Miss Halpin.

"No matter--I do know it. What reason did he give for wanting you to impersonate his wife?"

The woman buried her face in her hands and Williams let her cry it out.

Here was a nice ending to all his plans for Miss Thornton! If Forbes'

connection with this case was known what a splendid newspaper story his courts.h.i.+p of the young society girl would make! All the horrors of publicity would be crowded upon her with crus.h.i.+ng force. She might bear humiliation in the sight of her friends, but not before the gaze of the world. If anything was to be done to strangle that journalistic tid-bit it must be done then and there.

"Why did he want you to impersonate his wife?" repeated Williams.

The woman looked at him through her tears.

"He said he had to have the money and--if I did it--he'd have plenty. He said--he said there was no harm--that I was--I was--that I had a right to say I was Mrs. Forbes, and he'd marry me afterwards. But he'll never do it now!" she sobbed, "he'll never do it now!"

"I think he will."

Miss Halpin stopped weeping and stared eagerly at Williams.

"O if I thought that!" she began. "I'd do anything--anything!"

"Listen then. Does Winter or Stein know of Forbes in this matter?"

"No, no."

"Don't they know he's back of you?"

"No."

"All your own game?--You bought them yourself?"

"Yes."

"And you don't want revenge on Forbes?"

"No, no. G.o.d forgive me, I love him!"

"Then prove it. You will be taken to the Tombs now. Don't get frightened. Say nothing to anyone. Before night Forbes will get bail for you and you will go at once with him to Dr. Strong's in Jersey City.

Forbes has promised to marry you before?"

"Yes."

"So I suppose you wouldn't mind having some sort of hold on him?"

The woman smiled.

"All right, I'll give you some advice. If he hesitates at the altar this time tell him you've been asked to turn State's evidence and remind him that it is difficult for wives to testify against their husbands. That's all. Good-bye."

Williams opened the door and stepped into the outer office.

"You will find your prisoner in my room, Sergeant," he said to the waiting detective.

"Dan," he called to the office boy, as the door closed upon the officer and his charge. "Ring up Mr. R. Castelez Forbes, and say I want to see him here at once."

Ten minutes later Williams was retained by R. Castelez Forbes, and gave that gentleman some sound advice. The same day toward evening, Mrs. R.

C. Forbes, _nee_ Halpin, and her husband, _alias_ R. Castelez Forbes, started very privately for the West, and the City of New York was the richer in forfeited bail.

It is often difficult to differentiate between the accessory to a crime and the counsel defending the criminal. Williams, of course, might plead confidential communications, which certainly cover a mult.i.tude of sins.

But I prefer to pardon him on the theory that all is fair in love and--well, law is a sort of civil war. Sometimes not even civil.

If this wasn't a true story, I might report that Williams married a fine woman in every way worthy of him, and that Meyer as a reward for that day's good work gave him all his business ever afterwards. But the facts are Williams never married, and Meyer refused to pay his fee. Whereupon Williams promptly sued him for the money, won the suit and collected every cent due him. That is the real reason why the old scamp respects him nowadays and gives him so much of his business.

BY WAY OF COUNTERCLAIM.

I.

There are office buildings still standing in down-town New York where the occupant does not merge his ident.i.ty with the numerals on his door.

But they are very old buildings and the tenants are apt to be as old-fas.h.i.+oned as their surroundings. It was in one of these venerable piles that Clayton Sargent pa.s.sed his legal apprentices.h.i.+p, and perhaps this explains some things in his career which are otherwise inexplicable.

When Sargent was first ushered into the offices of Messrs. Harding, Peyton, Merrill and Van Standt he found a suite of plainly furnished rooms connected by green baize doors and surrounded by law books from floor to ceiling. The desks were large and dignified--almost learned in their solidity, as though they had soaked in all the wisdom that had dripped from the pens and all the experience of the pen holders.--The large iron safe built into the wall of the rear room looked a very monster of mystery from whose cavernous jaws no secrets would ever escape, and in whose keeping confidences were secure as with the Sphinx.

No sound of the typewriter was ever heard in those rooms, though the crackle and snapping of the soft cannel coal in the open fireplaces would occasionally lure someone into betting that "the Ancients had surrendered." No telephone ever tinkled its call inside those doors and no member of the firm ever learned to use that instrument.

Harding, Peyton, Merrill and Van Standt's law papers were a joke in the profession. They were engrossed on parchment-like paper and tied with blue or red silk string, and if a seal was used two bits of ribbon always protruded from its edge. But those who read these doc.u.ments, though they laughed at the outside, respected the inside, for "the Ancients" had a large practice and knew how to keep it.

"They're harmless old birds," said Elmendorff, whose place Sargent was taking, "but utterly impractical. I've been three years in a live office and I tell you I couldn't stand this. You'll waste your time here. Why, not a week ago I heard old man Peyton tell a client that he'd better put everything on the altar of compromise and then offer to divide, rather than get into litigation. They're dying of dry rot. You can't get up a sc.r.a.p here to save your eternal. Just think of this for instance.

Last month I began an action for the Staunton Manufacturing Company against Mundel and it was dead open and shut, too. Well, in walks Harding one morning madder than hops. 'How did this get in the office?'

says he, waiving the complaint. I told him I advised the plaintiffs that they had a good case. 'Good case!' he roars. 'There's not the slightest justice in the claim--not a scintilla of justice, Sir!' 'But we can win,' I told him, and I showed the old fool where the defendant had slipped up in the wording of his contract and how we had him cold. Well, darn me, if he didn't get hotter under the collar than before, asking me if I thought his firm were hired tricksters and bravos and I don't know what. Finally he bundled all the papers back to the Staunton Company and wrote them they oughtn't to sue. That settled me, and so I told them I'd have to get out into the world again before the moss grew. It's a pity, too, for they've really got a smooth lot of clients if they only knew how to work them."