isn’t enough for me to do, sir.”
Francis lit his pipe.
“It’s probably just a lull, Fawsitt,” he remarked.
“I don’t think so, sir.”
“The devil! You’ve been gossiping with some of these solicitors’ clerks, Fawsitt.”
“I shouldn’t call it gossiping, sir. I am always interested to hear anything that may concern our—my future. I have reason to believe, sir, that we are being passed over for briefs.”
“The reason being?”
“One can’t pick and choose, sir. One shouldn’t, anyway.”
Francis smiled.
“You evidently don’t approve of any measure of personal choice as to the work which one takes up.”
“Certainly I do not, sir, in our profession. The only brief I would refuse would be a losing or an ill-paid one. I don’t conceive it to be our business to prejudge a case.”
“I see,” Francis murmured. “Go on, Fawsitt.”
“There’s a rumour about,” the young man continued, “that you are only going to plead where the chances are that your client is innocent.”
“There’s some truth in that,” Francis admitted.
“If I could leave a little before the three months, sir, I should be glad,” Fawsitt said. “I look at the matter from an entirely different point of view.”
“You shall leave when you like, of course, Fawsitt, but tell me what that point of view is?”
“Just this, sir. The simplest-minded idiot who ever stammered through his address, can get an innocent prisoner off if he knows enough of the facts and the law. To my mind, the real triumph in our profession is to be able to unwind the meshes of damning facts and force a verdict for an indubitably guilty client.”
“How does the moral side of that appeal to you?” his senior enquired.
“I didn’t become a barrister to study morals, or even to consider them,” was the somewhat caustic reply. “When once a brief is in my mind, it is a matter of brain, cunning and resource. The guiltier a man, the greater the success if you can get him off.”
“And turn him loose again upon Society?”
“It isn’t our job to consider that, sir. The moral question is only confusing in the matter. Our job is to make use of the law for the benefit of our client. That’s what we’re paid for. That’s the measure of our success or failure.”
Francis nodded.
“Very reasonably put, Fawsitt,” he conceded. “I’ll give you a letter to Barnes whenever you like.”
“I should be glad if you would do so, sir,” the young man said. “I’m only wasting my time here….”
Francis wrote a letter of recommendation to Barnes, the great K.C., considered a stray brief which had found its way in, and strolled up towards the Milan as the hour approached luncheon-time. In the American bar of that palatial hotel he found the young man he was looking for—a flaxen-haired youth who was seated upon one of the small tables, with his feet upon a chair, laying down the law to a little group of acquaintances. He greeted Francis cordially but without that due measure of respect which nineteen should accord to thirty-five.
“Cheerio, my elderly relative!” he exclaimed. “Have a cocktail.”
Francis nodded assent.
“Come into this corner with me for a moment, Charles,” he invited. “I have a word for your ear.”
The young man rose and sat by his uncle’s side on a settee.
“In my declining years,” the latter began, “I find myself reverting to the follies of youth. I require a letter of introduction from you to a young lady of your acquaintance.”
“The devil! Not one of my own special little pets, I hope?”
“Her name is Miss Daisy Hyslop,” Francis announced.
Lord Charles Southover pursed his lips and whistled. He glanced at Francis sideways.
“Is this the beginning of a campaign amongst the butterflies,” he enquired, “because, if so, I feel it my duty, uncle, to address to you a few words of solemn warning. Miss Daisy Hyslop is hot stuff.”
“Look here, young fellow,” Francis said equably, “I don’t know what the state of your exchequer is—”
“I owe you forty,” Lord Charles interrupted. “Spring another tenner, make it fifty, that is, and the letter of introduction I will write for you will bring tears of gratitude to your eyes.”
“I’ll spring the tenner,” Francis promised, “but you’ll write just what I tell you—no more and no less.”
“Anything extra for keeping mum at home?” the young man ventured tentatively.
“You’re a nice sort of nephew to have!” Francis declared. “Abandon these futile attempts at blackmail and just come this way to the writing-table.”
“You’ve got the tenner with you?” the young man asked anxiously.
Francis produced a well-filled pocketbook. His nephew led the way to a writing-table, lit a cigarette which he stuck into the corner of his mouth, and in painstaking fashion wrote the few lines which Francis dictated. The ten pounds changed hands.
“Have one with me for luck?” the young man invited brightly. “No? Perhaps you’re right,” he added, in valedictory fashion. “You’d better keep your head clear for Daisy!”
CHAPTER XI
Miss Daisy Hyslop received Francis that afternoon, in the sitting-room of her little suite at the Milan. Her welcoming smile was plaintive and a little subdued, her manner undeniably gracious. She was dressed in black, a wonderful background for her really gorgeous hair, and her deportment indicated a recent loss.
“How nice of you to come and see me,” she murmured, with a lingering touch of the fingers. “Do take that easy-chair, please, and sit down and talk to me. Your roses were beautiful, but whatever made you send them to me?”
“Impulse,” he answered.
She laughed softly.
“Then please yield to such impulses as often as you feel them,” she begged. “I adore flowers. Just now, too,” she added, with a little sigh, “anything is welcome which helps to keep my mind off my own affairs.”
“It was very good of you to let me come,” he declared. “I
