I’ll have time to go over it, after all.”
He thrust the blue-backed sheets into his inner pocket. Mr. Kranich closed his brief-case.
“Well, the sooner the quicker,” he remarked, getting to his feet. “So long, Mr. Hoyle!—So long, Mr. Dillon!” He slipped through the door like a shadow. Hoyle got up and closed it behind him.
“Let’s have a look at those papers.”
“One moment!” Hugh held him off. “I would like to get this straight. In the first place, no matter what you do I’m out of this whole business. Mr. Devens is a friend of mine. In the second, am I right in supposing that you intend taking a case against one of your own clients?”
Hoyle had gone back to his chair and was watching Hugh over arched fingers.
“Who told you they were my clients?”
“O’Hara.”
Hoyle’s mouth drew into a small rosette.
“Doesn’t it occur to you that if I find one of my clients is crooked I can get rid of him? If Kranich has evidence that the A. A. and B., or its officers, have been guilty of crime, there is no reason why we should continue to represent them, or, for matter of that, why we should not act against them. It might be our duty to do so!”
“That’s a sweet thought!” ejaculated Hugh with contempt.
It was his introduction to high-class legal rascality. Hoyle eyed him from the shadow between the windows. The cat had tiptoed along all three sides of the fence and was now on her return trip, daintily lifting her white paws. Hugh took a step nearer.
“And it doesn’t answer my question. Are you going to take the case?”
“That depends——”
“On which side is the most money, I suppose,” hazarded Hugh scornfully. “That’s one way to practise law! On the one hand to take a case against a corporation whose money is in your pocket, or on the other to trap a man who wishes to retain you, into giving you confidential information to hand over to your client!—You’ve got to double-cross one or the other!”
Hoyle’s jowls had turned the colour of raw meat.
“Give me those papers or get out of this office!” he said.
Hugh buttoned his coat.
“That is what I intend to do. If I ever need a devil’s advocate I’ll know where to find him. Meantime, I shall take these papers back to Kranich.”
The light had faded from Mulcahy’s fence. The cat had vanished. The room was still.
“I’m a bad man to have for an enemy!” remarked Hoyle. “You’re young—and— Well—I’m willing to overlook this incident if you’ll behave yourself properly and give me those papers!”
Hugh turned his back on him and started for the door. “This is the end of a promising young career!” he thought. The chances and changes of this mortal life were certainly astonishing! At the threshold he paused. There had come into his mind the refrain of the song they had used to shout at the Heinies across the trenches.
“‘The bells of hell go ting-a-ling for you, and not for me!’” he remarked to his erstwhile partner. “Good-by, Hoyle and O’Hara! Give my regards to Sing Sing!”
Moira’s chauffeur, swinging down White Street in order to attain the broader thoroughfare of Lafayette again, nearly ran over Mr. Michael Redmond, who leaped gracefully upon the running-board and smiled upon her.
“Shall I give you a lift?” she asked.
“You nearly lifted me into eternal glory!” replied Redmond, twisting through the door. “But I will allow you to make amends. I saw you not long ago in Part I. You seem to have the habit. Has your pet burglar landed in the Tombs?”
“Yes,” answered Moira. “All my pet burglars and murderers and robbers have landed there. Where are you going to land?”
“I had thought of landing in your drawing-room about tea-time.”
“Do, by all means.”
She seemed encouragingly cordial, and it occurred to Mr. Redmond that he had been mistaken about her not liking him yesterday afternoon. So, being a bold young man, he said:
“You know, I would most awfully like to kiss you.”
“In that case you would land in the street,” she remarked definitely, “even if I let you first. Do you remember Gautier’s ‘One of Cleopatra’s Nights’?”
“I wish I could!” he mused. “You will observe that I only said I would like to.”
“It is a mistake to theorize about such things.”
“But not to do them?”
“If one expects to do them. It is too late now for either theorizing or action.”
Because she was Irish she liked him better this way than when he was humble. Really, he was rather nice!
“What sort of a young man is that Mr. Dillon?” she asked, partly from a desire to annoy him. Redmond finished lighting his cigarette.
“A nice fellow, I think. A sort of volcano. You never know when he’s going into eruption. A mighty good trial lawyer. He’s all right!”
Had he but known it he could have kissed her at that moment without rebuke! But he did not know it. He merely knew instinctively that the best way to cajole a woman is to praise her lover.
There were fifteen young people already having tea at the house when they made their entrance.
“Do forgive me for being late!” she begged. “No—keep right on pouring, Mona!—Make it strong, please! I’m sorry, but I had important business down at the Tombs—and I’m a wreck.”
“I hasten to add that I wasn’t the business,” added Mr. Redmond, modestly.
“Isn’t it a terrible place?” inquired a languid girl with green eyes and earrings. “I wouldn’t mind seeing it myself. Will you take me down some day, Mr. Redmond?”
Moira swung on her.
“If you are going down there merely out of curiosity you’d better stay away, Elsie dear.”
“I’m not going merely out of curiosity. I’d like to be of some help to those poor people!”
The others had stopped talking. Moira found herself quoting Hugh.
“Don’t think me rude,” she said, “but the idea that girls like us can really be of any help to men in prison, strikes me as ridiculous. What do we know about the conditions that brought them there? For that matter, what do we know about life?”
From which sententious utterance most of those present immediately concluded that she was stalking Mr. Michael Redmond, and was taking
