to the change of season,” replied his master. “As I recall, it was a soft and gentle green last spring. But this is autumn—when the leaves are red—or is it yellow?”
Quirk held it off for inspection.
“That was because it fell into a pail of borax water,” he explained, as Hugh lifted off the frying-pan and took his seat at the table.
“What’s on the calendar this morning?” he asked.
“A bunch of stuff over in the police court—but Quirk can hold most of it—adjourn it for a couple of days until we can look it over—a Tong murder, and one or two little things of that sort,” answered O’Hara. “Then there are a couple of motions in Part I, and five pleadings. I’ll attend to the motions, but you’ll have to handle the rest. You can plead ’em all guilty then and there if they haven’t any money. I’ve got a habeas corpus returnable before Judge Lawrence in Part II of the Supreme Court at eleven o’clock. A fairly busy morning. When is your next case?”
“My next case is the first one I can force the district attorney to try,” said Hugh. “Three of our clients have been rotting over there in the Tombs for a month, when there’s not a shred of credible evidence against them. Look at Renig! He was in the Tombs three weeks before he was tried! Who can say there isn’t one law for the poor and another for the rich?”
“Well, don’t look at me!” said O’Hara. “I didn’t.”
“It’s true all the same!” Hugh continued, waving his coffee spoon toward the Tombs. “That place over there is just a pest-house. Every man and woman that goes in there comes out infected with some social distemper. I’ll bet Renig is half Bolshevik already. I’d be, in his place! Justice is the basis of everything, isn’t it? We ought to administer the law as well as we play baseball, oughtn’t we?”
“Sure! We ought to!” agreed O’Hara. “But don’t forget, my bonny boy, that meantime we’re making a pretty good living out of its injustices!”
The law office of Hoyle & O’Hara was no less conveniently situated than the residence of the junior partner, being also on Franklin Street, fifty yards nearer Broadway. It occupied the ground floor of a brick building opposite “Pontin’s,” a restaurant much frequented by both prosecutors and lawyers, as well as by their clients and witnesses. A stout rail curbed the cupidity or apprehension of the prospective client until his business was made fully known to the hawk-faced youth who sat on guard. Here perforce until the word was forthcoming which admitted him to the august presence of one of the partners, he must kick his heels on a wooden bench in company with a waiting throng of sly-faced youths in fear of jail, widows seeking damages for their bereavement, young ladies who had been “taken advantage of,” elderly gentlemen who were being “annoyed” and were seeking relief therefrom, and all the others of the miscellany making up the firm’s clientèle.
The office in the rear overlooking the withered plane-trees of Mulcahy’s Beer Garden, was sacred to the head of the firm, Sylvanus Hoyle himself, whose totally bald pink pate resembled that of an oversized baby, but whose sharp nose, small, tightly compressed mouth, and smoothly shaven cheeks, with their cavernous eye-sockets, also gave him when his head was covered the appearance of a large white owl in a hat, a physical similarity intensified by the huge horn-rimmed spectacles which he was never without.
Hoyle’s past was shrouded in a mystery from which he never drew aside the veil. Tradition had it that he was the son of a Salem clergyman—a graduate of Harvard, who through personal experiences incident to early dissipation, had discovered the ease with which a shrewd member of the bar could profit by the misfortunes of his fellow men. No one knew where he lived, and he was rarely seen outside the four walls of his office. At rare intervals he emerged, brief-case in hand, in a blue cape and silk stovepipe hat, on his way to argue an appeal in the Appellate Division or in the Court of Appeals at Albany; on rarer occasions his door opened to admit some agitated applicant for legal succor, with whom he would be closeted for a long period of time, after which it might happen that a smell of burning paper, suggestive of brimstone, would follow the exit of his visitor along the passage to the outer office. Indeed the high brazier on its iron tripod in the corner, with the possible exception of the engraving of Lord Eldon between the windows, was the most conspicuous object in his office. He was a man of silence, who slipped out and in without so much as a good morning or a good night to his employees; but, if forced to stop and speak, his face was so boyish, his eyes so guileless, as to create an uncanny feeling that there was something wrong there—either that he had sold his soul to Satan in exchange for the secret of perpetual youth, or that in fact he was a child masquerading as a man.
So far as could be observed Hoyle never spoke to O’Hara, and neither did O’Hara speak to Hoyle, although he always referred to him with a veneration verging, particularly when he had been drinking, upon awe. The two must have communicated—like cats on a fence, perhaps—yet how or when, none knew, nor what hold the older man had upon his junior partner. For the face of O’Hara, for all that he was burly as a prize-fighter, was cruelly lined with passion, drink, and anxiety, and his eyes were the sad eyes of one who once had ideals that he has lost. His was the body of an athlete with the head of a world-weary debauchee; Hoyle’s the decrepit figure of an octogenarian with the rosy cheeks and bland gaze of a precocious infant.
O’Hara was as rough in his exterior as his senior was smooth, and at first, with his purple unshaven cheeks and stubble-covered chin, gave an impression of general disreputability which persisted until he had once begun to speak, when it was immediately dispelled by the mellow, organ-like quality of his voice. No more was known of his private history than was of Hoyle’s, although he was reported to have once had a wife, but, whether widowed or divorced, he had her no longer, and he never referred to her.
The third member of this strange triumvirate, who although not a member of the bar, formed an integral part of it, was Jeffrey Quirk, over whom as over his partner O’Hara, the silent Hoyle seemed to exercise some occult control. In the latter’s presence Quirk cowered like a dog, shrinking from him as if in terror of the lash, or appealing with mute eyes to O’Hara for protection. Indeed, Quirk always seemed to Hugh more like an animal endowed with a limited rationality than a man—a mentally enfeebled and unmoral creature, who had shattered his nervous system by the use of drugs, yet who nevertheless retained an instinctive perception for beauty and a curious mysticism strangely at variance with his occupation and surroundings—in appearance a sort of living dead man, endowed with automatic motion, whose soul still hovered within reach and at times returned to it, but who at others could be utilized by a stronger mind as its tool for either good or evil. He was, in a way, the firm’s familiar spirit, flitting here and there in the gloomy purlieus of the Tombs like a bat at their behest, mysteriously appearing after unexpected absences, always on hand in every court-room, apparently at one and the same time, to answer “Ready!” or to plead a prisoner guilty. His build and air, like his master Hoyle’s, were boyish, but his yellow skin was furrowed with wrinkles and scarred by smallpox.
Unsuspicious by nature, since there had been nothing in his early life to make him otherwise, Hugh neither saw nor felt anything sinister, or even unusual, in this peculiar trio. It did not occur to him to question any of the statements of his associates, or to dream that either of them could possibly be guilty of lying to him. Exteriorly they were not particularly different from some of the lawyers he had known at home. Old Mr. Safford was almost as bald as Mr. Hoyle. O’Hara was just like any other roughneck attorney. Quirk aroused his pity and instinct for protection. He knew no “Wall Street lawyers,” as civil attorneys are ordinarily referred to among the members of the criminal bar, and he had no opportunity to meet any, since they never condescended to appear in a criminal court, knowing full well in all probability that they would make asses of themselves if they did so. Hence Hugh had no standard of comparison except those set by the members of the professional staff of the district attorney—men such as Michael Redmond,
