& O’Hara’s offices were already crowded with waiting clients when they arrived, but since Hugh was the “trial” member of the firm, O’Hara made a practice of conferring with most of those who merely sought advice, thus leaving his young associate free to prepare for his more active duties in court.
Hugh looked over his correspondence, and studied his calendar. There were five “pleas” on it—that is to say, the firm had five clients who would be arraigned at the bar for the purpose of being interrogated as to their guilt or innocence. Practically nobody ever pleaded “guilty” in the first instance. Even those caught red-handed always claimed that they were “not guilty” in the expectation that rather than try their cases the district attorney would accept a plea of guilty to some lesser offense or, at any rate, to a lower degree of the same crime.
All a lawyer did was to take his stand beside his client when the latter was brought to the bar, and say “not guilty” when the clerk asked what plea the prisoner “desired to enter”; after which the defendant was taken back to his cell, to remain until somebody remembered that he was there, or the “D. A.” and his lawyer got tired of haggling over the disposition of his body. There were well-known cases where men, who if they had gone to trial would have been either acquitted or sentenced to but a nominal imprisonment, had lain for months in the Tombs while their lawyers negotiated for a plea.
It angered Hugh that the liberty of human beings should be dealt with as a matter of business or politics. He often told himself that he could never be a prosecutor, earning his salary by convicting men and sending them to prison or to the electric chair. How rotten it must have made Redmond feel, for instance, to find himself in the position of prosecuting poor Renig! This at once brought Moira to his mind. When would he see her again, he wondered. Had she really taken a fancy to him? Or was she merely gratifying a momentary whim, indulging herself in the cruel amusement of playing with him to find out what that kind of young man would do? Was she just another Roman princess who slew her lovers? What could a girl of her wealth and social position see in a shabby police court lawyer like himself? Yet he could not think of her without a thrill even then. The fiery quality of her beauty was tempered by the tenderness of her eyes. Sun and sky! Lilt of west wind, murmur of pine tops, chuckle of shallows and gurgle of rapids! Where was he drifting? Hoyle & O’Hara!
“Lady to see you!”
The office boy had said it just in the same metre. The words repeated themselves in Hugh’s ears:
“Lady to see you!
Lilt of the West Wind!
Sunshine and starlight!
Where am I drifting?
Show in the lady!”
“Show in the lady.”
“Yes, sir!” answered the boy, staring at him as if he were quite mad, as he was.
He did not need to ask her name. No “lady,” so far as he was aware, had ever called at the office of Hoyle & O’Hara before—certainly not while he had been connected with it.
“It’s getting to be a sort of joke, isn’t it!” she said, holding out her hand.
“The kind I like! The best one I know!” he assured her.
“Don’t be angry with me for taking you at your word so soon!” she said. “I’m like that. If I want anything I can’t wait. I have to do it right off!”
“You’ve come to the right place! You can do whatever you want here right now this minute.”
“You’re not angry with me—are you?”
“Angry!” he answered. “I’m a rather impatient person myself. I should have been angry if you hadn’t come.”
“I want to see everything! You say we girls from uptown don’t know enough to be of any help. Well, I want to know enough. Let me be your assistant. You attend to the law, I to the philanthropy.”
“A partnership?”
“Sure. Let’s begin right now. Dillon and Devens.”
“‘Devens and Dillon,’ you mean!”
She gave her characteristic little laugh.
“So you’ve discovered that already! You’re not afraid of me, are you?”
He took hold of her arm, just above the elbow.
“Do you think I am?” he demanded.
“I thought so last night!”
There was only a bunch of orchids between Moira and Hugh. Her eyes challenged his again.
“I’m part Irish like yourself!” he explained. “Let’s go over to court and start work. Our clients are waiting.”
The little Renault had already collected a crowd. Motors did not pause in Franklin Street even if they passed through it.
“What shall I do with the car?” she asked.
“It depends on how long you expect to stay.”
“That,” she retorted, “depends on you.”
“In that case I wouldn’t order him back before seven o’clock,” he declared.
That she should find herself in court for the second time within twenty-four hours was no greater a surprise to Moira herself than to the attendants about the building, who recognized her as the “Old Man’s” daughter. In coming to the Criminal Trial Term the afternoon before she had acted purely upon impulse, and as a result of that impulse she already had erected an elaborate dream castle, inhabited by herself and a passionate, black-haired young man, the physical counterpart of the defender of Paul Renig, and so desperately in love with her that he did everything she wished, even before she asked him to. Her whole life had been such as to develop her self-will. Richard Devens had been almost criminally indulgent, and her willfulness had been fostered by loneliness. Moira could not remember ever having a mother. One of her earliest recollections was of standing dressed all in black, with her hand in that of her father, and looking up at the coldly beautiful face of the portrait over the fireplace in the dining-room—her “picture mamma,” as she called it.
Even the nuns at the convent had made overmuch of her, and later on she had gone merely as a day scholar to a smart finishing school, where, after one o’clock, she was her own mistress. Already at sixteen she was acting as chatelaine of the big marzipan house opposite Central Park, presiding, to her father’s intense pride, at the dinners given to his political and business associates, flattered and encouraged to show off by a lot of old boys who, even if they had not all kissed the Blarney Stone, would have spoiled her out of real affection.
The wonder was that under these conditions Moira had remained the frank, generous girl that she was, for in spite of her willfulness there was nothing selfish about her, and she was constantly indulging in acts of philanthropic Quixoticism which put a heavy strain on Richard Devens’ personal bank account. She had fancied herself in love a hundred times, but never, save to the staccato knock of that “Object!” in court the afternoon before, had the door of her heart really swung outward. It had opened of its own accord, before she was aware of the fact, and already a totally unexpected stranger had
