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The Hypotheses of Failure

Short Stories

"Fox-in-the-Morning"

A Bird of Bagdad

A Blackjack Bargainer

A Call Loan

A Chaparral Christmas Gift

A Chaparral Prince

A Comedy in Rubber

A Cosmopolite in a Cafe

A Departmental Case

A Dinner at--------*

A Double-Dyed Deceiver

A Fog in Santone

A Harlem Tragedy

A Lickpenny Lover

A Little Local Colour

A Little Talk about Mobs

A Madison Square Arabian Night

A Matter of Mean Elevation

A Midsummer Knight's Dream

A Midsummer Masquerade

A Municipal Report

A Newspaper Story

A Night in New Arabia

A Philistine in Bohemia

A Poor Rule

A Ramble in Aphasia

A Retrieved Reformation

A Ruler of Men

A Sacrifice Hit

A Service of Love

A Snapshot at the President

A Strange Story

A Technical Error

A Tempered Wind

According to Their Lights

After Twenty Years

An Adjustment of Nature

An Afternoon Miracle

An Apology

An Unfinished Christmas Story

An Unfinished Story

Aristocracy Versus Hash

Art and the Bronco

At Arms With Morpheus

Babes in the Jungle

Best-Seller

Between Rounds

Bexar Scrip No. 2692

Blind Man's Holiday

Brickdust Row

Buried Treasure

By Courier

Calloway's Code

Caught

Cherchez La Femme

Christmas by Injunction

Compliments of the Season

Confessions of a Humorist

Conscience in Art

Cupid a La Carte

Cupid's Exile Number Two

Dickey

Dougherty's Eye-Opener

Elsie in New York

Extradited from Bohemia

Fickle Fortune or How Gladys Hustled

Friends in San Rosario

From Each According to His Ability

From the Cabby's Seat

Georgia's Ruling

Girl

He Also Serves

Hearts and Crosses

Hearts and Hands

Helping the Other Fellow

Holding Up a Train

Hostages to Momus

Hygeia at the Solito

Innocents of Broadway

Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet

Jimmy Hayes and Muriel

Law and Order

Let Me Feel Your Pulse

Little Speck in Garnered Fruit

Lord Oakhurst's Curse

Lost on Dress Parade

Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches

Makes the Whole World Kin

Mammon and the Archer

Man About Town

Masters of Arts

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

Modern Rural Sports

Money Maze

Nemesis and the Candy Man

New York by Camp Fire Light

Next to Reading Matter

No Story

October and June

On Behalf of the Management

One Dollar's Worth

One Thousand Dollars

Out of Nazareth

Past One at Rooney's

Phoebe

Proof of the Pudding

Psyche and the Pskyscraper

Queries and Answers

Roads of Destiny

Roses, Ruses and Romance

Rouge et Noir

Round the Circle

Rus in Urbe

Schools and Schools

Seats of the Haughty

Shearing the Wolf

Ships

Shoes

Sisters of the Golden Circle

Smith

Sociology in Serge and Straw

Sound and Fury

Springtime a La Carte

Squaring the Circle

Strictly Business

Strictly Business

Suite Homes and Their Romance

Telemachus, Friend

The Admiral

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes

The Assessor of Success

The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear

The Badge of Policeman O'Roon

The Brief Debut of Tildy

The Buyer From Cactus City

The Caballero's Way

The Cactus

The Caliph and the Cad

The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock

The Call of the Tame

The Chair of Philanthromathematics

The Champion of the Weather

The Church with an Overshot-Wheel

The City of Dreadful Night

The Clarion Call

The Coming-Out of Maggie

The Complete Life of John Hopkins

The Cop and the Anthem

The Count and the Wedding Guest

The Country of Elusion

The Day Resurgent

The Day We Celebrate

The Defeat of the City

The Detective Detector

The Diamond of Kali

The Discounters of Money

The Dog and the Playlet

The Door of Unrest

The Dream

The Duel

The Duplicity of Hargraves

The Easter of the Soul

The Emancipation of Billy

The Enchanted Kiss

The Enchanted Profile

The Ethics of Pig

The Exact Science of Matrimony

The Ferry of Unfulfilment

The Fifth Wheel

The Flag Paramount

The Fool-Killer

The Foreign Policy of Company 99

The Fourth in Salvador

The Friendly Call

The Furnished Room

The Gift of the Magi

The Girl and the Graft

The Girl and the Habit

The Gold That Glittered

The Greater Coney

The Green Door

The Guardian of the Accolade

The Guilty Party - An East Side Tragedy

The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss

The Hand that Riles the World

The Handbook of Hymen

The Harbinger

The Head-Hunter

The Hiding of Black Bill

The Higher Abdication

The Higher Pragmatism

The Hypotheses of Failure

The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson

The Lady Higher Up

The Last Leaf

The Last of the Troubadours

The Lonesome Road

The Lost Blend

The Lotus And The Bottle

The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein

The Making of a New Yorker

The Man Higher Up

The Marionettes

The Marquis and Miss Sally

The Marry Month of May

The Memento

The Missing Chord

The Moment of Victory

The Octopus Marooned

The Passing of Black Eagle

The Pendulum

The Phonograph and the Graft

The Pimienta Pancakes

The Plutonian Fire

The Poet and the Peasant

The Pride of the Cities

The Princess and the Puma

The Prisoner of Zembla

The Proem

The Purple Dress

The Ransom of Mack

The Ransom of Red Chief

The Rathskeller and the Rose

The Red Roses of Tonia

The Reformation of Calliope

The Remnants of the Code

The Renaissance at Charleroi

The Roads We Take

The Robe of Peace

The Romance of a Busy Broker

The Rose of Dixie

The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball

The Rubber Plant's Story

The Shamrock and the Palm

The Shocks of Doom

The Skylight Room

The Sleuths

The Snow Man

The Social Triangle

The Song and the Sergeant

The Sparrows in Madison Square

The Sphinx Apple

The Tale of a Tainted Tenner

The Theory and the Hound

The Thing's the Play

The Third Ingredient

The Trimmed Lamp

The Unknown Quantity

The Unprofitable Servant

The Venturers

The Vitagraphoscope

The Voice of the City

The Whirligig of Life

The World and the Door

Thimble, Thimble

Tictocq

To Him Who Waits

Tobin's Palm

Tommy's Burglar

Tracked to Doom

Transformation of Martin Burney

Transients in Arcadia

Two Recalls

Two Renegades

Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

Ulysses and the Dogman

Vanity and Some Sables

What You Want

While the Auto Waits

Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking

Witches' Loaves







Lawyer Gooch bestowed his undivided attention upon the engrossing arts
of his profession. But one flight of fancy did he allow his mind to
entertain. He was fond of likening his suite of office rooms to the
bottom of a ship. The rooms were three in number, with a door
opening from one to another. These doors could also be closed.

"Ships," Lawyer Gooch would say, "are constructed for safety, with
separate, water-tight compartments in their bottoms. If one
compartment springs a leak it fills with water; but the good ship goes
on unhurt. Were it not for the separating bulkheads one leak would
sink the vessel. Now it often happens that while I am occupied with
clients, other clients with conflicting interests call. With the
assistance of Archibald--an office boy with a future--I cause the
dangerous influx to be diverted into separate compartments, while I
sound with my legal plummet the depth of each. If necessary, they
may be baled into the hallway and permitted to escape by way of the
stairs, which we may term the lee scuppers. Thus the good ship of
business is kept afloat; whereas if the element that supports her were
allowed to mingle freely in her hold we might be swamped--ha, ha, ha!"

The law is dry. Good jokes are few. Surely it might be permitted
Lawyer Gooch to mitigate the bore of briefs, the tedium of torts and
the prosiness of processes with even so light a levy upon the good
property of humour.

Lawyer Gooch's practice leaned largely to the settlement of marital
infelicities. Did matrimony languish through complications, he
mediated, soothed and arbitrated. Did it suffer from implications,
he readjusted, defended and championed. Did it arrive at the
extremity of duplications, he always got light sentences for his
clients.

But not always was Lawyer Gooch the keen, armed, wily belligerent,
ready with his two-edged sword to lop off the shackles of Hymen. He
had been known to build up instead of demolishing, to reunite instead
of severing, to lead erring and foolish ones back into the fold
instead of scattering the flock. Often had he by his eloquent and
moving appeals sent husband and wife, weeping, back into each other's
arms. Frequently he had coached childhood so successfully that, at
the psychological moment (and at a given signal) the plaintive pipe of
"Papa, won't you tum home adain to me and muvver?" had won the day
and upheld the pillars of a tottering home.

Unprejudiced persons admitted that Lawyer Gooch received as big fees
from these reyoked clients as would have been paid him had the cases
been contested in court. Prejudiced ones intimated that his fees were
doubled, because the penitent couples always came back later for the
divorce, anyhow.

There came a season in June when the legal ship of Lawyer Gooch (to
borrow his own figure) was nearly becalmed. The divorce mill grinds
slowly in June. It is the month of Cupid and Hymen.

Lawyer Gooch, then, sat idle in the middle room of his clientless
suite. A small anteroom connected--or rather separated--this
apartment from the hallway. Here was stationed Archibald, who wrested
from visitors their cards or oral nomenclature which he bore to his
master while they waited.

Suddenly, on this day, there came a great knocking at the outermost
door.

Archibald, opening it, was thrust aside as superfluous by the visitor,
who without due reverence at once penetrated to the office of Lawyer
Gooch and threw himself with good-natured insolence into a comfortable
chair facing that gentlemen.

"You are Phineas C. Gooch, attorney-at-law?" said the visitor, his
tone of voice and inflection making his words at once a question, an
assertion and an accusation.

Before committing himself by a reply, the lawyer estimated his
possible client in one of his brief but shrewd and calculating
glances.

The man was of the emphatic type--large-sized, active, bold and
debonair in demeanour, vain beyond a doubt, slightly swaggering, ready
and at ease. He was well-clothed, but with a shade too much
ornateness. He was seeking a lawyer; but if that fact would seem to
saddle him with troubles they were not patent in his beaming eye and
courageous air.

"My name is Gooch," at length the lawyer admitted. Upon pressure he
would also have confessed to the Phineas C. But he did not consider it
good practice to volunteer information. "I did not receive your
card," he continued, by way of rebuke, "so I--"

"I know you didn't," remarked the visitor, coolly; "And you won't just
yet. Light up?" He threw a leg over an arm of his chair, and tossed
a handful of rich-hued cigars upon the table. Lawyer Gooch knew the
brand. He thawed just enough to accept the invitation to smoke.

"You are a divorce lawyer," said the cardless visitor. This time there
was no interrogation in his voice. Nor did his words constitute a
simple assertion. They formed a charge--a denunciation--as one would
say to a dog: "You are a dog." Lawyer Gooch was silent under the
imputation.

"You handle," continued the visitor, "all the various ramifications of
busted-up connubiality. You are a surgeon, we might saw, who extracts
Cupid's darts when he shoots 'em into the wrong parties. You furnish
patent, incandescent lights for premises where the torch of Hymen has
burned so low you can't light a cigar at it. Am I right, Mr. Gooch?"

"I have undertaken cases," said the lawyer, guardedly, "in the line to
which your figurative speech seems to refer. Do you wish to consult me
professionally, Mr.--" The lawyer paused, with significance.

"Not yet," said the other, with an arch wave of his cigar, "not just
yet. Let us approach the subject with the caution that should have
been used in the original act that makes this pow-wow necessary.
There exists a matrimonial jumble to be straightened out. But before
I give you names I want your honest--well, anyhow, your professional
opinion on the merits of the mix-up. I want you to size up the
catastrophe--abstractly--you understand? I'm Mr. Nobody; and I've got
a story to tell you. Then you say what's what. Do you get my
wireless?"

"You want to state a hypothetical case?" suggested Lawyer Gooch.

"That's the word I was after. 'Apothecary' was the best shot I could
make at it in my mind. The hypothetical goes. I'll state the case.
Suppose there's a woman--a deuced fine-looking woman--who has run
away from her husband and home? She's badly mashed on another man who
went to her town to work up some real estate business. Now, we may as
well call this woman's husband Thomas R. Billings, for that's his
name. I'm giving you straight tips on the cognomens. The Lothario
chap is Henry K. Jessup. The Billingses lived in a little town called
Susanville--a good many miles from here. Now, Jessup leaves
Susanville two weeks ago. The next day Mrs. Billings follows him.
She's dead gone on this man Jessup; you can bet your law library on
that."

Lawyer Gooch's client said this with such unctuous satisfaction that
even the callous lawyer experienced a slight ripple of repulsion. He
now saw clearly in his fatuous visitor the conceit of the lady-killer,
the egoistic complacency of the successful trifler.

"Now," continued the visitor, "suppose this Mrs. Billings wasn't happy
at home? We'll say she and her husband didn't gee worth a cent.
They've got incompatibility to burn. The things she likes, Billings
wouldn't have as a gift with trading-stamps. It's Tabby and Rover
with them all the time. She's an educated woman in science and
culture, and she reads things out loud at meetings. Billings is not
on. He don't appreciate progress and obelisks and ethics, and
things of that sort. Old Billings is simply a blink when it comes to
such things. The lady is out and out above his class. Now, lawyer,
don't it look like a fair equalization of rights and wrongs that a
woman like that should be allowed to throw down Billings and take the
man that can appreciate her?

"Incompatibility," said Lawyer Gooch, "is undoubtedly the source of
much marital discord and unhappiness. Where it is positively proved,
divorce would seem to be the equitable remedy. Are you--excuse me--is
this man Jessup one to whom the lady may safely trust her future?"

"Oh, you can bet on Jessup," said the client, with a confident wag of
his head. "Jessup's all right. He'll do the square thing. Why, he
left Susanville just to keep people from talking about Mrs. Billings.
But she followed him up, and now, of course, he'll stick to her.
When she gets a divorce, all legal and proper, Jessup will do the
proper thing."

"And now," said Lawyer Gooch, "continuing the hypothesis, if you
prefer, and supposing that my services should be desired in the case,
what--"

The client rose impulsively to his feet.

"Oh, dang the hypothetical business," he exclaimed, impatiently.
"Let's let her drop, and get down to straight talk. You ought to know
who I am by this time. I want that woman to have her divorce. I'll
pay for it. The day you set Mrs. Billings free I'll pay you five
hundred dollars."

Lawyer Gooch's client banged his fist upon the table to punctuate his
generosity.

"If that is the case--" began the lawyer.

"Lady to see you, sir," bawled Archibald, bouncing in from his
anteroom. He had orders to always announce immediately any client
that might come. There was no sense in turning business away.

Lawyer Gooch took client number one by the arm and led him suavely
into one of the adjoining rooms. "Favour me by remaining here a few
minutes, sir," said he. "I will return and resume our consultation
with the least possible delay. I am rather expecting a visit from a
very wealthy old lady in connection with a will. I will not keep you
waiting long."

The breezy gentleman seated himself with obliging acquiescence, and
took up a magazine. The lawyer returned to the middle office,
carefully closing behind him the connecting door.

"Show the lady in, Archibald," he said to the office boy, who was
awaiting the order.

A tall lady, of commanding presence and sternly handsome, entered
the room. She wore robes--robes; not clothes--ample and fluent.
In her eye could be perceived the lambent flame of genius and soul.
In her hand was a green bag of the capacity of a bushel, and an
umbrella that also seemed to wear a robe, ample and fluent. She
accepted a chair.

"Are you Mr. Phineas C. Gooch, the lawyer?" she asked, in formal and
unconciliatory tones.

"I am," answered Lawyer Gooch, without circumlocution. He never
circumlocuted when dealing with a woman. Women circumlocute. Time is
wasted when both sides in debate employ the same tactics.

"As a lawyer, sir," began the lady, "you may have acquired some
knowledge of the human heart. Do you believe that the pusillanimous
and petty conventions of our artificial social life should stand as an
obstacle in the way of a noble and affectionate heart when it finds
its true mate among the miserable and worthless wretches in the world
that are called men?"

"Madam," said Lawyer Gooch, in the tone that he used in curbing his
female clients, "this is an office for conducting the practice of law.
I am a lawyer, not a philosopher, nor the editor of an 'Answers to the
Lovelorn' column of a newspaper. I have other clients waiting. I
will ask you kindly to come to the point."

"Well, you needn't get so stiff around the gills about it," said the
lady, with a snap of her luminous eyes and a startling gyration of her
umbrella. "Business is what I've come for. I want your opinion in
the matter of a suit for divorce, as the vulgar would call it, but
which is really only the readjustment of the false and ignoble
conditions that the short-sighted laws of man have interposed between
a loving--"

"I beg your pardon, madam," interrupted Lawyer Gooch, with some
impatience, "for reminding you again that this is a law office.
Perhaps Mrs. Wilcox--"

"Mrs. Wilcox is all right," cut in the lady, with a hint of asperity.
"And so are Tolstoi, and Mrs. Gertrude Atherton, and Omar Khayyam, and
Mr. Edward Bok. I've read 'em all. I would like to discuss with you
the divine right of the soul as opposed to the freedom-destroying
restrictions of a bigoted and narrow-minded society. But I will
proceed to business. I would prefer to lay the matter before you in
an impersonal way until you pass upon its merits. That is to describe
it as a supposable instance, without--"

"You wish to state a hypothetical case?" said Lawyer Gooch.

"I was going to say that," said the lady, sharply. "Now, suppose there
is a woman who is all soul and heart and aspirations for a complete
existence. This woman has a husband who is far below her in intellect,
in taste--in everything. Bah! he is a brute. He despises literature.
He sneers at the lofty thoughts of the world's great thinkers. He
thinks only of real estate and such sordid things. He is no mate for a
woman with soul. We will say that this unfortunate wife one day meets
with her ideal--a man with brain and heart and force. She loves him.
Although this man feels the thrill of a new-found affinity he is too
noble, too honourable to declare himself. He flies from the presence
of his beloved. She flies after him, trampling, with superb
indifference, upon the fetters with which an unenlightened social
system would bind her. Now, what will a divorce cost? Eliza Ann
Timmins, the poetess of Sycamore Gap, got one for three hundred and
forty dollars. Can I--I mean can this lady I speak of get one that
cheap?"

"Madam," said Lawyer Gooch, "your last two or three sentences delight
me with their intelligence and clearness. Can we not now abandon the
hypothetical and come down to names and business?"

"I should say so," exclaimed the lady, adopting the practical with
admirable readiness. "Thomas R. Billings is the name of the low
brute who stands between the happiness of his legal--his legal, but
not his spiritual--wife and Henry K. Jessup, the noble man whom
nature intended for her mate. I," concluded the client, with an air
of dramatic revelation, "am Mrs. Billings!"

"Gentlemen to see you, sir," shouted Archibald, invading the room
almost at a handspring. Lawyer Gooch arose from his chair.

"Mrs. Billings," he said courteously, "allow me to conduct you into
the adjoining office apartment for a few minutes. I am expecting a
very wealthy old gentleman on business connected with a will. In a
very short while I will join you, and continue our consultation."

With his accustomed chivalrous manner, Lawyer Gooch ushered his
soulful client into the remaining unoccupied room, and came out,
closing the door with circumspection.

The next visitor introduced by Archibald was a thin, nervous,
irritable-looking man of middle age, with a worried and apprehensive
expression of countenance. He carried in one hand a small satchel,
which he set down upon the floor beside the chair which the lawyer
placed for him. His clothing was of good quality, but it was worn
without regard to neatness or style, and appeared to be covered with
the dust of travel.

"You make a specialty of divorce cases," he said, in, an agitated but
business-like tone.

"I may say," began Lawyer Gooch, "that my practice has not
altogether avoided--"

"I know you do," interrupted client number three. "You needn't tell
me. I've heard all about you. I have a case to lay before you
without necessarily disclosing any connection that I might have with
it--that is--"

"You wish," said Lawyer Gooch, "to state a hypothetical case.

"You may call it that. I am a plain man of business. I will be as
brief as possible. We will first take up hypothetical woman. We will
say she is married uncongenially. In many ways she is a superior
woman. Physically she is considered to be handsome. She is devoted
to what she calls literature--poetry and prose, and such stuff. Her
husband is a plain man in the business walks of life. Their home has
not been happy, although the husband has tried to make it so. Some
time ago a man--a stranger--came to the peaceful town in which
they lived and engaged in some real estate operations. This woman met
him, and became unaccountably infatuated with him. Her attentions
became so open that the man felt the community to be no safe place for
him, so he left it. She abandoned husband and home, and followed him.
She forsook her home, where she was provided with every comfort, to
follow this man who had inspired her with such a strange affection.
Is there anything more to be deplored," concluded the client, in a
trembling voice, "than the wrecking of a home by a woman's
uncalculating folly?"

Lawyer Gooch delivered the cautious opinion that there was not.

"This man she has gone to join," resumed the visitor, "is not the man
to make her happy. It is a wild and foolish self-deception that makes
her think he will. Her husband, in spite of their many disagreements,
is the only one capable of dealing with her sensitive and peculiar
nature. But this she does not realize now."

"Would you consider a divorce the logical cure in the case you
present?" asked Lawyer Gooch, who felt that the conversation was
wandering too far from the field of business.

"A divorce!" exclaimed the client, feelingly--almost tearfully.
"No, no--not that. I have read, Mr. Gooch, of many instances where
your sympathy and kindly interest led you to act as a mediator
between estranged husband and wife, and brought them together again.
Let us drop the hypothetical case--I need conceal no longer that it
is I who am the sufferer in this sad affair--the names you shall
have--Thomas R. Billings and wife--and Henry K. Jessup, the man
with whom she is infatuated."

Client number three laid his hand upon Mr. Gooch's arm. Deep emotion
was written upon his careworn face. "For Heaven's sake", he said
fervently, "help me in this hour of trouble. Seek out Mrs. Billings,
and persuade her to abandon this distressing pursuit of her lamentable
folly. Tell her, Mr. Gooch, that her husband is willing to receive
her back to his heart and home--promise her anything that will
induce her to return. I have heard of your success in these matters.
Mrs. Billings cannot be very far away. I am worn out with travel
and weariness. Twice during the pursuit I saw her, but various
circumstances prevented our having an interview. Will you undertake
this mission for me, Mr. Gooch, and earn my everlasting gratitude?"

"It is true," said Lawyer Gooch, frowning slightly at the other's last
words, but immediately calling up an expression of virtuous
benevolence, "that on a number of occasions I have been successful in
persuading couples who sought the severing of their matrimonial bonds
to think better of their rash intentions and return to their homes
reconciled. But I assure you that the work is often exceedingly
difficult. The amount of argument, perseverance, and, if I may be
allowed to say it, eloquence that it requires would astonish you. But
this is a case in which my sympathies would be wholly enlisted. I
feel deeply for you sir, and I would be most happy to see husband and
wife reunited. But my time," concluded the lawyer, looking at his
watch as if suddenly reminded of the fact, "is valuable."

"I am aware of that," said the client, "and if you will take the case
and persuade Mrs. Billings to return home and leave the man alone that
she is following--on that day I will pay you the sum of one thousand
dollars. I have made a little money in real estate during the recent
boom in Susanville, and I will not begrudge that amount."

"Retain your seat for a few moments, please," said Lawyer Gooch,
arising, and again consulting his watch. "I have another client
waiting in an adjoining room whom I had very nearly forgotten. I will
return in the briefest possible space."

The situation was now one that fully satisfied Lawyer Gooch's love of
intricacy and complication. He revelled in cases that presented such
subtle problems and possibilities. It pleased him to think that he
was master of the happiness and fate of the three individuals who sat,
unconscious of one another's presence, within his reach. His old
figure of the ship glided into his mind. But now the figure failed,
for to have filled every compartment of an actual vessel would have
been to endanger her safety; with his compartments full, his ship of
affairs could but sail on to the advantageous port of a fine, fat fee.
The thing for him to do, of course, was to wring the best bargain he
could from some one of his anxious cargo.

First he called to the office boy: "Lock the outer door, Archibald,
and admit no one." Then he moved, with long, silent strides into the
room in which client number one waited. That gentleman sat, patiently
scanning the pictures in the magazine, with a cigar in his mouth and
his feet upon a table.

"Well," he remarked, cheerfully, as the lawyer entered, "have you made
up your mind? Does five hundred dollars go for getting the fair lady
a divorce?"

"You mean that as a retainer?" asked Lawyer Gooch, softly
interrogative.

"Hey? No; for the whole job. It's enough, ain't it?"

"My fee," said Lawyer Gooch, "would be one thousand five hundred
dollars. Five hundred dollars down, and the remainder upon issuance
of the divorce."

A loud whistle came from client number one. His feet descended to the
floor.

"Guess we can't close the deal," he said, arising, "I cleaned up five
hundred dollars in a little real estate dicker down in Susanville.
I'd do anything I could to free the lady, but it out-sizes my pile."

"Could you stand one thousand two hundred dollars?" asked the lawyer,
insinuatingly.

"Five hundred is my limit, I tell you. Guess I'll have to hunt up a
cheaper lawyer." The client put on his hat.

"Out this way, please," said Lawyer Gooch, opening the door that led
into the hallway.

As the gentleman flowed out of the compartment and down the stairs,
Lawyer Gooch smiled to himself. "Exit Mr. Jessup," he murmured, as he
fingered the Henry Clay tuft of hair at his ear. "And now for the
forsaken husband." He returned to the middle office, and assumed a
businesslike manner.

"I understand," he said to client number three, "that you agree to pay
one thousand dollars if I bring about, or am instrumental in bringing
about, the return of Mrs. Billings to her home, and her abandonment of
her infatuated pursuit of the man for whom she has conceived such a
violent fancy. Also that the case is now unreservedly in my hands on
that basis. Is that correct?"

"Entirely", said the other, eagerly. "And I can produce the cash any
time at two hours' notice."

Lawyer Gooch stood up at his full height. His thin figure seemed to
expand. His thumbs sought the arm-holes of his vest. Upon his face
was a look of sympathetic benignity that he always wore during such
undertakings.

"Then, sir," he said, in kindly tones, "I think I can promise you an
early relief from your troubles. I have that much confidence in my
powers of argument and persuasion, in the natural impulses of the
human heart toward good, and in the strong influence of a husband's
unfaltering love. Mrs. Billings, sir, is here--in that room--" the
lawyer's long arm pointed to the door. "I will call her in at once;
and our united pleadings--"

Lawyer Gooch paused, for client number three had leaped from his chair
as if propelled by steel springs, and clutched his satchel.

"What the devil," he exclaimed, harshly, "do you mean? That woman in
there! I thought I shook her off forty miles back."

He ran to the open window, looked out below, and threw one leg over
the sill.

"Stop!" cried Lawyer Gooch, in amazement. "What would you do? Come,
Mr. Billings, and face your erring but innocent wife. Our combined
entreaties cannot fail to--"

"Billings!" shouted the now thoroughly moved client. "I'll Billings
you, you old idiot!"

Turning, he hurled his satchel with fury at the lawyer's head. It
struck that astounded peacemaker between the eyes, causing him to
stagger backward a pace or two. When Lawyer Gooch recovered his wits
he saw that his client had disappeared. Rushing to the window, he
leaned out, and saw the recreant gathering himself up from the top of
a shed upon which he had dropped from the second-story window.
Without stopping to collect his hat he then plunged downward the
remaining ten feet to the alley, up which he flew with prodigious
celerity until the surrounding building swallowed him up from view.

Lawyer Gooch passed his hand tremblingly across his brow. It was a
habitual act with him, serving to clear his thoughts. Perhaps also it
now seemed to soothe the spot where a very hard alligator-hide satchel
had struck.

The satchel lay upon the floor, wide open, with its contents spilled
about. Mechanically, Lawyer Gooch stooped to gather up the articles.
The first was a collar; and the omniscient eye of the man of law
perceived, wonderingly, the initials H. K. J. marked upon it. Then
came a comb, a brush, a folded map, and a piece of soap. Lastly, a
handful of old business letters, addressed--every one of them--to
"Henry K. Jessup, Esq."

Lawyer Gooch closed the satchel, and set it upon the table. He
hesitated for a moment, and then put on his hat and walked into the
office boy's anteroom.

"Archibald," he said mildly, as he opened the hall door, "I am going
around to the Supreme Court rooms. In five minutes you may step into
the inner office, and inform the lady who is waiting there that"--
here Lawyer Gooch made use of the vernacular--"that there's nothing
doing."




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