“Retain your seat for a few minutes, 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; while here, 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 someone 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 clinked 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 outsizes 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