by Grant Allen
‘I’m sorry it’s a burglar,’ Miss Figgins said, with a little sigh, as the barrister, no longer briefless, left the room. ‘I wish his first case had been anything but a burglary.’
Maclaine shut the door gently behind his retreating friend. ‘Why so, Linda?’ he asked, looking at her with a more inquiring glance.
The girl moved round to the other side of the table, and began taking up the breakfast things with perfect dignity. ‘Because it’s so unworthy of him,’ she said quietly, after a short pause. But a little red spot burnt bright in the middle of her cheek — a little red spot not wholly of anger — as always happened, indeed, when Maclaine, left alone with her for a moment, dropped the Miss, and addressed her by her Christian name as Linda.
CHAPTER II.
THE HEAD OF THE PROFESSION.
It took Douglas Harrison only twenty minutes to call on the solicitors who had sent him the brief (where he aroused the amused attention of the clerks in the office by his deferential nervousness), and then to go round in a cab to Holloway Gaol, where, under present circumstances, his prospective client was most unfortunately detained on a magistrate’s warrant. When he presented himself at the gates, however, breathless and excited, he asked so timidly whether he could see ‘a man of the name of Arthur Roper’ on legal business connected with his defence, and otherwise showed himself so obviously unaccustomed to similar errands of a professional character, that the authority in charge at the lodge — a portly gentleman with a braided coat and a powerful voice of considerable asperity — had evident doubts in his own mind for several seconds at a stretch as to whether in fact Arthur Roper’s counsel was really and truly the person he represented himself to be. But in the end, after some demur and some exhibition of credentials in the shape of that priceless brief, the young barrister was permitted to pass the large iron portal without further parley; and, being handed over to the custody of a second gaol official, with a big bunch of stern-looking keys at his side, was quickly conducted through a long blank stone corridor to the man Arthur Roper’s existing place of temporary residence.
At the cell door Harrison knocked tentatively. A voice from the other side answered, ‘Come in!’ — not in gruff and harsh tones, as counsel had imagined beforehand would almost certainly be the case, but with a gentlemanly and not altogether ungenial accent. Douglas Harrison waited while the official, smiling broadly at the needless knock, undid a ponderous bolt; then he entered, somewhat nervously, the narrow stone chamber where his first employer was lounging in enforced idleness.
Douglas was prepared to see a very desperate-looking and evil-faced person indeed, for Mr. Roper’s solicitors had described Mr. Roper to him during their brief interview as probably the most cunning and daring burglar then at large in any part of London. He had pictured to himself his first client much as Maclaine had facetiously described him — the living image of that typical Bill Sikes, with whose supposed lineaments Mr. Punch’s cartoons have made us all so familiar — a flat-nosed, brutal-jawed, low-browed ruffian. But when he saw instead a tall, slim, well-dressed, and almost gentlemanly person seated on the bed, who rose up politely and gracefully enough and bowed his welcome as counsel entered, Douglas Harrison drew back with unaffected surprise, and hardly touched the small white hand his client held out to him with engaging frankness.
‘I — eh — I beg your pardon,’ he stammered out apologetically. ‘I think there must be some mistake somewhere.... I wished to see a person of the name of Arthur Roper.’
The tall, slim man bowed once more in gentlemanly acquiescence. ‘My name!’ he answered proudly, producing a card from a little russia leather case in his pocket as he spoke. ‘Mr. Arthur Roper.’
‘Ye — es; Mr. Arthur Roper,’ the barrister echoed, glancing at it, and automatically correcting himself. ‘But — eh — I hope you’ll excuse me. The names and briefs must have got unaccountably mixed up at wash somehow. I was told ... my client ... Mr. Roper ... was committed here — you’ll forgive my saying it, but it’s in my brief — on a charge of burglary.’
The tall, slim man bowed a third time with marked politeness, and a smile distorted his pallid countenance. ‘Well, yes,’ he answered, evidently much amused; ‘you’ve put the right name to it. That’s just precisely what I’m run in this time for.’
‘But you’re not a burglar?’ Douglas Harrison cried, starting back in surprise.
Mr. Arthur Roper drew himself up to his full height of five feet eleven inches as he answered, with conscious pride, ‘Well, don’t let’s give ugly names to any gentleman’s calling; but I’m generally considered to stand, in my own line, at the head of the profession.’
‘What profession?’ the barrister asked, more astonished than amused at the man’s cynical shamelessness.
‘Cracking cribs,’ his client replied, with an easy smile, and nodded his head sideways knowingly.
Douglas Harrison had time to notice now that Mr. Roper, though gentlemanly-looking and good-natured enough, as far as features went, had a sinister expression lurking in his small green eyes, and an ugly smile playing about the corner of his thick sensuous lips that seemed the perfect incarnation of unblushing cynicism. He remarked also, that though Mr. Roper’s costume was not wholly lacking in neatness or fashionable cut, his collar and cuffs were a trifle grubby, and his general appearance didn’t seem to betoken any besotted devotion to the matutinal tub. In fact, he looked like a shabby-genteel broken-down gentleman who has seen better days, and has thrown away his cleanliness and his honesty together.
‘But you’re not guilty of the charge on which you’re now committed, of course?’ Douglas Harrison put in hastily, feeling that as a matter of the dignity of the profession he must at least deceive himself into a feeble belief in his client’s innocence on this occasion, at any rate.
‘Of course not,’ Mr. Roper echoed with a cunning smile, accompanied by a faint or almost imperceptible vibration of the left eyelid. ‘It’s a point of etiquette in the profession, you know, that this time, always, one’s unjustly suspected.’
‘Indeed,’ Douglas Harrison interjected, hardly knowing what else he was called upon to say.
‘Oh dear yes, it’s a point of etiquette in the profession!’ Mr. Roper went on, seating himself on the bed once more, with dangling legs, and motioning his legal adviser into the solitary rush-bottomed chair his apartment afforded; ‘and as the head of the profession, I need hardly say, I’m naturally jealous of its etiquette, much as the Lord Chancellor might be, of course, in your own line of business. Still, it can’t be denied that habitual criminals, as a cold world chooses to call us, often are wrongly suspected. Take my own luck, for instance. That’s the case with me at present. They’ve run me in, don’t you see, on a trumped-up charge. Though, to be sure,’ and he paused rhetorically for a second, ‘it was a most unfortunate circumstance, I must admit, that I happened to be found in the top attic, and with a sectional jemmy up my right sleeve.’ Saying which, with another faint tremor of his left eyelid, Mr. Arthur Roper laughed again melodiously.
‘A what?’ the barrister inquired with a puzzled look.
‘A sectional jemmy,’ Mr. Roper responded cheerfully. ‘A jemmy that takes to pieces, you know, like a telescope, and then fits together again. They’re common objects of the country, of course, to people who live by relieving other people of superfluous property.’
‘But how do you account for your being there, then, at all?’ Douglas Harrison asked, drawing back a little uneasily from the man’s hilarious merriment.
‘How do I account for my being there?’ Mr. Roper repeated. ‘Why, how on earth should I know? That’s counsel’s business, to suggest something that accounts for that, isn’t it?’ He nursed his smooth-shaven chin with one hand reflectively.... ‘Well, I suppose,’ he went on, after a pause, ‘I must have been actuated in my conduct by a misguided attachment for the under-housemaid, who slept in the next attic.’ And Mr. Roper once more smiled audibly.
‘Oh, indee
d!’ the barrister echoed a second time, more puzzled than ever.
‘Well, no,’ Mr. Roper corrected himself, growing suddenly more serious. ‘You’re new to this work, and I mustn’t mislead you. I wouldn’t really like it to be put down to that. Not for worlds would I seem to do anything to demean my character as a gentleman, and the head of my profession. If I was trying on the Don Juan trick at all, I hope I’d fly a step or two higher than a common kitchen wench. Or rather a step or two lower, since the under-housemaid occupies a room, no doubt, at the top of the stairs, while the daughter and heiress has her own fair bower in less airy heights on the second story. However, you know, this is not business. I’d better begin and tell you all I have to tell, first, from my own point of view — omitting incriminating facts, of course — and then you can decide what sort of a defence you think you’d better set up to cover it.’
‘I don’t want you to tell me anything — anything that would hamper me in my pleading on your case,’ Harrison put in hastily, in a shamefaced way, for his conscience pricked him. ‘Of course I can’t defend you unless, as regards this particular charge at least, I have some reasonable ground for thinking you are or may be possibly innocent.’
‘Oh, that’s all right, my dear sir!’ Mr. Roper replied, leaning back easily, and hugging one knee in his hand, laid across the other, while he eyed his counsel with a close and searching scrutiny. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday. I understand perfectly the ways of you lawyer fellows. Why, bless you, I was a solicitor’s clerk myself before I took to the crib-cracking line; and I had a narrow squeak of going up to Oxford, too, and being called to the bar — missed it by a fluke in a scholarship examination; detected copying off the fellow next me. Oh yes, you may well look surprised, but I’m a gentleman born; and whatever other mistakes I may have made in my life, I hope I’ve done something at least in my time to raise the gentlemanly tone of the crib-cracking profession!’
‘You don’t mean to say so,’ Harrison replied, hardly able to resist expressing his contempt and disgust at the fellow’s hatefully brutal openness.
‘Yes,’ Mr. Roper went on, surveying the bare wall with a stony stare of æsthetic disapprobation, ‘and I’ll tell you how I came to think of asking Morton and Maule to give you this brief — an unknown man like you that nobody’s ever heard of — when I might have taken the case to Montagu Williams, who’s got me more than once out of incredible difficulties. But the fact is, I happened to drop in at the Forum the other evening.’
‘You don’t mean to say,’ Douglas Harrison cried, ‘that you attend our weekly debates at the Forum?’
‘Oh, indeed I do!’ the habitual criminal retorted cheerfully. ‘I hope I shall never allow close attention to the duties of my profession entirely to kill out all intellectual interests — all lingering regard for the things of the mind — within me.... Besides,’ he added, after a telling pause, ‘I did a little business there, too, in a humble way. I found a few stray articles of precious metal lying about loose in gentlemen’s pockets, and I endeavoured to give them a lesson in carefulness by — eh — but, there, no matter.’
‘I’m afraid,’ Harrison said, holding himself still farther aloof, and feeling that cherished first brief slipping faster and faster each moment from his grasp, ‘if you persist in telling me so many unnecessary and unpleasant details I shall find it quite impossible to undertake this case for you.’
Mr. Roper smiled compassionately once more. ‘All right, governor,’ he answered, with a tolerant wave of the hand. ‘Now don’t cut up rusty, just when a fellow’s trying to do you a good turn. The fact is, I’m engaged in observing whether or not you’re the man to conduct this case. Well, as I was telling you, I dropped in at the Forum one evening this week, and heard you make such a capital all-round, slap-up speech on the emancipation of women question, that I said to a friend of mine — a lady herself — when I went home that evening, “Bess,” said I, “you mark my words — next time I’m run in, hanged if I don’t employ that young fellow I heard talking at the Forum to-night to pull me through with it!”’
‘I didn’t know I was speaking before a possible client,’ Harrison answered abashed, but endeavouring still to clutch hard at that brief that so trembled to elude him.
‘Well, that’s just what I said,’ Mr. Roper went on encouragingly. ‘I said it, and I meant it; and now I’ve done it. I’m a good-natured, kind-hearted sort of vagabond in my way, don’t you see; and when I heard how much you had to say in favour of that ridiculous nonsense you were put up to defend, I thought to myself, “That’s a clever young chap, by George! and a well-spoken young chap, who can make a good case out of the most blooming rubbish; and if only the attorneys would give him his chance, he’d be another Montagu Williams in his time, you bet, blow me tight if he wouldn’t!”’
‘I didn’t think it ridiculous nonsense,’ the young barrister put in honestly. ‘I believed and meant every word I said about it.’
‘Then the more fool you!’ Mr. Roper retorted, with unflinching candour. ‘However, that’s neither here nor there as regards our present interview. We haven’t met to-day to discuss the woman question, or the liquor question, or any other question that’s agitating society. What we’ve got to do now is to prepare this defence against the charge of burglary. I asked to see you personally, instead of allowing my solicitors to state the case to you, though I know it’s unprofessional, because the man who undertakes my defence has got to have his head screwed on the right way, and no mistake; and I wanted to make sure, by a personal interview, of the point of view you took about it. Whip out your brief then, Mr. Harrison, and we’ll turn to business.’
Thus recalled to the actual task in hand, Douglas Harrison, with a sinking heart, laid out the paper as desired, and began to discuss the heads of the possible defence, and the witnesses set down in the brief whom he might call to prove innocence of intention. Mr. Roper listened with a languid interest. ‘It’ll be seven years, of course,’ he said once, ‘if the police can prove it; but it’s worth going out of your way a little bit to advise these witnesses — to instruct them as to their evidence; for the fellows in the profession will consider my case is a gone coon, and if you were to get me a verdict, why, your fortune ‘ud be made; you’d be the most popular criminal lawyer in all England the day after.’
‘I’m afraid,’ Douglas Harrison said, shrinking back once more, ‘if you insist upon giving me such unpleasant hints I can’t avoid the inference that you wish me to suggest to the witnesses what lies they must tell. Were you really concealed about the premises, or were you not — at 47, Brook Street — on the evening in question?’
‘Well, there’s that awkward fact about my hat,’ Mr. Roper answered obliquely, going on with the case where he last let off. ‘That’ll have to be met and considered, of course. To anybody who didn’t know my character well, now, the appearance of that hat might be open to misconstruction. I confess the arrangement of the interior was devilish awkward.’
‘What arrangement of the interior?’ Douglas Harrison asked with a long-drawn sigh, for he felt this case was really getting beyond his swallowing capacities.
‘Well, you see,’ the client responded with an easy smile, ‘I’d cut the lining of my hat into a sort of mask with a pair of eye-holes, to turn down over the face, in case I should happen to be observed and followed, as I was out that evening on private business. The police have most unfortunately got the hat, and they’ll put it in, of course, in evidence against me.’
‘That’s bad,’ his counsel murmured, having nothing else to say on the subject.
‘Yes, that’s bad,’ Mr. Roper assented carelessly, like one who recounts some petty escapade. ‘But that’s not the worst of it. There’s another awkward fact we’ve got to face. I happened, as bad luck would have it, to be carrying in my hand a light wooden cane, or at least what looked like one; but when the police arrested me it turned out, to my immense surprise, to be solid steel, with a knob on the handle that would fell
a man at a blow as easy as look at him.’
‘But you must have known that by the weight, surely!’ Harrison exclaimed, appalled.
‘Ah yes, one would have said so! But it was painted like wood, you know; exactly resembling a common thornstick. A most ingenious imitation! And what puts the police particularly upon their guard about the stick’s this peculiar fact — that it’s precisely similar to another steel stick with which that poor fellow, Sergeant Holmes — you remember the case; they gave him a public funeral — was nobbled at Finsbury.’
For some time past, Douglas Harrison’s soul had been seething within him. But at those fateful words he rose and moved hastily to the door. He could contain himself no longer. The wretched creature’s vile murderous hints were too much for his equanimity. He could never defend this offensive reptile.
Mr. Arthur Roper rose up, responsive, as he did, and confronted him in surprise.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked, as Douglas Harrison stood with his hand on the door-knob, waiting for the warder, at the preconcerted signal, to come back and open it.
‘I’m going to return my brief to Morton and Maule,’ the barrister said resolutely.
Mr. Roper drew back as if overwhelmed with astonishment. ‘Going to return your brief!’ he cried. ‘The very first brief you’ve ever had! Why, what in goodness’s name are you going to do that for?’
Douglas Harrison looked at him with profound loathing. ‘Because I won’t make myself an instrument,’ he said, ‘to aid and abet in any way the turning loose once more upon outraged humanity of such a dangerous brute and cur as you are.’
Mr. Roper’s face was a study to behold. ‘Do you know,’ he gasped out, half choking, ‘that if you return this brief, after receiving instructions, and interviewing the client, and worming yourself into my confidence, no respectable solicitor in England will ever again employ you? Do you know that I’m the head of the profession in London, and could have brought you clients, if you managed my case well, every assize time regularly? Do you know that I’d as good as have made a millionaire of you? You’re simply ruining your professional prospects. I meant to do you a good turn, and I was feeling my way to see what you were worth; but you’re one of those absurd quixotic fools that won’t be befriended. No solicitor in England will ever again send a guinea brief to you.’
