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 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.”
