Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West
Merrick, and then
Goldstein."
CHAPTER XVII
UNCLE JOHN IS PUZZLED
Uncle John was off on his errands even before Jones and Arthur Weldon
had driven away from the hotel with the officer and Le Drieux. There had
been no "scene" and none of the guests of the hotel had any inkling of
the arrest.
Uncle John had always detested lawyers and so he realized that he was
sure to be a poor judge of the merits of any legal gentleman he might
secure to defend Jones.
"I may as well leave it to chance," he grumbled, as he drove down the
main boulevard. "The rascals are all alike!"
Glancing to this side and that, he encountered a sign on a building:
"Fred A. Colby, Lawyer."
"All right; I mustn't waste time," he said, and stopping his driver he
ascended a stairway to a gloomy upper hall. Here the doors, all in a row,
were alike forbidding, but one of them bore the lawyer's name, so Mr.
Merrick turned the handle and abruptly entered.
A sallow-faced young man, in his shirt-sleeves, was seated at a table
littered with newspapers and magazines, engaged in the task of putting
new strings on a battered guitar. As his visitor entered he looked up in
surprise and laid down the instrument.
"I want to see Colby, the lawyer," began Uncle John, regarding the
disordered room with strong disapproval.
"You are seeing him," retorted the young man, with a fleeting smile, "and
I'll bet you two to one that if you came here on business you will
presently go away and find another lawyer."
"Why?" questioned Mr. Merrick, eyeing him more closely.
"I don't impress people," explained Colby, picking up the guitar again.
"I don't inspire confidence. As for the law, I know it as well as
anyone--which is begging the question--but when I'm interviewed I have
to admit I've had no experience."
"No practice?"
"Just a few collections, that's all I sleep on that sofa yonder, eat at
a cafeteria, and so manage to keep body and soul together. Once in a
while a stranger sees my sign and needs a lawyer, so he climbs the
stairs.
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There was once a king who was very powerful. He had great influence over the wild beasts and animals. Now the tortoise was looked upon as the wisest of all beasts and men. This king had a son named Ekpenyon, to whom he gave fifty young girls as wives, but the prince did not like any of them. The king was very angry at this, and made a law that if any man had a daughter who was finer than the prince's wives, and who found favour in his son's eyes, the girl herself and her father and mother should be killed.
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