"What is your business?"
"I am an undertaker."
In an instant the room was in a turmoil, Bunce screaming out that he had been tricked by a parcel of shysters, Gottlieb indignantly defending his ruse as a perfectly proper method of discrediting Bunce, and the referee vainly endeavoring to restore order. As for myself, in spite of my anxiety over the whole affair, I could not do otherwise than laugh heartily over Bunce's ludicrous mistake. When Hawkins was brought in from outside, and, after proclaiming his identity, denied ever being served in the original action, the referee was but little inclined to listen to Lawyer Bunce, who now corrected his testimony and swore just as insistently that the real Hawkins was the person to whom he had given the papers in the case.
Here, then, was as pretty a trick as had ever been played upon an unsuspecting and well-meaning lawyer; and by it Gottlieb had so strengthened our position that, very likely, the referee would have found for our side even had not Hawkins taken it upon himself to swear the matter through. Moreover, the only person who could have disproved the latter's testimony or given evidence that might have militated against its probability—to wit, Crookshank, his former attorney—was dead and buried, and it seemed as if truth were buried with him. On the way back to our office I congratulated my partner on the Napoleonic strategy which he had displayed and a few days later a more substantial compliment followed, in the shape of an unqualified finding in our favor on the part of the referee.
"Was ever thirty-five thousand dollars earned so easily!" laughed
Gottlieb over his cigar as we were dining at Delmonico's.
"So long as Hawkins stays bought—yes," I answered.
"Don't be a death's head, Quib!" he retorted. "Why, even if he turned State's evidence, no one would believe him! Have another glass of this vintage—we can drink it every night now for a year at Dillingham's expense!"
"Well, here's to you, Gottlieb!" I answered, filling my goblet with creaming wine; "and here's to crime—whereby we live and move and have our being!"
And we clinked our glasses and drained them with a laugh.
I had now been a resident of New York for upward of twenty years and had acquired, as the junior member of the firm of Gottlieb & Quibble, an international reputation. It is true that my partner and I felt it to be beneath our dignity to advertise in the newspapers —and, indeed, advertising in New York City was for us entirely unnecessary—but we carried a card regularly in the English journals and received many retainers from across the water; in fact, we controlled practically all the theatrical business in the city, drawing the contracts for the managers and being constantly engaged in litigations on their behalf. We had long since abandoned as trivial all my various profit-sharing schemes, and, with the exception of carrying on our pay-rolls many of the attendants attached to the police and other criminal courts, had practically no "runners." We did not need any. There was no big criminal case in which we were not retained for the defence and rarely a divorce action of any notoriety where we did not appear for one of the parties.