XI. SETTLED OUT OF COURT
There are many solicitors in London who make larger incomes than Mr. Dane-Latimer, though he does very well and pays a considerable sum every year by way of super-tax. There are certainly solicitors with firmly established family practices, whose position is more secure than Mr. Dane-Latimer’s. And there are some whose reputation stands higher in legal circles. But there is probably no solicitor whose name is better known all over the British Isles than Mr. Dane-Latimer’s. He has been fortunate enough to become a kind of specialist in “Society” cases. No divorce suit can be regarded as really fashionable unless Mr. Dane-Latimer is acting in it for plaintiff, defendant, or co-respondent. A politician who has been libelled goes to Mr. Dane-Latimer for advice. An actress with a hopeful breach of promise case takes the incriminating letters to Mr. Dane-Latimer. He knows the facts of nearly every exciting scandal. He can fill in the gaps which the newspapers necessarily leave even in stories which spread themselves over columns of print. What is still better, he can tell stories which never get into the papers at all, the stories of cases so thrilling that the people concerned settle them out of court.
It will easily be understood that Mr. Dane-Latimer is an interesting man to meet and that a good many people welcome the chance of a talk with him.
Gorman, who has a cultivated taste for gossip, was greatly pleased when Dane-Latimer sat down beside him one day in the smoking-room of his club. It was two o’clock, an hour at which the smoking-room is full of men who have lunched. Gorman knew that Dane-Latimer would not talk in an interesting way before a large audience, but he hoped to be able to keep him until most of the other men had left. He beckoned to the waitress and ordered two coffees and two liqueur brandies. Then he set himself to be as agreeable as possible to Dane-Latimer.
“Haven’t seen you for a long time,” he said. “What have you been doing? Had the flu?”
“Flu! No. Infernally busy, that’s all.”
“Really,” said Gorman. “I should have thought the present slump would have meant rather a slack time for you. People—I mean the sort of people whose affairs you manage—can’t be going it in quite the old way, at all events not to the same extent.”
Dane-Latimer poured half his brandy into his coffee cup and smiled. Gorman, who felt it necessary to keep the conversation going, wandered on.
“But perhaps they are. After all, these war marriages must lead to a good many divorces, though we don’t read about them as much as we used to. But I dare say they go on just the same and you have plenty to do.”
Dane-Latimer grinned. He beckoned to the waitress and ordered two more brandies. Gorman talked on. One after another the men in the smoking-room got up and went away. At three o’clock there was no one left within earshot of Gorman and Dane-Latimer. A couple of Heads of Government Departments and a Staff Officer still sat on at the far end of the room, but they were busy with a conversation of their own about a new kind of self-starter for motor cars. Dane-Latimer began to talk at last.