“I don’t think I do.” murmured the young man, with a great sinking of the heart.
“They’re New York people,” the lady explained.
“I know almost nobody in New York,” answered Horace gloomily. “Wendover? No, I am quite sure the name is new to me.”
“That is curious,” said Mrs. Minster. She took a letter up from the desk. “This is from Judge Wendover, and it mentions you. I gathered from it that he knew you quite well.”
Oh, shades of the lies that might have been told, if one had only known!
Horace swiftly ransacked his brain for a way out of this dilemma. Evidently this letter bore upon his selection as her lawyer. He guessed rightly that it had been written at Tenney’s suggestion and by some one who had Mrs. Minster’s confidence. Obviously this some one was of the legal profession. That was his cue.
“The name does sound familiar, on second thought,” he said. “I daresay it is, if I could only place it. You see, I had a number of offers to enter legal firms in New York, and in that way I saw a good many people for a few minutes, you know, and quite probably I’ve forgotten some of their names. They would remember me, of course, but I might confuse them one with another, don’t you see? Strange, I don’t fix the man you mean. Was he a middle-aged man, grayish hair, well dressed?”
“Yes, that describes him.” She did not add that it would equally describe seven out of every ten other men called “judge” throughout the United States.
“Now I place him,” said Horace triumphantly. “There was some talk of my going into his office as a junior partner. Mutual friends of ours proposed it, I remember. But it didn’t attract me. Curious that I should have forgotten his name. One’s memory plays such whimsical tricks, though.”
“I didn’t know Judge Wendover was practising law,” said Mrs. Minster. “He never was much of a lawyer. He was county judge once down in Peekskill, about the time I was married, but he didn’t get reelected; and I thought he gave it all up when he went to New York.”