He laughed then. "What are you going to do—murder him?"
"It will probably be sufficient to bring an action against him."
"What for?"
I said that I wasn't a legal authority, but that it seemed to me that Terry would have a good case if he took the matter to court. "As a matter of fact," I added, "I rather wanted your advice about it."
"My advice is never to expect to win an action because you've got a good case."
"No?"
"The case doesn't matter. It's the lawyer that counts. That's my experience, as a man who's won hundreds of bad cases and made other people lose hundreds of good ones."
"It sounds rather terrible."
He laughed again; I think he would have purred if he had been able. "Shall I tell you," he said, "what I would say if I were defending Karelsky in an action brought against him by Terry?" He paused for a moment, and then, with gleaming eyes and the old professional note in his voice, continued: "Gentlemen of the Jury,—my client is a scientist of world-wide reputation. His honour is assailed by a man of whom none of you, I am sure, have ever heard before. Let me tell you something about him. He was formerly in the employ of my client. After being granted full access to all the privacies of the Professor's laboratories, he left suddenly, breaking his signed contract and leaving behind him not even a word of explanation. Since then he has done no work of any kind, but has been content to live mainly on the charity of friends.... And this is the man who, according to the prosecution, has made a discovery to rank with those of Kelvin and Lister!"
"There are the note-books and papers to prove it," I interjected sharply.