"Good advice," agreed Uncle John. "Of course they'll give him a preliminary hearing before locking him up, and if you'll stick to him I'll send on a lawyer in double-quick time."
"Thank you," said the boy. "The lawyer first, Mr. 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.