When I decided to take up the practice of the law, I had fancied, in my youthful ignorance, that it was a sort of glorified compound of a detective story and Gems of Oratory. I had now been at it for some years, and so far my detective instincts had been chiefly required in the search for missing authorities in the law books, and my oratorical gifts had been exercised almost exclusively on delinquent debtors who didn't want to pay their debts. You can therefore imagine that Clyde's interview left me pleasantly excited. This was the real thing! This was the case I long had sought and mourned because I found it not! Not for worlds would I have missed the opportunity of meeting his blackmailing correspondent. To face a rascal was no uncommon experience, unfortunately; but to face so complete and melodramatic a rascal, and to try to wrest from him some incriminating admission that would give me a controlling hold on him in my turn,--that was something that did not come often into the day's work.
Very much to my surprise, I found unexpected light upon the career of Alfred Barker not farther away than my own office. My first step was to set my clerk, Adam Fellows, to looking up the court and newspaper records of Barker's connection with the killing of Senator Benbow. When I mentioned his name to Fellows I saw by his sudden change of expression that I had touched some sore chord,--and if Fellows had an ambition it was to conceal his feelings, moreover.
"You know Barker, then?" I said abruptly.
"Yes," he said, in a very low voice,--and I guessed in what connection.
I may say here that Fellows was a souvenir of my first trial case and of an early enthusiasm for humanity. One day, not long after my admission to the bar, (this was before I came to Saintsbury,) the court assigned to me the defense of a young fellow who had no lawyer. He was a clerk in a city office, and was charged with embezzlement by his employers. The money had gone for race-track gambling, and he could not deny his guilt; but by bringing out the facts of his youth and his unfortunate associations, I was able to get a minimum sentence for him,--the best that could be expected under the circumstances. When his sentence expired, I was on the lookout for him, and took him into my own office as a clerk. I had nothing he could embezzle, for one thing, and the dogged stoicism with which he had met his fate interested me. Besides, I knew it would be difficult for him to get work, particularly as he did not have an engaging personality. I think that in a manner he was grateful, but he never could forget that he carried the stigma of a convict, and he imagined that everyone else was remembering it also. This moodiness had grown upon him instead of wearing off. It used to make me impatient,--but it is easy enough for one whose withers are unwrung to be impatient with the galled jade's tendency to wince.
"What do you know of him?" I asked.
"I know that where he is, there is deviltry, but no one ever catches him," he said bitterly. "Someone else will pay all right, but the law doesn't touch him."
"Did he get you into trouble?" I asked bluntly.
"He made me believe he could make a fortune for me. He kept me going with hopes that the next time, the next time, I would win enough to square things up. It was his doing, not mine, really. But he did nothing that the law takes note of." He spoke with unusual excitement and feeling, and I didn't think any good would come of a discussion of moral responsibility at that time.
"Well, look up everything possible about that affair when Benbow was killed," I said. "I want to see if there is anything in that which would give a hold on him."