“It’s always disagreeable to be obliged to tell a man he hasn’t a good case,” Ward announced.
“Well, I want you to know I respect you for your honesty. Swiggert encouraged me to think he might get us off on some technical defect in the statute, and it cost me a two thousand dollar fee to find he was wrong.”
“The point he raised was an interesting one,” Ward remarked mildly, “and he might have made it stick.”
“But he didn’t!” Pickett retorted a little savagely. “Now I got a matter I want the God’s truth about, absolutely. It’s a row I’ve got into with a few of my stockholders in the glass company. The fools got the idea of freezing me out! It’s all in these papers, and I want you to give it all the time it needs, but I want an opinion,—no more than you can get on a letter sheet. Swiggert uses too many words and I’ve got to have a yes or no.”
The thought of being frozen out caused Mr. Pickett to swell with indignation. He turned from father to son in an unvoiced but eloquent appeal to be saved from so monstrous and impious an assault upon his dignity.
“Certainly, Mr. Pickett,” said the senior Ward, accepting the papers. “We’ll be glad to take up the matter. It’s possible I may have to ask some questions——”
“That will be all right, Ward! I don’t mind telling you I’m a good deal worried about this thing. I’m at the Elks Club most every noon, and if you’ll just ’phone when you’re ready to see me we can have lunch together. Now, I guess a retainer’s the usual thing. What do you say to a thousand or two?”
John with difficulty refrained from screaming that two would be much more to the taste of the firm, but his father’s gentle and slightly tremulous murmur that one thousand would be satisfactory stilled him. The check written with a flourish, lay on the edge of Ward senior’s desk while Pickett abused the enemies who were trying to wrest from him the control of the glass company.
“I’m familiar with the general question you indicate,” said Ward, senior; “I went into it a while back in a similar case for a client in Newton county; we shall give it our best attention.”
“I got confidence in you!” blurted Pickett. “That’s why I brought the job here.” He thrust a big cigar into his mouth and began feeling in his pocket for a match which John instantly supplied.