The lawyer who never practised reached the Tippecanoe Club every week-day at exactly thirty minutes past twelve o’clock. Within five minutes he had usually taken one sip from a martini cocktail, dry, after which he was ready to discuss the news of the day for ten or fifteen minutes before going to the grill-room for luncheon. A good figure of a man was Copeland. He had steady brown eyes in which a keen humor lurked, and his hair that had once been black was now white; but he was still young and the snowy cap over his dark features was becoming. In a frock coat Copeland would have graced the Senate or the president’s cabinet table.
He had telephoned Leighton to meet him one day near the end of September and Morris came in as Copeland finished his cocktail.
“Nothing? You reject my offer? It’s better so at your age. When I was in the practice,—”
“That was in the day,” said Morris, “when a law library in these parts meant the state decisions, a few text-books and a jug of peach brandy behind the stove. Our Supreme Court has held—”
“Our Supreme Court,” began Copeland in his crisp, level tone, “is supreme in nothing so much as in its own stupidity. They have established precedents in torts that are utterly opposed to the best English decisions. Why, sir—”
Leighton grinned and Copeland changed the subject abruptly. This matter of the idiocy of the Supreme Court was a joke of long standing between Copeland and his friends at the bar. They were forever mailing him catalogues of law books and abstracts of curious decisions from legal periodicals for his edification. He really read law for diversion and enjoyed particularly suits involving the duties and obligations of common carriers.
Copeland, whom Leighton greatly admired, was a man of serious habits and pleasant fancies. He had, for example, a way of whistling when angry or annoyed,—a curiously mournful whistle that was gloomy with foreboding, and heavy with the sorrow of the world. He had begun life as the credit man of the corporation of which he was now president, which may explain his gravity. He was himself the originator of the plausible dictum that the credit man in a refrigerator factory—Copeland’s ice-boxes were sold in twenty states—suffers necessarily from intellectual chilblains. Copeland spoke in a dry, tart way that lent weight to his dicta, whether he was talking at the club or addressing the directors of his company. He was thoroughly self-contained and with emotions that never got out of bounds. About once a month he received and declined an offer of the presidency of some bank or trust company. A business man who is a good fellow, and who, moreover, can say no to his best friend without offense, names his own salary in this golden age of commerce.
Copeland continued to speak with characteristic crispness.
“I have a customer up in the country who has made the acquaintance of your particular friend, Mr. Jack Balcomb. Do you follow me?”
“Your customer must be a man of parts. Balcomb does not cultivate people unless he sees something pretty good in them.”