Lawyer Gooch, then, sat idle in the middle room of his clientless suite. A small anteroom connected—or rather separated—this apartment from the hallway. Here was stationed Archibald, who wrested from visitors their cards or oral nomenclature which he bore to his master while they waited.
Suddenly, on this day, there came a great knocking at the outermost door.
Archibald, opening it, was thrust aside as superfluous by the visitor, who without due reverence at once penetrated to the office of Lawyer Gooch and threw himself with good-natured insolence into a comfortable chair facing that gentlemen.
“You are Phineas C. Gooch, attorney-at-law?” said the visitor, his tone of voice and inflection making his words at once a question, an assertion and an accusation.
Before committing himself by a reply, the lawyer estimated his possible client in one of his brief but shrewd and calculating glances.
The man was of the emphatic type—large-sized, active, bold and debonair in demeanour, vain beyond a doubt, slightly swaggering, ready and at ease. He was well-clothed, but with a shade too much ornateness. He was seeking a lawyer; but if that fact would seem to saddle him with troubles they were not patent in his beaming eye and courageous air.
“My name is Gooch,” at length the lawyer admitted. Upon pressure he would also have confessed to the Phineas C. But he did not consider it good practice to volunteer information. “I did not receive your card,” he continued, by way of rebuke, “so I—”
“I know you didn’t,” remarked the visitor, coolly; “And you won’t just yet. Light up?” He threw a leg over an arm of his chair, and tossed a handful of rich-hued cigars upon the table. Lawyer Gooch knew the brand. He thawed just enough to accept the invitation to smoke.
“You are a divorce lawyer,” said the cardless visitor. This time there was no interrogation in his voice. Nor did his words constitute a simple assertion. They formed a charge—a denunciation—as one would say to a dog: “You are a dog.” Lawyer Gooch was silent under the imputation.
“You handle,” continued the visitor, “all the various ramifications of busted-up connubiality. You are a surgeon, we might say, who extracts Cupid’s darts when he shoots ’em into the wrong parties. You furnish patent, incandescent lights for premises where the torch of Hymen has burned so low you can’t light a cigar at it. Am I right, Mr. Gooch?”