And now I began to come upon "the Cat" again.
I knew a lad named Smith, whom I considered a victim of malpractice at the hands of a Denver surgeon whose brother was at the head of one of the great smelter companies of Colorado. The boy had suffered a fracture of the thigh-bone, and the surgeon—because of a hasty and ill-considered diagnosis, I believed—had treated him for a bruised hip. The surgeon, when I told him that the boy was entitled to damages, called me a blackmailer—and that was enough. I forced the case to trial.
I had resigned my clerkship and gone into partnership with a fine young fellow whom I shall call Charles Gardener[2]—though that was not his name—and this was to be our first case. We were opposed by Charles J. Hughes, Jr., the ablest corporation lawyer in the state; and I was puzzled to find the officers of the gas company and a crowd of prominent business men in court when the case was argued on a motion to dismiss it. The judge refused the motion, and for so doing—as he afterward told me himself—he was "cut" in his Club by the men whose presence in the court had puzzled me. After a three weeks' trial, in which we worked night and day for the plaintiff—with X-ray photographs and medical testimony and fractured bones boiled out over night in the medical school where I prepared them—the jury stood eleven to one in our favour, and the case had to be begun all over again. The second time, after another trial of three weeks, the jury "hung" again, but we did not give up. It had been all fun for us—and for the town. The word had gone about the streets: "Go up and see those two kids fighting the corporation heavyweights. It's more fun than a circus." And we were confident that we could win; we knew that we were right.
One evening after dinner, when we were sitting in the dingy little back room on Champa Street that served us as an office, A. M. Stevenson—"Big Steve"—politician and attorney for the Denver City Tramway Company, came shouldering in to see us—a heavy-jowled, heavy-waisted, red-faced bulk of good-humour—looking as if he had just walked out of a political cartoon. "Hello, boys," he said jovially. "How's she going? Making a record for yourselves up in court, eh? Making a record for yourselves. Well!"
He sat down and threw a foot up on the desk and smiled at us, with his inevitable cigarette in his mouth—his ridiculously inadequate cigarette. (When he puffed it, he looked like a fat boy blowing bubbles.) "Wearing yourselves out, eh? Working night and day? Ain't you getting about tired of it?"
"We got eleven to one each time," I said. "We'll win yet."
"Uh-huh. You will, eh?" He laughed amusedly. "One man stood out against you each time, wasn't there?"
There was.
"Well," he said, "there always will be. You ain't going to get a verdict in this case. You can't. Now I'm a friend of you boys, ain't I? Well, my advice to you is you'd better settle that case. Get something for your work. Don't be a pair of fools. Settle it."
"Why can't we get a verdict?" we asked.