CHAPTER VIII.
ENTER SHAGARACH.
"Meyer Shagarach, Attorney-at-Law."
The shingle could not have been more commonplace, the office stairs more dingy. A Jewish boy opened the door at Emily's knock and a young man of the same persuasion arose from his desk and bustled forward to inquire her business.
"Meester Shagarach is in. Did you wish to see him?"
After a moment a second door was opened and Emily was motioned into the inner office.
"This way, madam."
The man writing at the table barely glanced up at first, but, seeing who his visitor was, he rose and placed a seat for her. There was courtesy but no geniality in the gesture. Shagarach did not smile. It was said that he never smiled.
From the beginning Emily felt that she was in the presence of a man of destiny. Before sitting down her intuitions had determined her to enlist this force on Robert's side at any cost. Shagarach's body was small, his clothing mean and crinkled all over, as if its owner spent many hours daily crouched in a chair. But the face drew one's gaze and absorbed it. With care it might have been handsome, though the dead-black beard grew wild and the hair, tossed carelessly to one side, fell back at intervals, requiring to be brushed in place by the owner's hand. Under the smooth, bony brow that marks the Hebrew shone two eyes of extraordinary splendor, the largest, Emily thought, she had ever seen, and set the widest apart—brown and melting as a dog's, but glowing, as no dog's ever did, with profundities of human intelligence. Wide open at all times, they cast penetrating glances, never sidelong, always full—the eyes of a soul-searcher, a student of those characters, legible but elusive; which the spirit writes upon its outer garment. Their physical dimensions lent a large power to the face, as if more of the visible world could be comprehended within those magnificent organs than the glances of ordinary men compass. But the mouth below seemed rigid as granite, even during the play of speech.
"My name is Miss Barlow," said Emily.