“And every man is to be a law unto himself?”
“Not quite. Some men aren’t big enough to be. Let them stick to the conventional code. For me, if I make my own laws I don’t break them.”
“And you’re sure that you’re on the road to true success?” she asked lightly.
“Now, you have heaven in the back of your mind.”
“Not exactly,” she laughed. “But I didn’t expect you to understand.”
“Then I won’t disappoint you,” he said cheerfully.
She came back to the concrete.
“I should like to know whether it is true that you own the courts of Yuba County and have the decisions of the judges written at your lawyer’s offices in cases between you and the Consolidated.”
“If I do,” he answered easily, “I am doing just what the Consolidated would do in case they had been so fortunate as to have won the last election and seated their judicial candidates. One expects a friendly leaning from the men one put in office.”
“Isn’t the judiciary supposed to be the final, incorruptible bulwark of the nation?” she pretended to want to know.