in at a low door on which "Loeb,
Lynn, Levy and McCafferty" was painted in black letters. In the narrow
entrance he brushed against a man on the way out, a man with a hangdog
look and short bristling hair and the pastily-pallid skin that comes
from living long away from the sunlight. Feuerstein shivered
slightly--was it at the touch of such a creature or at the suggestions
his appearance started? In front of him was a ground-glass partition
with five doors in it. At a dirty greasy pine table sat a boy--one of
those child veterans the big city develops. He had a long and
extremely narrow head. His eyes were close together, sharp and shifty.
His expression was sophisticated and cynical. "Well, sir!" he said
with curt impudence, giving Feuerstein a gimlet-glance.

"I want to see Mr. Loeb." Feuerstein produced a card--it was one of
his last remaining half-dozen and was pocket-worn.

The office boy took it with unveiled sarcasm in his eyes and in the
corners of his mouth. He disappeared through one of the five doors,
almost immediately reappeared at another, closed it mysteriously behind
him and went to a third door. He threw it open and stood aside. "At
the end of the hall," he said. "The door with Mr. Loeb's name on it.
Knock and walk right in."

Feuerstein followed the directions and found himself in a dingy little
room, smelling of mustiness and stale tobacco, and lined with law
books, almost all on crime and divorce. Loeb, Lynn, Levy and
McCafferty were lawyers to the lower grades of the criminal and shady
only. They defended thieves and murderers; they prosecuted or defended
scandalous divorce cases; they packed juries and suborned perjury and
they tutored false witnesses in the way to withstand cross-examination.
In private life they were four home-loving, law-abiding citizens.

Loeb looked up from his writing and said with contemptuous cordiality:
"Oh--Mr. Feuerstein. Glad to see you--AGAIN. What's the trouble--NOW?"

At "again" and "now" Feuerstein winced slightly. He looked nervously
at Loeb.

"It's been--let me see--at least seven years since I saw you,"
continued Loeb, who was proud of his amazing memory. He was a squat,
fat man, with a coarse brown skin and heavy features. He was carefully
groomed and villainously perfumed and his clothes were in the extreme
of the loudest fashion. A diamond of great size was in his bright-blue
scarf; another, its match, loaded down his fat little finger