oked at him for a moment and then burst out laughing.

"By George!" he exclaimed. "Take it? Of course I'll take it. I
have no particular desire to go on with the litigation, I assure
you. I fully expected to be adjudged the father of a large family
of little Yarnowskis. But, now that the matter is settled, would
you mind telling me who the lady really is?"

Gottlieb looked at him very solemnly and, to my horror, gave an
imperceptible wink.

"All I can tell you, sir," he replied, "is that her name is Lizzie
Yarnowski, and that you married her under the name of Sadie Bings
before a justice of the peace at Piqua, Ohio."

At one time Gottlieb and I represented a very objectionable old
party who ran a scurrilous "society" paper, chiefly for the
opportunity it gave him to blackmail people. His method was the
very simple one of publishing some unfounded scandal without using
any names, and then to print a paragraph immediately following in
which the real names of the parties appeared, ostensibly with
relation to some other item of news:

"It is a well-known fact that a certain young society couple, both
of whom have, to say the least, led rather lurid lives, are no
longer on good terms and are carrying on--_sub rosa_--independent
establishments. Mr. ---- prefers the upper West Side, while Mrs.
---- has a tidy little Louis XVI flat on Eleventh Street. Incidentally
the family mansion remains at ---- Fifth Avenue.

"Mr. and Mrs. Kopeck Louis d'Or Jones are not going to Newport this
summer. There is a persistent rumor that Mrs. Jones will remain
with her mother on the Hudson, while her husband's plans are quite
indefinite."

In point of fact it was Gottlieb who had invented this neat method
of publishing scandal without any of the usual attendant risks.
Generally what would happen would be that the day after the issuing
of the number in which the objectionable article had appeared, Mr.
Kopeck Louis d'Or Jones would call up the white-haired editor of
_Social Sifting_ on the telephone and tell him that he proposed to
sue him for libel unless he printed an immediate retraction. Our
client would thereupon refer him to Gottlieb, who would explain to
Mr. Jones that the libel in question had no reference to him
whatsoever; that he could hardly expect _favorable_ items to appear
about him unless he took a financial interest in the paper; and
end by offering to negotiate a purchase for him of some of the
stock. In many