obability--to wit, Crookshank, his former
attorney--was dead and buried, and it seemed as if truth were buried
with him. On the way back to our office I congratulated my partner
on the Napoleonic strategy which he had displayed and a few days
later a more substantial compliment followed, in the shape of an
unqualified finding in our favor on the part of the referee.

"Was ever thirty-five thousand dollars earned so easily!" laughed
Gottlieb over his cigar as we were dining at Delmonico's.

"So long as Hawkins stays bought--yes," I answered.

"Don't be a death's head, Quib!" he retorted. "Why, even if he
turned State's evidence, no one would believe him! Have another
glass of this vintage--we can drink it every night now for a year
at Dillingham's expense!"

"Well, here's to you, Gottlieb!" I answered, filling my goblet with
creaming wine; "and here's to crime--whereby we live and move and
have our being!"

And we clinked our glasses and drained them with a laugh.

I had now been a resident of New York for upward of twenty years
and had acquired, as the junior member of the firm of Gottlieb &
Quibble, an international reputation. It is true that my partner
and I felt it to be beneath our dignity to advertise in the newspapers
--and, indeed, advertising in New York City was for us entirely
unnecessary--but we carried a card regularly in the English journals
and received many retainers from across the water; in fact, we
controlled practically all the theatrical business in the city,
drawing the contracts for the managers and being constantly engaged
in litigations on their behalf. We had long since abandoned as
trivial all my various profit-sharing schemes, and, with the
exception of carrying on our pay-rolls many of the attendants
attached to the police and other criminal courts, had practically
no "runners." We did not need any. There was no big criminal case
in which we were not retained for the defence and rarely a divorce
action of any notoriety where we did not appear for one of the
parties.

This matter of Hawkins's was the first in twenty years in which he
had ever deliberately faked an entire case! Yet, if ever there
was a safe opportunity to do so, this seemed the one, and I cannot
even now charge Gottlieb with recklessness in taking the chances
that he did; but, as luck would have it, there were two facts
connected with the Dillingham annulment the significance of which
we totally overlooked--o