"Anything on this morning, Counsellor?"
The title was still music to Holden's ears, so he smiled encouragingly
at the fat reporter. In an instant a bethumbed court calendar was shoved
under his nose and the reportorial pencil questioned,
"_Grafton against the Milling Companies?_ Are you in that? Say, what's
doing there to-day? Is it any good?"
The reportorial arm was slipped confidentially through his, and Holden
thus accompanied threaded his way through the crowded rotunda of the
County Court House.
"Hello--must be something up in Holden's office. Look at that leech
Plimpton glued to him!"
"Yes--_Grafton against The Milling Companies_."
"Good Lord! Is that on? I might as well go back to the office then.
We'll never be reached to-day."
"That's right. We're not ready, so thank goodness they're ahead of us.
It's a dandy case,--wish we had it."
"Think I'll stay and hear the arguments.--Old man Harter's in fine form,
they say."
So the managing clerks talked as they leaned against the walls of the
rotunda or sat upon the railing of the "Well."
It is an interesting place that rotunda--a trifle impossible, perhaps,
from an academic point of view,--but still an interesting place.
It is the big noisy ante-chamber to the stuffy court rooms of a big
noisy city. It has an atmosphere of tobacco, shirt sleeves and hurry--an
atmosphere of the people--its architecture is big and plain--an
architecture for the people, and its dirt and smears bespeak a daily use
and occupation by the people.
To the casual visitor the same persons seem to live in it all the year
round. To the habitue the masses are kaleidoscopic--never and yet ever
the same. Messengers,--process-servers, office boys--all the fledglings
of the law gather there in groups and blow cigarette smoke into each
other's faces. Court officials loll about the railing patronising the
managing clerks, who must cultivate them or yield all claims to
management. Big-girthed men hold one another by watch chains and lapels
and tell loud-mouthed stories of their triumphant practice. Bloated
gentlemen and shifty seek out corners to breathe moist secrets into each
other's ears. But heedless of all these a hurrying crowd is ever
streaming this way and that--here a haggard face and there a laughing
one--now a brutal type and now a mask of breeding--so they go--shuffle,
shuffle, click-a-clack, all day long, outside the halls of Justice.