"Important? Important isn't the word."
With the same air of innocence, Jones nodded. "I thought it wasn't the
word. I should have said trivial."
"But----"
Wickedly Jones laughed. "If you feel reckless enough to go another
basket of pippins, I will wager that if I tell Dunwoodie anything--and
mind the 'if'--he will agree that the paper-cutter is of no
consequence--except to its lawful owner, who wants it back."
"But tell me----"
"Anything you like. For the moment, though, tell me something."
"What?"
Jones blew a ring of smoke. "Do you happen to know whether Paliser had
anything?"
"What on earth has that to do with it?"
Jones blew another ring. "I had an idea that his mother might have left
him something. You knew her, didn't you? Any way, you still know M. P.
Did he ever say anything about it?"
"He did not need to. It was in the papers. He made over to him the
Splendor, the Place, and some Wall Street and lower Broadway property
that has been part of the Paliser estate since the year One."
"What is it all worth?" Jones asked. "Ten or twenty million?"
"Thirty, I should say. Perhaps more. But what has it to do with Lennox?"
Negligently Jones flicked his ashes. "Well, it changes the subject. I
can't talk about the same thing all the time. It is too fatiguing."
As he spoke, he stood up.
Verelst put out a hand. "Dunwoodie is sure to look in. Where are you off
to?"
Jones smiled at him. "I am going to gaze in a window where there are
pippins on view."
"Go to the devil!" said Verelst, who also got up.
Fabulists tell strange tales. It is their business to tell them. Jones
had no intention of looking at pippins. What he had in mind was fruit of
another variety. It was some distance away. Before he could make an
appreciable move toward it, Verelst, who had turned from him, turned
back.
"There!"
Beyond, through the high-arched entrance, a man was limping. He had the
battered face of an old bulldog and the rumpled clothes of a young
ruffian.
"There's Dunwoodie!"
Verelst, a hand on Jones' elbow, propelled him toward the lawyer, who
gratified them with the look, very baleful and equally famous, with
which he was said to reverse the Bench.
But Verelst, afraid of nothing except damp sheets, stretched a hand.
"You know Ten Eyck Jones. He has something very important to tell you."
"Yes," said Jones. "In March, on the eighth or ninth, I have forgotten
which, but it must be in the 'Law Journal,' a decision was rendered----"
He got no farther. Other members, crowding about, were questioning,
surmising, eager for a detail, a prediction, an obiter dictum, for
anything they could take away and repeat concerning the murder, in which
all knew that the great man was to appear.
But Dunwoodie was making himself heard, and not gently either. It was as
though already he was at the district attorney's throat.
"Where is the evidence? Where is it? Where is the evidence? There is not
a shred, not a scintilla. On the absence of facts adduced, I shall
maintain what I assert until the last armed Court of Appeals expires.
Hum! Ha!"