e new Watson was unable to agree with this doctrine, so far as it
* * * * *
The legal conscience thus gratuitously thrust upon him was soon to
undergo its first ordeal. An acquaintance of his, in a moment of
absent-mindedness, murdered somebody, and asked Watson to persuade the
inevitable jury that he hadn't. The said acquaintance explained to
Watson that he simply did it when he wasn't thinking.

Watson was in a hole. Obviously this was a case to which the
embarrassment prescribed by the General Council of the Bar was
applicable. This legal embarrassment, which, strictly speaking, ought
now to be his, would not, however, have worried him in the least had
it not been for another consideration. Suppose, after Watson had
triumphantly got his client acquitted, it got about that the "innocent"
had confessed his crime to counsel beforehand? That would mean an end to
Watson's professional career. One does not thus slight the edicts of the
mighty with impunity.

Watson was too proud to ask his client to keep the deadly secret, or to
apply the famous wriggle of _Hippolytus_: "My tongue hath sworn, but my
heart remains unsworn."

Nevertheless Watson gave his mind to the problem. In the end he decided
on the following line of defence: "Not Guilty," and in the alternative
"Guilty under justifiable circumstances, without malice aforethought but
with intent to benefit the person murdered."

Happily the General Council of the Bar has not yet assigned any
moral embarrassment to a counsel who pleads "Not Guilty," and in the
alternative, "Guilty." Watson therefore reasoned that if the jury
returned a verdict of "Not Guilty," his client's alternative confession
could be written off as an obvious mistake; on the other hand, if he
were found "Guilty," the fact of confession would be an ethical asset
towards securing for him a lenient view of the case.

As I said, Watson behaved well. He proved to his own and the jury's
satisfaction (1) that his client did not commit the murder; (2) that
alternatively he did commit the murder, but that he did so for the good
of everybody concerned; and (3) that in either case he never meant to do
it.

In the event the prisoner was acquitted without a stain upon his
* * * * *
Watson is now well established as the last hope of abandoned causes. He
is a specialist in defence, and criminals of every shade throng to him.
When a new one swims i