nature, the insect world over
again, the victim duped and crippled before he is devoured, and the
lawyer--how shall I put it?--facilitating the processes of swallowing and
digesting...."

There was no use arguing with Perry when he was in this vein....

Since I am not writing a technical treatise, I need not go into the
details of the Ribblevale suit. Since it to say that the affair, after a
while, came apparently to a deadlock, owing to the impossibility of
getting certain definite information from the Ribblevale books, which had
been taken out of the state. The treasurer, for reasons of his own,
remained out of the state also; the ordinary course of summoning him
before a magistrate in another state had naturally been resorted to, but
the desired evidence was not forthcoming.

"The trouble is," Mr. Wading explained to Mr. Scherer, "that there is no
law in the various states with a sufficient penalty attached that will
compel the witness to divulge facts he wishes to conceal."

It was the middle of a February afternoon, and they were seated in deep,
leather chairs in one corner of the reading room of the Boyne Club. They
had the place to themselves. Fowndes was there also, one leg twisted
around the other in familiar fashion, a bored look on his long and sallow
face. Mr. Wading had telephoned to the office for me to bring them some
papers bearing on the case.

"Sit down, Hugh," he said kindly.

"Now we have present a genuine legal mind," said Mr. Scherer, in the
playful manner he had adopted of late, while I grinned appreciatively and
took a chair. Mr. Watling presently suggested kidnapping the Ribblevale
treasurer until he should promise to produce the books as the only way
out of what seemed an impasse. But Mr. Scherer brought down a huge fist
on his knee.

"I tell you it is no joke, Watling, we've got to win that suit," he
asserted.

"That's all very well," replied Mr. Watling. "But we're a respectable
firm, you know. We haven't had to resort to safe-blowing, as yet."

Mr. Scherer shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say it were a matter of
indifference to him what methods were resorted to. Mr. Watling's eyes met
mine; his glance was amused, yet I thought I read in it a query as to the
advisability, in my presence, of going too deeply into the question of
ways and means. I may have been wrong. At any rate, its sudden effect was
to embolden me to give voice to an idea that had begun to simmer in my
mind,