do not doubt it. I am not a rich man, but serious though the monetary
loss would be to me, I should settle the matter out of court, were I not
positive that I had right on my side." To which Ocock returned a quick:
"Oh, quite so . . . of course."

Like his old father, he was a short, heavily built man; but there the
likeness ended. He had a high, domed forehead, above a thin, hooked
nose. His skin was of an almost Jewish pallor. Fringes of straight,
jet-black hair grew down the walls of his cheeks and round his chin,
meeting beneath it. The shaven upper lid was long and flat, with no
central markings, and helped to form a mouth that had not much more shape
or expression than a slit cut by a knife in a sheet of paper. The chin was
bare to the size of a crown-piece; and, both while he spoke and while he
listened to others speaking, the lawyer caressed this patch with his
finger-tips; so that in the course of time it had arrived at a state of
high polish--like the shell of an egg.

The air with which he heard his new client out was of a non-committal
kind; and Mahony, having talked his first heat off, grew chilled by the
wet blanket of Ocock's silence. There was nothing in this of the frank
responsiveness with which your ordinary mortal lends his ear. The brain
behind the dome was, one might be sure, adding, combining, comparing,
and drawing its own conclusions. Why should lawyers, he wondered, treat
those who came to them like children, advancing only in so far as it
suited them out of the darkness where they housed among strangely worded
paragraphs and obscure formulas?--But these musings were cut short.
Having fondled his chin for a further moment, Ocock looked up and put a
question. And, while he could not but admire the lawyer's acumen, this
did not lessen Mahony's discomfort. All unguided, it went straight for
what he believed to be the one weak spot in his armour. It related to