the detriment of other affairs, in preparing for it. I was greatly
hampered in my work by my client, who filled my office with his
tobacco-smoke and that of his friends, and he took it very much for
granted that he was going to win the suit. Fortune had always played
into his hands, he said, and I had no little difficulty in convincing him
that matters had passed from his hands into mine. In this I believe I
was never entirely successful. I soon found, too, that he had no ideas
whatever on the value of discretion, and it was only by repeated threats
of absolute failure that I prevented our secret tactics from becoming the
property of his sporting fraternity and of the town.

The more I worked on the case, the clearer it became to me that Mr.
Farquhar Fenelon Cooke's great-uncle had been either a consummate
scoundrel or a lunatic, and that our only hope of winning must be based
on proving him one or the other; it did not matter much which, for my
expectations at best were small. When I had at length settled to this
conclusion I confided it as delicately as possible to my client, who was
sitting at the time with his feet cocked up on the office table, reading
a pink newspaper.

"Which'll be the easier to prove?" he asked, without looking up.

"It would be more charitable to prove he had been out of his mind," I
replied, "and perhaps easier."

"Charity be damned," said this remarkable man. "I'm after the property."

So I decided on insanity. I hunted up and subpoenaed white-haired
witnesses for miles around. Many of them shook their heads when they
spoke of Mr. Cooke's great-uncle, and some knew more of his private