Mr. Feuerstein sank slowly into the seat beside her. ``Soul's wife,'' he murmured. ``Ah--but I have been near to death. The strain of the interview with your father-- the anguish--the hope--oh, what a curse it is to have a sensitive soul! And my old trouble''--he laid his hand upon his heart and slowly shook his head--``returned. It will end me some day.''
Hilda was trembling with sympathy. She put her hand upon his.
``If you had only sent word, dear,'' she said reproachfully, ``I would have come. Oh--I do love you so, Carl! I could hardly eat or sleep--and--''
``The truth would have been worse than silence,'' he said in a hollow voice. He did not intend the double meaning of his remark; the Gansers were for the moment out of his mind, which was absorbed in his acting. ``But it is over for the present--yes, over, my priceless pearl. I can come to see you soon. If I am worse I shall send you word.''
``But can't I come to see you?''
``No, bride of my dreams. It would not be--suitable. We must respect the little conventions. You must wait until I come.''
His tone was decided. She felt that he knew best. In a few minutes he rose. ``I must return to my room,'' he said wearily.
``Ah, heart's delight, it is terrible for a strong man to find himself thus weak. Pity me. Pray for me.''
He noted with satisfaction her look of love and anxiety. It was some slight salve to his cruelly wounded vanity. He walked feebly away, but it was pure acting, as he no longer felt so downcast. He had soon put Hilda into the background and was busy with his plans for revenge upon Ganser--``a vulgar animal who insulted me when I honored him by marrying his ugly gosling.''
Before he fell asleep that night he had himself wrought up to a state of righteous indignation. Ganser had cheated, had outraged him--him, the great, the noble, the eminent.
Early the next morning he went down to a dingy frame building that cowered meanly in the shadow of the Criminal Court House.
He mounted a creaking flight of stairs and went in at a low door on which ``Loeb, Lynn, Levy and McCafferty'' was painted in black letters. In the narrow entrance he brushed against a man on the way out, a man with a hangdog look and short bristling hair and the pastily-pallid skin that comes from living long away from the sunlight. Feuerstein shivered slightly--was it at the touch of such a creature or at the suggestions his appearance started? In front of him was a ground-glass partition with five doors in it.
At a dirty greasy pine table sat a boy--one of those child veterans the big city develops. He had a long and extremely narrow head. His eyes were close together, sharp and shifty.
His expression was sophisticated and cynical. ``Well, sir!'' he said with curt impudence, giving Feuerstein a gimlet-glance.
``I want to see Mr. Loeb.'' Feuerstein produced a card--it was one of his last remaining half-dozen and was pocket-worn.
The office boy took it with unveiled sarcasm in his eyes and in the corners of his mouth. He disappeared through one of the five doors, almost immediately reappeared at another, closed it mysteriously behind him and went to a third door. He threw it open and stood aside. ``At the end of the hall,'' he said.
``The door with Mr. Loeb's name on it. Knock and walk right in.''
Feuerstein followed the directions and found himself in a dingy little room, smelling of mustiness and stale tobacco, and lined with law books, almost all on crime and divorce. Loeb, Lynn, Levy and McCafferty were lawyers to the lower grades of the criminal and shady only. They defended thieves and murderers; they prosecuted or defended scandalous divorce cases; they packed juries and suborned perjury and they tutored false witnesses in the way to withstand cross-examination. In private life they were four home-loving, law-abiding citizens.
Loeb looked up from his writing and said with contemptuous cordiality: ``Oh --Mr. Feuerstein. Glad to see you--AGAIN.
What's the trouble--NOW?''
At ``again'' and ``now'' Feuerstein winced slightly. He looked nervously at Loeb.
``It's been--let me see--at least seven years since I saw you,'' continued Loeb, who was proud of his amazing memory. He was a squat, fat man, with a coarse brown skin and heavy features. He was carefully groomed and villainously perfumed and his clothes were in the extreme of the loudest fashion. A diamond of great size was in his bright-blue scarf; another, its match, loaded down his fat little finger. Both could be unscrewed and set in a hair ornament which his wife wore at first nights or when they dined in state at Delmonico's. As he studied Feuerstein, his face had its famous smile, made by shutting his teeth together and drawing his puffy lips back tightly from them.
``That is all past and gone,'' said Feuerstein. ``As a lad I was saved by you from the consequences of boyish folly. And now, a man grown, I come to you to enlist your aid in avenging an insult to my honor, an--''
``Be as brief as possible,'' cut in Loeb. ``My time is much occupied. The bald facts, please--FACTS, and BALD.''
Feuerstein settled himself and prepared to relate his story as if he were on the stage, with the orchestra playing low and sweet.
``I met a woman and loved her,'' he began in a deep, intense voice with a passionate tremolo.
``A bad start,'' interrupted Loeb. ``If you go on that way, we'll never get anywhere. You're a frightful fakir and liar, Feuerstein. You were, seven years ago; of course, the habit's grown on you. Speak out! What do you want? As your lawyer, I must know things exactly as they are.''
``I ran away with a girl--the daughter of the brewer, Peter Ganser,'' said Feuerstein, sullen but terse. ``And her father wouldn't receive me--shut her up--put me out.''
``And you want your wife?''
``I want revenge.''
``Of course--cash. Well, Ganser's a rich man. I should say he'd give up a good deal to get rid of YOU.'' Loeb gave that mirthless and mirth-strangling smile as he accented the ``you.''
``He's got to give up!'' said Feuerstein fiercely.
