McNeil's name had at first made no impression on me, but the mention of
Miss Leigh, "the Argand Estate," and of Wringman brought up an
association. "McNeil--McNeil?" I said. "Did you have five children; and
did your wife bring them on here some months ago--when the train was
late, one day?"
"Yes, sorr; that's the way it was."
"Well, I will keep you in longer than to-morrow," I said. And I did. But
Justice is too expensive a luxury for the poor. "Law is law," but it was
made by landlords. I won his case for him and got his furniture
released; I scored the Argand agent, an icy-faced gentleman, named
Gillis, "of high character," as the Argand counsel, Mr. McSheen,
indignantly declared, and incidentally "the Argand Estate," in terms
which made me more reputation than I knew of at the time.
The case was a reasonably simple one, for my client was entitled to a
poor debtor's exemption of a few household articles of primary need, and
he had not half of what he could have claimed under his exemption. It
appeared, however, that in the lease, which was in the regular form
used by the Argand Estate, all exemptions were waived, and also that it
was the regular practice of the estate to enforce the waiver, and it was
alleged at the trial that this practice had always been sustained. It
was the fact that this was the customary lease and that a principle was
involved which brought Mr. McSheen into the case, as he stated, for a
client who was the largest landlord in the city. And it was the fact
that Miss Leigh had recommended me and that McSheen was in the case that
made me put forth all my powers on it.
On the stand the Argand agent, Gillis, who, it appeared, had begun as an
office-boy in the office of Mr. Argand and had then become his private
secretary, from which he had risen to wealth and position, a fact I had
learned from Kalender, was foolish enough to say that the case was
gotten up by an unknown young lawyer out of spite against the Argand
Estate and that it was simply an instance of "the eternal attacks on
wealth"; that, in fact, there were "only two sides, the man with the
dress-coat and the man without."
"You began poor. When did you change your coat?" I asked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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