Philip Curtiss

“ To no one did it appear more incredible than it did to Bellsmith himself. At first, indeed, he had refused to take the legal injunction with any seriousness at all. One can understand, sometimes, the point of view of anarchists, for the fact does remain that to people like Bellsmith the law most often appears as something which applies to any one but themselves. ”

“ All that he asked was that it should hold long enough for "that gang" (meaning Israels) to get out of town and for Bellsmith to come to what the Pilgrim Trust Co. had decided should be his senses. Judge Marker knew that the Fabian methods of court procedure would play sufficiently into his hands. In a week or two the whole thing would "blow over"—"blow over" being a trusted anodyne with men like Judge Marker. So long as any further drains on the estate could be shut off, the thing would be cheap even at forty-five thousand dollars. ”

“ Very few pleasant remarks had been passed in that corridor that evening, and none of them by Charlie Barnes. Israels was apparently unaffected by the underlying current of hostility, but in Bellsmith it cut.
There have been odd stories told of men dying of thirst in a brackish river, of mountaineers freezing to death within sight of a tropical plain, but for nearly a week now Arnold Bellsmith had known what it was to ramble around his own home city actually a wealthy man and still virtually penniless. ”

“ Or, rather, their inclination is to confuse "a lawyer" with the law." A few confidential words with the old family attorney, they feel, and in some mysterious manner the affair is entirely off their hands. ”