Read Online Brothers In Law by Henry Cecil - Free Book Online

pretty good at getting to the bathroom first in a boarding house.
    â€˜And how’s Mr Wince?’ Roger heard him say. ‘How’s Mr Wince today? Come along in, my dear fellow, come along in,’ and then Mr Grimes’ door closed and Roger heard no more. He wondered what Mr Wince wanted. What was Cooling and Mallet about? He looked on his table. What a piece of luck. There it was. He quickly tied up the bundle he had been reading and opened Cooling and Mallet. At that moment Alec came in.
    â€˜Mr Grimes wants these, I’m afraid, sir,’ he said and took them away.
    Roger went back to the sins of Mr Pieman and Mrs Biggs. Even at his age he found it a little sad to see how the attitude between men and women can change. The letters, which in the early correspondence started and ended so very, very affectionately, full of all the foolish-looking but (to them) sweet sounding endearments of lovers, gradually cooled off. ‘My dearest, sweetest turnip, how I adore you’ became ‘Dear Mr Pieman, if I do not receive a cheque by return I shall place the matter in other hands.’ Is it really possible that I could ever hate the sight of Joy or Sally as undoubtedly Mr Pieman now hates the sight of Mrs Biggs? Perhaps it only happens, he thought, when the relationship has been that of husband and wife, or worse. At twenty-one these things are a little difficult to understand.
    Roger had an hour more with Mr Pieman and Mrs Biggs when Charles returned. The Court he had attended was some way away, but he was still hot and flushed.
    â€˜Hullo,’ said Roger. ‘How did you get on? I hear you’ve been doing a judgment something or other. I wish you’d tell me about it.’
    â€˜I wish you’d asked me that yesterday. Then I might have had to look it up. As it is, I have lost my one and only client.’
    â€˜I’m so sorry. What happened?’ asked Roger sympathetically.
    â€˜I’d learned the ruddy thing by heart. There wasn’t a thing I didn’t know.’ He broke off. ‘It really is too bad.’
    â€˜Do tell me, unless you’d rather not.’
    â€˜I think I’d like to get it off my chest. I was doing a js – a judgment summons. That’s an application to send to prison a person who hasn’t paid a judgment debt, but you can only succeed if you can prove he has had the means to pay the debt or at any rate, part of it since the judgment. The debtor has to attend and my job was to cross-examine him for all I was worth to show that he could have paid. I went to the Court with my client and I told him the sort of questions I was going to ask and he seemed very impressed. “That’ll shake him,” he said several times. I was really feeling confident. And what d’you think happened? The case was called on and the chap didn’t turn up. Well, that was bad enough, but it was after that that the trouble really began. After all, I can’t know everything, can I, and I had read that brief. If the chap had been there I’d have knocked him to bits. But he wasn’t. “Well,” said the judge, “what do you want me to do?” Well, I ought to have looked it up, I suppose, but I hadn’t. I’d no idea what I wanted him to do. Fortunately my client knew more than I did. “Have him fined,” he whispered. “Would Your Honour fine him?” I said.
    â€˜â€œYour client wants his money, I suppose,” said the judge. “What good will fining him do?”
    â€˜I had no idea. Again my client prompted me. “If he doesn’t pay, he goes to prison.”
    â€˜I repeated this to the judge.
    â€˜â€œBut surely that isn’t right,” said the judge. “You’ve got to prove means before he goes to prison.”
    â€˜â€œNot in the case of a fine,” whispered my client.
    â€˜â€œNot in the case of a fine, Your Honour,” I repeated, like the good