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this prison you will owe me a fee of ninety thousand
dollars. The fee will be all inclusive. Any expenses will be mine
to bear. Should I fail to secure your release you will owe me
nothing.”
    “But—”
    “Is that agreeable, sir?”
    “But what are you going to do? Engage
detectives? File an appeal? Try to get the case reopened?”
    “When a man engages to save your life, Mr.
Beale, do you require that he first outline his plans for you?”
    “No, but—”
    “Ninety thousand dollars. Payable if I
succeed. Are the terms agreeable?”
    “Yes, but—”
    “Mr. Beale, when next we meet you will owe me
ninety thousand dollars plus whatever emotional gratitude comes
naturally to you. Until then, sir, you owe me one dollar.” The thin
lips curled in a shadowy smile. ‘The cut worm forgives the plow,’
Mr. Beale. William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell .
‘The cut worm forgives the plow.’ You might think about that, sir,
until we meet again.”
    * * *
    The second meeting of Martin Ehrengraf and
Grantham Beale took place five weeks and four days later. On this
occasion the little lawyer wore a navy two-button suit with a
subtle vertical stripe. His shoes were highly polished black wing
tips, his shirt a pale blue broadcloth with contrasting white
collar and cuffs. His necktie bore a half-inch wide stripe of royal
blue flanked by two narrower strips, one gold and the other a
rather bright green, all on a navy field.
    And this time Ehrengraf’s client was also
rather nicely turned out, although his tweed jacket and flannels
were hardly a match for the lawyer’s suit. But Beale’s dress was a
great improvement over the shapeless gray prison garb he had worn
previously, just as his office, a room filled with jumbled books
and boxes, a desk covered with books and albums and stamps in and
out of glassine envelopes, two worn leather chairs, and a matching
sagging sofa—just as all of this comfortable disarray was a vast
improvement over the prison cell which had been the site of their
earlier meeting.
    Beale, seated behind his desk, gazed
thoughtfully at Ehrengraf, who stood ramrod straight, one hand on
the desk top, the other at his side. “Ninety thousand dollars,”
Beale said levelly. “You must admit that’s a bit rich, Mr.
Ehrengraf.”
    “We agreed on the price.”
    “No argument. We did agree, and I’m a firm
believer in the sanctity of verbal agreements. But it was my
understanding that your fee would be payable if my liberty came
about as a result of your efforts.”
    “You are free today.”
    “I am indeed, and I’ll be free tomorrow, but
I can’t see how it was any of your doing.”
    “Ah,” Ehrengraf said. His face bore an
expression of infinite disappointment, a disappointment felt not so
much with this particular client as with the entire human race.
“You feel I did nothing for you.”
    “I wouldn’t say that. Perhaps you were taking
steps to file an appeal. Perhaps you engaged detectives or did some
detective work of your own. Perhaps in due course you would have
found a way to get me out of prison, but in the meantime the
unexpected happened and your services turned out to be
unnecessary.”
    “The unexpected happened?”
    “Well, who could have possibly anticipated
it?” Beale shook his head in wonder. “Just think of it. Murchison
went and got an attack of conscience. The bounder didn’t have
enough of a conscience to step forward and admit what he’d done,
but he got to wondering what would happen if he died suddenly and I
had to go on serving a life sentence for a crime he had committed.
He wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize his liberty while he lived
but he wanted to be able to make amends if and when he died.”
    “Yes.”
    “So he prepared a letter,” Beale went on.
“Typed out a long letter explaining just why he had wanted his
partner dead and how the unregistered gun had actually belonged to
Speldron in the first place, and how he’d shot him and wrapped