Mr. Hepplewhite looked inquiringly at Mr. Edgerton and rose feebly.

“He’ll get you sooner or later,” declared the lawyer.  “A man as well known as you can’t avoid process.”

Mr. Hepplewhite bit his lips and went out into the hall.

Presently he returned carrying a legal-looking bunch of papers.

“Well, what is it this time?” asked Edgerton jocosely.

“It’s a suit for false imprisonment for one hundred thousand dollars!” choked Mr. Hepplewhite.

Mr. Edgerton looked shocked.

“Well, now you’ve got to convict him!” he declared.

“Convict him?” retorted Mr. Hepplewhite.  “I don’t want to convict him.  I’d gladly give a hundred thousand dollars to get out of the—­the—­darn thing!”

Which was as near profanity as he had ever permitted himself to go.

* * * * *

Upon the following Monday Mr. Hepplewhite proceeded to court—­flanked by his distinguished counsel in frock coats and tall hats—­simply because he had been served with a dirty-brown subpoena by Tutt & Tutt; and his distress was not lessened by the crowd of reporters who joined him at the entrance of the Criminal Courts Building; or by the flashlight bomb that was exploded in the corridor in order that the evening papers might reproduce his picture on the front page.  He had never been so much in the public eye before, and he felt slightly defiled.  For some curious reason he had the feeling that he and not Schmidt was the actual defendant charged with being guilty of something; nor was this impression dispelled even by listening to the indictment by which the Grand Jury charged Schmidt in eleven counts with burglary in the first, second and third degrees and with the crime of entering his, Hepplewhite’s, house under circumstances not amounting to a burglary but with intent to commit a felony, as follows: 

“Therefore, to wit, on the eleventh day of January in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and nineteen in the night-time of the said day at the ward, city and county aforesaid the dwelling house of one John De Puyster Hepplewhite there situate, feloniously and burglariously did break into and enter there being then and there a human being in said dwelling house, with intent to commit some crime therein, to wit, the goods, chattels, and personal property of the said John De Puyster Hepplewhite, then and there being found, then and there feloniously and burglariously to steal, take and carry away one silver tea service of the value of five hundred dollars and one pair of opera glasses of the value of five dollars each with force and arms——­”

“But that silver tea service cost fifteen thousand dollars and weighs eight hundred pounds!” whispered Mr. Hepplewhite.

“Order in the court!” shouted Captain Phelan, pounding upon the oak rail of the bar, and Mr. Hepplewhite subsided.

Yet as he sat there between his lawyers listening to all the extraordinary things that the Grand Jury evidently had believed Schmidt intended to do, the suspicion began gradually to steal over him that something was not entirely right somewhere.  Why, it was ridiculous to charge the man with trying to carry off a silver service weighing nearly half a ton when he simply had gone to bed and fallen asleep.  Still, perhaps that was the law.