Thus to annihilate a man by pad and pencil is indeed an art worthy of admiration.  The pen of an indictment clerk is oft mightier than the sword of a Lionheart, the brain behind the subtle quill far defter than said swordsman’s skill.  Moreover, the ingenuity necessary to draft one of these documents is not confined to its mere successful composition, for having achieved the miraculous feat of alleging in fourteen ways without punctuation that the defendant did something, and with a final fanfare of “saids” and “to wits” inserted his verb where no one will ever find it, the indicter must then be able to unwind himself, rolling in and out among the “dids” and “thens” and “theres” until he is once more safely upon the terra firma of foolscap at the head of the first page.

Mr. Caput Magnus could do it—­with the aid of a volume of printed forms devised in the days of Jeremy Bentham.  In fact, like a camel who smells water afar off, he could in a desert of verbal sand unerringly find an oasis of meaning.  Therefore was Caput Magnus held in high honor among the pack of human hounds who bayed at the call of Huntsman Peckham’s horn.  Others might lose the scent of what it was all about in the tropical jungle of an indictment eleven pages long, but not he.  Like the old dog in Masefield’s “Reynard the Fox,” Mr. Magnus would work through ditches full of legal slime, nose through thorn thickets of confusion, dash through copses and spinneys of words and phrases, until he snapped close at the heels of intelligibility.  The Honorable Peckham couldn’t have drawn an indictment to save his legal life.  Neither could any of the rest.  Neither could Caput without his book of ancient forms—­though he didn’t let anybody know it.

Shrouded in mystery on a salary of five thousand dollars a year, Caput sat in the shrine of his inner office producing literature of a clarity equaled only by that of George Meredith or Mr. Henry James.  He was the Great Accuser.  He could call a man a thief in more different ways than any deputy assistant district attorney known to memory—­with the aid of his little book.  He could lasso and throw any galloping criminal, however fierce, with a gracefully uncoiling rope of deadly adjectives.  On all of which he properly prided himself until he became unendurable to his fellows and insufferable to Peckham, who would have cheerfully fired him months gone by had he had a reason or had there been any other legal esoteric to take his place.

Yet pride goeth before a fall.  And I am glad of it, for Magnus was a conceited little ass.  This yarn is about the fall of Caput Magnus almost as much as it is about the uxorious Higgleby, though the two are inextricably entwined together.

* * * * *

“Mr. Tutt,” remarked Tutt after Higgleby’s departure, “that new client of ours is certainly sui generis.”

“That’s no crime,” smiled the senior partner, reaching for the malt-extract bottle.