A horse-car dropped me in half an hour at a hotel near my office.

After I had snatched a sandwich and a cup of coffee in the cafe I would dash up to my office--the door of which now bore the lettering: ABRAHAM GOTTLIEB ATTORNEY & COUNSELLOR-AT-LAW BRANCH OFFICE SIDDONS KELLY, MANAGER Siddons Kelly was the superannuated actor of whom I have already spoken, and when he was not, so to speak, in drink he was an invaluable person.

He had followed the stage all his life, but he was of the sort that tear passion to tatters and he had never risen above third-rate parts.

In every respect save declamation he had all the elegances and charm of manner that the stage can give, and he would receive and bow out a scrubwoman who had fallen down a flight of back stairs and wanted to make the landlord pay for her broken head with a grace truly Chesterfieldian.

This was all very fine until he had taken a drop too much, when his vocabulary would swell to such dimensions that the confused and embarrassed client would flee in self-protection unless fortunate enough to be rescued by Gottlieb or myself.