CHAPTER V.
The firm of Gottlieb & Quibble had not been long established before -- quite by chance--a new vista of opportunity opened before us.
My partner had a wretched client who, not unlike many others, would go to more pains and trouble to steal a dollar than it would have taken him to earn twenty.

This, I have noticed, is a general peculiarity of lawbreakers.

The man's name was McDuff and my partner had defended him on several occasions and had got him off, with the result that he was always hanging about the office and asking if this and that were "within the law." One fine day he was arrested on the charge of having obtained money by false premises in an unique manner.
It appeared that he had learned through a certain bar-tender that one Jones, a patron of the place, had but recently come into a legacy of a couple of hundred dollars and, in connection therewith, had imbibed so freely that he had become involved in a fist fight with a gentleman by the name of Holahan and had done the latter considerable facial damage.

McDuff pondered upon these facts for some time over his beer and then set out to find Jones--not a difficult task, as the legatee was making a round of all the near- by saloons and endeavoring to drink up his good fortune as rapidly as possible.

Overtaking him in a side street McDuff grasped him roughly by the shoulder.
"Look here, Jones," says he, pretending to be an officer; "I have a warrant for your arrest for committing a battery upon Thomas Holahan.