[Dan De Quille, A Nevada Lawyer's Ruse, New York Sun, June 28, 1885]

 

6          THE SUN, SUNDAY JUNE 28, 1885                       TWELVE PAGES.

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A NEVADA LAWYER'S RUSE

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HE EUCHRES THE BORES OF HIS OFFICE.

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And a Lively Fight Follows – The Office Bric-a-Brac Damaged – And the Lawyer is Sued for Conspiracy.

            VIRGINIA CITY, June 10. – Littleton Coke, a leading lawyer of the Comstock, is outside of a court room one of the mildest-mannered men that ever cut up a witness or an intestate estate.  Off his legitimate battle ground and in the ordinary walks of life, Littleton Coke is patient and long-suffering – would not even utter a word that would disturb the serene rapacity of a gas fitter. He could smilingly listen by the hour to a querulous old woman, complaining that faces wore pulled at her by the children of a neighbor, yet he had for a time tribulations that harrowed his soul down to its lowest levels.

            Through pretence of business, in the beginning, two men became visitors to his snug and quiet second-floor office, who presently developed from their chrysalis state of mere rapid maunderers into such intense and active bores that they became the terror of his life They were men who possessed the faculty of discoursing with much spirit and volubility for whole hours upon the "incongruousness of incongruity," the womanly nature of women and other equally interesting and instructive subjects.

            Poor Coke! "this affliction sore long time he bore" without being able to devise any plan whereby he might rid himself of the pair who were bringing "down his gray hairs in sorrow to the grave." So deeply did the presence of the twin bores affect him that his heart sank and his soul sickened at the bare appearance of either of his persecutors.

            One day when one of those tireless "toredoes," whoso name may be written "Jones," was drilling the lawyer through and through, causing him to sweat blood – all regardless of a malign coldness that shone in the legal eye – the conversation turned upon garrullity. Although a perfect magpie himself, Jones at once asserted that above all other things, he abhorred a loquacious person man or woman. "Of course," said he "one must expect tongue-wagging in the case of a woman, but constant gabble from a man I cannot endure."

            "Did it never occur to you, Jones," said the lawyer, "that you are yourself a pretty industrious talker, and you are by some suspected of having kissed the Blarney stone ?"

            "What me !" cried Jones.  "Why, sir, I am really a man of very few words. In most companies I am sure that I am altogether too reserved and reticent; that through my silence, taciturnity, and uncommunicativeness I am frequently suspected of being, in some sort, a spy upon those present – in fact, that I cause among those in the room a feeling uneasiness and depression.

            "That, sir, no one will dispute," said Littleton Coke dryly.

            The lawyer had seated himself at his open front window, both in order to obtain some relief by gazing out into the street and that the fresh air might fan his brow and cool his rising wrath. Glancing far down the street he saw, a block or more away, Mr. Smith – bore No. 2. This was ipecacuanha upon castor oil! It was plain to Littleton Coke that the twin bore was heading for his office.

            A sudden thought flashed across his brain. Turning to Jones he said: "It may be all as you say but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Now just for the fun of the thing, and to prove to you that you do not know yourself, I'll bet you $5 that you cannot go into that closet and remain there half an hour without speaking or coming out."

            "I'll take the bet," cries Jones with vivacity.  "I am as sure of the money as if I already had it in my pocket. What time is it now ?"

            "Just half past 2 o'clock. If you do not speak or come forth you'll have won your money at 3 o'clock. Bear in mind, however, that you are to remain in the closet with the door closed – in the dark, you know – for half an hour, and that you are neither to speak nor come out, no matter what may occur."

            "Quite satisfactory, but you are not to set the house on fire, nor are you to fire your revolver through the closet door."

            "Nonsense."

            "And you are to call me exactly at 3 clock ?"

            "Most assuredly – to the minute. Also you shall have a chair while in the closet – I will not require you to stand."

            Jones had but just been snugly seated in the closet and the door closed upon him, when Smith came puffing up the stairs.

            Both Smith and Jones are dabblers in stocks – curbstone brokers and street corner capitalists. Both value themselves highly as experts in all manner of mining matters.

            As soon as Smith entered that room he began about his favorite mining stock. "Well, Littleton," cried he, "the Golden Shower is beginning to show up well in the west crosscut from the main north drift on the 900 foot level, at the point where they are making the up-raise. That stock I let you have at bed rock will go up now. You'll come out all right on it yet. The stock has touched bottom. She's touched bottom sure! Now she'll go up – the least thing will send her up."

            "I don't pretend to know," said the lawyer, "but our friend Jones, who is as sharp on stocks as any man of my acquaintance, says Golden Shower has only just begun to tumble ; that it will go so far below bed rock that dynamite will not send it up – swears he would not give one bit an acre for such ground."      

            Smith's eyes flashed and his hair bristled.

            "Ha!" he snorted. "Jones says that, does he? The ass! What does he know about the Golden Shower or any other mine? If you listen to Jones, he'll land your boat for you devilish quick. He hasn't a particle of mining sense, common sense, nor sense of any kind, when you come to pan him out!"

            Lawyer Coke detected about this time an uneasy shuffling of feet in the closet. His scheme was working. Chuckling inwardly, he said : "Why, Smith, I have always understood Jones to be a sharp dealer in stocks and that he has made some pretty good hauls."

            "Good hauls!" Smith repeated. "I don't believe he has ever made a splitter. As he has nothing to put into stocks, how in thunder can he get anything out of them?"

            "But I have always understood Jones to be rather a heavy dealer," the lawyer said.    "Heavy dealer be hanged!" Jones replied. "He stands before the bulletin boards in front of the offices of the brokers and blows by the hour about the good turns he has just made. Never stock goes up but he has just bought 600 or 1000 shares, and never a stock goes down but he has sold just in the nick of time. All this time he does not own a share of anything, except perhaps some wildcat that is off the Board. He's the boss liar of the Comstock !"

            A sound from the closet as of the grating of teeth reached the ear of the lawyer. He smothered a chuckle and proceeded with the witness : "Oh, but you must be wrong, Mr. Smith. You must be wronging Mr. Jones in what you say. Mr. Jones dresses well and lives well generally ; therefore he must be making something in stocks."

            "Not a splitter!" said Smith. "Not a splitter, I tell you! He owes everybody that will trust him. He owes his tailor, owes at his restaurant, owes for his lodgings and would have been at the end of his string long ago but that his landlady and some other fools believe him when he blows about his big stock transactions. He'll go to where the woodbine twineth very soon. You can put Jones down for a regular deadbeat. I shouldn't wonder if he had already skipped the town. I have not seen him for a day or two. Besides, I hear that he has managed to get hold of the little savings of his landlady, some $500––."

            "Liar!" was heard in a muffled roar, as Jones rushed from the closet with uplifted chair, bristling and foaming with rage.

            Smith bounded from his seat at the lawyer's centre table, with eyes goggling at the sudden apparition of Jones from a quarter so unexpected, and in looks and attitude so venomous and threatening. He saw that the dogs of war had been slipped, and that it was war to the knife. Impelled by the instinct of self preservation, Smith grasped an ink bottle from the table and opened the battle by hurling it with all his force at Jones's head. Jones neatly stopped the missile with time bottom of his chair. The bottle exploded with a crash and a shower of ink flooded the carpet and spattered the walls. As Smith reached for a paper weight Jones let drive at him with his chair. Smith ducked his head below the table just in time, and the chair crashed into a large mirror.

            Lawyer Coke loudly called upon the combatants to cease the fray but their blood was up and the voices of both were still for war. They fired away at each other from opposite sides of the table round which they were dancing, with books, inkstands and all else that comes to hand. Jones had just fired at Smith a plaster bust of some great legal light, which missed and crashed to atoms in the remains of the shattered mirror, when the latter seized upon a bronze gladiator and whirled it about his head, yelling "Now I'll fetch you!"

            At sight of a missile so formidable Jones made a sudden plunge under the table, probably with the intention of grasping Smith by the legs and landing him upon his back. Smith, however, saw this dodge just as he was in the act of firing away with the gladiator, and, reserving his ammunition, stooped beneath the table to whack Jones's head with it. Finding that there was not room in which to swing his weapon, Smith contented himself by trying to punch it into Jones's face and eyes. Smith soon caused a free flow of claret from Jones's nose and from a cut he made over his right eye, when the latter managed to get hold of the base of the statuette, and by a sudden push sent the head of the gladiator into Smith's mouth, smashing in one or two front teeth. This unexpected return fire, and the pain it inflicted, caused Smith to make an involuntary attempt to rise to his feet, capsizing the table and tumbling it clear over Jones. In a moment both men were upon their feet and at it à la Heenan and Sayers, both as bloody as butchers.

            Finding that words alone were unheeded, the man of law rushed in to try to separate the combatants by muscular force. He arrived between the pair just in time to receive a left handed plumper on the nose from the blood-blinded Jones. Smarting from the blow and seeing blood flowing over his hands and shirt front, Lawyer Coke ran to a desk and brought forth a revolver, threatening to shoot dead the man who struck another blow. Observing the bloody condition of the disciple of Blackstone and the deadly look in his eye, usually so mild, the combatants fell back and ceased hostilities.

            At time muzzle of his cocked revolver Coke ordered Smith into an adjoining room, where he caused him to wash the blood from his face and hands, and then escorted him down the stairs and out by a rear passage mind door.

            As Smith took his departure he swore that he would never again darken the lawyer's door.  He declared that he had been led into a trap ; that an ambuscade had been prepared for him ; that Coke had concealed Jones in the closet with malice aforethought, and that he had designedly been led into abusing him. This had been done that at the proper moment Jones might dart out and assault him.  He had heretofore thought pretty well of Coke but this treacherous affair ended their friendship forever, "forever, sir!" It is the "last feather."

            Smith being dismissed, the lawyer returned to Jones and set him to washing away all removable traces of the combat. When about to escort him down stairs, Coke turned and said : "Mr. Jones, before you go I'll trouble you for the $5 I have won of you."

            "You will ? You have the cheek to ask it ? Mr. Litttleton Coke, you'll never see the color of $5 from me! But that you have the brass of the devil you would not mention it after humbugging me into that closet – ass that I was ! – and then bringing in Smith to villify and assassinate me. You will probably hear from me in an action for conspiracy. I rejoice that I got in that stinger on your nose. Never speak to me again, sir, on any occasion," and Jones departed in a towering rage.

            "Well, well!" cried Littleton Coke, when left alone as he survived the wreck of his office and inspected his nose in the fragment of a mirror that still remained attached to its frame. – "Well, I have settled the pair of them, but I must confess that my plan for suppressing bores has turned out an expensive and a painful one. I shall have a nose on me like a prize potato, and my office looks as if it had been the scene of the latest exploit of the dynamiters. It has been expensive, but, thank God, the job is done! I've settled two of the biggest bores on the Pacific coast – have dropped them both at one shot!"

DAN DE QUILLE.